[Afghan News] October 24, 2011

[یاسمینه]

NATO: 200 insurgents killed, captured in two recent operations in eastern Afghanistan
By Associated Press,
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan and NATO coalition forces killed or captured about 200 insurgents in eastern Afghanistan during two operations targeting the lethal Haqqani network, which has links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, the U.S.-led coalition said Monday.
At least 20 insurgents with ties to the Haqqani group were among those killed or captured in the operations conducted during the past week by Afghan security forces with the support of coalition troops, said German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a coalition spokesman in Afghanistan.
About half of the Haqqani fighters were identified as leaders and the other half were bomb makers or individuals who help militants in various ways, such as distributing weapons and supplies, running safe houses or preparing areas for attack.
“Removal of the midlevel cell leaders with their expertise and leadership has significantly disrupted insurgent operations and degrades the Haqqani network’s ability to coordinate and execute future attacks against combined team forces and the people of Afghanistan,” Jacobson said.
The joint force also seized more than 400 kilograms of explosives, weapons, munitions and computers.
The two operations have ended, but the coalition is continuing its work to disrupt the Haqqani network, he said.
On Sunday, NATO reported that a heavily armed group of Haqqani fighters was the target of an airstrike in Wuza Jadran district of Paktia province. The coalition said several insurgents were killed in the attack, but did not specify how many.
The Haqqani network is based in Pakistan, but operates primarily in Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces and is blamed for most of the recent high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital.
“Haqqani is not only a terrorist organization, it is a family clan, a criminal patronage network and a terrorist organization,” Jacobson said. He said that the Haqqanis aim to have maximum control over eastern Afghanistan and access to Kabul from the south.
“Though their family roots are in Paktika, they are operating on either side of the border. ... Their business is to smuggle drugs, murder and insurgency and their path is extremely bloody.”
At the same time as coalition and Afghan forces have stepped up their operations in areas along the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. and Afghanistan have urged Pakistan to act against the militants on its side of the border. U.S. officials recently visited Islamabad and Kabul to pressure Pakistan to do more to eliminate militant sanctuaries on its territory.
While NATO presses ahead with its campaigns, several hundred people including students demonstrated at Kabul University against a proposed U.S.-Afghan strategic security agreement that many in the country interpret as affording foreign forces long-term bases in Afghanistan.
The U.S. has said that it is not seeking permanent bases in Afghanistan. Afghan and U.S. officials are still working on the details of the plan that will govern the American troop presence in the country after the international forces’ combat mission ends in 2014.
The protest against the plan highlighted the growing frustration felt by many Afghans toward NATO forces who, they argue, have brought little in the way of security or development to the country since the start of the decade-long war that toppled the Taliban. Many of the protesters alleged that the international community wants to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and use the country as a springboard to other nations in the region.
“The fighting is not for bringing peace or stability or security,” said 26-year-old university student Sayed Abdullah. “This is only to allow them (NATO forces) to place their feet firmer in our country and then, from here, (they) want to occupy all the central Asian Muslim nations.”
The demonstrators, with about 200 to 300 Afghan police looking on warily, hoisted banners that made clear their antipathy for NATO’s presence and the proposed agreement.
“We don’t want international forces at all. To sit together is the only way to peace,” read one. Another said: “Our unity is our strength.”
Separately, the coalition reported that a NATO service member died Monday in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan. No other details were released.
So far this year, 475 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan.
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Associated Press writers Tarek El-Tablawy, Amir Shah and Massieh Aryan in Kabul contributed to this report.

Karzai says Afghanistan would back Pakistan if US attacks it; draws criticism from Afghans
By Associated Press, October 23
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country’s top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.
The scenario is exceedingly unlikely and appears to be less a serious statement of policy than an Afghan overture to Pakistan, just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.
“If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan,” Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. “If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”
He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies.
Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The comments set off a firestorm of criticism in the country. Afghan lawmakers argued they were particularly hypocritical coming just weeks after the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber.
While it is unclear who masterminded Rabbani’s killing, the Afghan government has said it was planned in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the Taliban leadership’s suspected base. In addition, the Afghan interior minister accused the Pakistani intelligence service of being involved — a claim that has not been substantiated.
“Pakistan has never been honest with Afghanistan, and the nation of Afghanistan will never forget those things that happen here” because of Pakistan, Shah Gul Rezaye, a lawmaker from Ghazni province told The Associated Press, citing Rabbani’s death and other incidents of violence.
“They make deal with terrorists, and then with the international community ... to get $1 billion from the U.S. under the name of the struggle against terrorism,” she said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was up to the Afghan government to explain Karzai’s remarks.
“This is not about war with each other,” Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall told the AP. “This is about a joint approach to a threat to all three of our countries: insurgents and terrorists who attack Afghans, Pakistanis, and Americans.”
Following her stop in Kabul, Clinton flew to Pakistan to deliver the blunt message that if Islamabad is unwilling or unable to take the fight to the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network operating from its border with Afghanistan, the U.S. “would show” them how to eliminate its safe havens.
Even so, she said the U.S. has no intention of deploying U.S. forces on Pakistani soil, and that the favored approach was one of reconciliation and peace — an effort that needed Islamabad’s cooperation.
Pakistan has been reluctant to move more forcefully against the Haqqani, arguing such an act could spark a broader tribal war in the region.
While it weighs its options, NATO pressed ahead with its operations.
The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Saturday concluded two operations aimed at disrupting insurgent operations in Kabul, provinces south of the Afghan capital and along the eastern border with Pakistan — all places where the Haqqani network has launched attacks.
NATO did not release further details about the operations, but Army Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a coalition spokesman, said Sunday that “a number of Haqqani affiliated insurgents plus additional fighters have been either detained or killed in the course of operations.”
During her visit to Pakistan, Clinton said Haqqani fighters were among those killed and captured during the operations.
“Many dozens, if not into the hundreds, have been captured or killed on the Afghan side of the border,” she said in Islamabad.
The push comes as NATO plans to pull out its combat forces by the end of 2014 and hand over full security responsibility to the Afghans.
But the attacks and assassination attempts continue.
In the latest such incident, bodyguards for Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was waiting for the minister’s convoy Sunday in Sayyed Khel district of Parwan province, north of Kabul, the ministry said. The minister was not in the convoy at the time.
NATO also said three of its service members were killed separate clashes with insurgents in the south and east of the country. The coalition did not provide additional details, but the deaths, which occurred Saturday and Sunday, raised to 474 the number of NATO service members killed so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also, five villagers were killed while trying to remove a roadside mine planted by the Taliban in the western province of Herat, the provincial governor’s spokesman, Mohyaddin Noori, said Sunday.
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Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.

The Unwinnable War
TIME.com By Aryn Baker Monday, Oct. 24, 2011
Out at the Kabul military training Center, on a barren hilltop, Colonel Fazl Karim is giving a new batch of recruits his usual pep talk. It's two weeks before these soldiers are commissioned as regulars in the Afghan National Army, and in some ways they look ready to go: they sit cross-legged in the dirt, all aligned in neat rows. Construction crews build more barracks nearby; 100,000 more recruits are expected to go through the U.S.-built training center in the next three years. If everything goes as planned, some 352,000 men will be ready to defend this country the day the mostly American army of foreign fighters packs up and leaves. "You are all going to die one day!" shouts Karim. "You might as well die protecting your country!"
A few men stifle yawns. Others poke their snoozing companions awake. Even the American officers overseeing all the training are skeptical. Taliban infiltration, drug use and desertion are commonplace among the men who arrive here. Troop quality is poor; recruiters can't be too selective when they have such large quotas to fill. For U.S. Army Captain Jason Reed, who is part of the training mission, it's just a matter of time. A long time. "As long as training continues when we leave, there is no reason to think that Afghanistan can't continue to grow a professional army," he says. "But it's going to take generations."
The government of Afghanistan and its American patrons do not have generations to make the country work. Afghans are supposed to take responsibility for their own security on Dec. 31, 2014, 38 months from now. But 10 years after the U.S. invaded this long-suffering country and then settled in for a long occupation, Afghanistan is nowhere close to being able to stand on its own — militarily, economically or even politically. To many, it has become an expensive misadventure. Meanwhile, the U.S. keeps broadcasting its intention to leave, not so much withdrawing as recoiling from a problem it seemingly no longer has the will or the ability to solve.
The prospect is frightening: Afghanistan today has the potential to be even more destabilizing for the region and the world than it was under the Taliban. Lawlessness has become the rule, so much so that many Afghans have grown nostalgic for the cold but effective dicta of Mullah Mohammed Omar's theocracy. Osama bin Laden may be dead and his fraying al-Qaeda network dispersed to other lands, but when the Americans leave, the country could easily revert to the failed narcostate and terrorist training ground that it once was. That alone would be a potent propaganda victory for America's foes. And it would risk unleashing another proxy war as rival militias, backed by regional allies, re-enact the civil war that saw the rise of the Taliban in the first place. Such a conflagration could pull nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India to the brink.
American patience for an alternative scenario is nearly tapped out. Over the course of 10 years, the U.S. has lost 1,786 service members and 763 private contractors there. An additional 14,342 service members have been wounded. The U.S. established over 180 forward operating bases around the country, deployed more than 9,000 mine-resistant vehicles and spent a total of $444 billion in the past decade on securing and rebuilding the nation — and attending to the damage the war caused to its troops when they returned home. America's best strategists and military minds and nation builders and engineers were set to work on one of the largest country-building efforts since the Marshall Plan. And it simply hasn't worked.
Even now, 10 years after the 2001 invasion, security is at one of its low points. The U.S. embassy in Kabul suffered through a prolonged siege last month. High-profile assassinations have picked off the top tier of government and security officers, including a former President tasked with leading peace negotiations with the Taliban leadership. Even as NATO statistics point to a 2% reduction in enemy attacks, the U.N. holds that 2011 is on track to be the most violent since the invasion for Afghan civilians.
American officials, first in the George W. Bush era and now under Barack Obama, confidently maintain that economic and security conditions in the country are improving, little by little. But the evidence for that claim is scant, and the deadline for U.S. withdrawal gets closer each day. In many ways, the withdrawal has already begun.
Nothing from Money I first went to Afghanistan for TIME in the winter of 2003. I expected resentment, poverty and destruction. Instead I encountered an extraordinary sense of hope. I ate greasy stews with tribal elders who were anticipating roads that would connect their villages, for the first time, to civilization. I went to school with teenage girls who sat alongside 6-year-olds to get the first-grade education denied to them by the Taliban. I shared the country's dangers too: I was nearly blown up by a suicide bomber and was ambushed alongside U.S. troops near what we had thought was a friendly village. I once had my life threatened with a hurled teapot. But still I kept going back for the fix. Like all of Afghanistan, I was hooked on hope.
A few years later I moved to Kabul, where I met, and married, an Afghan American who had returned after two decades in exile because he too believed in the country's future. We had a daughter, and when she was 2 months old I got her an Afghan passport, determined that she would one day play a part in a resurrected Afghanistan.
These days, I am starting to think that the flimsy blue booklet, embossed with the Afghan state seal, will be little more than a souvenir of an infancy spent in a collapsed country known best for drugs, terrorism and its endless history of war — a country that may become a footnote in America's noble but sometimes foolhardy habit of trying to do good miles from home.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, it was not just to avenge the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11; it was with, in the words of then President Bush, a moral obligation to "disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations." Bush also promised to raise the hopes of the "oppressed people of Afghanistan." The U.S. toppled the Taliban with little more than a few hundred Special Forces on horseback and satchels full of cash, showing — or so Washington thought — that the model of a light-footprint war could reverse a millennium of imperial routs in a country known as the graveyard of empires. That proved premature. The enemy the U.S. thought it had defeated simply melted into the population, while its leadership plotted a return from safe havens across the border in Pakistan. Distracted by Iraq and other crises, America's attention-deficit disorder toward Afghanistan undermined those early gains. The Taliban slipped back in, laying the groundwork for a tenacious insurgency that, several
years on, even a threefold surge by U.S. forces has not been able to defeat.
Meanwhile, the U.S. flung money at quick-impact projects designed to win Afghan hearts and minds as much as applause from taxpayers back home. Americans were development dilettantes lacking a clear long-term vision. Roads crumbled within years of their completion, the product of low-quality cement brought in by shady subcontractors. Security contractors paid bribes to the Taliban to stop them from attacking fuel convoys. In a country without wheelchairs, medical clinics were equipped with handicapped-accessible ramps. Schools were built, but no teacher-training colleges were established to staff them. And when the insurgency continued to grow, the U.S. first said agriculture was the solution, then a bigger army, then reintegration of Taliban foot soldiers.
By some measures, the narrative of Afghanistan over the past decade should be upbeat. Afghans are seeing greater prosperity, increased access to basic health care and more children in school. American assistance has helped boost the attendance in elementary and secondary schools for girls from nearly zero in 2001 to more than 3 million and for boys from 1 million to over 5 million. Twice as many Afghans have electricity now as in 2001. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the streets of my neighborhood swarming with girls in white headscarves making their way to class. They want to grow up to be President, they tell me, or doctors, or pilots so they can see the world. In the past year, the U.S. has trained and deployed 23 Afghan prosecutors and judges to districts that had neither, and it plans to raise that number to 52 eventually.
But these gains have come with caveats. Life expectancy has gone down since 2001. Outside the cities, those kids in school have nowhere to go after sixth grade. The measures of American success in Afghanistan have been couched in kilometers of roads built, money spent, insurgents killed. The Afghan National Army is judged not on its ability to fight but on the number of recruits trained. The metrics should tell the story of a nation rising from the ashes; the truth is that the country is just steps from the precipice.
The economy, which was averaging 10% growth largely because of annual injections of international aid, has slowed to a crawl. Foreign and private investment has stalled, and real estate prices in Kabul have been slashed by a third. And as attacks on the capital have increased, the economy has nose-dived. "Our economy depends on security," says Mohammad Azim, who runs an international cash-transfer office in Kabul's old money-exchange market. "When there is no security, everyone sends their money abroad. So business is good for me but bad for Afghanistan." The situation will only worsen, he says, the closer it gets to 2014. When the foreign forces depart, the support industries, from private security to trucking and construction, will collapse.
A Battlefield with Few Victories The U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, might have deemed last month's deftly orchestrated terrorist attack on the embassy "harassment," but his glib assessment of an assault that paralyzed the capital for 19 hours, took 16 innocent lives and demonstrated the militants' ability to penetrate even the most heavily guarded areas of the capital with weapons in tow has failed to convince Afghans that they are safe. Not long afterward, I got an e-mail from my local assistant, who was in Sweden for a three-month fellowship, telling me he wasn't returning. A bright, energetic law student who speaks in idiomatic slang learned from American troops, he had often voiced his dreams of making a difference for his country. No longer. The uncertain life of an illegal migrant seeking asylum is more appealing.
One of the fundamental pillars of the U.S. exit strategy is the assumption that the Afghan army will be able to stand up as the U.S. withdraws. Afghans are good soldiers, and brave, but as Reed points out, the timeline of their success extends far beyond the American deadline to leave. Last month, the Pentagon halved its budget over the next three years for training, paying and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces. A reduction in their already low salaries — about $200 a month for an Afghan army private — could lead to wider defections. One soldier, picking up his salary at Kabul's money-changing market, looked doubtfully at the wad of cash in his hand when asked what he would do if his pay were cut. "I'd quit," he said simply. Another soldier said he would probably join the Taliban. He was only half joking. "I hear they pay better," he said.
U.S. attempts to rapidly boost the number of alternative security forces may be undermining stability. A report released last month by Human Rights Watch documents alarming levels of abuse by the Afghan Local Police, a force created by the U.S. in remote areas where more-formal security forces are spread thin. These militias have been accused of rape, murder, extortion, armed land grabs and, in one gruesome case, hammering nails through the foot of a suspected teenage insurgent. David Petraeus, who commanded the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force before he stepped down to head the CIA, told the U.S. Senate in March that the program was "arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capability to secure itself."
And then there was the surge.
Petraeus' attempt to replicate his Iraq-war strategy in Afghanistan has had mixed results. In late 2009, in an effort to permanently defeat the Taliban insurgency, Obama ordered an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, boosting the number on the ground to 100,000. Yet the consensus is that the surge has not been the success it was in Iraq and that in some ways it has failed as a strategy. The military situation in the south has improved, but security in the eastern and northern sectors of the nation remains sketchy. Security in some provinces has actually deteriorated. The Taliban have shown a capacity for daring raids — for example, springing about 500 detainees by way of an underground tunnel from a prison near Kandahar in April — that suggests they may be gaining strength. "If you are looking at things over the summer, it's hard to point to a lot of good news coming out of Afghanistan," says a former Obama Administration security official in Washington. "There's no denying that."
Meanwhile, the ever more frequent air strikes and night raids that hit innocents along with insurgents are starting to undercut public support for the foreign forces. "We don't want the foreigners to leave," says women's-rights activist Shoukria Haider. "We know they are the only thing standing between us and a return to civil war. But the longer [they] stay, the more violence we see, so we are caught. We want the violence to end too."
A Nation No One Could Build? The easy narrative is to blame Afghanistan, a country that managed to repel both the British and Soviet armies in their primes and frustrate all manner of occupiers. But to throw hands up in exasperation and say Afghanistan, with its tribes and conservative traditions, is an ungovernable place impervious to change is to cower behind a convenient historical falsehood. Before the 1979 Soviet invasion, my mother-in-law wore Chanel suits and held a senior position with the national airline. My father-in-law worked for a functioning government that was slowly yielding development and progress.
Even today, my Afghan friends run successful media companies and work in a vibrant telecommunications sector. Sure, they are urban exceptions in a country whose rural population is still mired in poverty, but their successes could point to a future Afghan success, if the country is given the tools it needs. Afghans never saw the post-9/11 foreign presence as an invasion. They desperately wanted what the U.S. was offering — democracy, governance, human rights and financial independence. Even the most conservative Afghans recognized the need for schooling their young daughters. After 15 years of war and five more of Taliban rule, they were ready to regain their place among nations.
But instead of a Marshall Plan, the U.S. has come up with a patchwork of short-term solutions that seemed designed to showcase the appearance of progress rather than create enduring change. More damaging, perhaps, it has looked the other way when Afghan government officials, whose salaries are paid by American funds, flagrantly indulge in corruption and graft. Afghans are equally at fault: police indulge in petty bribes, power brokers rape, and parliamentarians steal land with little risk of legal or political retribution. The resulting lawlessness has Afghans across a broad spectrum of society waxing nostalgic for the era when a single Talib in the town square would dispense justice with a quote from the Koran and a flick of his lash. "Even as a liberal, I can say that the Taliban time was better," says Gholam Sadiq Niazi, a Soviet-trained technocrat in Afghanistan's oil-and-gas industry. "It doesn't matter if I have to go to mosque five times a day or grow a beard, as long as we have rule of law."
Niazi is no radical. He speaks from a comfortable, middle-class apartment in central Kabul. Financially, he says, he is better off now than in 2001, but what's the point, he asks, if someone could murder him tomorrow for his property and get out of jail with a bribe or political connections? The sister of an 11-year-old rape victim whose politically connected attacker was never prosecuted once shouted at me with rage and frustration, "If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now."
Few Afghans today support the wanton violence of the reincarnated Taliban insurgency, and history shows that the Taliban too were no strangers to corruption — but the fact that both women and religious moderates speak well of their reputation for security shows how shallowly rooted the support is for 10 years of Western assistance.
As much as some Afghans clung to the hope that talks earlier this year with the Taliban would bring peace, few believed they would result in anything more than another deal between armed political elites. And even those hopes evaporated when a Taliban peace envoy detonated his explosives-stuffed turban while embracing the head of the National Reconciliation Council. Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed instantly in a clear demonstration of how the Taliban truly feel about making peace: They don't need to compromise. They just need to wait.
So Many Exit Strategies Nearly nine years after I set my first, nervous foot on Afghan soil, my battered Nokia flashlight phone (essential in a country where, even in the capital, power outages are still common) is filled with the numbers of long-departed diplomats, soldiers, press officers, consultants and development experts. I too am only a temporary visitor these days. My husband and I left a year ago after we reluctantly came to the conclusion that our beloved city simply wasn't a safe enough place to raise our child. Each time I return, I find that the barricades are bigger, the razored garlands of concertina wire more numerous and thick. Anxiety and fear nibble at the edges of my conversations with ordinary Afghans. The indomitable Afghan pride has been shoved aside by canny calculations on how to get out — family in Pakistan, a student visa for Europe. Many Afghans too have exit strategies.
Military officials say things will get worse before they get better and that it will take time for the shaky Afghan forces to find their footing. Meanwhile, the Taliban have taken their campaign of rural intimidation to the cities, where their highly organized, complex suicide attacks undermine whatever confidence is left. NATO officials blithely assert that the suicide attacks are a sign of desperation, proof that the enemy is no longer capable of mounting a frontal attack. That may be the case, but the Taliban's ability to recruit volunteers for "martyrdom," as demonstrated by their profligate use of three or four at a time, indicates to me a far more terrifying kind of strength.
Even as the Obama Administration assures the American public that the drawdown of troops is on track, U.S. diplomats and military officials in Kabul weave a hopeful narrative of progress. Few of us on the ground see it that way. It used to be that American withdrawal was conditioned on success. Now, it seems, withdrawal has become the definition of success. If that's the case, success in Afghanistan will feel a lot like failure.
— with reporting by Massimo Calabresi / Washington and Walid Fazly and John Wendle / Kabul

Demonstrators oppose to possible establishment of U.S. military bases in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Around four hundred Afghans staged a peaceful demonstration in Kabul on Monday and expressed their opposition to the possible establishment of U.S. military bases in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
With many of them from seminaries, the demonstrators carrying banners inscribed with slogans "Death to America" shouted, "we do not want foreign troops' permanent bases in Afghanistan."
The protestors also said that the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan over the past 10 years had not changed the living condition of the ordinary people.
Prominent among those attended the demonstration, were a former presidential candidate Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai and a former parliamentarian Hajji Farid.
Afghan government and the U.S. administration have been discussing signing a strategic partnership, which if inked, according to some Afghan analysts would enable Washington to have military bases in Afghanistan.

Afghans cannot afford to set up security force: former U.S. envoy
CANBERRA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A former U.S. ambassador to Kabul of Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, on Monday said setting up a national security force will cost the Afghan government almost three times as much as it collects in revenue.
Eikenberry, also a retired U.S. general, is visiting Canberra of Australia.
He said Australia, U.S. and other nations have made great progress in training the Afghan security forces, but building an effective force will be expensive, as the near 7 billion U.S. dollars annual cost for the force would dwarf the 2.5 billion U.S. dollars the government receives in revenue.
"There's a significant shortfall and that will be incumbent then upon the U.S. and our allies and other countries ... to pay for those resource shortfalls," General Eikenberry told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
General Eikenberry said while there was a foundation in Afghanistan, but increasingly it was a question of political will and collective ability to translate the advantages given the country into lasting political and lasting economic effects.
Afghanistan and the international community have set 2014 for a transition to full local security responsibility, and Australia has promised an ongoing but reduced military presence and aid from 2014.

Analysis - U.S. talks up Pakistan role in Afghan peace talks
Reuters By Chris Allbritton Mon Oct 24, 2011
ISLAMABAD - After years of demanding Pakistan crack down on militants in a lawless tribal area on its border with Afghanistan, the United States has now set out a possibly tougher challenge -- bring those militants to the peace table.
It's a tough task. Ties have been strained between the two allies for months since Osama bin Laden was found holed up in a town two hours from Islamabad.
And there are doubts the Pakistanis can, or will, persuade the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network to take part in the nascent peace process to end the Afghan war, given Pakistan's ties to the militants and its competing interests in the region.
On a two-day visit to Islamabad last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Pakistan's relationship with the Haqqanis akin to keeping "snakes in your backyard."
She demanded that Pakistan deny the group any safe haven in the border zone. The network is one of the most effective factions of the Afghan Taliban-led insurgency and was blamed for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul last month,
But talking with militant groups has been a long-standing effort by the United States as it prepares to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and Clinton herself said there had been U.S. overtures to the Haqqanis. Now she wants Pakistan's help.
"We think that Pakistan, for a variety of reasons, has the capacity to encourage, to push, to squeeze ... terrorists, including the Haqqanis and the Afghan Taliban, to be willing to engage on the peace process," she said during her visit.
Clinton's comments seemed to be well-received by a Pakistan public weary of war and increasingly convinced the U.S.-led global fight against militancy is not its battle.
Pakistan says it has sacrificed more than any other country and says up to 40,000 civilians, troops and security personnel have been killed since 2001.
But it also reflects the reality that the United States is running out of options in Afghanistan.
"They have recognised the principle of talking to the Taliban. It's almost a natural thing to talk to the others," said Ayesha Siddiqa, a noted defence analyst. "And secondly, what are the options?"
BOLD ATTACKS
Across Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces have been unable to deal a decisive blow to Taliban insurgents and their allies like the Haqqanis, blamed for a series of bold attacks on American targets. More than 2,700 NATO troops have been killed since 2001, as well as more than 11,000 civilians. Many thousands more have been wounded.
Formidable challenges face foreign troops in the east, along with an uncertain ally across the border in Pakistan.
NATO is seeking to weaken a host of insurgents, who in eastern Afghanistan also include the independent Hezb-i-Islami group, and push them towards embryonic peace talks with the Afghan government rather than achieving a decisive battlefield victory in this long guerrilla war.
But it's an open question as to whether Pakistan will use whatever influence it may have to bring the Haqqanis off the battlefield, because Pakistan and the United States do not have the same interests in the region.
The network is led by the battle-hardened but ailing Jalaluddin Haqqani, although his son Sirajuddin is its operational leader.
It is considered close to both al Qaeda and the Pakistani security establishment. It was one of Pakistan's most valuable assets during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and Pakistan acknowledges it maintains contact with the group.
Pakistan wants to regain influence in Afghanistan by using Afghan Taliban militants and the Haqqani network taking shelter in Pakistan. The United States needs to eliminate or neutralise those same militants and their sanctuaries so it can withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
So, Clinton may have demanded more help in facilitating peace talks, even if the Haqqanis so far have seemed irreconcilable.
"We asked very specifically for greater cooperation from the Pakistani side to squeeze the Haqqani network and other terrorists, because we know that trying to eliminate terrorists and safe havens on one side of the border is not going to work," she said. It's unclear exactly what Pakistan is willing to do.
In the end, it's in Islamabad's interests to have a pro-Pakistani government in Kabul, and they see groups like the Haqqanis as a means of ensuring that. A potent fighting force of pro-Pakistani militants could bull its way into, or even topple, a fragile Afghan government after NATO withdraws the bulk of its combat troops.
"In the long run, the United States will have to get realistic about the region," wrote Christophe Jaffrelot, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research at Sciences Po in Paris.
"It might just have to admit that the Pakistanis do not believe that the two countries share interests, even if Washington continues to pretend that they do."
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn and Missy Ryan in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Paul Tait)

US demands Pakistan action on Afghan insurgents
Associated Press By ANNE GEARAN and MATTHEW LEE Sunday, October 23, 2011
ISLAMABAD - The United States pressed a hard case with a difficult ally during an extraordinary two-day diplomatic offensive in Pakistan, arguing on one hand that Pakistan should send its army after militants the U.S. says get special protection from the Pakistani government and on the other that Pakistan should use its influence with Taliban militants to encourage peace in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is unlikely to do either to U.S. satisfaction, leaving a critical counterterrorism partnership on uncertain terms.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged Friday that U.S.-Pakistani ties are now badly strained. The U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May is one reason. The death of two Pakistanis at the hands of a CIA contractor is another.
"Our relationship of late has not been an easy one," Clinton said at the close of meetings centered on U.S. demands for more cooperation. "We have seen distrust harden into resentment and public recrimination. We have seen common interests give way to mutual suspicion. We have seen common interests give way to mutual suspicion."
Leading an unusually large and powerful U.S. delegation, including CIA Director David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, Clinton met for four hours of talks with Pakistani officials late Thursday. On Friday, Clinton met alone with Pakistani President President Asif Ali Zardari and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who used a joint news conference to deny that Pakistan shelters or supports a particularly lethal wing of the Taliban, an issue at the heart of the talks with the Americans.
"There is no question of any support by any Pakistani institution to safe havens in Pakistan," for militants of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, Khar said.
Kahr insisted that Pakistan and the U.S. shared the same goal.
"Pakistan takes the threat of terrorism seriously," she said, noting that thousands of Pakistanis had been killed by extremists over the past decade. "We are committed to this process, we would be willing to do whatever we can to be able to make this a success."
The United States claims the Haqqanis, based in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, are mounting direct assaults on U.S. soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan that justify a stepped-up U.S. military push against them in Afghanistan and more CIA drone strikes to kill clan leaders in Pakistan.
The U.S. has grown increasingly impatient with Pakistan's refusal to take military action against the Haqqani network and its ambivalence, if not hostility, to supporting Afghan attempts to reconcile Taliban fighters into society.
Clinton warned that that stance is no longer acceptable while American officials warned that if Pakistan continued to balk, the U.S. would act unilaterally to end the militant threat. She also confirmed that the U.S. had tried to directly enlist the Haqqanis in peace efforts.
Clinton is the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge the outreach, which was first reported by The Associated Press in August. She said the meeting was organized by Pakistan's intelligence service and was preliminary "to see if (the Haqqanis) would show up."
The U.S. is asking for more Pakistani pressure on the Haqqanis, which the U.S. military considers the biggest threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. That's a tough sell for two reasons: Pakistan's army is already stretched thin by other counterterrorism operations the country's leaders consider a higher priority, and many in Pakistan view groups such as the Haqqanis as disaffected brethren, not enemies. By wide margins, Pakistanis also oppose any U.S. intervention in their country, including the clandestine drone campaign.
U.S. officials have accused Pakistan's military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, of harboring or helping the Haqqanis, which Pakistan's leaders deny. Clinton pointed to the joint U.S. and Afghan campaign against the militants on the Afghan side of the order and said that Pakistan must do the same. On Thursday, in the Afghan capital, she said those who allow such safe havens to remain would pay "a very big price."
U.S. officials have not been precise in public about what they are asking Pakistan to do militarily, and many privately acknowledge that any large military operation in the rugged tribal areas is unrealistic. Nor is the powerful Pakistani intelligence service likely to cut ties to the Haqqanis.
Clinton herself alluded to the utility of those ties, saying that the more important U.S. request of Pakistan is that it try to pressure Taliban militants to reconcile with the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.
She said the military fight against the group must be intensified to persuade members to quit and rejoin society. "We don't know if this will work, but we believe strongly we must try it," she said.
"Pakistan has a critical role to play in supporting Afghan reconciliation and ending the conflict," Clinton said. "We look to Pakistan to take strong steps to deny Afghan insurgents safe havens and to encourage the Taliban to enter negotiations in good faith."
Clinton said the urgency of the situation required that action take place "over the next days and weeks, not months and years," and she warned that many in Congress are fed up and ready to pull back on the billions in aid the U.S. provides to Pakistan.
"We should be able to agree that for too long extremists have been able to operate here in Pakistan and from Pakistani soil," Clinton told reporters at the news conference with Khar. "No one who targets innocent civilians, whether they be Pakistanis, Afghans, Americans or anyone else should be tolerated or protected."
In Washington, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had tough words for Pakistan during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
"We have the right to target not only forces and artillery attacking our forces in Afghanistan from across the border in Pakistan, but to target the people controlling those forces as well," he said.
The U.S. and Pakistan remain at odds over the proper sequencing for peace talks with the Taliban and their allies, said a Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks. Pakistan thinks the U.S. strategy of additional military action will not work, the official said.
Speaking to a group of Pakistani journalists, Clinton said it was unrealistic to think Pakistan's intelligence service did not have connections with insurgents.
"Every intelligence agency has contact with unsavory characters, that is part of the job of being in an intelligence agency," she said. "What we are saying is let's use those contacts to try to bring these people to the table to see whether or not they are going to be cooperative." She noted that it was the Pakistani intelligence services that requested the U.S. meet with the Haqqanis
A senior official traveling with Clinton said the meeting took place over the summer at the request of Pakistani intelligence, but would not give an exact date or the venue for the talks. The official said the Americans had delivered a clear message that "the door is open to those who can meet these red lines" but that those who chose to continue to fight would face intensified attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Officials pointed out that after the meeting the Haqqanis attacked a U.S. base in Afghanistan and are believed to be responsible for a strike on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in September.
Several former and current U.S. and Afghan officials have told the AP that the U.S. met with Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of the elder Jalauddin Haqqani, who heads the Haqqani network. The U.S. also held several meetings with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's former secretary Tayyab Aga. The talks were held in Bahrain and Germany, they said speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Washington's outreach to the Taliban has angered both Pakistan and the Afghan government. Talks with Aga ground to a halt earlier this year after they were leaked by officials in President Hamid Karzai's office, infuriated that Washington had opened up its own channels of communication with the Taliban.
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Gearan reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sebastian Abbot and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Donna Cassata in Washington contributed to this report.

Conflicts leave 12 Afghans dead, wounds 12 civilians in 24 hours
KABUL, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Continued militancy and conflicts have claimed the lives of a dozen Afghans including four civilians and wounded dozen others over the past 24 hours, officials said Sunday.
In the latest waves of violent attacks, a mine planted by the anti-government militants on Sunday, struck a police van in Herat province, some 640 km west of Afghan capital Kabul, leaving two policemen dead.
"A bomb planted on a road in Shindand district of Herat province struck a police van at around 1 p.m. today leaving two police officers dead," Mohammad Daud the police chief of Shindand district told Xinhua.
He blamed Taliban militants for planting the mine, but the outfit fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Also in the same province but in other district, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car killing four non-combatants on Saturday, police confirmed Sunday.
"A mine planted by Taliban rebels on a road in Pashtun Zarghon district struck a civilian car Saturday evening killing four aboard, and all the victims are innocent civilians," police spokesman in Herat province Noor Khan Nikzad told Xinhua.
Six Taliban insurgents have also been killed during operations elsewhere in the Taliban hotbed, the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here Sunday.
"The police forces backed by army and NATO-led troops during operations against insurgents in Kandahar and Helmand provinces have killed six Taliban rebels over the past 24 hours," the statement added.
In another violent incident two rockets fired by insurgents slammed into a residential area in Wardak province, some 35 km west of Afghan capital city Kabul Saturday night, wounding 12 civilians, an official said Sunday.
"Taliban rebels fired five rockets Saturday night, two of them hit a mosque in Miran village of Daimirdad district Saturday night, as a result 12 innocent worshipers were injured," spokesman for provincial administration Shahidullah Shahid told Xinhua.
Three more rockets exploded in land and causing no damages, he asserted.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment over the incidents.

Four Afghan civilians killed as roadside bomb struck car
HERAT, Afghanistan, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Four civilians lost their lives as a roadside bomb struck their car in Herat province 640 km west of capital city Kabul on Saturday, police said Sunday.
"A mine planted by Taliban rebels on a road in Pashtun Zarghon district struck a civilian car Saturday evening killing four aboard, and all the victims are innocent civilians," police spokesman in Herat province Noor Khan Nikzad told Xinhua.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan government have yet to make comment.
Civilians in Afghanistan often bear the brunt of conflict in the militancy-hit country. Some rockets fired by anti-government militants injured 12 civilians in Wardak province 35 km west of Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday.

Afghanistan: proof that untied aid really works
An Afghan experiment under which aid money is spent on local labour and local goods has resulted in thousands of new jobs
Guardian.co.uk By Scott Gilmore Monday 24 October 2011
Donors have promised, and largely failed, to truly untie aid. International development spending continues not to go to those who need it the most. But an experiment in Afghanistan is showing that aid money spent locally is a highly effective way to create jobs.
As the Guardian has reported, tied aid remains a stubbornly persistent component of international assistance. According to the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), a network of 54 NGOs from 19 countries, at least 20% of all bilateral aid remains formally tied.
But that number masks the larger amount of aid that is informally tied. Even when development agencies are free to spend their money wherever they want, they rarely spend it in the country that is being assisted. It is not spent in Liberia or Timor-Leste, but rather in international logistics hubs like Brindisi and Singapore.
In Afghanistan, donors have disbursed more than $36bn in aid over the last 10 years. But recent economic research, conducted by the Peace Dividend Trust on behalf of the British government, revealed that even when the aid was technically untied, only 37% of it entered the local economy. Most of the aid spending went elsewhere: to fly in foreign experts, or provide bottled water and building materials. The money might have been spent on Afghanistan, but it was not spent in Afghanistan.
Not surprisingly, the development technocrats and mandarins, whose salaries are paid out of these international aid budgets, have accepted this as merely a curious paradox of aid. Namely, those who give the money tend to benefit from it more than those whom it is supposed to help.
However, untied aid is now starting to reach the ground because of a new "Afghan First" policy implemented by donors in Kabul. They believe that Afghans who are in work are less likely to join the Taliban, and have decreed that aid procurement should use local labour and local goods to rebuild Afghanistan, whenever possible.
The idea heralds a conscious effort by the international community to "spend the development dollar twice". By channelling aid money through Afghan entrepreneurs, donors can double their impact: if $1m is spent on building a school, an additional $1m in profits and taxes can be left behind by using a local construction company. Most important, though, this approach moves jobs from Dubai to Kabul and Kandahar.
A job can be transformative, especially during a war. A single salary will feed a family, send a girl to school, and provide a mother with medical care. It will generate taxes, pay police wages, and build hope.
The World Bank estimates the unemployment rate in Afghanistan is 8%, but this does not account for the high levels of underemployment. For the most part, jobs in Afghanistan are seasonal, sporadic and unskilled. Creating jobs is difficult, and expensive. For example, the $3bn Aynak Valley copper mine (the biggest foreign investment in the country's history) is only expected to directly employ 4,500 Afghans. It will be a small drop in the sea of underemployed.
By contrast, the "Afghan First" approach to truly untie aid has supported far more jobs with far less money. In a job creation survey conducted by Peace Dividend Trust, $441m in aid contracts, ranging in size from $1,000 to $5m, created or sustained more than 118,000 new jobs. Untied aid spending, using local entrepreneurs, created jobs at a rate 170 greater than the money invested in the copper mine.
The jobs being created through donor procurement are the jobs that Afghans want and that Afghanistan needs. These are skilled jobs in a wide range of sectors, including manufacturing, solar panels, bottled water, fruit exporting, logistics and construction. At the same time, since a business must be registered before it can bid on an international tender, these contracts are generating millions in badly needed local taxes.
Donor contracts typically lead to businesses expanding their employee base by more than 300%, the majority of those jobs being skilled. For a typical aid contract spent locally, one month of employment is created or sustained for every $600 spent. Furthermore, the majority of businesses invest profits in both physical capital and training staff.
The concept of genuinely untying aid – to allow it to be spent locally and to create jobs – has spread to other development missions, most notably to Port au Prince. There, local officials are now talking about a "Haiti First" policy, and are pressuring aid agencies to spend their money in Haiti, not just on Haiti. The impact can be seen on the ground already, as local entrepreneurs are allowed to compete for international contracts, to create employment, to pay taxes, and to build a peaceful future.
• Scott Gilmore is the founder and CEO of Peace Dividend Trust, a social enterprise that champions entrepreneurs and builds markets in post-conflict economies

Afghan sovereignty 'possible, not probable'
Dan Oakes October 25, 2011 The Age Australia
A RETIRED American military official has cast serious doubt on the proposed handing over of sovereignty to the Afghan government, saying it is "possible" rather than "probable".
Former US lieutenant-general Karl Eikenberry has also warned that
the cost of propping up the Afghan security forces after allied troops pull out could be triple the Afghan government's total revenue.
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The Australian government has repeatedly described the military mission in Afghanistan as training Afghan security forces until they are capable of taking responsibility for security in Oruzgan province, where most Australian troops are stationed.
However, many observers are deeply sceptical about whether the Afghan army and police will be capable of standing on their own, particularly as they will be heavily reliant on funding by the international community.
They are also riven by tribal divisions, desertion and a reputation for brutality and ill-discipline.
General Eikenberry — who was the United States ambassador to Kabul between 2009 and 2011 — told an audience at Australian National University there had been phenomenal improvement in the standard of the security forces since 2002, in everything from recruiting to logistics and structure.
"Against that, though, the enterprise of sustaining the Afghan national security forces is an expensive one," he said.
"We believe that by the year 2014, just the sustainment cost of the army and police alone could be reaching $7 billion, and who's going to be paying that $7 billion? Well the Afghan national government by 2014 will probably be generating revenue of $2 billion to $2.5 billion, so there's a significant shortfall, and it will be incumbent then upon the United States and its allies to pay for those resource shortfalls."
General Eikenberry also said there were concerns about the "political" reliability of the security forces, and whether their loyalty will be to the central government or to regional strongmen, as in the past.
General Eikenberry said there were four main issues the US-led coalition was confronting in its quest to hand responsibility for the country over to the Afghan government.
They are: the continuing support within Pakistan for the Taliban, and the havens granted to insurgents; the ability of the Afghan security forces to provide security for their people; the economic stability of the country, particularly when the flood of coalition development aid begins to slow; and the ability of the government to crack down on corruption and govern for all Afghans.
"The [recent troop] surge has set the stage for the transition to full Afghan sovereignty by the end of 2014, and I think that the conditions that the surge has set makes the transition a possibility, I would not give a probability against that," General Eikenberry said.
He also noted that the coalition would not be pulling out in toto from Afghanistan in 2014, but would actually retain a sizeable military and aid presence to help the Afghan government.
"We hope that by the end of 2014, we achieve de facto sovereignty, with the Afghans having the responsibility for security with international support, that detention of Afghan citizens on the battlefield is entirely done by the Afghan government, that the Afghans are able to have more direct control over governance in their country," he said.
"Given the progress that's been made in this country over the last 10 years, I think it is possible to get there."

British troops offer glimpse of life in Afghanistan
By Nathalie Auriol | AFP
On small pieces of paper, some covered in sand, British soldiers in Afghanistan have set out their hopes, fears and everyday musings for a new exhibition which paints a picture of modern war.
Artist Derek Eland, a former paratrooper, visited members of 16 Air Assault Brigade in Helmand in January, where he asked them to write down their thoughts on everything from fighting the Taliban to their families back home.
The result is 400 cards giving what he describes as a "self-portrait of a modern conflict", which is on display at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, northwest England, to mark 10 years since the Afghan war began.
Eland told AFP he wanted "to find a different way to get inside the heads of the soldiers on the frontline". And so, during a month, the 50-year-old followed several units on their often life-threatening missions.
Returning home from patrols or during downtime on base, the soldiers agreed to write honestly about how they felt about the war.
"I did worry that when they did write, they would write something that they thought people wanted to hear, or something they wanted the army to be happy with. I was completely bowled over," Eland said.
Bearing messages that range from the prosaic to the emotionally charged, from crude to poetic, the little coloured cards are crammed onto huge placards in the exhibition, creating a patchwork of personal experience.
Some speak of fear and fighting: "To go forward could have meant death by a command wire IED (a roadside bomb). To go back down the alley could have meant death by small arms fire.
"I had to make a hasty decision. I have seldom felt so alone in my life, or so scared."
Another soldier admitted: "It's hard to explain what it feels like to know one of your friends has been hit. It's easy to feel like you will be the next."
Some messages contain no words but drawings, while others keep their emotions in check with brief phrases, including: "War is not about who is right or wrong. It's about who is left."
Another simply says: "I'm an infantry man with hell on my shoulders."
Other soldiers filled up their cards with words and had to use numerous bits of paper to get their message across.
Many write about the second front, the challenge of being away from their families for months on end, which one soldier describes as a "day to day struggle" that is never portrayed in the media.
Others lighten the mood with humour, including one who writes as if he were sending a postcard on holiday: "Dear Mum, weather lovely, locals friendly, food fantastic."
Small pleasures are also celebrated: "Just back a 5-hour patrol. Received parcels on 21/01/2011 -- 17H51 Afghan time: tortilla wraps, corned chicken, corned ham, coffee, gloves, sweets -- It's such morale; it's unbelievable."
Eland believes the power of the cards comes from the fact that he only gave the soldiers about 15 or 20 minutes to write their messages.
"They were literally pouring the thoughts they carried around in their heads on to these cards," he said.
The cards were first displayed in a "diary room" on the military base in Helmand, where the soldiers could read each other's contributions, and Eland has recreated the exact set-up in Manchester, sticking tape and all.
"It's the honesty of these stories that makes them important," one soldier said.
"In Our Own Words: Soldiers? Thoughts from Afghanistan" runs until June 24.

After setbacks, U.S. military tries to rebuild ties with Pakistani military
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post Monday, October 24, 6:57 PM
KABUL — When Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti was the U.S. military commander in eastern Afghanistan last year, he toured the battlefield with his Pakistani counterparts along both sides of the porous border.
Together, American and Pakistani troops fought coordinated operations to squeeze Taliban insurgents seeking sanctuary in the rugged mountains.
With the killing of Osama bin Laden in May by U.S. commandos on Pakistani soil, however, such border cooperation — and even basic dialogue between U.S. and Pakistani troops — came to a grinding halt.
As a high-level American delegation led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pushed for more political cooperation last week, Scaparrotti, now the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan, is working to re-start the military dialogue on the ground.
“After May, this relationship is not what it was, say, a year ago,” Scaparrotti said in an interview at his headquarters here. “My intent is to start rebuilding this on a mil-to-mil basis, at least.”
A week before Clinton’s visit to Islamabad, Scaparrotti met with top Pakistani military officials and pressed for re-establishing “routine daily communication” and discussions of how to deal with insurgents.
“If we work together we can have a joint effect on [the insurgents], and we need to do so,” Scaparrotti said.
The main thrust of the American message is that Pakistan must do more to combat the Haqqani network, the Taliban-linked insurgent group that is responsible for many of the past bombings in Kabul. American officials believe Pakistan’s government supports — or at least permits — Haqqani fighters to operate from within Pakistan.
Tension over the network grew after a series of attacks on the U.S. Embassy and a British cultural center in Kabul, as well as a spike in cross-border shelling this year in Paktika province. Scaparrotti said shelling from Pakistan was falling on U.S. and Afghan border units at four times the rate of last year.
Although some have accused the Pakistani military of firing into Afghanistan, Scaparrotti blamed insurgents, who sometimes use the tactic to divert American attention to one area as they drive truck convoys of weapons and fighters across other parts of the border.
Pakistani officials say they do not want to fight an operation in the Haqqani stronghold of North Waziristan and risk over-extending their military. “When you talk to their military leadership, they will say it’s a matter of capacity, and there’s some truth to that, but we need them to get focused on the Haqqani network,” Scaparrotti said.
U.S. and Afghan troops have intensified their own campaign against the Haqqani network. Last week, two U.S. military brigades, along with Afghan and U.S. Special Operations troops, and Afghan police and army units, launched Operation Knife Edge in the Haqqani strongholds of Logar, Wardak and Ghazni provinces south of Kabul.
Coalition troops pulled drone aircraft and other intelligence assets away from southern Afghanistan for the operation, which is intended to help pinpoint Haqqani fighters, officials said. A total of 11,000 coalition troops and 25,000 Afghan security forces are involved.
That operation and another recent one resulted in the death or capture of about 200 insurgents, said a spokesman for the NATO coalition. At least 20 of those captured or killed were Haqqani fighters or had links to the network.
“We have taken a lot of operatives off the battlefield,” another senior coalition military official said. “The effect has been so far so good. It’s been a classic disrupt operation, in that they’ve gone to ground, they’re laying low, they are moving in response to our operations.
“And all the time they’re doing that, so far they’ve been able to do very, very little offensively or proactively. And that’s exactly the purpose of the operation.”
Scaparrotti said he’s seen some encouraging signs of resumed Pakistan-U.S. military cooperation in the past month, including a conference between coalition troops and the commander of the Pakistani army’s 11th Corps, which operates along the border.
“We’ve seen a commitment on their part to begin to reconnect here on some of the things that were more standard a little over a year ago,” Scaparrotti said.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com