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General ousted for POLITICO quotes
By: Tim Mak November 4, 2011 04:47 PM EDT politico.com
Major Gen. Peter Fuller, a top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was relieved of his duties Friday after comments he made to POLITICO disparaging Afghan President Hamid Karzai and calling the government’s leaders “isolated from reality.”
Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, ousted Fuller following what the coalition called his “inappropriate public comments.”
“These unfortunate comments are neither indicative of our current solid relationship with the government of Afghanistan, its leadership, or our joint commitment to prevail here in Afghanistan,” Allen said in a statement.
“The Afghan people are an honorable people, and comments such as these will not keep us from accomplishing our most critical and shared mission — bringing about a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan,” he added.
Fuller was the deputy commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan and responsible for training Afghan security forces.
In a Thursday interview with POLITICO, Fuller, a two-star general, slammed Karzai’s recent remark that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S., blasting the president’s comments as “erratic,” and adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me. … I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care?’”
“When they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that’s more articulate in public,” Fuller added.
Fuller also criticized Afghan leaders as divorced from the economic realities of the United States.
“I said, ‘You guys are isolated from reality.’ The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups. The U.S. is in this [too],” Fuller told POLITICO. “If you’re in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood. They don’t understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that’s part of my job — to educate ’em.”
He repeatedly said the Afghan leaders don’t appreciate the sacrifice that the United States was making in “blood and treasure” for the sake of their country.
Military officials said Fuller had been quoted accurately and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had been made aware of his comments to POLITICO, reported CNN.
The NATO statement did not say what Fuller would do next but such disciplinary action usually ends military careers, reports noted. Fuller has served in the armed forces for more than 30 years.
U.S. general: Afghan leaders 'isolated from reality'
Politico.comBy TIM MAK 3/11/2011
A senior U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan called key elements of the government “isolated from reality,” said they don’t appreciate America’s sacrifice for their nation and offered up some choice words for President Hamid Karzai.
Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the American-led NATO effort to train and equip Afghan security forces, told POLITICO in an interview that top leaders in the Afghan government had not fully recognized the sacrifices in “treasure and blood” that the U.S. was making for their security and recalled that a senior Afghan official even demanded the transfer of tanks just so they could be used for parades.
The two-star general flashed irritation when he brought up Karzai’s recent remarks that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S., blasting the president’s comments as “erratic,” and adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care’?”
“When they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that’s more articulate in public,” Fuller said during a visit to Washington for a conference.
Karzai is term-limited and will not be running for another term. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Karzai’s remarks have been misunderstood.
Fuller recently involved Afghan generals in a strategic review of the U.S. mission and said that they didn’t understand the extent to which America is in economic distress.
“I said, ‘You guys are isolated from reality.’ The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups. The U.S. is in this [too],” Fuller told POLITICO. “If you’re in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood. They don’t understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that’s part of my job to educate ’em.”
The problem, he says, is a mentality that the Soviets left behind in Afghanistan.
“We didn’t buy them a lot of things that they had seen bought previously by the Soviets, the tanks and the jets. So they asked for them,’” Fuller said. “They say, ‘Well, the Russians gave us this.’”
Fuller says he responds by saying, “’You’re telling us that you’re not appreciative of $11.2 billion from the U.S. this year? We have challenges going on in our own country, and this is our national treasure.’”
In fact, the Afghan government made requests for F-16 fighter jets and tanks, even without the budget to use or maintain them, said Fuller. “I actually had someone senior tell me, ‘All I want to do is put them [tanks] on a flat bed and drive them around in a parade,” he said.
Fuller described one of his key responsibilities in the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan rather folksily, as someone who often needs to beat back overzealous demands from certain elements of the Afghan government.
“You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish,” said Fuller. “We’re giving them fish while they’re learning, and they want more fish! [They say,] ‘I like swordfish, how come you’re giving me cod?’ Guess what? Cod’s on the menu today.”
However, Fuller said later, Afghan leadership is starting to come around to being able to appreciate American sacrifices.
“The senior leaders [in Afghanistan] are starting to understand that there is a finite amount of resources that the American public is going to provide. Do I wish that they had understood that from Day One? Absolutely. But we probably didn’t do a good job of messaging that very well,” said Fuller. “It’s our responsibility to educate them. And when sometimes you deal with sovereign nations, and they don’t hear it the first time, it’s our responsibility to repeat it.”
And Fuller has put his money where his mouth is. His command had been allotted $12.8 billion for the as-yet-unapproved FY2012 budget before he joined that NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, but he and his team managed to trim $1.6 billion from that figure in August of this year.
“We’re having financial difficulties. I acknowledge it. I’m trying to be the best steward of the resources that are given to us. I could have bought a lot more stuff with $1.6 billion,” Fuller said.
Mullah Omar warns Taliban against hurting Afghan civilians
Fugitive Taliban leader tells insurgents they face sharia justice if found negligent in edict seen as attempt to win hearts and minds
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011 14.42 EDT
The Taliban was responsible for 80% of the 1,462 civilian casualties in the first six months of this year, according to the UN.
Taliban foot soldiers will face sharia justice if they kill or injure innocent civilians without taking precautions, the fugitive leader of the Afghan insurgency has warned.
Mullah Omar, the Taliban's supreme cleric, released an 1,800-word statement that dwelled at length on the need to protect civilians in a sign of the insurgency's growing defensiveness on the issue.
Human rights workers described the statement, published in five languages on Friday to mark the Islamic festival of Eid, as extremely significant. They said it went into far more detail about the issue than any other previous pronouncement.
The mujahideen, as the rebels style themselves, are ordered to "take every step to protect the lives and wealth of ordinary people".
The decree said: "Scholars should be employed every now and then to preach protection of civilian life, wealth and honour to mujahideen and promote virtue … All civilian casualties which are caused or are believed to be caused by mujahideen should be reported to the superiors."
It also called for investigations by the movement's "legal offices" of cases where locals say civilians have been hurt by landmines, suicide bombings or other attacks. "If it is irrefutably proven that the blood of innocent Muslims is spilled by the negligence of mujahideen then a penalty should be implemented in accordance with sharia," the statement said. The family of the victims should also be compensated, it suggested.
Afghan civilians are also ordered to protect themselves by not "moving in close proximity to Americans who patrol in villages and countryside".
Kate Clark, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said even though the statement was in part propaganda it could also help civilians trapped in the middle of fighting between Nato and Taliban forces. "It is much, much more specific than ever before on the Taliban's system of internal discipline and command and control," she said. "And they admit that they themselves are causing civilian casualties, not just people doing it in their name."
That Omar's statement on the issue is an indication of how embarrassing the problem of civilian casualties has become for a movement that sees itself as the protector of the Afghan people against foreign military aggression.
According to the latest UN figures, the Taliban were responsible for 80% of the 1,462 civilian deaths caused by fighting between insurgents and pro-government forces in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year. Of those killed by insurgents, 38% of deaths were due to IEDs, or homemade roadside bombs.
Georgette Gagnon, the UN's director of human rights in Afghanistan, said it remained to be seen whether the insurgents would take any real steps to reduce casualties. "I would like them to say publicly that they will stop using indiscriminate, pressure plate IEDs," she said, saying that while in power the Taliban regime banned anti-personnel mines as un-Islamic.
US weighs shift in strategy in Afghanistan war
By Dan De Luce | AFP – Fri, Nov 4, 2011
President Barack Obama's advisers are debating a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan that would focus on advising Afghan forces while scaling back combat operations much earlier than planned, officials say.
The potential change raises the possibility of a faster-paced drawdown of US troops, but administration officials insist it is too early to speculate on an option that is still tentative.
"It shouldn't surprise anybody that we're thinking ahead about what may happen but it's very preliminary and there are no particular options," a US defense official told AFP.
The Wall Street Journal first broke the story, reporting Thursday that top officials have discussed revising the mission and that the move could possibly be approved as soon as May when NATO leaders meet in Chicago.
A debate on strategy and troop levels in the unpopular war comes as Obama faces a difficult re-election campaign next year and mounting pressure to find savings in the federal budget.
The Pentagon did not deny the report and said only that the administration's policy on the 10-year-old war had not changed.
"There are no formal plans that have been presented from this department to the White House or from this government to the government of Afghanistan on a potential change of mission," press secretary George Little told reporters.
At the last NATO summit in Lisbon last year, alliance members approved a decision to transfer security duties to Afghan forces for the whole of the country by the end of 2014, paving the way for the exit of NATO-led troops.
The possible shift is reminiscent of the administration's approach to Iraq, where a new "advise and assist" mission -- dubbed Operation New Dawn -- was announced in 2010 to underline an emphasis on handing security over to Iraqi forces.
With 97,000 US troops and 45,000 allied soldiers, the NATO-led force has concentrated on rolling back Taliban insurgents in towns and cities while training Afghan army and police.
US commanders have tended to push for more time for combat operations and for delaying withdrawals of troops as much as possible, but some inside and outside the Pentagon are arguing for handing over to Afghan forces sooner while more NATO boots are still on the ground.
"It's better to do it when you've got 80,000 troops on the ground than when you've got 40,000 troops on the ground and you're looking at the exits," said Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who has called for changing the mission.
"You've got to make this mental leap away from -- 'I'm going to do this myself' to 'I'm going to enable our Afghan partners to do it,'" said Exum, a retired US Army officer who served in Afghanistan.
An earlier handover would allow a larger allied force to back up Afghan forces when they falter, he said.
The approach also does not necessarily mean an accelerated drawdown of troops but poses the risk that Afghans or other regional players could perceive the change as a retreat.
"By changing the mission, does it look like the US is running for the exits or does it look like the US is making a logical transition?" asked Exum.
The revised mission would likely not affect the US military's manhunts carried out by special operations forces, which target militants linked to Al-Qaeda, Exum and other analysts said.
But the change represents a clear break from the military's experience in Iraq, where "we defeated the insurgency and then turned the country over to the Iraqis themselves," Exum said.
"In Afghanistan, we are going to turn over the country to the Afghans before the insurgency is fully defeated."
Obama's political opponents were quick to question the possible change in mission.
Referring to both the Iraq withdrawal and the potential mission change in Afghanistan, Republican US House Speaker John Boehner said "we should be very careful about losing the gains that have been made because of someone wanting to be more expedient."
The outcome of the war in Afghanistan will hinge in part on the competence and cohesion of Afghanistan's security forces, which have gotten mixed reviews.
NATO has overseen a dramatic expansion of the security forces with the army set to grow to 195,000 and the police to 157,000 by October 2012.
But out of 173 Afghan battalions, only one is designated by the Pentagon as able to operate independently from the US-led coalition.
U.S. says its civilian aid to Afghanistan has peaked
By Susan Cornwell | Reuters – Thu, Nov 3, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. civilian aid to Afghanistan has peaked, the State Department said in a new report, declaring the United States would spend less on development assistance there as it withdraws troops from the country.
"We have reached the high water mark of our civilian funding levels" for Afghanistan, the department said in a status report on civilian efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan that was sent to congressional offices and obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has fallen from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion this year, the report by the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said.
These amounts do not include tens of billions of dollars Washington has spent on training the Afghan army and police.
President Barack Obama and allied leaders committed last year to turning security in Afghanistan over to Afghan control by 2014. By the end of next year, Obama plans to pull out 33,000 troops that he deployed in surge aimed at turning around the flagging decade-old conflict.
The State Department report said the United States is now shifting from funding stabilization projects in Afghanistan to "long-term sustainable development at lower funding levels."
It said future U.S. aid in Afghanistan would focus on economic growth, such as in agriculture and mining, as well as infrastructure, such as energy and water, and in educational and vocational development.
The number of American government civilians serving in Afghanistan has nearly quadrupled from around 320 to more than 1,200, the report said, but it was silent on whether some would now be withdrawn along with U.S. troops.
The Obama administration announced an increase in civilian advisers -- experts on matters ranging from agriculture to courts -- to Afghanistan in 2009 to accompany the influx of 33,000 U.S. combat troops there.
Part of what was dubbed a "smart power" strategy, the idea of sending the civilians was to build on military gains with improvements in the lives of ordinary Afghans.
But the "smart power" idea is on the wane as U.S. lawmakers prepare to carve chunks out of overseas spending to try to address budget shortfalls.
Support on Capitol Hill for aid to Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, has plummeted amid accusations that some in the Pakistani government have aided anti-U.S. militants.
The State Department report said Congress had slipped on its 2009 promise to triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan over five years. The appropriations reached the promised level of $1.5 billion in 2010, but last year amounted to only $1 billion, the document said.
It said, however, that the Obama administration intended for assistance to Islamabad to continue and wants to focus on "signature" projects in Pakistan. U.S. officials are currently looking to select a major new infrastructure project "that would both contribute to power generation and water management" in Pakistan, it said.
(Editing by Vicki Allen)
Pakistan to give military training to Afghan National Army
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan Army would train Afghan National Army and police under the trilateral pacts signed in 6th Trilateral Summit held in Istanbul, local media reported on Friday.
Quoting Foreign Office spokesperson, Tehmina Janjua, The News reported that Pakistan signed a protocol among Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey on conduct of mutual exercises and on training cooperation with Afghanistan. Pakistan would train police personnel to counter terrorism/law enforcement and it would also train the military personnel.
According to one of the protocols, the three countries had signed a memorandum of understanding for training police personnel and conduct mutual military exercises.
The protocol includes training courses between the militaries of the three countries and mutual exercises. These were singed by Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, General Necdet Ozal of Turkey and General Shah Muhammad Kairimi from Afghanistan.
The foreign office spokesperson said that Pakistan's principal objectives with regards to Afghanistan are to promote stability, peace and prosperity in this brotherly country. This is important for peace and stability in the region as a whole.
"We are actively participating in all trilateral processes with regards to Afghanistan. These include Pakistan-Afghanistan- Turkey, Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran, Pakistan-Afghanistan-U.S. and the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Russia quadrilateral as well as the SCO-sponsored processes and RECCA", said the spokesperson.
Local watchers believe that the conduct of mutual exercises and training cooperation would lessen the tension between the two countries. After the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbabi on Sept. 20, a statement issued by Afghan foreign office accused Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI for its alleged involvement in the murder plot. Pakistani government refused it but such accusations tensed the bilateral relations.
Pakistan says will work with Afghanistan on border
AFP – Thu, Nov 3, 2011
Pakistan and Afghanistan will work together to monitor all movements through a border crossing by the end of the month, the Pakistani interior minister said Thursday.
"There were lot of allegations (by Afghanistan) that people come from Pakistan and when I went to Chaman border I observed a free-for-all," Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
In January 2007, Pakistan installed a computerised biometeric system on a trial basis to try to control illegal cross-border traffic at Chaman in insurgency-wracked Baluchistan province.
But on the second day, thousands of Afghan tribesmen attacked the border gates, forcing authorities to close the crossing. The protest was against the biometric system and a Pakistani plan to fence and mine parts of the border.
Further protests saw Pakistan to shelve the system.
Malik said last month that the system would be revived on November 30 due to complaints about Islamist militants crossing the border unchecked, but now said that Afghanistan had also agreed to log movement on its side of the border.
"We are going to do it by the end of current month and the good thing is that Afghanistan is now also doing it on their side of the border," the Pakistani interior minister said.
Malik said the new system would begin in the last week of November.
"This arrangement would give us a registered log of all trucking activity as well as human movement so that we know who is coming in and who is going out."
Although he provided no detail on how it would be possible, Malik also said the two countries had agreed to close down all unofficial tracks across the border except the established crossings at Chaman and Torkham, further north.
Malik said he and his Afghan counterpart would hold monthly meetings "to tackle the incursions and other border management problems."
The United States has asked Pakistan to provide greater intelligence sharing to stop efforts by the Taliban and its Haqqani network faction to try to cross the border into Afghanistan and plan attacks.
The biometric system would issue border passes to people after recording their fingerprints, retinas or facial patterns for identification.
The porous Afghan-Pakistani border separates families and tribesmen, but also allows Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants to move with ease in their fight against US soldiers in Afghanistan and government forces in Pakistan.
A Pakistani official at Torkham, when contacted by AFP, said there was no firm date on plans to introduce biometrics at the crossing.
Afghanistan, Pakistan take small steps towards repairing rift
By Jonathon Burch and Myra MacDonald | Reuters – Wed, Nov 2, 2011
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pakistan and Afghanistan have stepped back from a near-rupture in relations following the murder of an Afghan peace envoy, officials said on Wednesday after several days of talks between the two countries.
Leaders of the two countries, accompanied by their army and intelligence chiefs, met at a regional conference hosted by Turkey for the first time since the assassination in September of peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
"We gained more than we hoped for. We broke the ice," a Turkish official said of his country's efforts to help repair a relationship essential to ending the war in Afghanistan.
"We all know the story here - it's difficult," a senior western diplomat said. "They know the bottom line is that they do actually need each other."
Afghanistan had earlier cancelled talks with Pakistan after Rabbani's killing in Kabul by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary who Afghanistan said was sent from the Pakistani city of Quetta.
The assassination also prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to say there was no point in talking to the Taliban and that Afghanistan should instead deal directly with Pakistan, which it accuses of supporting and sheltering the insurgents.
Afghan and Pakistani officials, however, both indicated a willingness to try again to explore peace talks with insurgents - though they differ on how these should be approached.
Kabul has in the past accused Pakistan of interfering in the
peace process and of backing the Afghan Taliban - including those in the so-called Quetta shura and the Haqqani network - to extend its own influence in Afghanistan and counter rival India.
"In our discussions we ask Pakistan again and again to allow the Quetta shura to come and sit with Afghanistan at the negotiating table to find, to explore a peaceful solution," Karzai's National Security Adviser Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said.
"We are ready to talk to everybody, every Afghan citizen if he or she is ready to talk for peace and stability in Afghanistan," he told Reuters.
A day after a trilateral summit hosted by Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan along with other countries in the region also signed up to a declaration on Wednesday reaffirming support for an Afghan-led process of reconciliation.
"We have to make damage control (after Rabbani's killing)," another senior western diplomat said. "We have to make clear we don't delete the file of reconciliation."
NO ROAD MAP
Pakistan, increasingly worried about the war in Afghanistan spilling over into its own territory, has long called for talks with Taliban insurgents.
Such talks have been endorsed by the United States - provided insurgents are willing to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution.
Rabbani's assassination had torpedoed a process seen as helping to pave the way for the United States and its allies to pull out most combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014.
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are seen as needing to work together to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik - who denied his country supported the Taliban - told Reuters Pakistan was ready to help in any Afghan-led peace process.
"We want a safe, stable Afghanistan. We want to be good neighbours," he said. But it was up to Karzai to set objectives on what was expected from the peace process, he added. "There is no clear road map."
Pakistan has also suggested a cease-fire could help create the right climate for talks to succeed - whereas the United States has said it will fight and talk at the same time.
During their meetings in Istanbul, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to set up a "joint mechanism" to investigate Rabbani's assassination.
Pakistan's Malik, however, said that Islamabad had turned down a suggestion for a joint investigation. "They demanded a joint commission. A joint commission is not allowed under our law."
But he promised Pakistan would investigate any leads and details given by Afghanistan. "We will do everything possible to help Afghanistan to bring the culprits to justice."
Afghan and Pakistani officials gave different views on the identity of Rabbani's killer.
A senior Afghan official, speaking on background, told Reuters documents found on the body of the suicide bomber showed he was a Pakistani national.
Malik said no Pakistani was involved but noted that many Afghan refugees had been living in Pakistan for decades and had in the past often obtained false identity papers.
With the thaw in relations still tentative, Afghanistan has said it will judge Pakistan's willingness to help bring peace to the country on the basis of its actions rather than words.
"We will establish our relationship with Pakistan on the basis of mutual trust and cooperation," Spanta said.
"After the assassination of President Rabbani this relation and this trust basis was destroyed. The discussion between us, Turkey and Pakistan was an effort to bring some movement in bilateral relations between the two countries but I'm not sure that we had success."
But Pakistan, the senior Afghan official said, had promised during their Istanbul talks - which included an unscheduled dinner on Tuesday between the two presidents along with their military and intelligence officials - to cooperate.
(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Editing by Tim Pearce)
Pak playing dual "role of fireman, arsonist " in Afghanistan: US senators
New Kerala - Fri Nov 4, 9:39 pm ET
Washington, Nov 4 : Two US senators, who recently came back from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, have said it appears that Pakistan is playing both the "role of fireman and arsonist" in Afghanistan.
"It does feel, at times, like Pakistan is playing both the role of fireman and arsonist in Afghanistan," The Express Tribune quoted Democratic Senator Mark Udall, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying.
"The next few weeks will demonstrate or not whether we can work together effectively with the government of Pakistan" against foes like the Haqqani network blamed for attacks in Afghanistan, Democratic Senator Jack Reed said.
Reed said he had pressurized top Pakistani officials to curtail the Haqqani network's operations in Afghanistan.
"Action needs to be taken in days and weeks" Udall said, adding that the US intelligence agencies and their Pakistan counterparts have been working together, but more needs to be done to strengthen their cooperation.
"We'd like it to be stronger, we'd like it to be more disclosive, there have been some shortcomings, there have been some mixed signals, but all in all we continue to cooperate with them and they cooperate with us in many ways," he added.
--ANI
INTERVIEW - Afghan Taliban commander rejects U.S. peace push
Reuters By Jibran Ahmad Thu Nov 3, 2011
CHAMAN, Pakistan - A mid-level Afghan Taliban commander, whose fighters held two French journalists hostage for more than a year, said U.S. overtures for peace talks were simply an attempt to divide Islamists.
In a rare insight into the thinking of a Taliban commander, Qari Mahmud Mujahid said the United States was just trying to save face after battlefield losses.
"The blood of thousands of our Mujahideen is bearing fruit and now the U.S. and its allies are begging us to help them find a respectable exit from Afghanistan," he told Reuters in an interview in the Pakistani border town of Chaman.
The United States is eager to stabilise Afghanistan as much as possible before the end of 2014 -- when all NATO combat troops are due home -- and has been stressing the need for all militant groups to pursue peace.
The United States has said it remains open to reaching an accord with insurgents ready to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution.
Mujahid, a stern-looking figure who carries a U.S. made pistol, is not part of the top Taliban leadership structure -- he is a commander in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul.
But his views shed light on how mid-level commanders interpret the American drive for reconciliation.
"This is their (the United States') propaganda to divide our various fighting groups. The Taliban had defeated them on the battlefield and now they are working to find out a respectable exit from Afghanistan," said Mujahid, flanked by guards with AK-47 assault rifles.
On a recent visit to Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was time to bring all militant groups to the negotiating table.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since 2001, according to the United Nations, although a recent Pentagon report says it is down.
TALIBAN LESS RIGID
The Taliban had grown confident enough to fight during all seasons, said Mujahid, who was dressed in a traditional shalwar qameez, traditional baggy tunic and trousers and a white cap.
Insurgent attacks have tended to fall off in winter as the mountain passes they use to cross from havens in Pakistan become blocked with snow.
Qari Mahmud Mujahid is the Taliban commander's nom de guerre. He did not want his real name used for fear of being captured or killed by Western or Afghan forces.
Mujahid said he became close to reclusive Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Omar over the years and had spent time in Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, where he once saw Osama bin Laden and several of his Arab militant supporters one night.
After seizing power in Afghanistan in 1996, the Taliban implemented heavily oppressive policies that alienated Afghans.
They publicly executed adulterers and brought back physical punishments including amputation. The Taliban banned television, some sports and most music, arrested men without beards, and beat those who didn't attend prayers.
Women were shut out from most work and study.
There have been hints in statements from former Taliban officials that they may have softened their stance.
Asked what type of rule the Taliban would impose if they took over again, Mujahid, who served his guests dry fruit and tea without sugar, said they would favour a "pure" Islamic system "that would be acceptable to all countries".
"We are not against female education. Once the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has come into power, we would make all arrangements to enable the females to get their education and would ensure all rights to the women, but within the framework of Islam," he said.
Mujahid said his supporters held French journalists Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier hostage in Afghanistan for a year and a half before they were released in June.
He complained that journalists were not visiting areas under his control to report how the Taliban "restored peace", but reacted angrily when it was suggested it would be too risky.
"The two French journalists you are referring to did not inform us before coming to our areas. They could be spies as the enemy often used to travel in our areas disguised as journalists. We did not know they were journalists," he said.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
U.S. Tightens Drone Rules
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JULIAN E. BARNES NOVEMBER 4, 2011
The Central Intelligence Agency has made a series of secret concessions in its drone campaign after military and diplomatic officials complained large strikes were damaging the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan.
The covert drones are credited with killing hundreds of suspected militants, and few U.S. officials have publicly criticized the campaign, or its rapid expansion under President Barack Obama. Behind the scenes, however, many key U.S. military and State Department officials demanded more-selective strikes. That pitted them against CIA brass who want a free hand to pursue suspected militants.
The disputes over drones became so protracted that the White House launched a review over the summer, in which Mr. Obama intervened.
The review ultimately affirmed support for the underlying CIA program. But a senior official said: "The bar has been raised. Inside CIA, there is a recognition you need to be damn sure it's worth it."
Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the U.S.
The Pakistan drone debate already seems to be influencing thinking about the U.S. use of drones elsewhere in the world. In Yemen, the CIA used the pilotless aircraft in September to kill American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected terrorist. But the White House has for now barred the CIA from attacking large groups of unidentified lower-level militants there.
The CIA concessions were detailed by high-level officials in a series of interviews with The Wall Street Journal. But in a measure of the discord, administration officials have different interpretations about the outcome of the White House review. While some cast the concessions as a "new phase" in which the CIA would weigh diplomacy more heavily in its activities, others said the impact was minimal and that the bar for vetting targets has been consistently high.
"Even if there are added considerations, the program—which still has strong support in Washington—remains as aggressive as ever," said a U.S. official.
Last year, Mr. Obama expanded the CIA program to 14 drone "orbits." Each orbit usually includes three drones, sufficient to provide constant surveillance over tribal areas of Pakistan. The CIA's fleet of drones includes Predators and larger Reapers. The drones carry Hellfire missiles and sometimes bigger bombs, can soar to an altitude of 50,000 feet and reach cruise speeds of up to 230 miles per hour.
The drone program over the past decade has moved from a technological oddity to a key element of U.S. national-security policy. The campaign has killed more than 1,500 suspected militants on Pakistani soil since Mr. Obama took office in 2009, according to government officials.
To some degree, the program has become a victim of its own success. Critics question whether aggressive tactics are necessary following the eradication of senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including Osama bin Laden, killed in a helicopter raid by Navy Seals in May after drone and satellite surveillance of the compound where he was living.
Many officials at the Pentagon and State Department privately argued the CIA pays too little attention to the diplomatic costs of air strikes that kill large groups of low-level fighters. Such strikes inflame Pakistani public opinion. Observers point to the rising power in Pakistan of political figures like Imran Khan, who held large rallies to protest the drones and could challenge the current government.
All this comes at a time when the State Department is trying to enlist Pakistan's help in advancing peace talks with the Taliban, a key element of a White House drive to end the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Top officials of the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council have been pulled into the debate. Among those voicing concerns was Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded the war in Afghanistan before becoming CIA director in September. A senior intelligence official said Gen. Petraeus voiced "caution against strikes on large groups of fighters."
Changing the handling of the drone program doesn't mean the CIA is pulling back. The agency in recent weeks has intensified strikes in Pakistan focusing on the militant Haqqani network, a group believed to be behind a series of attacks in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and State Department have backed those strikes as serving U.S. interests.
The debate in Washington was fueled by a particularly deadly drone strike on March 17. It came at a low point in U.S.-Pakistani relations, just a day after Pakistan agreed after weeks of U.S. pressure to release a CIA contractor who had killed two Pakistanis.
Infuriated Pakistani leaders put the death toll from the drone strike at more than 40, including innocent civilians. American officials say about 20 were killed, all militants.
The March 17 attack was a "signature" strike, one of two types used by the CIA, and the most controversial within the administration. Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes.
The second type of drone strike, known as a "personality" strike, targets known terrorist leaders and has faced less internal scrutiny.
Signature strikes were first used under former President George W. Bush. His administration began arming unmanned aircraft to hunt al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. As al Qaeda militants fled to Pakistan, the CIA began a secret drone program there, with quiet backing from Islamabad.
For the first years, U.S. officials used drones only to target known, top terror suspects. The drone strikes quickly became unpopular with the Pakistani public. In 2008, when Pakistani leaders bowed to public pressure and began to block U.S. requests for strikes, President Bush authorized a major expansion, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes, including signature strikes, without Pakistani permission.
Initially, the CIA was skeptical of the value of expending resources on lower-level operatives through signature strikes, a former senior intelligence official said. Military officials, however, favored the idea. The debate eventually would lead to the CIA and the military reversing their initial positions.
Mr. Obama was an early convert to drones. The CIA has had freedom to decide who to target and when to strike. The White House usually is notified immediately after signature strikes take place, not beforehand, a senior U.S. official said.
The program had some early skeptics, but their concerns gained little traction. Dennis Blair, Mr. Obama's first director of national intelligence, recommended that the CIA measure the program's effectiveness beyond numbers of dead militants, U.S. officials said. It didn't happen.
The CIA and the State Department had been at odds for months over the use of drones. Tensions flared with the arrival in Islamabad late last year of a new ambassador, Cameron Munter, who advocated more judicious use of signature strikes, senior officials said.
On at least two occasions, Leon Panetta, then the CIA director, ignored Mr. Munter's objections to planned strikes, a senior official said. One came just hours after Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited Islamabad.
State Department diplomats weren't alone in their concerns. Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders, who initially favored more aggressive CIA methods, began to question that approach.
The debate erupted after the March 17 strike, when National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and others at the White House, taken aback by the number of casualties and Pakistan's sharp reaction, questioned whether the CIA should for large groups, at times, hold its fire. Officials asked what precautions were being taken to aim at highly valued targets, rather than foot soldiers.
"Donilon and others said, 'O.K., I got it; it's war and it's confusing. Are we doing everything we can to make sure we are focused on the target sets we want?'" said a participant in the discussions. "You can kill these foot soldiers all day, every day and you wouldn't change the course of the war."
A senior Obama administration official declined to comment on Mr. Donilon's closed-door discussions but said that he wasn't second-guessing the CIA's targeting methodology and pointed to his long-standing support for the program. The official said the White House wanted to use the drone program smartly to pick off al Qaeda leaders and the Haqqanis. "It's about keeping our eyes on the ball," the official said.
In the spring, military leaders increasingly found themselves on the phone with Mr. Panetta and his deputy urging restraint in drone attacks, particularly during periods when the U.S. was engaging in high-level diplomatic exchanges with Pakistan. "Whenever they got a shot [for a drone attack], they just took it, regardless of what else was happening in the world," a senior official said.
Mr. Panetta made his first concession in an April meeting with his Pakistani counterpart. He told Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha that the U.S. would tell the Pakistanis ahead of time about strikes expected to kill more than 20 militants, officials said.
The debate over the future of the drone program intensified after the death of Osama bin Laden the next month. Pakistani leaders were embarrassed that the U.S. carried out the operation in their country, undetected. They demanded an end to the signature drone strikes.
Mr. Donilon, the National Security Advisor, launched a broad review of Pakistan policy, including the drone program. Officials said the internal debate that ensued was the most serious since the signature strikes were expanded in 2008.
CIA officials defended the signature strikes by saying they frequently netted top terrorists, not just foot soldiers. Twice as many wanted terrorists have been killed in signature strikes than in personality strikes, a U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Adm. Mullen argued that the CIA needed to be more selective. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates feared that the Pakistanis, if pushed too hard, would block the flow of supplies to troops in Afghanistan, officials said.
For Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has supported the CIA's strikes in the vast majority of cases, the biggest focus has been to make sure political ramifications are properly assessed to avoid a situation where the political opposition in Pakistan becomes so great that the country's current or future leaders decide to bar the drones outright.
Independent information about who the CIA kills in signature strikes in Pakistan is scarce. The agency tells U.S. and Pakistani officials that there have been very few civilian deaths—only 60 over the years. But some senior officials in both governments privately say they are skeptical that civilian deaths have been that low.
Some top officials in the White House meetings this summer argued for a broader reassessment. "The question is, 'Is it even worth doing now? We've got the key leadership in al Qaeda, what is it that we're there for now?" one of the officials recalled some advisers asking.
The White House review culminated in a Situation Room meeting with Mr. Obama in June in which he reaffirmed support for the program.
But changes were made. Mr. Obama instituted an appeals procedure to give the State Department more of a voice in deciding when and if to strike. If the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan objected to a strike, for example, the CIA director or his deputy would first try to talk through their differences with the ambassador. If the conflict was unresolved, the secretary of state would appeal directly to the CIA director. If they couldn't reach agreement, however, the CIA director retained the final say.
Since the changes were made, officials say internal tensions over the strikes have eased and agencies were acting more in concert with each other.
Though Mr. Petraeus voiced a preference for smaller drone strikes, officials said the agency has the leeway to carry out large-scale strikes and hasn't been formally directed to go after only higher-value targets and avoid foot soldiers. Since Mr. Petraeus's arrival at CIA, some strikes on larger groups have taken place, the senior intelligence official said.
To reduce the number of CIA strikes on Pakistani soil, the military moved more of its own drones into position on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan, according to participants in the discussions. That makes it easier for the CIA to "hand off" suspected militants to the U.S. military once they cross into Afghanistan, rather than strike them on Pakistani soil, U.S. officials said.
U.S.-Pakistani relations remain troubled, but Islamabad recently expanded intelligence cooperation and has toned down its opposition to the drone strikes, both in public and private, officials said. Pakistani officials had sought advance notice, and greater say, over CIA strikes so they could try to mitigate the public backlash.
"It's not like they took the car keys away from the CIA," a senior official said. "There are just more people in the car." —Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Multiple insurgents including Haqqani network leader detained: NATO
KABUL, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had captured multiple anti-Afghan government militants including a leader of Haqqani network on Thursday, a statement of the alliance released here Friday said.
"A combined Afghan and coalition security force captured a Haqqani network leader and detained one suspected insurgent during an operation in Zarghun Shahr district, Paktika province, yesterday," the statement asserted.
However, it did not identify the name of the arrested leader of Haqqani network and his rank, adding "The leader operated an insurgent fighter cell in Zarghun Shahr district and was responsible for numerous attacks against Afghan forces in western Paktika."
Haqqani network is the military wing of Taliban outfit and has been operating in eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal areas and Afghan capital Kabul over the past couple of years.
The statement also said that "Afghan and NATO-led troops during a combined operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district, Helmand province detained multiple suspected insurgents yesterday."
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Platoon Testimony Continues in Afghan Atrocities Case
VOA News November 3, 2011 Luis Ramirez | Lewis-McChord Military Base, Washington State
Testimony continues in the military trial, court martial, of American soldier Calvin Gibbs, accused of masterminding war crimes allegedly committed by the platoon he led in Afghanistan. If convicted, Gibbs could face life in prison without parole.
Alleged crimes
It was in remote areas of Kandahar province where military prosecutors allege that Gibbs plotted fake combat scenes and planned the murders of Afghan civilians.
Alleged victims included an unarmed 15-year-old boy picked at random in a field - shot before soldiers posed with his body for keepsake photos, like one published in a German newspaper and since presented as evidence at Gibbs' trial.
One after another, members of Gibbs' platoon - some of them already convicted in the case - have testified about the boredom, rampant drug use in the unit and of Gibbs' hatred of Afghan people, whom he is alleged to have described as savages.
Panel deciding Gibbs fate
A panel of soldiers deciding on Gibbs' fate has seen graphic evidence, including photos of severed fingers that witnesses say Gibbs cut off Afghans and kept as trophies.
Gibbs pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and 13 other charges. In opening statements, his lawyer said Gibbs had been betrayed by members of his platoon and was not responsible for the killings. In the days ahead, the military jury will decide.
Taliban exploits US pullback to hit Pakistan
Financial Times By James Lamont and Matthew Green November 3, 2011
New Delhi and Islamabad - Pakistan’s Taliban has opened a new front in the north of the country exploiting the departure of US troops from outposts in eastern Afghanistan to kill scores of members of the security forces in cross-border attacks, the Pakistani army says.
Pakistan’s military says it has been forced to deploy at least 4,000 troops in the past few months to the northern regions of Dir and Chitral, which had previously been free of Taliban fighters.
Major General Athar Abbas, the military’s chief spokesman in Rawalpindi, where Pakistan’s army has its headquarters, said the campaigns in Dir and Chitral were now “a major challenge” but that militancy had not yet spread to the Gilgit-Baltistan region in the far north, which borders China.
Gen Abbas said 100 members of the military, police and paramilitary forces had been killed in roadside bombings and other attacks in the northern region in the past three months.
Pakistani officers say moves by the Nato-led force in Afghanistan to abandon remote bases near the Pakistan border under its strategy to focus on protecting more heavily populated areas has given militants a chance to regroup in remote Afghan valleys.
Pakistani officials blame the attacks in the north on fighters loyal to Maulvi Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader whose forces were expelled from Pakistan’s Swat Valley by an army offensive in 2009, and who is now believed to be based in the sparsely-populated Kunar and Nuristan provinces in eastern Afghanistan.
The Pakistani militants’ recent success in exploiting Afghan soil to stage attacks across the frontier represents a mirror image of the traditional pattern of a war in which Afghan Taliban factions have for years used safe havens in Pakistan to attack Nato forces in Afghanistan.
It also raises fresh questions about the security risks attached to Nato’s plan to gradually withdraw the vast majority of its combat forces in Afghanistan before handing primary responsibility for fighting the Taliban to Afghan troops in 2014.
“Parts of Nuristan and Kunar have become a haven for Pakistani militants, who have joined forces with Afghan counterparts,” said Khalid Aziz, head of the Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training, a think-tank in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar. “It’s a free-for-all over there.”
Hawa Alam Nuristani, a member of parliament from Nuristan, said Pakistani Taliban militants were forcing locals to pay them taxes and make donations of food, petrol and volunteers. Schools and clinics had been closed in Taliban-controlled areas and Afghan forces were confined largely to guarding government buildings in isolated urban centres, Mr Nuristani said.
“More ordinary people in the region were motivated to join the insurgency after the withdrawal of US troops,” he said. “The Afghan National Security Forces are not in a position to control the provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.”
Isaf, the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, said it was working with Pakistani officers stationed at its headquarters in Kabul to co-ordinate operations to minimise cross-border infiltration. “We routinely share information with our Pakistan military counterparts,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmie Cummings, an Isaf spokesman.
Gen Abbas warned that the new front in the north was placing extra pressure on the security forces, which have devoted some 147,000 men to the campaign against militants in more southerly areas in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
The US has spent the past two years putting pressure on Pakistan’s military to launch an offensive in the tribal area of North Waziristan to dismantle bases used by the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group that has been blamed for a string of suicide attacks on the Afghan capital Kabul and on Nato troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Gen Abbas confirmed the presence of China’s People’s Liberation Army in northern Pakistan to help with reconstruction after a year of natural disasters. He said that the PLA’s engineers had helped clear a huge landslide that had blocked the Karakorum Highway, which links Pakistan’s heartland to the Chinese border, during last year’s floods. The presence of Chinese troops in Pakistan has caused suspicion in India, which views growing military ties between its two regional rivals with concern.
The appearance of Pakistani Taliban forces even 350km from the Chinese border is highly sensitive for Beijing, which fears any export of Islamic fundamentalism from Pakistan could destabilise the Uighur population in Xinjiang, and the Muslim areas of western China.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By: Tim Mak November 4, 2011 04:47 PM EDT politico.com
Major Gen. Peter Fuller, a top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was relieved of his duties Friday after comments he made to POLITICO disparaging Afghan President Hamid Karzai and calling the government’s leaders “isolated from reality.”
Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, ousted Fuller following what the coalition called his “inappropriate public comments.”
“These unfortunate comments are neither indicative of our current solid relationship with the government of Afghanistan, its leadership, or our joint commitment to prevail here in Afghanistan,” Allen said in a statement.
“The Afghan people are an honorable people, and comments such as these will not keep us from accomplishing our most critical and shared mission — bringing about a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan,” he added.
Fuller was the deputy commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan and responsible for training Afghan security forces.
In a Thursday interview with POLITICO, Fuller, a two-star general, slammed Karzai’s recent remark that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S., blasting the president’s comments as “erratic,” and adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me. … I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care?’”
“When they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that’s more articulate in public,” Fuller added.
Fuller also criticized Afghan leaders as divorced from the economic realities of the United States.
“I said, ‘You guys are isolated from reality.’ The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups. The U.S. is in this [too],” Fuller told POLITICO. “If you’re in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood. They don’t understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that’s part of my job — to educate ’em.”
He repeatedly said the Afghan leaders don’t appreciate the sacrifice that the United States was making in “blood and treasure” for the sake of their country.
Military officials said Fuller had been quoted accurately and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had been made aware of his comments to POLITICO, reported CNN.
The NATO statement did not say what Fuller would do next but such disciplinary action usually ends military careers, reports noted. Fuller has served in the armed forces for more than 30 years.
U.S. general: Afghan leaders 'isolated from reality'
Politico.comBy TIM MAK 3/11/2011
A senior U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan called key elements of the government “isolated from reality,” said they don’t appreciate America’s sacrifice for their nation and offered up some choice words for President Hamid Karzai.
Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the American-led NATO effort to train and equip Afghan security forces, told POLITICO in an interview that top leaders in the Afghan government had not fully recognized the sacrifices in “treasure and blood” that the U.S. was making for their security and recalled that a senior Afghan official even demanded the transfer of tanks just so they could be used for parades.
The two-star general flashed irritation when he brought up Karzai’s recent remarks that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in a war against the U.S., blasting the president’s comments as “erratic,” and adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, ‘I don’t really care’?”
“When they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that’s more articulate in public,” Fuller said during a visit to Washington for a conference.
Karzai is term-limited and will not be running for another term. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Karzai’s remarks have been misunderstood.
Fuller recently involved Afghan generals in a strategic review of the U.S. mission and said that they didn’t understand the extent to which America is in economic distress.
“I said, ‘You guys are isolated from reality.’ The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups. The U.S. is in this [too],” Fuller told POLITICO. “If you’re in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold, everybody lives in Hollywood. They don’t understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that’s part of my job to educate ’em.”
The problem, he says, is a mentality that the Soviets left behind in Afghanistan.
“We didn’t buy them a lot of things that they had seen bought previously by the Soviets, the tanks and the jets. So they asked for them,’” Fuller said. “They say, ‘Well, the Russians gave us this.’”
Fuller says he responds by saying, “’You’re telling us that you’re not appreciative of $11.2 billion from the U.S. this year? We have challenges going on in our own country, and this is our national treasure.’”
In fact, the Afghan government made requests for F-16 fighter jets and tanks, even without the budget to use or maintain them, said Fuller. “I actually had someone senior tell me, ‘All I want to do is put them [tanks] on a flat bed and drive them around in a parade,” he said.
Fuller described one of his key responsibilities in the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan rather folksily, as someone who often needs to beat back overzealous demands from certain elements of the Afghan government.
“You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish,” said Fuller. “We’re giving them fish while they’re learning, and they want more fish! [They say,] ‘I like swordfish, how come you’re giving me cod?’ Guess what? Cod’s on the menu today.”
However, Fuller said later, Afghan leadership is starting to come around to being able to appreciate American sacrifices.
“The senior leaders [in Afghanistan] are starting to understand that there is a finite amount of resources that the American public is going to provide. Do I wish that they had understood that from Day One? Absolutely. But we probably didn’t do a good job of messaging that very well,” said Fuller. “It’s our responsibility to educate them. And when sometimes you deal with sovereign nations, and they don’t hear it the first time, it’s our responsibility to repeat it.”
And Fuller has put his money where his mouth is. His command had been allotted $12.8 billion for the as-yet-unapproved FY2012 budget before he joined that NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, but he and his team managed to trim $1.6 billion from that figure in August of this year.
“We’re having financial difficulties. I acknowledge it. I’m trying to be the best steward of the resources that are given to us. I could have bought a lot more stuff with $1.6 billion,” Fuller said.
Mullah Omar warns Taliban against hurting Afghan civilians
Fugitive Taliban leader tells insurgents they face sharia justice if found negligent in edict seen as attempt to win hearts and minds
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011 14.42 EDT
The Taliban was responsible for 80% of the 1,462 civilian casualties in the first six months of this year, according to the UN.
Taliban foot soldiers will face sharia justice if they kill or injure innocent civilians without taking precautions, the fugitive leader of the Afghan insurgency has warned.
Mullah Omar, the Taliban's supreme cleric, released an 1,800-word statement that dwelled at length on the need to protect civilians in a sign of the insurgency's growing defensiveness on the issue.
Human rights workers described the statement, published in five languages on Friday to mark the Islamic festival of Eid, as extremely significant. They said it went into far more detail about the issue than any other previous pronouncement.
The mujahideen, as the rebels style themselves, are ordered to "take every step to protect the lives and wealth of ordinary people".
The decree said: "Scholars should be employed every now and then to preach protection of civilian life, wealth and honour to mujahideen and promote virtue … All civilian casualties which are caused or are believed to be caused by mujahideen should be reported to the superiors."
It also called for investigations by the movement's "legal offices" of cases where locals say civilians have been hurt by landmines, suicide bombings or other attacks. "If it is irrefutably proven that the blood of innocent Muslims is spilled by the negligence of mujahideen then a penalty should be implemented in accordance with sharia," the statement said. The family of the victims should also be compensated, it suggested.
Afghan civilians are also ordered to protect themselves by not "moving in close proximity to Americans who patrol in villages and countryside".
Kate Clark, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said even though the statement was in part propaganda it could also help civilians trapped in the middle of fighting between Nato and Taliban forces. "It is much, much more specific than ever before on the Taliban's system of internal discipline and command and control," she said. "And they admit that they themselves are causing civilian casualties, not just people doing it in their name."
That Omar's statement on the issue is an indication of how embarrassing the problem of civilian casualties has become for a movement that sees itself as the protector of the Afghan people against foreign military aggression.
According to the latest UN figures, the Taliban were responsible for 80% of the 1,462 civilian deaths caused by fighting between insurgents and pro-government forces in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year. Of those killed by insurgents, 38% of deaths were due to IEDs, or homemade roadside bombs.
Georgette Gagnon, the UN's director of human rights in Afghanistan, said it remained to be seen whether the insurgents would take any real steps to reduce casualties. "I would like them to say publicly that they will stop using indiscriminate, pressure plate IEDs," she said, saying that while in power the Taliban regime banned anti-personnel mines as un-Islamic.
US weighs shift in strategy in Afghanistan war
By Dan De Luce | AFP – Fri, Nov 4, 2011
President Barack Obama's advisers are debating a shift in the military's mission in Afghanistan that would focus on advising Afghan forces while scaling back combat operations much earlier than planned, officials say.
The potential change raises the possibility of a faster-paced drawdown of US troops, but administration officials insist it is too early to speculate on an option that is still tentative.
"It shouldn't surprise anybody that we're thinking ahead about what may happen but it's very preliminary and there are no particular options," a US defense official told AFP.
The Wall Street Journal first broke the story, reporting Thursday that top officials have discussed revising the mission and that the move could possibly be approved as soon as May when NATO leaders meet in Chicago.
A debate on strategy and troop levels in the unpopular war comes as Obama faces a difficult re-election campaign next year and mounting pressure to find savings in the federal budget.
The Pentagon did not deny the report and said only that the administration's policy on the 10-year-old war had not changed.
"There are no formal plans that have been presented from this department to the White House or from this government to the government of Afghanistan on a potential change of mission," press secretary George Little told reporters.
At the last NATO summit in Lisbon last year, alliance members approved a decision to transfer security duties to Afghan forces for the whole of the country by the end of 2014, paving the way for the exit of NATO-led troops.
The possible shift is reminiscent of the administration's approach to Iraq, where a new "advise and assist" mission -- dubbed Operation New Dawn -- was announced in 2010 to underline an emphasis on handing security over to Iraqi forces.
With 97,000 US troops and 45,000 allied soldiers, the NATO-led force has concentrated on rolling back Taliban insurgents in towns and cities while training Afghan army and police.
US commanders have tended to push for more time for combat operations and for delaying withdrawals of troops as much as possible, but some inside and outside the Pentagon are arguing for handing over to Afghan forces sooner while more NATO boots are still on the ground.
"It's better to do it when you've got 80,000 troops on the ground than when you've got 40,000 troops on the ground and you're looking at the exits," said Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who has called for changing the mission.
"You've got to make this mental leap away from -- 'I'm going to do this myself' to 'I'm going to enable our Afghan partners to do it,'" said Exum, a retired US Army officer who served in Afghanistan.
An earlier handover would allow a larger allied force to back up Afghan forces when they falter, he said.
The approach also does not necessarily mean an accelerated drawdown of troops but poses the risk that Afghans or other regional players could perceive the change as a retreat.
"By changing the mission, does it look like the US is running for the exits or does it look like the US is making a logical transition?" asked Exum.
The revised mission would likely not affect the US military's manhunts carried out by special operations forces, which target militants linked to Al-Qaeda, Exum and other analysts said.
But the change represents a clear break from the military's experience in Iraq, where "we defeated the insurgency and then turned the country over to the Iraqis themselves," Exum said.
"In Afghanistan, we are going to turn over the country to the Afghans before the insurgency is fully defeated."
Obama's political opponents were quick to question the possible change in mission.
Referring to both the Iraq withdrawal and the potential mission change in Afghanistan, Republican US House Speaker John Boehner said "we should be very careful about losing the gains that have been made because of someone wanting to be more expedient."
The outcome of the war in Afghanistan will hinge in part on the competence and cohesion of Afghanistan's security forces, which have gotten mixed reviews.
NATO has overseen a dramatic expansion of the security forces with the army set to grow to 195,000 and the police to 157,000 by October 2012.
But out of 173 Afghan battalions, only one is designated by the Pentagon as able to operate independently from the US-led coalition.
U.S. says its civilian aid to Afghanistan has peaked
By Susan Cornwell | Reuters – Thu, Nov 3, 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. civilian aid to Afghanistan has peaked, the State Department said in a new report, declaring the United States would spend less on development assistance there as it withdraws troops from the country.
"We have reached the high water mark of our civilian funding levels" for Afghanistan, the department said in a status report on civilian efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan that was sent to congressional offices and obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has fallen from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion this year, the report by the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said.
These amounts do not include tens of billions of dollars Washington has spent on training the Afghan army and police.
President Barack Obama and allied leaders committed last year to turning security in Afghanistan over to Afghan control by 2014. By the end of next year, Obama plans to pull out 33,000 troops that he deployed in surge aimed at turning around the flagging decade-old conflict.
The State Department report said the United States is now shifting from funding stabilization projects in Afghanistan to "long-term sustainable development at lower funding levels."
It said future U.S. aid in Afghanistan would focus on economic growth, such as in agriculture and mining, as well as infrastructure, such as energy and water, and in educational and vocational development.
The number of American government civilians serving in Afghanistan has nearly quadrupled from around 320 to more than 1,200, the report said, but it was silent on whether some would now be withdrawn along with U.S. troops.
The Obama administration announced an increase in civilian advisers -- experts on matters ranging from agriculture to courts -- to Afghanistan in 2009 to accompany the influx of 33,000 U.S. combat troops there.
Part of what was dubbed a "smart power" strategy, the idea of sending the civilians was to build on military gains with improvements in the lives of ordinary Afghans.
But the "smart power" idea is on the wane as U.S. lawmakers prepare to carve chunks out of overseas spending to try to address budget shortfalls.
Support on Capitol Hill for aid to Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, has plummeted amid accusations that some in the Pakistani government have aided anti-U.S. militants.
The State Department report said Congress had slipped on its 2009 promise to triple nonmilitary aid to Pakistan over five years. The appropriations reached the promised level of $1.5 billion in 2010, but last year amounted to only $1 billion, the document said.
It said, however, that the Obama administration intended for assistance to Islamabad to continue and wants to focus on "signature" projects in Pakistan. U.S. officials are currently looking to select a major new infrastructure project "that would both contribute to power generation and water management" in Pakistan, it said.
(Editing by Vicki Allen)
Pakistan to give military training to Afghan National Army
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan Army would train Afghan National Army and police under the trilateral pacts signed in 6th Trilateral Summit held in Istanbul, local media reported on Friday.
Quoting Foreign Office spokesperson, Tehmina Janjua, The News reported that Pakistan signed a protocol among Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey on conduct of mutual exercises and on training cooperation with Afghanistan. Pakistan would train police personnel to counter terrorism/law enforcement and it would also train the military personnel.
According to one of the protocols, the three countries had signed a memorandum of understanding for training police personnel and conduct mutual military exercises.
The protocol includes training courses between the militaries of the three countries and mutual exercises. These were singed by Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, General Necdet Ozal of Turkey and General Shah Muhammad Kairimi from Afghanistan.
The foreign office spokesperson said that Pakistan's principal objectives with regards to Afghanistan are to promote stability, peace and prosperity in this brotherly country. This is important for peace and stability in the region as a whole.
"We are actively participating in all trilateral processes with regards to Afghanistan. These include Pakistan-Afghanistan- Turkey, Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran, Pakistan-Afghanistan-U.S. and the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Russia quadrilateral as well as the SCO-sponsored processes and RECCA", said the spokesperson.
Local watchers believe that the conduct of mutual exercises and training cooperation would lessen the tension between the two countries. After the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbabi on Sept. 20, a statement issued by Afghan foreign office accused Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI for its alleged involvement in the murder plot. Pakistani government refused it but such accusations tensed the bilateral relations.
Pakistan says will work with Afghanistan on border
AFP – Thu, Nov 3, 2011
Pakistan and Afghanistan will work together to monitor all movements through a border crossing by the end of the month, the Pakistani interior minister said Thursday.
"There were lot of allegations (by Afghanistan) that people come from Pakistan and when I went to Chaman border I observed a free-for-all," Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad.
In January 2007, Pakistan installed a computerised biometeric system on a trial basis to try to control illegal cross-border traffic at Chaman in insurgency-wracked Baluchistan province.
But on the second day, thousands of Afghan tribesmen attacked the border gates, forcing authorities to close the crossing. The protest was against the biometric system and a Pakistani plan to fence and mine parts of the border.
Further protests saw Pakistan to shelve the system.
Malik said last month that the system would be revived on November 30 due to complaints about Islamist militants crossing the border unchecked, but now said that Afghanistan had also agreed to log movement on its side of the border.
"We are going to do it by the end of current month and the good thing is that Afghanistan is now also doing it on their side of the border," the Pakistani interior minister said.
Malik said the new system would begin in the last week of November.
"This arrangement would give us a registered log of all trucking activity as well as human movement so that we know who is coming in and who is going out."
Although he provided no detail on how it would be possible, Malik also said the two countries had agreed to close down all unofficial tracks across the border except the established crossings at Chaman and Torkham, further north.
Malik said he and his Afghan counterpart would hold monthly meetings "to tackle the incursions and other border management problems."
The United States has asked Pakistan to provide greater intelligence sharing to stop efforts by the Taliban and its Haqqani network faction to try to cross the border into Afghanistan and plan attacks.
The biometric system would issue border passes to people after recording their fingerprints, retinas or facial patterns for identification.
The porous Afghan-Pakistani border separates families and tribesmen, but also allows Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants to move with ease in their fight against US soldiers in Afghanistan and government forces in Pakistan.
A Pakistani official at Torkham, when contacted by AFP, said there was no firm date on plans to introduce biometrics at the crossing.
Afghanistan, Pakistan take small steps towards repairing rift
By Jonathon Burch and Myra MacDonald | Reuters – Wed, Nov 2, 2011
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pakistan and Afghanistan have stepped back from a near-rupture in relations following the murder of an Afghan peace envoy, officials said on Wednesday after several days of talks between the two countries.
Leaders of the two countries, accompanied by their army and intelligence chiefs, met at a regional conference hosted by Turkey for the first time since the assassination in September of peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
"We gained more than we hoped for. We broke the ice," a Turkish official said of his country's efforts to help repair a relationship essential to ending the war in Afghanistan.
"We all know the story here - it's difficult," a senior western diplomat said. "They know the bottom line is that they do actually need each other."
Afghanistan had earlier cancelled talks with Pakistan after Rabbani's killing in Kabul by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary who Afghanistan said was sent from the Pakistani city of Quetta.
The assassination also prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to say there was no point in talking to the Taliban and that Afghanistan should instead deal directly with Pakistan, which it accuses of supporting and sheltering the insurgents.
Afghan and Pakistani officials, however, both indicated a willingness to try again to explore peace talks with insurgents - though they differ on how these should be approached.
Kabul has in the past accused Pakistan of interfering in the
peace process and of backing the Afghan Taliban - including those in the so-called Quetta shura and the Haqqani network - to extend its own influence in Afghanistan and counter rival India.
"In our discussions we ask Pakistan again and again to allow the Quetta shura to come and sit with Afghanistan at the negotiating table to find, to explore a peaceful solution," Karzai's National Security Adviser Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said.
"We are ready to talk to everybody, every Afghan citizen if he or she is ready to talk for peace and stability in Afghanistan," he told Reuters.
A day after a trilateral summit hosted by Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan along with other countries in the region also signed up to a declaration on Wednesday reaffirming support for an Afghan-led process of reconciliation.
"We have to make damage control (after Rabbani's killing)," another senior western diplomat said. "We have to make clear we don't delete the file of reconciliation."
NO ROAD MAP
Pakistan, increasingly worried about the war in Afghanistan spilling over into its own territory, has long called for talks with Taliban insurgents.
Such talks have been endorsed by the United States - provided insurgents are willing to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution.
Rabbani's assassination had torpedoed a process seen as helping to pave the way for the United States and its allies to pull out most combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014.
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are seen as needing to work together to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik - who denied his country supported the Taliban - told Reuters Pakistan was ready to help in any Afghan-led peace process.
"We want a safe, stable Afghanistan. We want to be good neighbours," he said. But it was up to Karzai to set objectives on what was expected from the peace process, he added. "There is no clear road map."
Pakistan has also suggested a cease-fire could help create the right climate for talks to succeed - whereas the United States has said it will fight and talk at the same time.
During their meetings in Istanbul, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to set up a "joint mechanism" to investigate Rabbani's assassination.
Pakistan's Malik, however, said that Islamabad had turned down a suggestion for a joint investigation. "They demanded a joint commission. A joint commission is not allowed under our law."
But he promised Pakistan would investigate any leads and details given by Afghanistan. "We will do everything possible to help Afghanistan to bring the culprits to justice."
Afghan and Pakistani officials gave different views on the identity of Rabbani's killer.
A senior Afghan official, speaking on background, told Reuters documents found on the body of the suicide bomber showed he was a Pakistani national.
Malik said no Pakistani was involved but noted that many Afghan refugees had been living in Pakistan for decades and had in the past often obtained false identity papers.
With the thaw in relations still tentative, Afghanistan has said it will judge Pakistan's willingness to help bring peace to the country on the basis of its actions rather than words.
"We will establish our relationship with Pakistan on the basis of mutual trust and cooperation," Spanta said.
"After the assassination of President Rabbani this relation and this trust basis was destroyed. The discussion between us, Turkey and Pakistan was an effort to bring some movement in bilateral relations between the two countries but I'm not sure that we had success."
But Pakistan, the senior Afghan official said, had promised during their Istanbul talks - which included an unscheduled dinner on Tuesday between the two presidents along with their military and intelligence officials - to cooperate.
(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Editing by Tim Pearce)
Pak playing dual "role of fireman, arsonist " in Afghanistan: US senators
New Kerala - Fri Nov 4, 9:39 pm ET
Washington, Nov 4 : Two US senators, who recently came back from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, have said it appears that Pakistan is playing both the "role of fireman and arsonist" in Afghanistan.
"It does feel, at times, like Pakistan is playing both the role of fireman and arsonist in Afghanistan," The Express Tribune quoted Democratic Senator Mark Udall, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying.
"The next few weeks will demonstrate or not whether we can work together effectively with the government of Pakistan" against foes like the Haqqani network blamed for attacks in Afghanistan, Democratic Senator Jack Reed said.
Reed said he had pressurized top Pakistani officials to curtail the Haqqani network's operations in Afghanistan.
"Action needs to be taken in days and weeks" Udall said, adding that the US intelligence agencies and their Pakistan counterparts have been working together, but more needs to be done to strengthen their cooperation.
"We'd like it to be stronger, we'd like it to be more disclosive, there have been some shortcomings, there have been some mixed signals, but all in all we continue to cooperate with them and they cooperate with us in many ways," he added.
--ANI
INTERVIEW - Afghan Taliban commander rejects U.S. peace push
Reuters By Jibran Ahmad Thu Nov 3, 2011
CHAMAN, Pakistan - A mid-level Afghan Taliban commander, whose fighters held two French journalists hostage for more than a year, said U.S. overtures for peace talks were simply an attempt to divide Islamists.
In a rare insight into the thinking of a Taliban commander, Qari Mahmud Mujahid said the United States was just trying to save face after battlefield losses.
"The blood of thousands of our Mujahideen is bearing fruit and now the U.S. and its allies are begging us to help them find a respectable exit from Afghanistan," he told Reuters in an interview in the Pakistani border town of Chaman.
The United States is eager to stabilise Afghanistan as much as possible before the end of 2014 -- when all NATO combat troops are due home -- and has been stressing the need for all militant groups to pursue peace.
The United States has said it remains open to reaching an accord with insurgents ready to sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and respect the Afghan constitution.
Mujahid, a stern-looking figure who carries a U.S. made pistol, is not part of the top Taliban leadership structure -- he is a commander in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul.
But his views shed light on how mid-level commanders interpret the American drive for reconciliation.
"This is their (the United States') propaganda to divide our various fighting groups. The Taliban had defeated them on the battlefield and now they are working to find out a respectable exit from Afghanistan," said Mujahid, flanked by guards with AK-47 assault rifles.
On a recent visit to Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was time to bring all militant groups to the negotiating table.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since 2001, according to the United Nations, although a recent Pentagon report says it is down.
TALIBAN LESS RIGID
The Taliban had grown confident enough to fight during all seasons, said Mujahid, who was dressed in a traditional shalwar qameez, traditional baggy tunic and trousers and a white cap.
Insurgent attacks have tended to fall off in winter as the mountain passes they use to cross from havens in Pakistan become blocked with snow.
Qari Mahmud Mujahid is the Taliban commander's nom de guerre. He did not want his real name used for fear of being captured or killed by Western or Afghan forces.
Mujahid said he became close to reclusive Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Omar over the years and had spent time in Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, where he once saw Osama bin Laden and several of his Arab militant supporters one night.
After seizing power in Afghanistan in 1996, the Taliban implemented heavily oppressive policies that alienated Afghans.
They publicly executed adulterers and brought back physical punishments including amputation. The Taliban banned television, some sports and most music, arrested men without beards, and beat those who didn't attend prayers.
Women were shut out from most work and study.
There have been hints in statements from former Taliban officials that they may have softened their stance.
Asked what type of rule the Taliban would impose if they took over again, Mujahid, who served his guests dry fruit and tea without sugar, said they would favour a "pure" Islamic system "that would be acceptable to all countries".
"We are not against female education. Once the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has come into power, we would make all arrangements to enable the females to get their education and would ensure all rights to the women, but within the framework of Islam," he said.
Mujahid said his supporters held French journalists Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier hostage in Afghanistan for a year and a half before they were released in June.
He complained that journalists were not visiting areas under his control to report how the Taliban "restored peace", but reacted angrily when it was suggested it would be too risky.
"The two French journalists you are referring to did not inform us before coming to our areas. They could be spies as the enemy often used to travel in our areas disguised as journalists. We did not know they were journalists," he said.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
U.S. Tightens Drone Rules
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and JULIAN E. BARNES NOVEMBER 4, 2011
The Central Intelligence Agency has made a series of secret concessions in its drone campaign after military and diplomatic officials complained large strikes were damaging the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan.
The covert drones are credited with killing hundreds of suspected militants, and few U.S. officials have publicly criticized the campaign, or its rapid expansion under President Barack Obama. Behind the scenes, however, many key U.S. military and State Department officials demanded more-selective strikes. That pitted them against CIA brass who want a free hand to pursue suspected militants.
The disputes over drones became so protracted that the White House launched a review over the summer, in which Mr. Obama intervened.
The review ultimately affirmed support for the underlying CIA program. But a senior official said: "The bar has been raised. Inside CIA, there is a recognition you need to be damn sure it's worth it."
Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the U.S.
The Pakistan drone debate already seems to be influencing thinking about the U.S. use of drones elsewhere in the world. In Yemen, the CIA used the pilotless aircraft in September to kill American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected terrorist. But the White House has for now barred the CIA from attacking large groups of unidentified lower-level militants there.
The CIA concessions were detailed by high-level officials in a series of interviews with The Wall Street Journal. But in a measure of the discord, administration officials have different interpretations about the outcome of the White House review. While some cast the concessions as a "new phase" in which the CIA would weigh diplomacy more heavily in its activities, others said the impact was minimal and that the bar for vetting targets has been consistently high.
"Even if there are added considerations, the program—which still has strong support in Washington—remains as aggressive as ever," said a U.S. official.
Last year, Mr. Obama expanded the CIA program to 14 drone "orbits." Each orbit usually includes three drones, sufficient to provide constant surveillance over tribal areas of Pakistan. The CIA's fleet of drones includes Predators and larger Reapers. The drones carry Hellfire missiles and sometimes bigger bombs, can soar to an altitude of 50,000 feet and reach cruise speeds of up to 230 miles per hour.
The drone program over the past decade has moved from a technological oddity to a key element of U.S. national-security policy. The campaign has killed more than 1,500 suspected militants on Pakistani soil since Mr. Obama took office in 2009, according to government officials.
To some degree, the program has become a victim of its own success. Critics question whether aggressive tactics are necessary following the eradication of senior al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including Osama bin Laden, killed in a helicopter raid by Navy Seals in May after drone and satellite surveillance of the compound where he was living.
Many officials at the Pentagon and State Department privately argued the CIA pays too little attention to the diplomatic costs of air strikes that kill large groups of low-level fighters. Such strikes inflame Pakistani public opinion. Observers point to the rising power in Pakistan of political figures like Imran Khan, who held large rallies to protest the drones and could challenge the current government.
All this comes at a time when the State Department is trying to enlist Pakistan's help in advancing peace talks with the Taliban, a key element of a White House drive to end the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Top officials of the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council have been pulled into the debate. Among those voicing concerns was Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded the war in Afghanistan before becoming CIA director in September. A senior intelligence official said Gen. Petraeus voiced "caution against strikes on large groups of fighters."
Changing the handling of the drone program doesn't mean the CIA is pulling back. The agency in recent weeks has intensified strikes in Pakistan focusing on the militant Haqqani network, a group believed to be behind a series of attacks in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and State Department have backed those strikes as serving U.S. interests.
The debate in Washington was fueled by a particularly deadly drone strike on March 17. It came at a low point in U.S.-Pakistani relations, just a day after Pakistan agreed after weeks of U.S. pressure to release a CIA contractor who had killed two Pakistanis.
Infuriated Pakistani leaders put the death toll from the drone strike at more than 40, including innocent civilians. American officials say about 20 were killed, all militants.
The March 17 attack was a "signature" strike, one of two types used by the CIA, and the most controversial within the administration. Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes.
The second type of drone strike, known as a "personality" strike, targets known terrorist leaders and has faced less internal scrutiny.
Signature strikes were first used under former President George W. Bush. His administration began arming unmanned aircraft to hunt al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. As al Qaeda militants fled to Pakistan, the CIA began a secret drone program there, with quiet backing from Islamabad.
For the first years, U.S. officials used drones only to target known, top terror suspects. The drone strikes quickly became unpopular with the Pakistani public. In 2008, when Pakistani leaders bowed to public pressure and began to block U.S. requests for strikes, President Bush authorized a major expansion, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes, including signature strikes, without Pakistani permission.
Initially, the CIA was skeptical of the value of expending resources on lower-level operatives through signature strikes, a former senior intelligence official said. Military officials, however, favored the idea. The debate eventually would lead to the CIA and the military reversing their initial positions.
Mr. Obama was an early convert to drones. The CIA has had freedom to decide who to target and when to strike. The White House usually is notified immediately after signature strikes take place, not beforehand, a senior U.S. official said.
The program had some early skeptics, but their concerns gained little traction. Dennis Blair, Mr. Obama's first director of national intelligence, recommended that the CIA measure the program's effectiveness beyond numbers of dead militants, U.S. officials said. It didn't happen.
The CIA and the State Department had been at odds for months over the use of drones. Tensions flared with the arrival in Islamabad late last year of a new ambassador, Cameron Munter, who advocated more judicious use of signature strikes, senior officials said.
On at least two occasions, Leon Panetta, then the CIA director, ignored Mr. Munter's objections to planned strikes, a senior official said. One came just hours after Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited Islamabad.
State Department diplomats weren't alone in their concerns. Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military leaders, who initially favored more aggressive CIA methods, began to question that approach.
The debate erupted after the March 17 strike, when National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and others at the White House, taken aback by the number of casualties and Pakistan's sharp reaction, questioned whether the CIA should for large groups, at times, hold its fire. Officials asked what precautions were being taken to aim at highly valued targets, rather than foot soldiers.
"Donilon and others said, 'O.K., I got it; it's war and it's confusing. Are we doing everything we can to make sure we are focused on the target sets we want?'" said a participant in the discussions. "You can kill these foot soldiers all day, every day and you wouldn't change the course of the war."
A senior Obama administration official declined to comment on Mr. Donilon's closed-door discussions but said that he wasn't second-guessing the CIA's targeting methodology and pointed to his long-standing support for the program. The official said the White House wanted to use the drone program smartly to pick off al Qaeda leaders and the Haqqanis. "It's about keeping our eyes on the ball," the official said.
In the spring, military leaders increasingly found themselves on the phone with Mr. Panetta and his deputy urging restraint in drone attacks, particularly during periods when the U.S. was engaging in high-level diplomatic exchanges with Pakistan. "Whenever they got a shot [for a drone attack], they just took it, regardless of what else was happening in the world," a senior official said.
Mr. Panetta made his first concession in an April meeting with his Pakistani counterpart. He told Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha that the U.S. would tell the Pakistanis ahead of time about strikes expected to kill more than 20 militants, officials said.
The debate over the future of the drone program intensified after the death of Osama bin Laden the next month. Pakistani leaders were embarrassed that the U.S. carried out the operation in their country, undetected. They demanded an end to the signature drone strikes.
Mr. Donilon, the National Security Advisor, launched a broad review of Pakistan policy, including the drone program. Officials said the internal debate that ensued was the most serious since the signature strikes were expanded in 2008.
CIA officials defended the signature strikes by saying they frequently netted top terrorists, not just foot soldiers. Twice as many wanted terrorists have been killed in signature strikes than in personality strikes, a U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Adm. Mullen argued that the CIA needed to be more selective. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates feared that the Pakistanis, if pushed too hard, would block the flow of supplies to troops in Afghanistan, officials said.
For Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has supported the CIA's strikes in the vast majority of cases, the biggest focus has been to make sure political ramifications are properly assessed to avoid a situation where the political opposition in Pakistan becomes so great that the country's current or future leaders decide to bar the drones outright.
Independent information about who the CIA kills in signature strikes in Pakistan is scarce. The agency tells U.S. and Pakistani officials that there have been very few civilian deaths—only 60 over the years. But some senior officials in both governments privately say they are skeptical that civilian deaths have been that low.
Some top officials in the White House meetings this summer argued for a broader reassessment. "The question is, 'Is it even worth doing now? We've got the key leadership in al Qaeda, what is it that we're there for now?" one of the officials recalled some advisers asking.
The White House review culminated in a Situation Room meeting with Mr. Obama in June in which he reaffirmed support for the program.
But changes were made. Mr. Obama instituted an appeals procedure to give the State Department more of a voice in deciding when and if to strike. If the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan objected to a strike, for example, the CIA director or his deputy would first try to talk through their differences with the ambassador. If the conflict was unresolved, the secretary of state would appeal directly to the CIA director. If they couldn't reach agreement, however, the CIA director retained the final say.
Since the changes were made, officials say internal tensions over the strikes have eased and agencies were acting more in concert with each other.
Though Mr. Petraeus voiced a preference for smaller drone strikes, officials said the agency has the leeway to carry out large-scale strikes and hasn't been formally directed to go after only higher-value targets and avoid foot soldiers. Since Mr. Petraeus's arrival at CIA, some strikes on larger groups have taken place, the senior intelligence official said.
To reduce the number of CIA strikes on Pakistani soil, the military moved more of its own drones into position on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan, according to participants in the discussions. That makes it easier for the CIA to "hand off" suspected militants to the U.S. military once they cross into Afghanistan, rather than strike them on Pakistani soil, U.S. officials said.
U.S.-Pakistani relations remain troubled, but Islamabad recently expanded intelligence cooperation and has toned down its opposition to the drone strikes, both in public and private, officials said. Pakistani officials had sought advance notice, and greater say, over CIA strikes so they could try to mitigate the public backlash.
"It's not like they took the car keys away from the CIA," a senior official said. "There are just more people in the car." —Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Multiple insurgents including Haqqani network leader detained: NATO
KABUL, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had captured multiple anti-Afghan government militants including a leader of Haqqani network on Thursday, a statement of the alliance released here Friday said.
"A combined Afghan and coalition security force captured a Haqqani network leader and detained one suspected insurgent during an operation in Zarghun Shahr district, Paktika province, yesterday," the statement asserted.
However, it did not identify the name of the arrested leader of Haqqani network and his rank, adding "The leader operated an insurgent fighter cell in Zarghun Shahr district and was responsible for numerous attacks against Afghan forces in western Paktika."
Haqqani network is the military wing of Taliban outfit and has been operating in eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal areas and Afghan capital Kabul over the past couple of years.
The statement also said that "Afghan and NATO-led troops during a combined operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district, Helmand province detained multiple suspected insurgents yesterday."
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Platoon Testimony Continues in Afghan Atrocities Case
VOA News November 3, 2011 Luis Ramirez | Lewis-McChord Military Base, Washington State
Testimony continues in the military trial, court martial, of American soldier Calvin Gibbs, accused of masterminding war crimes allegedly committed by the platoon he led in Afghanistan. If convicted, Gibbs could face life in prison without parole.
Alleged crimes
It was in remote areas of Kandahar province where military prosecutors allege that Gibbs plotted fake combat scenes and planned the murders of Afghan civilians.
Alleged victims included an unarmed 15-year-old boy picked at random in a field - shot before soldiers posed with his body for keepsake photos, like one published in a German newspaper and since presented as evidence at Gibbs' trial.
One after another, members of Gibbs' platoon - some of them already convicted in the case - have testified about the boredom, rampant drug use in the unit and of Gibbs' hatred of Afghan people, whom he is alleged to have described as savages.
Panel deciding Gibbs fate
A panel of soldiers deciding on Gibbs' fate has seen graphic evidence, including photos of severed fingers that witnesses say Gibbs cut off Afghans and kept as trophies.
Gibbs pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and 13 other charges. In opening statements, his lawyer said Gibbs had been betrayed by members of his platoon and was not responsible for the killings. In the days ahead, the military jury will decide.
Taliban exploits US pullback to hit Pakistan
Financial Times By James Lamont and Matthew Green November 3, 2011
New Delhi and Islamabad - Pakistan’s Taliban has opened a new front in the north of the country exploiting the departure of US troops from outposts in eastern Afghanistan to kill scores of members of the security forces in cross-border attacks, the Pakistani army says.
Pakistan’s military says it has been forced to deploy at least 4,000 troops in the past few months to the northern regions of Dir and Chitral, which had previously been free of Taliban fighters.
Major General Athar Abbas, the military’s chief spokesman in Rawalpindi, where Pakistan’s army has its headquarters, said the campaigns in Dir and Chitral were now “a major challenge” but that militancy had not yet spread to the Gilgit-Baltistan region in the far north, which borders China.
Gen Abbas said 100 members of the military, police and paramilitary forces had been killed in roadside bombings and other attacks in the northern region in the past three months.
Pakistani officers say moves by the Nato-led force in Afghanistan to abandon remote bases near the Pakistan border under its strategy to focus on protecting more heavily populated areas has given militants a chance to regroup in remote Afghan valleys.
Pakistani officials blame the attacks in the north on fighters loyal to Maulvi Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader whose forces were expelled from Pakistan’s Swat Valley by an army offensive in 2009, and who is now believed to be based in the sparsely-populated Kunar and Nuristan provinces in eastern Afghanistan.
The Pakistani militants’ recent success in exploiting Afghan soil to stage attacks across the frontier represents a mirror image of the traditional pattern of a war in which Afghan Taliban factions have for years used safe havens in Pakistan to attack Nato forces in Afghanistan.
It also raises fresh questions about the security risks attached to Nato’s plan to gradually withdraw the vast majority of its combat forces in Afghanistan before handing primary responsibility for fighting the Taliban to Afghan troops in 2014.
“Parts of Nuristan and Kunar have become a haven for Pakistani militants, who have joined forces with Afghan counterparts,” said Khalid Aziz, head of the Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training, a think-tank in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar. “It’s a free-for-all over there.”
Hawa Alam Nuristani, a member of parliament from Nuristan, said Pakistani Taliban militants were forcing locals to pay them taxes and make donations of food, petrol and volunteers. Schools and clinics had been closed in Taliban-controlled areas and Afghan forces were confined largely to guarding government buildings in isolated urban centres, Mr Nuristani said.
“More ordinary people in the region were motivated to join the insurgency after the withdrawal of US troops,” he said. “The Afghan National Security Forces are not in a position to control the provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.”
Isaf, the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, said it was working with Pakistani officers stationed at its headquarters in Kabul to co-ordinate operations to minimise cross-border infiltration. “We routinely share information with our Pakistan military counterparts,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmie Cummings, an Isaf spokesman.
Gen Abbas warned that the new front in the north was placing extra pressure on the security forces, which have devoted some 147,000 men to the campaign against militants in more southerly areas in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
The US has spent the past two years putting pressure on Pakistan’s military to launch an offensive in the tribal area of North Waziristan to dismantle bases used by the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group that has been blamed for a string of suicide attacks on the Afghan capital Kabul and on Nato troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Gen Abbas confirmed the presence of China’s People’s Liberation Army in northern Pakistan to help with reconstruction after a year of natural disasters. He said that the PLA’s engineers had helped clear a huge landslide that had blocked the Karakorum Highway, which links Pakistan’s heartland to the Chinese border, during last year’s floods. The presence of Chinese troops in Pakistan has caused suspicion in India, which views growing military ties between its two regional rivals with concern.
The appearance of Pakistani Taliban forces even 350km from the Chinese border is highly sensitive for Beijing, which fears any export of Islamic fundamentalism from Pakistan could destabilise the Uighur population in Xinjiang, and the Muslim areas of western China.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com