[Afghan News] October 29, 2011

[یاسمینه]

Official: 13 American troops killed in Kabul attack
From Nick Paton Walsh, CNN October 29, 2011
Editor's note: Home and Way: U.S. and coalition casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- At least 13 U.S. troops were killed in Kabul on Saturday when a suicide bomber struck a vehicle in a NATO military convoy, a U.S. military official said.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force confirmed 13 deaths within its force, but did not specify their nationalities.
The U.S. official emphasized details are continuing to unfold. A heavily damaged vehicle is believed to be an armored bus that was carrying U.S. troops from one base to another.
The attack caused a "number" of NATO and local Afghan casualties, ISAF said in a statement. Four Afghans, including two students, were also killed, said Hashmat Stanikzai, spokesman for Kabul's police chief.
Stanikzai said the vehicle used in the attack appeared to be a red Toyota Corolla packed with a significant amount of explosives.
It was unclear how many people were wounded, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
The deaths were the largest single-day U.S. loss in Afghanistan since the August crash in Afghanistan's Wardak province that killed 38 people, including 17 Navy SEALS. That aircraft was brought down by an insurgent rocket-propelled grenade.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed Saturday's attack in a text message, saying it killed "16 foreign soldiers, one civilian" and injured many others.
Taliban casualty counts are often inflated; there was no other reliable indication 16 foreigners were killed.
The attack was one of two targeting NATO-led forces that day.
A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on coalition forces during training, killing two, said Master Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, a spokesman for ISAF. The shooter was killed in the incident in southern Afghanistan.
The coalition did not provide any other details about the shooting, and did not disclose the nationalities of those killed.
In another suicide attack in northeastern Afghanistan, a woman in a burqa detonated herself near the nation's intelligence agency.
She tried to enter the National Directorate of Security and was shot at, but she still managed to detonate herself, said Sabour Alayar, deputy police chief of Kunar province.
Two officers and two civilians were wounded, he said, adding that the female suicide bomber was about 25 years old.
Alayar said they had intelligence of a suicide bomber looking for a target, and their security forces were on alert.
The August helicopter attack made for the the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the 10 years since allied forces began their campaign there. Seventy-one American troops died in August, six more than in July 2010, which previously had been the worst month for U.S. casualties.
Fifteen U.S. soldiers and three civilian contractors were killed in April 2005 when a coalition helicopter traveling in severe weather crashed near Ghazni. Sixteen Americans -- eight soldiers and eight sailors -- were killed when their MH-47 helicopter was downed by a rocket-propelled grenade near Kunar province in June 2005.
In May 2006, a U.S. helicopter crashed near Asadabad in Kunar province, killing all 10 U.S. soldiers aboard.
Three Drug Enforcement Administration special agents and seven U.S. troops were killed in western Afghanistan in October 2009 when they returned from a raid on a compound believed to be harboring insurgents tied to drug trafficking.
CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr and journalist Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed to this report.

US report says security improved in Afghanistan
By DONNA CASSATA - Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite improvements to security in Afghanistan, militants operating from safe havens in Pakistan and chronic problems with the Kabul government pose significant risks to a "durable, stable Afghanistan," according to a Pentagon progress report released Friday.
More than a decade since the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the U.S. and the start of the Afghan war, the U.S. and its allies have reversed violent trends in much of the country and the transition to Afghans taking charge of security has begun in seven key areas, including major cities such as Kabul and Herat.
"Security gains during (the past six months) have provided a firm foundation for the transition of security responsibilities to the Afghan government" and its security forces, the report said.
However, cross-border attacks have increased in recent months due to insurgents' safe havens in Pakistan and the support they received from within its borders.
"The insurgency remains resilient and, enabled by Pakistani safe havens, continues to contest" Afghan security forces throughout the country, especially in the east, according to the semi-annual report sent to Congress.
The report also identified chronic problems with the Afghan government, including widespread corruption, delays in reforms and political disputes, as obstacles to U.S. and coalition efforts to get Kabul to take over security for the country.
The Unites States has some 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and plans to bring most forces home by the end of 2014. President Barack Obama announced this past summer that 10,000 troops will be redeployed by the end of the year. The 33,000 troops that Obama sent as a surge force will be out by the end of September 2012, leaving about 68,000 troops.
"Transition remains on track with no demonstrated effort by the insurgency to target the process," the report said.
Overall, the report gives a more upbeat assessment of the military strategy and its future prospects. For the first time in several years, the report does not describe the progress in Afghanistan as "fragile and reversible" — an omission that a senior defense official said Friday was deliberate.
Instead, the report focused on the continuing risk areas, such as the safe havens in Pakistan and weak governing in Kabul.
The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publically on the issue, said that U.S. and coalition forces will be turning more attention to the eastern border region. But the official could provide no details on what that would look like, or if it will mean a substantial shift in U.S. troops to the embattled region.
The latest progress report — the last one was in April — strikes a more critical tone than previous Pentagon reports about Pakistan's failure to crack down on safe havens for militants along the border with Afghanistan, arguing that these havens enable insurgents considered the greatest threat to American troops.
The report said the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan had improved early on, but several events severely strained those ties. Most notably was the May 2 U.S. raid deep inside Pakistan that led to the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Cross-border attacks diminished in August, but high-profile attacks in September, including the assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, were a significant setback.
The report said these attacks "were carried out by the Haqqani network and directly enabled by Pakistani safe haven and support."
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who directs day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan, told reporters on Thursday that the attacks are about four times more frequent than they had been in the past year.
The United States in recent weeks has stepped up criticism of Pakistan and its counterterrorism cooperation but has at the same time sought to cajole the increasingly angry and resistant Pakistanis into doing more. As tensions rose between Washington and Islamabad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered an unusually blunt warning to the Pakistanis, saying during a visit to Kabul last week that they "must be part of the solution" to the Afghan conflict.
Clinton said the Obama administration expects the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services to "take the lead" in not only fighting insurgents based in Pakistan but also in encouraging Afghan militants to reconcile with Afghan society. She said the U.S. would go it alone if Pakistan chose not to heed the call.
After leaving Kabul, Clinton made the same points to Pakistani officials in Islamabad, where she led a high-level U.S. team, including CIA director David Petraeus, seeking to repair badly strained ties. Those meetings appear to have dulled the intensity of Pakistan's anger but there has not yet been any clear sign that the crisis is over.
Last month, then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said the Haqqani network, which is affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida, "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistan's intelligence agency. Mullen accused the network of staging an attack against the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on Sept. 13 as well as a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers. He claimed Pakistan's spy agency helped the group.

NATO: Man in Afghan army uniform kills 2 troops
By AMIR SHAH - Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO says a man wearing an Afghan military uniform has turned his weapon on coalition and Afghan troops in the country's south, killing two members of the U.S.-led coalition.
The coalition says the shooter also was killed in the incident Saturday in southern Afghanistan.
The nationalities of those killed were not disclosed and the coalition did not provide any other details about the shooting.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy on the outskirts of Kabul on Saturday, causing casualties among the NATO service members and Afghan civilians, the U.S.-led coalition said. Afghan officials said three civilians and one policeman were killed.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred near Darulaman Palace, the bombed-out seat of former Afghan kings on the southwest outskirts of the capital. It was the deadliest of two attacks in the day that targeted either the U.S.-led coalition or Afghan government offices in the country.
"Initial reports indicate that there has been a vehicle-borne IED attack today against a coalition vehicle in Kabul," NATO said in a statement, using military terminology for a car bomb. The alliance said "several" of its service members were among the casualties of the attack, but provided no other details.
The Afghan Ministry of Interior said three Afghan civilians and one Afghan police were killed. The Taliban claim came shortly after the attack in a text message to media outlets.
An Associated Press reporter on the scene said that NATO and Afghan forces had sealed off the area. Two NATO helicopters landed to airlift casualties. The back end of a NATO bus appeared to have been blown apart and was turned into a charred shell.
Earlier Saturday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up as she tried to attack a local government office in the capital of Kunar province, a hotbed of militancy in northeast Afghanistan along the Pakistan border.
Abdul Sabor Allayar, deputy provincial police chief, said the guards outside the government's intelligence office in Asad Abad became suspicious of the woman and started shooting, at which point she detonated her explosives.
There were no other casualties in that attack.
Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces conducted operations earlier this month, killing more than 100 insurgents in an effort to curb violence in rugged areas of Kunar where the coalition and Afghan government have a light footprint.
Farther south along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Afghan and coalition forces captured two leaders of the Haqqani network and two other suspected insurgents in Sarobi district of Paktika province, the coalition said.
Haqqani fighters, who are affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida, are heavily rooted in Paktika and neighboring Paktia and Khost provinces.
One of the captured leaders provided insurgent fighters with funding, weapons, supplies and hideouts, and the other coordinated attacks against Afghan forces, the coalition said.

NATO: 30 insurgents killed in eastern Afghanistan
By TAREK EL-TABLAWY - Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Insurgents attacked a convoy of Afghan and international troops on Friday in eastern Afghanistan, sparking a gunbattle that left about 30 militants dead, NATO said.
The joint Afghan-international force called for air support during the firefight in Shinwar district of Nangarhar province, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said. No other information was disclosed and it is unclear whether any Afghan or coalition forces were killed or wounded.
NATO forces in Afghanistan have concentrated on Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan in the past several years, but more recently have shifted their focus to the east along the border with Pakistan.
In the south, a roadside bomb killed NATO service member in Kandahar province, the same region where the U.S.-led alliance repelled a coordinated Taliban attack on a U.S.-run civilian and military base a day earlier, NATO said without providing further details.
The death raises to 480 the number of coalition forces killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
Earlier, the U.S.-led alliance said its troops, in tandem with Afghan police, repulsed on Thursday a Taliban attack on a camp in Kandahar that is home to NATO troops, including Americans, and a provincial reconstruction team.
NATO said one Afghan interpreter was killed in the attack, while one American civilian contractor and two Afghan security guards were wounded. Five NATO service members also were lightly wounded, the alliance said.
The Taliban launched the assault from a compound across from the camp, firing rocket-propelled grenades, NATO said.
Two car bombs went off as Afghan police were clearing the compound, NATO said, but no one was hurt in the blast. The buildings had been rigged with explosives, and NATO said its forces fired Hellfire missiles at the compound, killing all four attackers.
Kandahar, and much of the south, had long been seen as a Taliban stronghold, but Afghan and coalition forces have made significant gains in the area and the insurgents have since shifted their operations further east and to some northern provinces.
NATO said the presence of car bombs at the site indicated the insurgents had a plan, which they were unable to execute, and that it had expected the Taliban to launch such an attack before the onset of winter, when the violence and attacks tend to abate.
In other incidents across the country, a civilian car struck a roadside bomb early Friday in Nangarhar province's Khogyani district, killing two men, a woman and a child, said district chief Mohammad Hassan.

US says it's ready to talk to Taliban chief
Dean Nelson Washington The Age Australia October 30, 2011.
WASHINGTON is ready to negotiate with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who sheltered Osama bin Laden as he plotted the September 11 attacks.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told a Congress committee that the US regards his involvement as crucial to the prospects for peace in Afghanistan.
Her comments have been taken as a significant shift in US policy, from moves to divide the Taliban-led insurgency and isolate Mullah Omar to an acknowledgement of his leadership.
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Earlier this month it emerged that US officials had met leaders of the Haqqani network, the Taliban faction blamed for some of the most devastating attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Last week, the faction's commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani, warned Washington that only the Quetta Shura, the Taliban-led militant organisation, could negotiate a peace deal and that his fighters would not be divided.
In an appearance before the House foreign affairs committee, Mrs Clinton said the US would continue to ''fight, talk and build'' in Afghanistan and Pakistan to test any willingness to negotiate. She said there was ''evidence going both ways'' on its intentions.
Doubts were raised over the Taliban leadership's intentions after the assassination last month by a suicide bomber of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president and the head of the High Peace Council.
Mrs Clinton said last month's Haqqani meeting was not a ''negotiation'' and that no meetings had followed it, but stressed that any future negotiations with the Taliban would need the Quetta Shura's blessing.
A US Defence Department report to Congress released on Friday said violence in Afghanistan went down in the past year, reversing five straight years of sharp increases.
Still, the insurgency remained ''capable'' and ''resilient'', and its havens across the border in Pakistan remained the biggest risks ''to the process of turning security gains into a durable, stable Afghanistan'', according to the report. The violence dropped particularly in the country's south-west, west and north, the Pentagon reported.
Security in the country's eastern region remains tenuous because of the sanctuary and support from Pakistan.
The report sets the stage for President Barack Obama to proceed with his plan to give the Afghan government full command of its security by the end of 2014.
The US has begun to pull out troops, with the first 10,000 out of almost 100,000 expected to leave by the end of this year.
''The most significant development during this reporting period is the reduction in year-over-year violence,'' the Pentagon said in the congressionally mandated report.
The Pentagon attributed the improved security to increasingly effective joint operations with Afghan security forces.
The Afghan National Army now numbers more than 170,000, and the Afghan National Police exceeds 136,000. They are due to expand to 195,000 soldiers and 157,000 police officers by October next year.

U.S. troops to begin leaving Kandahar
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post October 28
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The U.S. military is planning to start withdrawing troops from this volatile southern city, shifting them to neighboring rural areas even as the Taliban shows it is capable of penetrating the city to attack, according to U.S. and Afghan military officials.
The move is not without risk, because reclaiming Kandahar — the homeland of many Taliban leaders — still motivates the insurgency. Assassins have carried out a ruthless campaign against government officials in the city over the past year, and Kandahar’s vulnerabilities were on display as recently as Thursday, when Taliban fighters launched multi-pronged attacks on two U.S. bases. The attacks killed three Afghans and wounded six Americans.
Still, U.S. military commanders were encouraged by an overall decline in violence in Kandahar over the summer fighting season. With President Obama having ordered the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of December — and an additional 20,000 by next fall — some combat troops must leave the south, where the bulk of American forces are located, commanders said.
U.S. military officials did not want to reveal the size or timing of their shift out of the city, but they did not dispute that a smaller urban footprint was coming. Their goal is to replicate the situation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where coalition troops have a low-visibility presence and serve as advisers to Afghan soldiers and police.
“We will begin to thin out and turn over security of Kandahar to the Afghan security forces, in a similar fashion as we did Kabul,” said Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the second-ranking commander in Afghanistan.
Some Afghans welcome the prospect of fewer convoys of giant American armored vehicles that clog downtown roads and add to the impression of an occupied city. But others wonder whether the Afghan security forces, particularly the police, can handle the Taliban on their own.
“We are worried about this, 100 percent. Not only the military, but the locals and the tribal elders are also concerned,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Raziq Sherzai, commander of the Kandahar Air Wing and the brother of a powerful provincial governor. “The city right now is under the control of the Americans. . . . Without them the Taliban activity will increase, there will be more attacks and more instability in the city.”
Early in his tenure, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker visited Kandahar’s governor, Toryalai Wesa, to reassure him that “this was not a shut-the-lights-off-we’re out-of-here” situation, said a U.S. military official in Kandahar.
“Certainly, the governor was apprehensive,” the military official said of the August visit. “There is going to be a reduction [in troops], no question.”
The top prize
From the beginning of Obama’s troop buildup, Kandahar was the top prize. The dusty, sun-baked city spawned the Taliban movement in the 1990s, and the surrounding farmlands remain violently contested, with insurgents having converted large swaths into minefields. “As goes Kandahar, so goes Afghanistan,” the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said last summer.
That target has shifted this year, as U.S. commanders look to the country’s eastern border with Pakistan as their biggest challenge.
U.S. officials have touted declines in violence this year in Kandahar city and in areas of the surrounding province such as the Arghandab Valley, where the bloody fighting of past years amid the pomegranate orchards has tapered off substantially. The roughly 4,500 troops operating in those areas, from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division, have recorded steep declines in Taliban activity this year.
Over the three-month period ending in mid-September — the heart of the traditional summer fighting season — the number of U.S. troops killed dropped 90 percent over the previous year, with roadside bombs declining by 60 percent, according to U.S. military statistics. The number of insurgent attacks was down 75 percent last month over the previous September.
Residents in Kandahar recently held large and peaceful gatherings for religious holidays, cricket tournaments and a reading by a famous local poet — signs that a semblance of normalcy is returning to the city, U.S. officials said. A police commander in Kandahar, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Salim Ahsas, said that last year, his men could not drive their Ranger trucks into Taliban-controlled neighborhoods outside the city but now they have greater freedom of movement. “In general, the security situation is much better than last year,” he said.
“When ISAF is talking about withdrawal, it doesn’t mean they will completely leave the scene. They are gradually withdrawing their troops from the city,” Ahsas said, referring to the formal name for coalition forces, the International Security Assistance Force. “Our police, in terms of capacity, are improving and developing day by day.”
Some of his subordinates are less confident about the prospect of fighting the Taliban with fewer U.S. troops to back them up. “If the Americans don’t protect the Afghan government, as they do now, the situation could turn to chaos,” said an aide to Kandahar’s police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq.
Lack of a strong government
The head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in the province, Abdul Qadir Noorzai, said that a weak and corrupt government has failed to win the trust of residents and that violence remains an ever-present worry. “If we are talking about one week of calm, one week of bombing, that is not any change,” he said.
The Kandahar government remains in uncertain territory following the killings this summer of Ahmed Wali Karzai — a local strongman and the half-brother of the Afghan president — as well as Kandahar’s mayor.
Many predicted a violent tribal power struggle as various groups vied for Ahmed Wali Karzai’s mantle. Although that hasn’t happened, the government remains weak and reliant on foreign funding.
“The current situation is not ready for withdrawal. The terrorists are still here,” said Hamidullah Popalzai, the head of the district council in Zhari, outside the city. “The Afghan army is not capable of defending the people without coalition support. If we’re going to be serious about this, we need the Americans.”
Special correspondents Javed Hamdard in Kandahar and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report.

Fears Aussies killed in Afghanistan
October 29, 2011 - 11:34PM The Age Australia
There are fears two Australian soldiers have been killed by an Afghan in army uniform in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.
Defence in Australia has not confirmed the reports out of Afghanistan.
A man dressed in Afghan army uniform shot dead two foreign troops in the volatile south of Afghanistan on Saturday, NATO said, without identifying the nationalities of the soldiers involved.
"Two International Security Assistance Force service members were killed today in southern Afghanistan when an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform apparently turned his weapon on Afghan and coalition forces," an official statement said.
However, the German newsagency dpa has reported that Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan army, said the two dead individuals were Australian soldiers.
A total of 28 Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan up until July this year.
Fears of infiltration within the Afghan army ranks have risen as Western backers fund and train a huge expansion of the fledgling national force ahead of the withdrawal of all foreign combat forces scheduled for 2014.
The announcement came as a suicide car bomber in the capital Kabul struck a US-run NATO bus travelling through the southwest of the city, killing at least 14 people, mostly foreign forces.

Pakistan behind U.S. goal of Afghan peace: ambassador
Reuters By Andrew Stern Fri Oct 28, 2011
CHICAGO - The U.S. goal of peace in Afghanistan is firmly shared by Pakistan, but the two nations face hurdles that include anti-American sentiments in Pakistan, the country's ambassador in the United States said on Friday.
"Pakistan and the United States are agreed that reconciliation is something we need to work for," Ambassador Husain Haqqani told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
But there remains the question of whether Afghan insurgents, many of whose hide-outs in Pakistan have long been the source of U.S.-Pakistani tension, are willing negotiators.
"A lot of times the problem is a very small number of people, dedicated and violent, want to impose their will by arms," Haqqani said.
As the Obama administration seeks to bring its troops home and put end to a decade of war in Afghanistan, its nascent efforts to broker a peace deal between insurgents and the Afghan government is playing an increasingly central role.
Yet the bid to find a negotiated settlement highlights the deep fissures in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, as U.S. officials accuse Pakistan of indirectly fueling violence in Afghanistan and often undermining Afghan stability.
Pakistanis meanwhile complain they have suffered greatly at the hands of extremists and accuse the United States of overlooking their efforts to contain their militant threat.
Haqqani praised comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a congressional committee on Thursday that the United States was seeking negotiations with Afghan insurgents, while at the same time fighting them on the battlefield.
"Why can't we just talk to these people and get a settlement? Absolutely, we'd love to do it. If you have (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar's address please send him a letter on our behalf to come to the table," Haqqani said.
"The problem is you can't be half engaged in these negotiations. Do the Taliban have a vision of where they want to be? Are they willing to be part of a pluralist Afghanistan in the future?"
He said Pakistan will "do everything to facilitate discussions between all elements of the Taliban that we can reach."
Haqqani derided commentators in the region, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who last week made comments suggesting that his country would side with Pakistan if a military conflict broke out between Islamabad and Washington.
"Pakistan and the United States are not going to war," he said.
"Sometimes people forget there are unresolved issues in Pakistan," he said, citing a societal debate about the role of religion and the nation's decades-long struggle toward democratically elected governments.
"My request to Americans is to be patient with Pakistan," he said.
(Additional reporting by Missy Ryan; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Pakistan's radical reputation
Foreign Policy By Daud Khattak Friday, October 28, 2011
Intolerant, fundamentalist and extremist. This is the general impression of Pakistani society in the world outside Pakistan, though a deeper look would lead the observer to discover another layer - altogether different than the one visible from Europe and America. Following the Urdu-language Pakistani media, one is easily brought to the conclusion that there exists widespread radicalism and fundamentalism among Pakistanis. The television anchors and their repetition of ‘national interests' aside, the key question is: Is the Pakistani society really extremist? A cursory look at the events of the past few years can tell the answer.
Following the highly-rigged general elections in 2002 in favor of the now defunct religious alliance, Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Pakistan's religious parties looked poised to assert their newfound power in the country. But just six years later, in the February 2008 general election, Pakistanis overwhelmingly supported secular political parties such as the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP), while the religious parties managed to retain only seven seats in the country's National Assembly. The religious parties and their affiliates also failed on several occasions to start a political movement by using issues such as the jailing of Pakistani doctor Aafia Siddiqui, the US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal northwest, the Raymond Davis episode, or the U.S. Special Forces raid in Abbottabad and killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's security establishment also contributes to the West's fundamentalist and extremist image of Pakistani society. Over the years, the Pakistani state has supported the armies of Kashmir-focused jihadists in order to gain leverage over its more powerful and several-times-larger rival India, as well maintain a Pakistan-friendly government in neighboring Afghanistan. To achieve these goals, the establishment willfully encouraged a number of elements within its own borders, ranging from pro-jihadist religious parties to extremist literature in schools, colleges and universities, in order to generate support for the jihadist cause.
Within Pakistan, the armed forces are often presented as heroes and the true custodians of Pakistan's ideological and geographical frontiers, while the liberal political forces are labeled (albeit with some truth) as vested interests, too corrupt and inefficient to run the country and ensure its defense. Pakistani youth are flooded with hardliner propaganda and find attraction in extremist views because of the stance of the esteemed military, the jihadist literature in classrooms, government-controlled electronic media, and a state policy of encouraging certain jihadist organizations.
This policy approach, although it dates back to the creation of Pakistan, was institutionalized during the 10 years of military rule under the dictator General Zia ul-Haq, who championed jihad and the Islamization of society. The majority of the secular leaders at that time were either won over one way or another, forced to keep silent, or pushed into exile, thus leaving room for the fundamentalists to come forward and "purify" the society by holding mass gatherings in cities, speaking on the official electronic media, becoming involved in educational institutions and spreading jihadist literature. Zia and his rightist support base thus maneuvered hard, and the ultimate result was the emergence of a hardliner approach among the upper layer of the Pakistani society to Muslim causes - be it Kashmir, Afghanistan, Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo or any other place in the world. The support for extremists and jihadists did not end with the death of Gen. Zia. Elements in The state security apparatus continued t
he same policies, eventually resulting in the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan who converted areas of the country into a safe haven for extremists and jihadists all over the world.
However, this is only one side of the picture. A few thousand miscreants fighting in the tribal areas, or some baton-wielding madressa students marching a street in Punjab, in no way represent the majority of the 180 million-strong Pakistani populace, who disapprove of the Taliban's terrorism and vandalism. Today, the tribal areas are being presented to the world as a tinderbox where everyone is a radical fighter or suicide bomber, only to convince the western world to shower more money on the Pakistani elites in order to avert this purported threat to global peace. In fact, this is a well-orchestrated plan in which the tribal people are the real victims. Victims in the sense that they are presented to the world as the trouble-maker while in fact, they are hostages at the hands of the Pakistani security agencies (and the militant groups), who over the years have supported or ignored the presence of jihadist and terrorist groups on Pakistani soil.
To understand the state's approach to the tribal areas, one must look at a few simple but thought-provoking questions: Why have the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) been discriminated against over the past 60 years? Why are they being run under the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) laws, and why were political parties banned from the area until very recently? How many schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, roads, canals, dams, power projects, and agriculture projects have been launched in FATA over the years? There are many other such unanswered questions, and the motive is clear: Keep FATA residents in the dark and mold their image as and when needed.
Despite all of this, a vast majority of FATA residents are still in favor of education, development, political reforms and (no doubt) peace. We are hearing more and more accounts of tribal Pakistanis spending their hard-earned money to send their sons and daughters to colleges and universities to become doctors, engineers, teachers and scholars. Would a person sending his son or daughter to university support the Taliban's jihadist agenda?
In Pakistan's cities meanwhile, despite the fact that the secular political leadership is often rendered useless by criminal elements and their supporters, the vast majority of people disapprove of militancy and extremism. The once popular religious political parties are usually not able to gather more than a few hundred people at rallies, even for flashpoint issues such as price hikes, power outages, fuel shortages or foreigners' alleged disrespect of Islam. Anti-Americanism exists in many countries and Pakistan is no exception. But being anti-American does not necessarily mean being a jihadist or a Talib. Protests in the United States and around the world against the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are non-violent examples of this sentiment.
Now is the time for the western world to understand the situation by looking deep into Pakistani society instead of judging things on the basis of protest demonstrations by a few hundred bearded young men, or some gun-wielding men in videos from FATA. The key point to understand is that the real Pakistani society lies under the superficial layer of radicalism being presented as a serious threat to Pakistan and the peace of the world at large.
We need to know that despite security threats, hundreds of thousands of students are attending schools, colleges and universities; new private sector educational institutions are being opened; new think-tanks are being launched; the NGO network is spreading; and music, art and culture are flourishing. These developments are even occurring in areas presented as the most conservative to the outside world. It is high time for the world to look beyond the surface and see the vast majority of Pakistanis, who have been taken hostage by the few armed thugs who are propped up by the state to achieve the foreign policy goals.
Extremism is without a doubt a serious issue confronting the state of Pakistan and the region. But the approach should be to take it head on with the support of the bulk of Pakistanis who disapprove of terrorism and believe in political dialogue as a resolution to issues both inside and outside the country.
Daud Khattak is a journalist currently working for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Pashto-language station Radio Mashaal.

China passes the buck in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Raffaello Pantucci Friday, October 28, 2011
As we pass the 10-year anniversary of the US-led war in Afghanistan, most attention has been focused on how much longer the United States intends to stay in the region. But a question that has not been addressed is who is going to be putting the pieces together afterwards. The European Union (EU) and the United States are clearly at the end of their tether, while Russia, India and other nearby powers continue to lack the capacity or means to dominate the region. Other rising regional power China may continue to be wary of becoming involved in any foreign entanglements, but as a friend put it in a meeting in Beijing the other day, China may not have broken the teapot of Afghanistan, but it is one that sits firmly on their borders.
And there is some evidence that this reality is sinking in at Zhongnanhai in Beijing. Chinese firms have made substantial investments in Afghanistan. The Aynak copper mine has been joined by an investment in oil fields in northern Afghanistan. And while Chinese firms in the end did not invest in the Bamiyan iron mines they have still cast their lot in terms of developing Afghan infrastructure - pouring money into telecoms, road-building and train lines linking Afghanistan to the rest of the region.
But this has not been supported by any large-scale investment in Afghan security. For that, China continues to look to NATO on the ground and more implicit protection from her close ally in Islamabad. As one senior Afghan put it to me, a reason that was often given for why the Chinese had gotten some of these deals was that it was known how close they were to Pakistan. The assumption was that if the deal went to China then the site would be protected in some way and the development would proceed.
While unclear to what degree this was the determining factor, the story plays into what seems to be China's main foreign policy factor when considering Afghanistan, and that is Pakistan. The Sino-Pak relationship is one of the closest in the world, spanning trade, nuclear weapons, counter-terrorism and regional hedging against India. As both sides characterize it publicly, it is "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel, sweeter than honey, and dearer than eyesight." And into this fits Afghanistan, a troublesome country that borders both and is the source of regional instability. China, still a hesitant foreign policy actor, is unwilling to do too much to assert her authority in the region and is more than happy to let eager Pakistan take the lead.
And this approach is something that has worked for China for many years now. Unwilling to become involved in a conflict that could force it to take sides in a conflict in which it could be painted as part of some alliance against Islam and potentially support actors who would encourage separatists in the restive Xinjiang province, China has hesitated to do much in Afghanistan in support of NATO efforts in the country. For some in China, there was a sense that NATO's loss in Afghanistan was China's gain and that the potential encirclement that might result from NATO success on their borders would be to China's detriment, while for others there was a sense that this was a lost cause anyway and that Afghanistan was the "graveyard of empires."
Instead, China focused on investing in things that seemed like a good idea. A large copper mine at Aynak sits close to China's borders and consequently seemed a wise investment to first bid for it and then offer a whole package of deals including a local power station and train line to provide the backdrop to make the deal work for the Chinese firm. All of this would help supply China's need for copper, as well as develop a part of the country that was close to China and would therefore potentially have a knock-on effect in improving prosperity in neighboring underdeveloped Chinese province Xinjiang. Similarly with the deal to secure the oil fields in Amu Darya - China's unslakable thirst for hydrocarbons means it will reach out anywhere to get them, and when they are so close to home, all the better.
But while none of this disagrees with western policy in Afghanistan, there is no sense that China is willing to buy into any active policy supporting western goals in the region. China continues to be the ultimate hedging power in Afghanistan - while it seems clear that they are willing to support western aims in the country, there continues to be a lack of any clear evidence that they are as willing to expend political capital or effort to advance their goals actively in the country. This is not to say they are indolent in advancing their interests, but that they are wary of becoming entangled in a country that has repeatedly shown a capacity to reject foreign influence.
From a Chinese perspective, the answer to Afghanistan is clear. The tribes need to fight it out amongst each other - to paraphrase what one expert told me in Beijing, this is a country with "lots of big powerful men who need to be kept happy" and outsiders do not really stand much of chance moderating this. Ultimately, the country is poor, will clearly need investment going forward, and China will be there to support it. With deep pockets and no conditions, this support can be funneled to whomever is in charge and to whomever has the power of the provinces where China has direct interests. When it comes to border threats, China seems to have managed to secure strong intelligence links and is able to keep a quite firm lid on any potential threats from extremist groups with links to networks in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
China's play in Afghanistan has been very hesitant so far. The reason for this is a lack of certainty in Beijing about what Washington's game plan is. In the meantime, they have continued to make careful strategic investments with a view to the long game. And while from a western analysis this should mean a greater Chinese interest in stabilizing the current government, from Beijing's perspective it is far better to let things play themselves out while focusing on specific interests. This will not necessarily help western aims to re-shape Afghanistan, but it will strengthen China's hand when the west finally leaves.
Raffaello Pantucci is a Visiting Scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and an Associate Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation. He blogs at http://www.raffaellopantucci.com.

UN reports sharp drop in Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan on security fears
By Associated Press, Saturday, October 29, 3:49 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations’ refugee agency says the number of Afghans returning home has dropped sharply this year because of the country’s security situation and lack of opportunities.
The UNHCR said Saturday that 60,000 Afghans have returned so far this year under its voluntary repatriation effort, with 43,000 coming home from Pakistan and 17,000 from Iran.
The agency said the number returning from Pakistan, which is home to 1.7 million Afghan refugees, is down 59 percent this year compared to 2010.
It says the drop is linked to the refugees’ concerns about returning to unstable regions of Afghanistan where few opportunities are available.

What we didn't know about the war in Afghanistan
CBC News By Brian Stewart Oct 28, 2011
It sometimes feels as if our distant war in Afghanistan never really happened, so rarely is it analyzed or discussed any more.
Perhaps we all feel it's over and done with. But wars never let you get away that easily. One can only hide for so long from history before its inconvenient facts seek you out and demand answers.
Such is the case with "Lessons learned? What Canada should learn from Afghanistan," a 54-page study for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and a powerful examination of our stunningly incoherent approach to that war.
The writers are two of our most respected military historians, professor emeritus Jack Granatstein and David Bercuson, of the University of Calgary, who also happen to be two well-known supporters of the war.
Yet they manage to peel away layer after layer of weak political leadership, jealous bureaucratic infighting, and the complete lack of strategic insight in Ottawa, which bedevilled Canada's mission there from start to finish.
What gives their assessment all the more punch is that they believe the mission was a noble one and don't see the war as lost. But they never shy away from revealing some truly horrible mismanagement.
After reading "Lessons learned," you will be left with the alarming thought that Ottawa ministers and bureaucrats never had a clue how to run a big military operation overseas, and never took the trouble to learn. More mystery
Even the way Canada volunteered itself, in the spring of 2005, to take control of the dangerous Kandahar province is a murky subject all these years later.
We've heard it said that the commitment was driven by the military. But Bercuson and Granatstein reveal that Foreign Affairs and CIDA were enthusiastic hawks and that there was a strong desire in cabinet both to please the U.S. and elevate Canada's international influence.
The study also has a hint of something more sinister.
Some months before the then Liberal cabinet discussed sending in a force of any size — and this was a minority government, remember — at least one senior U.S. general in NATO told a Canadian liaison officer that Ottawa had told Washington it would send in a battle group.
Where exactly did that promise originate from, and on what basis could it have been made? These are just some of many mysteries crying out for investigation.
The big one, of course, is why the Paul Martin government in 2006, and then the Stephen Harper one just months later, failed so spectacularly to recognize the risks they were allowing our troops to face.
As these two historians point out, Ottawa was gambling that our soldiers would be well supported in Kandahar by NATO, even though senior Canadian officers attached to NATO were already warning that our European allies were putting "caveats" on their troops.
These were restrictions that would limit their ability to fight and make them dangerously undependable, as events quickly proved.
In short, Ottawa put great faith in an alliance that its own military distrusted, and Ottawa was dead wrong. No intel
As we now see, Canada committed itself to Kandahar, home of the Taliban, without even conducting a serious intelligence study of the area and, incredibly, without taking into account Kandahar's long undefended border with Pakistan, which proved to be a sanctuary for insurgents.
The report quotes an early Canadian commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Fraser, saying "Nobody was collecting information on Pakistan. Pakistan was a black hole. I went to various agencies in Ottawa and said can you help me and they said no, but we'll change our collection plan" and try to find you more intelligence.
Still, Ottawa did not hurry. According to U.S. officials, Canada didn't increase its intelligence effort in the region for two more years, when CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, became involved.
Even military intelligence that resourceful officers were able to pick up from their U.S. colleagues was often ignored.
The first Canadian commander to go in, Col. Ian Hope, had been briefed by his U.S. colleagues to expect a Taliban surge that first summer. Yet a blasé Ottawa refused to give Canadian troops their own helicopter support for medical evacuation, something that had to be begged from the Americans. The less said
Because of Canadian cabinet secrecy, we know far less about our route to war and the decisions that were made than citizens in Britain and the U.S. know about what their governments did.
We don't, for example, know if the Martin government even asked the Canadian military for a detailed appreciation of the coming mission, apart from a superficial scan of maps, before it decided "let's go."
The study is equally blunt about the failings of the Harper government's almost incomprehensible management of the war.
Was our mission about defeating the Taliban? Or promoting human rights? Or reconstruction? Were we really determined never to "cut and run," or were we actually anxiously packing up to get out?
"It is impossible to discern a clear and consistent line on the Kandahar and Afghanistan mission over the course of five years," Bercuson and Granatstein state.
This was clearly Prime Minister Harper's fault as his office (the PMO) rigorously controlled every aspect of communications, muting the military's own voice. And Harper, for reasons still unknown, seemed to feel that feeding Canadians as little information as possible was appropriate war management.
"The prime minister" the study suggests, "may have concluded that the war could not be won, was politically costly and therefore, the less said of aims and objectives the better." Lessons learned
In the end, Canada never even sought to use the new diplomatic influence that it believed this war and the sacrifice of our troops would give it. That may be the cruellest rebuke of all.
Even when Afghanistan was being discussed in Washington, there was no mechanism to ensure that we would be heard at the highest level. As the historians conclude, "Canada apparently did not try very hard to raise its voice and had no impact whatever on key U.S. decisions regarding Afghanistan."
So much for the old boast that military sacrifice will at least "give us a seat at the table."
The study's lessons for future conflicts emphasize the need for better government leadership, clear communications, solid intelligence, and a deep suspicion of military alliances.
"Lessons learned" should be a must-read for all members of Parliament and Ottawa bureaucrats. And for anyone else who wishes to know what it is we still need to know about our years in a distant war.

Pakistan safe havens challenge U.S. Afghan effort
Reuters By Susan Cornwell Fri Oct 28, 2011
WASHINGTON - Even as the United States begins to withdraw from Afghanistan, insurgents abetted by Pakistan pose the major threat to U.S.-led forces, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Security has improved in recent months and enemy attacks are down in Afghanistan compared to a year ago, the Pentagon said in a twice-annual report to the U.S. Congress.
NATO and Afghan forces largely "stunted" the Taliban's spring and summer offensive, although the insurgency remains adaptive and resilient, with a "significant regenerative capacity," the report said.
But attacks from across the eastern border were up because of the support the insurgency received from safe havens in Pakistan, it said.
"Safe havens in Pakistan remain the insurgency's greatest enabler," the report said. These havens have grown more "virulent" in recent months "and are the most significant risk" to NATO's campaign, it said.
The report comes as President Barack Obama's administration has begun pulling surge forces from Afghanistan -- withdrawing 10,000 this year and the remaining 23,000 by the end of September 2012.
Critics of Obama's plan fear it could undermine the progress surge troops have made and point to faltering security in attacks in Afghanistan's volatile east, along the porous border with Pakistan.
The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), which advises aid and other groups on security, warned this month that the war appeared to be "escalating, not diminishing."
The Pentagon said that recent high-profile attacks in Kabul, including a bold September 13 strike on the U.S. Embassy that rattled perceptions about security in the capital, were carried out by the Pakistan-based Haqqani network and "directly enabled by Pakistan safe haven and support."
While high-profile attacks on "soft targets" have increased, overall enemy attacks were five percent lower than the same period a year earlier, said the report, which covers April 1 through September 30. It said enemy attacks continue to decline.
POLITICAL EFFECT
Assassinations and attacks directed from the safe havens in Pakistan could have a "significant political effect" in Afghanistan as well as coalition countries, the document said. Afghan perceptions of security had worsened slightly, it said.
Civilian casualties remained elevated, although the Pentagon noted that most of them were caused by insurgents or roadside bombs, rather than NATO operations.
The report said the security gains provide a firm foundation for gradually putting Afghan forces in charge of security, a goal now set for the end of 2014.
Yet serious doubts remain about how quickly the improving but inexperienced Afghan army and police can take over -- and how long Washington will be willing to pay for them.
Lasting stability was also threatened by a weak Afghan government, it said. Widespread corruption, political disputes and lack of progress toward reforms were threatening the government's long-term viability. The influence of criminal patronage networks on the Afghan military also posed a threat.
It said the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. forces in Pakistan was an important achievement, but strained U.S.-Pakistani ties. U.S. officials have said that communications between foreign forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani soldiers have been inadequate.
Mistrust and divergent interests will also continue to make cooperation difficult between Afghan and Pakistani officials, it said.
Iran also continues to provide lethal aid to insurgents, including weapons and training, the report said.
For the rest of this year, the Pentagon expects that the Taliban-led insurgency's main effort will focus on regaining control of safe havens and population centers in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
Kabul would remain a target for high-profile attacks and assassination attempts.
The Haqqani network's main effort will be to re-exert dominance in Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces, and "it will also continue to target Kabul with high-profile attacks in an effort to maintain its influence on the reconciliation process."
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

U.S. Military Waste A Smoldering Afghan Health Issue
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan October 28, 2011
Rahim spends most of his day selling merchandise to foreign soldiers out of the ramshackle hut he calls his shop. It's a living -- he earns enough to support his wife and four children -- but like many locals he feels his life in Bagram, north of Kabul, is killing him.
"It's the air," Rahim says as he coughs violently and points to the plumes of black and green smoke rising in the distance. "It's making me and my family sick."
Rahim, who provides only his first name, pins the blame squarely on Bagram air base, home to about 30,000 U.S. and coalition forces as well as thousands of foreign and local contractors. Located only a few miles from Bagram city, the base houses a large airstrip, dozens of residential halls, and even a modern shopping mall that boasts a Burger King and a Pizza Hut.
According to Rahim, the source of the smoke is a huge burning pit at the base -- an open dump site the U.S. military uses to dispose of trash at the base. He believes harmful chemicals are released in the burning process, causing various forms of ailments and disease in the areas surrounding the base.
"They're burning TVs, radios, mobile phones, and all sorts of electronics. It doesn't matter how much we have protested, neither the government nor the Americans have listened to our concerns," Rahim says. "They shouldn't do this. Our children are getting sick because the wind is blowing the smoke inside our homes."
Rahim's concerns are shared by other locals. Farhad, who has worked at the air base since 2008, describes the burn pit as the size of "several soccer fields." A bulldozer pushes waste into the pit, located at the outer edge of the base, and it burns 24 hours a day, he says.
"I've witnessed the Americans dumping and then burning electronics like computers and television sets, ...things that are renewed every six months," Farhad says. "The smoke gives off a very bad odor that smells like plastic, which is entering our homes. It is making everyone sick, especially the children. This has been happening ever since the Americans entered Bagram 10 years ago."
Effects Of Pollution
Comparative statistics documenting a rise in cases of illnesses and disease due to exposure to the burning pits are not available. No official study has been carried out, in part due to the lack of proper testing equipment and expertise among health officials in Afghanistan.
But the effects on the local population are readily obvious, according to Dr. Mustafa Siddiqui, a health specialist from Kabul. He says using fuel to burn waste contaminates the air with toxic pollutants such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, and can cause respiratory illnesses, chronic allergies, and various cancers.
"People living near the military base in Bagram are coughing up blood, find it difficult to breathe, and have problems with their kidneys and livers," Dr. Siddiqui says.
Steven Markowitz, professor of environmental sciences at Queens College, City University of New York, says U.S. soldiers returning from Afghanistan are also showing significant increases in respiratory problems. He attributes this to the soldiers being exposed to open burn pits at Bagram and other U.S. military bases.
"If we know American soldiers are being affected, then we know it is quite possible for local laborers on bases and the local population to be affected," Markowitz says.
Few Signs Of Progress
The United States has 100,000 troops and thousands more contractors in Afghanistan, with each producing 4.5 kilograms of waste each day, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Commander Robert Mulac, public affairs officer for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A), says burning pits are the most "expeditious way" of getting rid of the waste.
"The reason for the use of burn pits is that, because of the very large volume of solid waste generated by contingency operations, it is impracticable to landfill the waste without first substantially reducing the volume," Mulac says.
Mulac adds that USFOR-A is implementing measures to reduce the amount of open-air burning, including the installation of low-emission incinerators at Bagram air base.
But Ghulam Mohammad Malikyar, who heads Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), says military officials at Bagram have not done enough.
"From what we can see and the reports we receive from the ground, it is clear that this issue has not been taken seriously," Malikyar says. "We have recommended that they use recycling and introduce clean incinerators but nothing has come of it. The process toward changing this practice has been very slow."
Malikyar says that he has met with numerous military officials at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul and at Bagram air base over the past two years. "We have told them that burning waste in the open is strictly forbidden under Afghan law," he says. "We have told them that the smoke is making people sick and damaging the environment."
Convincing The Military To Change
Afghan laws forbidding burn pits are not applicable to U.S. and other international forces. But according to Malikyar, the lease agreement at Bagram and other foreign bases denies local investigators permission to access and monitor a military facility.
"These conditions are hampering efforts to overhaul the use of burn pits in other military bases and army facilities as well," Malikyar says. "This problem is occurring in military bases around the country. But it is up to foreign officials to implement the changes; we cannot."
NEPA, which regulates, monitors, and enforces environmental laws in the country, first received complaints about the U.S. military's use of fire pits in Bagram at the local level in 2009.
"Previously, there was no problem. The policy in Bagram was to sell outdated equipment to local contractors who would, in turn, sell them as second-hand goods," Malikyar says. "But this practice ended two years ago as more waste piled up.... With waste piling up, the fire pits were used by the military more regularly and now they are burning waste all the time."
In the past two years, NEPA's regional office in Bagram has interviewed dozens of locals who say they are suffering from various respiratory disorders, and eye and nasal problems originating from toxic smoke from Bagram air base.
NEPA's local environment-monitoring office in Bagram forwarded the grievances to Malikyar, who in turn notified U.S. authorities.
Nowhere To Turn
Located throughout Afghanistan, the U.S. military's burn pits have compounded the serious environmental and health issues facing Afghanistan. Many cities in the country already suffer from a lack of sewage and sanitation systems, growing slums, crumbling infrastructure, and rapid population growth.
Constant power cuts and the absence of a national natural-gas grid also mean that many households, including Rahim's in Bagram, use wood, coal, and heating oil for cooking and heating.
For Rahim, protecting the country's deteriorating environment is paramount to creating better health conditions for ordinary Afghans.
Consoling his two sick daughters as they lie on his lap, Rahim says his family is experiencing firsthand the detrimental effects of environmental neglect. He considers leaving for good, but therein lies the catch -- by leaving for a healthier life, he would have to give up his family's livelihood.
RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Homayoon Shinwary contributed to this report

Afghan Government Forces Shaky Truce In Tribal Land Dispute
October 27, 2011 By Abubakar Siddique Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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.

Yak's milk hospitality in the remote Pamir mountains
BBC News By John Pilkington 28 October 2011
Pamir mountains, Afghanistan - The conflict in Afghanistan has reduced the flow of tourists to the country almost to zero. But one remote, northern corner of the country has remained at peace, and is keen to welcome more visitors.
High in the Pamir mountains, Afghanistan meets its northern neighbour Tajikistan on the banks of the thundering Panj River.
For most of the last century, this marked the southern limit of Soviet Central Asia, and there is still an outpost in the form of a Russian-speaking village with a single narrow bridge across the river.
I crossed the bridge and stepped back 100 years.
On the Tajik side were cars, electric lights, piped water and central heating and on the Afghan side donkeys, candles, water buckets and smoky yak-dung fires.
From here a finger of Afghanistan goes east for 350km (200 miles), separating Tajikistan from Pakistan.
This is the so-called Wakhan Corridor, a relic of the 19th Century "Great Game" between Britain and Russia. It leads to the High Pamir, where four separate mountain ranges come together in a tangle of peaks and glaciers.
These are the lands of the Wakhi and the Kyrgyz.
The Wakhi live in rough stone houses, the Kyrgyz are semi-nomadic and prefer big round tents which they call "yurts".
In the lower valleys I found the Wakhi busy harvesting the all-important barley crop. Higher up, the Kyrgyz were leading sheep and yaks across endless mountainsides, making the most of the summer pasture.
Apart from these shepherds with their animals, the only creatures you see in the high valleys are marmots, vultures, and - if you are really lucky - a faraway glimpse of a snow leopard.
I cannot speak Wakhi or Kyrgyz, so I found myself an interpreter called Yar Mohammad and he in turn came up with two splendid horsemen, Shogun and Amin Bek.
I had brought a tent and was intending to be self-sufficient, but in all the villages people instantly came out to greet us with rounds of bread, and bowl after bowl of freshly made yak's-milk yogurt.
If you haven't experienced yak's-milk yogurt - well, it's tangy, it tingles on the tongue, it's rich in Vitamin C and it's very addictive. We were also offered cups of salty and slightly rancid yak-butter tea - but somehow I never found this quite so tempting.
I was aiming for a place called Bozai Gumbaz, and an appointment with a famous British character from the days of the Raj. Victorian courtesy
In 1891 Captain Francis Younghusband was arrested by Cossacks here, and frogmarched out of what they said was now part of Russia.
In London this seemed horribly like the prelude to an invasion of British India. In the end there was no invasion and no war - but this so-called "Pamir Incident" led directly to the peculiar boundaries that we see today, with the Wakhan Corridor made part of Afghanistan to prevent British and Russian forces from ever again having to meet.
I wanted to mark the 120th anniversary of the incident by giving a nod and a wink to the officers involved, who actually behaved with impeccable Victorian courtesy all round. The Cossacks even gave Younghusband a haunch of venison.
But crossing the river to Bozai Gumbaz I somehow managed to fall off my horse.
One moment it was wading happily across, the next it was on its knees and I was tumbling over its head. Luckily my foot caught in one of the stirrups, so instead of being swept away I was dragged foot-first through the freezing water and dumped on the far bank.
Back in Ishkashim, the tiny town at the Corridor's entrance, I recovered in a little guesthouse with the razzmatazz of the bazaar nearby.
Ishkashim is not Kathmandu, but its people are working hard to make things easier for visitors, and they would like to welcome more of us.
Adab Shah, who has just started up a travel company, tells me, "The main problem is getting people up into the Corridor. It's expensive and very uncomfortable, because the road is so bad."
Well I had bounced and jolted up that road myself, and I would say his assessment is spot-on. But roadworks apart, what are the chances that this unlikely experiment will succeed against all the odds?
It will depend, of course - like so much in Afghanistan - on what happens after most of the Nato forces depart, probably in 2014.
So if you enjoy mountains, and if you have got a taste for yak's-milk yogurt, I would say, "Go while you can."

Mongolia: Afghanistan’s Minority Hazara Students Find Peace in Ulaanbaatar
EURASIANET.org By Pearly Jacob October 28, 2011
Mongolia - Ulaanbaatar hardly registers as dream destination for study-abroad scholars. But for a handful of Afghan students, all-expenses-paid undergraduate scholarships to study in Mongolia's capital city present a pragmatic alternative to life in war-torn Kabul.
In the bustling canteen of Mongolia International University (MIU), 21-year-old Nasim Sahel, an ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Province, admits that before his arrival the only image he had of Mongolia was of people riding horses -- "and of course Genghis Khan.” Currently, Sahel and at least 22 other Hazaras study in Mongolia, most of them the recipients of scholarships specifically designed for members of the oft-persecuted minority group back home.
In Afghanistan, Hazaras are believed to be descended from Genghis Khan's marauding forces as they swept through during the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. The name “Hazara” is thought to come from the Persian “hazar,” or thousand, a reference to the hordes. Mostly Shi’a Islam believers and Asian in appearance, Hazaras have endured frequent persecution from their Sunni neighbors. The ethnically Pashtun Taliban singled out the group for mass executions and forced deportations, most notably in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, and attacks on their settlements in highland towns like Bamiyan, the provincial capital.
In 2009, Davaabat Sainbayar, director of an online, non-profit networking initiative for Mongolians worldwide -- Tsahim Urtuu, or “Electronic Station” -- was producing a local TV series tracking Mongolians around the globe when he visited a Hazara community in Kabul. Eyewitness accounts of discrimination, "just because they were regarded as Mongols," shocked him. Three months later, with Mongolian government support, he announced the Tsahim Urtuu scholarship program. "Our goal was to help these students, who we view as ethnic Mongolians, and see where it leads," he says.
The three students chosen for the first round underwent nine months of preparatory language lessons before enrolling in undergraduate classes at the government-run National University of Mongolia (NUM) in 2009. Despite the crash course, language is still “the biggest challenge,” says Zahra Baksh, a second-year business management student. “We often have to translate words from Mongolian into English and if we still don't get it, into Persian."
For most Hazara students, many of whom experienced life as refugees in Iran and Pakistan, their time in Mongolia offers their first taste of prolonged peace and relative stability. Meqdad Salehi, a Tsahim Urtuu scholarship awardee studying international relations at NUM, spent his entire childhood as a displaced person. He was born in Iran to Hazara refugees who had moved there hoping to escape persecution in Afghanistan. Hazaras speak a dialect of Persian. With their Shi’a beliefs, many seek sanctuary in Shi'a Iran, rather than Sunni Pakistan.
Unfortunately for Salehi and many like him, discrimination followed the Hazaras to Iran. "Tajiks and Uzbeks refugees from Afghanistan look more like Iranians. It is more difficult for Hazaras to be accepted because of our Mongolian features," said Salehi. Unable to find easy access to jobs and schooling in Iran, his family moved back to Afghanistan -- just as the Taliban gained control over much of the country in the mid-1990s. Taliban repression forced his family to return to Iran, but they found the environment so unwelcoming that they opted to return to Kabul prior to the 9/11 terrorism tragedy and the subsequent US-led blitz on Afghanistan. "The second time we came back to Afghanistan and then 9/11 happened. We heard Americans would attack so we ran to Pakistan,” Salehi said. The family has since returned to Kabul.
For Sahel, the student from Bamiyan, Mongolia is the opportunity he had always hoped for. "At least there is a country that's supporting me, a country that says, ‘Yes, you belong to me,’ after I've been exiled from Afghanistan and called a slave,” he said. An outspoken student, his hair dyed a reddish blonde, Sahel says the individual freedom he enjoys in Mongolia has been the best part of his experience. Yet he still yearns to return to a peaceful Afghanistan. "I like the idea of being descended from Mongolians, but I belong to Afghanistan."
For Hazara students in Ulaanbaatar, thoughts of home are sobering reminders of the uncertainty that loved ones continue to grapple with. "Each time I hear news of gunfire or bomb blasts in Kabul, I have to fight the urge to panic and think the worst," says Meqdad Salehi.
When asked to describe the situation at home, Zahra Bakhsh, the business management student, mulled the question for a minute. "Afghanistan is like...” she said before pausing. “I don't know how you say it in English " After a quick Google search she finds a satisfactory way to express her sentiments: "Afghanistan is like a spell no one can break.”

Afghans Bemused by Karzai's Pakistan Comments
What exactly did President Karzai mean when he suggested his country would back Pakistan in a war with America?
IWPR By Khan Mohammad Danishju 28 Oct 11
Afghanistan - President of Afghanistan Hamed Karzai's remarks about siding with Pakistan if it ever went to war with the United States have caused no little surprise at home as well as abroad.
"If conflict breaks out between Pakistan and the US, we will be beside with Pakistan," Karzai said in an interview shown on the privately owned Geo TV station in Pakistan on October 22.
His remarks caused some concern, especially since they followed closely on visits by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to both Islamabad and Kabul.
While in Islamabad, Clinton urged Pakistan to do more to curb insurgent groups that use the northwest of the country to mount attacks on targets in Afghanistan – exactly what Afghan leaders including Karzai have been calling for.
Many Afghans have long believed that sections of the leadership in Islamabad have covertly sponsored the Taleban and allied groups like the “Haqqani network” as a way of keeping Afghanistan in a constant state of turmoil, and also of preventing India from gaining ground there.
Aside from ongoing Taleban insurgent actions across the Afghan countryside, the Haqqani network has been blamed for urban attacks in Kabul in June and September, leading to many questions about why this group operates apparently unmolested out of Pakistan’s North Waziristan agency. (For more on this, see Afghans Sceptical of Pakistan's Will to Curb Insurgents.)
The furore caused by Karzai’s remarks led his office to quickly backtrack on the comments. Spokesman Amal Faizi said the president’s remarks had been distorted and were not a reference to US efforts to strike at insurgents based in Pakistan. In recent months, US forces have used unmanned drone aircraft to hit key militant leaders, and in May, special forces tracked down and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad.
Instead, he said, Karzai meant that “if America attacks Pakistan, and if the Pakistani people come to Afghanistan and ask for help, it will be [our] moral responsibility to help them. The doors of Afghanistan will be open to them.”
Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Janan Musazai added greater clarity when he told reporters that the remarks had been taken out of context, given that only one clip a minute long was shown from an interview that lasted for nearly an hour.
The piece as aired was, he concluded, “not accurate or balanced”.
Afghan political analysts dismissed suggestions that Karzai’s remarks signal a change in foreign policy, and questioned the wisdom of making off-the-cuff remarks in such a fraught environment, with violence continuing inside Afghanistan and US-Pakistani relations at an all-time low.
Sayed Fazel Sancharaki, spokesman for the Afghan National Front, the main political opposition to Karzai’s administration, noted the recent strategic agreement signed with India, Pakistan’s old enemy, and suggested the president’s remarks were little more than confusing bluster.
“If this government did support Pakistan, then it would have reacted to the [US] drone attacks in Waziristan and other parts of Pakistan,” he said. “Afghanistan has never taken a stand that backs Pakistan. Remarks like these from Karzai can only leave the people of Afghanistan and the international community in a state of uncertainty.”
Regional affairs analyst Abdol Rashid Waziri said the president would do well to avoid appearing to take up positions that most Afghans would disagree with.
“Ninety-five per cent of the Afghan people do not view Pakistan with friendly eyes. They are doubtful about friendship with that country,” he said.
Like Sancharaki, Waziri argued that a statement about siding with Pakistan might have been intended to calm Islamabad’s fears that the strategic pact with India could lead to the threat of encirclement.
“The president was trying to make the Pakistani people understand that Afghanistan will never allow other countries to use it to interfere in Pakistan,” he explained. (For more on the implications of the agreement, see Afghans Welcome Pact With India.)
Political analyst Harun Mir said any statements that Afghan leaders made should always be carefully crafted so as to avoid the possibility that they might be misused or misquoted.
“The president should have made diplomatic, measured remarks so that no one would be able to misinterpret them,” he said. “The president’s discussions on Pakistani TV or other media outlets need to be very precise and calculated, because these media are monitored by the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence agency] which can extract all kinds of interpretations from such remarks.”
In reality, though, Pakistani officials would not have taken the remarks seriously, as they had their own agenda for Afghanistan anyway, Mir said. The same was true of Afghanistan’s western allies, for different reasons.
“Westerners are familiar with remarks of this kind from the Afghan president. They don’t take them seriously, because there have been several occasions where such comments have been made, and his spokesmen have later said they were incorrect or offered another interpretation for them” he said.
Afghan journalist Yaqub Komak agreed that the pattern of controversial statement followed by retraction was all too familiar. But he said it was wrong to charge ahead with controversial comments without taking the views and sensibilities of Afghans into account.
Kabul resident Id Mohammad was among the many Afghans who found the president’s quoted remarks offensive.
“I am certain that if one day Karzai asks the people of Afghanistan to come and stand beside Pakistan against some other country, there will be no one in favour except Karzai himself. But if he calls on the people to come and take a stand against Pakistan, even the women and girls of this country will be prepared to do so,” he said.
Another Kabuli, Hajji Daud, took a different view, arguing that Afghanistan was so weak and vulnerable to Pakistani pressure that a bit of duplicitous flattery was sometimes necessary.
“Even if such remarks aren’t sincere, it’s good for us to be smart. We need to keep in mind the best interests of our people and country at all times. If all it takes is a few words to make our enemy happy, why not say them and keep him on the hop?”
Khan Mohammad Danishju is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com