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Karzai: Afghanistan Needs Help to Fight Terrorist Groups
VOA News November 2, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is warning that there will not be any hope for peace in his country without help from its neighbors in fighting terror groups.
Mr. Karzai told diplomats at an international conference's in Turkey Wednesday that terrorist networks still are a major threat to Afghanistan's security. He said that groups conducting what he called a “merciless campaign of destruction” inside Afghanistan continue to have sanctuaries outside the country.
The Afghan leader has joined representatives from some 20 countries and aid agency members in Istanbul for a one-day summit focusing on Afghanistan's security and economic development as foreign troops prepare to leave the country in the coming years.
Mr. Karzai's comments come a day after a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, in which they discussed a joint investigation into the murder of Afghan peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani in September.
Mr. Karzai has regularly urged Pakistan to do more against militants. U.S. and Afghan officials accuse Islamabad of sheltering and supporting insurgents, including the Haqqani network blamed for Rabbani's death — a claim the Pakistani government strongly denies.
France, Germany, Iran and India are some of the countries taking part in the conference.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Wednesday that countries have an obligation to contribute to Afghanistan's peace, stability, security and wealth. He says such cooperation is necessary for the “sake of our common interests.”
The summit in Istanbul is expected to lay the groundwork for the way forward in Afghanistan. International combat troops are set to complete their withdrawal from the country and transfer full security control to their Afghan counterparts by the end of 2014.
There are more than 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, most from the United States.
Afghanistan is a proxy war between India and Pakistan
When Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai visited New Delhi earlier last month to sign a strategic partnership deal, he quickly reassured Islamabad it remained Kabul's most important partner.
Telegraph.co.uk By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor 02 Nov 2011
"Pakistan is our twin brother, India is a great friend. The agreement we signed with our friend will not affect our brother," he explained.
India and Afghanistan's problem is that Pakistan doesn't agree. It sees India's involvement in Afghanistan as a threat to its 'strategic depth', a concept in which Afghanistan is acknowledged as Pakistan's backyard in which India has no right to hang out with its great friend.
The fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 allowed India to expand its influence in Afghanistan dramatically. Its engineers and IT specialists poured in as part of its most ambitious aid package – worth more than $1.5 billion – to build remote mountain roads, establish telephone, internet, and satellite links and reopen schools and hospitals. Washington encouraged India's involvement and believed it could use the soft power of its popular Bollywood film industry and other cultural links to encourage tolerance and pluralism in the country.
For India, which had been frozen out under the Taliban regime as a supporter of the Northern Alliance's warlords, Afghanistan holds the keys to the Central Asian mineral and energy reserves it needs to sustain its rapid economic growth. To that end, and to increase its chances of gaining access to Afghanistan's own rich reserves of iron ore, India has pledged another half a billion dollars in aid.
Afghanistan is keen to encourage India in this: it doesn't want Pakistan to be its sole customs guard or jailer, and it has seen how vindictive its twin can be. When India's Kabul embassy was blown up by a suicide bomber in 2008, killing 41, including India's defence attaché, American officials said they had evidence that members of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service had been involved in the plot. Just over a year later they struck again, killing 17.
A few months later Pakistani officials successfully lobbied for India to be excluded from last year's Afghanistan conference in Istanbul and for its need for 'strategic depth' to be reflected in any peace settlement for the country.
The message for India was that it could only operate successfully in Afghanistan with Pakistan's tacit approval. This message has been received loud and clear by the major Indian companies bidding to mine Afghanistan's deep mineral reserves: Should they invest heavily in rail or oil pipeline projects when their security cannot be protected from attacks by Taliban factions close to Pakistan?
So while India and Iran discuss opening a new Afghan 'silk route' which bypasses Pakistan's tightly-controlled Wagah border with India, fear of Islamabad's militant friends could still jeopardise this latest rail project and other badly needed developments.
Afghanistan is not just the front line in Nato's fight against the Taliban, but also a proxy war between India and Pakistan. Until relations really improve between the nuclear neighbours, Afghanistan will remain another of their battlegrounds – and no safe place for serious investors.
Afghan forces kill 6 insurgents
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces, during a cleanup operation in Ghazni province, 125 km south of capital city Kabul, eliminated six anti-government insurgents on Wednesday, an army officer in the province Colonel Dillawar Shah said.
"The operation launched in Zargar area outside provincial capital the Ghazni city this morning and so far six rebels have been killed," Shah told Xinhua.
There were no casualties on the troops and security forces, he said.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan government have yet to make comment.
Suicide blast wounds 2 in Afghan town
KABUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two persons sustained injuries as a suicide bomber blew himself up in Paktia province, 100 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, on Wednesday, a private television channel reported.
"A suicide bomber driving an explosive-laden car and attempted to target a security base was identified and shot dead by security forces in Paktia's provincial capital Gardez this morning," Tolo aired in its news bulletin.
However, the media outlet without revealing more details added that the bomber blew himself up before dying.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops are largely relying on suicide attacks and often carry out deadly suicide and roadside bombings.
Afghan forces to begin second-phase of security take-over from NATO
KABUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) would soon start taking over security responsibility from the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said on Wednesday.
"We are confident that Afghan National Army and police are capable enough to take the security responsibility from the international troops in the second phase of transferring security, which is expected to begin soon," Azimi told reporters here at a press conference.
However, he did not reveal the exact date for the second phase of the security transition to Afghan forces, saying President Hamid Karzai would announce the date.
The first phase of security transfer from around 130,000-strong NATO-led troops to Afghan forces began in July and has already been completed.
In the first phase of security transition, the security responsibility of seven cities and provinces including the capital city Kabul had been handed over to the Afghan side, and in the second phase, the security responsibility of 17 provinces and cities would be handed over to Afghan security forces.
With the beginning of transferring security charge from NATO- led troops to Afghan government the withdrawal of foreign troops has also begun and would be completed by the end of 2014.
Karzai rules out early resumption of Taliban talks
Reuters By Jonathon Burch and Myra MacDonald Tue Nov 1, 2011
ISTANBUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai ruled out on Tuesday an early resumption of talks with the Taliban after a summit meeting with Pakistan which appeared to yield no breakthrough on a bitter rift between the two neighbours.
Karzai's comments could undercut U.S. efforts to pick up the threads of talks ruptured by the assassination in September of Afghan peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary.
"We cannot keep talking to suicide bombers, therefore we have stopped talking about talking to the Taliban until we have an address for the Taliban ... until that day we have said we will be talking to our brothers in Pakistan to find a solution to the problem that we have," he said.
Shortly after Rabbani's assassination, Karzai had said there was no point talking to the insurgents and therefore it was best to talk directly with the Pakistanis -- accused by Afghanistan of giving the Taliban safe haven and support.
His reiteration of that comment while speaking at a news conference alongside Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari suggested that the talks hosted by Turkey in Istanbul had failed to ease tensions between Kabul and Islamabad.
Afghanistan accuses Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of supporting Taliban insurgents who have launched a string of attacks in recent months as the United States and its allies prepare to pull out most combat troops by the end of 2014.
Afghanistan has also said that Rabbani's killer was sent from the Pakistani city of Quetta, where it says some of the Taliban leadership is based.
The talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan - their first since Rabbani's assassination - were meant to smoothe the way for a broader conference on Wednesday, to which other countries including India and those with troops fighting in the 10-year Afghan war have been invited.
The United States has made clear it is still open to reaching an accord with those insurgents who are willing to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution -- though it insists it will fight them while also pursuing talks.
Pakistan has long pushed for talks with the insurgents to end the war in Afghanistan which is increasingly spilling over into Pakistani territory. Its critics accuse it of backing insurgents to extend its own influence over Afghanistan and counter rival India.
Both the United States and Pakistan have said that talks with insurgents should be an Afghan-led process. Pakistan also insists it is being used as a scapegoat for the failure of U.S.-led troops to bring stability to Afghanistan.
"The situation in the region is a very complex one ... the NATO armies, the world armies have been there for the last 10 years. If it was such an easy issue they would have solved it, the fact of the matter is that Afghanistan has always been known as the graveyard of empires," Zardari told the news conference.
"Obviously there are interest groups, obviously there are non-state actors, whenever we go three steps forward some state actor, non-state actor or some interest group moves in."
Karzai's comments, however, suggested he was in no mood to relent on his earlier assertion that Taliban talks were pointless -- though the summit was attended by the army and intelligence chiefs of Afghanistan and Pakistan along with their foreign and interior ministers.
"We have been hurt badly, our desire for peace has been either misunderstood or misused and we have learnt a lesson from the manner in which we pursued the peace process," Karzai said.
"MOVE BEYOND WORDS"
At Tuesday's talks, Afghanistan urged Pakistan to take concrete steps to curb Islamist militants who it said were a threat to both countries.
Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin told reporters the two neighbours had been trying for several years to build trust "but I think we have failed to see results on the ground."
"So we are at a stage where we need to move beyond words, beyond expressions of commitments. We need to get to a stage where we actually do concrete things that will address our concerns with regards to our security," he said.
Ludin said Islamabad's cooperation was vital to the security of Afghanistan but also to Pakistan, which has also faced a wave of bombings by the Pakistani Taliban.
"So the message we are really bringing today is to tell Pakistan, 'Look, you're not doing us a favour by helping with bringing peace and security to Afghanistan ... It's a question of peace and security in Pakistan that's also suffering at the hands of terrorism.'"
Islamabad, which denies supporting the Taliban, has complained in turn that insurgents from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, have been using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch attacks in Pakistan.
Ludin also said Afghanistan wanted Pakistan to deal with the Haqqani network -- a powerful insurgent group which says it owes allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, but has traditionally been seen as close to the ISI.
Former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has accused the Haqqani network of acting as "a veritable arm" of the ISI and blamed it for an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul shortly before Rabbani's assassination.
Pakistan denies supporting the Haqqani network and attributes its lack of action against the group to the fact that its army is already overstretched fighting Pakistani Taliban militants and others.
A senior U.S. administration official said on Monday that Pakistani action against the Haqqani network did not necessarily need to be military.
Instead it would include "ensuring that intelligence doesn't go to the Haqqani network" and "that they don't benefit from financial resources or flow of finances."
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
Kandahar Lawmakers Urge International Forces: Don't Leave
Lawmakers fear region could be included in next phases of NATO troop pullout
VOA News November 1, 2011
Lawmakers from Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province are asking for international forces to stay put, at least for time being.
Speaking Tuesday in Kabul flanked by other members of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar, Khalid Pashtun said Monday's deadly attack in the provincial capital is proof NATO troops are still needed.
The combined assault and suicide bombing in Kandahar killed at least five people, including three security guards working for the United Nations' refugee agency. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said a U.N. agency was the target.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce which regions will be included into the second phase of the security transfer in the coming weeks. Pashtun and his colleagues from Kandahar province fear the region could be included in the next phases of the NATO troop pullout.
Kandahar remains a Taliban stronghold.
Elsewhere, two more NATO troops died in a roadside bombing Tuesday.
NATO said the troops were killed in eastern Afghanistan, but did not give any additional details.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.
Lawlessness Reigns In Tajik-Afghan Border Region
November 2, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Farangis Najibullah
Every stranger is treated with suspicion in Dashti Jum these days.
It flies in the face of Tajik tradition, but residents of this southern village along the border with Afghanistan feel their caution is justified. Dashti Jum is one of a handful of communities in the district of Shuroobod with a well-deserved reputation for lawlessness.
The sound of gunfire -- rumored to be between border guards and drug smugglers encroaching from Afghanistan -- surprises no one. Young men are employed as drug mules, often landing them in prison, and abductions of local residents and livestock thefts by smugglers are frequent occurrences.
Officials claim some residents collaborate with Afghan drug dealers and they call on villagers to cooperate with authorities to restore law and order.
But villagers blame authorities for doing too little to exert control in the region.
"No one would cross the border if it were properly watched," says Nazokat, a local housewife who provides only her first name. "Policing the border is the state authorities' responsibility. They should put sufficient number of troops there."
Colonel Qadamsho Khushqadamov, who heads border troops serving under the State Committee for National Security in the district, declines to provide figures but insists that an "adequate number of border guards are deployed in the area."
The military is also involved, with new barracks recently erected in Shuroobod to house troops to be used in case of emergency, Khushqadamov explains. District police are stationed at a central headquarters, with some villages equipped with small police posts.
But despite their numbers, the odds are stacked against law and order.
Stolen Humans, Livestock, And Walnuts
Located along a 150-kilometer stretch defined by the Panj River, the district of Shuroobod is among the most porous sections of Tajikistan's 1,344-kilometer frontier with Afghanistan. Its mountainous terrain and proximity to Afghanistan make it uniquely suitable as a drug route, with many remote roads neglected since the Soviet era, making them inaccessible to all but the most determined.
Colonel Khushqadamov admits that his forces lack a crucial tool in the effort to keep watch on the border: a helicopter.
Davlat Safarov, a retired border guard from the village of Qavoq, says the area has become a virtual no-man's land over the past two decades.
"It feels like about 12 villages here are under Afghan [drug dealers'] control," Safarov says. "They kidnap people, steal livestock -- they even stole our neighbor's walnuts."
There are no reliable kidnapping statistics, but at least five cases have been documented this year. One involved the disappearance of a young woman whose family received a telephone call from an Afghan number informing them that she had been made a bride and would not be returning home. Local authorities have reported securing the release of four men kidnapped in separate incidents by armed groups of men who entered from Afghanistan.
In May, around 80 cows from a state-owned farm were stolen, according to district prosecutor Ghiyosiddin Umarov.
Desperate Measures
Pervasive kidnappings prompted residents of the village of Qavoq to take matters into their own hands by expelling a 72-year-old man from the village in the belief that his sons were linked to drug smugglers.
"That's not the way to tackle the problem," says Askarsho Navruzov, district chief of the State Committee for National Security.
He says community involvement is key helping establish law and order. "We have hot lines in each village for people who want to cooperate with authorities in this fight, to anonymously pass information," he says.
He says Tajik officials believe that some locals collaborate with narcotic smugglers, adding that authorities look for such connections when investigating kidnappings. As a preventive measure, he says, officials meet with local residents to explain the dangers of the getting involved in the drug trade. In addition, a reward of 1000 somonis (roughly $210) has been offered for locals who provide useful information about drug smugglers.
Dozens of residents of border areas have been imprisoned in recent years for illegally crossing the border to Afghanistan and smuggling narcotics back to Tajikistan.
Husnigul Qurbonova, a housewife from Qavoq, is among those who are open about the problem. She says her three brothers are currently serving prison sentences after being detained with drugs.
"Every family in Qavoq has at least one or two relative serving time in prison for assisting drug dealers," Qurbonova says.
Complex Problem
Retired border guard Safarov agrees that kidnappings and drug smuggling are "very much connected, and should be dealt with together."
But he also suggests that poverty and a lack of jobs in the impoverished region have made many villagers easy targets for Afghan drug smugglers seeking to recruit couriers.
"This problem initially begun during the Tajik civil war [in the1990s] when nobody was paying attention," Safarov says. "Drug smugglers use secret pathways, they come in donkeys through minefields. Some locals know that very well. If they had cooperated with authorities and passed the information, this problem would have been resolved quite easily."
"But people are afraid," Safarov says. "On one hand, they are being kidnapped by drug dealers; on the other hand, the authorities treat them with suspicion. There is no trust."
RFE/RL Tajik Service correspondent Abdumumin Sherkhonov contributed to this report
U.S. Blocks Assets Of Captured Haqqani Chief
November 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The U.S. State Department says it is blacklisting a captured commander of the Haqqani insurgent network.
The move identifies Haqqani commander Mali Khan as a specially-designated global terrorist and blocks any assets he may have in U.S. jurisdictions.
The State Department said in a statement that all assets "subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Mali Khan has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him."
Under the move, Americans are also banned from providing Khan with material support.
Khan was captured in September during a joint NATO-Afghan operation in Afghanistan's southeastern in Paktiya province.
The Haqqani network is widely believed to have been involved in the assassination in September of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was heading the country's reconciliation body -- the High Peace Council.
It is also thought to have been complicit in a June attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in which 12 people were killed.
compiled from agency reports
U.S. should talk to Afghan neighbors before Taliban: Kissinger
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. should first negotiate with the neighboring countries of Afghanistan before it holds talks with Taliban which is aimed to bring it into the political process, former U.S. State Secretary Henry Kissinger said on Tuesday.
"I have no objection in principle to negotiating with the Taliban," Kissinger said at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center. "But for the purpose of ending the war, it's the wrong sequence of events."
"The first negotiation in my view ought to be with surrounding countries," he said, referring to Pakistan, India and Iran and so on.
"If there is a negotiation with the Taliban, it should be in the framework of a multilateral regional negotiation," he said.
The Obama administration has decided to pull out U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2014. analysts argued that the Taliban, given the fixed timeline, will simply adopt the strategy of "waiting it out."
"If you negotiate while your forces are withdrawing, you're not in a great negotiating position," Kissinger noted.
But he also admitted that there is not going to be sufficient public support in the U.S. if the war in Afghanistan stretches beyond the 2014 deadline.
"We selected objectives beyond the capacity of the American domestic consensus to support over the period required to implement them," said Kissinger, citing the U.S. military interventions in Korean peninsular, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Evidence Points to US Soldier's Hand in Afghan Atrocities
VOA News November 2, 2011 Luis Ramirez
McChord US Military Base - Prosecutors presented photographs Tuesday in the court martial of U.S. Army soldier Calvin Gibbs they say show he had a direct hand in alleged atrocities against Afghan civilians last year.
Tuesday was the second day of testimony in the court martial of Calvin Gibbs. The 26-year-old staff sergeant faces three counts of murder in addition to 13 other charges. He faces life in prison without parole, if convicted.
Gibbs, a former squad leader, is accused of masterminding and leading his platoon to carry out the killings of unarmed Afghan villagers in Kandahar province and staging them to appear like combat deaths. His attorney argues that Gibbs was betrayed by his comrades, who he alleges acted by their own will.
On the stand for a second day was chief prosecution witness Jeremy Morlock, once Gibbs' right hand man in the platoon the staff sergeant headed. He testified that Gibbs spotted a victim at random, tossed a grenade, ordered Morlock and another soldier to shoot the man, then himself shot the man to make sure he was dead. Morlock said Gibbs then planted a hand grenade next to the Afghan victim, to make it appear that the man had tried to attack the U.S. soldiers.
Gibbs' attorney denied his client shot the man, and called Morlock's testimony into question by casting doubt on his accounts of where the man had been shot. Prosecutors then presented a photo of the man's corpse shot in the back of the head, as Morlock had testified.
Tuesday's testimony included more gory accounts of the atrocities allegedly committed by Gibbs, with the five members of the military panel trying the case being shown photos of bloody and mutilated corpses and severed fingers.
Among the other witnesses who testified Tuesday was Alexander Christy, a medic with Gibbs' platoon who described seeing Gibbs hunch over the corpse of an Afghan teenager and, using a pair of shears, cut off the boy's finger as a keepsake.
The medic said Gibbs taunted him for refusing to do the amputation. He described yet another disturbing scene of Gibbs playing with the boy's body, moving its arms and mouth like a puppet.
At the end of the day, there was testimony from another platoon member who described how Gibbs led him and others to beat a soldier who they suspected was telling on them. The witness said Gibbs tried to intimidate the soldier by rolling out two severed fingers and threatening to kill him if he informed anyone of what the platoon was doing.
The case is alleged to be the worst atrocity committed by U.S. troops in the Afghan conflict. Nine platoon members have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and two others are awaiting courts martial.
No senior commanders above Gibbs have been tried or disciplined in the case.
Cash flows, but can Afghan training legacy last?
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman Tue Nov 1, 2011
KABUL - As over a thousand Afghan army graduates raise both palms to their faces in prayer standing under blazing sunshine, one of the country's most experienced generals surveys them with a mixture of pride and trepidation.
Lined up on a stretch of cement next to rows of green duffel bags, the graduates are the latest addition to a force expected to secure most of the country by the end of 2014, when foreign combat forces are due to leave.
Amlaqullah Patyani, a tall moustachioed general in charge of all Afghan army training, fears a bumpy road ahead even for his most courageous recruits.
"We have no clue how to operate the weapons that NATO gives us. And even if we did, will the weapons keep coming after 2014?" he asked Reuters at the ceremony, raising a key question about the sustainability of expensive Western efforts to build up Afghan security forces.
One example given by recruits is the complex computer system used to operate Stryker armoured fighting vehicles that cost around $4 million (2 million pounds) each. Many new recruits assigned to master the system lack basic numeral skills and are unable to read the Latin script used inside.
But NATO is racing against the clock to train Afghanistan's police and army forces expected to reach 350,000-strong in order to take over fighting in an increasingly violent war, a project seen as crucial for the country to battle insurgents on its own.
RECORD SPENDING ON TRAINING
The United States poured in a record amount, near $12 billion between October 2010 and September 2011, to train and equip Afghanistan's security forces. Almost as much cash, some $11 billion, is planned for the year through September 2012.
But with all the money, and over 130,000 foreign troops in the country, the mission is missing hundreds of trainers.
The 1,810-strong training force says it has commitments for another 510 troops "in the near future", and is also trying to recruit another 480 mentors -- suggesting around one-third of posts are currently open.
But finding the right skills has almost nothing to do with how much money there is or how many soldiers are in the country, NATO training mission officials say.
Air force trainers are especially needed, as are finding volunteers or spare personnel with the patience and other skills needed to mould raw and sometimes illiterate recruits into military professionals.
But senior U.S. military officials admit that money has not always been spent in the wisest ways.
"We have received an awful lot of money from the U.S. government. We need to use it differently now," said U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller, deputy commander for programs and resources within the NATO training mission.
Another U.S. official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the mission was buying up high-tech equipment to satisfy Washington, while more basic needs were ignored.
The mismatch between skills and high-tech equipment has even prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to make a plea for a focus on sustainable training.
"This could get problematic," said Major General Aminullah Karim, who oversees the army's education and training.
"We need the training to be completely Afghan-led and a success. And there must be enough NATO mentors for this," he told Reuters at the sprawling Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) just outside the capital.
NATO and Afghan officials envision the 350,000 strong force as being roughly divided equally between the army and police, though analysts say the police are becoming a paramilitary force who do not protect civilians from the scourge of daily crime.
SUSTAINABLE FUNDING
Longer term, there are questions about how much the West will stump up for Afghanistan's army. The Afghan government hopes vast copper and iron ore mines will one day pay its bills, but they are in very early stages of development and will not bear fruit for years.
Afghanistan's Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in October that a full Afghan national security force including army and police would cost about $5 billion a year.
But sources later said that Western powers are contemplating funding a security force smaller than the envisaged 350,000 men, as they grapple with shrinking government budgets at home.
AVOIDING A SOVIET REPEAT
The scenario Afghanistan's senior generals face now is not entirely new. The Soviet Union's exit strategy in its 1980s war was also to train Afghan forces.
The Americans are acutely aware of the comparison to their Cold War foe, said U.S. Army General William Caldwell as he travelled aboard a helicopter on the outskirts of Kabul.
Below he eyed the sandy Soviet-built KMTC training ground strewn with derelict and rusted troop carriers and wreckage from the war which lost the Soviet Union 15,000 soldiers. Three years after Moscow stopped fighting in 1989, its training was halted.
"The Soviet Union built a great air force and army which was very well-equipped. But a few years later, it collapsed," said Caldwell, who has overseen all NATO training in Afghanistan for the past two years.
Caldwell said Moscow failed because its training never transitioned into being Afghan-led, eventually paving the way for the Taliban's rise to power in 1996.
But Russians argue that Afghanistan's internal instability and an equipment and cash vacuum were to blame, a scenario that could play out again when NATO's soldiers leave.
"In 1992 we refused to keep supporting Afghanistan, and literally within a month we saw a total collapse of the Afghan army. Generals became mujahedeen, or ran away," said Yegor Engelgard, an expert on political Islam at Moscow Defence Brief, a specialist publication.
"You can keep training, but how stable they will be as a force is a big question. I just don't see how this regime will be maintained if the Americans stop logistical support."
(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Ed Lane)
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News November 2, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is warning that there will not be any hope for peace in his country without help from its neighbors in fighting terror groups.
Mr. Karzai told diplomats at an international conference's in Turkey Wednesday that terrorist networks still are a major threat to Afghanistan's security. He said that groups conducting what he called a “merciless campaign of destruction” inside Afghanistan continue to have sanctuaries outside the country.
The Afghan leader has joined representatives from some 20 countries and aid agency members in Istanbul for a one-day summit focusing on Afghanistan's security and economic development as foreign troops prepare to leave the country in the coming years.
Mr. Karzai's comments come a day after a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, in which they discussed a joint investigation into the murder of Afghan peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani in September.
Mr. Karzai has regularly urged Pakistan to do more against militants. U.S. and Afghan officials accuse Islamabad of sheltering and supporting insurgents, including the Haqqani network blamed for Rabbani's death — a claim the Pakistani government strongly denies.
France, Germany, Iran and India are some of the countries taking part in the conference.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Wednesday that countries have an obligation to contribute to Afghanistan's peace, stability, security and wealth. He says such cooperation is necessary for the “sake of our common interests.”
The summit in Istanbul is expected to lay the groundwork for the way forward in Afghanistan. International combat troops are set to complete their withdrawal from the country and transfer full security control to their Afghan counterparts by the end of 2014.
There are more than 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, most from the United States.
Afghanistan is a proxy war between India and Pakistan
When Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai visited New Delhi earlier last month to sign a strategic partnership deal, he quickly reassured Islamabad it remained Kabul's most important partner.
Telegraph.co.uk By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor 02 Nov 2011
"Pakistan is our twin brother, India is a great friend. The agreement we signed with our friend will not affect our brother," he explained.
India and Afghanistan's problem is that Pakistan doesn't agree. It sees India's involvement in Afghanistan as a threat to its 'strategic depth', a concept in which Afghanistan is acknowledged as Pakistan's backyard in which India has no right to hang out with its great friend.
The fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 allowed India to expand its influence in Afghanistan dramatically. Its engineers and IT specialists poured in as part of its most ambitious aid package – worth more than $1.5 billion – to build remote mountain roads, establish telephone, internet, and satellite links and reopen schools and hospitals. Washington encouraged India's involvement and believed it could use the soft power of its popular Bollywood film industry and other cultural links to encourage tolerance and pluralism in the country.
For India, which had been frozen out under the Taliban regime as a supporter of the Northern Alliance's warlords, Afghanistan holds the keys to the Central Asian mineral and energy reserves it needs to sustain its rapid economic growth. To that end, and to increase its chances of gaining access to Afghanistan's own rich reserves of iron ore, India has pledged another half a billion dollars in aid.
Afghanistan is keen to encourage India in this: it doesn't want Pakistan to be its sole customs guard or jailer, and it has seen how vindictive its twin can be. When India's Kabul embassy was blown up by a suicide bomber in 2008, killing 41, including India's defence attaché, American officials said they had evidence that members of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service had been involved in the plot. Just over a year later they struck again, killing 17.
A few months later Pakistani officials successfully lobbied for India to be excluded from last year's Afghanistan conference in Istanbul and for its need for 'strategic depth' to be reflected in any peace settlement for the country.
The message for India was that it could only operate successfully in Afghanistan with Pakistan's tacit approval. This message has been received loud and clear by the major Indian companies bidding to mine Afghanistan's deep mineral reserves: Should they invest heavily in rail or oil pipeline projects when their security cannot be protected from attacks by Taliban factions close to Pakistan?
So while India and Iran discuss opening a new Afghan 'silk route' which bypasses Pakistan's tightly-controlled Wagah border with India, fear of Islamabad's militant friends could still jeopardise this latest rail project and other badly needed developments.
Afghanistan is not just the front line in Nato's fight against the Taliban, but also a proxy war between India and Pakistan. Until relations really improve between the nuclear neighbours, Afghanistan will remain another of their battlegrounds – and no safe place for serious investors.
Afghan forces kill 6 insurgents
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces, during a cleanup operation in Ghazni province, 125 km south of capital city Kabul, eliminated six anti-government insurgents on Wednesday, an army officer in the province Colonel Dillawar Shah said.
"The operation launched in Zargar area outside provincial capital the Ghazni city this morning and so far six rebels have been killed," Shah told Xinhua.
There were no casualties on the troops and security forces, he said.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan government have yet to make comment.
Suicide blast wounds 2 in Afghan town
KABUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two persons sustained injuries as a suicide bomber blew himself up in Paktia province, 100 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, on Wednesday, a private television channel reported.
"A suicide bomber driving an explosive-laden car and attempted to target a security base was identified and shot dead by security forces in Paktia's provincial capital Gardez this morning," Tolo aired in its news bulletin.
However, the media outlet without revealing more details added that the bomber blew himself up before dying.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops are largely relying on suicide attacks and often carry out deadly suicide and roadside bombings.
Afghan forces to begin second-phase of security take-over from NATO
KABUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) would soon start taking over security responsibility from the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said on Wednesday.
"We are confident that Afghan National Army and police are capable enough to take the security responsibility from the international troops in the second phase of transferring security, which is expected to begin soon," Azimi told reporters here at a press conference.
However, he did not reveal the exact date for the second phase of the security transition to Afghan forces, saying President Hamid Karzai would announce the date.
The first phase of security transfer from around 130,000-strong NATO-led troops to Afghan forces began in July and has already been completed.
In the first phase of security transition, the security responsibility of seven cities and provinces including the capital city Kabul had been handed over to the Afghan side, and in the second phase, the security responsibility of 17 provinces and cities would be handed over to Afghan security forces.
With the beginning of transferring security charge from NATO- led troops to Afghan government the withdrawal of foreign troops has also begun and would be completed by the end of 2014.
Karzai rules out early resumption of Taliban talks
Reuters By Jonathon Burch and Myra MacDonald Tue Nov 1, 2011
ISTANBUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai ruled out on Tuesday an early resumption of talks with the Taliban after a summit meeting with Pakistan which appeared to yield no breakthrough on a bitter rift between the two neighbours.
Karzai's comments could undercut U.S. efforts to pick up the threads of talks ruptured by the assassination in September of Afghan peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary.
"We cannot keep talking to suicide bombers, therefore we have stopped talking about talking to the Taliban until we have an address for the Taliban ... until that day we have said we will be talking to our brothers in Pakistan to find a solution to the problem that we have," he said.
Shortly after Rabbani's assassination, Karzai had said there was no point talking to the insurgents and therefore it was best to talk directly with the Pakistanis -- accused by Afghanistan of giving the Taliban safe haven and support.
His reiteration of that comment while speaking at a news conference alongside Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari suggested that the talks hosted by Turkey in Istanbul had failed to ease tensions between Kabul and Islamabad.
Afghanistan accuses Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of supporting Taliban insurgents who have launched a string of attacks in recent months as the United States and its allies prepare to pull out most combat troops by the end of 2014.
Afghanistan has also said that Rabbani's killer was sent from the Pakistani city of Quetta, where it says some of the Taliban leadership is based.
The talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan - their first since Rabbani's assassination - were meant to smoothe the way for a broader conference on Wednesday, to which other countries including India and those with troops fighting in the 10-year Afghan war have been invited.
The United States has made clear it is still open to reaching an accord with those insurgents who are willing to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution -- though it insists it will fight them while also pursuing talks.
Pakistan has long pushed for talks with the insurgents to end the war in Afghanistan which is increasingly spilling over into Pakistani territory. Its critics accuse it of backing insurgents to extend its own influence over Afghanistan and counter rival India.
Both the United States and Pakistan have said that talks with insurgents should be an Afghan-led process. Pakistan also insists it is being used as a scapegoat for the failure of U.S.-led troops to bring stability to Afghanistan.
"The situation in the region is a very complex one ... the NATO armies, the world armies have been there for the last 10 years. If it was such an easy issue they would have solved it, the fact of the matter is that Afghanistan has always been known as the graveyard of empires," Zardari told the news conference.
"Obviously there are interest groups, obviously there are non-state actors, whenever we go three steps forward some state actor, non-state actor or some interest group moves in."
Karzai's comments, however, suggested he was in no mood to relent on his earlier assertion that Taliban talks were pointless -- though the summit was attended by the army and intelligence chiefs of Afghanistan and Pakistan along with their foreign and interior ministers.
"We have been hurt badly, our desire for peace has been either misunderstood or misused and we have learnt a lesson from the manner in which we pursued the peace process," Karzai said.
"MOVE BEYOND WORDS"
At Tuesday's talks, Afghanistan urged Pakistan to take concrete steps to curb Islamist militants who it said were a threat to both countries.
Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin told reporters the two neighbours had been trying for several years to build trust "but I think we have failed to see results on the ground."
"So we are at a stage where we need to move beyond words, beyond expressions of commitments. We need to get to a stage where we actually do concrete things that will address our concerns with regards to our security," he said.
Ludin said Islamabad's cooperation was vital to the security of Afghanistan but also to Pakistan, which has also faced a wave of bombings by the Pakistani Taliban.
"So the message we are really bringing today is to tell Pakistan, 'Look, you're not doing us a favour by helping with bringing peace and security to Afghanistan ... It's a question of peace and security in Pakistan that's also suffering at the hands of terrorism.'"
Islamabad, which denies supporting the Taliban, has complained in turn that insurgents from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, have been using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch attacks in Pakistan.
Ludin also said Afghanistan wanted Pakistan to deal with the Haqqani network -- a powerful insurgent group which says it owes allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, but has traditionally been seen as close to the ISI.
Former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has accused the Haqqani network of acting as "a veritable arm" of the ISI and blamed it for an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul shortly before Rabbani's assassination.
Pakistan denies supporting the Haqqani network and attributes its lack of action against the group to the fact that its army is already overstretched fighting Pakistani Taliban militants and others.
A senior U.S. administration official said on Monday that Pakistani action against the Haqqani network did not necessarily need to be military.
Instead it would include "ensuring that intelligence doesn't go to the Haqqani network" and "that they don't benefit from financial resources or flow of finances."
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
Kandahar Lawmakers Urge International Forces: Don't Leave
Lawmakers fear region could be included in next phases of NATO troop pullout
VOA News November 1, 2011
Lawmakers from Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province are asking for international forces to stay put, at least for time being.
Speaking Tuesday in Kabul flanked by other members of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar, Khalid Pashtun said Monday's deadly attack in the provincial capital is proof NATO troops are still needed.
The combined assault and suicide bombing in Kandahar killed at least five people, including three security guards working for the United Nations' refugee agency. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said a U.N. agency was the target.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce which regions will be included into the second phase of the security transfer in the coming weeks. Pashtun and his colleagues from Kandahar province fear the region could be included in the next phases of the NATO troop pullout.
Kandahar remains a Taliban stronghold.
Elsewhere, two more NATO troops died in a roadside bombing Tuesday.
NATO said the troops were killed in eastern Afghanistan, but did not give any additional details.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.
Lawlessness Reigns In Tajik-Afghan Border Region
November 2, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Farangis Najibullah
Every stranger is treated with suspicion in Dashti Jum these days.
It flies in the face of Tajik tradition, but residents of this southern village along the border with Afghanistan feel their caution is justified. Dashti Jum is one of a handful of communities in the district of Shuroobod with a well-deserved reputation for lawlessness.
The sound of gunfire -- rumored to be between border guards and drug smugglers encroaching from Afghanistan -- surprises no one. Young men are employed as drug mules, often landing them in prison, and abductions of local residents and livestock thefts by smugglers are frequent occurrences.
Officials claim some residents collaborate with Afghan drug dealers and they call on villagers to cooperate with authorities to restore law and order.
But villagers blame authorities for doing too little to exert control in the region.
"No one would cross the border if it were properly watched," says Nazokat, a local housewife who provides only her first name. "Policing the border is the state authorities' responsibility. They should put sufficient number of troops there."
Colonel Qadamsho Khushqadamov, who heads border troops serving under the State Committee for National Security in the district, declines to provide figures but insists that an "adequate number of border guards are deployed in the area."
The military is also involved, with new barracks recently erected in Shuroobod to house troops to be used in case of emergency, Khushqadamov explains. District police are stationed at a central headquarters, with some villages equipped with small police posts.
But despite their numbers, the odds are stacked against law and order.
Stolen Humans, Livestock, And Walnuts
Located along a 150-kilometer stretch defined by the Panj River, the district of Shuroobod is among the most porous sections of Tajikistan's 1,344-kilometer frontier with Afghanistan. Its mountainous terrain and proximity to Afghanistan make it uniquely suitable as a drug route, with many remote roads neglected since the Soviet era, making them inaccessible to all but the most determined.
Colonel Khushqadamov admits that his forces lack a crucial tool in the effort to keep watch on the border: a helicopter.
Davlat Safarov, a retired border guard from the village of Qavoq, says the area has become a virtual no-man's land over the past two decades.
"It feels like about 12 villages here are under Afghan [drug dealers'] control," Safarov says. "They kidnap people, steal livestock -- they even stole our neighbor's walnuts."
There are no reliable kidnapping statistics, but at least five cases have been documented this year. One involved the disappearance of a young woman whose family received a telephone call from an Afghan number informing them that she had been made a bride and would not be returning home. Local authorities have reported securing the release of four men kidnapped in separate incidents by armed groups of men who entered from Afghanistan.
In May, around 80 cows from a state-owned farm were stolen, according to district prosecutor Ghiyosiddin Umarov.
Desperate Measures
Pervasive kidnappings prompted residents of the village of Qavoq to take matters into their own hands by expelling a 72-year-old man from the village in the belief that his sons were linked to drug smugglers.
"That's not the way to tackle the problem," says Askarsho Navruzov, district chief of the State Committee for National Security.
He says community involvement is key helping establish law and order. "We have hot lines in each village for people who want to cooperate with authorities in this fight, to anonymously pass information," he says.
He says Tajik officials believe that some locals collaborate with narcotic smugglers, adding that authorities look for such connections when investigating kidnappings. As a preventive measure, he says, officials meet with local residents to explain the dangers of the getting involved in the drug trade. In addition, a reward of 1000 somonis (roughly $210) has been offered for locals who provide useful information about drug smugglers.
Dozens of residents of border areas have been imprisoned in recent years for illegally crossing the border to Afghanistan and smuggling narcotics back to Tajikistan.
Husnigul Qurbonova, a housewife from Qavoq, is among those who are open about the problem. She says her three brothers are currently serving prison sentences after being detained with drugs.
"Every family in Qavoq has at least one or two relative serving time in prison for assisting drug dealers," Qurbonova says.
Complex Problem
Retired border guard Safarov agrees that kidnappings and drug smuggling are "very much connected, and should be dealt with together."
But he also suggests that poverty and a lack of jobs in the impoverished region have made many villagers easy targets for Afghan drug smugglers seeking to recruit couriers.
"This problem initially begun during the Tajik civil war [in the1990s] when nobody was paying attention," Safarov says. "Drug smugglers use secret pathways, they come in donkeys through minefields. Some locals know that very well. If they had cooperated with authorities and passed the information, this problem would have been resolved quite easily."
"But people are afraid," Safarov says. "On one hand, they are being kidnapped by drug dealers; on the other hand, the authorities treat them with suspicion. There is no trust."
RFE/RL Tajik Service correspondent Abdumumin Sherkhonov contributed to this report
U.S. Blocks Assets Of Captured Haqqani Chief
November 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The U.S. State Department says it is blacklisting a captured commander of the Haqqani insurgent network.
The move identifies Haqqani commander Mali Khan as a specially-designated global terrorist and blocks any assets he may have in U.S. jurisdictions.
The State Department said in a statement that all assets "subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Mali Khan has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with him."
Under the move, Americans are also banned from providing Khan with material support.
Khan was captured in September during a joint NATO-Afghan operation in Afghanistan's southeastern in Paktiya province.
The Haqqani network is widely believed to have been involved in the assassination in September of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was heading the country's reconciliation body -- the High Peace Council.
It is also thought to have been complicit in a June attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul in which 12 people were killed.
compiled from agency reports
U.S. should talk to Afghan neighbors before Taliban: Kissinger
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. should first negotiate with the neighboring countries of Afghanistan before it holds talks with Taliban which is aimed to bring it into the political process, former U.S. State Secretary Henry Kissinger said on Tuesday.
"I have no objection in principle to negotiating with the Taliban," Kissinger said at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center. "But for the purpose of ending the war, it's the wrong sequence of events."
"The first negotiation in my view ought to be with surrounding countries," he said, referring to Pakistan, India and Iran and so on.
"If there is a negotiation with the Taliban, it should be in the framework of a multilateral regional negotiation," he said.
The Obama administration has decided to pull out U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2014. analysts argued that the Taliban, given the fixed timeline, will simply adopt the strategy of "waiting it out."
"If you negotiate while your forces are withdrawing, you're not in a great negotiating position," Kissinger noted.
But he also admitted that there is not going to be sufficient public support in the U.S. if the war in Afghanistan stretches beyond the 2014 deadline.
"We selected objectives beyond the capacity of the American domestic consensus to support over the period required to implement them," said Kissinger, citing the U.S. military interventions in Korean peninsular, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Evidence Points to US Soldier's Hand in Afghan Atrocities
VOA News November 2, 2011 Luis Ramirez
McChord US Military Base - Prosecutors presented photographs Tuesday in the court martial of U.S. Army soldier Calvin Gibbs they say show he had a direct hand in alleged atrocities against Afghan civilians last year.
Tuesday was the second day of testimony in the court martial of Calvin Gibbs. The 26-year-old staff sergeant faces three counts of murder in addition to 13 other charges. He faces life in prison without parole, if convicted.
Gibbs, a former squad leader, is accused of masterminding and leading his platoon to carry out the killings of unarmed Afghan villagers in Kandahar province and staging them to appear like combat deaths. His attorney argues that Gibbs was betrayed by his comrades, who he alleges acted by their own will.
On the stand for a second day was chief prosecution witness Jeremy Morlock, once Gibbs' right hand man in the platoon the staff sergeant headed. He testified that Gibbs spotted a victim at random, tossed a grenade, ordered Morlock and another soldier to shoot the man, then himself shot the man to make sure he was dead. Morlock said Gibbs then planted a hand grenade next to the Afghan victim, to make it appear that the man had tried to attack the U.S. soldiers.
Gibbs' attorney denied his client shot the man, and called Morlock's testimony into question by casting doubt on his accounts of where the man had been shot. Prosecutors then presented a photo of the man's corpse shot in the back of the head, as Morlock had testified.
Tuesday's testimony included more gory accounts of the atrocities allegedly committed by Gibbs, with the five members of the military panel trying the case being shown photos of bloody and mutilated corpses and severed fingers.
Among the other witnesses who testified Tuesday was Alexander Christy, a medic with Gibbs' platoon who described seeing Gibbs hunch over the corpse of an Afghan teenager and, using a pair of shears, cut off the boy's finger as a keepsake.
The medic said Gibbs taunted him for refusing to do the amputation. He described yet another disturbing scene of Gibbs playing with the boy's body, moving its arms and mouth like a puppet.
At the end of the day, there was testimony from another platoon member who described how Gibbs led him and others to beat a soldier who they suspected was telling on them. The witness said Gibbs tried to intimidate the soldier by rolling out two severed fingers and threatening to kill him if he informed anyone of what the platoon was doing.
The case is alleged to be the worst atrocity committed by U.S. troops in the Afghan conflict. Nine platoon members have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and two others are awaiting courts martial.
No senior commanders above Gibbs have been tried or disciplined in the case.
Cash flows, but can Afghan training legacy last?
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman Tue Nov 1, 2011
KABUL - As over a thousand Afghan army graduates raise both palms to their faces in prayer standing under blazing sunshine, one of the country's most experienced generals surveys them with a mixture of pride and trepidation.
Lined up on a stretch of cement next to rows of green duffel bags, the graduates are the latest addition to a force expected to secure most of the country by the end of 2014, when foreign combat forces are due to leave.
Amlaqullah Patyani, a tall moustachioed general in charge of all Afghan army training, fears a bumpy road ahead even for his most courageous recruits.
"We have no clue how to operate the weapons that NATO gives us. And even if we did, will the weapons keep coming after 2014?" he asked Reuters at the ceremony, raising a key question about the sustainability of expensive Western efforts to build up Afghan security forces.
One example given by recruits is the complex computer system used to operate Stryker armoured fighting vehicles that cost around $4 million (2 million pounds) each. Many new recruits assigned to master the system lack basic numeral skills and are unable to read the Latin script used inside.
But NATO is racing against the clock to train Afghanistan's police and army forces expected to reach 350,000-strong in order to take over fighting in an increasingly violent war, a project seen as crucial for the country to battle insurgents on its own.
RECORD SPENDING ON TRAINING
The United States poured in a record amount, near $12 billion between October 2010 and September 2011, to train and equip Afghanistan's security forces. Almost as much cash, some $11 billion, is planned for the year through September 2012.
But with all the money, and over 130,000 foreign troops in the country, the mission is missing hundreds of trainers.
The 1,810-strong training force says it has commitments for another 510 troops "in the near future", and is also trying to recruit another 480 mentors -- suggesting around one-third of posts are currently open.
But finding the right skills has almost nothing to do with how much money there is or how many soldiers are in the country, NATO training mission officials say.
Air force trainers are especially needed, as are finding volunteers or spare personnel with the patience and other skills needed to mould raw and sometimes illiterate recruits into military professionals.
But senior U.S. military officials admit that money has not always been spent in the wisest ways.
"We have received an awful lot of money from the U.S. government. We need to use it differently now," said U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller, deputy commander for programs and resources within the NATO training mission.
Another U.S. official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the mission was buying up high-tech equipment to satisfy Washington, while more basic needs were ignored.
The mismatch between skills and high-tech equipment has even prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to make a plea for a focus on sustainable training.
"This could get problematic," said Major General Aminullah Karim, who oversees the army's education and training.
"We need the training to be completely Afghan-led and a success. And there must be enough NATO mentors for this," he told Reuters at the sprawling Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) just outside the capital.
NATO and Afghan officials envision the 350,000 strong force as being roughly divided equally between the army and police, though analysts say the police are becoming a paramilitary force who do not protect civilians from the scourge of daily crime.
SUSTAINABLE FUNDING
Longer term, there are questions about how much the West will stump up for Afghanistan's army. The Afghan government hopes vast copper and iron ore mines will one day pay its bills, but they are in very early stages of development and will not bear fruit for years.
Afghanistan's Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in October that a full Afghan national security force including army and police would cost about $5 billion a year.
But sources later said that Western powers are contemplating funding a security force smaller than the envisaged 350,000 men, as they grapple with shrinking government budgets at home.
AVOIDING A SOVIET REPEAT
The scenario Afghanistan's senior generals face now is not entirely new. The Soviet Union's exit strategy in its 1980s war was also to train Afghan forces.
The Americans are acutely aware of the comparison to their Cold War foe, said U.S. Army General William Caldwell as he travelled aboard a helicopter on the outskirts of Kabul.
Below he eyed the sandy Soviet-built KMTC training ground strewn with derelict and rusted troop carriers and wreckage from the war which lost the Soviet Union 15,000 soldiers. Three years after Moscow stopped fighting in 1989, its training was halted.
"The Soviet Union built a great air force and army which was very well-equipped. But a few years later, it collapsed," said Caldwell, who has overseen all NATO training in Afghanistan for the past two years.
Caldwell said Moscow failed because its training never transitioned into being Afghan-led, eventually paving the way for the Taliban's rise to power in 1996.
But Russians argue that Afghanistan's internal instability and an equipment and cash vacuum were to blame, a scenario that could play out again when NATO's soldiers leave.
"In 1992 we refused to keep supporting Afghanistan, and literally within a month we saw a total collapse of the Afghan army. Generals became mujahedeen, or ran away," said Yegor Engelgard, an expert on political Islam at Moscow Defence Brief, a specialist publication.
"You can keep training, but how stable they will be as a force is a big question. I just don't see how this regime will be maintained if the Americans stop logistical support."
(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Ed Lane)
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