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Afghan Detainees Tortured, U.N. Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS October 10, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Prisoners in some Afghan-run detention facilities have been beaten and tortured, a United Nations report said Monday, but the international organization said that the mistreatment was not the result of government policy.
The 74-page report found that detainees in 47 facilities in 24 provinces run by the Afghan National Police and the Directorate of Security suffered interrogation techniques that constituted torture under both international and Afghan law.
It said Afghan security ministries cooperated with the investigation and have taken measures to stop the abuse after being presented with the report.
The NATO-led international military coalition, also known as ISAF, announced last month that it had stopped transferring detainees to 16 of the facilities. NATO was taking action to help fix the problem before resuming the transfers, the report said.
Drafted by the U.N.'s Afghan mission, known as UNAMA, the report was based on interviews of 379 detainees spread around the facilities and conducted from October 2010 to August 2011.
It "found the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment."
The report said torture methods included suspending people by their wrists, beatings to the soles of their feet, electric shocks, twisting detainees' genitals, removing toe nails and being put in stress positions.
UNAMA said that the torture occurred for the purpose of obtaining information and confessions, which it said are often the sole form of evidence submitted in Afghan criminal trials. Judges often find such confessions "both persuasive and conclusive of the defendant's guilt."
Afghan authorities have taken steps to stop the abuse, UNAMA said.
The authorities "have stated clearly they have an action plan to address these concerns, started investigations, reassigned personnel in the case of the National Directorate of Security, and have further indicated that responsible individuals will be suspended from their positions and in serious cases, prosecuted," the report said.
The report was issued as part of a U.N. program to observe detention facilities.
"UNAMA's findings indicate that mistreatment is not an institutional or government policy," said Staffan de Mistura, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan.
He added that Afghan government cooperation "suggests that reform is both possible and desired as does the government's announced remedial actions to end these abusive practices."
The European Union also said it welcomed the Afghan government's commitment to stop abuse.
"The EU reiterates that all concerned parties must respect and guarantee the fundamental rights of all detainees, to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment, to bring those responsible for such acts to justice and to adhere to and comply with the relevant international norms and standards," said Vygaudas Usackas, the head of the EU's delegation and its special representative to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior said five Afghan civilians died in twin explosions Monday in the Dangam district of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.
A civilian vehicle struck a roadside bomb and when passers-by ran to assist the driver, another mine exploded, killing four and wounding two other people, the ministry said.
NATO also said one of its service members died in southern Afghanistan. It said an investigation was launched into the death to determine the circumstances. It provided no further details.
A total of seven NATO members have died in Afghanistan in October, and 461 since the start of the year.
Pakistan Taliban considers peace talks: report
Qasim Nauman October 10, 2011
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban movement, the country's biggest security threat, has suggested it would consider peace talks with the U.S.-backed government, a local newspaper reported Monday.
Pakistani leaders said after an all-party meeting attended by top military and intelligence officials last month they would seek reconciliation with militants to end an insurgency.
And Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was quoted by newspapers as saying the government was ready to talk peace.
"Our shura (council) will decide whether and when can we enter into talks with the government, with the military," the Express Tribune quoted Maulvi Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud, deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban, as saying.
"But I think we would like to involve countries we trust ... they are in the Arab world. Let's saySaudi Arabia."
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP), which is close to al Qaeda, was formed in December 2007 as an alliance of Pakistani militant groups to attack the Pakistani state.
It has been blamed for many of the suicide bombings across Pakistan.
Several army offensives against the group's strongholds on the Afghan border have failed to weaken its campaign. Thousands of Pakistani soldiers, policemen and civilians have been killed in the conflict.
"Until now, we don't have any direct peace offer ... our shura will sit down when we are approached. That is how we operate. There is one centralized body to take important decisions," the newspaper quoted Mehsud as saying on its website.
Any shift toward reconciliation with the TTP could anger Washington.
Last year, the United States added the TTP to its list of foreign terrorist organizations and set rewards for information leading to the capture of two of its leaders.
Ties are already heavily strained by the unilateral U.S. special forces raid that killedOsama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in May, and American accusations that Islamabad supports militants who attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The TTP also has ambitions to strike Western targets abroad. The group claimed responsibility for the failed bomb plot in New York'sTimes Square last year and is increasingly seen as a direct threat to the United States.
U.S. prosecutors charged TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud for a plot that killed sevenCIA employees at a U.S. base in Afghanistan in 2009.
Past deals with the TTP have failed to bring stability and gave the group space to impose their harsh version of Islam in areas that were ceded to it by the government.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Fighting Shadows: Why the U.S. Will Struggle to Defeat the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan
By John Wendle / Kabul Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 time.com
In recent weeks, there has been a seemingly incessant barrage of NATO press releases coming out of Kabul, announcing the capture or death of commanders within the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network. It would almost make one believe that the war on the Pakistani border is being won against this shadowy militia known for their daring and complex attacks in Kabul over the past few years. But the reality is different.
Western attention to the Haqqani network spiked a month ago when the group was blamed for a series of attacks across Kabul, the most severe of which had RPGs landing inside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and only ended after a 20-hour gun battle. Then a week later, the group used a bomb hidden in an insurgent's turban to assassinate former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, the commission charged with negotiating with the Taliban.
With Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda on the wane, the Haqqani network has offered the U.S. a new bogeyman in Afghanistan. Like bin Laden, it too is also based in Pakistan — a point emphasized late last month when Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the Haqqani network is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After Rabbani's assassination, both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are ratcheting up pressure on the network as well as Pakistan, but many see these as ill-conceived or ineffectual efforts by an occupying power whose time is running out in Afghanistan.
Over the past year the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has said it has carried out more than 500 operations against the Haqqani network. On Sept. 30, ISAF announced what it touted as a major coup: the capture of Haji Mali Khan, whom it described as "the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan" and uncle of Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani, the day-to-day commanders of the fighting force and the sons of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the patriarch of the family and a former commander of a mujahedin force funded by the CIA during the war with the Soviets. ISAF says Khan "moved forces from Pakistan to Afghanistan to conduct terrorist activity," "served as an emissary" between the group and the Pakistani Taliban and "established a militant camp" inside Afghanistan along the border.
But Thomas Ruttig, a co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) and expert on the Haqqani network, thinks ISAF may be crowing over very little — and still has a lot of work to do. "Mali Khan has not been one of the top five Haqqani network commanders. His name was not widely known, and he was more of local importance. In the news of his capture, I see more of an attempt to project progress in the fight against this Taliban network, as we saw a few years ago in the fight against al-Qaeda, when a number of previously unknown number fours and fives were discovered and killed or captured," says Ruttig.
Regardless of Khan's true importance, ISAF increased the frequency of its Haqqani-focused missions fourfold after his capture and claim almost every day that they are bringing down network leaders. "The Haqqani network and its safe havens remain a top priority for the Afghan and coalition force," ISAF said in a statement, adding that so far they had killed 20 leaders and captured more than 1,400 insurgents since the start of this year.
But Afghan army and police commanders on the ground in Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces, the core of the network's territory on the Afghan side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, have a different view. "Our police are looking for Haqqani and Taliban fighters everyday in different districts, but right now we are unable to stop the Haqqani group from crossing the border. If they come during the night, we aren't able to stop them because we don't have an air force, night vision and we lack training and high-quality weapons," says Colonel Almar Khan, a border police commander in Paktia province, part of the Haqqani heartland.
General Orya Khail, a corps commander in Khost province, says the number of Haqqani fighters on the border is "increasing day by day." Asked if Afghan security forces should go into Pakistan to root out the Taliban in their bases, he tells TIME, "We can't even ensure security in our own country, how we can go into Pakistan to clear the area? Look at our provinces: in Logar we can't go to the villages although Logar is the closest province to Kabul. Now it's not advantageous for Afghanistan to fight on the border. We should take care of our local problems first. The main challenges are corruption and strengthening the army and other security forces."
On the political side, the situation is no easier. Repeated allegations by the Afghan and U.S. governments that the Haqqani network is supported by Pakistan's ISI were somewhat corroborated last week, when Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's version of the FBI, announced that evidence gleaned from the capture of an insurgent shows that the plans to assassinate Rabbani were drawn in Quetta, Pakistan. "Photos, maps and videos showed that it was planned in Quetta," Mashal tells TIME. As a result, Karzai pulled out of tripartite talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. scheduled for this week.
But Ruttig, of the AAN, says, "It is difficult to prove that the ISI is behind, or advises in, particular operations of the Haqqani network, or, for that matter, other Taliban subgroups or other terrorist organizations. Often, reports about the Haqqani network or other organizations' involvement in certain attacks remain unclear. This is still the case in the latest attacks." For what it's worth, both the Pakistani and Taliban spokesmen have denied that links exist between the ISI and the Haqqani network. At the same time, Zabiullah Mujahid, a well-known Taliban spokesman, tells TIME, "Siraj Haqqani is one of the best commanders and mujahid of the Afghan people, and he is with us." Though relations between the Taliban and the Haqqani network have never been completely clear, Mujahid says recent overtures made by the Karzai government to bring Siraj Haqqani into the government have failed: "Yes, a few days ago as always, the government told Siraj Haqqani to come to the government and he would be given a high ranking position, but they got a negative answer back."
Now, ever fragile relations between the current government in Kabul and the Pakistanis are at a low ebb. Deputy National Security Adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali told the Wall Street Journal: "From now on Afghanistan will follow the 'trust but verify' approach toward Pakistan, in particular with regard to our peace effort." Karzai himself said that Kabul could no longer negotiate with the Taliban, and the only viable negotiating partner is Pakistan, a provocative declaration dismissed by Islamabad, which would not have been pleased by Karzai's visit last week to India (an archenemy in the minds of many Pakistani strategists), during which he signed a strategic cooperation deal with New Delhi.
Despite the ramped-up military pressure on the Haqqani network and diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, Mashal of the the NDS believes Kabul will see more spectacular attacks like those the group has been accused recently of carrying out. "We do predict more terrorist attacks, but they won't be successful. We are capable of stopping them, God willing." But they have not been in the past.
— With additional reporting by Walid Fazly
Over 1,400 Haqqani fighters held in Afghanistan this year
New Kerala
Kabul, Oct 10 : Afghan army and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) kept up pressure on insurgents as over 1,400 Haqqani network militants have been captured in Afghanistan so far this year, ISAF spokesperson said Monday.
"Haqqani is a mixture of insurgents and criminals in its network and finances itself out of all types of criminal activities including drugs," ISAF spokesperson Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told a joint press conference with Dominic Medley, NATO's civilian representative's spokesperson.
"We chase Haqqani in the field, killing and capturing more than 100 last week alone, and more than 1,400 were captured this year. We also have to break their financial trends," Carsten said.
"Haqqani network has link with Al Qaeda and receives support of any kind from (some foreign) governments and that support must be stopped," Xinhua quoted him as saying.
A Taliban-affiliated militant group, the Haqqani network mostly operates in eastern Afghan provinces and capital Kabul, and were blamed for many high-profile attacks, including a truck bombing on a US military base in Wardak province Sep 10 and a coordinated attack on ISAF headquarters and US embassy in Kabul Sep 13.
Regarding the security transition process from ISAF to Afghan security forces, Medley said the second phase of transition will be announced by Afghan government in coming weeks.
The first phase of transition of security responsibility began in July this year, and the process will be completed by the end of 2014.
NATO civilian representative's spokesman also stated that the alliance would support Afghanistan beyond 2014.
"The NATO commitment is clear. Afghanistan will not be abandoned and the Alliance will stay committed," Medley said.
--IANS
Australian female soldier reports sex assault at military base in Afghanistan
CANBERRA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- A female Australian soldier was allegedly sexually assaulted at a military base in Afghanistan, Australian Defense Department confirmed on Monday.
The soldier reported the assault, which she said happened at the Tarin Kot base in restive Uruzgan province, to superiors on Wednesday. "Defense does not condone inappropriate behavior and treats such allegations seriously," a spokesperson of the department said in a statement.
"Our immediate priority at this time is to provide support and assistance to the soldier and ensure the safety and welfare of our members."
The spokesperson said female soldier is completing her deployment early and is returning to Australia in accordance with her wishes.
The matter is now the subject of an investigation, and further details regarding the alleged assault will not be released while investigation is underway.
It is the latest in a series of sex scandals to hit the Australian military, which saw an inquiry into the treatment of women that had received more than 1,000 complaints over sexual abuses. The investigation is due to deliver its official report later this week.
The news also came following last month's announcement that women will be allowed to serve in frontline infantry units in combat within five years.
Lavrov: U.S. Afghan Policy Stokes HIV/AIDS Problem
October 10, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States was aggravating the HIV/AIDS problem in Russia and the rest of Europe by refusing to use its forces to destroy opium crops in Afghanistan.
Lavrov made the comment at a conference opening in Moscow today on communicable diseases in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
He said, "We must fight not only the use but also the spread of drugs."
Afghanistan is the world's top producer of poppies used to make opium, the key ingredient in heroin production.
Russia faces an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is spreading from shared needles among injecting drug users.
The United States has phased out crop eradication efforts to focus instead on intercepting drugs and hunting production operations and drug lords.
It said it made the change because drug crop eradication was putting farmers out of work, sowing resentment against foreign intervention.
compiled from agency reports
Rocket attack kills 2 civilians, wound another in Afghanistan
ASSADABAD, Afghanistan, Oct. 10 (Xinhua)-- Two civilians were killed and another was injured as a rocket fired by insurgents hit a residential area in Kunar province with Assadabad its capital 185 km east of Afghan capital city Kabul on Monday, an official said.
"A rocket fired by anti-government insurgents slammed into a residential area in Narai district this morning leaving two persons including a woman and a child dead," spokesman for provincial administration Wasihullah Wasifi told Xinhua.
Another child was injured in the attack, he added.
He also blamed Taliban militants for firing rocket but the outfit fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops has yet to make comment.
Taliban militants often carry out attacks against government interests in parts of Kunar province along the border with Pakistan's tribal area of Bajawar.
Two Taliban insurgents were arrested in Narai district on Sunday evening, according to Kunar provincial police chief Awaz Mohammad Nazari.
Afghan police kill 4 insurgents, detain 3 others
KABUL, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police during operations have killed four insurgents and detained three others over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) in collaboration with Army and NATO-led Coalition forces launched three joint operations in surrounding areas of the Nangarhar, Kandahar and Ghazni province over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement providing daily operational updates.
"As a result of these operations, four armed insurgent were killed, one wounded and three others were arrested by ANP," the statement said, adding during these operations, the ANP also destroyed a narcotic factory and discovered two radio handsets, two rocket launchers, four AK-47 guns, 94 heavy bullets, 4,305 light bullets, four anti-vehicle mines, six hand grenades, 440 kg narcotics, 45 kg Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and one vehicle.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" for referring to Taliban.
Taliban militants, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and NATO-led troops since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the war-ravaged country, have yet to make comments.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces kept up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 360 insurgents had been killed and around 430 were detained by joint forces in September alone, according the interior ministry statements.
From pages of life to a book of the dead
Sydney Morning Herald By Kim Barker October 10, 2011
Reading notes from her last trip to Kandahar leaves a reporter numb.
I STILL keep a reporter's notebook from five years ago even though it's fairly useless. All the pages are full and some have fallen out. But it holds interviews with 17 people from my last road trip to Kandahar, when the highway was still safe enough to drive. In a way, the notebook is evidence of what happened in Afghanistan and when things started to go wrong.
I spent much of the last decade in south Asia as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, first visiting Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban had been driven from power, a time when women hugged me on the streets of Kabul and hope was a contagion. And I kept coming back, even moving to the region, chronicling how the war moved from the good war to the forgotten war to the longest war.
By June 2006, my last road trip to Kandahar, there were disturbing signs - a resurgent Taliban, an incompetent government, a transition in Western forces as the United States started trying to tiptoe out of the country. But still, there was no sense of how bad things could get. There was still hope.
Now it's October 2011. As of Friday, 10 years have passed since the war began, since the bombs first fell. Afghanistan has the distinction of being the longest war for the US.
Despite all assurances to the contrary, this conflict is not going well. The Afghan security forces, while improving, are by no means ready to go it alone. The Afghan government is not just corrupt, it lacks a mandate from people outside the cities. It's not as if the Taliban and their ilk are so strong - the Afghan government is just so weak. And meanwhile, there is this deadline of 2014, when the West plans to start pulling out most troops.
Understandably, the deadline hangs like a guillotine over many Afghans. Because while many just want the foreign forces gone, they know what such an exodus means. Chaos, civil war. And eventually, when the world rights itself, it means being run by some strongman who gains his power from neighbouring Pakistan.
It is easy enough to ask: So what? Who cares? In this long war that has cost billions of dollars, not to mention thousands of foreign lives, the fate of Afghans gets short shrift. They are most often collateral damage, forgotten.
So this story is for them, some kind of 10-year anniversary present, some kind of acknowledgment for what many Afghans bought into and what many lost.
In my notebook, there is Malalai Kakar, the first woman in Kandahar to return to the police force, who carried her Kalashnikov rifle beneath her all-encompassing blue burqa. She was a swaggering, smoking, swearing force of nature, who smiled slyly and called other police officers cowards for running from the Taliban.
''I am not concerned or nervous at all,'' she said about Taliban warnings to her. ''I don't think the Taliban are getting stronger. We are supported by the world. No one supports them.''
There is also Mohammad Akbar Khakrizwal, the former intelligence chief of Kandahar. He was a charmer, a man who mocked my burqa (it was too short), the brother of the former police chief, killed the year before. He, unlike many others, saw how things were changing.
''Write down this date,'' he said. ''In one year, the situation will be worse than it is today. I'm telling Americans, if they do not bring changes in their policies, they will say, thank heaven, Iraq is a heaven compared to here.''
It was June 13, 2006. He was right. A year later, the US claimed to have irrefutable evidence Iran was sending weapons to the Taliban. The International Red Cross said life for Afghans was worse than the year before. And mistaking each other for the enemy, Afghan police, known for their exuberant use of weapons, fired 49 rocket-propelled grenades at US-led troops. The Americans, more restrained but also more accurate, fired back, killing eight police.
Others are in my notebook, such as Dad Mohammad Khan, the parliamentarian who had just lost about 40 family members in a Taliban ambush. And Ahmad Wali Karzai, the brother of the President, who fervently denied all rumours that he was running drugs, that he was somehow corrupt.
During the years, the numbers changed. First, five were dead, then 10, then 15, and finally 16. All were gut-wrenching in some way, particularly Malalai, gunned down alongside her son as she left for work in the morning. But always, there was a punch line - of course, the only person left alive in my notebook was Karzai's brother, the alleged drug dealer and power broker.
Now that's not even true. He was the 17th target, killed in July. Looking through my notebook, I'd like to say I feel sad, but mostly I feel numb. There is no one left alive. Just notes about what they once said, what they once felt, who they once were. And meanwhile, the world talks of walking away.
Kim Barker, who spent five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan reporting for the Chicago Tribune, is the author of the newly released book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Afghans blame Pakistan, and want Western forces to stay on
The Sydney Morning Herald By Yalda Hakim October 10, 2011
''Every Muslim knows fighting infidels is a duty. If you become a martyr, you'll go [to] paradise," says Qari Ramazon, the man responsible for the attack on Kabul's Serena Hotel in 2008, which killed six people. When Ramazon looks you in the eye and says he'd be happy if the West faced more terrorist attacks, you start to wonder if the last 10 years in Afghanistan have made any real progress.
After gaining rare access to one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons, Pul-e-Charkri in Kabul, I asked him why his group remain intent on killing. "Afghans and Pakistanis are against the US and NATO. It's my duty to fight them. I can afford to put explosives on my body and lose my life," Ramazon told me.
I travelled to Afghanistan to interview the man in charge of negotiating peace with the Taliban, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani. But within 36 hours of my arrival, I was attending his funeral. He was killed by an assassin who had hidden a bomb in his turban. This is life for ordinary Afghans, who live every day fearing another leader will be targeted or more innocent civilians killed in this seemingly endless war.
Mourners gathered at a hilltop cemetery overlooking Kabul as Rabbani was laid to rest. They were angry. Angry at Pakistan. Angry at its intelligence agency, the ISI. Most Afghans I spoke to accused Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Pakistan has of course been quick to reject these accusations, but from the country's opposition leader to police chiefs and ordinary civilians, Afghans continue to blame their hostile nuclear neighbour for their woes. "Osama bin Laden was found at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment. To think al-Qaeda and the Taliban aren't based there is wrong," said police chief Esmatullah Alizai.
The death of Rabbani has dealt a serious blow to any negotiations with the Taliban. Rabbani, an elder statesman respected by both sides of Afghan politics, gave the body legitimacy. An ethnic Tajik and once leader of the Northern Alliance, the 70-year-old was also able to protect President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, from rival camps within his government.
Pressure is now mounting on the country's embattled leader to not only appease various factions but to find a consensus on the peace process. For many, that process is now dead in the water.
The powerful governor of the northern province of Balkh, Mohammad Atta Noor, has warned that if Karzai doesn't take swift action against the Taliban, he will rearm and regroup the Northern Alliance to take on the task.
But who is the enemy? Who will they fight? The war tactic has changed. Taliban fighters seem to have moved off the battlefield and are focusing on more targeted attacks. This year, they've managed to successfully assassinate four key Karzai allies. And the security situation continues to worsen, with violence increasing by nearly 40 per cent over last year.
The capital is tense. A few weeks ago the Taliban mounted an attack on the US embassy and NATO headquarters. Central Kabul is supposedly protected by a ''Ring of Steel'', fortified checkpoints which are designed to stop attacks on key government buildings and the residences of officials such as Rabbani. But twice it has failed miserably.
Now, with peace talks in disarray and America's influence waning before its troops withdraw in 2014, the future appears bleak for Afghans. After 10 years, many feel very little has been done to eliminate terrorism from the country and region. Afghans fear their country may spiral back into civil war as violent factions battle it out - a recipe for creating another terrorist haven.
At a time of persistent violence, many I spoke to said the West needs to reconsider the timetable for withdrawal. "The world must not repeat its mistakes," said Atta.
''The world must not leave Afghanistan to deal with drugs, smugglers and terrorists. And if the international community doesn't understand this, and Afghanistan has to deal with terrorism on its own, these problems will reach the Western world's most beautiful cities.''
Yalda Hakim is a presenter of the SBS international current affairs program Dateline. Afghans warn insurgents biding time as U.S. marks war milestone
McClatchy-Tribune News October 9, 2011
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - When the muezzins’ calls summon the faithful of Afghanistan’s second-largest city to morning prayers, the senior cleric remains inside the crumbling walls of an old army base, sitting at the microphone of a low-power radio station that’s become his pulpit.
“I am so much under threat that I can’t walk on the street,” said Maulawi Ubaidullah Hikmat, the head of Kandahar province’s official Islamic council, who beams daily sermons over a 1,000-watt transmitter, protected by a solitary bodyguard. “I can’t even preach in my own mosque.”
Hikmat’s fear — driven by a Taliban murder campaign that’s killed hundreds of Afghan officials, clerics, tribal elders and others affiliated with the U.S.-backed government — contrasts sharply with the Obama administration’s assertion of “great progress” 10 years after the Oct. 7, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan.
As he tries to wind down the longest war in U.S. history, President Barack Obama says his strategy has turned the tables on the Taliban and allowed U.S. combat forces to begin withdrawing. But many Afghan officials and ordinary people counter that the insurgents are merely laying low, waiting out the U.S. drawdown, and worry that U.S. policy is turning the clock back to the civil war that was convulsing their country at the time of the invasion.
“How can they say there is security here?” asked Zmari Khan, a Kandahar City police chief and a survivor of four assassination attempts by Taliban suicide bombings. The attacks scarred his body, blew off fingers and toes and rendered his left arm useless.
“There is no option for me,” he said. “I am killing them (the Taliban) or they will kill me. We have been betrayed by everybody.”
U.S. officials and commanders argue last year’s surge of 33,000 U.S. soldiers, intensified U.S. and Afghan night raids and larger, better-trained Afghan security forces have turned the tide against the Taliban in their southern heartland and brought relative stability to areas long under their sway.
“We have reversed the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan,” Obama declared to Congress in a Sept. 30 letter accompanying his latest status report on the war.
After 1,800 U.S. soldiers dead, some 13,000 wounded and more than $444 billion in costs — not to mention an economically battered electorate at home that’s increasingly opposed to the war — Obama on June 22 announced the start of the U.S. combat troop pullout. The surge troops are to be gone by next summer, and Afghan forces are to assume full responsibility for security by the end of 2014.
“The insurgents’ ability to control territory has diminished” and they are “losing ground,” assistant Defence Secretary Michele Flournoy assured a Sept. 23 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
On the surface, that assessment seemed accurate during a recent visit to Kandahar City and surrounding areas, where the hard-line Islamic movement began in 1994.
Districts where it once was too dangerous to drive were thick with traffic. Local bazaars appeared to be thriving. Schools were open. Gaggles of young men splashed in irrigation canals to escape the broiling heat. Fields brimmed with eggplants, melons and other crops.
“Now, it’s totally different,” said Shah Mohammad Ahmadi, the governor of Arghandab, a district of 150,000 people, rich with orchards and vineyards, that for several years saw some of the war’s bloodiest fighting. “Now we have access to all of the villages and the villages have access to us.”
But Ahmadi works inside a fortress-like combat outpost manned by U.S. and Afghan troops. He echoed warnings by other officials and ordinary Afghans that the security gains in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province, another Taliban stronghold, were superficial.
“I’ve told the Americans many times that they need to stay longer,” Ahmadi said. “If they leave, we will lose all of our gains for the last 10 years.”
Afghans say the Taliban — unable to prevail in conventional battles against the stronger, high-tech U.S. forces — have resorted to guerrilla tactics of roadside and suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. The attacks have eroded public trust in the government of President Hamid Karzai and fuelled U.S. opposition to the war.
“Where is the weakness of the Taliban? Even with two men, they can shake the province. Why are the Americans saying the Taliban is weak?” asked Haji Toorjan, a former low-level insurgent commander. “Look how the Russians were defeated here. They were defeated by guerrilla warfare.”
The insurgency’s top leaders are biding their time in sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan, supported by Pakistan’s army-run Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, waiting for the U.S. troops to leave, according to Afghan and U.S. officials. Pakistan denies the allegations.
“The Pakistani goal is that they don’t want Afghanistan developed or peaceful,” said Maulvi Noor ul Aziz, a veteran mid-level Taliban commander who surrendered earlier this year because of what he charged was a growing Pakistani role in the insurgency.
“A peaceful Afghanistan is not in the interests of Pakistan, because there would be no more aid money from the United States sent to Pakistan,” he said.
Some Afghans expressed little confidence that their forces could replace the U.S. surge troops.
“The ANA (Afghan National Army) just sit in their posts and don’t come out,” complained Sardar Mohammad, 24, as he sat with other villagers in a field next to piles of purple eggplants they’d just harvested. “They won’t bother with what is going on in the villages.”
Many local officials and Afghans are deeply afraid that the U.S. troop drawdown will reignite the devastating civil war between the Taliban, who are dominated by the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, and the Northern Alliance, a coalition of mainly ethnic minorities whose leaders now control key government posts.
They worry that Pakistan will step up support for the Taliban. India, determined to stop Pakistan from turning Afghanistan into a sanctuary for Islamic militants who’ve killed hundreds of its citizens, could respond by backing the minorities as it did before the U.S. invasion, raising the danger of a direct clash between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Senior U.S. officials seldom discuss it, but they also see the threat of renewed civil war. On Sept. 22, in his final testimony to a congressional committee before retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen warned: “If we continue to draw down forces at pace while ... public and systemic corruption is left unchecked, I believe we risk leaving behind a government in which we cannot reasonably expect the Afghans to have faith.
“At best, this would lead to localized conflicts inside the country. At worst, it could lead to government collapse and civil war.”
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, insisted in an Aug. 13 interview that “we are not going to repeat 1990,” when the United States disengaged from Afghanistan at the end of the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. That policy contributed to the Taliban takeover in 1996, which paved the way for al-Qaeda’s arrival.
He said the United States envisions “a strategic relationship” with Afghanistan.
But that’s hardly comforting to Haji Khallar Khan, one of many tribal elders from around the province who have fled to Kandahar City to escape assassination by the Taliban.
“In my district, only the district office and a U.S. base are safe, yet they are still fired on,” said Khan, a local council member from Maiwand, a district bordering Helmand Province. “You can’t go anywhere else without security. In the bazaar, in the shops, the Taliban just sit there. The Americans don’t recognize them.”
McClatchy-Tribune News
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS October 10, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Prisoners in some Afghan-run detention facilities have been beaten and tortured, a United Nations report said Monday, but the international organization said that the mistreatment was not the result of government policy.
The 74-page report found that detainees in 47 facilities in 24 provinces run by the Afghan National Police and the Directorate of Security suffered interrogation techniques that constituted torture under both international and Afghan law.
It said Afghan security ministries cooperated with the investigation and have taken measures to stop the abuse after being presented with the report.
The NATO-led international military coalition, also known as ISAF, announced last month that it had stopped transferring detainees to 16 of the facilities. NATO was taking action to help fix the problem before resuming the transfers, the report said.
Drafted by the U.N.'s Afghan mission, known as UNAMA, the report was based on interviews of 379 detainees spread around the facilities and conducted from October 2010 to August 2011.
It "found the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment."
The report said torture methods included suspending people by their wrists, beatings to the soles of their feet, electric shocks, twisting detainees' genitals, removing toe nails and being put in stress positions.
UNAMA said that the torture occurred for the purpose of obtaining information and confessions, which it said are often the sole form of evidence submitted in Afghan criminal trials. Judges often find such confessions "both persuasive and conclusive of the defendant's guilt."
Afghan authorities have taken steps to stop the abuse, UNAMA said.
The authorities "have stated clearly they have an action plan to address these concerns, started investigations, reassigned personnel in the case of the National Directorate of Security, and have further indicated that responsible individuals will be suspended from their positions and in serious cases, prosecuted," the report said.
The report was issued as part of a U.N. program to observe detention facilities.
"UNAMA's findings indicate that mistreatment is not an institutional or government policy," said Staffan de Mistura, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan.
He added that Afghan government cooperation "suggests that reform is both possible and desired as does the government's announced remedial actions to end these abusive practices."
The European Union also said it welcomed the Afghan government's commitment to stop abuse.
"The EU reiterates that all concerned parties must respect and guarantee the fundamental rights of all detainees, to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment, to bring those responsible for such acts to justice and to adhere to and comply with the relevant international norms and standards," said Vygaudas Usackas, the head of the EU's delegation and its special representative to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior said five Afghan civilians died in twin explosions Monday in the Dangam district of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.
A civilian vehicle struck a roadside bomb and when passers-by ran to assist the driver, another mine exploded, killing four and wounding two other people, the ministry said.
NATO also said one of its service members died in southern Afghanistan. It said an investigation was launched into the death to determine the circumstances. It provided no further details.
A total of seven NATO members have died in Afghanistan in October, and 461 since the start of the year.
Pakistan Taliban considers peace talks: report
Qasim Nauman October 10, 2011
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban movement, the country's biggest security threat, has suggested it would consider peace talks with the U.S.-backed government, a local newspaper reported Monday.
Pakistani leaders said after an all-party meeting attended by top military and intelligence officials last month they would seek reconciliation with militants to end an insurgency.
And Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was quoted by newspapers as saying the government was ready to talk peace.
"Our shura (council) will decide whether and when can we enter into talks with the government, with the military," the Express Tribune quoted Maulvi Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud, deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban, as saying.
"But I think we would like to involve countries we trust ... they are in the Arab world. Let's saySaudi Arabia."
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan (TTP), which is close to al Qaeda, was formed in December 2007 as an alliance of Pakistani militant groups to attack the Pakistani state.
It has been blamed for many of the suicide bombings across Pakistan.
Several army offensives against the group's strongholds on the Afghan border have failed to weaken its campaign. Thousands of Pakistani soldiers, policemen and civilians have been killed in the conflict.
"Until now, we don't have any direct peace offer ... our shura will sit down when we are approached. That is how we operate. There is one centralized body to take important decisions," the newspaper quoted Mehsud as saying on its website.
Any shift toward reconciliation with the TTP could anger Washington.
Last year, the United States added the TTP to its list of foreign terrorist organizations and set rewards for information leading to the capture of two of its leaders.
Ties are already heavily strained by the unilateral U.S. special forces raid that killedOsama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in May, and American accusations that Islamabad supports militants who attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The TTP also has ambitions to strike Western targets abroad. The group claimed responsibility for the failed bomb plot in New York'sTimes Square last year and is increasingly seen as a direct threat to the United States.
U.S. prosecutors charged TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud for a plot that killed sevenCIA employees at a U.S. base in Afghanistan in 2009.
Past deals with the TTP have failed to bring stability and gave the group space to impose their harsh version of Islam in areas that were ceded to it by the government.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
Fighting Shadows: Why the U.S. Will Struggle to Defeat the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan
By John Wendle / Kabul Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 time.com
In recent weeks, there has been a seemingly incessant barrage of NATO press releases coming out of Kabul, announcing the capture or death of commanders within the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network. It would almost make one believe that the war on the Pakistani border is being won against this shadowy militia known for their daring and complex attacks in Kabul over the past few years. But the reality is different.
Western attention to the Haqqani network spiked a month ago when the group was blamed for a series of attacks across Kabul, the most severe of which had RPGs landing inside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy and only ended after a 20-hour gun battle. Then a week later, the group used a bomb hidden in an insurgent's turban to assassinate former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, the commission charged with negotiating with the Taliban.
With Osama bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda on the wane, the Haqqani network has offered the U.S. a new bogeyman in Afghanistan. Like bin Laden, it too is also based in Pakistan — a point emphasized late last month when Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the Haqqani network is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). After Rabbani's assassination, both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are ratcheting up pressure on the network as well as Pakistan, but many see these as ill-conceived or ineffectual efforts by an occupying power whose time is running out in Afghanistan.
Over the past year the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has said it has carried out more than 500 operations against the Haqqani network. On Sept. 30, ISAF announced what it touted as a major coup: the capture of Haji Mali Khan, whom it described as "the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan" and uncle of Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani, the day-to-day commanders of the fighting force and the sons of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the patriarch of the family and a former commander of a mujahedin force funded by the CIA during the war with the Soviets. ISAF says Khan "moved forces from Pakistan to Afghanistan to conduct terrorist activity," "served as an emissary" between the group and the Pakistani Taliban and "established a militant camp" inside Afghanistan along the border.
But Thomas Ruttig, a co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) and expert on the Haqqani network, thinks ISAF may be crowing over very little — and still has a lot of work to do. "Mali Khan has not been one of the top five Haqqani network commanders. His name was not widely known, and he was more of local importance. In the news of his capture, I see more of an attempt to project progress in the fight against this Taliban network, as we saw a few years ago in the fight against al-Qaeda, when a number of previously unknown number fours and fives were discovered and killed or captured," says Ruttig.
Regardless of Khan's true importance, ISAF increased the frequency of its Haqqani-focused missions fourfold after his capture and claim almost every day that they are bringing down network leaders. "The Haqqani network and its safe havens remain a top priority for the Afghan and coalition force," ISAF said in a statement, adding that so far they had killed 20 leaders and captured more than 1,400 insurgents since the start of this year.
But Afghan army and police commanders on the ground in Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces, the core of the network's territory on the Afghan side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, have a different view. "Our police are looking for Haqqani and Taliban fighters everyday in different districts, but right now we are unable to stop the Haqqani group from crossing the border. If they come during the night, we aren't able to stop them because we don't have an air force, night vision and we lack training and high-quality weapons," says Colonel Almar Khan, a border police commander in Paktia province, part of the Haqqani heartland.
General Orya Khail, a corps commander in Khost province, says the number of Haqqani fighters on the border is "increasing day by day." Asked if Afghan security forces should go into Pakistan to root out the Taliban in their bases, he tells TIME, "We can't even ensure security in our own country, how we can go into Pakistan to clear the area? Look at our provinces: in Logar we can't go to the villages although Logar is the closest province to Kabul. Now it's not advantageous for Afghanistan to fight on the border. We should take care of our local problems first. The main challenges are corruption and strengthening the army and other security forces."
On the political side, the situation is no easier. Repeated allegations by the Afghan and U.S. governments that the Haqqani network is supported by Pakistan's ISI were somewhat corroborated last week, when Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's version of the FBI, announced that evidence gleaned from the capture of an insurgent shows that the plans to assassinate Rabbani were drawn in Quetta, Pakistan. "Photos, maps and videos showed that it was planned in Quetta," Mashal tells TIME. As a result, Karzai pulled out of tripartite talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. scheduled for this week.
But Ruttig, of the AAN, says, "It is difficult to prove that the ISI is behind, or advises in, particular operations of the Haqqani network, or, for that matter, other Taliban subgroups or other terrorist organizations. Often, reports about the Haqqani network or other organizations' involvement in certain attacks remain unclear. This is still the case in the latest attacks." For what it's worth, both the Pakistani and Taliban spokesmen have denied that links exist between the ISI and the Haqqani network. At the same time, Zabiullah Mujahid, a well-known Taliban spokesman, tells TIME, "Siraj Haqqani is one of the best commanders and mujahid of the Afghan people, and he is with us." Though relations between the Taliban and the Haqqani network have never been completely clear, Mujahid says recent overtures made by the Karzai government to bring Siraj Haqqani into the government have failed: "Yes, a few days ago as always, the government told Siraj Haqqani to come to the government and he would be given a high ranking position, but they got a negative answer back."
Now, ever fragile relations between the current government in Kabul and the Pakistanis are at a low ebb. Deputy National Security Adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali told the Wall Street Journal: "From now on Afghanistan will follow the 'trust but verify' approach toward Pakistan, in particular with regard to our peace effort." Karzai himself said that Kabul could no longer negotiate with the Taliban, and the only viable negotiating partner is Pakistan, a provocative declaration dismissed by Islamabad, which would not have been pleased by Karzai's visit last week to India (an archenemy in the minds of many Pakistani strategists), during which he signed a strategic cooperation deal with New Delhi.
Despite the ramped-up military pressure on the Haqqani network and diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, Mashal of the the NDS believes Kabul will see more spectacular attacks like those the group has been accused recently of carrying out. "We do predict more terrorist attacks, but they won't be successful. We are capable of stopping them, God willing." But they have not been in the past.
— With additional reporting by Walid Fazly
Over 1,400 Haqqani fighters held in Afghanistan this year
New Kerala
Kabul, Oct 10 : Afghan army and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) kept up pressure on insurgents as over 1,400 Haqqani network militants have been captured in Afghanistan so far this year, ISAF spokesperson said Monday.
"Haqqani is a mixture of insurgents and criminals in its network and finances itself out of all types of criminal activities including drugs," ISAF spokesperson Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told a joint press conference with Dominic Medley, NATO's civilian representative's spokesperson.
"We chase Haqqani in the field, killing and capturing more than 100 last week alone, and more than 1,400 were captured this year. We also have to break their financial trends," Carsten said.
"Haqqani network has link with Al Qaeda and receives support of any kind from (some foreign) governments and that support must be stopped," Xinhua quoted him as saying.
A Taliban-affiliated militant group, the Haqqani network mostly operates in eastern Afghan provinces and capital Kabul, and were blamed for many high-profile attacks, including a truck bombing on a US military base in Wardak province Sep 10 and a coordinated attack on ISAF headquarters and US embassy in Kabul Sep 13.
Regarding the security transition process from ISAF to Afghan security forces, Medley said the second phase of transition will be announced by Afghan government in coming weeks.
The first phase of transition of security responsibility began in July this year, and the process will be completed by the end of 2014.
NATO civilian representative's spokesman also stated that the alliance would support Afghanistan beyond 2014.
"The NATO commitment is clear. Afghanistan will not be abandoned and the Alliance will stay committed," Medley said.
--IANS
Australian female soldier reports sex assault at military base in Afghanistan
CANBERRA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- A female Australian soldier was allegedly sexually assaulted at a military base in Afghanistan, Australian Defense Department confirmed on Monday.
The soldier reported the assault, which she said happened at the Tarin Kot base in restive Uruzgan province, to superiors on Wednesday. "Defense does not condone inappropriate behavior and treats such allegations seriously," a spokesperson of the department said in a statement.
"Our immediate priority at this time is to provide support and assistance to the soldier and ensure the safety and welfare of our members."
The spokesperson said female soldier is completing her deployment early and is returning to Australia in accordance with her wishes.
The matter is now the subject of an investigation, and further details regarding the alleged assault will not be released while investigation is underway.
It is the latest in a series of sex scandals to hit the Australian military, which saw an inquiry into the treatment of women that had received more than 1,000 complaints over sexual abuses. The investigation is due to deliver its official report later this week.
The news also came following last month's announcement that women will be allowed to serve in frontline infantry units in combat within five years.
Lavrov: U.S. Afghan Policy Stokes HIV/AIDS Problem
October 10, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States was aggravating the HIV/AIDS problem in Russia and the rest of Europe by refusing to use its forces to destroy opium crops in Afghanistan.
Lavrov made the comment at a conference opening in Moscow today on communicable diseases in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
He said, "We must fight not only the use but also the spread of drugs."
Afghanistan is the world's top producer of poppies used to make opium, the key ingredient in heroin production.
Russia faces an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is spreading from shared needles among injecting drug users.
The United States has phased out crop eradication efforts to focus instead on intercepting drugs and hunting production operations and drug lords.
It said it made the change because drug crop eradication was putting farmers out of work, sowing resentment against foreign intervention.
compiled from agency reports
Rocket attack kills 2 civilians, wound another in Afghanistan
ASSADABAD, Afghanistan, Oct. 10 (Xinhua)-- Two civilians were killed and another was injured as a rocket fired by insurgents hit a residential area in Kunar province with Assadabad its capital 185 km east of Afghan capital city Kabul on Monday, an official said.
"A rocket fired by anti-government insurgents slammed into a residential area in Narai district this morning leaving two persons including a woman and a child dead," spokesman for provincial administration Wasihullah Wasifi told Xinhua.
Another child was injured in the attack, he added.
He also blamed Taliban militants for firing rocket but the outfit fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops has yet to make comment.
Taliban militants often carry out attacks against government interests in parts of Kunar province along the border with Pakistan's tribal area of Bajawar.
Two Taliban insurgents were arrested in Narai district on Sunday evening, according to Kunar provincial police chief Awaz Mohammad Nazari.
Afghan police kill 4 insurgents, detain 3 others
KABUL, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police during operations have killed four insurgents and detained three others over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) in collaboration with Army and NATO-led Coalition forces launched three joint operations in surrounding areas of the Nangarhar, Kandahar and Ghazni province over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement providing daily operational updates.
"As a result of these operations, four armed insurgent were killed, one wounded and three others were arrested by ANP," the statement said, adding during these operations, the ANP also destroyed a narcotic factory and discovered two radio handsets, two rocket launchers, four AK-47 guns, 94 heavy bullets, 4,305 light bullets, four anti-vehicle mines, six hand grenades, 440 kg narcotics, 45 kg Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and one vehicle.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" for referring to Taliban.
Taliban militants, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan and NATO-led troops since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the war-ravaged country, have yet to make comments.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces kept up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 360 insurgents had been killed and around 430 were detained by joint forces in September alone, according the interior ministry statements.
From pages of life to a book of the dead
Sydney Morning Herald By Kim Barker October 10, 2011
Reading notes from her last trip to Kandahar leaves a reporter numb.
I STILL keep a reporter's notebook from five years ago even though it's fairly useless. All the pages are full and some have fallen out. But it holds interviews with 17 people from my last road trip to Kandahar, when the highway was still safe enough to drive. In a way, the notebook is evidence of what happened in Afghanistan and when things started to go wrong.
I spent much of the last decade in south Asia as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, first visiting Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban had been driven from power, a time when women hugged me on the streets of Kabul and hope was a contagion. And I kept coming back, even moving to the region, chronicling how the war moved from the good war to the forgotten war to the longest war.
By June 2006, my last road trip to Kandahar, there were disturbing signs - a resurgent Taliban, an incompetent government, a transition in Western forces as the United States started trying to tiptoe out of the country. But still, there was no sense of how bad things could get. There was still hope.
Now it's October 2011. As of Friday, 10 years have passed since the war began, since the bombs first fell. Afghanistan has the distinction of being the longest war for the US.
Despite all assurances to the contrary, this conflict is not going well. The Afghan security forces, while improving, are by no means ready to go it alone. The Afghan government is not just corrupt, it lacks a mandate from people outside the cities. It's not as if the Taliban and their ilk are so strong - the Afghan government is just so weak. And meanwhile, there is this deadline of 2014, when the West plans to start pulling out most troops.
Understandably, the deadline hangs like a guillotine over many Afghans. Because while many just want the foreign forces gone, they know what such an exodus means. Chaos, civil war. And eventually, when the world rights itself, it means being run by some strongman who gains his power from neighbouring Pakistan.
It is easy enough to ask: So what? Who cares? In this long war that has cost billions of dollars, not to mention thousands of foreign lives, the fate of Afghans gets short shrift. They are most often collateral damage, forgotten.
So this story is for them, some kind of 10-year anniversary present, some kind of acknowledgment for what many Afghans bought into and what many lost.
In my notebook, there is Malalai Kakar, the first woman in Kandahar to return to the police force, who carried her Kalashnikov rifle beneath her all-encompassing blue burqa. She was a swaggering, smoking, swearing force of nature, who smiled slyly and called other police officers cowards for running from the Taliban.
''I am not concerned or nervous at all,'' she said about Taliban warnings to her. ''I don't think the Taliban are getting stronger. We are supported by the world. No one supports them.''
There is also Mohammad Akbar Khakrizwal, the former intelligence chief of Kandahar. He was a charmer, a man who mocked my burqa (it was too short), the brother of the former police chief, killed the year before. He, unlike many others, saw how things were changing.
''Write down this date,'' he said. ''In one year, the situation will be worse than it is today. I'm telling Americans, if they do not bring changes in their policies, they will say, thank heaven, Iraq is a heaven compared to here.''
It was June 13, 2006. He was right. A year later, the US claimed to have irrefutable evidence Iran was sending weapons to the Taliban. The International Red Cross said life for Afghans was worse than the year before. And mistaking each other for the enemy, Afghan police, known for their exuberant use of weapons, fired 49 rocket-propelled grenades at US-led troops. The Americans, more restrained but also more accurate, fired back, killing eight police.
Others are in my notebook, such as Dad Mohammad Khan, the parliamentarian who had just lost about 40 family members in a Taliban ambush. And Ahmad Wali Karzai, the brother of the President, who fervently denied all rumours that he was running drugs, that he was somehow corrupt.
During the years, the numbers changed. First, five were dead, then 10, then 15, and finally 16. All were gut-wrenching in some way, particularly Malalai, gunned down alongside her son as she left for work in the morning. But always, there was a punch line - of course, the only person left alive in my notebook was Karzai's brother, the alleged drug dealer and power broker.
Now that's not even true. He was the 17th target, killed in July. Looking through my notebook, I'd like to say I feel sad, but mostly I feel numb. There is no one left alive. Just notes about what they once said, what they once felt, who they once were. And meanwhile, the world talks of walking away.
Kim Barker, who spent five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan reporting for the Chicago Tribune, is the author of the newly released book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Afghans blame Pakistan, and want Western forces to stay on
The Sydney Morning Herald By Yalda Hakim October 10, 2011
''Every Muslim knows fighting infidels is a duty. If you become a martyr, you'll go [to] paradise," says Qari Ramazon, the man responsible for the attack on Kabul's Serena Hotel in 2008, which killed six people. When Ramazon looks you in the eye and says he'd be happy if the West faced more terrorist attacks, you start to wonder if the last 10 years in Afghanistan have made any real progress.
After gaining rare access to one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons, Pul-e-Charkri in Kabul, I asked him why his group remain intent on killing. "Afghans and Pakistanis are against the US and NATO. It's my duty to fight them. I can afford to put explosives on my body and lose my life," Ramazon told me.
I travelled to Afghanistan to interview the man in charge of negotiating peace with the Taliban, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani. But within 36 hours of my arrival, I was attending his funeral. He was killed by an assassin who had hidden a bomb in his turban. This is life for ordinary Afghans, who live every day fearing another leader will be targeted or more innocent civilians killed in this seemingly endless war.
Mourners gathered at a hilltop cemetery overlooking Kabul as Rabbani was laid to rest. They were angry. Angry at Pakistan. Angry at its intelligence agency, the ISI. Most Afghans I spoke to accused Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Pakistan has of course been quick to reject these accusations, but from the country's opposition leader to police chiefs and ordinary civilians, Afghans continue to blame their hostile nuclear neighbour for their woes. "Osama bin Laden was found at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment. To think al-Qaeda and the Taliban aren't based there is wrong," said police chief Esmatullah Alizai.
The death of Rabbani has dealt a serious blow to any negotiations with the Taliban. Rabbani, an elder statesman respected by both sides of Afghan politics, gave the body legitimacy. An ethnic Tajik and once leader of the Northern Alliance, the 70-year-old was also able to protect President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, from rival camps within his government.
Pressure is now mounting on the country's embattled leader to not only appease various factions but to find a consensus on the peace process. For many, that process is now dead in the water.
The powerful governor of the northern province of Balkh, Mohammad Atta Noor, has warned that if Karzai doesn't take swift action against the Taliban, he will rearm and regroup the Northern Alliance to take on the task.
But who is the enemy? Who will they fight? The war tactic has changed. Taliban fighters seem to have moved off the battlefield and are focusing on more targeted attacks. This year, they've managed to successfully assassinate four key Karzai allies. And the security situation continues to worsen, with violence increasing by nearly 40 per cent over last year.
The capital is tense. A few weeks ago the Taliban mounted an attack on the US embassy and NATO headquarters. Central Kabul is supposedly protected by a ''Ring of Steel'', fortified checkpoints which are designed to stop attacks on key government buildings and the residences of officials such as Rabbani. But twice it has failed miserably.
Now, with peace talks in disarray and America's influence waning before its troops withdraw in 2014, the future appears bleak for Afghans. After 10 years, many feel very little has been done to eliminate terrorism from the country and region. Afghans fear their country may spiral back into civil war as violent factions battle it out - a recipe for creating another terrorist haven.
At a time of persistent violence, many I spoke to said the West needs to reconsider the timetable for withdrawal. "The world must not repeat its mistakes," said Atta.
''The world must not leave Afghanistan to deal with drugs, smugglers and terrorists. And if the international community doesn't understand this, and Afghanistan has to deal with terrorism on its own, these problems will reach the Western world's most beautiful cities.''
Yalda Hakim is a presenter of the SBS international current affairs program Dateline. Afghans warn insurgents biding time as U.S. marks war milestone
McClatchy-Tribune News October 9, 2011
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - When the muezzins’ calls summon the faithful of Afghanistan’s second-largest city to morning prayers, the senior cleric remains inside the crumbling walls of an old army base, sitting at the microphone of a low-power radio station that’s become his pulpit.
“I am so much under threat that I can’t walk on the street,” said Maulawi Ubaidullah Hikmat, the head of Kandahar province’s official Islamic council, who beams daily sermons over a 1,000-watt transmitter, protected by a solitary bodyguard. “I can’t even preach in my own mosque.”
Hikmat’s fear — driven by a Taliban murder campaign that’s killed hundreds of Afghan officials, clerics, tribal elders and others affiliated with the U.S.-backed government — contrasts sharply with the Obama administration’s assertion of “great progress” 10 years after the Oct. 7, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan.
As he tries to wind down the longest war in U.S. history, President Barack Obama says his strategy has turned the tables on the Taliban and allowed U.S. combat forces to begin withdrawing. But many Afghan officials and ordinary people counter that the insurgents are merely laying low, waiting out the U.S. drawdown, and worry that U.S. policy is turning the clock back to the civil war that was convulsing their country at the time of the invasion.
“How can they say there is security here?” asked Zmari Khan, a Kandahar City police chief and a survivor of four assassination attempts by Taliban suicide bombings. The attacks scarred his body, blew off fingers and toes and rendered his left arm useless.
“There is no option for me,” he said. “I am killing them (the Taliban) or they will kill me. We have been betrayed by everybody.”
U.S. officials and commanders argue last year’s surge of 33,000 U.S. soldiers, intensified U.S. and Afghan night raids and larger, better-trained Afghan security forces have turned the tide against the Taliban in their southern heartland and brought relative stability to areas long under their sway.
“We have reversed the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan,” Obama declared to Congress in a Sept. 30 letter accompanying his latest status report on the war.
After 1,800 U.S. soldiers dead, some 13,000 wounded and more than $444 billion in costs — not to mention an economically battered electorate at home that’s increasingly opposed to the war — Obama on June 22 announced the start of the U.S. combat troop pullout. The surge troops are to be gone by next summer, and Afghan forces are to assume full responsibility for security by the end of 2014.
“The insurgents’ ability to control territory has diminished” and they are “losing ground,” assistant Defence Secretary Michele Flournoy assured a Sept. 23 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
On the surface, that assessment seemed accurate during a recent visit to Kandahar City and surrounding areas, where the hard-line Islamic movement began in 1994.
Districts where it once was too dangerous to drive were thick with traffic. Local bazaars appeared to be thriving. Schools were open. Gaggles of young men splashed in irrigation canals to escape the broiling heat. Fields brimmed with eggplants, melons and other crops.
“Now, it’s totally different,” said Shah Mohammad Ahmadi, the governor of Arghandab, a district of 150,000 people, rich with orchards and vineyards, that for several years saw some of the war’s bloodiest fighting. “Now we have access to all of the villages and the villages have access to us.”
But Ahmadi works inside a fortress-like combat outpost manned by U.S. and Afghan troops. He echoed warnings by other officials and ordinary Afghans that the security gains in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province, another Taliban stronghold, were superficial.
“I’ve told the Americans many times that they need to stay longer,” Ahmadi said. “If they leave, we will lose all of our gains for the last 10 years.”
Afghans say the Taliban — unable to prevail in conventional battles against the stronger, high-tech U.S. forces — have resorted to guerrilla tactics of roadside and suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. The attacks have eroded public trust in the government of President Hamid Karzai and fuelled U.S. opposition to the war.
“Where is the weakness of the Taliban? Even with two men, they can shake the province. Why are the Americans saying the Taliban is weak?” asked Haji Toorjan, a former low-level insurgent commander. “Look how the Russians were defeated here. They were defeated by guerrilla warfare.”
The insurgency’s top leaders are biding their time in sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan, supported by Pakistan’s army-run Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, waiting for the U.S. troops to leave, according to Afghan and U.S. officials. Pakistan denies the allegations.
“The Pakistani goal is that they don’t want Afghanistan developed or peaceful,” said Maulvi Noor ul Aziz, a veteran mid-level Taliban commander who surrendered earlier this year because of what he charged was a growing Pakistani role in the insurgency.
“A peaceful Afghanistan is not in the interests of Pakistan, because there would be no more aid money from the United States sent to Pakistan,” he said.
Some Afghans expressed little confidence that their forces could replace the U.S. surge troops.
“The ANA (Afghan National Army) just sit in their posts and don’t come out,” complained Sardar Mohammad, 24, as he sat with other villagers in a field next to piles of purple eggplants they’d just harvested. “They won’t bother with what is going on in the villages.”
Many local officials and Afghans are deeply afraid that the U.S. troop drawdown will reignite the devastating civil war between the Taliban, who are dominated by the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, and the Northern Alliance, a coalition of mainly ethnic minorities whose leaders now control key government posts.
They worry that Pakistan will step up support for the Taliban. India, determined to stop Pakistan from turning Afghanistan into a sanctuary for Islamic militants who’ve killed hundreds of its citizens, could respond by backing the minorities as it did before the U.S. invasion, raising the danger of a direct clash between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Senior U.S. officials seldom discuss it, but they also see the threat of renewed civil war. On Sept. 22, in his final testimony to a congressional committee before retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen warned: “If we continue to draw down forces at pace while ... public and systemic corruption is left unchecked, I believe we risk leaving behind a government in which we cannot reasonably expect the Afghans to have faith.
“At best, this would lead to localized conflicts inside the country. At worst, it could lead to government collapse and civil war.”
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, insisted in an Aug. 13 interview that “we are not going to repeat 1990,” when the United States disengaged from Afghanistan at the end of the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. That policy contributed to the Taliban takeover in 1996, which paved the way for al-Qaeda’s arrival.
He said the United States envisions “a strategic relationship” with Afghanistan.
But that’s hardly comforting to Haji Khallar Khan, one of many tribal elders from around the province who have fled to Kandahar City to escape assassination by the Taliban.
“In my district, only the district office and a U.S. base are safe, yet they are still fired on,” said Khan, a local council member from Maiwand, a district bordering Helmand Province. “You can’t go anywhere else without security. In the bazaar, in the shops, the Taliban just sit there. The Americans don’t recognize them.”
McClatchy-Tribune News
www.afghanistannewscenter.com