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Taliban Spokesman Denies Being Captured
By FAROUQ JAN MANGAL and ROD NORDLAND The New York Times November 14, 2011
KHOST, Afghanistan — A Taliban spokesman whose provocative and taunting media reports have often infuriated Afghan and Western officials firmly denied that he had been captured Monday.
His arrest had been reported by local officials in the Sar Hawza District, a remote eastern area in Paktika Province, along the Pakistan border, where the Taliban have been active.
An Afghan government official there reported that the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, was among suspects detained during joint coalition and Afghan military operations. A second government official in Paktika confirmed the account. Both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release the information.
Reached on his usual cellphone number a few hours later, Mr. Mujahid angrily denied their accounts. “I am talking to you on the phone right now,” he told an Afghan reporter who has frequently interviewed him in the past. “I am safe and sound and living in a safe place.”
“Those people who were arrested in Paktika do not belong to us,” Mr. Mujahid said. “They are just some innocent civilians, and the forces of the puppet government may have forced the guy to confess and say he is Zabiullah Mujahid. As I said, I am safe and on the run and always looking after myself.”
The reporter said the voice matched that of the man who over the past year has been the spokesman for Taliban activities in eastern and northern Afghanistan.
Afghan officials and those with the international forces operating here have maintained that Mr. Mujahid — one of two Taliban spokesmen — is not an individual, but rather a persona used by a number of Taliban insurgents adopting the same name and Afghan cellphone numbers, and operating from Pakistan just across the border.
However, many Afghan journalists he speaks to by telephone maintain that his voice has not changed at least in the past year, suggesting he is a single individual, as he — or his persona — has insisted.
Whether persona or person, Mr. Mujahid is regarded even by some of his enemies as an effective communicator, reacting quickly to events and using a variety of new media to get the Taliban’s message out.
On Sunday, he send out in a mass e-mail what he said was the security plan for the major council, or loya jirga, set to begin in Kabul on Wednesday. While officials denied that the document was genuine, if it was a fake, it was an elaborate one. Its wealth of details, like private phone numbers of intelligence officers, made it appear legitimate. The security plan was also posted on a Taliban Web site.
On Monday, Latfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said security forces had killed a suicide bomber as he tried to enter the gate of the Polytechnic University, which is where the loya jirga is going to be held.
But he said the e-mailed security plan was a fake. “It’s not our plan, or if it is our plan, it’s the previous loya jirga plan,” he said, speaking to journalists on Monday. “The plan Zabiullah Mujahid sent to you — he sent it to me also in my e-mail — if it was the genuine plan, then the Taliban would not have made it public; they would have used it.”
He said the failure of their attack had driven the Taliban to rely “on a kind of psy-ops instead.”
Taliban insurgents did attack the last loya jirga, narrowly missing Mr. Karzai with a rocket attack, and prompting him to dismiss his interior and intelligence ministers.
Farouq Jan Mangal reported from Khost, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Sharifullah Sahak and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul
Questions Cloud Meeting of Afghan Elders Called by Karzai
By ALISSA J. RUBIN November 14, 2011 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite criticism from neighboring countries, threats from the Taliban and calls for a boycott from some political opponents, President Hamid Karzai has called a loya jirga, the traditional grand council of Afghan elders and leaders, in an attempt to gain popular support for a long-term partnership with the United States, Afghan officials and analysts say.
Even before the jirga’s opening, set for Wednesday, it is being clouded by doubt and confusion — much of it sown by Mr. Karzai himself.
His public statements about the United States have grown more hostile in recent months, including a statement several weeks ago in which he suggested that if Pakistanis were to go to war with the Americans, he would actually ally himself with Islamabad.
That in particular seemed a contrary message to be sending while intense negotiations were under way to persuade the United States to keep troops and military trainers for 10 years beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline, and while also asking for help in paying for the Afghan security forces.
Afghan officials affirmed, however, that Mr. Karzai’s overarching goal is to obtain an agreement with the Americans, not least because he knows that his fate is closely tied to their military presence and aid.
Mr. Karzai must overcome the resistance of Americans facing both budget pressures and public exhaustion with a war that is entering its second decade. He must also counter intensifying opposition from the governments of Pakistan and Iran, which have their own ambitions in Afghanistan and distrust the United States.
Some Afghan officials say that the four- or five-day jirga, to which 2,030 delegates have been invited, is vital to building domestic political support for keeping the American military here for an extra decade, so that he can tell his opponents that he is in the talks at the behest of the Afghan people.
“There’s so much opposition to this partnership with the United States from our neighbors,” said an Afghan government official who is knowledgeable about the negotiations and spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic concerns. “So this jirga is so the president can show that the people of Afghanistan want this.”
The jirga will also discuss how to bring about peace with the Taliban in the wake of the assassination of the head of the government-sponsored High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September.
However, the council’s planners have been vague about its full agenda, and there may be other goals. Some Afghan analysts suggest that Mr. Karzai wants an endorsement for specific requirements for the strategic partnership with United States, including demands that the agreement be binding, that all detention operations be turned over rapidly to the Afghan government, and that military night raids, which are central to American counterinsurgency tactics but a driving instigator of domestic outrage, be conducted only by Afghan forces.
An Afghan analyst who asked not to be named because he is close to the government of Mr. Karzai acknowledged the uncertainty of the jirga’s purposes. “It is not clear the president has decided what he wants to use it for, but he’s spent money, he’s invited people, they are on their way and he’s played it up,” the analyst said.
There is even confusion about what kind of jirga is being held this week and whether its decisions will have any legal weight. There are consultative jirgas, like the 2010 peace jirga that sought to bring the Taliban into negotiations with the government. There are emergency jirgas, like the one in 2002 to seek direction after the Taliban’s ouster from power. And there are constitutional councils, required to enact lasting legal changes.
The jirga to begin Wednesday is being called “traditional,” bypassing the usual classifications and clouding its legal mandate.
That imprecision has alarmed both Western diplomats and members of Mr. Karzai’s opposition, who fear it may allow the council to veer off course. One specific concern is that it will present an opening for a constitutional change that would allow Mr. Karzai to run for a third term.
“Its goals are entirely confusing,” said Abdullah Abdullah, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 presidential election and who held a news conference on Sunday about the coming meeting. “It has secret goals. Its decisions, whatever decisions it would make, would not be acceptable for the people of Afghanistan.”
Mr. Abdullah and other political figures, including Abdul Rashid Dostum, a prominent ethnic-Uzbek leader, and Ahmad Behzad, the Parliament’s deputy speaker, who is from the western province of Herat, said that if there was a need for a statement of support for an American-Afghan strategic agreement, then the appropriate body to give it would be the Parliament — not a jirga whose members are handpicked by Mr. Karzai or his lieutenants.
Part of the unease is driven by jirgas’ important symbolic status in Afghan politics, where even those councils that are not constitutional jirgas can carry real weight with the public, said Thomas Ruttig, a co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. This is at least the fifth significant jirga since the expulsion of the Taliban in 2001.
“Afghans tend to see the jirgas in a golden light and speak of them as a very traditional way of deciding things,” said Ruttig said, noting that in fact they have been used by Afghan leaders to give a populist imprimatur to their policies only in the past 85 years, starting with King Amanullah in the 1920s.
“And, they can be useful when you have relative stability, but when you have instability and don’t reflect the broad set of opinions then they run into trouble,” he said.
If the seemingly intentional vagueness reflects a certain rudderless state of mind in the Afghan leadership, that would also be worrisome, Mr. Ruttig said.
“The government is not supposed to be amateurs,” he said. “They are supposed to lead the country and know the Constitution, but they seem sometimes not to know it very well.”
The last few days have seen a relentless drumbeat of opposition to this jirga as members of Parliament who oppose Mr. Karzai, political opposition figures and members of civil society have called for participants to boycott it.
The Taliban have gone out of their way to threaten to kill anybody who attends, and late on Sunday sent out a mass e-mail that said insurgents had obtained the security plan for the jirga. They attached the 20-page plan, which included a schematic drawing of the meeting site, at Polytechnic University, and the names and numbers of Interior Ministry officers involved in the security.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry derided the material as mere propaganda, and a NATO spokesman, Commodore Bill Truelove, said, “We are still studying it, but we believe it is a fabrication.”
However, a senior Afghan security official admitted that the plan had been sent to all the security ministries in the last several days and was not a top secret document, suggesting that the Taliban could have obtained it from multiple sources.
On Monday, Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said security forces had killed a suicide bomber as he tried to enter the gate of the university.
During the consultative peace jirga held in June 2010, the Taliban managed to position attackers in buildings relatively close to the jirga tent and shot rockets at it. Afterward, the interior minister and head of the Intelligence Service were forced to resign.
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
Attacker Killed Near Venue As Opponents Try To Sidetrack Afghan Jirga
November 14, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
Reports by Afghan security forces of a thwarted suicide attack outside the venue of this week's national grand assembly, or loya jirga, are adding to fears that militants will stop at nothing to disrupt the high-profile event.
The incursion -- by as many as four would-be attackers, according to various reports -- came on the heels of a disputed claim by Taliban militants that they had obtained and published details of official security plans for the jirga.
The national assembly, which is expected to last at least two days, was called by President Hamid Karzai to gauge national opinion on the future of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as well as the issue of negotiating with the Taliban.
A similar event one year ago was disrupted during Karzai's opening speech when rocket- and gun-wielding attackers struck, killing three civilians in the crossfire but leaving jirga participants unscathed.
Lawmaker Shukaria Barakzai told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that she was notified by Afghan officials that she was on numerous insurgent "hit lists," but said she had no intention of missing the loya jirga.
"I am 100 percent for participating in any jirga that seeks peace for the people of Afghanistan and helps them in planning their future," Barakzai said.
Suicide Attack
Security forces announced that the suspected suicide bomber was shot and killed near the tent in Kabul where roughly 2,000 tribal elders and political leaders were expected to gather from November 16.
"Police asked him to stop but he kept walking toward the jirga area," Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi was quoted as saying by dpa. "They intended to carry out a suicide attack near the jirga tent."
Sediqqi was quoted as saying the suspect was carrying a bag of explosives at the time.
The same agency quoted another security official as saying three other suspects were detained. Other sources put the number of accomplices at two.
News of the thwarted attack came amid lawmakers' complaints that they had received threatening text messages warning against attending the assembly.
Threats Target Participants
Afghan officials meanwhile rejected claims that Taliban militants had acquired the government's security plans for the affair.
Afghan Intelligence Service spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said those maps and a list of the service's security arrangements published by the Taliban on its website on November 13 were fabrications.
"The plan that we have drafted -- and I have seen it -- is 100 percent different from the one that has been sent to the media," Mashal told journalists in the capital.
The Taliban's claims came amid reports that Afghan lawmakers had received threatening text messages warning against attending the event.
Lawmaker Muhammad Daoud Hasas described the text message he received, apparently sent from a mobile phone number traced back to neighboring Pakistan.
"Their message says that anybody participating in this 'American Loya Jirga,' as they call it, will meet death," Hasas said. "Every lawmaker and government official has received this threat."
Safia Siddiqi, a spokeswoman for the forum's commission, claimed that there were no signs that militant threats would deter participants from attending the event.
"This morning the invited participants were queuing up to [register for participating in the event]," Siddiqi said. "This shows that the people want to do what they have come for here. I don’t see doing anything else."
The government has a spotty track record in providing security to such events. At the last jirga, in June 2010, insurgent rocket attack and gunfire disrupted Karzai's opening remarks. Security forces killed two militants who were wearing suicide vests. Three civilians were killed in the shootout, but 1,500 participants of the Loya Jirga remained safe.
written by Abubakar Siddique based on RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan and additional agency reports
Taliban Claim To Have Loya Jirga Security Plan
November 14, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Taliban in Afghanistan has published what it claims are security plans for an upcoming national meeting, but the Afghan government has dismissed the claim as baseless.
The Taliban on its website on November 13 published what it said were maps of the venue where the gathering will take place, as well as a list of security arrangements.
But the Afghan Interior Ministry said the documents were a fake and that the Taliban want to scare Afghans who will attend the traditional loya jirga.
The assembly is to open in Kabul on November 16 and last at least three days. It will involve around 2,000 elders and political figures.
A similar jirga in June 2010 was marred by rockets and gunfire during President Hamid Karzai's opening speech. Three civilians were injured in the attack, which proved a major embarrassment to the central government.
Karzai called this week's gathering to discuss Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the United States as well as efforts to reconcile with insurgents.
The Taliban has already threatened to target the assembly.
compiled from agency reports
On Afghan-Pakistan border, suspicions reign
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post Monday, November 14, 4:07 PM
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, AFGHANISTAN — One Tuesday evening last month, while patrolling along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, American soldiers came under a flurry of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades from the vicinity of a Pakistani military checkpoint known as Border Post 4.
The soldiers with the 3rd platoon launched a warning flare, called a “red star cluster,” to identify themselves. For a moment, according to a U.S. military summary of the incident, the firing stopped; then it resumed. The U.S. soldiers shot back with their rifles and handheld 60mm mortars — a rare direct-fire engagement with a Pakistani border post.
But as with much concerning Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war, this firefight has left American soldiers at a loss for a clear explanation. It could have been a case of Pakistani soldiers firing on U.S. troops to provide cover for insurgents maneuvering nearby, as some U.S. soldiers initially concluded. Or, insurgents could have been firing from a checkpoint that had already been abandoned by Pakistani troops.
The murky episode is one small illustration of the challenge in defining Pakistan’s involvement with insurgents who are fighting U.S. troops. The longer the Afghan war drags on, the more suspicion mounts that Pakistan’s security services provide a wide range of support for the Taliban and its allies. And with this suspicion, Afghan and American relations with Pakistan continue to deteriorate.
There is no shortage of accusations flying across the border. On the Afghan side, officials regularly accuse Pakistan’s military and intelligence services of using the Taliban to fight a proxy war against the United States, their nominal ally. Afghan leaders say Pakistan’s spies meet with the Taliban leadership, and fund and equip them for the fight in Afghanistan.
With equal conviction, Pakistani officials deny harboring or helping the insurgency in any way and blame U.S. and Afghan officials for allowing insurgent sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s president vowed this month to “eradicate” the Haqqani network, the insurgent group that the U.S. military’s highest-ranking officer this year called a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
On the border, the situation does not become much clearer. U.S. soldiers in Paktika, a province the size of New Jersey that is across from the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan, see the role of Pakistan as a somewhat abstract question — they do not let it distract them from the daily requirements of fighting the insurgency.
Several U.S. soldiers here said they believed it was likely that Pakistan’s government was complicit with the Taliban and Haqqani fighters in the province but that they could not prove that connection. Accusing Pakistan of helping to kill U.S. troops — while at the same time receiving billions in American aid — is a politically touchy issue that many U.S. soldiers would rather avoid.
“There’s a lot of smoke. Is there fire?” said one U.S. military officer about possible Pakistani complicity with the insurgents. “It’s a very strong circumstantial argument at this point.”
Inside Forward Operating Base Tillman, in eastern Paktika province, Pakistani soldiers share office space with U.S. troops at a border coordination center that is intended to help bolster efforts against insurgents on both sides of the border. At this base, and others along the border, U.S. troops regularly come under attack from rockets fired from Pakistani territory. About half of all indirect insurgent fire — rockets, mortars or artillery — in the province is launched from within a mile of the border, and 10 to 12 percent of it comes from the Pakistan side, said Maj. Eric Butler, the intelligence officer with the U.S. brigade in Paktika.
American soldiers said the sophisticated and coordinated nature of some rocket-fire suggests extensive training, and perhaps Pakistani military involvement.
Butler said there is “no real, hard evidence that anybody is being complicit.” But he added: “I personally find it very difficult to believe that there’s not some kind of knowledge.”
Lt. Col. Curtis D. Taylor, who commands an American battalion in western Paktika, said there are regular rumors about Pakistan’s involvement with insurgents but that those are unconfirmed.
“If you talk to the people who are connected to the insurgency, they tell you that the insurgent activity . . . the intensity of activity, is modulated by Pakistani ISI,” Taylor said. “That’s consistent across the board. What they tell you is the ISI has control over the intensity of the insurgency.”
The firefight on Oct. 25 remains something of a mystery. After the first few minutes of firing from the Pakistani Frontier Corps checkpoint, U.S. aircraft spotted a group of insurgents about 200 yards to the west firing rocket-propelled grenades at the American soldiers. U.S. military aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs and killed the insurgents.
When the fighting first broke out, an officer at FOB Tillman asked the Pakistani liaison officer to call his Frontier Corps counterparts, but the Pakistani major was “hemming and hawing,” one U.S. military officer said. When he eventually called, there was no answer.
A report written a day after the fighting suggested that U.S. officers believed Pakistani troops were providing cover for the insurgents by firing at the American soldiers. “It is likely PAKMIL were facilitating [insurgents’] maneuver on [coalition forces] positions,” it read. “It is my assessment that conducting coordinated PAKMIL operations will most likely remain problematic due to perceived support and/or tolerance of [insurgent] forces operating in and around PAKMIL [checkpoints].”
But a few days after the fighting, a group of U.S. Special Operations soldiers went to a hilltop about 400 yards from Border Post 4 and surveyed it with a night-vision scope. It appeared as if it might be abandoned, one U.S. military official said.
The insurgents might have used the checkpoint, if it had been abandoned, for the potential political benefit of ratcheting up tension along the border, the U.S. military official said. Others believe that the checkpoint was occupied and that there had been a Pakistani flag flying from it the day of the attack.
Butler, the brigade intelligence officer, said there is no evidence to prove that Pakistani soldiers were firing that day, but he said it is possible they were.
“I can see how it could have been two different groups of insurgents — one to cover the other — or Pak Mil doing it,” he said. “I have no evidence either way.”
Post-Taliban Afghanistan has made progress: NATO
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- The post-Taliban Afghanistan has made tangible progress in different fields since the collapse of Taliban regime 10 years ago, a NATO's civilian spokesman said on Monday.
"Ten years ago this past weekend the Taliban fled Kabul and Afghanistan's capital city was liberated, today is an opportunity to reflect on some of the positive achievements that have been made by the government and people of Afghanistan with their international partners over the last ten years," NATO's civilian spokesman Dominic Medley told reporters in weekly press briefing here.
The economy is 11 times larger than it was under the Taliban, he said, adding "There are now 18,000 km of paved roads, which give a boost to the trade and economy."
There are five times more people enrolled in education programs - - some 40 percent of the them are women, he said.
"Under the Taliban rule, women were not allowed to get an education," Medley added.
The Taliban regime was ousted from power on Nov. 12, 2001 in a U.S.-led military campaign and the Taliban fighters had fled Afghan capital of Kabul towards countryside.
However, the Taliban have staged a violent comeback years later after their ouster and have been waging a vicious insurgency.
With regarding to continued security incidents in Afghanistan, Medley said "You will never be 100 percent effective against terrorists and extremists who are willing to blow themselves up and kill Afghanistan civilians" adding "what is stronger now is the commitment between international community and the people and the government of Afghanistan."
"There is no going back to the bad days, it's a desire to move forward to have stability, peace and prosperity," Medley added.
"It is clear that the Taliban leadership has lost control of their organization, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Afghans and the rest of the world," spokesman for the 130,000-strong NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) General Bill Truelove told newsmen at the same press briefing.
Tony Abbott makes surprise visit to Afghanistan
by: Steve Lewis From:The Daily Telegraph (Australia) November 15, 2011
TONY Abbott has given a strong commitment to keeping Australian troops in Afghanistan - possibly beyond 2014 - during a surprise visit to the army base at Tarin Kowt.
The Opposition Leader has also delivered a backhander to the Greens and other critics of Australia’s engagement in the fledgling democracy, saying that troops on the ground did not like when casualties are "politicised".
Just days after Prime Minister Julia Gillard paid a visit to the multi-national base, Mr Abbott donned the heavy gear used by the bomb disposal squad as he was given a personal demonstration of the high risk role played by Australian troops.
While morale has been tested at the camp following the deaths of three Australian soldiers - the result of a rogue Afghani soldier - Mr Abbott said the feedback from the troops showed no lessening of resolve.
"They are very proud of the work they are doing, very keen to see it continue, and a little dismayed at any suggestion that its not worthwhile and it should end before the job is done," he said.
While the Greens and others have used the recent deaths to again call for the withdrawal of Australia’s military presence, Mr Abbott said the soldiers he spoke to "didn’t like it when casualties are politicised".
Australian troops are due to withdraw by 2014 under the present timeframe although the Gillard Government has suggested some numbers may stay to continue training the Afghan army.
The Opposition Leader hinted that he would support continuing the military presence past this date - if he believed it would benefit Afghanistan.
"My view is that it would be unrealistic for Australia to stay longer than our principal allies are staying, but that it is important for the coalition to stay as long as is needed for the job to be done," he said.
"And my strong suspicion would be that while it may be well possible to start significant draw downs of troops within a few years, it would be wrong to think that Australia’s involvement with Afghanistan will terminate at that point or that the west’s involvement with Afghanistan should terminate at that point."
After receiving a raft of high-level briefings, Mr Abbott said he had "always been very confident that we are making a difference (in Afghanistan) and nothing that I have heard shakes my faith that we are making a difference".
Bagram: The other Guantanamo?
By Seth Doane, Phil Hirschkorn November 13, 2011 CBS News
KABUL, Afghanistan - The former prisoner of the American military in his native Afghanistan entered the office leaning on a crutch. He said he had trouble walking after spending a year confined to a 35-square-foot jail cell at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, about an hour's drive north of the capital, Kabul.
He agreed to speak with us only if we kept his identity hidden. We agreed to call him just "Mohammed."
"Our cells were like cages," Mohammed spoke in Dari through a translator. "We couldn't see anything outside."
The cage-like cells for some Bagram detainees were part of a $60 million renovation in 2009. Mohammed, who was detained that June, believes disgruntled neighbors tipped U.S. troops about him following a land dispute. His family did not learn for six months why he had disappeared.
"Somebody had reported that I was helping the Taliban, which would be the last thing in the world I would do," Mohammed said. "I build this country. What Taliban are doing is destroying this country."
The Taliban is the militant Islamic group allied with al Qaeda that ran Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001, until it was toppled by the U.S. invasion.
Mohammed, a father of 10 children, said he is a trained engineer and educator who teaches girls. He said he would never support the Taliban, which was infamous for its oppression of women.
Mohammed said he never saw any evidence against him and did he not get an attorney. Instead, a U.S. military officer was appointed to represent him at status review hearings.
"I was innocent. I hadn't done anything wrong," Mohammed said. He was never physically mistreated, but he was woken up at all hours to be interrogated, he said.
Today, there are more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram, or five times the number (around 600) when President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. There are currently 18 times as many detainees at Bagram than at the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, whose prisoner population has dwindled from a peak of 780 to 170.
While Guantanamo has been the subject of legal wrangling and international controversy since the U.S. started sending terrorism suspects there in 2002, the explosive growth of the detainee population at Bagram has largely escaped international or domestic scrutiny.
When CBS NEWS asked to visit Bagram three months ago, the U.S. military first approved our visit, and then cancelled it. Our request to interview any U.S. military official in Afghanistan or at the Pentagon about detainee procedures was rejected.
Neither William Lietzau, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, nor Brigadier General Mark Martins, the commanding officer at Bagram until this fall, would agree to an interview. Gen. Martins is now in charge of prosecutions at Guantanamo.
Earlier this year, Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First, interviewed nearly 20 former detainees in Afghanistan and was permitted to observe several detainee hearings at Bagram.
"It's worse than Guantanamo," Eviatar said in an interview, "because there are fewer rights."
Eviatar's report, "Detained and Denied in Afghanistan: How To Make U.S. Detention Comply With the Law," documented stories of detainees held from seven months to seven years.
"There was no evidence presented," she said, "there was no questioning of the government's evidence, whether this person had done anything wrong, whether he deserved to be in prison. So that's a real problem -- you have a complete lack of due process."
Unlike Guantanamo, the Department of Defense won't release the names of its Bagram detainees or its reasons for holding them indefinitely. Eviatar said Mohamed's story is typical.
When the ACLU sued the government two years ago for greater disclosure of Bagram prisoner names, citizenship, place of capture, and length of detention, DOD fought the suit and replied that even the criteria for detaining Afghans an "enduring security threat" is a state secret.
"We're not going to win this war by making enemies of the local population, and unfortunately sweeping people up and putting them in prison without a fair hearing makes enemies of the local population," Eviatar said. "And the problem with holding thousands of people, a large number of whom probably do not pose a danger, is that you create tremendous resentment among not only those people but their families, their extended families, their villages, the families they left behind who now don't have a bread winner."
The procedures for handling detainees at Guantanamo have evolved over a decade after extensive Supreme Court and Congressional review that has yet to be applied to Bagram.
The first, revamped "military commission" of an accused Al Qaeda terrorist began at Guantanamo this past week with the arraignment of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of leading the October 2000 raft bomb attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors.
Al-Nashiri faces the death penalty when his commission resumes next November, with commissions for five Guantanamo prisoners accused of direct roles in the September 11th conspiracy to follow. Al-Nashiri's arraignment was open to the news media.
"The due process we are giving in Afghanistan is consistent with law of war due process, said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee.
Graham said in an interview he is satisfied with procedures that require every Bagram detainee to appear before a three officer panel every six months. An Air Force JAG and active reservist, Graham has sat on review boards during visits to Bagram.
"We're fighting people who are trying to topple the Afghan government and kill American forces. They're not common criminals; they're treated as an insurgent under the law of war," Graham said.
"The additional surge forces are taking the fight to the enemy, so captures are way up," Graham continued. "The more the Afghan people think we're winning and trust us, the more people we're going to capture. So the good news for our troops is that we got more people off the battlefield that were shooting at them last year."
A large number of detainees remain incarcerated simply because the war is not over, Graham said, adding that the goal is to transfer prisoners to Afghan control, eventually.
"Here's the dilemma for U.S. forces: you capture these people in the battlefield in a firefight. The local community tells you, 'this is the bad guy,' Graham said. "We're not going to turn him back over to an Afghan legal system that is full of corruption and doesn't have capacity."
Graham supports the Obama administration's plans to expand Bagram prison, which the military now prefers to call the prison the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), referring to the Afghan province where it resides.
DOD is now reviewing bids from contractors to expand the facility to house up to 5,500 detainees. The project is expected to cost another $25 to $100 million when it is completed by the end of 2012.
Mohammed said he does not doubt there are true insurgents held at Bagram/DFIP, but he believes many men are unjustly held. His once-positive view of the U.S. has changed.
"When I think of spending more than a year without any crime, that not only affected me personally, it affected my family, it affected my life, it affected my work," Mohammed said. "That makes us angry."
Bin Laden kill spooks Taliban off cell phones
By Farhan Bokha November 14, 2011 CBS News
ISLAMABAD - More than six months after U.S. Navy SEALs tracked and killed Osama bin Laden in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, bringing an end to the rein of the world's most hunted terrorist, his allies in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region have reportedly taken unusual precautions to avoid capture, or death.
In a range of background interviews with CBS News, Pakistani and Western officials say human couriers are increasingly being used by militants to replace the ubiquitous cell phone.
While there are no clear, verifiable statistics to back the claims, the officials say the intelligence information available is enough to suggest that the trend is growing significantly.
Complete coverage: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
"There is a widespread belief that Osama bin Laden could not have been traced had it not been the fact that someone close to him used a cell phone, and was found," a Pakistani intelligence official tells CBS News on condition of anonymity. "This revelation has brought about a behavioral change."
The so called "Quetta Shura," a high representative council of the Taliban based in the sprawling metropolis of the same name near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, has reportedly abandoned much of its reliance on cell phones, instead dispatching people to deliver messages, according to local officials.
"In the past, sometimes people took the risk of occasionally using a mobile phone to call numbers in Afghanistan. Now they don't," says a Pakistani government official from Quetta.
Without naming the individual Taliban leaders involved, the official says, "senior people among this community (of the Taliban) now prefer to send couriers, even for conveying the most mundane information which is of no value to anyone tracking these people."
The official says suspect individuals have even gone so far as opting to send a courier to deliver a message of wedding congratulations across the border, rather than risk revealing their location by using a cell phone.
Experienced intelligence officials say that, while the proliferation of cellular phones in Pakistan's congested urban centers may not allow each conversation to be closely monitored, it is still possible to do so in sparsely populated areas where the militants have their bases and camps.
"The fewer the people in any area, the easier it becomes to keep an eye on their communication," the Pakistani intelligence official tells CBS News.
Western defense officials in Islamabad confirm seeing reports of the Taliban adopting additional precautions since the U.S. raid on bin Laden.
"I have heard of instances where Mr A who is a Taliban figure in location B will give his phone to Mr C to communicate a message from location D," says one Western official.
"Unlike the past, when people were maybe a bit more complacent, now they try to physically keep themselves many, many miles away from a location of their phone being used," said the official, who, like the others, asked to remain anonymous.
Both Pakistani and Western officials who spoke to CBS News say the United States is widely thought to have technology in place to monitor mobile phone signals from the Pakistan-Afghan border area.
It is this area that the U.S. has long pointed to as a refuge for Taliban and al Qaeda militants, who frequently attack Western troops in Afghanistan.
"I don't think the Taliban would know exactly how such technology works. It is highly classified," says the Western official, but "the mere belief of a mobile phone signal leading to targeting of an individual is enough to put people on the extreme defensive."
US military's role in Afghanistan after 2014
Long War Journal By CJ Radin November 13, 2011
In an interview with TOLONews, US General John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, discussed US plans to support Afghanistan after 2014. While the complete strategic agreement is still in the works, General Allen provided some details.
Currently the US has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, while the rest of ISAF contributes another 40,000. As announced by President Obama in June 2011, the US plans to draw down its forces to 68,000 troops by September 2012. From there, the US will continue to drawn down to a much smaller residual force by the end of 2014. A specific number has not been quoted but will likely be between 10,000 and 20,000 troops. Other ISAF nations plan to draw down their forces along similar lines.
At that point, conventional military operations would be discontinued. According to General Allen, the US and allied force's mission will be reduced to:
* training and mentoring of the Afghan National Security Forces, which includes the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police; * providing "enabler" functions such as helicopter transportation, medical treatment, and intelligence gathering (air support including ground attack will probably also be needed); and * counterterrorism operations, to be provided by US and allied special operations forces. Note that a counterterrorism organization is already in place in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). This is separate from the ISAF organization which runs the conventional military operation. OEF currently numbers about 10,000 troops.
US forces will share bases with Afghan security forces, Allen said. It has not yet been determined what the US role would be if Afghanistan suffered a conventional attack from one if its neighbors. Additionally, the US military is not presently authorized to operate outside of Afghan territory.
The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) currently number 301,000 troops. By October 2012, the ANSF is slated to grow to 353,000 troops in total, consisting of 191,000 troops in the Afghan National Army and 162,000 officers in the Afghan National Police. There is no plan to grow beyond this. After October 2012, ISAF training and mentoring will concentrate on professionalizing the force and developing the "enabler" functions, although the process will not be complete by the end of 2014.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By FAROUQ JAN MANGAL and ROD NORDLAND The New York Times November 14, 2011
KHOST, Afghanistan — A Taliban spokesman whose provocative and taunting media reports have often infuriated Afghan and Western officials firmly denied that he had been captured Monday.
His arrest had been reported by local officials in the Sar Hawza District, a remote eastern area in Paktika Province, along the Pakistan border, where the Taliban have been active.
An Afghan government official there reported that the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, was among suspects detained during joint coalition and Afghan military operations. A second government official in Paktika confirmed the account. Both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release the information.
Reached on his usual cellphone number a few hours later, Mr. Mujahid angrily denied their accounts. “I am talking to you on the phone right now,” he told an Afghan reporter who has frequently interviewed him in the past. “I am safe and sound and living in a safe place.”
“Those people who were arrested in Paktika do not belong to us,” Mr. Mujahid said. “They are just some innocent civilians, and the forces of the puppet government may have forced the guy to confess and say he is Zabiullah Mujahid. As I said, I am safe and on the run and always looking after myself.”
The reporter said the voice matched that of the man who over the past year has been the spokesman for Taliban activities in eastern and northern Afghanistan.
Afghan officials and those with the international forces operating here have maintained that Mr. Mujahid — one of two Taliban spokesmen — is not an individual, but rather a persona used by a number of Taliban insurgents adopting the same name and Afghan cellphone numbers, and operating from Pakistan just across the border.
However, many Afghan journalists he speaks to by telephone maintain that his voice has not changed at least in the past year, suggesting he is a single individual, as he — or his persona — has insisted.
Whether persona or person, Mr. Mujahid is regarded even by some of his enemies as an effective communicator, reacting quickly to events and using a variety of new media to get the Taliban’s message out.
On Sunday, he send out in a mass e-mail what he said was the security plan for the major council, or loya jirga, set to begin in Kabul on Wednesday. While officials denied that the document was genuine, if it was a fake, it was an elaborate one. Its wealth of details, like private phone numbers of intelligence officers, made it appear legitimate. The security plan was also posted on a Taliban Web site.
On Monday, Latfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said security forces had killed a suicide bomber as he tried to enter the gate of the Polytechnic University, which is where the loya jirga is going to be held.
But he said the e-mailed security plan was a fake. “It’s not our plan, or if it is our plan, it’s the previous loya jirga plan,” he said, speaking to journalists on Monday. “The plan Zabiullah Mujahid sent to you — he sent it to me also in my e-mail — if it was the genuine plan, then the Taliban would not have made it public; they would have used it.”
He said the failure of their attack had driven the Taliban to rely “on a kind of psy-ops instead.”
Taliban insurgents did attack the last loya jirga, narrowly missing Mr. Karzai with a rocket attack, and prompting him to dismiss his interior and intelligence ministers.
Farouq Jan Mangal reported from Khost, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Sharifullah Sahak and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul
Questions Cloud Meeting of Afghan Elders Called by Karzai
By ALISSA J. RUBIN November 14, 2011 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite criticism from neighboring countries, threats from the Taliban and calls for a boycott from some political opponents, President Hamid Karzai has called a loya jirga, the traditional grand council of Afghan elders and leaders, in an attempt to gain popular support for a long-term partnership with the United States, Afghan officials and analysts say.
Even before the jirga’s opening, set for Wednesday, it is being clouded by doubt and confusion — much of it sown by Mr. Karzai himself.
His public statements about the United States have grown more hostile in recent months, including a statement several weeks ago in which he suggested that if Pakistanis were to go to war with the Americans, he would actually ally himself with Islamabad.
That in particular seemed a contrary message to be sending while intense negotiations were under way to persuade the United States to keep troops and military trainers for 10 years beyond the Obama administration’s 2014 withdrawal deadline, and while also asking for help in paying for the Afghan security forces.
Afghan officials affirmed, however, that Mr. Karzai’s overarching goal is to obtain an agreement with the Americans, not least because he knows that his fate is closely tied to their military presence and aid.
Mr. Karzai must overcome the resistance of Americans facing both budget pressures and public exhaustion with a war that is entering its second decade. He must also counter intensifying opposition from the governments of Pakistan and Iran, which have their own ambitions in Afghanistan and distrust the United States.
Some Afghan officials say that the four- or five-day jirga, to which 2,030 delegates have been invited, is vital to building domestic political support for keeping the American military here for an extra decade, so that he can tell his opponents that he is in the talks at the behest of the Afghan people.
“There’s so much opposition to this partnership with the United States from our neighbors,” said an Afghan government official who is knowledgeable about the negotiations and spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic concerns. “So this jirga is so the president can show that the people of Afghanistan want this.”
The jirga will also discuss how to bring about peace with the Taliban in the wake of the assassination of the head of the government-sponsored High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September.
However, the council’s planners have been vague about its full agenda, and there may be other goals. Some Afghan analysts suggest that Mr. Karzai wants an endorsement for specific requirements for the strategic partnership with United States, including demands that the agreement be binding, that all detention operations be turned over rapidly to the Afghan government, and that military night raids, which are central to American counterinsurgency tactics but a driving instigator of domestic outrage, be conducted only by Afghan forces.
An Afghan analyst who asked not to be named because he is close to the government of Mr. Karzai acknowledged the uncertainty of the jirga’s purposes. “It is not clear the president has decided what he wants to use it for, but he’s spent money, he’s invited people, they are on their way and he’s played it up,” the analyst said.
There is even confusion about what kind of jirga is being held this week and whether its decisions will have any legal weight. There are consultative jirgas, like the 2010 peace jirga that sought to bring the Taliban into negotiations with the government. There are emergency jirgas, like the one in 2002 to seek direction after the Taliban’s ouster from power. And there are constitutional councils, required to enact lasting legal changes.
The jirga to begin Wednesday is being called “traditional,” bypassing the usual classifications and clouding its legal mandate.
That imprecision has alarmed both Western diplomats and members of Mr. Karzai’s opposition, who fear it may allow the council to veer off course. One specific concern is that it will present an opening for a constitutional change that would allow Mr. Karzai to run for a third term.
“Its goals are entirely confusing,” said Abdullah Abdullah, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 presidential election and who held a news conference on Sunday about the coming meeting. “It has secret goals. Its decisions, whatever decisions it would make, would not be acceptable for the people of Afghanistan.”
Mr. Abdullah and other political figures, including Abdul Rashid Dostum, a prominent ethnic-Uzbek leader, and Ahmad Behzad, the Parliament’s deputy speaker, who is from the western province of Herat, said that if there was a need for a statement of support for an American-Afghan strategic agreement, then the appropriate body to give it would be the Parliament — not a jirga whose members are handpicked by Mr. Karzai or his lieutenants.
Part of the unease is driven by jirgas’ important symbolic status in Afghan politics, where even those councils that are not constitutional jirgas can carry real weight with the public, said Thomas Ruttig, a co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. This is at least the fifth significant jirga since the expulsion of the Taliban in 2001.
“Afghans tend to see the jirgas in a golden light and speak of them as a very traditional way of deciding things,” said Ruttig said, noting that in fact they have been used by Afghan leaders to give a populist imprimatur to their policies only in the past 85 years, starting with King Amanullah in the 1920s.
“And, they can be useful when you have relative stability, but when you have instability and don’t reflect the broad set of opinions then they run into trouble,” he said.
If the seemingly intentional vagueness reflects a certain rudderless state of mind in the Afghan leadership, that would also be worrisome, Mr. Ruttig said.
“The government is not supposed to be amateurs,” he said. “They are supposed to lead the country and know the Constitution, but they seem sometimes not to know it very well.”
The last few days have seen a relentless drumbeat of opposition to this jirga as members of Parliament who oppose Mr. Karzai, political opposition figures and members of civil society have called for participants to boycott it.
The Taliban have gone out of their way to threaten to kill anybody who attends, and late on Sunday sent out a mass e-mail that said insurgents had obtained the security plan for the jirga. They attached the 20-page plan, which included a schematic drawing of the meeting site, at Polytechnic University, and the names and numbers of Interior Ministry officers involved in the security.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry derided the material as mere propaganda, and a NATO spokesman, Commodore Bill Truelove, said, “We are still studying it, but we believe it is a fabrication.”
However, a senior Afghan security official admitted that the plan had been sent to all the security ministries in the last several days and was not a top secret document, suggesting that the Taliban could have obtained it from multiple sources.
On Monday, Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said security forces had killed a suicide bomber as he tried to enter the gate of the university.
During the consultative peace jirga held in June 2010, the Taliban managed to position attackers in buildings relatively close to the jirga tent and shot rockets at it. Afterward, the interior minister and head of the Intelligence Service were forced to resign.
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
Attacker Killed Near Venue As Opponents Try To Sidetrack Afghan Jirga
November 14, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
Reports by Afghan security forces of a thwarted suicide attack outside the venue of this week's national grand assembly, or loya jirga, are adding to fears that militants will stop at nothing to disrupt the high-profile event.
The incursion -- by as many as four would-be attackers, according to various reports -- came on the heels of a disputed claim by Taliban militants that they had obtained and published details of official security plans for the jirga.
The national assembly, which is expected to last at least two days, was called by President Hamid Karzai to gauge national opinion on the future of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as well as the issue of negotiating with the Taliban.
A similar event one year ago was disrupted during Karzai's opening speech when rocket- and gun-wielding attackers struck, killing three civilians in the crossfire but leaving jirga participants unscathed.
Lawmaker Shukaria Barakzai told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that she was notified by Afghan officials that she was on numerous insurgent "hit lists," but said she had no intention of missing the loya jirga.
"I am 100 percent for participating in any jirga that seeks peace for the people of Afghanistan and helps them in planning their future," Barakzai said.
Suicide Attack
Security forces announced that the suspected suicide bomber was shot and killed near the tent in Kabul where roughly 2,000 tribal elders and political leaders were expected to gather from November 16.
"Police asked him to stop but he kept walking toward the jirga area," Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi was quoted as saying by dpa. "They intended to carry out a suicide attack near the jirga tent."
Sediqqi was quoted as saying the suspect was carrying a bag of explosives at the time.
The same agency quoted another security official as saying three other suspects were detained. Other sources put the number of accomplices at two.
News of the thwarted attack came amid lawmakers' complaints that they had received threatening text messages warning against attending the assembly.
Threats Target Participants
Afghan officials meanwhile rejected claims that Taliban militants had acquired the government's security plans for the affair.
Afghan Intelligence Service spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said those maps and a list of the service's security arrangements published by the Taliban on its website on November 13 were fabrications.
"The plan that we have drafted -- and I have seen it -- is 100 percent different from the one that has been sent to the media," Mashal told journalists in the capital.
The Taliban's claims came amid reports that Afghan lawmakers had received threatening text messages warning against attending the event.
Lawmaker Muhammad Daoud Hasas described the text message he received, apparently sent from a mobile phone number traced back to neighboring Pakistan.
"Their message says that anybody participating in this 'American Loya Jirga,' as they call it, will meet death," Hasas said. "Every lawmaker and government official has received this threat."
Safia Siddiqi, a spokeswoman for the forum's commission, claimed that there were no signs that militant threats would deter participants from attending the event.
"This morning the invited participants were queuing up to [register for participating in the event]," Siddiqi said. "This shows that the people want to do what they have come for here. I don’t see doing anything else."
The government has a spotty track record in providing security to such events. At the last jirga, in June 2010, insurgent rocket attack and gunfire disrupted Karzai's opening remarks. Security forces killed two militants who were wearing suicide vests. Three civilians were killed in the shootout, but 1,500 participants of the Loya Jirga remained safe.
written by Abubakar Siddique based on RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan and additional agency reports
Taliban Claim To Have Loya Jirga Security Plan
November 14, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Taliban in Afghanistan has published what it claims are security plans for an upcoming national meeting, but the Afghan government has dismissed the claim as baseless.
The Taliban on its website on November 13 published what it said were maps of the venue where the gathering will take place, as well as a list of security arrangements.
But the Afghan Interior Ministry said the documents were a fake and that the Taliban want to scare Afghans who will attend the traditional loya jirga.
The assembly is to open in Kabul on November 16 and last at least three days. It will involve around 2,000 elders and political figures.
A similar jirga in June 2010 was marred by rockets and gunfire during President Hamid Karzai's opening speech. Three civilians were injured in the attack, which proved a major embarrassment to the central government.
Karzai called this week's gathering to discuss Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the United States as well as efforts to reconcile with insurgents.
The Taliban has already threatened to target the assembly.
compiled from agency reports
On Afghan-Pakistan border, suspicions reign
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post Monday, November 14, 4:07 PM
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, AFGHANISTAN — One Tuesday evening last month, while patrolling along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, American soldiers came under a flurry of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades from the vicinity of a Pakistani military checkpoint known as Border Post 4.
The soldiers with the 3rd platoon launched a warning flare, called a “red star cluster,” to identify themselves. For a moment, according to a U.S. military summary of the incident, the firing stopped; then it resumed. The U.S. soldiers shot back with their rifles and handheld 60mm mortars — a rare direct-fire engagement with a Pakistani border post.
But as with much concerning Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war, this firefight has left American soldiers at a loss for a clear explanation. It could have been a case of Pakistani soldiers firing on U.S. troops to provide cover for insurgents maneuvering nearby, as some U.S. soldiers initially concluded. Or, insurgents could have been firing from a checkpoint that had already been abandoned by Pakistani troops.
The murky episode is one small illustration of the challenge in defining Pakistan’s involvement with insurgents who are fighting U.S. troops. The longer the Afghan war drags on, the more suspicion mounts that Pakistan’s security services provide a wide range of support for the Taliban and its allies. And with this suspicion, Afghan and American relations with Pakistan continue to deteriorate.
There is no shortage of accusations flying across the border. On the Afghan side, officials regularly accuse Pakistan’s military and intelligence services of using the Taliban to fight a proxy war against the United States, their nominal ally. Afghan leaders say Pakistan’s spies meet with the Taliban leadership, and fund and equip them for the fight in Afghanistan.
With equal conviction, Pakistani officials deny harboring or helping the insurgency in any way and blame U.S. and Afghan officials for allowing insurgent sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s president vowed this month to “eradicate” the Haqqani network, the insurgent group that the U.S. military’s highest-ranking officer this year called a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
On the border, the situation does not become much clearer. U.S. soldiers in Paktika, a province the size of New Jersey that is across from the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan, see the role of Pakistan as a somewhat abstract question — they do not let it distract them from the daily requirements of fighting the insurgency.
Several U.S. soldiers here said they believed it was likely that Pakistan’s government was complicit with the Taliban and Haqqani fighters in the province but that they could not prove that connection. Accusing Pakistan of helping to kill U.S. troops — while at the same time receiving billions in American aid — is a politically touchy issue that many U.S. soldiers would rather avoid.
“There’s a lot of smoke. Is there fire?” said one U.S. military officer about possible Pakistani complicity with the insurgents. “It’s a very strong circumstantial argument at this point.”
Inside Forward Operating Base Tillman, in eastern Paktika province, Pakistani soldiers share office space with U.S. troops at a border coordination center that is intended to help bolster efforts against insurgents on both sides of the border. At this base, and others along the border, U.S. troops regularly come under attack from rockets fired from Pakistani territory. About half of all indirect insurgent fire — rockets, mortars or artillery — in the province is launched from within a mile of the border, and 10 to 12 percent of it comes from the Pakistan side, said Maj. Eric Butler, the intelligence officer with the U.S. brigade in Paktika.
American soldiers said the sophisticated and coordinated nature of some rocket-fire suggests extensive training, and perhaps Pakistani military involvement.
Butler said there is “no real, hard evidence that anybody is being complicit.” But he added: “I personally find it very difficult to believe that there’s not some kind of knowledge.”
Lt. Col. Curtis D. Taylor, who commands an American battalion in western Paktika, said there are regular rumors about Pakistan’s involvement with insurgents but that those are unconfirmed.
“If you talk to the people who are connected to the insurgency, they tell you that the insurgent activity . . . the intensity of activity, is modulated by Pakistani ISI,” Taylor said. “That’s consistent across the board. What they tell you is the ISI has control over the intensity of the insurgency.”
The firefight on Oct. 25 remains something of a mystery. After the first few minutes of firing from the Pakistani Frontier Corps checkpoint, U.S. aircraft spotted a group of insurgents about 200 yards to the west firing rocket-propelled grenades at the American soldiers. U.S. military aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs and killed the insurgents.
When the fighting first broke out, an officer at FOB Tillman asked the Pakistani liaison officer to call his Frontier Corps counterparts, but the Pakistani major was “hemming and hawing,” one U.S. military officer said. When he eventually called, there was no answer.
A report written a day after the fighting suggested that U.S. officers believed Pakistani troops were providing cover for the insurgents by firing at the American soldiers. “It is likely PAKMIL were facilitating [insurgents’] maneuver on [coalition forces] positions,” it read. “It is my assessment that conducting coordinated PAKMIL operations will most likely remain problematic due to perceived support and/or tolerance of [insurgent] forces operating in and around PAKMIL [checkpoints].”
But a few days after the fighting, a group of U.S. Special Operations soldiers went to a hilltop about 400 yards from Border Post 4 and surveyed it with a night-vision scope. It appeared as if it might be abandoned, one U.S. military official said.
The insurgents might have used the checkpoint, if it had been abandoned, for the potential political benefit of ratcheting up tension along the border, the U.S. military official said. Others believe that the checkpoint was occupied and that there had been a Pakistani flag flying from it the day of the attack.
Butler, the brigade intelligence officer, said there is no evidence to prove that Pakistani soldiers were firing that day, but he said it is possible they were.
“I can see how it could have been two different groups of insurgents — one to cover the other — or Pak Mil doing it,” he said. “I have no evidence either way.”
Post-Taliban Afghanistan has made progress: NATO
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- The post-Taliban Afghanistan has made tangible progress in different fields since the collapse of Taliban regime 10 years ago, a NATO's civilian spokesman said on Monday.
"Ten years ago this past weekend the Taliban fled Kabul and Afghanistan's capital city was liberated, today is an opportunity to reflect on some of the positive achievements that have been made by the government and people of Afghanistan with their international partners over the last ten years," NATO's civilian spokesman Dominic Medley told reporters in weekly press briefing here.
The economy is 11 times larger than it was under the Taliban, he said, adding "There are now 18,000 km of paved roads, which give a boost to the trade and economy."
There are five times more people enrolled in education programs - - some 40 percent of the them are women, he said.
"Under the Taliban rule, women were not allowed to get an education," Medley added.
The Taliban regime was ousted from power on Nov. 12, 2001 in a U.S.-led military campaign and the Taliban fighters had fled Afghan capital of Kabul towards countryside.
However, the Taliban have staged a violent comeback years later after their ouster and have been waging a vicious insurgency.
With regarding to continued security incidents in Afghanistan, Medley said "You will never be 100 percent effective against terrorists and extremists who are willing to blow themselves up and kill Afghanistan civilians" adding "what is stronger now is the commitment between international community and the people and the government of Afghanistan."
"There is no going back to the bad days, it's a desire to move forward to have stability, peace and prosperity," Medley added.
"It is clear that the Taliban leadership has lost control of their organization, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Afghans and the rest of the world," spokesman for the 130,000-strong NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) General Bill Truelove told newsmen at the same press briefing.
Tony Abbott makes surprise visit to Afghanistan
by: Steve Lewis From:The Daily Telegraph (Australia) November 15, 2011
TONY Abbott has given a strong commitment to keeping Australian troops in Afghanistan - possibly beyond 2014 - during a surprise visit to the army base at Tarin Kowt.
The Opposition Leader has also delivered a backhander to the Greens and other critics of Australia’s engagement in the fledgling democracy, saying that troops on the ground did not like when casualties are "politicised".
Just days after Prime Minister Julia Gillard paid a visit to the multi-national base, Mr Abbott donned the heavy gear used by the bomb disposal squad as he was given a personal demonstration of the high risk role played by Australian troops.
While morale has been tested at the camp following the deaths of three Australian soldiers - the result of a rogue Afghani soldier - Mr Abbott said the feedback from the troops showed no lessening of resolve.
"They are very proud of the work they are doing, very keen to see it continue, and a little dismayed at any suggestion that its not worthwhile and it should end before the job is done," he said.
While the Greens and others have used the recent deaths to again call for the withdrawal of Australia’s military presence, Mr Abbott said the soldiers he spoke to "didn’t like it when casualties are politicised".
Australian troops are due to withdraw by 2014 under the present timeframe although the Gillard Government has suggested some numbers may stay to continue training the Afghan army.
The Opposition Leader hinted that he would support continuing the military presence past this date - if he believed it would benefit Afghanistan.
"My view is that it would be unrealistic for Australia to stay longer than our principal allies are staying, but that it is important for the coalition to stay as long as is needed for the job to be done," he said.
"And my strong suspicion would be that while it may be well possible to start significant draw downs of troops within a few years, it would be wrong to think that Australia’s involvement with Afghanistan will terminate at that point or that the west’s involvement with Afghanistan should terminate at that point."
After receiving a raft of high-level briefings, Mr Abbott said he had "always been very confident that we are making a difference (in Afghanistan) and nothing that I have heard shakes my faith that we are making a difference".
Bagram: The other Guantanamo?
By Seth Doane, Phil Hirschkorn November 13, 2011 CBS News
KABUL, Afghanistan - The former prisoner of the American military in his native Afghanistan entered the office leaning on a crutch. He said he had trouble walking after spending a year confined to a 35-square-foot jail cell at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, about an hour's drive north of the capital, Kabul.
He agreed to speak with us only if we kept his identity hidden. We agreed to call him just "Mohammed."
"Our cells were like cages," Mohammed spoke in Dari through a translator. "We couldn't see anything outside."
The cage-like cells for some Bagram detainees were part of a $60 million renovation in 2009. Mohammed, who was detained that June, believes disgruntled neighbors tipped U.S. troops about him following a land dispute. His family did not learn for six months why he had disappeared.
"Somebody had reported that I was helping the Taliban, which would be the last thing in the world I would do," Mohammed said. "I build this country. What Taliban are doing is destroying this country."
The Taliban is the militant Islamic group allied with al Qaeda that ran Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001, until it was toppled by the U.S. invasion.
Mohammed, a father of 10 children, said he is a trained engineer and educator who teaches girls. He said he would never support the Taliban, which was infamous for its oppression of women.
Mohammed said he never saw any evidence against him and did he not get an attorney. Instead, a U.S. military officer was appointed to represent him at status review hearings.
"I was innocent. I hadn't done anything wrong," Mohammed said. He was never physically mistreated, but he was woken up at all hours to be interrogated, he said.
Today, there are more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram, or five times the number (around 600) when President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. There are currently 18 times as many detainees at Bagram than at the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, whose prisoner population has dwindled from a peak of 780 to 170.
While Guantanamo has been the subject of legal wrangling and international controversy since the U.S. started sending terrorism suspects there in 2002, the explosive growth of the detainee population at Bagram has largely escaped international or domestic scrutiny.
When CBS NEWS asked to visit Bagram three months ago, the U.S. military first approved our visit, and then cancelled it. Our request to interview any U.S. military official in Afghanistan or at the Pentagon about detainee procedures was rejected.
Neither William Lietzau, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, nor Brigadier General Mark Martins, the commanding officer at Bagram until this fall, would agree to an interview. Gen. Martins is now in charge of prosecutions at Guantanamo.
Earlier this year, Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First, interviewed nearly 20 former detainees in Afghanistan and was permitted to observe several detainee hearings at Bagram.
"It's worse than Guantanamo," Eviatar said in an interview, "because there are fewer rights."
Eviatar's report, "Detained and Denied in Afghanistan: How To Make U.S. Detention Comply With the Law," documented stories of detainees held from seven months to seven years.
"There was no evidence presented," she said, "there was no questioning of the government's evidence, whether this person had done anything wrong, whether he deserved to be in prison. So that's a real problem -- you have a complete lack of due process."
Unlike Guantanamo, the Department of Defense won't release the names of its Bagram detainees or its reasons for holding them indefinitely. Eviatar said Mohamed's story is typical.
When the ACLU sued the government two years ago for greater disclosure of Bagram prisoner names, citizenship, place of capture, and length of detention, DOD fought the suit and replied that even the criteria for detaining Afghans an "enduring security threat" is a state secret.
"We're not going to win this war by making enemies of the local population, and unfortunately sweeping people up and putting them in prison without a fair hearing makes enemies of the local population," Eviatar said. "And the problem with holding thousands of people, a large number of whom probably do not pose a danger, is that you create tremendous resentment among not only those people but their families, their extended families, their villages, the families they left behind who now don't have a bread winner."
The procedures for handling detainees at Guantanamo have evolved over a decade after extensive Supreme Court and Congressional review that has yet to be applied to Bagram.
The first, revamped "military commission" of an accused Al Qaeda terrorist began at Guantanamo this past week with the arraignment of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of leading the October 2000 raft bomb attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors.
Al-Nashiri faces the death penalty when his commission resumes next November, with commissions for five Guantanamo prisoners accused of direct roles in the September 11th conspiracy to follow. Al-Nashiri's arraignment was open to the news media.
"The due process we are giving in Afghanistan is consistent with law of war due process, said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who sits on the Armed Services Committee.
Graham said in an interview he is satisfied with procedures that require every Bagram detainee to appear before a three officer panel every six months. An Air Force JAG and active reservist, Graham has sat on review boards during visits to Bagram.
"We're fighting people who are trying to topple the Afghan government and kill American forces. They're not common criminals; they're treated as an insurgent under the law of war," Graham said.
"The additional surge forces are taking the fight to the enemy, so captures are way up," Graham continued. "The more the Afghan people think we're winning and trust us, the more people we're going to capture. So the good news for our troops is that we got more people off the battlefield that were shooting at them last year."
A large number of detainees remain incarcerated simply because the war is not over, Graham said, adding that the goal is to transfer prisoners to Afghan control, eventually.
"Here's the dilemma for U.S. forces: you capture these people in the battlefield in a firefight. The local community tells you, 'this is the bad guy,' Graham said. "We're not going to turn him back over to an Afghan legal system that is full of corruption and doesn't have capacity."
Graham supports the Obama administration's plans to expand Bagram prison, which the military now prefers to call the prison the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), referring to the Afghan province where it resides.
DOD is now reviewing bids from contractors to expand the facility to house up to 5,500 detainees. The project is expected to cost another $25 to $100 million when it is completed by the end of 2012.
Mohammed said he does not doubt there are true insurgents held at Bagram/DFIP, but he believes many men are unjustly held. His once-positive view of the U.S. has changed.
"When I think of spending more than a year without any crime, that not only affected me personally, it affected my family, it affected my life, it affected my work," Mohammed said. "That makes us angry."
Bin Laden kill spooks Taliban off cell phones
By Farhan Bokha November 14, 2011 CBS News
ISLAMABAD - More than six months after U.S. Navy SEALs tracked and killed Osama bin Laden in the northern Pakistani city of Abbottabad, bringing an end to the rein of the world's most hunted terrorist, his allies in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region have reportedly taken unusual precautions to avoid capture, or death.
In a range of background interviews with CBS News, Pakistani and Western officials say human couriers are increasingly being used by militants to replace the ubiquitous cell phone.
While there are no clear, verifiable statistics to back the claims, the officials say the intelligence information available is enough to suggest that the trend is growing significantly.
Complete coverage: The Killing of Osama bin Laden
"There is a widespread belief that Osama bin Laden could not have been traced had it not been the fact that someone close to him used a cell phone, and was found," a Pakistani intelligence official tells CBS News on condition of anonymity. "This revelation has brought about a behavioral change."
The so called "Quetta Shura," a high representative council of the Taliban based in the sprawling metropolis of the same name near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, has reportedly abandoned much of its reliance on cell phones, instead dispatching people to deliver messages, according to local officials.
"In the past, sometimes people took the risk of occasionally using a mobile phone to call numbers in Afghanistan. Now they don't," says a Pakistani government official from Quetta.
Without naming the individual Taliban leaders involved, the official says, "senior people among this community (of the Taliban) now prefer to send couriers, even for conveying the most mundane information which is of no value to anyone tracking these people."
The official says suspect individuals have even gone so far as opting to send a courier to deliver a message of wedding congratulations across the border, rather than risk revealing their location by using a cell phone.
Experienced intelligence officials say that, while the proliferation of cellular phones in Pakistan's congested urban centers may not allow each conversation to be closely monitored, it is still possible to do so in sparsely populated areas where the militants have their bases and camps.
"The fewer the people in any area, the easier it becomes to keep an eye on their communication," the Pakistani intelligence official tells CBS News.
Western defense officials in Islamabad confirm seeing reports of the Taliban adopting additional precautions since the U.S. raid on bin Laden.
"I have heard of instances where Mr A who is a Taliban figure in location B will give his phone to Mr C to communicate a message from location D," says one Western official.
"Unlike the past, when people were maybe a bit more complacent, now they try to physically keep themselves many, many miles away from a location of their phone being used," said the official, who, like the others, asked to remain anonymous.
Both Pakistani and Western officials who spoke to CBS News say the United States is widely thought to have technology in place to monitor mobile phone signals from the Pakistan-Afghan border area.
It is this area that the U.S. has long pointed to as a refuge for Taliban and al Qaeda militants, who frequently attack Western troops in Afghanistan.
"I don't think the Taliban would know exactly how such technology works. It is highly classified," says the Western official, but "the mere belief of a mobile phone signal leading to targeting of an individual is enough to put people on the extreme defensive."
US military's role in Afghanistan after 2014
Long War Journal By CJ Radin November 13, 2011
In an interview with TOLONews, US General John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, discussed US plans to support Afghanistan after 2014. While the complete strategic agreement is still in the works, General Allen provided some details.
Currently the US has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, while the rest of ISAF contributes another 40,000. As announced by President Obama in June 2011, the US plans to draw down its forces to 68,000 troops by September 2012. From there, the US will continue to drawn down to a much smaller residual force by the end of 2014. A specific number has not been quoted but will likely be between 10,000 and 20,000 troops. Other ISAF nations plan to draw down their forces along similar lines.
At that point, conventional military operations would be discontinued. According to General Allen, the US and allied force's mission will be reduced to:
* training and mentoring of the Afghan National Security Forces, which includes the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police; * providing "enabler" functions such as helicopter transportation, medical treatment, and intelligence gathering (air support including ground attack will probably also be needed); and * counterterrorism operations, to be provided by US and allied special operations forces. Note that a counterterrorism organization is already in place in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). This is separate from the ISAF organization which runs the conventional military operation. OEF currently numbers about 10,000 troops.
US forces will share bases with Afghan security forces, Allen said. It has not yet been determined what the US role would be if Afghanistan suffered a conventional attack from one if its neighbors. Additionally, the US military is not presently authorized to operate outside of Afghan territory.
The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) currently number 301,000 troops. By October 2012, the ANSF is slated to grow to 353,000 troops in total, consisting of 191,000 troops in the Afghan National Army and 162,000 officers in the Afghan National Police. There is no plan to grow beyond this. After October 2012, ISAF training and mentoring will concentrate on professionalizing the force and developing the "enabler" functions, although the process will not be complete by the end of 2014.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com