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U.S. Explores Faster Afghan Handover
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS And JULIAN E. BARNES NOVEMBER 3, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is exploring a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan to an advisory role as soon as next year, senior officials said, a move that would scale back U.S. combat duties well ahead of their scheduled conclusion at the end of 2014.
Such a move would have broad implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. It could begin a phase-out of the current troop-intensive approach, which focuses on protecting the Afghan population, in favor of a greater focus on targeted counterterrorism operations, as well as training the Afghan military.
A transition to a training mission could also allow for a faster drawdown of U.S. forces in the country, though officials said discussions about troop levels have yet to move forward.
The revised approach has been discussed in recent high-level meetings involving top defense and administration officials, according to people involved in the deliberations. No decisions have been made, officials said, and policy makers could consider other options that would adjust the mission in other ways, officials said.
Officials said agreement on a formal shift to an advisory role could come as early as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in May—in the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Some officials have drawn comparisons to President Barack Obama's 2009 decision to switch to an "advise and assist" role in Iraq and to declare a formal end to U.S. combat operations there. In Iraq, after mid-2009, troops were largely confined to their bases.
Security conditions in Afghanistan are different, however, and will likely require U.S. troops, particularly Special Operations forces, to continue to accompany their Afghan counterparts into battle after the U.S. takes an advisory role.
Defense officials said the U.S. still would be directly involved in many combat operations, though increasingly with Afghan forces in the lead.
"It's not like we'regoing to move to train, advise and assist and just let the Afghans do everything on their own and we're not fighting bad guys," a senior official said.
It would be wrong, the official said, to think the U.S. was now considering "ending the war in Afghanistan earlier than expected."
Although discussions about changing the mission are in the early stages, their urgency is growing ahead of the NATO summit, to be held in Chicago, Mr. Obama's hometown.
The U.S. and its allies hope to use the summit to flesh out their withdrawal plans, U.S. officials said. At a NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010, the U.S. and its allies backed plans to hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
For Mr. Obama, the political stakes are growing. There has been a sharp decline in domestic political support for the Afghan war amid a weak economy and mounting fiscal woes. A change in the mission at the NATO summit would come at the height of the 2012 campaign, in which some of Mr. Obama's Republican challengers have called for winding down the war in Afghanistan.
When Mr. Obama came to office in January 2009, there were just over 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He quickly added 21,000 more.
In a lengthy strategy review later that year, military leaders requested 40,000 additional troops to support a counterinsurgency campaign, a troop-intensive approach.
Vice President Joe Biden and others argued that a large troop buildup could be counterproductive, and instead advocated a campaign emphasizing strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. But Mr. Obama in December 2009 authorized a surge of 33,000 troops, which allowed commanders to step up the counterinsurgency campaign. He has said he would withdraw those surge troops by the end of next summer.
The recent discussions reflect ambivalence within the administration over whether the counterinsurgency approach was merited.
Some administration officials privately argued that it was too costly and unrealistic, compared to a counterterrorism strategy that relies more heavily on using Special Operations forces to hunt down and kill militants, rather than deploying large numbers of forces in a "hearts-and-minds" campaign.
One official described the shift being considered as a change in focus—as opposed to an end to counterinsurgency. Training local forces, defense officials noted, is part of counterinsurgency operations.
"We are doing more training and assistance right now. We are doing more and more each month.It is the normal maturation of [the Afghans] going in the lead," a defense official said.
One of the perils of such a transition is that the Afghan security forces have long been seen as incapable of handling the security role now managed by the U.S. and its NATO partners.
But some officials say the administration now sees the goal of building a perfect Afghan force by 2014 as no longer attainable, and is looking for a force that is "good enough" to keep the Taliban from overtaking the country.
In anticipation of changes in the U.S. troop posture, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. John Allen, is pushing to begin giving Afghan forces the lead in some areas of Afghanistan where the fighting is fierce. Doing so would test Afghan fighting skills before the U.S. withdrawal makes it more difficult for the U.S. to provide them with sufficient backup.
Congressional officials briefed on the discussions said Gen. Allen's accelerated transition plan would provide a test of the drawdown schedule.
"Frankly, if we're going to have fewer troops in Afghanistan in a year or two, then you might as well do it now while we have enough troops to bail them out when they screw up," one official said.
Many top military officials are reluctant to pull out quickly and want to keep as many troops on the ground and in combat in Afghanistan as long as the White House will allow it.
But some military officials have begun to question the common wisdom at the Pentagon.
These officials argue the U.S. military has been too slow to hand off the lead in combat operations to the Afghans, relying on more capable U.S. and NATO troops.
"The large number of Americans that are present right now, in a perverse way, is keeping the Afghans from being moved more rapidly into the lead of this fight," said David Barno, a former top commander in Afghanistan who just returned from a visit to the country.
The White House has yet to decide what the U.S. presence in Afghanistan will look like after 2014. Preliminary discussions include how many troops would be needed to protect the U.S. embassy and consulates around the country after the bulk of the forces withdraw.
The question confronting the administration is whether to follow the Iraq model, where Mr. Obama last month decided to fully withdraw U.S. forces, or opt to keep some troops in place to conduct counterterrorism operations alongside the Afghans longer term. —Maria Abi-Habib contributed to this article.
7 killed in attack on NATO contractor office in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Seven people, including five attackers, were killed Thursday when insurgents attacked a local contractor office building in Herat city, the provincial capital of Herat province, 640 km west of Afghan capital of Kabul.
"At around 9:30 a.m. local time Thursday five terrorists attacked a trade company in Guzara district of Herat city near Herat airport. Two terrorists exploded an explosive-laden car, killing two security guards on the spot," Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement.
It did not provide details on the company, however, local media reports said the firm is a local company named ESKO which provides logistical support for NATO-led forces in the province.
Without mentioning the exact number, the statement said the assailants took hostage some people inside the compound for a short time.
"Three attackers were killed by police inside the compound and all hostages were released safely," the statement said, adding two security guards and a policeman were injured in the attack.
The statement blamed "the enemies of Afghanistan," a term often used by officials to refer to Taliban insurgents.
Over 3,800 Italian troops have been serving in Herat province within the framework of 130,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced the spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The militant group warned people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Taliban insurgents carried out a coordinated attack on an UN compound in southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Monday, killing six people including three local UN staff.
Two Guards Killed in Attack on NATO Contractor
VOA News November 3, 2011
Unknown insurgents killed two Afghan security guards in an attack on a compound housing NATO contractors in Afghanistan's western Herat province.
Thursday's attack began with a suicide car bombing outside the offices of Monaco-based ES-KO. Gunmen then stormed the offices and launched an hours-long gunbattle with Afghan security forces.
NATO said it provided air and ground assistance in response to the attack, which took place near its regional headquarters in the area. Several people were wounded in the assault, while all five attackers were either shot dead or died in the initial explosion.
ES-KO's website says the company has provided food services to coalition forces in Afghanistan and built a runway at Herat's airport near where Thursday's attack took place.
NATO began transferring security responsibility in Herat's provincial capital to Afghan forces in July.
All 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.
In a similar attack Monday, a suicide bomber blew up a car near offices used by the United Nations refugee agency in the southern city Kandahar. Three gunmen then rushed into the area, sparking a gun battle. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the combined attack, which killed five people, including three U.N. employees.
25 Taliban insurgents killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces during operations have killed 25 Taliban insurgents in different Afghan provinces over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan Army and ISAF ( International Security Assistance Force) forces in 14 joint operations over the past 24 hours in Kabul, Heart, Nangarhar, Kandahar, Paktia, Helmand and Khost provinces have killed 25 Taliban insurgents," the ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement joint force also captured five armed militants during the same operations besides seizing a handful of weapons and ammunitions.
Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1, have yet to make comments.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces keep up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 290 insurgents had been killed and around 430 detained by joint forces in October alone, according the Afghan interior ministry.
U.S. spy aircraft kills 3 in NW Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. spy aircraft fired three missiles into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region on Thursday and killed at least three people, local media reported.
The missiles struck a house at Dande Darpakhel, a border area along with Afghanistan in North Waziristan, Geo TV reported.
The house was also destroyed in the attack.
It was not immediately known whom was killed in the strike.
The U.S. unmanned aircraft routinely fire missiles into Waziristan tribal area as American officials claimed that the militants launch cross-border attacks from the region into Afghanistan. Local tribesmen said that members of the Haqqani network had been living in Dande Darpakhel area for years but all had left the region as the result of military operation in 2005.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former Afghan Jehadi commander and father of Sirajuddin Haqqani, had established religious schools in the area during the 1979-89 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan is under U.S. pressure to launch major operation against the Haqqani network, blamed for attacks on U.S. embassy in Kabul and a truck bomb attack on an U.S. military base in Maidan Wardak province in September.
It was the 5th strike in Waziristan tribal region in a week.
On Monday, a U.S. pilotless drone killed at least 4 people in North Waziristan. Also On Sunday, a U.S. spy aircraft fired six missiles on a house in the same region and killed at least 6 people. At least ten people, including two Taliban commanders, were killed in both strikes in South and North Waziristan on Thursday.
The U.S. has stepped up drone strikes in recent days despite strong opposition by the Pakistani Government. Opposition groups said that former President Pervez Musharraf had allowed U.S. drone strike, but he denied the claim and insists that he had allowed only monitoring the movement of suspected militants.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said last week that no permission had been granted to the United States to launch drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan.
Hundreds of tribesmen from Waziristan staged a rally in Islamabad on Friday and called for immediate halt to the American drone strikes in the tribal regions. They said that innocent people were killed in the strikes.
Russia offers to aid U.S. anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan
MOSCOW, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Russia said Thursday it is willing to use its satellites to assist U.S. anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan.
"We would like to offer the American side our satellite capabilities to draw a map of the drug plantation in Afghanistan," Victor Ivanon, head of Russia's Federal Anti-drug Service, told the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.
He said Russia is ready to cooperate in fighting Afghan drug trafficking within the framework of the Russia-NATO Council and Russia-U.S. bilateral presidential commission.
The Russian official also urged the West not to ideologize the Afghan drug issue, and to fight all drug lords regardless of their connections with Taliban.
Ivanov also said the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since NATO sent troops to that country.
"Regrettably, the results are deplorable. Drug production rose over 40 times. The humanitarian disaster and enormous unemployment have created the environment for drug production and trafficking," he said.
McManus: What about Afghanistan?
Foreign policy is getting short shrift in a year dominated by economic concerns.
Los Angeles Times By Doyle McManus November 3, 2011
Republicans usually enter a presidential campaign with a built-in advantage on at least one issue: national security. Historically, voters trust the GOP to be tougher than Democrats on defense and foreign policy.
Not this time. President Obama has robbed the Republican Party of its usual foreign policy edge, thanks to his surprisingly enthusiastic prosecution of the war against terrorism. The death of Osama bin Laden in May didn't give Obama much of a bump in opinion polls overall; unluckily for the president, the economy is still the overriding issue in voters' minds. But that doesn't mean voters didn't notice. A recent AP-GfK poll found a wide swing between voters' appraisals of Obama on domestic and foreign issues: Only 40% approved of his performance on the economy, but 64% approved of his actions on terrorism, and roughly half approved of his conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
That has left Republican candidates for president without clear territory of their own on foreign policy and defense. In effect they have replied: Yes, but we'd be tougher — tougher on terrorism, tougher on China and tougher on Iran.
"If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today," Mitt Romney said in a speech last month. "An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender."
But what would a President Romney, a President Perry or a President Cain actually do to carry out the promise of a stronger America? Even Romney, who has issued a 43-page "white paper" on national security, hasn't been very specific — except on one issue: more defense spending.
The former Massachusetts governor has promised to reverse what he calls Obama's "massive defense cuts." But there's a problem with that approach: Obama actually increased defense spending during his first three years in office, and the cuts he has proposed in future spending — $400 billion over 12 years — amount to roughly 5% of projected national security spending for that period.
Romney says he wants to increase military spending and establish a "floor" of 4% of gross domestic product, a proposal that came out of the George W. Bush administration. (Current defense spending is about 3.8% of GDP, not counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) But how would Romney pay for more defense spending during a time of austerity? He hasn't said.
Romney's rivals for the nomination — with the notable exceptions of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has called for genuinely massive cuts, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has said defense cuts should at least be considered — have mostly fallen in line, echoing his call for more military spending
But on other national security issues, the Republicans have been far less clear.
Take Afghanistan, a war that's in its 10th year. The GOP candidates have found an easy comfort zone in criticizing Obama for setting a deadline of 2014 for handing off security to the Afghans and for beginning the drawdown of U.S. forces next summer. Announcing a date for the U.S. departure, they say, has encouraged the Taliban and its Pakistani allies to wait us out.
But the Republicans haven't proposed serious alternatives, nor have they addressed many of the tough questions in Afghanistan: How long would they stay, and with how many troops? Would they engage in negotiations with the Taliban, to see if a deal could be cut? And how would they persuade Pakistan, a putative U.S. ally, to stop sheltering and supporting Taliban factions, perhaps the single biggest reason the war has not been won?
Romney has urged taking a tough line with Pakistan on its support of Afghan insurgents, but he hasn't said how. And if the other candidates have formulated coherent positions on how to move forward in the region, they haven't expressed them.
When Perry was asked about Pakistan last month, he delivered a rambling and incoherent response that questioned, among other things, why the U.S. hadn't sold upgraded fighter planes to India and Taiwan. And Herman Cain seemed to dismiss the importance of foreign policy altogether when he famously said it didn't matter whether he knew anything about "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan."
"How's that going to create one job?" he asked.
The Republican candidates have been tough on China, but there too they have been vague — plenty of attitude but not much policy. Again, Romney is the exception: He's said he'd impose punitive tariffs on imports from China on his first day in office to retaliate against China's policy of keeping its currency artificially cheap. (Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, said that was a bad idea because the Chinese would quickly retaliate. "You're going to find yourself in a trade war," he warned.)
On Iran, the Republicans have slammed Obama for failing to stop the Islamic regime's nuclear program, but again they haven't offered any new ideas. (Romney's one strange offering was to call for the indictment of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — presumably by the International Criminal Court, which most Republicans don't like — for saying Israel should be "wiped off the map.")
So far, the Republicans running for president have focused their campaigns on only one part of the national agenda: the domestic economy. They've been running for tax-cutter in chief and budget-cutter in chief — but not commander in chief.
That's understandable in a year when the economy is the voters' overriding concern. But commander in chief is a big part of the job. Voters deserve to know what these would-be presidents would do in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how they'd act toward China and Iran. The candidates haven't told them much yet. It's time they did.
Istanbul Conference Pledges Support For Afghanistan
November 2, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Dorian Jones
ISTANBUL -- All of Afghanistan's neighbors and Western powers were represented at a one-day conference in Turkey, with delegates committing to cooperate and work together to help develop the volatile country.
Heavy on good intentions but light on detail, the agreement was intended to be show of unity for Afghanistan as its security forces take on greater responsibility and as international forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said the so-called "Istanbul Process" was driven by his country's needs and represented an important step for the region.
Rasul described it as "a process that will allow the countries in the heart of the Asian region to implement important confidence-building measures toward a more effective, broader, and deeper regional cooperation that promotes security, stability, and economic development in our region."
Delegations endorsed the pledge to protect Afghanistan's "sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity," and promised cooperation on the dismantling of "terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens."
Countries represented were from Afghanistan's immediate neighborhood, from the greater region, and from the West, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the United States. Delegates from as NATO, the EU, and the UN also were in attendance.
Reaching Out To Pakistan
In a speech to the delegates, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns hailed the day's pledges as "the first clear, region-wide statement of support for Afghanistan in this time of transition and reconciliation."
He said regional powers had often acted "in ways that make things worse," instead of cooperating to solve problems.
Burns' comments were at least in part a reference to Pakistan, which both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly accused of providing tacit if not direct support to the Taliban insurgency and undermining Afghan security.
Islamabad rejects those charges.
As the delegates also pledged support for efforts toward a political solution to the war in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to help facilitate negotiations with the Taliban.
"The peace process will not succeed unless we are able to get the top leadership of the Taliban based in Pakistan to join us," Karzai said.
"Our hope is that with the help from our brothers in Pakistan, we will manage to wean away the Taliban leadership from some of the long-established networks of support they enjoy outside Afghanistan and integrate them into the peace process."
Alistair Burt, Britain's minister of state for the Middle East and South Asia, also insisted that successful Afghan-Pakistani cooperation is crucial for regional stability.
"They both have a vested interest in dealing with the scourge of terrorism and we believe they both have a vested interest in making sure that those who can abide by the conditions set out by President Karzai for inclusion in political process should come back into that political process," Burt said.
Talking Taliban
The Istanbul conference comes one day after Turkish President Abdullah Gul hosted both Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, during which the leaders attempted to ease tensions following last month's assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Kabul has accused Islamabad of being behind the Taliban suicide bombing that killed Rabbani, a charge Islamabad denies.
The November 1 meeting produced a commitment by Karzai and Zardari to open a joint investigation into the assassination, establishing the air of cooperation that carried over to the conference.
While Karzai said the door was closed for now on talks with the Taliban, his foreign minister expressed optimism that negotiation would be possible.
"We know that there are people among the Taliban and others that are willing to have peace under the conditions that we have proposed to you," Rasul said. "I am confident and optimistic [that we can] achieve a peace process."
Regional Interconnectivity
The agreement also commits countries in Afghanistan's region not to act against another through a third party -- a point observers say could be a reference to Islamabad's concerns over Kabul turning to its regional rival, India.
In addressing the delegates, Karzai explicitly mentioned the signing last month of a strategic partnership with India, describing it as of historical importance.
The conference also saw commitments made in the areas of in trade, education, and communication.
Afghanistan and its Western backers are attempting to bolster support for the "New Silk Road" initiative, which seeks to establish regional trade and transportation network that would run through Afghanistan.
The hope is that increasing economic ties and prosperity will promote regional cooperation, make the country less dependent on foreign assistance, and counter the pull of extremism.
While the past two days in Istanbul resulted in broad pledges of support and set the stage for further cooperation at an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, next month, observers point to one real measure of success.
That is, whether or not the Turkish meetings will bring about a thaw in what most say is the region's most crucial relationship -- that between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hands off Afghanistan, nations agree in security pact
The Globe and Mail Graeme Smith Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011
ISTANBUL - More than a dozen countries in the volatile region around Afghanistan have reached a security agreement that emphasizes non-interference in the troubled country’s affairs, in a diplomatic push to prevent proxy wars and state partition as NATO troops withdraw.
The Istanbul Protocol commits signatories to protect Afghanistan’s “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity,” and promises co-operation on the dismantling of “terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens.”
Such promises are less notable than the list of countries that pledged agreement, which reads like a who’s who of regional rivals for influence in Afghanistan. Delegations that adopted the protocol included Pakistan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates.
Copies of the agreement given journalists did not include a signature from Uzbekistan, initially touted as a member of the regional group, but no Uzbek officials were available to comment.
Still, the deal reached at an ornate hall on the waterfront in Istanbul on Wednesday was touted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns as the “first, clear, region-wide” statement of support from Afghanistan’s neighbourhood.
The focus of the agreement was clearly to prevent outsiders from meddling in Afghanistan during the sensitive transition period that started in recent months as the United States began withdrawing soldiers from the country. Those withdrawals are scheduled to accelerate, removing perhaps a quarter of the 130,000 international troops by the end of next year.
Some delegations to the Istanbul summit expressed worry that the withdrawals could result in civil war, or even the breakup of Afghanistan, and the meeting’s final agreement reflected those concerns: The document makes several mentions of “indivisible security,” “territorial integrity,” and similar phrases. Most importantly, signatories pledged “non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states.”
Such a non-intervention pact had been championed earlier this year by Karl Inderfurth, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia, in a briefing paper that envisioned Pakistan and India promising “not to seek a military presence in Afghanistan or to use Afghan soil to undermine the other.”
Neither country made such a specific promise at the Istanbul conference, but they did speak in general terms about allowing Afghanistan to chart its own path. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, mentioned her country’s respect for Afghan sovereignty during her opening remarks to the conference on Tuesday morning, and that comment was quickly singled out for praise by Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who appeared at the conference on behalf of the European Union foreign policy team.
Some members of the Pakistani delegation appeared to resent the emphasis on sovereignty, seeing it as another way of repeating the widespread accusation that Islamabad supports Taliban insurgents. In an interview on Monday evening, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that if the United States feels so strongly about ensuring respect for sovereignty in the region, then it should reconsider its policy of violating Pakistani airspace with armed drones.
“Nobody wants drone attacks in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik said. “So if these 14 countries agree to respect sovereignty, the 15th should be the United States.”
The regional foreign ministers agreed to meet again in June of 2012 in Kabul, to review compliance with the protocol.
Such diplomatic efforts have had little effect in the past: The United Nations started talks about non-interference across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1982; an agreement was finally reached at Geneva in 1988, on the eve of Soviet troop withdrawals, but the deal was largely ignored as regional powers lined up to support opposing factions in the civil war.
The possibility of that bitter history repeating itself was not lost on the delegates in Istanbul. Iran’s Foreign Minister even suggested that the recent assassination of Afghan Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani represented part of a “conspiracy” to destabilize Afghanistan.
“Iran warns against every step that could bring Afghanistan to the edge of collapse or partition,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, according to a transcript of his speech.
Tribal Truce In Eastern Afghanistan Falls Apart
November 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Abubakar Siddique
The three-year truce that the Afghan government forced on a violent land dispute in eastern Afghanistan and we described last week as "shaky" from the outset lasted just one day. While the exact casualty figures are difficult to determine, members of a Pashtun clan are said to have been killed and others injured while scores more were detained when they clashed with government troops on October 28.
The fighting came one day after young tribal fighters had vacated their respective trenches early on October 27 in the Ghani Khel region of eastern Nangarhar province. Locals had rejoiced at the development because they saw it halting a violent tribal land dispute over a government-owned plain that had claimed the lives of 100 members of the Alisher Khel and Sepah branches of the Pashtun Shinwari tribe. The impetus for the truce was a threat of military action by Nangarhar Province Governor Gul Agha Sherzai on October 25. He was apparently annoyed with holding endless jirgas, or tribal councils, with the two sides.
Independent Afghan news agency Pajhwok reported that the Sepah tribesmen returned to Ghani Khel on October 28 where the disputed plain lies south of Nangarhar's capital, Jalalabad. Aminullah Amarkhel accused them of attacking a military base where Sherzai was holding council with the military and police officials. The agency reported that two policemen were injured in the attack but government retaliation killed seven attackers. Government forces also reportedly captured 65 attackers.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan on October 29, Malik Usman Shinwari, a Sepah leader, claimed that government forces had killed 60 of their fighters and injured 80 others.
Clinton's Dubious Plan to Save Afghanistan With a 'New Silk Road'
Most analysts seem to agree that the antiquity-era trade route is never coming back, so why is it America's new favorite idea for Central Asia?
The Atlantic By Joshua Kucera Nov 2, 2011
When foreign ministers from Afghanistan, its neighbors, and several European countries meet today in Istanbul, U.S. diplomats will be pushing them to sign on to an ambitious plan for the future of Central Asia. The "New Silk Road," as the State Department is calling their strategy, would link the infrastructure -- roads, railways, power lines -- of the 'Stans of post-Soviet Central Asia southward through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. At the same time, they would work with the governments to reduce legal and bureaucratic impediments to trade, like corrupt border crossings.
The hope is that this would produce a flowering of East-West overland trade akin to the original Silk Road, by which China traded with the Middle East via Central Asian trade centers like Kashgar, Bukhara, and Samarkand. "Turkmen gas fields could help meet both Pakistan's and India's growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech outlining the vision. "Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond." (Clinton was originally scheduled to pitch her counterparts in Istanbul, but the death of her mother forced her to cancel the trip.)
But hope may be the only thing driving on the New Silk Road. The State Department has few good options in Afghanistan, and the U.S. doesn't want to leave (or at least wants to seem like they won't leave) a disaster behind once it starts pulling troops out in 2014. So it cast about for ideas and found the New Silk Road proposal, which had been bouncing around the post-Soviet think tank circuit in Washington since the mid-oughts.
The plan's architect is Fred Starr, the chair of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a small Washington, D.C. think tank, with the backing of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. State Department officials have long been wary of the plan, initially dismissing it as unworkable. But it began to gain favor last year at U.S. Central Command, and with its commander at the time, General David Petraeus. Since Marc Grossman became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, replacing the late Richard Holbrooke, the State Department has come around to support the strategy. And Clinton has appeared to embrace it as the economic foundation of the U.S.'s post-2014 strategy for Afghanistan, promoting it in her meetings last month with the presidents of three of Afghanistan's neighbors: Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The origins of the plan, however, lie in geopolitics rather than economics. In the mid-oughts, there were a variety of programs by which the U.S. tried to unite South and Central Asia, including an effort to tie together the electrical grids of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with those of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Authority for the Central Asian countries were also moved under a new State Department bureau, taking them out of the Europen bureau with the rest of the post-Soviet republics and connecting them with South Asia. What these schemes all have in common is that they attempt to weaken the economic (and as a result, political) monopoly that Russia, by dint of the centralized Soviet infrastructure, has on these countries.
As Marlene Laruelle writes in a new book, Mapping Central Asia, which includes a great chapter on the revived metaphor of the New Silk Road: "The underlying geo-economic rationales of these Roads is to exclude Moscow from new geopolitical configurations."
The State Department doesn't say this, of course, and it's possible (even likely) that the people now implementing the strategy don't think of it as such. Clinton even implied that there could be some sort of connection with the Russia-led Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus, which is the basis for Vladimir Putin's notorious Eurasian Union.
But this geopolitical vestige lives on in the current iteration of the New Silk Road. Look at a map of South and Central Asia -- ideally, one where you can see topography and the quality of roads -- and it's apparent that the most sensible way to ship goods from India west is not the northern route over the massive mountain passes and crumbling roads of Central Asia. It's the southern route, through Iran and Turkey. But, obviously, a U.S.-backed plan can't include Iran.
There are also political barriers to inter-Central Asian trade. George Gavrilis, an expert on Central Asia and borders, described them in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. Many of the countries in the region, he notes, have persistent problems with their neighbors: Pakistan with Afghanistan and India, Uzbekistan with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Trade agreements are fragile and susceptible to political difficulties; the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan was closed for 18 months following last summer's violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. More fundamentally, a region-wide strategy would be unlikely to work because the countries that surround Afghanistan -- China, Pakistan, Iran and the 'stans -- all have very different interests and little desire to cooperate with one another. "I love the idea," Gavrilis told me when I asked about the New Silk Road. "But I just don't see how it can be implemented,"
Notwithstanding the romance of the original Silk Road, Laruelle notes in her book, the geopolitical situation has changed quite a bit in the centuries since. "The border divisions of the 20th century have transformed these ancient trans-continental routes into cul-de-sacs of nation-states and no simple political will to declare a zone a 'crossroads' can suffice to influence the reality of being in the margins," she writes.
And the reason the first Silk Road died out? Sea transport became much cheaper, which is still true today. So plans, she continues, "to modify in depth the status quo of global trade, three-quarters of which is carried out by sea, by replacing it with continental trade on the pretext that, once upon a time, caravans used to travel along these routes, can not be taken seriously."
The State Department, in its public statements on the plan, highlights a handful of existing or proposed projects on which the New Silk Road could be modeled, including a free-trade agreement signed last year between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. But they give little reason for optimism. The Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement was laboriously, personally brokered by Holbrooke but has yet to be implemented, and with relations between the two countries suffering, may never actually happen.
The TAPI pipeline has been discussed since the 1990s, but as with similar schemes, insecurity in Afghanistan has scared away companies that might have the capital to build such a pipeline. With U.S. and NATO troops departing, the security situation is likely to decline even further, a problem that the plan's boosters acknowledge. "We have continued insecurity and instability in Afghanistan," Sham Bathija, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said at a recent conference in Washington on the strategy. "Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead."
It's not clear what eventually convinced the State Department to embrace the New Silk Road. Starr is an eloquent proponent, and his enthusiasm can be infectious. But more than anything, the adoption of the plan speaks, as Bathija suggests, to the lack of good options for post-2014 Afghanistan. If this is the best Washington can come up with, the future for Afghanistan looks bleak.
But that's not to say that there are no other choices. Instead of pushing an ambitious multilateral plan for Afghanistan, Gavrilis' article suggests the U.S. should work with the countries it can actually do something with, tailoring individual strategies to each particular country's interest: "Resuscitating region-wide approaches is a fool's errand that will not save Afghanistan. It is time for the international community to dump diplomatic niceties and work with those neighbors whose policies could be molded to Afghanistan's benefit."
This lacks the romance of the Silk Road and the ambitious vision of a thriving Europe-Asia trade corridor. But it has a lot better chance of succeeding.
A Long List of Suckers
The New York Times By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Op-Ed Columnist November 1, 2011
Agra, India - Last week, I toured the great Mogul compound of Fatehpur Sikri, near the Taj Mahal. My Indian guide mentioned in passing that in the late 1500s, when Afghanistan was part of India and the Mogul Empire, the Iranian Persians invaded Afghanistan in an effort to “seize the towns of Herat and Kandahar” and a great battle ensued. I had to laugh to myself: “Well, add them to that long list of suckers — countries certain that controlling Afghanistan’s destiny was vital to their national security.”
There were already plenty on that list before, and there have been even more since. As America now debates how to extract itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is worth re-reading a little Central Asian history and recalling for how many centuries great powers — from India to Persia, from Britain to Russia, and now from America to Iran, Turkey and Pakistan — have wrestled for supremacy in this region, in different versions of what came to be called “The Great Game.” One can only weep at the thought of how much blood and treasure have been expended in this pursuit and how utterly ungreat this game has been in retrospect. No one ever wins for long, and all they win is a bill.
It is with this bias that I think about the debate following President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, on schedule, at the end of this year — a decision that has been greeted with much huffing and puffing from hawkish Republicans about how Obama will be remembered for losing Iraq to Iran. Iraq will now fall under Iran’s “influence,” they proclaim, and none of us will ever be able to sleep well again.
Please put me down in the camp that thinks Obama did the right thing and that Iran’s mullahs will not be the winners.
Why? Well, for starters, centuries of history teach us that Arabs and Persians do not play well together. Yes, Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority and so does Iran. But Iraqi Arab Shiites willingly fought for eight years against Persian Iranian Shiites in the Iran-Iraq war.
Moreover, I am certain that in recent years America’s lingering troop presence in Iraq actually gave Iran greater influence in Baghdad. The U.S., however well intentioned, became a lightning rod that absorbed a lot of Iraqis’ frustrations with their government’s underperformance, and the U.S. “occupation” drew all attention away from Iran’s shenanigans inside Iraq. Iraqis are a proud people. Once our troops are gone, Iraqi Arabs will surely focus entirely on their own government’s performance and on any Iranian or other attempts to try to be the puppeteer of Iraqi politics. Any Iraqi leader seen as Tehran’s lackey will have problems.
Indeed, once we’re gone, I actually think the dominant flow of influence will be from Iraq toward Iran — if (and it is still a big if) — Iraq’s democracy holds. If it does, Iranians will have to look across the border every day at Iraqis, with their dozens of free newspapers and freedom to form any party and vote for any leader, and wonder why these “inferior” Iraqi Arab Shiites enjoy such freedoms and “superior” Iranian Persian Shiites do not.
“Iran’s interests were served by the Arab status quo ante — ideologically bankrupt regimes brutalizing disenfranchised populations,” argues Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “The more representative governments there are in the Middle East, the more it highlights the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a salmon swimming upstream against the current of history.”
Some say Iran was the geopolitical winner of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. I’d hold off on that judgment, too. “The Iranian regime is at its lowest moment of influence in the region — 14 percent popularity in the latest Zogby poll,” remarked Abbas Milani, who teaches Iranian politics at Stanford. What you see today if you look underneath the Islamic revolutionary facade in Iran, added Milani, “is a flourishing of painting, films and music, driven by technology. It is a society seeking its own bottom-up blend of Islam and modernity. The regime has no role in this.”
Just as I don’t buy the notion that we need to keep playing The Great Game in Iraq, I also don’t buy it for Afghanistan.
“If the U.S. steps back, it will see that it has a lot more options,” argues C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research, in New Delhi. “You let the contending regional forces play out against each other and then you can then tilt the balance.” He is referring to the India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China and Northern Alliance tribes in Afghanistan. “At this point, you have the opposite problem. You are sitting in the middle and are everyone’s hate-object, and everyone sees some great conspiracy in whatever you do. Once you pull out, and create the capacity to alter the balance, you will have a lot more options and influence to affect outcomes — rather than being pushed around and attacked by everyone.”
America today needs much more cost-efficient ways to influence geopolitics in Asia than keeping troops there indefinitely. We need to better leverage the natural competitions in this region to our ends. There is more than one way to play The Great Game, and we need to learn it.
Afghan sport officials leave for U.S. to attend sport programs: ISAF
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- In efforts to promote sport in war torn-Afghanistan and expand Afghan sports leaders' knowledge and understanding of the potential for Afghanistan's youth sports, a group of Afghan sport officials including Afghan Olympic leaders have recently left for United States.
"At the invitation of the Amateur Athletic Union (An non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the U.S.) and the United States Olympic Committee, the Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs, Taimoor Eshaqzai, and the President of the Afghan National Olympic Committee, Zahir Aghbar, accompanied by a group of Afghan National Olympic Committee sports federation leaders, have departed Kabul to take part in a week-long sports orientation trip to the United States," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a press release here on Thursday.
Without giving the exact time for the departure, ISAF in the statement said "This trip is part of a broader sports diplomacy strategy being executed by ISAF, working in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy, to build Afghan government's institutional capacity and infrastructure for youth sport programs."
This will contribute to ongoing transition and socio economic development efforts in Afghanistan, ISAF said in the release.
"ISAF anticipates this program will help expand Afghan sports leaders' knowledge and understanding of the potential for Afghanistan's youth sports, from community to national levels," the press release added.
This orientation visit will involve travel throughout Florida, as well as to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado to meet senior sports executives, marketing representatives, and sports physiology and training experts.
The group will visit community-based sports complexes and international training facilities as well as observe youth and collegiate sporting activities.
The football, cricket, basketball, volleyball, golf, boxing, taekwondo, weightlifting, bodybuilding, wrestling, chess and other sports are popular among war-weary Afghans besides some traditional sports like "Buzkashi" in some parts of the country.
The ancient game of Buzkashi, which literally translated means "goat grabbing", is a popular sport in Afghanistan, playing by two teams of horse riders, largely has been playing in northern part of the country and capital Kabul.
"Future sports partnerships and development will benefit Afghan youth (roughly 70 percent of Afghanistan's population) and help provide a viable alternative to drugs, criminal activity, and support for the insurgency," the ISAF release added.
Currently over 130,000 NATO-led ISAF with majority of them Americans have been serving in Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS And JULIAN E. BARNES NOVEMBER 3, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is exploring a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan to an advisory role as soon as next year, senior officials said, a move that would scale back U.S. combat duties well ahead of their scheduled conclusion at the end of 2014.
Such a move would have broad implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. It could begin a phase-out of the current troop-intensive approach, which focuses on protecting the Afghan population, in favor of a greater focus on targeted counterterrorism operations, as well as training the Afghan military.
A transition to a training mission could also allow for a faster drawdown of U.S. forces in the country, though officials said discussions about troop levels have yet to move forward.
The revised approach has been discussed in recent high-level meetings involving top defense and administration officials, according to people involved in the deliberations. No decisions have been made, officials said, and policy makers could consider other options that would adjust the mission in other ways, officials said.
Officials said agreement on a formal shift to an advisory role could come as early as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in May—in the heat of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Some officials have drawn comparisons to President Barack Obama's 2009 decision to switch to an "advise and assist" role in Iraq and to declare a formal end to U.S. combat operations there. In Iraq, after mid-2009, troops were largely confined to their bases.
Security conditions in Afghanistan are different, however, and will likely require U.S. troops, particularly Special Operations forces, to continue to accompany their Afghan counterparts into battle after the U.S. takes an advisory role.
Defense officials said the U.S. still would be directly involved in many combat operations, though increasingly with Afghan forces in the lead.
"It's not like we'regoing to move to train, advise and assist and just let the Afghans do everything on their own and we're not fighting bad guys," a senior official said.
It would be wrong, the official said, to think the U.S. was now considering "ending the war in Afghanistan earlier than expected."
Although discussions about changing the mission are in the early stages, their urgency is growing ahead of the NATO summit, to be held in Chicago, Mr. Obama's hometown.
The U.S. and its allies hope to use the summit to flesh out their withdrawal plans, U.S. officials said. At a NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010, the U.S. and its allies backed plans to hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
For Mr. Obama, the political stakes are growing. There has been a sharp decline in domestic political support for the Afghan war amid a weak economy and mounting fiscal woes. A change in the mission at the NATO summit would come at the height of the 2012 campaign, in which some of Mr. Obama's Republican challengers have called for winding down the war in Afghanistan.
When Mr. Obama came to office in January 2009, there were just over 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He quickly added 21,000 more.
In a lengthy strategy review later that year, military leaders requested 40,000 additional troops to support a counterinsurgency campaign, a troop-intensive approach.
Vice President Joe Biden and others argued that a large troop buildup could be counterproductive, and instead advocated a campaign emphasizing strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. But Mr. Obama in December 2009 authorized a surge of 33,000 troops, which allowed commanders to step up the counterinsurgency campaign. He has said he would withdraw those surge troops by the end of next summer.
The recent discussions reflect ambivalence within the administration over whether the counterinsurgency approach was merited.
Some administration officials privately argued that it was too costly and unrealistic, compared to a counterterrorism strategy that relies more heavily on using Special Operations forces to hunt down and kill militants, rather than deploying large numbers of forces in a "hearts-and-minds" campaign.
One official described the shift being considered as a change in focus—as opposed to an end to counterinsurgency. Training local forces, defense officials noted, is part of counterinsurgency operations.
"We are doing more training and assistance right now. We are doing more and more each month.It is the normal maturation of [the Afghans] going in the lead," a defense official said.
One of the perils of such a transition is that the Afghan security forces have long been seen as incapable of handling the security role now managed by the U.S. and its NATO partners.
But some officials say the administration now sees the goal of building a perfect Afghan force by 2014 as no longer attainable, and is looking for a force that is "good enough" to keep the Taliban from overtaking the country.
In anticipation of changes in the U.S. troop posture, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. John Allen, is pushing to begin giving Afghan forces the lead in some areas of Afghanistan where the fighting is fierce. Doing so would test Afghan fighting skills before the U.S. withdrawal makes it more difficult for the U.S. to provide them with sufficient backup.
Congressional officials briefed on the discussions said Gen. Allen's accelerated transition plan would provide a test of the drawdown schedule.
"Frankly, if we're going to have fewer troops in Afghanistan in a year or two, then you might as well do it now while we have enough troops to bail them out when they screw up," one official said.
Many top military officials are reluctant to pull out quickly and want to keep as many troops on the ground and in combat in Afghanistan as long as the White House will allow it.
But some military officials have begun to question the common wisdom at the Pentagon.
These officials argue the U.S. military has been too slow to hand off the lead in combat operations to the Afghans, relying on more capable U.S. and NATO troops.
"The large number of Americans that are present right now, in a perverse way, is keeping the Afghans from being moved more rapidly into the lead of this fight," said David Barno, a former top commander in Afghanistan who just returned from a visit to the country.
The White House has yet to decide what the U.S. presence in Afghanistan will look like after 2014. Preliminary discussions include how many troops would be needed to protect the U.S. embassy and consulates around the country after the bulk of the forces withdraw.
The question confronting the administration is whether to follow the Iraq model, where Mr. Obama last month decided to fully withdraw U.S. forces, or opt to keep some troops in place to conduct counterterrorism operations alongside the Afghans longer term. —Maria Abi-Habib contributed to this article.
7 killed in attack on NATO contractor office in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Seven people, including five attackers, were killed Thursday when insurgents attacked a local contractor office building in Herat city, the provincial capital of Herat province, 640 km west of Afghan capital of Kabul.
"At around 9:30 a.m. local time Thursday five terrorists attacked a trade company in Guzara district of Herat city near Herat airport. Two terrorists exploded an explosive-laden car, killing two security guards on the spot," Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement.
It did not provide details on the company, however, local media reports said the firm is a local company named ESKO which provides logistical support for NATO-led forces in the province.
Without mentioning the exact number, the statement said the assailants took hostage some people inside the compound for a short time.
"Three attackers were killed by police inside the compound and all hostages were released safely," the statement said, adding two security guards and a policeman were injured in the attack.
The statement blamed "the enemies of Afghanistan," a term often used by officials to refer to Taliban insurgents.
Over 3,800 Italian troops have been serving in Herat province within the framework of 130,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced the spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The militant group warned people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Taliban insurgents carried out a coordinated attack on an UN compound in southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Monday, killing six people including three local UN staff.
Two Guards Killed in Attack on NATO Contractor
VOA News November 3, 2011
Unknown insurgents killed two Afghan security guards in an attack on a compound housing NATO contractors in Afghanistan's western Herat province.
Thursday's attack began with a suicide car bombing outside the offices of Monaco-based ES-KO. Gunmen then stormed the offices and launched an hours-long gunbattle with Afghan security forces.
NATO said it provided air and ground assistance in response to the attack, which took place near its regional headquarters in the area. Several people were wounded in the assault, while all five attackers were either shot dead or died in the initial explosion.
ES-KO's website says the company has provided food services to coalition forces in Afghanistan and built a runway at Herat's airport near where Thursday's attack took place.
NATO began transferring security responsibility in Herat's provincial capital to Afghan forces in July.
All 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.
In a similar attack Monday, a suicide bomber blew up a car near offices used by the United Nations refugee agency in the southern city Kandahar. Three gunmen then rushed into the area, sparking a gun battle. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the combined attack, which killed five people, including three U.N. employees.
25 Taliban insurgents killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces during operations have killed 25 Taliban insurgents in different Afghan provinces over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan Army and ISAF ( International Security Assistance Force) forces in 14 joint operations over the past 24 hours in Kabul, Heart, Nangarhar, Kandahar, Paktia, Helmand and Khost provinces have killed 25 Taliban insurgents," the ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement joint force also captured five armed militants during the same operations besides seizing a handful of weapons and ammunitions.
Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1, have yet to make comments.
Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces keep up pressure on insurgents all over the country as over 290 insurgents had been killed and around 430 detained by joint forces in October alone, according the Afghan interior ministry.
U.S. spy aircraft kills 3 in NW Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. spy aircraft fired three missiles into Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region on Thursday and killed at least three people, local media reported.
The missiles struck a house at Dande Darpakhel, a border area along with Afghanistan in North Waziristan, Geo TV reported.
The house was also destroyed in the attack.
It was not immediately known whom was killed in the strike.
The U.S. unmanned aircraft routinely fire missiles into Waziristan tribal area as American officials claimed that the militants launch cross-border attacks from the region into Afghanistan. Local tribesmen said that members of the Haqqani network had been living in Dande Darpakhel area for years but all had left the region as the result of military operation in 2005.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former Afghan Jehadi commander and father of Sirajuddin Haqqani, had established religious schools in the area during the 1979-89 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.
Pakistan is under U.S. pressure to launch major operation against the Haqqani network, blamed for attacks on U.S. embassy in Kabul and a truck bomb attack on an U.S. military base in Maidan Wardak province in September.
It was the 5th strike in Waziristan tribal region in a week.
On Monday, a U.S. pilotless drone killed at least 4 people in North Waziristan. Also On Sunday, a U.S. spy aircraft fired six missiles on a house in the same region and killed at least 6 people. At least ten people, including two Taliban commanders, were killed in both strikes in South and North Waziristan on Thursday.
The U.S. has stepped up drone strikes in recent days despite strong opposition by the Pakistani Government. Opposition groups said that former President Pervez Musharraf had allowed U.S. drone strike, but he denied the claim and insists that he had allowed only monitoring the movement of suspected militants.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said last week that no permission had been granted to the United States to launch drone attacks on targets inside Pakistan.
Hundreds of tribesmen from Waziristan staged a rally in Islamabad on Friday and called for immediate halt to the American drone strikes in the tribal regions. They said that innocent people were killed in the strikes.
Russia offers to aid U.S. anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan
MOSCOW, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Russia said Thursday it is willing to use its satellites to assist U.S. anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan.
"We would like to offer the American side our satellite capabilities to draw a map of the drug plantation in Afghanistan," Victor Ivanon, head of Russia's Federal Anti-drug Service, told the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.
He said Russia is ready to cooperate in fighting Afghan drug trafficking within the framework of the Russia-NATO Council and Russia-U.S. bilateral presidential commission.
The Russian official also urged the West not to ideologize the Afghan drug issue, and to fight all drug lords regardless of their connections with Taliban.
Ivanov also said the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since NATO sent troops to that country.
"Regrettably, the results are deplorable. Drug production rose over 40 times. The humanitarian disaster and enormous unemployment have created the environment for drug production and trafficking," he said.
McManus: What about Afghanistan?
Foreign policy is getting short shrift in a year dominated by economic concerns.
Los Angeles Times By Doyle McManus November 3, 2011
Republicans usually enter a presidential campaign with a built-in advantage on at least one issue: national security. Historically, voters trust the GOP to be tougher than Democrats on defense and foreign policy.
Not this time. President Obama has robbed the Republican Party of its usual foreign policy edge, thanks to his surprisingly enthusiastic prosecution of the war against terrorism. The death of Osama bin Laden in May didn't give Obama much of a bump in opinion polls overall; unluckily for the president, the economy is still the overriding issue in voters' minds. But that doesn't mean voters didn't notice. A recent AP-GfK poll found a wide swing between voters' appraisals of Obama on domestic and foreign issues: Only 40% approved of his performance on the economy, but 64% approved of his actions on terrorism, and roughly half approved of his conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
That has left Republican candidates for president without clear territory of their own on foreign policy and defense. In effect they have replied: Yes, but we'd be tougher — tougher on terrorism, tougher on China and tougher on Iran.
"If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today," Mitt Romney said in a speech last month. "An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender."
But what would a President Romney, a President Perry or a President Cain actually do to carry out the promise of a stronger America? Even Romney, who has issued a 43-page "white paper" on national security, hasn't been very specific — except on one issue: more defense spending.
The former Massachusetts governor has promised to reverse what he calls Obama's "massive defense cuts." But there's a problem with that approach: Obama actually increased defense spending during his first three years in office, and the cuts he has proposed in future spending — $400 billion over 12 years — amount to roughly 5% of projected national security spending for that period.
Romney says he wants to increase military spending and establish a "floor" of 4% of gross domestic product, a proposal that came out of the George W. Bush administration. (Current defense spending is about 3.8% of GDP, not counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) But how would Romney pay for more defense spending during a time of austerity? He hasn't said.
Romney's rivals for the nomination — with the notable exceptions of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has called for genuinely massive cuts, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has said defense cuts should at least be considered — have mostly fallen in line, echoing his call for more military spending
But on other national security issues, the Republicans have been far less clear.
Take Afghanistan, a war that's in its 10th year. The GOP candidates have found an easy comfort zone in criticizing Obama for setting a deadline of 2014 for handing off security to the Afghans and for beginning the drawdown of U.S. forces next summer. Announcing a date for the U.S. departure, they say, has encouraged the Taliban and its Pakistani allies to wait us out.
But the Republicans haven't proposed serious alternatives, nor have they addressed many of the tough questions in Afghanistan: How long would they stay, and with how many troops? Would they engage in negotiations with the Taliban, to see if a deal could be cut? And how would they persuade Pakistan, a putative U.S. ally, to stop sheltering and supporting Taliban factions, perhaps the single biggest reason the war has not been won?
Romney has urged taking a tough line with Pakistan on its support of Afghan insurgents, but he hasn't said how. And if the other candidates have formulated coherent positions on how to move forward in the region, they haven't expressed them.
When Perry was asked about Pakistan last month, he delivered a rambling and incoherent response that questioned, among other things, why the U.S. hadn't sold upgraded fighter planes to India and Taiwan. And Herman Cain seemed to dismiss the importance of foreign policy altogether when he famously said it didn't matter whether he knew anything about "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan."
"How's that going to create one job?" he asked.
The Republican candidates have been tough on China, but there too they have been vague — plenty of attitude but not much policy. Again, Romney is the exception: He's said he'd impose punitive tariffs on imports from China on his first day in office to retaliate against China's policy of keeping its currency artificially cheap. (Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, said that was a bad idea because the Chinese would quickly retaliate. "You're going to find yourself in a trade war," he warned.)
On Iran, the Republicans have slammed Obama for failing to stop the Islamic regime's nuclear program, but again they haven't offered any new ideas. (Romney's one strange offering was to call for the indictment of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — presumably by the International Criminal Court, which most Republicans don't like — for saying Israel should be "wiped off the map.")
So far, the Republicans running for president have focused their campaigns on only one part of the national agenda: the domestic economy. They've been running for tax-cutter in chief and budget-cutter in chief — but not commander in chief.
That's understandable in a year when the economy is the voters' overriding concern. But commander in chief is a big part of the job. Voters deserve to know what these would-be presidents would do in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how they'd act toward China and Iran. The candidates haven't told them much yet. It's time they did.
Istanbul Conference Pledges Support For Afghanistan
November 2, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Dorian Jones
ISTANBUL -- All of Afghanistan's neighbors and Western powers were represented at a one-day conference in Turkey, with delegates committing to cooperate and work together to help develop the volatile country.
Heavy on good intentions but light on detail, the agreement was intended to be show of unity for Afghanistan as its security forces take on greater responsibility and as international forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said the so-called "Istanbul Process" was driven by his country's needs and represented an important step for the region.
Rasul described it as "a process that will allow the countries in the heart of the Asian region to implement important confidence-building measures toward a more effective, broader, and deeper regional cooperation that promotes security, stability, and economic development in our region."
Delegations endorsed the pledge to protect Afghanistan's "sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity," and promised cooperation on the dismantling of "terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens."
Countries represented were from Afghanistan's immediate neighborhood, from the greater region, and from the West, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the United States. Delegates from as NATO, the EU, and the UN also were in attendance.
Reaching Out To Pakistan
In a speech to the delegates, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns hailed the day's pledges as "the first clear, region-wide statement of support for Afghanistan in this time of transition and reconciliation."
He said regional powers had often acted "in ways that make things worse," instead of cooperating to solve problems.
Burns' comments were at least in part a reference to Pakistan, which both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly accused of providing tacit if not direct support to the Taliban insurgency and undermining Afghan security.
Islamabad rejects those charges.
As the delegates also pledged support for efforts toward a political solution to the war in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to help facilitate negotiations with the Taliban.
"The peace process will not succeed unless we are able to get the top leadership of the Taliban based in Pakistan to join us," Karzai said.
"Our hope is that with the help from our brothers in Pakistan, we will manage to wean away the Taliban leadership from some of the long-established networks of support they enjoy outside Afghanistan and integrate them into the peace process."
Alistair Burt, Britain's minister of state for the Middle East and South Asia, also insisted that successful Afghan-Pakistani cooperation is crucial for regional stability.
"They both have a vested interest in dealing with the scourge of terrorism and we believe they both have a vested interest in making sure that those who can abide by the conditions set out by President Karzai for inclusion in political process should come back into that political process," Burt said.
Talking Taliban
The Istanbul conference comes one day after Turkish President Abdullah Gul hosted both Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, during which the leaders attempted to ease tensions following last month's assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Kabul has accused Islamabad of being behind the Taliban suicide bombing that killed Rabbani, a charge Islamabad denies.
The November 1 meeting produced a commitment by Karzai and Zardari to open a joint investigation into the assassination, establishing the air of cooperation that carried over to the conference.
While Karzai said the door was closed for now on talks with the Taliban, his foreign minister expressed optimism that negotiation would be possible.
"We know that there are people among the Taliban and others that are willing to have peace under the conditions that we have proposed to you," Rasul said. "I am confident and optimistic [that we can] achieve a peace process."
Regional Interconnectivity
The agreement also commits countries in Afghanistan's region not to act against another through a third party -- a point observers say could be a reference to Islamabad's concerns over Kabul turning to its regional rival, India.
In addressing the delegates, Karzai explicitly mentioned the signing last month of a strategic partnership with India, describing it as of historical importance.
The conference also saw commitments made in the areas of in trade, education, and communication.
Afghanistan and its Western backers are attempting to bolster support for the "New Silk Road" initiative, which seeks to establish regional trade and transportation network that would run through Afghanistan.
The hope is that increasing economic ties and prosperity will promote regional cooperation, make the country less dependent on foreign assistance, and counter the pull of extremism.
While the past two days in Istanbul resulted in broad pledges of support and set the stage for further cooperation at an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, next month, observers point to one real measure of success.
That is, whether or not the Turkish meetings will bring about a thaw in what most say is the region's most crucial relationship -- that between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hands off Afghanistan, nations agree in security pact
The Globe and Mail Graeme Smith Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011
ISTANBUL - More than a dozen countries in the volatile region around Afghanistan have reached a security agreement that emphasizes non-interference in the troubled country’s affairs, in a diplomatic push to prevent proxy wars and state partition as NATO troops withdraw.
The Istanbul Protocol commits signatories to protect Afghanistan’s “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity,” and promises co-operation on the dismantling of “terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens.”
Such promises are less notable than the list of countries that pledged agreement, which reads like a who’s who of regional rivals for influence in Afghanistan. Delegations that adopted the protocol included Pakistan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates.
Copies of the agreement given journalists did not include a signature from Uzbekistan, initially touted as a member of the regional group, but no Uzbek officials were available to comment.
Still, the deal reached at an ornate hall on the waterfront in Istanbul on Wednesday was touted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns as the “first, clear, region-wide” statement of support from Afghanistan’s neighbourhood.
The focus of the agreement was clearly to prevent outsiders from meddling in Afghanistan during the sensitive transition period that started in recent months as the United States began withdrawing soldiers from the country. Those withdrawals are scheduled to accelerate, removing perhaps a quarter of the 130,000 international troops by the end of next year.
Some delegations to the Istanbul summit expressed worry that the withdrawals could result in civil war, or even the breakup of Afghanistan, and the meeting’s final agreement reflected those concerns: The document makes several mentions of “indivisible security,” “territorial integrity,” and similar phrases. Most importantly, signatories pledged “non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states.”
Such a non-intervention pact had been championed earlier this year by Karl Inderfurth, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia, in a briefing paper that envisioned Pakistan and India promising “not to seek a military presence in Afghanistan or to use Afghan soil to undermine the other.”
Neither country made such a specific promise at the Istanbul conference, but they did speak in general terms about allowing Afghanistan to chart its own path. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, mentioned her country’s respect for Afghan sovereignty during her opening remarks to the conference on Tuesday morning, and that comment was quickly singled out for praise by Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who appeared at the conference on behalf of the European Union foreign policy team.
Some members of the Pakistani delegation appeared to resent the emphasis on sovereignty, seeing it as another way of repeating the widespread accusation that Islamabad supports Taliban insurgents. In an interview on Monday evening, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that if the United States feels so strongly about ensuring respect for sovereignty in the region, then it should reconsider its policy of violating Pakistani airspace with armed drones.
“Nobody wants drone attacks in Pakistan,” Mr. Malik said. “So if these 14 countries agree to respect sovereignty, the 15th should be the United States.”
The regional foreign ministers agreed to meet again in June of 2012 in Kabul, to review compliance with the protocol.
Such diplomatic efforts have had little effect in the past: The United Nations started talks about non-interference across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1982; an agreement was finally reached at Geneva in 1988, on the eve of Soviet troop withdrawals, but the deal was largely ignored as regional powers lined up to support opposing factions in the civil war.
The possibility of that bitter history repeating itself was not lost on the delegates in Istanbul. Iran’s Foreign Minister even suggested that the recent assassination of Afghan Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani represented part of a “conspiracy” to destabilize Afghanistan.
“Iran warns against every step that could bring Afghanistan to the edge of collapse or partition,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, according to a transcript of his speech.
Tribal Truce In Eastern Afghanistan Falls Apart
November 1, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Abubakar Siddique
The three-year truce that the Afghan government forced on a violent land dispute in eastern Afghanistan and we described last week as "shaky" from the outset lasted just one day. While the exact casualty figures are difficult to determine, members of a Pashtun clan are said to have been killed and others injured while scores more were detained when they clashed with government troops on October 28.
The fighting came one day after young tribal fighters had vacated their respective trenches early on October 27 in the Ghani Khel region of eastern Nangarhar province. Locals had rejoiced at the development because they saw it halting a violent tribal land dispute over a government-owned plain that had claimed the lives of 100 members of the Alisher Khel and Sepah branches of the Pashtun Shinwari tribe. The impetus for the truce was a threat of military action by Nangarhar Province Governor Gul Agha Sherzai on October 25. He was apparently annoyed with holding endless jirgas, or tribal councils, with the two sides.
Independent Afghan news agency Pajhwok reported that the Sepah tribesmen returned to Ghani Khel on October 28 where the disputed plain lies south of Nangarhar's capital, Jalalabad. Aminullah Amarkhel accused them of attacking a military base where Sherzai was holding council with the military and police officials. The agency reported that two policemen were injured in the attack but government retaliation killed seven attackers. Government forces also reportedly captured 65 attackers.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan on October 29, Malik Usman Shinwari, a Sepah leader, claimed that government forces had killed 60 of their fighters and injured 80 others.
Clinton's Dubious Plan to Save Afghanistan With a 'New Silk Road'
Most analysts seem to agree that the antiquity-era trade route is never coming back, so why is it America's new favorite idea for Central Asia?
The Atlantic By Joshua Kucera Nov 2, 2011
When foreign ministers from Afghanistan, its neighbors, and several European countries meet today in Istanbul, U.S. diplomats will be pushing them to sign on to an ambitious plan for the future of Central Asia. The "New Silk Road," as the State Department is calling their strategy, would link the infrastructure -- roads, railways, power lines -- of the 'Stans of post-Soviet Central Asia southward through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. At the same time, they would work with the governments to reduce legal and bureaucratic impediments to trade, like corrupt border crossings.
The hope is that this would produce a flowering of East-West overland trade akin to the original Silk Road, by which China traded with the Middle East via Central Asian trade centers like Kashgar, Bukhara, and Samarkand. "Turkmen gas fields could help meet both Pakistan's and India's growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech outlining the vision. "Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond." (Clinton was originally scheduled to pitch her counterparts in Istanbul, but the death of her mother forced her to cancel the trip.)
But hope may be the only thing driving on the New Silk Road. The State Department has few good options in Afghanistan, and the U.S. doesn't want to leave (or at least wants to seem like they won't leave) a disaster behind once it starts pulling troops out in 2014. So it cast about for ideas and found the New Silk Road proposal, which had been bouncing around the post-Soviet think tank circuit in Washington since the mid-oughts.
The plan's architect is Fred Starr, the chair of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a small Washington, D.C. think tank, with the backing of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. State Department officials have long been wary of the plan, initially dismissing it as unworkable. But it began to gain favor last year at U.S. Central Command, and with its commander at the time, General David Petraeus. Since Marc Grossman became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, replacing the late Richard Holbrooke, the State Department has come around to support the strategy. And Clinton has appeared to embrace it as the economic foundation of the U.S.'s post-2014 strategy for Afghanistan, promoting it in her meetings last month with the presidents of three of Afghanistan's neighbors: Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The origins of the plan, however, lie in geopolitics rather than economics. In the mid-oughts, there were a variety of programs by which the U.S. tried to unite South and Central Asia, including an effort to tie together the electrical grids of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with those of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Authority for the Central Asian countries were also moved under a new State Department bureau, taking them out of the Europen bureau with the rest of the post-Soviet republics and connecting them with South Asia. What these schemes all have in common is that they attempt to weaken the economic (and as a result, political) monopoly that Russia, by dint of the centralized Soviet infrastructure, has on these countries.
As Marlene Laruelle writes in a new book, Mapping Central Asia, which includes a great chapter on the revived metaphor of the New Silk Road: "The underlying geo-economic rationales of these Roads is to exclude Moscow from new geopolitical configurations."
The State Department doesn't say this, of course, and it's possible (even likely) that the people now implementing the strategy don't think of it as such. Clinton even implied that there could be some sort of connection with the Russia-led Customs Union with Kazakhstan and Belarus, which is the basis for Vladimir Putin's notorious Eurasian Union.
But this geopolitical vestige lives on in the current iteration of the New Silk Road. Look at a map of South and Central Asia -- ideally, one where you can see topography and the quality of roads -- and it's apparent that the most sensible way to ship goods from India west is not the northern route over the massive mountain passes and crumbling roads of Central Asia. It's the southern route, through Iran and Turkey. But, obviously, a U.S.-backed plan can't include Iran.
There are also political barriers to inter-Central Asian trade. George Gavrilis, an expert on Central Asia and borders, described them in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. Many of the countries in the region, he notes, have persistent problems with their neighbors: Pakistan with Afghanistan and India, Uzbekistan with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Trade agreements are fragile and susceptible to political difficulties; the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan was closed for 18 months following last summer's violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. More fundamentally, a region-wide strategy would be unlikely to work because the countries that surround Afghanistan -- China, Pakistan, Iran and the 'stans -- all have very different interests and little desire to cooperate with one another. "I love the idea," Gavrilis told me when I asked about the New Silk Road. "But I just don't see how it can be implemented,"
Notwithstanding the romance of the original Silk Road, Laruelle notes in her book, the geopolitical situation has changed quite a bit in the centuries since. "The border divisions of the 20th century have transformed these ancient trans-continental routes into cul-de-sacs of nation-states and no simple political will to declare a zone a 'crossroads' can suffice to influence the reality of being in the margins," she writes.
And the reason the first Silk Road died out? Sea transport became much cheaper, which is still true today. So plans, she continues, "to modify in depth the status quo of global trade, three-quarters of which is carried out by sea, by replacing it with continental trade on the pretext that, once upon a time, caravans used to travel along these routes, can not be taken seriously."
The State Department, in its public statements on the plan, highlights a handful of existing or proposed projects on which the New Silk Road could be modeled, including a free-trade agreement signed last year between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. But they give little reason for optimism. The Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement was laboriously, personally brokered by Holbrooke but has yet to be implemented, and with relations between the two countries suffering, may never actually happen.
The TAPI pipeline has been discussed since the 1990s, but as with similar schemes, insecurity in Afghanistan has scared away companies that might have the capital to build such a pipeline. With U.S. and NATO troops departing, the security situation is likely to decline even further, a problem that the plan's boosters acknowledge. "We have continued insecurity and instability in Afghanistan," Sham Bathija, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said at a recent conference in Washington on the strategy. "Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead."
It's not clear what eventually convinced the State Department to embrace the New Silk Road. Starr is an eloquent proponent, and his enthusiasm can be infectious. But more than anything, the adoption of the plan speaks, as Bathija suggests, to the lack of good options for post-2014 Afghanistan. If this is the best Washington can come up with, the future for Afghanistan looks bleak.
But that's not to say that there are no other choices. Instead of pushing an ambitious multilateral plan for Afghanistan, Gavrilis' article suggests the U.S. should work with the countries it can actually do something with, tailoring individual strategies to each particular country's interest: "Resuscitating region-wide approaches is a fool's errand that will not save Afghanistan. It is time for the international community to dump diplomatic niceties and work with those neighbors whose policies could be molded to Afghanistan's benefit."
This lacks the romance of the Silk Road and the ambitious vision of a thriving Europe-Asia trade corridor. But it has a lot better chance of succeeding.
A Long List of Suckers
The New York Times By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Op-Ed Columnist November 1, 2011
Agra, India - Last week, I toured the great Mogul compound of Fatehpur Sikri, near the Taj Mahal. My Indian guide mentioned in passing that in the late 1500s, when Afghanistan was part of India and the Mogul Empire, the Iranian Persians invaded Afghanistan in an effort to “seize the towns of Herat and Kandahar” and a great battle ensued. I had to laugh to myself: “Well, add them to that long list of suckers — countries certain that controlling Afghanistan’s destiny was vital to their national security.”
There were already plenty on that list before, and there have been even more since. As America now debates how to extract itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is worth re-reading a little Central Asian history and recalling for how many centuries great powers — from India to Persia, from Britain to Russia, and now from America to Iran, Turkey and Pakistan — have wrestled for supremacy in this region, in different versions of what came to be called “The Great Game.” One can only weep at the thought of how much blood and treasure have been expended in this pursuit and how utterly ungreat this game has been in retrospect. No one ever wins for long, and all they win is a bill.
It is with this bias that I think about the debate following President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, on schedule, at the end of this year — a decision that has been greeted with much huffing and puffing from hawkish Republicans about how Obama will be remembered for losing Iraq to Iran. Iraq will now fall under Iran’s “influence,” they proclaim, and none of us will ever be able to sleep well again.
Please put me down in the camp that thinks Obama did the right thing and that Iran’s mullahs will not be the winners.
Why? Well, for starters, centuries of history teach us that Arabs and Persians do not play well together. Yes, Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority and so does Iran. But Iraqi Arab Shiites willingly fought for eight years against Persian Iranian Shiites in the Iran-Iraq war.
Moreover, I am certain that in recent years America’s lingering troop presence in Iraq actually gave Iran greater influence in Baghdad. The U.S., however well intentioned, became a lightning rod that absorbed a lot of Iraqis’ frustrations with their government’s underperformance, and the U.S. “occupation” drew all attention away from Iran’s shenanigans inside Iraq. Iraqis are a proud people. Once our troops are gone, Iraqi Arabs will surely focus entirely on their own government’s performance and on any Iranian or other attempts to try to be the puppeteer of Iraqi politics. Any Iraqi leader seen as Tehran’s lackey will have problems.
Indeed, once we’re gone, I actually think the dominant flow of influence will be from Iraq toward Iran — if (and it is still a big if) — Iraq’s democracy holds. If it does, Iranians will have to look across the border every day at Iraqis, with their dozens of free newspapers and freedom to form any party and vote for any leader, and wonder why these “inferior” Iraqi Arab Shiites enjoy such freedoms and “superior” Iranian Persian Shiites do not.
“Iran’s interests were served by the Arab status quo ante — ideologically bankrupt regimes brutalizing disenfranchised populations,” argues Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “The more representative governments there are in the Middle East, the more it highlights the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a salmon swimming upstream against the current of history.”
Some say Iran was the geopolitical winner of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. I’d hold off on that judgment, too. “The Iranian regime is at its lowest moment of influence in the region — 14 percent popularity in the latest Zogby poll,” remarked Abbas Milani, who teaches Iranian politics at Stanford. What you see today if you look underneath the Islamic revolutionary facade in Iran, added Milani, “is a flourishing of painting, films and music, driven by technology. It is a society seeking its own bottom-up blend of Islam and modernity. The regime has no role in this.”
Just as I don’t buy the notion that we need to keep playing The Great Game in Iraq, I also don’t buy it for Afghanistan.
“If the U.S. steps back, it will see that it has a lot more options,” argues C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research, in New Delhi. “You let the contending regional forces play out against each other and then you can then tilt the balance.” He is referring to the India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China and Northern Alliance tribes in Afghanistan. “At this point, you have the opposite problem. You are sitting in the middle and are everyone’s hate-object, and everyone sees some great conspiracy in whatever you do. Once you pull out, and create the capacity to alter the balance, you will have a lot more options and influence to affect outcomes — rather than being pushed around and attacked by everyone.”
America today needs much more cost-efficient ways to influence geopolitics in Asia than keeping troops there indefinitely. We need to better leverage the natural competitions in this region to our ends. There is more than one way to play The Great Game, and we need to learn it.
Afghan sport officials leave for U.S. to attend sport programs: ISAF
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- In efforts to promote sport in war torn-Afghanistan and expand Afghan sports leaders' knowledge and understanding of the potential for Afghanistan's youth sports, a group of Afghan sport officials including Afghan Olympic leaders have recently left for United States.
"At the invitation of the Amateur Athletic Union (An non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the U.S.) and the United States Olympic Committee, the Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs, Taimoor Eshaqzai, and the President of the Afghan National Olympic Committee, Zahir Aghbar, accompanied by a group of Afghan National Olympic Committee sports federation leaders, have departed Kabul to take part in a week-long sports orientation trip to the United States," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a press release here on Thursday.
Without giving the exact time for the departure, ISAF in the statement said "This trip is part of a broader sports diplomacy strategy being executed by ISAF, working in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy, to build Afghan government's institutional capacity and infrastructure for youth sport programs."
This will contribute to ongoing transition and socio economic development efforts in Afghanistan, ISAF said in the release.
"ISAF anticipates this program will help expand Afghan sports leaders' knowledge and understanding of the potential for Afghanistan's youth sports, from community to national levels," the press release added.
This orientation visit will involve travel throughout Florida, as well as to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado to meet senior sports executives, marketing representatives, and sports physiology and training experts.
The group will visit community-based sports complexes and international training facilities as well as observe youth and collegiate sporting activities.
The football, cricket, basketball, volleyball, golf, boxing, taekwondo, weightlifting, bodybuilding, wrestling, chess and other sports are popular among war-weary Afghans besides some traditional sports like "Buzkashi" in some parts of the country.
The ancient game of Buzkashi, which literally translated means "goat grabbing", is a popular sport in Afghanistan, playing by two teams of horse riders, largely has been playing in northern part of the country and capital Kabul.
"Future sports partnerships and development will benefit Afghan youth (roughly 70 percent of Afghanistan's population) and help provide a viable alternative to drugs, criminal activity, and support for the insurgency," the ISAF release added.
Currently over 130,000 NATO-led ISAF with majority of them Americans have been serving in Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com