[Afghan News] October 28, 2011

[یاسمینه]

Afghan interpreter killed in US base attack
AFP
An Afghan interpreter was killed and eight other people wounded in a Taliban attack on a US-run base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, NATO said Friday.

Four attackers were killed in the assault on the civilian-military base housing the local provincial reconstruction team in what was the Taliban capital before the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the militia from power.

Armed with guns, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades, the attackers opened fire from an empty building near the compound.

"One American civilian contractor and two Afghan security guards were injured, one Afghan interpreter was killed, and five ISAF service members were slightly wounded as a result of the attack," the military said.

In keeping with policy, it did not announce the nationalities of the wounded troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, but the base is run by the American military.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took around four hours to repel, saying the gunmen were armed with suicide vests.

The Taliban frequently carry out coordinated attacks on high-profile Western and government targets as part of their nearly 10-year insurgency.

Senior officials, including provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa, provincial police chief Abdul Raziq, and the deputy director of the Afghan intelligence agency were at the base for a meeting at the time of the attack, said a police official on condition of anonymity.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi had told AFP by telephone during the attack that the governor was on the base and was one of the targets.

"There was no attempt to breach Camp Nathan Smith," the military said, adding that two car bombs were detonated safely during the siege.

Afghan police and NATO said they had successfully thwarted the attack.

"The presence of the VBIEDs (vehicle bombs) indicate the insurgents had a plan they could not execute," said Colonel John Kolasheski, the commander of Camp Nathan Smith.

The Kandahar government said the "successful operation" showed that the Afghan police "have once again proved their capabilities".

NATO announced separately that one of its soldiers was killed in a bomb attack in the south on Friday, without specifying where or their nationality.

According to the independent icasualties.org website, at least 497 foreign soldiers have died in the war so far this year, compared to 711 in 2011.

US Soldier Goes on Trial for Civilian Atrocities in Afghanistan
VOA News October 27, 2011 Luis Ramirez | Joint Base Lewis-McCord, Washington, US
A military court in the western U.S. state of Washington is set to try Calvin Gibbs, an American soldier accused of masterminding the brutal killings of Afghan civilians last year. Gibbs' court martial is set to get under way on Friday.

In the months leading up to his court martial, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs has refused to cooperate with military investigators.

The accusations against him have been based on witness accounts that have included grisly details of random killings, and body parts put into plastic bags as trophies. He is accused of three counts of murder.

Gibbs led a platoon of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based here at Joint Base Lewis McChord. Members of that platoon say he threatened anyone who did not keep quiet about the killings. Victims included a 15-year-old boy who was unarmed and chosen at random. Witnesses are quoted as saying Gibbs played with the boy's corpse, and cut off a finger as a keepsake.

Now, he faces life in prison. Other members of the platoon have also been charged and sentenced.

The trial comes as the U.S. military draws down its operations in Afghanistan and takes stock of its accomplishments in the region. The Army says it hopes the trial will help correct any impression that it tolerates criminal behavior.

Colonel Barry Huggins commands the 2nd Brigade that absorbed Gibbs' 5th Brigade. He spoke to VOA in May. “Unlike the people we are engaged in conflict with at the moment, they are not about a policy. They are an aberration. The targeting of civilians or the harm that comes to civilians is not part of our strategy. It's an aberration from that strategy,” Huggins said.

The military has come under criticism for not acting quickly after a platoon member's family alerted officials at the base about the crimes.

Liberal activist Jorge Gonzalez, a veteran of a Stryker brigade, runs a cafe outside the base. Along with free coffee for soldiers, the cafe counsels those who are considering leaving the military for ideological or other reasons.

He says the court martial might bring justice in the Calvin Gibbs case, but he says the damage to the military's image cannot be repaired.

“The story will go everywhere and everybody will think that this is what the U.S. military does, which is very bad. But it leaves that impression, even though it was just a few soldiers that got caught. It's definitely horrible for the rest of the soldiers,” Gonzalez said.

Soldiers here at Gibbs' home base speak of anger and shame. One soldier who did not want to be recorded says he hopes justice will be done, and a separation made between the real warriors who hunt down the Taliban, and those he calls "fake warriors" who kill defenseless civilians for sport.

The panel deciding on Gibbs' case will be chosen on Friday, and testimony begins on Monday.

Clinton Defends US Policy on Pakistan, Afghanistan to Congressional Panel
VOA News October 27, 2011 Cindy Saine
Capitol Hill - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has strongly defended Obama administration policies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan during an appearance Thursday before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. Some lawmakers expressed frustration about continued terrorist safe havens in Pakistan that are undermining NATO efforts in Afghanistan.

A number of lawmakers grilled Secretary of State Clinton as to whether the United States is making progress towards achieving its strategic national security goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said the United States and Pakistan are at a crossroads, and that Washington cannot sustain a partnership with Islamabad if it pursues policies that are hostile to U.S. interests and jeopardize American lives. She said the ultimate disgrace was the discovery of now deceased al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden living inside Pakistan close to a Pakistani military facility.

Secretary of State Clinton said she would be the first to admit that relationships with the two countries are not always easy. But she cited major successes the United States has achieved.

"Osama bin Ladin and many of his top lieutenants are dead," said Clinton. "The threat remains real and urgent, especially from al-Qaida’s affiliates. But the group’s senior leadership has been devastated and its ability to conduct operations greatly diminished."

The ranking member of the committee, Democratic Representative Howard Berman of California, said he felt that perhaps U.S. military aid to Pakistan might need to be re-evaluated, but he said continued U.S. economic aid is vital.

"It is in our long-term interest to support the continued development of Pakistan's civil society and nascent democratic institutions," said Berman.

Clinton said that during her trip to Pakistan last week she delivered a clear message to military and civilians leaders that they must act against the militant Haqqani network.

“I explained that trying to distinguish between so-called good terrorists and bad terrorists is ultimately self-defeating and dangerous," she said. "No one who targets innocent civilians of any nationality should be tolerated or protected.”

U.S. officials have accused Pakistan's military spy agency, the ISI of providing support to the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, which has launched attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Other foreign policy issues also came up at the hearing. Republican Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio strongly criticized President Barack Obama for saying he is going to remove all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of this year.

"I am very concerned by the president's recent announcement of a complete withdrawal by the end of the year," said Chabot. "Fulfilling a campaign promise at the expense of American national security interests is at best strategic neglect and at worst downright irresponsible."

Chabot also said he feared U.S. forces may be pulled out of Afghanistan before conditions there merit it. The United States has about 98,000 troops in Afghanistan and plans to bring most of them home by the end of 2014.

Clinton: Pakistan Should Do More Against Haqqani Network
October 27, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today that Pakistan should do more to curb attacks by a militant network operating from its territory against international forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Clinton, speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pressed for Pakistan to take action against all extremists, but focused on the Haqqani network.

"In Islamabad last week, [Joint Chiefs Staff chairman] General [Martin] Dempsey, [CIA] Director [David] Petraeus, and I delivered a single, unified message: Pakistan's civilian and military leadership must join us in squeezing the Haqqani network from both sides of the border and in closing safe havens," Clinton said. "We underscored to our Pakistani counterparts the urgency of the task at hand, and we had detailed and frank conversations about the concrete steps both sides need to take."

U.S. officials say the Haqqani network enjoys support from Pakistan's military intelligence, the ISI, and has carried out anti-American attacks in Afghanistan.

But Clinton stopped short of linking action on the group to the U.S. relationship with Pakistan.

In Kabul, meanwhile, General Curtis Scaparrotti, the U.S. deputy commander in Afghanistan, today accused Pakistani forces of allowing insurgents to launch rocket and mortar attacks on U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan.


Afghanistan must bolster forces on border: US
AFP
The NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan can still succeed even if insurgents continue to enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan but that will require more Afghan forces at the border, a US general said Thursday.

Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, deputy commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said the presence of safe havens for Afghan insurgents in neighboring Pakistan posed possibly the biggest threat to the war effort.

"There are several threats to our campaign. That's the one that I'm perhaps the most concerned about," he told reporters by video link from Afghanistan.

The general said NATO forces could hand over to Afghan troops in 2014 as planned even if Pakistan fails to crack down on the militant outposts inside its borders. But he acknowledged it would make the war effort "a much tougher task."

A build-up of Afghan forces in the eastern border area -- backed up by drone surveillance aircraft -- could contain the danger from insurgents operating out of Pakistan, according to Scaparrotti.

"I do believe that we can meet our objectives in 2014 without a direct impact in the sanctuary, but I believe in order to do that we have to build a strong, capable, layered defense with the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) in order to provide, you know, a proper interdiction," he said.

The length of the border and the rugged terrain in the east make it impossible to block every crossing point.

Instead, larger numbers of Afghan army units could be deployed in the area along with improved border posts and mobile units "to cover those gaps and then respond to incursions," Scaparrotti said.

Clinton: U.S. would negotiate with Taliban leader
CNN By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer October 27, 2011
Washington - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States would be willing to negotiate with the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban if he met conditions that have been laid out.

Testifying at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clinton did not dismiss the prospect when asked by Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, whether reconciliation talks with the Taliban and other insurgents would include talking with Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

"You don't make peace with your friends," she said, speaking days after concluding a weeklong trip that included stops in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There first would have to be a demonstrated willingness on the Taliban's part to negotiate and to meet the conditions already laid out for joining negotiations, she said.

"We have been clear," she had told the committee earlier, "about the necessary outcomes of any negotiation: Insurgents must renounce violence, abandon al Qaeda, and abide by the constitution of Afghanistan, including its protections for women and minorities. If insurgents cannot meet those red-lines, they will face continued and unrelenting assault."

But she said it is important for an inclusive Afghan-led peace and reconciliation process, in which the parties talk to former insurgents who are ready to renounce violence.

Pressed during questioning about what makes her certain that insurgents will change course and renounce an extremist ideology, Clinton said she is "very realistic," and recognizes not all of them will.

Some 2,500 fighters have already begun the process of reintegrating and have expressed weariness with the Taliban, she said. In that vein, she said, there have been recent threads of intelligence showing a debate in these societies on issues such as letting girls go to school that she finds promising.

Talks have not yet reached the stage where it is known how many insurgents harbor a desire to reintegrate, she said.

Clinton last week disclosed a meeting this past summer between the United States and a representative of the Pakistan-based Haqqani insurgent network at the request of Pakistan's intelligence service. She said such meetings are part of a strategy in which "we want to fight, talk and build all at the same time."

"Part of the reason for that is to test whether these organizations have any willingness to negotiate in good faith," she said. "There's evidence going both ways, to be clear. Sometimes we hear that they will, that there are elements within each that wish to pursue that. And then other times that it's off the table. So I think that with respect to the Haqqani network, it illustrates this point."

In her opening remarks, Clinton said that while "serious challenges" remain, work in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has "yielded significant results," noting that the success of the U.S. presence in the region sometimes gets lost in the public debate.

"Osama bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants are dead," she said. While "the threat remains real and urgent, especially from al Qaeda's affiliates," al Qaeda's ability to conduct operations has been greatly diminished through cooperation on and off the battlefield, she added.

"Many of our successes against al Qaeda would not have been possible without close cooperation between the United States and Pakistan," she said.

In Afghanistan, where security forces still have a long way to go before they can take on added responsibility, and where extreme poverty and corruption remain key challenges going forward, Clinton noted that there are 7 million more children in school a decade after the United States went to war in the country. Nearly 40% of Afghan girls are in school today, she said, a sharp reversal from when the Taliban ruled the country and prohibited girls from attending school.

"Working with our Afghan and Pakistani partners is not always easy, but these relationships are advancing America's national security interests," Clinton said. "And walking away would undermine those interests."

The secretary of state expanded on the "fight, talk, build" strategy that she unveiled on her trip.

As coalition and Afghan forces have increased pressure on the Taliban and Haqqani network operations inside Afghanistan, Clinton said, commanders remain concerned about the ability of these groups to launch attacks on coalition forces from safe havens in Pakistan. In meeting with their counterparts in Pakistan last week, Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, urged Pakistan to help squeeze the Haqqani network on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

"We're not suggesting that Pakistan sacrifice its own security. Quite the opposite," Clinton told the House committee, noting the sacrifices the Pakistan military has made in the fight.

Pakistan has a huge stake in getting Taliban and other insurgents to the negotiating table as well, Clinton said, and called on the Pakistanis to do so through public statements and closing off the safe havens inside Pakistan.

"For our part, the United States is working with the Afghan government to conclude a new strategic partnership that will provide a framework for cooperation long after the transition is concluded in 2014," she said. "It will send a strong signal about our enduring commitment to the people of Afghanistan and the future of the region."

The military battle against the Haqqani network continues, Clinton said, with a major military operation in Afghanistan launched last week that captured or killed more than a hundred Haqqani operatives. As the United States steps up its own efforts to pressure the Haqqani network both financially and operationally, Pakistan plays a critical role in ratcheting up pressure on militants operating on its soil, she said.

"We're already working with the Pakistanis to target those who are behind a lot of the attacks against Afghans and Americans," Clinton said. "And I made it very clear to the Pakistanis that the attack on our embassy was an outrage and the attack on our foreign operating base that injured 77 of our soldiers was a similar outrage. And it was in both instances terrible, but the fact is we avoided having dozens and dozens of wounded or killed."

Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparotti,the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that Pakistani officials have told him "they simply don't have the capacity to take on" the Haqqani network.

But more worrying, he said, may be "indications" seen by coalition forces that Haqqani attacks have originated from locations "in close proximity to some Pakistani outposts."

"I think the collaboration is, at least in some cases, local collaborations with the insurgents, and we talk very bluntly with our Pakistan counterparts about this," Scaparotti said.

Regarding Afghanistan, Clinton addressed questions about the reliability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai following comments last week in which Karzai said he would side with Pakistan if a war between it and the United States ever broke out. She said she asked U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker to decipher the meaning behind Karzai's remarks. Those comments, Crocker told her, were "taken out of context and misunderstood," and harkened back to the long history of cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan going back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Clinton said she had had a "productive meeting" with Karzai last week in Kabul, one that continued to build on cooperation on fighting insurgents while closely monitoring the success of the Afghan-led reconciliation efforts with insurgents.

As Afghanistan and Pakistan both move to address change in their society, Clinton said religious minority populations must be protected along with women, and racial minorities. "This is one of our biggest problems in the world right now," she said. "There needs to be a greater acceptance of religious tolerance and in so many places there is no history of religious tolerance."

Clinton told the committee it is important to build capacity for sustained economic growth and development in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the region as a means to building lasting stability and security.

"People need a realistic hope for a better life, a job and a chance to provide for their family," she said. "So it is critical to our broader effort that civilian assistance continues in both Afghanistan and Pakistan."

As the administration works to strengthen oversight and effectiveness of its programs in the region, Clinton told the committee she will be sending a comprehensive status update on civilian assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan next week that would detail plans for both short-term stabilization and long-term development programs.

As coalition forces draw down their numbers ahead of a planned pullout in 2014, Clinton said, it is important for the United States and its partners to support an Afghan-led economic strategy that will improve agricultural productivity, develop natural resources, increase exports, and strengthen the country's financial sector.

She also noted the importance of promoting trade between Afghanistan, Pakistan and its neighbors through the building of new infrastructure and other ways to move goods that will create new jobs across the region.

As the United States gradually reduces its military footprint in Afghanistan over the next few years, Clinton told the members of Congress, Washington must still remain engaged in the region. "America paid a heavy price for disengaging after the Soviets left in 1989," she said. "We cannot afford to make that mistake again. We have to be smart and strategic. And we have to work together to protect our interests."

Afghan Government Forces Shaky Truce In Tribal Land Dispute
October 27, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
Heavily armed young fighters vacated their respective trenches early on October 27 in eastern Afghanistan, honoring a truce demanded by the local government and halting a tribal land dispute that has claimed more than 100 lives over the last two years.

The two sides, from the Alisher Khel and Sepah branches of the Pashtun Shinwari tribe, agreed to the three-year truce only after Nangarhar Province Governor Gul Agha Sherzai threatened military action to put an end to their fighting.

What began as a dispute over a large plain in the Ghani Khel region south of the provincial capital, Jalalabad, eventually took on the appearance of a traditional war involving garrisons, trenches, mortars, and heavy machine guns.

The truce came after Sherzai, a former anti-Soviet guerrilla commander, delivered his ultimatum before a gathering of regional tribal leaders in Jalalabad on October 25.

"If by morning -- and my friends from Sepah tribe should listen carefully -- they don't vacate their trenches, [the makeshift] military garrisons, and the rooms they have built, the government will act in accordance with the law," Sherzai said. "I will go there -- and I have the backing of all the tribes, UNAMA [the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan], and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]. We all will go there and disarm them."

Sherzai further warned that even the presence of Taliban in the region would not deter him from carrying out his threat of military action.

Sustainable Truce

Lawmaker Faridoon Mohmand, who has played a key role in resolving the dispute through tribal councils, accompanied Sherzai to Ghani Khel on October 26 to reinforce the ultimatum.

Mohmand tells RFE/RL he believes the truce is sustainable.

"The two sides agreed to a three-year truce, meaning that there will be a cease-fire and the two sides will live in peace," Mohmand said. "They will vacate whatever housing they have built under the supervision of a [designated] delegation, who will return it to the government. The government will then build a housing project where the impoverished and homeless people will be given homes."

Sherzai's assertion of authority is rare in Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of small and big land disputes between families, clans and ethnic groups, threaten stability and bring untold suffering. Should the government fail to follow through on the promises made by Sherzai, the truce could prove to be short-lived.

Mohammad Yousaf Sabir, a lawmaker from Nagarahar, says disputes over landownership have risen sharply since the demise of the Taliban regime a decade ago. He tells RFE/RL that property prices have skyrocketed across Afghanistan, where land has always been considered a precious commodity. The Afghan Constitution and accumulation of properties under previous governments have made the state a major landowner, but people have rapidly encroached on its properties in cities and rural areas.

Ignoring The Rule Of Law

Sabir, who hails from Ghani Khel, says that the disputed plain in his home region is actually owned by the government. But the two Shinwari clans now want to possess it in order to distribute it among their members. The land grab, he says, is essentially a result of anarchy in Afghanistan.

"People think that because the government in Afghanistan is weak they can get away with grabbing property," Sabir said. "Many people here are not aware of the importance of the rule of law and they pay little attention to the laws. So some people only strive to capture a piece of land and think that nobody can force them out of there."

The Afghan government still lacks a comprehensive system of land management. Property records are patchy and in some regions land is still collectively owned by clans and tribes. After the fall of the Taliban regime, many powerful militia leaders and warlords became government leaders, and many Afghans accuse them of enriching themselves by grabbing public and private property.

Pakistan denies BBC report on Taliban links
Chris Allbritton October 27, 2011
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan strongly denied Thursday a BBC report that alleged the Pakistani military, along with its intelligence arm, supplied and protected the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda.

A number of middle-ranking Taliban commanders detailed what they said was extensive Pakistani support in interviews for a BBC documentary series, the first part of which was broadcast Wednesday.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik, on a visit to Britain, criticized the program, telling a London news conference that the Taliban were trying to create a wedge between their adversaries by making such allegations.

"We are victims, victims of war, we have lost over 35,000 innocent people, including senior officers, policemen, and normal foot soldiers. I think doubting us is really heartbreaking ... We have stood in the front line," Malik said, referring to Pakistan's fight against militant groups.

"We are facing daily these suicide bombers. If they had been trained by us, we should not be getting ourselves killed," he said.

A former Afghan intelligence head also told the BBC that Afghanistan gave former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf information in 2006 that Osama bin Laden was hiding in northern Pakistan, but the intelligence was not acted on. The al Qaeda leader was killed in the same area by U.S. special forces in May this year.

Pakistan's military denied the BBC report.

"We consider that this report is highly biased, it is one-sided, it doesn't have the version of the side which is badly hit or affected by this report," Major General Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani military, told Reuters.

"So therefore, other than that, it's factually incorrect."

CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED
One Taliban commander, Mullah Qaseem, told the BBC that Pakistan had played a significant role in providing supplies and a hiding place for Afghan Taliban fighters.

Abbas denied this, questioning Qaseem's credibility.

He said the head of Pakistan's spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had already said "not a single bullet or financial support" had been given to groups named in the BBC report.

The United States has long suspected Pakistan, or elements within the ISI, of supporting militant groups in order to increase its influence in Afghanistan, particularly after NATO combats troops leave in 2014.

In September, Admiral Mike Mullen, then the top U.S. military officer, accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets including the U.S. embassy in Kabul. He said the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, blamed for a September 13 embassy attack, was a "veritable arm" of the ISI.

Pakistan denies the U.S. allegations.

Malik said that "if Pakistan has recruited some people for intelligence purposes," that did not mean it supported them.

He suggested the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's security service also had connections with the Haqqani group or other militants because they were hunting for intelligence and recruiting sources.

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. It was one of only three countries to have diplomatic relations with the Islamist group.

US Afghan 'kill team' leader faces court martial
AFP
The alleged ringleader of a rogue US army unit charged with killing Afghan civilians for fun faces a court martial Friday, 18 months after the slayings.

Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs' week-long military trial comes after guilty verdicts were handed down as part of plea deals with three other members of the so-called "kill team."

The previous court hearings exposed grisly evidence about soldiers taking fingers from the bodies as trophies and posing with corpses, evoking memories of abuse at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on Iraq.

Gibbs faces three charges of premeditated murder as well as a string of accusations of assault, making threats, "conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline," and impeding an investigation.

"If convicted of all charges (and specifications), Staff Sgt. Gibbs faces a maximum punishment of imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole," said a statement from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle.

The court martial is scheduled to last until next Friday, November 4, although officials say its length could depend on how Gibbs's defense lawyers want to proceed.

In all, five soldiers have been accused over the deaths of three Afghans in southern Kandahar province from January to May 2010. The soldiers were from the 5th Stryker Brigade, based in the northwestern US state of Washington.

Three have already pleaded guilty in deals with military prosecutors thought to include agreements to testify against their fellow defendants, including alleged ringleader Gibbs.

In March, Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, admitted to involvement in the killings and to using stolen arms to pretend the victims were enemy fighters.

He was jailed for 24 years and dishonorably discharged, but avoided life in prison.

In August Specialist Adam Winfield, 23, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter and illegal use of marijuana.

Then, last month, Private First Class Andrew Holmes, 21, was jailed for seven years in a plea bargain to avoid a 15-year term.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel published three grisly pictures in March, out of a reported cache of 4,000 documents, showing Morlock and Holmes holding up the bloodied head of a corpse.

At a pre-trial hearing in November 2010 for Gibbs, defense attorney Phillip Stackhouse argued that his client had played no role in the killings.

Stackhouse asked the judge presiding over that hearing to weigh Gibbs's assertion of innocence with the testimony from "these dope-smoking soldiers in a combat zone. Who are you going to believe, where does the credibility lay?"

Apart from Gibbs, another soldier, Michael Wagnon, is still awaiting military trial for his alleged role in the killings.

The Pentagon has admitted the allegations and photographs are embarrassing for the US military, but has stressed that such behavior is an "aberration" for a force of nearly 100,000 deployed in Afghanistan.

The fine line between culture and law in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Javid Ahmad Thursday, October 27, 2011
Countries that have experienced decades of conflict and political turmoil, and have historically featured persistent executive-judicial disputes tend to have less judicial autonomy. Afghanistan epitomizes this. The country has not only lacked comprehensive, integrated laws for much of its history, but what laws existed were culturally dictated and enforced, and in most cases, still are.

As an Afghan, articles about the emergence of the rule of law in the West make me think about the intersection of culture and law in Afghanistan and its challenges. Even before its formal establishment as a nation, the United States began to create common law by using centuries-old written precedents from Great Britain, and applying American notions of reason and justice. Since there is little written tradition in Afghanistan, it does not have such a heritage, nor common law texts, as a starting point. Its starting point is a religious text, the Quran, written in Arabic, a language understood by only a small number of Afghans, the oral history of past decisions, and "felt necessities of the time," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. characterized one aspect of the development of the common law in the United States.

The Afghan idea of a justice system is also defined by Pashtunwali, a social code of conduct and way of life that predates the Anglo-Saxon common law. Pashtunwali defines the fundamentals of the Afghan culture, identity and, above all, personal honor. What distinguishes the practice of Pashtunwali is its emphasis on using influential local and tribal leaders (Maliks, Khans and mullahs), or respected outsiders chosen arbitrarily by the conflicting parties, to act as fact-finders and decision-makers. Furthermore, decisions must be seen as arbitrary and impartial, not compelled by any of the players in the conflict. This is one of the key reasons people in rural Afghanistan have historically opted to use customary shuras (councils) and jirgas (assemblies) as the primary decision-making forums in which to resolve their disputes. Over the course of Afghan history, the ideals of Pashtunwali have driven and influenced local decisions and rulings, primarily in rural Afghanistan, though the ethos of the system may be seen in all Pashtuns. The few attempts by the central legal authorities to supplant this indigenous centuries-long system of beliefs have been, and may continue to be, largely unsuccessful.

Laws in the United States made by federal, state and local representatives are designed to supersede and override the common law, while in the absence of a statute (or the Constitution), the common law prevails. Although broad policy objectives are not well mapped by use of the common law, it is a filler of necessity and provides an indispensable resource for judicial decisions in the absence of legislative guidance. By contrast, Afghans are usually handed oral, extemporized rulings influenced heavily by village elders, local and tribal leaders, Khans and mullahs, through the long-practiced shura and jirga system. Shuras and jirgas are said to be more efficient, accessible, cost-effective, less corrupt and more trusted by the Afghans than the formal state justice institutions. But these rulings often occur without reference to - mostly because of a lack of knowledge of, indifference to or defiance of - the Afghan Constitution, statutory laws or any other written records. Instead, these leaders rely on their understanding of the Quran, oral histories of past decisions known to them and to their people, Pashtunwali, and their "felt necessity."

Thus, there is no cohesive thread connecting these oral decisions across villages and tribes to any common national public policy objectives. Afghans who have experienced both the formal and non-formal justice systems find the latter more in line and in compliance with local norms, customs and traditions, including the promotion and encouragement of consensus and avoiding a culture of impunity. Ignorance of and disregard for the country's written law , as well as prevalent corruption, mean that people have little confidence in the laws and low expectations of justice brought through the formal court system. A report released last year by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) notes that in 2009 alone, Afghans paid an estimated $2.5 billion in bribes, equivalent to 23 percent of Afghanistan's GDP, and that judicial officials topped the list of those who received the bribes. By contrast, judges in the United States use a more consistent process and look to the written precedents in common and statutory law, as well as publications of scholars and retired judges when they do not have written precedents in their own jurisdiction to guide them. This reduces the incidence of corruption, since wide departures from these precedents would bring critical attention to anomalous decisions.

So what happens in Afghanistan? The disparate sense of "felt necessity," guided by various interpretations of a religious text many cannot read and many misunderstand - together with flawed oral histories of past judgments - drive local decisions, creating a confusing and conflicting hodgepodge of rulings devoid of broad public policy considerations. A key point to note here is that a lack of nationally accepted laws permits subversive elements such as the Taliban and leaders who may be unaware of the formal justice system or distrust government institutions, to intuit and then adopt the most draconian of these incongruent decisions. These actors then form "public policy" based on their interpretations, and enforce it in the areas that they control with attribution to the Quran and use of brutal penalties for non-compliance.

The solution, it seems, would be for Afghan scholars and those with legal education and background in Afghanistan to go to village and tribal leaders across the country and record the background and results of recent their rulings and judgments. These scholars could then tease out common public policy threads from dispute resolutions that were build on factors ranging from the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad to local conditions and "felt necessities." Having distilled the core essence of such decisions, a "Restatement of the Law of Afghanistan" could be written, similar to the one that exists in the United States, which would set out the main principles of a developing Afghan common law. It would have no legal power, but it would provide a starting point of the type the founding fathers of the United States received from Great Britain. Through this mechanism, the future decisions of village and tribal leaders in Afghanistan would be guided but not bound by the past. They would at last be put into writing, further developing coherent and better reasoned guides for Afghanistan's judicial system and a foundation against which ill-conceived and corrupt decisions can be measured and criticized.

It would be these written decisions of village and tribal leaders that would begin the long process of codifying the actual common law of Afghanistan, providing a place to look back for precedent and forward for the common threads of a rule of law.

There are no effective alternative power centers in Afghanistan that could create incentives for the people to take their disputes and disagreements to courts. Indeed, there are only a few courts now in existence and most are distrusted and discredited. However, codifying the actual common law of Afghanistan and applying it in the formal court system could create an incentive for the Afghan people to more formally and habitually refer their disputes and problems to the justice system.

Javid Ahmad, a native of Kabul, is Program Coordinator with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington DC.

Merkel: Germany to continue support to Afghanistan beyond 2014
Oct 27, 2011 Monsters and Critics.com
Berlin - Germany is to continue aid to Afghanistan beyond 2014 when its troops are scheduled to leave, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin on Thursday after meeting visiting NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

'We agreed that our responsibility for Afghanistan will not end after the withdrawal of fighting troops,' she said. Germany would continue to fund training of Afghan security forces. Rasmussen also said NATO would not turn its back on Afghanistan.

Germany is set to host a conference of Afghans on the future of their country at the start of December. The Germans, who have about 5,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, mainly in the north of the country, are scheduled to begin their gradual drawdown in the next few weeks.

Merkel said the conference in Bonn would be an opportunity to discuss 'jobs that still have to be done.'

She said she and Rasmussen agreed that Afghanistan was on a 'sensible' path, 'even if there is a great deal still to be done.'

Rasmussen said the withdrawal timetable was firm, but support beyond 2014 was important for the whole region. Pakistan had to be aware that NATO's departure would not leave a 'security vacuum.'

Afghan Archeologists Race Against Time to Find Treasures
VOA News October 27, 2011 Brian Calvert | Mes Aynak, Logar Province, Afghanistan
Long before Afghanistan was an Islamic country, Buddhist settlements dotted its mountains and deserts. While the Taliban infamously destroyed the giant Buddhist statues of Bamyan Province in 2001, many archeological riches remain. Alongside those buried treasures of the past are some $1 trillion in mineral wealth.

A race against time

The men are in a race against time. On Mes Aynak Mountain, in Afghanistan’s Logar Province, they are digging out some of the country’s oldest treasures. As fast as they can.

They have only two years to recover artifacts from four sites around the mountain before a Chinese copper mine moves in.

“Well we are trying but the problem is the site is very huge and our archeologists, we only have 24 archeologists, and an institute, and we need more,” said Khair Muhammad Khairzada, who is with the Afghan Institute of Archaeology.

The Buddhists were thriving here around 1,500 years ago. The site was a pilgrimage destination and a monastery. Even back then, it was known for its copper. Mes Aynak means Copper of Aynak.

Within next two years, Chinese to mine

Looters have taken most of the treasures above ground. They even drilled tunnels and made off with the tops of giant statues. Erosion took its toll as well. And now the Chinese have come to recover billions of dollars worth of copper.

The China Metallurgical Group established a camp here in 2009. By 2013, miners will begin tearing down the mountain.

Archaeologist Abdul Qadir Temori say two years is not enough time.

“Yes, it is a limited amount of time. Only an archeologist would understand what a limited time it is,” he said.

An extension of the dig is not expected. The $4 billion deal is Afghanistan’s largest ever and would provide needed jobs and revenue for this war-weary country.

But the archeologists say it is not worth it.

Hunderds of ancient treasures, forever lost

“History will judge them. There’s no difference between the terrorists and the Chinese, because terrorists are destroying our artifacts with their guns and weapons and the Chinese are destroying them by money,” said archaeologist Temori.

Hundreds of ancient treasures have been unearthed here since digging began in earnest. They are filling the National Museum. An untold number of artifacts remain below the earth. But so does the copper.

So the race continues to save the riches of Afghanistan’s past from the riches of its future. Before long, the mountain these men are working on will be gone.

Britain 'should not withdraw troops from Afghanistan before 2014'
Britain should not draw down troop numbers from the Afghan frontline before David Cameron's 2014 deadline for withdrawal, the head of Afghanistan army in the province has told The Daily Telegraph.
Telegraph.co.uk By Thomas Harding 28 Oct 2011
Helmand - Britain currently has 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, including special forces, but David Cameron has given assurances that it will remain at that level only until the end of next year. After that military experts expect the numbers to fall in stages in advance of the withdrawal deadline. But the province's top soldier has said a staged withdrawl would harm the battle to secure the province from the Taliban.

"If the British leave, in my personal opinion, this will have a negative effect on security," Brig Gen Sheren Shah told The Daily Telegraph: British soldiers were needed "to fight together with us in the front line until 2014".

The Kabul government on Wednesday announced that parts of Helmand would be among 17 provinces that move to Afghan control next year.

President Hamid Karzai will officially name the new areas that are to "transition" from Nato to Afghans leading security at a summit in Istanbul next Wednesday. Up to seven provinces and districts in 10 other provinces will transition giving Afghan forces control of up to 50 per cent of the population.

The second phase of handover, that comes after a few areas went to local control in July, is part of the plan for Nato to gradually withdraw its troops after a decade of fighting.

Downing Street has been circumspect about keeping any troops in Afghanistan from 2015 but the Afghan general said some would still be needed. But Brig Shah said a large number of support troops will also be needed to support the Afghan army for "many years" after the timetabled withdrawal at the end of 2014.

"To be honest I cannot forecast clearly after 2014 how much longer we will need British forces in Afghanistan but our country has been demolished and we have tolerated 30 years war in which we lost everything," he said.

"So we need the international community, especially British influence, for longer. I cannot say for how many years but a number of years."

Helmand has gone from being the trouble spot of Afghanistan almost to its "trophy province" with Brig Gen Shah's 3rd Brigade of 215 Corps seen as the "model" for the rest of the army.

The 44-year-old general has led Afghans as a commander in the Soviet-trained army who defected to the Mujahideen and then helped the Northern Alliance throw out the Taliban.

His brigade now conducts battalion size operations on its own with British advisors in the background.

In another sign of progress it has received the first Afghan "high threat operator" trained up to Western bomb disposal standards.

But the general warned that more advanced training in engineering, logistics and heavy weapons was needed before his brigade could become fully independent. They would also require Nato air power for a long time to come.

The officer also reflected Kabul's worries of greater interference from Afghanistan's neighbours such as Pakistan and Iran following Nato's withdrawal.

"As soldiers we are born to fight, we have no fear of the Taliban after 2014. The only fear we have is of foreign neighbouring countries interfering in Afghanistan." Despite the Afghans taking the lead in security in more Helmand districts beyond the provincial capital Lashkar Gah which they have controlled since July there still remain a number of teething issues.

The British are increasingly taking a step back from combat operations with two infantry battalions now fully committed to training and mentoring the Afghans.

"The Afghan Army is the future, they are our ticket out of here," one commander said.

Tajik Power Line To Afghanistan Inaugurated
October 27, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
DUSHANBE -- An electric power line linking a hydroelectric power plant in Tajikistan with the Afghan city of Pul-i-Kumri was formally inaugurated today by officials from both countries, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.

Tajik Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov, Afghan Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim, and Afghan Water and Energy Minister Mohammad Ismail Khan attended the ceremony in the southern Tajik province of Khatlon, where the Sangtuda Hydroelectric Power Plant is located.

The Afghan officials met in Dushanbe on October 26 with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

Khan said after the meeting that the 300-megawatt power line between Sangtuda and Pul-i-Kumri, the administrative center of Baghlan Province, will initially supply Afghanistan with power for just five months of the year, beginning in May.

As of 2015, Tajikistan will supply electricity all year around.

Tajik hydroelectric power plants generate a large amount of electricity during the spring and summer, providing a surplus for export. But during the winter months, Tajikistan experiences power shortages that usually necessitate rationing.

Construction of the 281-kilometer power line (118 kilometers on Tajik territory and 163 kilometers in Afghanistan) began in 2009 and was financed primarily by long-term, low-interest loans from the Asian Development Bank.

Photo Essay: Infant mortality rate remains high despite better health care in Afghanistan
By Associated Press,
KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite billions in international aid, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest nations in the world. Its high infant mortality rate is evidence that life remains hard for the Afghan people from the moment of birth.

The infant mortality rate is considered an important indicator of a country’s level of health or development.

In Afghanistan, now in its 10th year of war, care for pregnant women has improved. Yet many births still occur at home or in poorly equipped medical facilities, jeopardizing the health of both mother and child, especially if there are complications during and after childbirth.

Afghanistan has an infant mortality rate of an estimated 129 deaths per 1,000 births, according to statistics cited by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.

Moreover, Afghan children die before reaching age 5 at a rate of 191 for every 1,000 births.

While still one of the highest in the world, Afghanistan’s infant mortality rate is falling.

Hundreds of midwives have been trained, and access to basic health care has increased with the construction of more clinics built with foreign aid.

Plan Afghanistan
Why the Colombia model -- even if it means drug war and armed rebellion -- is the best chance for U.S. success in Central Asia.
Foreign Policy BY PAUL WOLFOWITZ , MICHAEL O'HANLON OCTOBER 28, 2011
President Barack Obama made clear this week that the remaining troops will soon come home from Iraq. Some 10 years after the first troops landed in Afghanistan, we're now nearly back to a one-front war. But where are we, really? It's clear that both citizens and Washington alike are collectively weary of war and frustrated by this particular mission, with its interminable timelines and uncertain partners in Kabul and Islamabad, even if it has only been three to four years since the United States intensified its collective focus and resources on this mission.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the temporary surge of U.S. forces was used for two purposes: First, to increase the size and quality of Iraqi and Afghan security forces so that they could take over most or all of the fight -- this might be called "the surge that stays behind" or the "permanent surge"; and second, to create conditions sufficiently stable so that what we hand off to indigenous forces is not a losing hand that is doomed to fail, but one with a reasonable chance of success. The surge in Iraq produced dramatic results in a relatively short period of time; the results in Afghanistan have been more limited. With the president having announced that U.S. forces will withdraw by 2014, the question bears asking: Is victory in Afghanistan now beyond our grasp?

Many analysts have noted that the surge strategy in Afghanistan needs to be fundamentally different from that in Iraq. It is not an accident but rather a product of geography and the demography that Iraq has had strong central governments over the course of thousands of years, whereas Afghanistan has never had one. An Iraqi government can aspire to control all or nearly all of its territory. Indeed, any notion of success in Iraq virtually requires it. An Afghan government, on the other hand, cannot aspire to such an ambitious goal and, critically, success in Afghanistan does not require it.

Strange though it may sound, success in Afghanistan would look a lot more like the success that has been achieved in Colombia over the last 10 years, rather than the success that we are hoping for in Iraq. This is a point that was made two-and-a-half years ago by Scott Wilson, a Washington Post reporter who had spent four years in Colombia as a correspondent and a year in Iraq. Writing in April 2009, Wilson said that Obama "may want to look south rather than east in charting a new course" for Afghanistan. Though they hide in triple-canopy jungles rather than forbidding mountains, the insurgents in Colombia, like those in Afghanistan, will always enjoy the benefit of sanctuaries inside the country. And, until Pakistan withdraws its support for the Taliban, Pakistan will cause the same problems for the Afghan government that Venezuela does for Colombia.

Back then, in 2009, Afghanistan wasn't ready for such a strategy. But the successes of the surge since then -- which have been substantial even though not as dramatic as the ones achieved in just a year in Iraq -- make it possible to do so now. In both Iraq and Afghanistan the surge has involved a temporary increase in U.S. troop levels -- but the increase in numbers only works because it supports a shift in strategy, from one centered on killing or capturing enemy combatants to one focused on providing security for the local population. Along with that shift in strategy, a much greater emphasis has been placed on increasing both the quality and quantity of local security forces, so that they can eventually maintain that local security -- and continue the fight against extremists -- without substantial reliance on U.S. forces.

But even assuming a best-case scenario, it is unlikely that any government would be able to exercise control over the entire country, much less one with Afghanistan's weak institutions, uncertain current leadership, colonial borders, and ancient tribal society. There will always be significant sections of the country, particularly in the more remote mountainous regions, where a guerilla movement like the Taliban can find effective sanctuary. That situation is substantially worsened by the existence of virtually unimpeded sanctuary on the Pakistan side of the border and support for the Taliban from important elements of that country's national security apparatus.

Given the strength and determination of the Taliban, perhaps it was never realistic to establish what the U.N. Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn in 2001 hoped would be "a broad-based, gender sensitive, multi-ethnic and fully representative government" over all of Afghanistan. But if we set our sights realistically, we can still achieve the minimum standards of success needed to protect American security and give the Afghan people hope for a better future, in a way that is also consistent with the pressures of U.S. politics. Rather than aiming to establish government control over the entire country, the U.S. goal should be to contain the insurgency while giving the Afghans the tools to take over the fight from us in coming years.

In fact, something to this effect has been the U.S. strategy on the ground for some time now. And, for both American and even Afghan purposes, such an outcome could be considered a genuine success. Over the past decade, we have achieved just this result in Colombia -- or, more accurately, the Colombians with our assistance have achieved such a result -- and it is rightly considered a substantial victory.

***

For almost 50 years, Colombia has been plagued by violence, the result of a bloody war waged against the government by Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries -- led primarily by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Although the violence was interrupted from time-to-time by a variety of peace agreements, these inevitably turned out to be more in the nature of armed truces than true peace settlements. Violent right-wing militias and even more violent narco-traffickers, added to the bloodshed. The narcotics trade itself became a major source of funding for FARC and, as the cocaine and heroin trade grew in the 1990s, the government's grip on the country became increasingly tenuous. Assassinations became commonplace and violent deaths were, based on the best available statistics, at least five times higher in per capita terms than the level in Afghanistan today. In fact, war-related deaths remain higher in Colombia even now, after a decade of progress. By 1998, a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report s
peculated on the possibility of a FARC victory within as little as five years. At the height of the insurgency in 2006, the FARC controlled as much as 30 percent of the territory of Colombia.

In response to that growing danger, in 2000, the Colombian government put forward an ambitious Plan Colombia, which was warmly embraced by the Bill Clinton administration and later the George W. Bush administration. According to a recent Congressional Research Service study, the country has "made significant progress in reestablishing government control over much of its territory, combating drug trafficking and terrorist activities, and reducing poverty," through a combination of brave actions by the Colombian military, some $7 billion in U.S. assistance, a relatively small number of U.S. military advisors and, particularly, the strong leadership of President Alvaro Uribe from 2002 to 2010. A number of senior FARC leaders have been killed, some through targeted air strikes, and thousands of FARC fighters have demobilized, partly as a result of a government amnesty program. According to Colombian government statistics and other sources, the number of FARC fighters has declined by half since 2001 (though they s
till number almost 8,000) and they are having difficulty recruiting new members. The International Crisis Group estimates the average age of FARC recruits today at less than 12 years old. The country remains plagued by violence, to be sure, but is no longer in danger of state collapse and no longer has the omnipresent feel of a war zone.

Some might object that the articulation of such an outcome as our goal in Afghanistan would be an acknowledgement of failure. True, it is a less desirable end state than either the Bush or Obama administrations initially envisioned for Afghanistan or than the United Nations envisioned in the heady days back in Bonn. But such an outcome would in fact be substantially better than current conventional expectations after 10 years of a war that many Americans and Afghans think we are actually losing.

From an American point of view it would prevent Afghanistan from being controlled by the Taliban, whose willingness to support terrorism is probably reinforced by a decade of war, and it would provide us with an essential base for conducting effective counterterrorism campaigns in the areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan beyond our control. From an Afghan perspective, it provides those Afghans who do not wish to be ruled by the Taliban -- which includes nearly all of the non-Pashtun population and a majority even of the Pashtun -- the opportunity to defend themselves against possible insurgent takeover. While one might hope for a better outcome over time as the government's political and military capacity improves, a "Colombia standard" for Afghanistan is a realistic goal -- and one that actually might be sustainable in the coming years, given waning public support for the war.

In a way, it's actually a return to an earlier strategy. A decade ago, after overthrowing the Taliban in concert with the Afghan Northern Alliance, the United States adopted what was often nicknamed a "light footprint" strategy for helping getting Afghanistan get back on its feet. This approach had a certain logic. Importantly, it was not adopted out of a need to shift attention to Iraq but out of a desire not to repeat the dismal Soviet experience in Afghanistan. It took reality in account: rebuilding an Afghan state that had never been very strong to begin with and was even more decimated after a quarter century of civil war was never going to be easy. The "light footprint" approach did initially deliver a higher standard of living and quality of life for the Afghan people, but it did not reckon on the Taliban mounting a major comeback -- sadly, with the support of Pakistan's intelligence service -- starting around late 2005.

The Obama administration, of course, tried a more comprehensive counterinsurgency approach in Afghanistan. This new strategy built on smaller force increases already begun towards the end of Bush's second term, but Obama gets the lion's share of both the credit and the associated responsibility, since it was he who tripled U.S. combat forces and brought total international force strength up to levels not far below where they were in Iraq during the surge there. The goals, while somewhat focused geographically on key parts of Afghanistan's south and east, were to systematically weaken the insurgency while building up the military, economic, and political capacity of the Afghan state at national, provincial, and local levels.

The Afghanistan surge has achieved some real successes. Under the able leadership of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, for example, the Afghan National Army in particular has improved in both quality and quantity. It is partnering with NATO forces in the field in a concentrated form of apprenticeship even after basic training is complete, providing about half of all combat forces for operations in the south, bearing primary responsibility for security in Kabul, and showing fairly strong commitment to the Afghan state. This important development remains underappreciated in the U.S. debate and provides a major basis for hope that the hand-off to Afghan security forces can succeed.

That said, it must be acknowledged that more ambitious goals for Afghanistan are not going to come to fruition. Kabul and key parts of the country's south that were once Taliban strongholds have been largely secured, yet the east of the country remains perilous, and overall levels of violence have not appreciably declined nationwide. This is disappointing. The high level of violence reflects, to some extent, the larger presence of NATO and Afghan forces on the streets and in the hills of the country which brings them into more frequent contact with the enemy, but it was reasonable to hope for better conditions after two years of the surge. Assassinations remain a serious problem. Spectacular recent attacks in places like Kabul have been less effective than commonly portrayed, but still do add further weight to the argument that the insurgency remains robust. On top of all of this, corruption in Kabul and perfidy in parts of Pakistan's security forces complicate the military task enormously.

But this is a far cry from a Taliban victory. Given Afghanistan's current trajectory, major Afghan cities seem likely to remain in government hands. Attacks and assassinations will remain a major worry, especially for security forces and political leaders, but represent something closer to a nuisance for most citizens, who would generally have more immediate economic issues on their minds. Transportation arteries will, for the most part, be increasingly usable even if hardly safe. Areas such as the Korengal Valley will continue to provide sanctuary for terrorists and insurgents even inside the country, but a combination of Afghan forces and NATO intelligence, special operations, and drone strikes will keep them in check.

***

The analogy between Colombia and Afghanistan goes only so far, of course. One important difference is that Afghanistan's ability to support the size of security forces required for stability is far less than that of Colombia's -- whose army numbers 178,000 and its national police another 144,000. Those numbers are very close to the newly revised targets for Afghanistan -- with a total of about 350,000 security forces. Sounds pretty good for a country half the size of Colombia, with roughly 25 percent fewer people. However, Afghanistan's gross domestic product is only 6 percent that of Colombia's.

Success in Afghanistan therefore requires a commitment to continue substantial financial support of at least several billion dollars a year, long beyond 2014, the year when NATO is supposed to have completed the handoff for primary security responsibility to Afghan forces nationwide. That is something that President Hamid Karzai has rightly requested, though it will fall to his successor to continue the partnership with the international community thereafter -- 2014 also marks the year that Karzai is constitutionally required to step down. The government of Colombia committed $3 for every $1 dollar spent by the United States on Plan Colombia; the government of Afghanistan is obviously unable to do that. However, the United States should solicit a significant sharing of the burden from other countries, particularly from some of the wealthy Gulf countries, which have so much at stake in the region and have so far done so little to help.

Another major difference from the Colombia case is that, although cross-border sanctuary is a problem for both countries, Pakistan's support for the Taliban is much greater than Venezuela's for FARC. The level of Pakistan's support for the Taliban for the past half decade is deeply disturbing. The Taliban was Pakistan's creation and its principal ally in Afghanistan during the 1990s, so it is not surprising that Islamabad is reluctant to abandon them. It is less clear why support for the Taliban was increased when it was, but one possibility is that Pakistan was preparing for the day when the United States once again abandons Afghanistan, given the pervasive fear in Islamabad that Afghanistan could then fall into chaos or turn primarily in an India-friendly direction. This is why the all-or-nothing model is doomed to fail. Rather, the articulation of a more realistic U.S. goal for Afghanistan, with a limited presence that is sustainable over the long term, could be part of an effective strategy -- which we cu
rrently lack -- to secure greater Pakistani cooperation in reigning in the Taliban

All of this will take time. Afghanistan's institutions are too weak today to allow us to accelerate our exit strategy beyond what the Obama administration has already done. And even the relatively happy "Colombia outcome" can hardly be guaranteed. Among other things, it requires more decisive and unifying political leadership than Karzai is currently able to muster in Afghanistan -- in this regard, elections in 2014 will be crucial for strengthening the nation's democracy and improving governance, and America needs to focus as much attention on helping Afghans prepare for that big event as we have provided already in military terms on the battlefield. Again, the Colombia example is germane; Uribe was hardly without his flaws but he did bring more legitimate and upright governance to his country.

Strengthening Afghan democracy and preparing for a post-Karzai future after 2014 require, among other things, much more robust support for Afghanistan's weak political parties and parliament. That means everything from technical support on how to hold rallies, develop platforms, get out the vote, and prepare candidates for Afghanistan's political parties, to help for parliament to create stronger staffs and research organizations that serve its agendas, to many more exchange programs and visits involving Afghanistan's new generation of political leaders. Governors need more help too, perhaps in some kind of "sister" relationship with America's national board of governors. But U.S. officials need to look further down the line: They still focus too much on Karzai and his cabinet when interacting with Afghan leaders; clearly, most of these individuals no longer represent the country's future. Plan Colombia succeeded, in no small measure, because it was a Colombian plan that had Colombian buy in. For a similar su
ccess to be achieved in Afghanistan, there needs to be some kind of Afghan process that achieves a broader commitment -- beyond just Karzai -- to the strategy and a joint commitment by Afghanistan and the United States to their agreed responsibilities beyond 2014.

But the Colombia model should give hope to those who wonder what we are still doing in Afghanistan after so many years, and provide an attainable standard that with some patience and just a little luck we can probably still achieve in what has now become America's longest war.

Military threat halts Pashtun land war
Asia Times By Abubakar Siddique Oct 29, 2011
Heavily armed young fighters vacated their respective trenches early on October 27 in eastern Afghanistan, honoring a truce demanded by the local government and halting a tribal land dispute that has claimed more than 100 lives over the past two years.

The two sides, from the Alisher Khel and Sepah branches of the Pashtun Shinwari tribe, agreed to the three-year truce only after Nangarhar provincial governor Gul Agha Sherzai threatened military action to put an end to their fighting.

What began as a dispute over a large plain in the Ghani Khel region south of the provincial capital, Jalalabad, eventually took on the appearance of a traditional war involving garrisons, trenches, mortars and heavy machine guns.

The truce came after Sherzai, a former anti-Soviet guerrilla commander, delivered his ultimatum before a gathering of regional tribal leaders in Jalalabad on October 25.

"If by morning - and my friends from Sepah tribe should listen carefully - they don't vacate their trenches, [the makeshift] military garrisons, and the rooms they have built, the government will act in accordance with the law," Sherzai said. "I will go there - and I have the backing of all the tribes, UNAMA [the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan], and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]. We all will go there and disarm them."

Sherzai further warned that even the presence of Taliban in the region would not deter him from carrying out his threat of military action.

Sustainable truce Lawmaker Faridoon Mohmand, who has played a key role in resolving the dispute through tribal councils, accompanied Sherzai to Ghani Khel on October 26 to reinforce the ultimatum.

Mohmand tells RFE/RL he believes the truce is sustainable. "The two sides agreed to a three-year truce, meaning that there will be a ceasefire and the two sides will live in peace," Mohmand said. "They will vacate whatever housing they have built under the supervision of a [designated] delegation, who will return it to the government. The government will then build a housing project where the impoverished and homeless people will be given homes."

Sherzai's assertion of authority is rare in Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of small and big land disputes between families, clans and ethnic groups, threaten stability and bring untold suffering. Should the government fail to follow through on the promises made by Sherzai, the truce could prove to be short-lived.

Mohammad Yousaf Sabir, a lawmaker from Nagarahar, says disputes over landownership have risen sharply since the demise of the Taliban regime a decade ago. He tells RFE/RL that property prices have skyrocketed across Afghanistan, where land has always been considered a precious commodity. The Afghan Constitution and accumulation of properties under previous governments have made the state a major landowner, but people have rapidly encroached on its properties in cities and rural areas.

Sabir, who hails from Ghani Khel, says that the disputed plain in his home region is actually owned by the government. But the two Shinwari clans now want to possess it in order to distribute it among their members. The land grab, he says, is essentially a result of anarchy in Afghanistan.

"People think that because the government in Afghanistan is weak they can get away with grabbing property," Sabir said. "Many people here are not aware of the importance of the rule of law and they pay little attention to the laws. So some people only strive to capture a piece of land and think that nobody can force them out of there."

The Afghan government still lacks a comprehensive system of land management. Property records are patchy and in some regions land is still collectively owned by clans and tribes. After the fall of the Taliban regime, many powerful militia leaders and warlords became government leaders, and many Afghans accuse them of enriching themselves by grabbing public and private property.

Mao’s Rockets and the Eastern Afghan Border War, Part I
New York Times By C.J. CHIVERS October 26, 2011
Cold War Weapons and Afghanistan’s Unending Fight
Traveling at Mach 1.1, a 107-millimeter rocket gives little time for those along its path to react. Even if a counterbattery radar picks up an incoming rocket in flight, the warning might sound only a moment before the arrival of the rocket itself, barely allowing time to flinch. By then the rocket has either passed by or it has struck, delivering its warhead’s explosive blast.

This year American and Afghan soldiers along one part of Afghanistan’s uncertain border with Pakistan have become expert at these sounds and familiar with their perils. The rate and the severity of rocket attacks against outposts in eastern Paktika Province have spiked since midspring, making 107-millimeter rocket attacks, once again part of the familiar fabric of the Afghan border war. Rockets had been fired at American outposts near the border for years, but during 2010 the attacks all but stopped. They spiked again this year.The data speaks for itself: During a roughly six-month period, May to October, in 2010, there were two rocket attacks from within Pakistan on three outposts near the border with Waziristan. This year, during the same months, there were 59. And there have been more than 100 attacks against the same base from rocket firing positions in Afghanistan but within a short distance of the border, compared with 13 such attacks in the same period last year.

Of course this is a political story; it is nearly impossible not to examine the data in light of the deterioration in American-Pakistani relations. But it is also possible to go deeper, past the sparks, to look at some of the fuel. The escalated attacks provide a fresh chance to examine modern war through the weapons that fighters choose, and they illuminate how so much of the war as we understand it in Afghanistan takes its shape from the combination of the vast stocks of munitions ordered into production during the cold war and the adaptability of local fighters in both acquiring them and adapting them to updated use. Add in the particular tactical restrictions influencing the fight along the border between Paktika Province and Waziristan, which favors the guerrillas by limiting the American and Afghan forces’ ability to stop the arms flow and the rules for firing back, and the insurgents’ reinvigorated 107-millimeter rocket campaign offers a case study in how a relatively lightly equipped force can harass,
in what amounts to tactical perpetuity, the army of a superpower. Styles of Fighting and the Afghan Map

First, some national perspective. The rockets, for all of the menace and the mix of tactical and political problems they pose, are not everywhere. And this fits an old pattern: In Afghanistan, the factors that propel the unending violence have roots reaching around the world, but the texture of many fights assumes local shapes. Those who take up arms against the American and Afghan government forces scattered about the country often do so in their own ways. Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades are standard tools, visible from one end of the country to the other and carried by both sides. Suicide bombers, while acting on a far smaller scale than gunmen, can strike most anywhere. After that, the list of weapons can shift as you go down the road. Thus, in one area, a particular Taliban mortar team can harass an outpost for months, shaping the experience of the war for those behind the blast walls. In other places, mortar fire is rare, or even, in practical terms, nonexistent. There are sections of Helmand
Province where snipers (we use the term loosely) are a menace, whereas in much of the country there are no snipers at all. Here and there Taliban fighters possess an SPG-9 tube (think: bazooka, post-World War II variety), and use it to try to destroy government trucks or guard towers. But most soldiers go a tour without even hearing of that weapon, much less having one of its heavy rounds slam in nearby.

Even the Taliban’s bloody campaign of improvised explosive devices is inconsistently applied. Some districts are populated by able and determined bomb makers and teams that hide the lethal handiwork along trails. Other districts — including districts considered hostile to American troops and the Afghan government — are not. Thus, soldiers walk near many villages with trepidation. Elsewhere their fellow grunts stroll, bombs far from their minds.

War is politics, we’re told. And politics is local. These paired lines frame well enough some of the reasons that if someone invested the time and examined the incidents in an organized way, a nation simmering with war could be broken down into a map showing, valley by valley, patch of steppe by patch of steppe, the varied ways that guerrillas try to kill.

If you were plotting that map, the 107-millimeter rocket would not shade all of it. It is hardly a new weapon to Afghan war, but it is not used across the full of Afghan territory, or even in most places. In those places where they are commonly used, however (Kandahar Air Field is one), they are an influential arm, driving up the war’s cost, increasing its dangers, and disrupting the tempo and outcomes of American and Afghan operations. Mao’s Small Mobile Rocket Launchers

So let’s have a look at what we’re talking about, in the historical and technical sense. The 107-millimeter rockets belong to a family of arms known colloquially and collectively as Type 63 rockets. The name was given to the first weapon in the class, officially unveiled by Mao’s China in 1963 as the People’s Liberation Army was moving beyond foreign handouts and Soviet patterns and expanding its arms production base. As first designed, the rockets were to be fired from mobile 12-tube launchers, typically mounted on a trailer that was to be towed. Below is an image of one of those systems, which in this case was being used to instruct volunteers to the forces fighting the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi this year in Libya. (NOTE: This post will draw on some of its recent images from Libya. This is because it was possible in Libya for a Western reporter to see and photograph the systems in use, whereas the Taliban’s firing of the systems against American-Afghan bases cannot be readily observed by Westerners,
at least not from the firing site. Western journalists in Afghanistan do get to observe the incoming. Those whose work over the years has brought them through Kandahar Air Field have often been present for rocket attacks, though the sprawling size of that base often gives 107-millimeter rocket attacks a distant feel. A rocket attack against a small outpost is often a different experience, due to the proximity of the explosions.) Back to the photo, below, of the common 12-tube launcher.

Each of those 12 tubes was meant to hold a single rocket. The full payload of a dozen can be fired in fewer than 10 seconds, via electrical circuits that ignite the rockets’ propellants, putting them to flight. Reloading the deck takes at least a few minutes, assuming the crew is well drilled and the rockets are already prepared (as in, removed from their wooden crates, with fuzes inserted, and handy). Here is an image of one the high-explosive variants of the rocket (again, from Libya).

As the image suggests, the rockets themselves are roughly three feet long, (the precise length depends on the variant and the choice of fuze). They weigh about 40 pounds, with most of the weight tied up in the rocket motor and propellant that push the warhead through the air. What you see above is one of the common, standard munitions. In an e-mail last week, Neil Gibson, a technical adviser to IHS Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, noted that there were multiple warheads out there – several high-explosive variants, a fragmentation warhead packed with small metal spheres, an incendiary variant that includes white phosphorus, another that releases 16 small cluster bombs and a tactical electronic-warfare model that deploys a signal-jamming device beneath a parachute, to disrupt radio traffic for as long as 15 minutes.

The rockets common to Afghanistan are of the high-explosive sort, like that shown above. Although it is not immediately clear which variants are in play nationwide (because there may be different variants fired by different rocket teams in different provinces), a former American E.O.D. officer who often assists me with munitions identification said that images of the shattered remains of rockets I sent him appeared to be from one of the standard Chinese high-explosive variants, like that round above. These variants carry a high-explosive charge of just less than three pounds. (By comparison, the common F-1 pineapple grenade contains about two ounces of TNT fill.) Most have a maximum range of roughly five miles, which means that rocket crews can set up their weapons in Pakistan and fire them over the border at several American-Afghan outposts.

It is worth noting, before jumping to a conclusion that China is providing the rockets now in common use against American troops and outposts, that since its introduction, the Type 63 series has been widely exported and has also been manufactured, with or without license, by Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, North Korea, South Africa and Turkey, according to IHS Jane’s. And as is common for weapons made by several of these governments, and across such a run of decades, there is no reliable open-source estimate for how many of the weapons have been manufactured, or of how large remaining stockpiles might be, or of which countries have what quantities on hand.

We do know this: This year has been a busy year for 107-millimeter rocket fire, and supply did not seem an issue. Libya brimmed with the rockets, many of which have since slipped away (or been fired), and in Afghanistan the supply has never run dry. Long before the current American units arrived in-country, of course, Afghanistan was a munitions magnet. The rockets being used against American outposts could come from any number of middlemen or sources. Moreover, even with the presence of more troops, Afghan and American, nothing has managed to stop the flow. (Earlier this year, I checked with Kandahar Air Field to see if the influx of thousands of soldiers along the Arghandab River had stopped the perennial phenomenon of rocket attacks on the base. It had not. The Taliban’s 107-millimeter rocket crews, and their rockets, were still out there.)

It is also worth noting that 107s were not introduced to the battlefield by the Taliban; these rockets have been part of Afghan war since the Soviet Union made its own try at subduing the place. The American-backed mujahedeen once brought them over the Durand line and launched them toward Soviet bases and into government-controlled cities, sapping the Soviet Army and terrifying civilians who had crowded into urban centers to escape what was then, as now, a brutal rural war. Later, in the civil war that followed the Soviet-backed Afghan government’s collapse, various factions fired them into cities as well.

Given Afghanistan’s recent history, and the fact that Western troop levels have crested and soon will begin to fall, there is every reason to expect that for as long as American troops remain in the country, the 107-millimeter rocket will be there, too. Like the Kalashnikov, the rocket-propelled grenade, the suicide attacker and the hidden, makeshift bomb, Type 63 rockets will be a part of Afghan violence for the years of fighting ahead.

So how have Afghans put these weapons to use against the latest generation of conventional troops? We’ll take that up tomorrow.


Mao’s Rockets and the Eastern Afghan Border War, Part II
The New York Times By C.J. CHIVERS October 27, 2011
Mosque Clocks and the Long War
When Afghan guerrillas point their Type 63 107-millimeter rockets at American-Afghan bases and connect them to the batteries that will spark their launch, they are following one of the familiar patterns of modern guerrilla war. The weapons in front them were designed in Communist arms plants for a large Communist conventional force, a mobile launcher-and-rocket system that could quickly mass firepower on a small area. And what would seem a technically uneducated martial force has modified and adapted them, with minimal equipment, to an effective and updated use.

The adaptations are necessary because for a guerrilla, these rockets, if used according to their original design, would be a burden. A 12-tube launcher requires considerable logistics, including a high-volume of ammunition, which is heavy (one full barrage alone involves munitions alone weighing roughly 500 pounds). And tactically, Afghan guerrillas would put themselves at risk if they tried dragging one of the original systems about the countryside and then blasted out barrages from a single firing point.

Look at the photo, above. How could they hide the thing? Or, after they fired it, themselves? Forget the woefully common (and cartoonish) misconception that most Afghan insurgents are suicidal. This is not so. Some certainly are. And others are willing to risk their lives. But many are cautious survivors of fighting a technically sophisticated Western military force, and intend to stay alive. And many of them know American tactics and the effects of American military technology well enough to fight in ways that reduce their risks.

So, what to do? Ditch the large launchers. With the help of blowtorches and welders, or sometimes with nothing but a rocket and compass, Afghans have adapted the large Chinese 107-millimeter rocket system to another chore – firing one rocket at a time, surreptitiously. This exchanges the work of a firing battery with the work of a lone man, or a small team spread across the terrain, via a smaller system that can be surprisingly crude and effective at the same time.

“There’s a variety of ways to do it,” said Sgt. First Class Christopher A. Simpson, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist in Paktika Province. “The more improvised way is to lay a rocket on a hillside with a car jack for elevation.” And an intermediate system involves resting a rocket on a homemade rail, and firing it from there. If this sounds a bit like Wile E. Coyote and his ACME ordnance, it is not. How can it be that an unguided rocket fired from three, four or five miles away has a chance at striking a small outpost if simply fired after leaning it on the ground?

The answer lies in the weapon’s design. So let’s take a quick detour, because the design of 107-millimeter rocket is such that the launch tube, while preferable, is not necessary. Here’s why: The warhead of 107-millimeter rocket is screwed onto a rocket motor, which flies through the air via the thrust provided by burning propellant. And as the rocket moves forward, “the gases produced on propellant combustion are directed through seven canted nozzles arranged on the periphery of the projectile base,” Neil Gibson, a technical adviser to IHS Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, wrote by e-mail. These gases “both propel the rocket forward and force the projectile to rotate at high radial velocity” – as high as 366 rotations per second. The result? Because of this spin, 107-millimeter rockets tend to fly very straight, even if they take off from the dirt, or a simple rail.

What this means is that someone who becomes familiar with the rockets, and knows exactly where he is and where his target is, can, with practice, fire the rockets with a considerable degree of long-range accuracy. This is not the sort of accuracy of GPS- or laser-guided munitions, the stuff of those heavily hyped down-the-chimney highlight reels favored by TV. But it can be good enough to hit a small military compound from a few miles out, say, a well-surveyed firing position just inside of Pakistan.

And not all crews straddling the Durand line rely on makeshift rails or car jacks. There are still crews that use factory-made launch tubes, either as designed by the arms plants that manufacture single-tube launchers or by dismantling a larger system and then giving its components the workshop treatment.

Have a look, below, at some options. These two launchers are from legacy collections – weapons collected by previous American units in Afghanistan. The first image might have features you recognize from the image of the 12-tube launcher above. That’s because it’s a workshop repurposing of components removed from a Chinese Type 63 launcher. I sent photographs of the launcher to Drew Schumann, a former United States Army intelligence officer now working as an analyst for NATO in Afghanistan. He noted the circular cuts in the square frames along the tube’s base, and described the launcher almost instantly – it was a tube from a former 12-tube deck that someone (he called the man “torch happy”) had “taken from the top left corner of the stack.” Mr. Schumann also noted that it had been mounted on a workshop-grade stand, which serves as firing platform. And he spotted an odd detail, which you can see below.

By his read, this is the rear sight of from a DShK variant, a .50-caliber machine gun. On the surface that would not seem to makes sense. The trajectory of a .50-caliber round and a 107-millimter rocket are not the same, and the range markers on this sight would bear no relationship to a rocket shot at the ranges typical to Paktika Province. But the sight may have had another purpose — lining up the tube to an aiming stake set in the ground along an azimuth leading to the targeted outpost. If that is the case, this would be a smart bit of salvaging and recycling. And Mr. Schumann has a fine eye. (Many readers of this blog already knew that.)

The next image shows a different single-tube launcher, with different origins.

Mr. Gibson from IHS Jane’s identified this tube, and Mr. Schumann agreed with his assessment. It’s a factory-produced Iranian launcher (see a factory original here and note the weapon at the top of the “Uskowi on Iran” Web page ). The Iranians, as they reproduced many Communist arms in their own plants, offered a single-rocket launcher. This made the weapon a much more useful arm for guerrillas or any other underground force, which could not be expected to hold territory and supply or maintain the larger multiple-rocket system.

One detail of this weapon shows clearly enough how it was intended to be moved about the battlefield. Look at it here.

Those small strands of welded-on metal make the slots for a sling. This weapon was not meant for a trailer; it was designed to be worn over the back or shoulder of a man on the march. It’s a grunt’s mobile rocket launcher, to be carried in on foot.

These are the ways that the Taliban and other insurgent groups have converted the original Chinese conventional rocket to enduring use. Or rather, this is how the equipment has been adapted. The tactics are another matter. Why? Because when fired against American bases, crews firing the 107-millimeter rockets face a daunting fact, which is locked in the math. Type 63 rockets typically have a maximum range of less than five and a half miles. But many American bases are supported by artillery sections that can fire much further than that. Coupled to counterbattery radars that often show exactly where rockets have been fired from, Americans gun lines can quickly fire on so-called “point-of-origin” positions with barrages of white phosphorous or air-bursting high-explosive munitions. A photographer, Tyler Hicks, and I watched a crew fire two 50-round barrages at firing positions on Oct. 7. Remember that line about many Afghan insurgents intending to stay alive? How can that be squared with the circumstances above?
Enter the Mosque clock.

The Mosque clock, shown in the photo at the top of this post, and again in reverse view, above, is a simple battery-operated clock, and presumably common in the bazaars of Waziristan. In Paktika Province, these clocks are commonly used as timers to allow the remote launching of a Type 63 rocket. The concept is straightforward. The men with the rockets carry their munitions to a planned firing point, from where the precise distance and azimuth to an American outpost are, from experience, well known. The rockets are set up, elevated to the firing angle matching the range and elevation to the outpost’s walls, and then connected to the batteries that will initiate their launch. At this point, closing the circuit would cause each rocket to fire. But in the age of counterbattery radar, that carries risks, because the American artillery will fire back — heavily and fast. So the clock is affixed, as a timer, and the rocket is thereby set to fire later. Then the man (or men) who set up the rocket backs away. Alone on
the ground, the clock ticks on, until the designated time, when the rocket is fired. By then those who put it there are long gone.
The potential result can be seen below, a strike on the HESCO barriers inside Forward Operating Base Tillman, a base that is a common target for rockets fired from Pakistan.

If you have made it this far, then you now know a good bit more than you might ever have expected to know about 107-millimeter rocket fire. There is a purpose to this. Though weapons like those shown in the photographs above are monuments to smart scrounging and a modern guerrilla’s penchant for making do, the enduring place that Type 63 rockets have in Afghan war is testament to something more important than martial habits along the Durand line. It is a reminder of the role that stocks of arms from the cold war still play on the battlefield,and a reminder as well that decades of nontransparency in arms transfers have helped shape wars.

One part of the still emerging Western doctrine for fighting terrorism and countering insurgency borrows from cold war-era ideas for deterrence. This strand of security thought holds that while there is a category of jihadist who cannot be deterred, many of the people who help that jihadist can readily be dissuaded from pitching in. These are people – bankers, arms dealers, managers at transportation firms, to name a few – who have much to lose, and for whom supporting the fight is a business. Little that has been tried to date in Afghanistan, by the Soviet Union or the West, seems to have extinguished the local will to fight. There seems little chance of that changing before the American military withdraws most of its forces by late 2014.

But there is a distinction between being willing to fight and being able to carry on a campaign of cross-border rocket fire. The latter requires rockets, which seem to exist in bountiful supply. Type 63 rockets are not like homemade bombs. They cannot be made most anywhere by most any reasonably handy set of hands. And they are not like assault rifles, which can be stored in harsh environmental conditions and reused for decades. They are reasonably sophisticated, single-use munitions that, in the main, are kept under lock and key by the governments and arms firms that possess them. And yet because there is little to deter their black- or gray-market transfer or sale, they get loose and end up in the hands of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and similar groups.

The availability of these rockets, as part of the reinvigorated 2011 cross-border campaign, underscores again the potential value in more transparency in national and corporate data on arms manufactures and sales, and of publicly documenting stockpiles of arms around the world, and of underwriting the destruction of surplus military munitions wherever they are found. These would-be deterrents are supported by various governments and many arms-control advocates, but movements to expand or strengthen conventional arm registers and counter-proliferation protocols often lack traction or are thwarted. As long as this is so, 107-millimeter rockets are likely to be fired at whoever tries to hold territory in Afghanistan. It takes more than a will to fight to fight like this. It takes the tools, which, as the world of conventional arms control stands, move easily, just out of view, until they are fired.


www.afghanistannewscenter.com