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Taliban claims to leak security details of crucial Afghan meeting
By Nick Paton Walsh and Ruhullah Khapalwak, CNN Sun November 13, 2011
Kabul (CNN) -- A Taliban-affiliated website published on Sunday what it claimed was a leaked document containing confidential government security plans for a vital meeting of tribal elders in Kabul next week, one that is set to discuss Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the United States and possible peace talks with the insurgency.
The plans included a detailed satellite map of the area and purported details of the security arrangements, but the Afghan Interior Ministry immediately dismissed them as fake.
The tribal elder meeting -- or loya jirga -- is considered by many an important step in harnessing Afghan consent to both a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and any possible peace deal with elements of the insurgency. It is due to begin Wednesday and continue for several days; hundreds of community leaders have been invited from across the country. Their conclusions will likely influence Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Taliban have long threatened to disrupt the event. Sunday's alleged leak was interpreted in Kabul as anything from a desperate insurgency resorting to fraudulent propaganda to a new sign of the Taliban's enhanced ability to elicit confidential information from government ministries. Regardless, they are a sign of the information war between coalition forces and the insurgency, both of which regularly trade blows and accusations on social media.
A translated statement on the website read: "The vigilant Mujahedeen of Islamic Emirate have acquired the security plans, maps and other documents related to the upcoming supposed loya jirga (National
Assembly) by means of its personnel embedded inside the enemy ranks."
The Interior Ministry dismissed the post, saying it only served as part of a failing propaganda campaign aimed at intimidating people from attending the loya jirga.
"This is yet another huge lie by the Taliban," said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi. "It is part of a propaganda campaign and it is what we can expect. The Taliban are under pressure -- they have tried to disrupt and have failed to do so. That is why they are resorting to this propaganda."
He rejected the notion of jirga delegates due avoiding the meeting because of the alleged leak.
The document said the following could be "probable threats" posed by the Taliban:
-- "Suicide attacks with new and dangerous tactics in one or several places continuing for several hours";
-- "Rocket attacks from Kabul city sub-districts or districts outside";
-- "Infiltration of enemy into the lines of security forces."
The statement on the website also said, "These important secrets which you will see in the below pages have been acquired by Mujahedeen of Islamic Emirate from two ministries and from the special security corps of the government. Our upcoming attacks will become even more lethal and precise with the acquisition of such intelligence material, if God wills it."
The statement went on to promise further details: "Note -- The original security plans which consist of 28 pages and six pictorial maps have been recomposed and rewritten by us for intelligence and policy purposes. We will release the second, third, 28th sides of the plan and a map to show its validation and will also release the pictorial part of it in the near future, if Allah Wills it."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force was aware of the message on the website, but could not confirm the accuracy of it, spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said.
"The Taliban have said they would go to all extremes to disrupt the loya jirga," he said.
Afghan president's rival to boycott assembly
(AFP)
KABUL — The main challenger to the Afghan president said Sunday he would boycott a traditional leaders' assembly to discuss peace moves and ties with the United States, calling it illegal and unconstitutional.
President Hamid Karzai has convened the assembly, or loya jirga, this week to discuss strategies for trying to broker peace with Taliban insurgents and long-term relations with the United States after combat troops leave.
Abdullah Abdullah, rival to Karzai in the runoff round of the 2009 presidential election, told a news conference in Kabul: "I won't participate in the upcoming traditional loya jirga. Holding this... doesn't have any legal base, and it is contrary to Afghanistan's constitution."
He did not rule out attendance of the assembly, to be held from November 16, by members of the opposition Change and Hope Coalition, which he heads.
The loya jirga follows the September assassination of Karzai's chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani by a bomber who purported to be a peace envoy for the Taliban, amid government attempts to negotiate with the insurgents.
Abdullah also denounced vagueness surrounding the future of Afghanistan's partnership with the US -- which led the 2001 invasion that ousted the Taliban from government -- after the planned withdrawal of its combat troops by the end of 2014.
"I have not seen any documents" on the future partnership, said Abdullah, who also served as foreign minister under Karzai from 2001 to 2006.
A deal still under negotiation with the Americans will govern the longer-term presence of US troops in Afghanistan, a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan and the wider region.
The loya jirga, which brings together representatives from Afghan provinces, tribes, ethnic groups and civil society, is held on rare occasions to discuss major policy decisions.
Another coalition recently created around two former warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, has also denounced the planned assembly.
Lawmakers had voiced concern it would be used to bypass their powers, but a spokeswoman for the assembly said Saturday its decisions would not be binding and parliament would have the final say.
More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the meeting in a giant tent in Kabul.
Registration for Afghan Loya Jirga begins
By Farid Behbud, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Registration for the planned Afghan Loya Jirga or traditional grand assembly have begun since Saturday.
"Registration has commenced for the participants of the traditional Loya Jirga scheduled to be convened on Wednesday (Nov. 16) to discuss the pros and cons of a proposed strategic partnership agreement between Afghanistan and the United States and peace mechanism," a spokeswoman for the Jirga was quoted as saying by the Daily Outlook Afghanistan in its front page on Sunday.
More than 2,000 people including influential Afghan figures from across the country, all sitting parliamentarians and some former MPs, 30 percent members of provincial councils of the country's 34 provinces, representatives of civil society organizations, members of private sector and traders as well as special people will take part in the event, the spokeswoman of the Jirga's preparatory commission said.
Some religious scholars, influential tribal elders, representatives of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Iran, the United States and European countries and some members of disabled people will also be members of the designed Jriga.
In spite of some reports that the Jriga will be canceled for some technical problems, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement on Saturday that the upcoming Loya Jirga should be held as scheduled.
However, some members of Afghan Lower House of parliament has been doubtful for the forthcoming event and described holding the Jirga as a step that is against the Afghan constitution, some 171 out of 249 MPs has registered to take part in the assembly.
Another topic to be discussed in the Jirga will be the mechanisms of peace talks with the armed Taliban insurgents who have been waging a vicious insurgency after their regime was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
The armed outfit fighting the Afghan government and some 130, 000-strong NATO-led troops with nearly 100,000 of them Americans have already blasted the Jirga.
In a statement released to media outlets days ago, the Afghan Taliban termed the upcoming Loya Jirga as a "trick" to legalize the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and vowed to disrupt it.
"Under the orders of its masters, the Kabul administration wants to abuse a much respected custom of our country (Loya Jirga) and try to give a legal face to the establishment of permanent bases for the American occupying forces on the Islamic soil of Afghanistan," the Taliban statement said.
"For its long term goal of permanently staying in Afghanistan, the Americans want to once again abuse this tradition through its stooge regime to call a supposed Loya Jirga in which faces of its preference will be gathered, food will be eaten and once again, games will be played with the fate and future of its nation," the statement of the Taliban outfit said.
The coming four-day Loya Jirga is scheduled to be held under a giant tent inside the Polytechnic University compound in west of Kabul, and as part of the security measures, the Afghan government has given days-off for the students of Polytechnic during the Jirga, and will station police on the hilltops and roads leading to the Jirga avenue.
Taliban commander detained in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces captured three Taliban militants, including their commander, on Sunday during an operation in Shindand district of Herat province, 640 km west of Afghan capital city Kabul, an official said.
"Taliban commander Mullah Zahir along with two of his bodyguards were captured during an operation launched in Shindand district this morning," spokesman for the provincial administration Mohiuding Nuri told Xinhua.
Describing Mullah Zahir as a key Taliban commander in the western region, Nuri said with the arrest of Zahir, the security situation would be further strengthened in the western region of Afghanistan.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Afghanistan success is in eye of beholder
As NATO insists that violence is declining while many Afghans say daily life has grown more perilous, tension has grown over so-called metrics that can be used to chart progress or deterioration.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times November 12, 2011
Reporting from Forward Operating Base Ghazni - The young U.S. Army sergeant had lost nearly all the blood in his body by the time he was rushed into a military field clinic at this dusty base in eastern Afghanistan.
As his distraught unit mates converged on the surgical suite, some of them weeping, the entire camp pitched in for an emergency blood drive. But military doctors' frantic efforts were futile, and Sgt. John A. Lyons, a 26-year-old from New Jersey who had studied Latin in college, died of the wounds he had suffered in a Taliban ambush.
As the U.S.-led war against the Taliban grinds into its second decade, the life-and-death struggle taking place daily across Afghanistan has gotten entangled in increasingly divergent narratives of the Western war effort. In this high-stakes phase of a waning conflict, perceptions of success have become crucial, perhaps more so than reality.
PHOTOS: A decade of war in Afghanistan
Yet even as the question of what constitutes success has become more urgent, it has become more difficult to pin down.
With an American troop drawdown underway and expected to accelerate in the coming year, the NATO force insists that violence is declining, that the insurgency's strength is flagging and that Afghan forces are demonstrating a growing ability to take the lead in safeguarding the country.
Many Afghans, however, subscribe to a darker view: that daily life has grown more perilous, that national and local governance has become even shakier, that the country's police and army are chronically unable protect its citizens, and that the Taliban movement is hunkering down to wait out the Western presence.
Recent months have seen escalating tension over so-called metrics that can be used to chart either progress or deterioration.
In an unusually public instance of clashing statistical analysis, NATO's International Security Assistance Force declared last month that enemy attacks had dropped by nearly 10% in the first nine months of the year. But the United Nations, citing its own figures for an overlapping period, reported that violent incidents had jumped by almost 40% in the first eight months of 2011.
Ghazni, the rundown capital of the province of the same name where Lyons was killed Oct. 26, is on a provisional list of areas to be next handed over to the control of the Afghan police and army. That follows the summer's security transfer of an initial group of seven cities and provinces. Nationwide, the process is to be completed within the next three years.
But this arid swath of terrain south of Kabul, the national capital, contains some of the country's most "kinetic" areas, military-speak for the level of violent incidents and confrontations with insurgents. Many in Ghazni fear that Afghan security forces cannot begin to cope with the threat posed by the Taliban and other militant groups.
In at least four districts of the province, the Taliban movement has set up shadow governments, complete with courts, tax collection and its own harsh brand of law enforcement, said Mohammed Arif Rahmani, one of Ghazni's representatives in the national parliament. Even in the provincial capital, Taliban commanders have sufficient sway to order a ban on music, in an echo of the harsh edicts in place when the movement ruled Afghanistan.
"Generally, people don't really incline toward the Taliban," Rahmani said. "But the levels of corruption and insecurity make them prefer the Taliban over the government."
As an example, he cited inaction after local people complained to officials that they were being robbed and menaced on a particular stretch of road.
"Then we complained to the Taliban," he said. "And they arrested the robbers, took what had been stolen, returned everything to the owners, and told the people, 'Any time you face trouble because of thieves, you come to us, and we'll take care of it.'"
He and other officials said local qualms about Afghan forces' will and readiness to step up had been brushed aside. "The foreigners have decided to hand over security responsibility," Rahmani said. "So there is really no choice."
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration has shied away from setting specific "benchmarks" to be achieved before the American combat mission ends. The U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, who served in Baghdad before taking up his post in Kabul, said he did not believe such measurements provided a true picture of progress.
"You can achieve every benchmark and still fail. Or you can meet none of them and be successful," he said. "You have to view the situation through a wider aperture."
Success in Afghanistan, he and other senior Western officials say, could be defined on some level by basic security that can be maintained by Afghan security forces, and the existence of a government that can provide essential services such as healthcare and education.
But there are intangibles as well.
"If parents have expectations, say, that their children will have a better life than they do, that's part of it too," Crocker said.
Although hopes and anxieties are hard to quantify, even statistics can offer competing versions of reality. The recent disparity in figures on violence can be explained in part by the fact that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization figures documented attacks on Western and Afghan troops, while the U.N. measurement was broader, encompassing those against civilians as well.
But assessments differ, too, over the degree to which insurgents are able to disrupt daily life and inspire fear among ordinary Afghans. Western military officials tend to speak dismissively of ambitious operations mounted by the insurgents, such as September's 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, calling them a sign of desperation.
After a series of "spectacular" attacks this year, however, many people living in the Afghan capital are rattled as never before. The falling price of Kabul real estate has been cited by some as an indicator of rising security fear.
For many Americans, of course, the only statistics that matter now are the billions of dollars expended in Afghanistan, and the numbers of troops killed and wounded here. At least 1,833 U.S. service members have died in the conflict, according to the independent monitoring website icasualties.org.
On Thursday, hundreds of people turned out in Seaside Park, N.J., for a solemn procession honoring Lyons, the Army sergeant killed in Ghazni. He had been scheduled to come home in December, a few days before what would have been his 27th birthday.
At the field clinic in Ghazni, one of the military doctors who struggled to save him described a "full-court press" in the operating room, despite the fact that the gravity of Lyons' wounds had left him with only the faintest of life signs.
"Emotionally, it's very hard," said Air Force Maj. Brian Holt, a trauma surgeon from St. Louis who was a member of the team that day. "There are certain injuries that haunt us, as surgeons. You can't save them all."
3 insurgents killed, 46 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Security forces, during operations, killed three insurgents and captured 46 other suspects over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan army and NDS or intelligence agency in collaboration with NATO-led Coalition Forces launched six joint operations in surrounding areas of the Nangarhar, Paktika, Ghazni, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Nimroz provinces over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.
"As a result of these operations, three armed insurgents were killed, two wounded and 46 others were arrested by ANP," it said.
The ANP also discovered and confiscated three AK-47 guns, a hand grenade, 30kg Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), 2,700 kilograms ammonium nitrate (use for making IEDs), 18 rocket launchers and three heavy weapons, according to the statement.
Taliban insurgents, who have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1, have not made comments so far.
Separately, Kabul police has detained six suspects accused of robbery, using of fake passport and carrying illegal weapon in capital city of Kabul in the same period of time, the statement added.
Hundreds of UK troops' in Afghanistan after 2015
13 November 2011 BBC News
Hundreds of British soldiers will stay in Afghanistan after the UK pulls out combat troops, the chief of the defence staff has said.
The government wants troops to leave by 2015, but says some will remain to support and train Afghan forces.
General Sir David Richards said the final figure was undecided, but it would be hundreds rather than thousands.
Their role is to prevent Afghanistan being used as a terrorist base.
Gen Richards, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, said: "We haven't yet decided what the residual figure will be, but I think we are looking in the hundreds rather than the thousands."
He said Britain's role was not to "extinguish the insurgency" but to reduce it to a level that Afghan security forces can take on, and to prevent the country being used as a base to train terrorists.
"We're on track to deliver that strategy," he said.
There was no truth in the suggestion that injured soldiers could lose their jobs, he added.
The suggestion was made in a leaked memo by a junior officer - but it was dismissed by the Ministry of Defence.
The document, seen by the Daily Telegraph, suggested 2,500 wounded personnel could go as part of 16,500 Army job losses. It is thought to have been distributed to commanders in Afghanistan.
Referring to the story, Gen Richards said: "I'd like to kill that, there's no such policy."
"No-one will be forced out of the Army - they won't leave until it's right for them."
Speculative figures
He said the figures leaked in the memo were speculative and he did not expect to see a new round of redundancies.
The document reflected early work on how numbers in the Army could be reduced and was sent out to Afghanistan "in a fit of enthusiasm".
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond reiterated the point on Sunday, saying: "Nobody being treated for an injury or a medical condition received on active service will be considered for redundancy - that's our policy, it isn't going to change.
"While they're being treated no-one will be considered for redundancy. Of course, once people's treatment is complete there is then a medical assessment process which will look at the best way to plan their careers."
Some 7,000 army troops will be laid off as part of the first tranche of redundancies, which has already begun.
Gen Richards said that despite cuts to the military he was confident the Army could meet the "core military task" required by the government.
"The most important strategic risk facing the country is clearly our economic situation," he added.
He said military morale was "remarkably high" on the front line - from troops serving in Afghanistan to those flying sorties over Libya in the recent Nato-mandated operation.
Life better since Taliban driven from Kabul, says Nato
By Orla Guerin 13 November 2011 BBC News
Kabul - Ten years since the Taliban were driven from the Afghan capital, Kabul, Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says there have been big improvements.
On 13 November 2001 that the western-backed Northern Alliance swept into the Afghan capital virtually unopposed.
But, Mr Goss says, plenty of things have not been done.
Critics stress the Taliban can still bring death into the capital. Many are anxious about the coming withdrawal of foreign combat forces.
A decade after the liberation of Kabul by the Northern Alliance, the city is growing fast, but it still has the architecture of war - checkpoints, blast walls and heavily fortified buildings.
A city of bicycles has become a city of jeeps and traffic jams, a monument to commerce and to corruption.
The poverty remains, but there is progress - like electricity around the clock in most neighbourhoods.
Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says the city has changed beyond recognition.
"When you walk around in Kabul, this is now a bustling lively city with women on the streets, people able to go to hospitals, schools open where girls can go to as well as boys and it feels very very different to how it did 10 years ago."
But the ambassador admits that many things have not been done.
Some - troubled by the ghosts of the past - worry about a return to all-out civil war.
Ten years on, Kabul is still waiting for peace.
According to one veteran analyst here, people assumed and hoped things would be a lot better by now.
Huntsman urges US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately to focus on home-front goals
By Associated Press, November 13
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Republican presidential contender Jon Huntsman says it’s time for the United States to exit Afghanistan and focus on rebuilding the nation’s home front.
The former ambassador to China says during Saturday night’s debate of GOP hopefuls that he would leave a small contingent of forces on the ground to help Afghan forces. He says the United States has achieved its goals of removing the Taliban from governing, killing Osama bin Laden and staging free elections.
He says it’s now time for America to focus on America, not Afghanistan or Iraq.
Rival Mitt Romney says that he would listen to his military commanders and says President Barack Obama is not heeding the military’s advice. Romney says Obama is playing politics with deployments and disagrees with any timeline for withdrawal.
As Pakistan eyes peace talks with the Taliban, anxiety builds
Past deals with the militants have backfired, each time giving the insurgents an opportunity to regroup and replenish their ranks.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez November 13, 2011
Islamabad, Pakistan - Every time Pakistan hammered out peace agreements with militants, the results were disastrous. The groups grew stronger, and the toll their bomb blasts took on civilians steadily rose.
That history explains why anxiety is rippling through the country as talk builds of the prospect for peace negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, the homegrown insurgency responsible for most of the suicide bombings and terrorist strikes that have killed thousands of people in recent years.
Pakistani leaders have expressed a newfound interest in tackling the problem of militancy through peace talks rather than military confrontation. At a Sept. 29 conference of more than 50 political leaders, participants signed a resolution endorsing the idea of negotiations with militants. " 'Give peace a chance' must be the guiding central principle," the resolution declared.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in October that the government was prepared to negotiate with militants willing to lay down their arms. Elements within the Pakistani Taliban have signaled their willingness to talk, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said recently.
The movement to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban comes at a time when, across the border in Afghanistan, peace talks with the Afghan Taliban are seen as Washington's only recourse after battling those insurgents for 10 years.
On both sides of the border, the prospect of peace negotiations is fraught with risk and uncertainty.
In Afghanistan, the government's bid to reconcile with Afghan Taliban leaders suffered a severe blow in September with the assassination of President Hamid Karzai's chief negotiator, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Afghan officials accused Pakistan's intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, of involvement in the killing, a charge Pakistan denied. In Pakistan, a peace accord could give insurgents the ideal tool to expand both influence and territory.
Like the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban is made up of factions united in the goal of toppling the current government and imposing sharia, or Islamic law. The Pakistani Taliban maintains links with Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups entrenched in Pakistan's tribal belt.
So far, there has been no endorsement of any overtures from the Pakistani military, historically the ultimate voice in the country's strategy against militants. But at a briefing last month for members of the parliament's defense committees, Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani said any decision to begin talks with the Pakistani Taliban would have to be made by the country's civilian government.
A lawmaker who attended the briefing said army leaders made it clear that "if the government wants to give negotiations a chance, the army will wait for the results of those negotiations." The lawmaker spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was held behind closed doors.
In the last few years, Pakistan has deployed more than 140,000 troops to battle the Pakistani Taliban across most of the tribal belt along the Afghan border. The army has retaken large swaths of territory once held by the militant group, but the Taliban still controls pockets throughout the area and continues to carry out attacks on targets including military checkpoints, mosques and markets.
Negotiating with the Pakistani Taliban would represent a marked shift in strategy for Islamabad, and some analysts are doubtful it would work.
"It's pretty clear it would be a bad idea," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan. "Past peace agreements gave the militants breathing room and space to enlarge their control. And there's no reason to expect that this time, if they pursue another deal, that the result would be any different."
The last peace agreement with militants, reached between Pakistan and Taliban insurgents in early 2009 in the picturesque Swat Valley tourist region in the north, collapsed when militants refused to lay down their arms and instead expanded their reach to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the capital. That spring, the military launched an assault that retook the valley.
Peace agreements and cease-fires with Taliban militants in the volatile Waziristan tribal region in 2005, '06 and '08 also backfired, each time giving insurgents the opportunity to regroup and replenish their ranks.
"After each agreement," said security analyst Khadim Hussain, the Taliban "became bigger, more entrenched and stronger than before."
Authorities in Islamabad have blamed the Pakistani Taliban for some of the country's worst terrorist attacks, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
The group is led by Hakimullah Mahsud, a Pashtun militant who took over after a U.S. drone strike killed chieftain Baitullah Mahsud two years ago. Mahsud's second in command, Wali ur-Rehman, told a Pakistani newspaper last month that the group would want an Arab country to mediate before agreeing to enter talks.
Proponents of negotiations say fighting the militants with military blitzes hasn't stemmed suicide bombings, which since 2001 have killed at least 4,600 people and injured 10,000 in Pakistan.
"What's needed is dialogue," Imran Khan, a former Pakistani cricket star turned politician, told reporters after the Sept. 29 conference. "There are two approaches: military and political. And in my opinion and the opinion of most others [at the conference], a military approach won't solve the problem."
Others in Pakistani society aren't so sure. An Oct. 5 editorial in the Express Tribune newspaper warned that the movement toward talks with the Taliban "placed the [Pakistani Taliban] on a platform of strength in Pakistan from where, if the state negotiates, it would be tantamount to abject surrender."
Pakistanis who oppose talking with the Taliban can take encouragement in the knowledge that the military may not support the idea, either. Though the military has publicly said it would abide by the civilian government's decisions, it has also moved aggressively against the most recent Pakistani Taliban threat: cross-border attacks by militants using the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan as sanctuary.
Those attacks have killed more than 100 members of Pakistan's security forces this year. Pakistani military leaders have blamed U.S., NATO and Afghan forces for not uprooting Pakistani Taliban militants from their havens in eastern Afghanistan.
"The Pakistani Taliban's goals are well known," Almeida said. "I can't see the military having much of an appetite to cut a deal. But never say never."
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Pakistan Donkey Cart Blast Kills 6
VOA News November 13, 2011
Pakistan officials say a bomb blast in the country's remote northwest has killed six people.
Authorities say the bomb that exploded Sunday was planted in a donkey cart in the market area of Mastak town.
A local government official says the explosives were detonated with a remote-controlled device.
No group has claimed responsibility. Officials have blamed similar attacks in the past on the Taliban and Islamist militants.
Pashtun Music Bazaars Still Being Targeted
Majeed Babar November 13, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Taliban campaign against music in northwest Pakistan and the tribal areas is still in full swing.
Militants bombed or torched more than a dozen music shops late last week in the Swabi district of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and the city of Miramshah in North Waziristan, according to numerous reports (here, here, and a late-October attack here), reportedly after threats to close their "un-Islamic businesses."
The wave of hate and destruction against such local music and popular culture in Khyber Pukhtunkhwah started under a government led by the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an Islamic religious alliance, in 2002, when thousands of musicians and singers were forced to abandon a 200-year-old Dabgari music bazaar.
The cultural clampdown early last decade was so intense that, at one point, burning music CDs and cassettes became a regular Friday festivity at local parks in Peshawar. The Khyber Pukhtunkhwa chief minister at the time
(when it was called the Northwest Frontier Province), Akram Khan Durrani, blamed bazaar closures and cassette bonfires on thriving obscenity.
During the campaign against "obscenity," female images were scrapped from advertising and cinema billboards and posters, the only concert hall in the city of Peshawar was locked down, and dozens of musicians and singers were given just three choices: go into hiding, leave the country, or leave the profession.
Those who chose to stay were chased, kidnapped, or otherwise targeted. Noted singers Gulzar Alam and Sardar Ali Yousafzai were attacked by armed men; Mushraff Bungash was kidnapped; performers were made to appear on television or otherwise publicly withdraw from artistic and musical activities considered "un-Islamic."
The most recent attacks suggest that the Taliban is not lying low in pursuing its self-proclaimed agenda of Talibanizing the Pashtun-dominated tribal areas and Khyber Pukhtunkhwah.
So it is worth asking whether such restrictive attitudes to popular culture and Pashtu music will be allowed to dominate -- on either or both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border -- if the U.S. and Pakistani governments proceed with their stated aim of talking with the Taliban.
Will Afghanistan learn that cross-dressers are not criminals?
The video of policemen bullying a transvestite exposed an unpleasant side to Afghan culture – but humane voices give cause for hope
Guardian.co.uk By Nushin Arbabzadah Sunday 13 November 2011
"Take off your chador," the police officer orders an Afghan cross-dresser in a video that has been shared endlessly on social networking websites.
"Take off your wig!" Beneath the shiny black locks, the head is revealed as male with receding, closely cropped hair.
He's also wearing a scarlet short-sleeved shalwar kamiz – sexy but traditional female attire. The feminine look is accentuated by large sparkling bangles and see-through embroidery.
The victim's ordeal goes on for what seems like eternity as he endures humiliating comments and laughter from the police officers.
"Please have mercy, don't make fun of me," he whispers.
"Boy! Face the camera," they shout, forcing him to remove the fake breasts from inside his top. The breasts turn out to be a pair of socks filled with dough.
"Dough to make the breasts feel softy-soft," an officer shouts amid laughter. Male cross-dressing is a familiar enough in Afghanistan for the locals to have coined a special term. The word is ezak – a vague but deeply derogatory noun referring to anything from a eunuch or a hermaphrodite to a transvestite or a male homosexual.
Following the discovery of the dough, a barrage of questions ensues in the video. "Why are you dressed like this? Where did you put the makeup on? What is all this about? What have you two been up to?"
This final question is addressed to a shy young man leaning away but standing next to the transvestite. The two were arrested together. "I was shopping for clothes," the cross-dresser whispers, taking off the bangles. He is trying to tell the officers that his dressing up is just a silly, harmless game.
"Put the bangles back on," a police officer orders. The victim reluctantly obeys, his eyes filled with tears.
"Please, officer, we haven't committed a crime," the victim's companion pleads, turning away from the camera.
Like most of the sensationalist Afghan news that is spread online, the video gives no information about the date, the source, or the victim's fate following the arrest. The clip made the rounds, creating lively debate before people tired of it.
My immediate reaction was to regard it as a clear example of ignorance breeding cruelty. From the officers' tone it was evident that they felt proud of the arrest, believing they had protected ordinary families from a couple of "dangerous perverts".
But the officers' pride was also mixed with utter bewilderment. This confusion was neatly summed up in the video's title: "A man dressed as a woman – but why?" The title cried out for explanation and the numerous comments left by viewers revealed a wide range of interpretation.
They included political paranoia, with some viewers suspecting that the cross-dresser was in reality a suicide bomber trained by the Pakistani ISI to infiltrate Kabul disguised as a woman.
There was also a more sober reaction, with commentators criticising the police for wasting their time on mundane incidents while the threat of terrorism was all too real. A few comments interpreted the cross-dressing as a sign of cultural anarchy, a symbol of Afghans straying from the path of Islam.
A couple of people demanded the cross-dresser should be executed, while others said that even though the cross-dresser was misguided they still felt sorry for him.
Amid such voices of confusion, and at times outright cruelty, it was heartening to read comments expressing anger at the police's humiliation of the victim: "The man has committed no crime. Cross-dressing is a psychological condition. What he needs is treatment rather than public humiliation."
Others recalled their own encounters with transvestites:
"During the Taliban, we had an ezak in our neighborhood. His brothers used to hit him for acting like a female and finally killed him. "I am worried about this man's future. His family is bound to kill him because of the shame he has brought on them. To protect this unfortunate person, people should stop sharing this video."
It was the presence of these voices of sanity among Afghans themselves that encouraged me to write this article. It showed that people are beginning to realise the importance of psychology in making a society more humane. This is vitally needed but much neglected in Afghanistan.
Students are often discouraged by their own families from pursuing their interest in psychology. "Do you really want to end up a doctor to the crazies?" is the usual reaction. The prejudice is widespread, even inside the medical community.
The result is a nation deeply in need of psychological treatment but left with little choice but to turn to "traditional treatments", which include chaining patients to the walls of saintly shrines or depriving them of food and drink for long periods.
Amid such dark despair, the sane voices of compassion that appeared alongside the aggressive comments offered a glimmer of hope because they showed that Afghans are beginning to understand that transvestites are not criminals.
It is true that different cultures create distinctive personality traits, but as the case of the unlucky Afghan transvestite revealed, psychological conditions are universal, with transvestites from the dusty roads of Kabul to the sparkling clubs of New York feeling the same urge to dress up as women with or without society's approval.
Moscow vs. the Mujahideen
The Wall Street Journal, Book Review By Brian M. Downing 12/11/2011
The Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89) has passed from being the subject of angry international debate to the object of calm historical inquiry, but given the current conflict there, the period retains a certain urgent resonance. Two new books shed useful light on those days. In "Afgantsy," Rodric Braithwaite, the British ambassador in Moscow at war's close, explores the Soviets' decision to intervene, the experience of soldiers and the war's effects back home. The book is based on interviews with senior government officials and soldiers of all ranks. In "A Long Goodbye," Artemy Kalinovsky, a Western-educated academic, presents a more formal, highly detailed study of the Soviet withdrawal.
Mr. Braithwaite examines the decision to intervene in some detail. In the late 1970s, the communist Afghan government, newly installed by a coup, attempted to modernize agriculture, education and the state, but heavy-handedness and rapid implementation triggered formidable opposition among Afghans. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence encouraged the revolt, and as the government in Kabul wobbled, the Soviets—who had long enjoyed influence but never control over Afghanistan—became alarmed. Moscow counseled slowing the reforms, easing oppressive measures and building popular support, but the Afghan leadership resisted. After all, Kabul replied, hadn't Stalin championed swift and brutal modernization?
As the rebellion intensified and spread among Islamic guerrillas known as the mujahideen, Moscow debated sending in troops to install a more competent, compliant government and to train the failing Afghan military. The discussion was of course conducted in a Cold War context, and KGB chief (and future head of state) Yuri Andropov warned, rather implausibly, that the U.S. was seeking a "New Great Ottoman Empire" for the region and that the Afghan president, Hafizullah Amin, might even be a CIA operative.
An interventionist consensus formed in the aging, ailing Politburo, even as Soviet generals protested. Intervention could cause widespread desertions in the Afghan army, the generals argued, with the deserters joining the resistance. The invading Soviet troops would stir both religious and nationalist fervor in the Afghans, who would fight relentlessly to evict the foreigners. The generals also warned that an invasion would escalate Cold War tensions by prompting the U.S. to suspend arms-control negotiations. The military called for a political solution.
The Politburo interventionists countered: The Americans were already abandoning détente by rejecting the SALT II arms-control agreement, funding the MX missile and B1 bomber, and deploying Pershing missiles to Europe. If the U.S. took advantage of a power vacuum in Afghanistan and installed Pershings there, the Soviet Union's Central Asian assets would be threatened.
In December 1979, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan. They killed President Amin, installed a Moscow favorite, Babrak Karmal, as the country's ruler and secured the cities. But the troops almost immediately became enmeshed in fighting with the mujahideen that would not end until the Soviets withdrew nearly a decade later—an event the geriatric interventionists did not live to see.
The Soviet army was geared toward conventional war in Central Europe, not guerrilla war in Central Asia, but Mr. Braithwaite contends that it adapted and performed reasonably well, considering the extensive and unstoppable foreign support that the mujahideen enjoyed. The army adopted counterinsurgency techniques and forged separate peaces with several guerrilla commanders, including the fabled Ahmad Shah Massoud. Special forces and airborne units were especially effective.
Many Soviet officers were careerists who cared little for their soldiers' lives, Mr. Braithwaite says, but others wrestled with the problem of following orders in an unwinnable war while protecting as best they could the young men entrusted to them. Well-connected families back home kept their sons out of the service or at least out of Afghanistan. Combat soldiers came overwhelmingly from factories and farms, prompting a Soviet general's caustic remark that they were an "army of workers and peasants"—as the old Bolshevik forces were officially called.
Mr. Braithwaite ably sketches the quotidian lives of these soldiers. Boys from hardscrabble upbringings could suddenly buy foreign watches, tape recorders, jeans and cameras in thriving off-post bazaars. Conscript pay was of course meager, but merchants would gladly barter for goods secreted from a supply hut. The soldiers could watch movies brought from Russia, and reading material was available in "Lenin rooms"; a more riveting pastime was using a rifle scope to watch female bathers.
Rudyard Kipling's accounts of life and death in Pathan lands, though frowned upon by higher-ups for sentimentalizing imperialism, won avid readers with the other side in the old Great Game. The arithmetic on the frontier hadn't changed much, nor had the fate of the wounded on the Afghan plains.
The politics and diplomacy leading to the Soviets' 1989 exit form the core of Artemy Kalinovsky's "A Long Goodbye." Only two years after the invasion, the author says, grumbling stirred in Moscow and elsewhere—within the government, the Communist Party and the military. Even Politburo hardliners began to favor a diplomatic solution, but they were an elderly bunch, and their infirmities and deaths prevented decisive action. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and garnered support for withdrawal. He "was not so much troubled by the military and economic costs of the war or by the domestic political effects, although these were undoubtedly important," Mr. Kalinovsky writes, "as he was by its potential to interfere with his broader reform projects, particularly his plan to seek a lessening of international tension."
Nonetheless, international and domestic considerations complicated translating consensus into action. The U.S. preferred to see its rival squander resources and alienate the developing world. Mr. Gorbachev's overtures to America for help with a diplomatic solution were seen as ploys; U.S. support for the mujahideen continued. The Soviet leader worried that a humiliating exit followed by the Kabul government's collapse would damage Moscow's position with countries in the developing world. A withdrawal might also bolster pressure for autonomy in the Soviet Union's Muslim republics, strengthen elites' opposition to his planned reforms and heighten popular discontent.
In the event, Mr. Gorbachev had to pull out without securing U.S. acceptance of the Kabul government and an attendant cutoff of arms to the mujahideen. The Afghan government remained in power several years, owing less to Moscow's support than to mujahideen disunity.
Neither Mr. Braithwaite nor Mr. Kalinovsky views the war—dismaying and wasteful though it was—as playing a significant role in the Soviet Union's fall. Mr. Braithwaite does note the war's souring effect on Russian society even in the early stages: "As more and more soldiers completed tours of duty and returned home—sometimes as wounded veterans, sometimes as bodies for funeral, but always marked by the experience—the war became increasingly difficult to keep a secret." Letters complaining about the war began pouring into the Central Committee and the editorial offices of Pravda. "Unlike earlier letters, which had often been anonymous, these were signed," Mr. Braithwaite writes.
Members of the state bureaucracy and of the party itself came to see the Soviet political system as decayed, errant and based on a clique of doddering old men who had started a disastrous military misadventure. The remains of dead soldiers were being unceremoniously returned to loved ones in the small hours. No mention of the country they died in was permitted on grave markers.
Mr. Gorbachev, as both authors note, eventually spoke out forthrightly about the war, chiefly to neutralize hardline opposition to his reforms. Many generals, however, opposed the less than honorable exit Mr. Gorbachev ordered; they also later blamed him for the withdrawal from Eastern Europe and the corruption and anarchy it set loose. The resentments fed into support for the clumsy 1991 Russian coup, which sought to restore the greatness of the Soviet Union but brought only its swift demise.
Neither book supports the oft-heard boast that U.S. Stinger missiles were important or even decisive in the war. American money and matériel certainly contributed to the mujahideen's success, but the authors agree with several other studies that say Stingers did not markedly increase Soviet aircraft losses; pilots simply changed tactics to avoid them. It was not Charlie Wilson's war.
Both Messrs. Braithwaite and Kalinovsky close, quite understandably, with the 1989 withdrawal. For Afghans, the Soviets' exit signaled victory, and many mujahideen went home, leaving ambitious commanders to fight among themselves with thinner ranks. The Kabul government then made overtures to several of the commanders and gained their support. The approach might have brought a good measure of stability had foreign aid continued from Moscow or elsewhere. But such stability was not forthcoming, of course—and the rule of the Taliban was soon upon the land. A decade after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, diplomatic overtures to guerrilla commanders are once again in the air. Maybe the hapless country will yet achieve a measure of stability.
—Mr. Downing is the author of "The Military Revolution and Political Change" and "The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America From the Great War to Vietnam.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Nick Paton Walsh and Ruhullah Khapalwak, CNN Sun November 13, 2011
Kabul (CNN) -- A Taliban-affiliated website published on Sunday what it claimed was a leaked document containing confidential government security plans for a vital meeting of tribal elders in Kabul next week, one that is set to discuss Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the United States and possible peace talks with the insurgency.
The plans included a detailed satellite map of the area and purported details of the security arrangements, but the Afghan Interior Ministry immediately dismissed them as fake.
The tribal elder meeting -- or loya jirga -- is considered by many an important step in harnessing Afghan consent to both a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and any possible peace deal with elements of the insurgency. It is due to begin Wednesday and continue for several days; hundreds of community leaders have been invited from across the country. Their conclusions will likely influence Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Taliban have long threatened to disrupt the event. Sunday's alleged leak was interpreted in Kabul as anything from a desperate insurgency resorting to fraudulent propaganda to a new sign of the Taliban's enhanced ability to elicit confidential information from government ministries. Regardless, they are a sign of the information war between coalition forces and the insurgency, both of which regularly trade blows and accusations on social media.
A translated statement on the website read: "The vigilant Mujahedeen of Islamic Emirate have acquired the security plans, maps and other documents related to the upcoming supposed loya jirga (National
Assembly) by means of its personnel embedded inside the enemy ranks."
The Interior Ministry dismissed the post, saying it only served as part of a failing propaganda campaign aimed at intimidating people from attending the loya jirga.
"This is yet another huge lie by the Taliban," said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi. "It is part of a propaganda campaign and it is what we can expect. The Taliban are under pressure -- they have tried to disrupt and have failed to do so. That is why they are resorting to this propaganda."
He rejected the notion of jirga delegates due avoiding the meeting because of the alleged leak.
The document said the following could be "probable threats" posed by the Taliban:
-- "Suicide attacks with new and dangerous tactics in one or several places continuing for several hours";
-- "Rocket attacks from Kabul city sub-districts or districts outside";
-- "Infiltration of enemy into the lines of security forces."
The statement on the website also said, "These important secrets which you will see in the below pages have been acquired by Mujahedeen of Islamic Emirate from two ministries and from the special security corps of the government. Our upcoming attacks will become even more lethal and precise with the acquisition of such intelligence material, if God wills it."
The statement went on to promise further details: "Note -- The original security plans which consist of 28 pages and six pictorial maps have been recomposed and rewritten by us for intelligence and policy purposes. We will release the second, third, 28th sides of the plan and a map to show its validation and will also release the pictorial part of it in the near future, if Allah Wills it."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force was aware of the message on the website, but could not confirm the accuracy of it, spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings said.
"The Taliban have said they would go to all extremes to disrupt the loya jirga," he said.
Afghan president's rival to boycott assembly
(AFP)
KABUL — The main challenger to the Afghan president said Sunday he would boycott a traditional leaders' assembly to discuss peace moves and ties with the United States, calling it illegal and unconstitutional.
President Hamid Karzai has convened the assembly, or loya jirga, this week to discuss strategies for trying to broker peace with Taliban insurgents and long-term relations with the United States after combat troops leave.
Abdullah Abdullah, rival to Karzai in the runoff round of the 2009 presidential election, told a news conference in Kabul: "I won't participate in the upcoming traditional loya jirga. Holding this... doesn't have any legal base, and it is contrary to Afghanistan's constitution."
He did not rule out attendance of the assembly, to be held from November 16, by members of the opposition Change and Hope Coalition, which he heads.
The loya jirga follows the September assassination of Karzai's chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani by a bomber who purported to be a peace envoy for the Taliban, amid government attempts to negotiate with the insurgents.
Abdullah also denounced vagueness surrounding the future of Afghanistan's partnership with the US -- which led the 2001 invasion that ousted the Taliban from government -- after the planned withdrawal of its combat troops by the end of 2014.
"I have not seen any documents" on the future partnership, said Abdullah, who also served as foreign minister under Karzai from 2001 to 2006.
A deal still under negotiation with the Americans will govern the longer-term presence of US troops in Afghanistan, a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan and the wider region.
The loya jirga, which brings together representatives from Afghan provinces, tribes, ethnic groups and civil society, is held on rare occasions to discuss major policy decisions.
Another coalition recently created around two former warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, has also denounced the planned assembly.
Lawmakers had voiced concern it would be used to bypass their powers, but a spokeswoman for the assembly said Saturday its decisions would not be binding and parliament would have the final say.
More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the meeting in a giant tent in Kabul.
Registration for Afghan Loya Jirga begins
By Farid Behbud, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Registration for the planned Afghan Loya Jirga or traditional grand assembly have begun since Saturday.
"Registration has commenced for the participants of the traditional Loya Jirga scheduled to be convened on Wednesday (Nov. 16) to discuss the pros and cons of a proposed strategic partnership agreement between Afghanistan and the United States and peace mechanism," a spokeswoman for the Jirga was quoted as saying by the Daily Outlook Afghanistan in its front page on Sunday.
More than 2,000 people including influential Afghan figures from across the country, all sitting parliamentarians and some former MPs, 30 percent members of provincial councils of the country's 34 provinces, representatives of civil society organizations, members of private sector and traders as well as special people will take part in the event, the spokeswoman of the Jirga's preparatory commission said.
Some religious scholars, influential tribal elders, representatives of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Iran, the United States and European countries and some members of disabled people will also be members of the designed Jriga.
In spite of some reports that the Jriga will be canceled for some technical problems, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement on Saturday that the upcoming Loya Jirga should be held as scheduled.
However, some members of Afghan Lower House of parliament has been doubtful for the forthcoming event and described holding the Jirga as a step that is against the Afghan constitution, some 171 out of 249 MPs has registered to take part in the assembly.
Another topic to be discussed in the Jirga will be the mechanisms of peace talks with the armed Taliban insurgents who have been waging a vicious insurgency after their regime was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
The armed outfit fighting the Afghan government and some 130, 000-strong NATO-led troops with nearly 100,000 of them Americans have already blasted the Jirga.
In a statement released to media outlets days ago, the Afghan Taliban termed the upcoming Loya Jirga as a "trick" to legalize the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and vowed to disrupt it.
"Under the orders of its masters, the Kabul administration wants to abuse a much respected custom of our country (Loya Jirga) and try to give a legal face to the establishment of permanent bases for the American occupying forces on the Islamic soil of Afghanistan," the Taliban statement said.
"For its long term goal of permanently staying in Afghanistan, the Americans want to once again abuse this tradition through its stooge regime to call a supposed Loya Jirga in which faces of its preference will be gathered, food will be eaten and once again, games will be played with the fate and future of its nation," the statement of the Taliban outfit said.
The coming four-day Loya Jirga is scheduled to be held under a giant tent inside the Polytechnic University compound in west of Kabul, and as part of the security measures, the Afghan government has given days-off for the students of Polytechnic during the Jirga, and will station police on the hilltops and roads leading to the Jirga avenue.
Taliban commander detained in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces captured three Taliban militants, including their commander, on Sunday during an operation in Shindand district of Herat province, 640 km west of Afghan capital city Kabul, an official said.
"Taliban commander Mullah Zahir along with two of his bodyguards were captured during an operation launched in Shindand district this morning," spokesman for the provincial administration Mohiuding Nuri told Xinhua.
Describing Mullah Zahir as a key Taliban commander in the western region, Nuri said with the arrest of Zahir, the security situation would be further strengthened in the western region of Afghanistan.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Afghanistan success is in eye of beholder
As NATO insists that violence is declining while many Afghans say daily life has grown more perilous, tension has grown over so-called metrics that can be used to chart progress or deterioration.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times November 12, 2011
Reporting from Forward Operating Base Ghazni - The young U.S. Army sergeant had lost nearly all the blood in his body by the time he was rushed into a military field clinic at this dusty base in eastern Afghanistan.
As his distraught unit mates converged on the surgical suite, some of them weeping, the entire camp pitched in for an emergency blood drive. But military doctors' frantic efforts were futile, and Sgt. John A. Lyons, a 26-year-old from New Jersey who had studied Latin in college, died of the wounds he had suffered in a Taliban ambush.
As the U.S.-led war against the Taliban grinds into its second decade, the life-and-death struggle taking place daily across Afghanistan has gotten entangled in increasingly divergent narratives of the Western war effort. In this high-stakes phase of a waning conflict, perceptions of success have become crucial, perhaps more so than reality.
PHOTOS: A decade of war in Afghanistan
Yet even as the question of what constitutes success has become more urgent, it has become more difficult to pin down.
With an American troop drawdown underway and expected to accelerate in the coming year, the NATO force insists that violence is declining, that the insurgency's strength is flagging and that Afghan forces are demonstrating a growing ability to take the lead in safeguarding the country.
Many Afghans, however, subscribe to a darker view: that daily life has grown more perilous, that national and local governance has become even shakier, that the country's police and army are chronically unable protect its citizens, and that the Taliban movement is hunkering down to wait out the Western presence.
Recent months have seen escalating tension over so-called metrics that can be used to chart either progress or deterioration.
In an unusually public instance of clashing statistical analysis, NATO's International Security Assistance Force declared last month that enemy attacks had dropped by nearly 10% in the first nine months of the year. But the United Nations, citing its own figures for an overlapping period, reported that violent incidents had jumped by almost 40% in the first eight months of 2011.
Ghazni, the rundown capital of the province of the same name where Lyons was killed Oct. 26, is on a provisional list of areas to be next handed over to the control of the Afghan police and army. That follows the summer's security transfer of an initial group of seven cities and provinces. Nationwide, the process is to be completed within the next three years.
But this arid swath of terrain south of Kabul, the national capital, contains some of the country's most "kinetic" areas, military-speak for the level of violent incidents and confrontations with insurgents. Many in Ghazni fear that Afghan security forces cannot begin to cope with the threat posed by the Taliban and other militant groups.
In at least four districts of the province, the Taliban movement has set up shadow governments, complete with courts, tax collection and its own harsh brand of law enforcement, said Mohammed Arif Rahmani, one of Ghazni's representatives in the national parliament. Even in the provincial capital, Taliban commanders have sufficient sway to order a ban on music, in an echo of the harsh edicts in place when the movement ruled Afghanistan.
"Generally, people don't really incline toward the Taliban," Rahmani said. "But the levels of corruption and insecurity make them prefer the Taliban over the government."
As an example, he cited inaction after local people complained to officials that they were being robbed and menaced on a particular stretch of road.
"Then we complained to the Taliban," he said. "And they arrested the robbers, took what had been stolen, returned everything to the owners, and told the people, 'Any time you face trouble because of thieves, you come to us, and we'll take care of it.'"
He and other officials said local qualms about Afghan forces' will and readiness to step up had been brushed aside. "The foreigners have decided to hand over security responsibility," Rahmani said. "So there is really no choice."
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration has shied away from setting specific "benchmarks" to be achieved before the American combat mission ends. The U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, who served in Baghdad before taking up his post in Kabul, said he did not believe such measurements provided a true picture of progress.
"You can achieve every benchmark and still fail. Or you can meet none of them and be successful," he said. "You have to view the situation through a wider aperture."
Success in Afghanistan, he and other senior Western officials say, could be defined on some level by basic security that can be maintained by Afghan security forces, and the existence of a government that can provide essential services such as healthcare and education.
But there are intangibles as well.
"If parents have expectations, say, that their children will have a better life than they do, that's part of it too," Crocker said.
Although hopes and anxieties are hard to quantify, even statistics can offer competing versions of reality. The recent disparity in figures on violence can be explained in part by the fact that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization figures documented attacks on Western and Afghan troops, while the U.N. measurement was broader, encompassing those against civilians as well.
But assessments differ, too, over the degree to which insurgents are able to disrupt daily life and inspire fear among ordinary Afghans. Western military officials tend to speak dismissively of ambitious operations mounted by the insurgents, such as September's 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, calling them a sign of desperation.
After a series of "spectacular" attacks this year, however, many people living in the Afghan capital are rattled as never before. The falling price of Kabul real estate has been cited by some as an indicator of rising security fear.
For many Americans, of course, the only statistics that matter now are the billions of dollars expended in Afghanistan, and the numbers of troops killed and wounded here. At least 1,833 U.S. service members have died in the conflict, according to the independent monitoring website icasualties.org.
On Thursday, hundreds of people turned out in Seaside Park, N.J., for a solemn procession honoring Lyons, the Army sergeant killed in Ghazni. He had been scheduled to come home in December, a few days before what would have been his 27th birthday.
At the field clinic in Ghazni, one of the military doctors who struggled to save him described a "full-court press" in the operating room, despite the fact that the gravity of Lyons' wounds had left him with only the faintest of life signs.
"Emotionally, it's very hard," said Air Force Maj. Brian Holt, a trauma surgeon from St. Louis who was a member of the team that day. "There are certain injuries that haunt us, as surgeons. You can't save them all."
3 insurgents killed, 46 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Security forces, during operations, killed three insurgents and captured 46 other suspects over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan army and NDS or intelligence agency in collaboration with NATO-led Coalition Forces launched six joint operations in surrounding areas of the Nangarhar, Paktika, Ghazni, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Nimroz provinces over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.
"As a result of these operations, three armed insurgents were killed, two wounded and 46 others were arrested by ANP," it said.
The ANP also discovered and confiscated three AK-47 guns, a hand grenade, 30kg Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), 2,700 kilograms ammonium nitrate (use for making IEDs), 18 rocket launchers and three heavy weapons, according to the statement.
Taliban insurgents, who have intensified activities since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive against Afghan security forces and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan on May 1, have not made comments so far.
Separately, Kabul police has detained six suspects accused of robbery, using of fake passport and carrying illegal weapon in capital city of Kabul in the same period of time, the statement added.
Hundreds of UK troops' in Afghanistan after 2015
13 November 2011 BBC News
Hundreds of British soldiers will stay in Afghanistan after the UK pulls out combat troops, the chief of the defence staff has said.
The government wants troops to leave by 2015, but says some will remain to support and train Afghan forces.
General Sir David Richards said the final figure was undecided, but it would be hundreds rather than thousands.
Their role is to prevent Afghanistan being used as a terrorist base.
Gen Richards, speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, said: "We haven't yet decided what the residual figure will be, but I think we are looking in the hundreds rather than the thousands."
He said Britain's role was not to "extinguish the insurgency" but to reduce it to a level that Afghan security forces can take on, and to prevent the country being used as a base to train terrorists.
"We're on track to deliver that strategy," he said.
There was no truth in the suggestion that injured soldiers could lose their jobs, he added.
The suggestion was made in a leaked memo by a junior officer - but it was dismissed by the Ministry of Defence.
The document, seen by the Daily Telegraph, suggested 2,500 wounded personnel could go as part of 16,500 Army job losses. It is thought to have been distributed to commanders in Afghanistan.
Referring to the story, Gen Richards said: "I'd like to kill that, there's no such policy."
"No-one will be forced out of the Army - they won't leave until it's right for them."
Speculative figures
He said the figures leaked in the memo were speculative and he did not expect to see a new round of redundancies.
The document reflected early work on how numbers in the Army could be reduced and was sent out to Afghanistan "in a fit of enthusiasm".
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond reiterated the point on Sunday, saying: "Nobody being treated for an injury or a medical condition received on active service will be considered for redundancy - that's our policy, it isn't going to change.
"While they're being treated no-one will be considered for redundancy. Of course, once people's treatment is complete there is then a medical assessment process which will look at the best way to plan their careers."
Some 7,000 army troops will be laid off as part of the first tranche of redundancies, which has already begun.
Gen Richards said that despite cuts to the military he was confident the Army could meet the "core military task" required by the government.
"The most important strategic risk facing the country is clearly our economic situation," he added.
He said military morale was "remarkably high" on the front line - from troops serving in Afghanistan to those flying sorties over Libya in the recent Nato-mandated operation.
Life better since Taliban driven from Kabul, says Nato
By Orla Guerin 13 November 2011 BBC News
Kabul - Ten years since the Taliban were driven from the Afghan capital, Kabul, Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says there have been big improvements.
On 13 November 2001 that the western-backed Northern Alliance swept into the Afghan capital virtually unopposed.
But, Mr Goss says, plenty of things have not been done.
Critics stress the Taliban can still bring death into the capital. Many are anxious about the coming withdrawal of foreign combat forces.
A decade after the liberation of Kabul by the Northern Alliance, the city is growing fast, but it still has the architecture of war - checkpoints, blast walls and heavily fortified buildings.
A city of bicycles has become a city of jeeps and traffic jams, a monument to commerce and to corruption.
The poverty remains, but there is progress - like electricity around the clock in most neighbourhoods.
Nato's ambassador to Afghanistan, Simon Gass, says the city has changed beyond recognition.
"When you walk around in Kabul, this is now a bustling lively city with women on the streets, people able to go to hospitals, schools open where girls can go to as well as boys and it feels very very different to how it did 10 years ago."
But the ambassador admits that many things have not been done.
Some - troubled by the ghosts of the past - worry about a return to all-out civil war.
Ten years on, Kabul is still waiting for peace.
According to one veteran analyst here, people assumed and hoped things would be a lot better by now.
Huntsman urges US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately to focus on home-front goals
By Associated Press, November 13
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Republican presidential contender Jon Huntsman says it’s time for the United States to exit Afghanistan and focus on rebuilding the nation’s home front.
The former ambassador to China says during Saturday night’s debate of GOP hopefuls that he would leave a small contingent of forces on the ground to help Afghan forces. He says the United States has achieved its goals of removing the Taliban from governing, killing Osama bin Laden and staging free elections.
He says it’s now time for America to focus on America, not Afghanistan or Iraq.
Rival Mitt Romney says that he would listen to his military commanders and says President Barack Obama is not heeding the military’s advice. Romney says Obama is playing politics with deployments and disagrees with any timeline for withdrawal.
As Pakistan eyes peace talks with the Taliban, anxiety builds
Past deals with the militants have backfired, each time giving the insurgents an opportunity to regroup and replenish their ranks.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez November 13, 2011
Islamabad, Pakistan - Every time Pakistan hammered out peace agreements with militants, the results were disastrous. The groups grew stronger, and the toll their bomb blasts took on civilians steadily rose.
That history explains why anxiety is rippling through the country as talk builds of the prospect for peace negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, the homegrown insurgency responsible for most of the suicide bombings and terrorist strikes that have killed thousands of people in recent years.
Pakistani leaders have expressed a newfound interest in tackling the problem of militancy through peace talks rather than military confrontation. At a Sept. 29 conference of more than 50 political leaders, participants signed a resolution endorsing the idea of negotiations with militants. " 'Give peace a chance' must be the guiding central principle," the resolution declared.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in October that the government was prepared to negotiate with militants willing to lay down their arms. Elements within the Pakistani Taliban have signaled their willingness to talk, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said recently.
The movement to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban comes at a time when, across the border in Afghanistan, peace talks with the Afghan Taliban are seen as Washington's only recourse after battling those insurgents for 10 years.
On both sides of the border, the prospect of peace negotiations is fraught with risk and uncertainty.
In Afghanistan, the government's bid to reconcile with Afghan Taliban leaders suffered a severe blow in September with the assassination of President Hamid Karzai's chief negotiator, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. Afghan officials accused Pakistan's intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, of involvement in the killing, a charge Pakistan denied. In Pakistan, a peace accord could give insurgents the ideal tool to expand both influence and territory.
Like the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban is made up of factions united in the goal of toppling the current government and imposing sharia, or Islamic law. The Pakistani Taliban maintains links with Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups entrenched in Pakistan's tribal belt.
So far, there has been no endorsement of any overtures from the Pakistani military, historically the ultimate voice in the country's strategy against militants. But at a briefing last month for members of the parliament's defense committees, Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani said any decision to begin talks with the Pakistani Taliban would have to be made by the country's civilian government.
A lawmaker who attended the briefing said army leaders made it clear that "if the government wants to give negotiations a chance, the army will wait for the results of those negotiations." The lawmaker spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was held behind closed doors.
In the last few years, Pakistan has deployed more than 140,000 troops to battle the Pakistani Taliban across most of the tribal belt along the Afghan border. The army has retaken large swaths of territory once held by the militant group, but the Taliban still controls pockets throughout the area and continues to carry out attacks on targets including military checkpoints, mosques and markets.
Negotiating with the Pakistani Taliban would represent a marked shift in strategy for Islamabad, and some analysts are doubtful it would work.
"It's pretty clear it would be a bad idea," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan. "Past peace agreements gave the militants breathing room and space to enlarge their control. And there's no reason to expect that this time, if they pursue another deal, that the result would be any different."
The last peace agreement with militants, reached between Pakistan and Taliban insurgents in early 2009 in the picturesque Swat Valley tourist region in the north, collapsed when militants refused to lay down their arms and instead expanded their reach to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the capital. That spring, the military launched an assault that retook the valley.
Peace agreements and cease-fires with Taliban militants in the volatile Waziristan tribal region in 2005, '06 and '08 also backfired, each time giving insurgents the opportunity to regroup and replenish their ranks.
"After each agreement," said security analyst Khadim Hussain, the Taliban "became bigger, more entrenched and stronger than before."
Authorities in Islamabad have blamed the Pakistani Taliban for some of the country's worst terrorist attacks, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
The group is led by Hakimullah Mahsud, a Pashtun militant who took over after a U.S. drone strike killed chieftain Baitullah Mahsud two years ago. Mahsud's second in command, Wali ur-Rehman, told a Pakistani newspaper last month that the group would want an Arab country to mediate before agreeing to enter talks.
Proponents of negotiations say fighting the militants with military blitzes hasn't stemmed suicide bombings, which since 2001 have killed at least 4,600 people and injured 10,000 in Pakistan.
"What's needed is dialogue," Imran Khan, a former Pakistani cricket star turned politician, told reporters after the Sept. 29 conference. "There are two approaches: military and political. And in my opinion and the opinion of most others [at the conference], a military approach won't solve the problem."
Others in Pakistani society aren't so sure. An Oct. 5 editorial in the Express Tribune newspaper warned that the movement toward talks with the Taliban "placed the [Pakistani Taliban] on a platform of strength in Pakistan from where, if the state negotiates, it would be tantamount to abject surrender."
Pakistanis who oppose talking with the Taliban can take encouragement in the knowledge that the military may not support the idea, either. Though the military has publicly said it would abide by the civilian government's decisions, it has also moved aggressively against the most recent Pakistani Taliban threat: cross-border attacks by militants using the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan as sanctuary.
Those attacks have killed more than 100 members of Pakistan's security forces this year. Pakistani military leaders have blamed U.S., NATO and Afghan forces for not uprooting Pakistani Taliban militants from their havens in eastern Afghanistan.
"The Pakistani Taliban's goals are well known," Almeida said. "I can't see the military having much of an appetite to cut a deal. But never say never."
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Pakistan Donkey Cart Blast Kills 6
VOA News November 13, 2011
Pakistan officials say a bomb blast in the country's remote northwest has killed six people.
Authorities say the bomb that exploded Sunday was planted in a donkey cart in the market area of Mastak town.
A local government official says the explosives were detonated with a remote-controlled device.
No group has claimed responsibility. Officials have blamed similar attacks in the past on the Taliban and Islamist militants.
Pashtun Music Bazaars Still Being Targeted
Majeed Babar November 13, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Taliban campaign against music in northwest Pakistan and the tribal areas is still in full swing.
Militants bombed or torched more than a dozen music shops late last week in the Swabi district of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and the city of Miramshah in North Waziristan, according to numerous reports (here, here, and a late-October attack here), reportedly after threats to close their "un-Islamic businesses."
The wave of hate and destruction against such local music and popular culture in Khyber Pukhtunkhwah started under a government led by the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an Islamic religious alliance, in 2002, when thousands of musicians and singers were forced to abandon a 200-year-old Dabgari music bazaar.
The cultural clampdown early last decade was so intense that, at one point, burning music CDs and cassettes became a regular Friday festivity at local parks in Peshawar. The Khyber Pukhtunkhwa chief minister at the time
(when it was called the Northwest Frontier Province), Akram Khan Durrani, blamed bazaar closures and cassette bonfires on thriving obscenity.
During the campaign against "obscenity," female images were scrapped from advertising and cinema billboards and posters, the only concert hall in the city of Peshawar was locked down, and dozens of musicians and singers were given just three choices: go into hiding, leave the country, or leave the profession.
Those who chose to stay were chased, kidnapped, or otherwise targeted. Noted singers Gulzar Alam and Sardar Ali Yousafzai were attacked by armed men; Mushraff Bungash was kidnapped; performers were made to appear on television or otherwise publicly withdraw from artistic and musical activities considered "un-Islamic."
The most recent attacks suggest that the Taliban is not lying low in pursuing its self-proclaimed agenda of Talibanizing the Pashtun-dominated tribal areas and Khyber Pukhtunkhwah.
So it is worth asking whether such restrictive attitudes to popular culture and Pashtu music will be allowed to dominate -- on either or both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border -- if the U.S. and Pakistani governments proceed with their stated aim of talking with the Taliban.
Will Afghanistan learn that cross-dressers are not criminals?
The video of policemen bullying a transvestite exposed an unpleasant side to Afghan culture – but humane voices give cause for hope
Guardian.co.uk By Nushin Arbabzadah Sunday 13 November 2011
"Take off your chador," the police officer orders an Afghan cross-dresser in a video that has been shared endlessly on social networking websites.
"Take off your wig!" Beneath the shiny black locks, the head is revealed as male with receding, closely cropped hair.
He's also wearing a scarlet short-sleeved shalwar kamiz – sexy but traditional female attire. The feminine look is accentuated by large sparkling bangles and see-through embroidery.
The victim's ordeal goes on for what seems like eternity as he endures humiliating comments and laughter from the police officers.
"Please have mercy, don't make fun of me," he whispers.
"Boy! Face the camera," they shout, forcing him to remove the fake breasts from inside his top. The breasts turn out to be a pair of socks filled with dough.
"Dough to make the breasts feel softy-soft," an officer shouts amid laughter. Male cross-dressing is a familiar enough in Afghanistan for the locals to have coined a special term. The word is ezak – a vague but deeply derogatory noun referring to anything from a eunuch or a hermaphrodite to a transvestite or a male homosexual.
Following the discovery of the dough, a barrage of questions ensues in the video. "Why are you dressed like this? Where did you put the makeup on? What is all this about? What have you two been up to?"
This final question is addressed to a shy young man leaning away but standing next to the transvestite. The two were arrested together. "I was shopping for clothes," the cross-dresser whispers, taking off the bangles. He is trying to tell the officers that his dressing up is just a silly, harmless game.
"Put the bangles back on," a police officer orders. The victim reluctantly obeys, his eyes filled with tears.
"Please, officer, we haven't committed a crime," the victim's companion pleads, turning away from the camera.
Like most of the sensationalist Afghan news that is spread online, the video gives no information about the date, the source, or the victim's fate following the arrest. The clip made the rounds, creating lively debate before people tired of it.
My immediate reaction was to regard it as a clear example of ignorance breeding cruelty. From the officers' tone it was evident that they felt proud of the arrest, believing they had protected ordinary families from a couple of "dangerous perverts".
But the officers' pride was also mixed with utter bewilderment. This confusion was neatly summed up in the video's title: "A man dressed as a woman – but why?" The title cried out for explanation and the numerous comments left by viewers revealed a wide range of interpretation.
They included political paranoia, with some viewers suspecting that the cross-dresser was in reality a suicide bomber trained by the Pakistani ISI to infiltrate Kabul disguised as a woman.
There was also a more sober reaction, with commentators criticising the police for wasting their time on mundane incidents while the threat of terrorism was all too real. A few comments interpreted the cross-dressing as a sign of cultural anarchy, a symbol of Afghans straying from the path of Islam.
A couple of people demanded the cross-dresser should be executed, while others said that even though the cross-dresser was misguided they still felt sorry for him.
Amid such voices of confusion, and at times outright cruelty, it was heartening to read comments expressing anger at the police's humiliation of the victim: "The man has committed no crime. Cross-dressing is a psychological condition. What he needs is treatment rather than public humiliation."
Others recalled their own encounters with transvestites:
"During the Taliban, we had an ezak in our neighborhood. His brothers used to hit him for acting like a female and finally killed him. "I am worried about this man's future. His family is bound to kill him because of the shame he has brought on them. To protect this unfortunate person, people should stop sharing this video."
It was the presence of these voices of sanity among Afghans themselves that encouraged me to write this article. It showed that people are beginning to realise the importance of psychology in making a society more humane. This is vitally needed but much neglected in Afghanistan.
Students are often discouraged by their own families from pursuing their interest in psychology. "Do you really want to end up a doctor to the crazies?" is the usual reaction. The prejudice is widespread, even inside the medical community.
The result is a nation deeply in need of psychological treatment but left with little choice but to turn to "traditional treatments", which include chaining patients to the walls of saintly shrines or depriving them of food and drink for long periods.
Amid such dark despair, the sane voices of compassion that appeared alongside the aggressive comments offered a glimmer of hope because they showed that Afghans are beginning to understand that transvestites are not criminals.
It is true that different cultures create distinctive personality traits, but as the case of the unlucky Afghan transvestite revealed, psychological conditions are universal, with transvestites from the dusty roads of Kabul to the sparkling clubs of New York feeling the same urge to dress up as women with or without society's approval.
Moscow vs. the Mujahideen
The Wall Street Journal, Book Review By Brian M. Downing 12/11/2011
The Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89) has passed from being the subject of angry international debate to the object of calm historical inquiry, but given the current conflict there, the period retains a certain urgent resonance. Two new books shed useful light on those days. In "Afgantsy," Rodric Braithwaite, the British ambassador in Moscow at war's close, explores the Soviets' decision to intervene, the experience of soldiers and the war's effects back home. The book is based on interviews with senior government officials and soldiers of all ranks. In "A Long Goodbye," Artemy Kalinovsky, a Western-educated academic, presents a more formal, highly detailed study of the Soviet withdrawal.
Mr. Braithwaite examines the decision to intervene in some detail. In the late 1970s, the communist Afghan government, newly installed by a coup, attempted to modernize agriculture, education and the state, but heavy-handedness and rapid implementation triggered formidable opposition among Afghans. U.S. and Pakistani intelligence encouraged the revolt, and as the government in Kabul wobbled, the Soviets—who had long enjoyed influence but never control over Afghanistan—became alarmed. Moscow counseled slowing the reforms, easing oppressive measures and building popular support, but the Afghan leadership resisted. After all, Kabul replied, hadn't Stalin championed swift and brutal modernization?
As the rebellion intensified and spread among Islamic guerrillas known as the mujahideen, Moscow debated sending in troops to install a more competent, compliant government and to train the failing Afghan military. The discussion was of course conducted in a Cold War context, and KGB chief (and future head of state) Yuri Andropov warned, rather implausibly, that the U.S. was seeking a "New Great Ottoman Empire" for the region and that the Afghan president, Hafizullah Amin, might even be a CIA operative.
An interventionist consensus formed in the aging, ailing Politburo, even as Soviet generals protested. Intervention could cause widespread desertions in the Afghan army, the generals argued, with the deserters joining the resistance. The invading Soviet troops would stir both religious and nationalist fervor in the Afghans, who would fight relentlessly to evict the foreigners. The generals also warned that an invasion would escalate Cold War tensions by prompting the U.S. to suspend arms-control negotiations. The military called for a political solution.
The Politburo interventionists countered: The Americans were already abandoning détente by rejecting the SALT II arms-control agreement, funding the MX missile and B1 bomber, and deploying Pershing missiles to Europe. If the U.S. took advantage of a power vacuum in Afghanistan and installed Pershings there, the Soviet Union's Central Asian assets would be threatened.
In December 1979, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan. They killed President Amin, installed a Moscow favorite, Babrak Karmal, as the country's ruler and secured the cities. But the troops almost immediately became enmeshed in fighting with the mujahideen that would not end until the Soviets withdrew nearly a decade later—an event the geriatric interventionists did not live to see.
The Soviet army was geared toward conventional war in Central Europe, not guerrilla war in Central Asia, but Mr. Braithwaite contends that it adapted and performed reasonably well, considering the extensive and unstoppable foreign support that the mujahideen enjoyed. The army adopted counterinsurgency techniques and forged separate peaces with several guerrilla commanders, including the fabled Ahmad Shah Massoud. Special forces and airborne units were especially effective.
Many Soviet officers were careerists who cared little for their soldiers' lives, Mr. Braithwaite says, but others wrestled with the problem of following orders in an unwinnable war while protecting as best they could the young men entrusted to them. Well-connected families back home kept their sons out of the service or at least out of Afghanistan. Combat soldiers came overwhelmingly from factories and farms, prompting a Soviet general's caustic remark that they were an "army of workers and peasants"—as the old Bolshevik forces were officially called.
Mr. Braithwaite ably sketches the quotidian lives of these soldiers. Boys from hardscrabble upbringings could suddenly buy foreign watches, tape recorders, jeans and cameras in thriving off-post bazaars. Conscript pay was of course meager, but merchants would gladly barter for goods secreted from a supply hut. The soldiers could watch movies brought from Russia, and reading material was available in "Lenin rooms"; a more riveting pastime was using a rifle scope to watch female bathers.
Rudyard Kipling's accounts of life and death in Pathan lands, though frowned upon by higher-ups for sentimentalizing imperialism, won avid readers with the other side in the old Great Game. The arithmetic on the frontier hadn't changed much, nor had the fate of the wounded on the Afghan plains.
The politics and diplomacy leading to the Soviets' 1989 exit form the core of Artemy Kalinovsky's "A Long Goodbye." Only two years after the invasion, the author says, grumbling stirred in Moscow and elsewhere—within the government, the Communist Party and the military. Even Politburo hardliners began to favor a diplomatic solution, but they were an elderly bunch, and their infirmities and deaths prevented decisive action. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and garnered support for withdrawal. He "was not so much troubled by the military and economic costs of the war or by the domestic political effects, although these were undoubtedly important," Mr. Kalinovsky writes, "as he was by its potential to interfere with his broader reform projects, particularly his plan to seek a lessening of international tension."
Nonetheless, international and domestic considerations complicated translating consensus into action. The U.S. preferred to see its rival squander resources and alienate the developing world. Mr. Gorbachev's overtures to America for help with a diplomatic solution were seen as ploys; U.S. support for the mujahideen continued. The Soviet leader worried that a humiliating exit followed by the Kabul government's collapse would damage Moscow's position with countries in the developing world. A withdrawal might also bolster pressure for autonomy in the Soviet Union's Muslim republics, strengthen elites' opposition to his planned reforms and heighten popular discontent.
In the event, Mr. Gorbachev had to pull out without securing U.S. acceptance of the Kabul government and an attendant cutoff of arms to the mujahideen. The Afghan government remained in power several years, owing less to Moscow's support than to mujahideen disunity.
Neither Mr. Braithwaite nor Mr. Kalinovsky views the war—dismaying and wasteful though it was—as playing a significant role in the Soviet Union's fall. Mr. Braithwaite does note the war's souring effect on Russian society even in the early stages: "As more and more soldiers completed tours of duty and returned home—sometimes as wounded veterans, sometimes as bodies for funeral, but always marked by the experience—the war became increasingly difficult to keep a secret." Letters complaining about the war began pouring into the Central Committee and the editorial offices of Pravda. "Unlike earlier letters, which had often been anonymous, these were signed," Mr. Braithwaite writes.
Members of the state bureaucracy and of the party itself came to see the Soviet political system as decayed, errant and based on a clique of doddering old men who had started a disastrous military misadventure. The remains of dead soldiers were being unceremoniously returned to loved ones in the small hours. No mention of the country they died in was permitted on grave markers.
Mr. Gorbachev, as both authors note, eventually spoke out forthrightly about the war, chiefly to neutralize hardline opposition to his reforms. Many generals, however, opposed the less than honorable exit Mr. Gorbachev ordered; they also later blamed him for the withdrawal from Eastern Europe and the corruption and anarchy it set loose. The resentments fed into support for the clumsy 1991 Russian coup, which sought to restore the greatness of the Soviet Union but brought only its swift demise.
Neither book supports the oft-heard boast that U.S. Stinger missiles were important or even decisive in the war. American money and matériel certainly contributed to the mujahideen's success, but the authors agree with several other studies that say Stingers did not markedly increase Soviet aircraft losses; pilots simply changed tactics to avoid them. It was not Charlie Wilson's war.
Both Messrs. Braithwaite and Kalinovsky close, quite understandably, with the 1989 withdrawal. For Afghans, the Soviets' exit signaled victory, and many mujahideen went home, leaving ambitious commanders to fight among themselves with thinner ranks. The Kabul government then made overtures to several of the commanders and gained their support. The approach might have brought a good measure of stability had foreign aid continued from Moscow or elsewhere. But such stability was not forthcoming, of course—and the rule of the Taliban was soon upon the land. A decade after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, diplomatic overtures to guerrilla commanders are once again in the air. Maybe the hapless country will yet achieve a measure of stability.
—Mr. Downing is the author of "The Military Revolution and Political Change" and "The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America From the Great War to Vietnam.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com