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A decade on, what can US accomplish in Afghanistan?
Reuters By Missy Ryan Sun Dec 4, 2011
WASHINGTON - As senior U.S. officials head to a major meeting on Afghanistan next week, underlying their talks will be a simple question: what can Washington hope to accomplish there with fewer troops, less money, and less time?
U.S. objectives in Afghanistan are far more modest than they were in the months following the September 11 attacks, when the West hoped to replace the Taliban's backwardness and brutality with a secure democracy at the crossroads of Asia.
After years in which the war was overlooked and underfunded, President Barack Obama focused this "war of necessity" in 2009 on the threat from al Qaeda and on enabling Afghanistan to fend off its enemies for itself.
Yet even U.S. goals for Afghanistan today, which include providing a modicum of security, making progress against endemic poverty and improving weak, corrupt governance are in question as Western nations move to curtail their role in a war most officials believe cannot be won on the battlefield.
The United States "has yet to present a credible and detailed plan for transition that shows the U.S. and its allies can achieve some form of stable, strategic outcome in Afghanistan that even approaches the outcome of the Iraq War," Anthony Cordesman, a long-time security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote recently.
"Far too many U.S. actions have begun to look like a cover for an exit strategy from Afghanistan."
The U.S. military and diplomatic blueprint, especially for the next two years as foreign troops hand over to local forces, takes center stage ahead of Monday's summit in Bonn, Germany.
The meeting, headlined by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will focus on Afghanistan's economic future and on defining the West's future presence in Afghanistan.
Despite plans to steadily shrink its Afghanistan force, the Obama administration has vowed it will not abandon the country as the West did following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
Officials link investment in a long-term presence in Afghanistan - which could include bases and a major diplomatic footprint even after most foreign combat troops go home at the end of 2014 - to defending U.S. national security.
Obama scored a major victory this spring in his tightly focused approach to the war when U.S. Navy SEALs tracked down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and killed him.
The military mission on the ground in Afghanistan, however, has been much broader than just defeating al Qaeda.
U.S. commanders say Obama's 2009 decision to deploy an extra 30,000 troops has paid off in the Taliban's southern heartland. They now hope to connect that to the capital.
Yet the outlook in the country's rugged east, where militants from the Haqqani network and other groups crisscross the lawless border with Pakistan, is much more troubling.
A series of high-profile attacks this fall, including an assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the assassination of the former Afghan president, the country's top official for peace talks, also rattled the narrative of improving security.
"We have important work to do inside Afghanistan. I will say that a great deal of progress is being made. Insurgents have been under increasing pressure," Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters on Friday.
"The enemy remains dangerous, and they are capable of violence, as we have seen, regrettably," he said.
'PURE NUMBERS'
Many worry that an array of militants, in the absence of enough foreign troops and an adequate improvement in local security forces, will plunge Afghanistan back into major violence.
"If you don't deal with that, then where are you going to be five years from now?" asked Jeffrey Dressler, a security analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
"You could have even a greater sanctuary and safehaven than you had before 9/11," he said.
Military commanders are now drawing up plans for how they will stretch a shrinking force to match that threat as Obama moves to withdraw the surge force by next fall.
Underlying Obama's plans is the new fiscal reality of the U.S. government, mired in debt and facing big budget cuts.
"Here it's just pure numbers and the amount of money we're spending in Afghanistan," said Brian Katulis, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress.
The Pentagon has sunk $330 billion into Afghanistan. While lawmakers are loathe to be seen as stiffing the troops, support for future spending of that order is all but inconceivable.
Fiscal pressures are compounded by Congress' mounting exasperation with what they see as Karzai's erratic behaviour and with growing recognition that Pakistan may never cooperate as desired against militants fueling violence in Afghanistan.
Even the most Herculean of U.S. efforts may not matter without more cooperation from Pakistan, which is boycotting the Bonn conference after NATO aircraft accidentally killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border.
While the details of what happened are still unclear, the incident has laid bare lingering bilateral tensions and the gap between U.S. and Pakistani ambitions for Afghanistan.
U.S. officials are pressing ahead with efforts to broker a deal outlining the long-term U.S.-Afghan relationship even though night raids and other issues remain sticking points.
The deal will include a commitment in principle to a U.S. military presence after 2014, which will focus on supporting Afghan forces and on targeted operations against militants.
U.S. officials insist Washington is not walking away. One senior U.S. official said the goal of the conference in Bonn and an earlier one in Istanbul was "to send a message to the Taliban and anybody else that, actually, international engagement and investment in Afghanistan is not over."
FIGHT, TALK, BUILD
Despite tactical successes in the south, even Western military officials say Afghanistan cannot be won by fighting alone - it also requires effective diplomacy and a viable plan to put Afghanistan on its feet economically.
Yet the impact of the West's aid effort - Congress has provided nearly $73 billion to rebuild and train local forces since 2002 - is another question mark beyond some important achievements in education and maternal and child health.
The U.S. strategy now rests on two objectives: building a local army capable of fending off militants, and brokering a peace deal with the Taliban. Both are ambitious goals.
While Clinton has pointed to initial contact between U.S. officials and the insurgency in efforts to broker a peace deal, there is scant evidence that a substantive agreement can be reached in the near term. It is also a politically risky course for Obama with his re-election bid less than a year off.
Efforts to build a strong local security force have succeeded in adding and arming men - and in many cases teaching them to read - but it remains unclear whether this force will have the ability and desire to take on the Taliban and other groups as foreigners go home.
The West, especially the United States, will be required to underwrite that efforts for years to come.
Analysts say the U.S. effort in Afghanistan remains hobbled by bureaucratic tensions and the lack of a shared goal for what Afghanistan can and should look like after 2014.
"We fought, we tried to build, and then quite belatedly we mapped out a strategy for trying to talk," said Katulis, of the Center for American Progress, referring to Clinton's triple strategy to 'fight, talk, build' in Afghanistan.
For a Long-Term Afghan-American Accord, Night Raids Are a Sticking Point
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND December 3, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government has been talking about ending the American military’s controversial campaign of night raids for years, but now they see an opportunity to actually do something about it.
In continuing negotiations for a long-term strategic agreement between the two countries, the Afghans have made a no-compromise stand on abolishing or greatly limiting night raids, in which commandos go after people suspected of being insurgents in private homes rather than in the field.
Both sides very much want the strategic agreement. It would give bases to the American military in Afghanistan and give the Afghans assurances of continued training and financing for their rapidly growing and ever more costly security forces.
Western diplomats say that all such big issues are already settled, but night raids remain the thorn in the talks.
“It is one of the central points — yes, we hope it will not be a deal breaker,” Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said in an interview. “It is one of our primary conditions.”
There are other sticking points as well, according to Western diplomats — how to handle detentions, and how legally binding the agreement will be — but those have not attracted the same level of public interest, or put the Americans on the defensive with their Afghan allies to such a degree.
The American military sees night raids as an essential and effective part of its counterinsurgency effort, with a very high reward-to-risk ratio. But Mr. Karzai and much of his government see the raids as politically disastrous, as they enrage the populace and often set entire communities against the American military presence.
Over the past year, American commanders have greatly increased the frequency of the raids, with as many as 40 around the country being carried out on some nights, and an average of 10 a night, the military says. Even that is estimated to be twice the rate of 2010. Thousands of Taliban insurgents, hundreds of them midlevel commanders, have been captured or killed in the raids, officials have said.
Delegates at the recent loya jirga meetings convened by Mr. Karzai overwhelmingly asked the president to make an end to night raids a condition of signing a strategic agreement. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly demanded in speeches that night raids by foreign forces should end.
Most night raids are carried out by various kinds of Special Operations troops, and now the vast majority are “partnered” — conducted with Afghan troops along, the military says. A smaller number are considered “black ops,” covert missions conducted solely by specialized American units like the Army’s Delta Force, Navy Seal commandos or the C.I.A.
NATO officials say they have modified how night raids are conducted in response to the Afghan government’s concerns.
“Ninety-five percent of all night operations at this stage are already partnered,” said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the NATO spokesman in Afghanistan. “So basically the recommendation of the traditional loya jirga is already put into action.”
“It is in our combined interest that as soon as possible, Afghanization is accomplished,” he added, referring to an Afghan takeover of security responsibility.
Mr. Faizi was unimpressed by that argument. “According to reports from our officials in different provinces, the Afghan security forces are leaving with the American forces to go conduct night operations without being informed directly where they are going, which house they are searching and who is the target,” he said.
While General Jacobson said night raids averaged 10 a night now, a recent study of night raids by the Open Society Foundations, financed by George Soros, estimated that 19 a night were taking place during the first three months of 2011.
The American military is so enamored of the tactic that some generals have said that without night raids, the United States may as well go home.
General Jacobson said that 85 percent of night raids took place without a single shot fired, and that over all such operations accounted for less than one percent of all civilian casualties.
Afghans, however, complain that because night raids involve soldiers going into private homes and often seeing the women who live there, they deeply offend Afghan cultural sensitivities and have an alienating effect out of proportion to either their military value or their casualty rate.
“This has become a very sensitive issue for the Afghan people,” said Mr. Faizi, who made it clear that he was relating Mr. Karzai’s views on the subject. “In general, they are not against night raids if they are led by Afghan people.”
Mr. Faizi said the raids were the biggest complaints that Mr. Karzai heard when visitors from the provinces met with him.
“If one of the messages of the United States is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, then these night raids are totally against this,” he said. “People are becoming more and more against the international presence in Afghanistan.”
On the frontlines of southern Helmand Province, the governor of Sangin district, Mohammad Sharif, is a critic of the practice, even though his district has been the center of some of the toughest fighting of the war, with among the highest casualty rates for NATO forces. He said the Special Operations forces that carried out the raids often got the wrong people, including many pro-government people. “People are not happy, and they feel bad toward Americans,” he said.
A high-ranking official in Helmand Province saw the matter differently, although he did not want to be quoted by name endorsing night raids because of their unpopularity. “So many Taliban commanders have been killed or detained in night raids, and if it wasn’t for them, we would not have the peace we now have,” he said. “Taliban commanders are like snakes: it’s hard to catch them, and night raids are their charmers.”
He also noted that trying to arrest a Taliban commander during the day would inevitably mean a battle, which might well cause casualties among bystanders.
Mr. Faizi said the president was concerned that in many cases, Afghan families were forced to give food and shelter to insurgents, and then later were blamed for doing so and arrested. “We think that all these night raids, they bring the conflict directly to the homes of the Afghan people,” he said. “It has to be the opposite, the fight has to be fought somewhere else.”
Hajji Faizullah, a money changer in Kandahar who lost his leg fighting the Soviets, said a nephew and son-in-law were seized six months ago in night raids in the city of Kandahar. They are still in detention.
“In our customs, if a strange man enters your house, you are allowed to kill him, he has come either to rob or to dishonor you,” Mr. Faizullah said. “So the Americans are violating our houses at night and dishonoring us but we are feeble and cannot resist them.”
With both sides’ views on night raids seemingly set in stone, that is one of the reasons the strategic agreement talks between the United States and Afghanistan have taken months more than originally expected — talks have been going on in earnest since March and at first had been expected to conclude by summer.
An agreement between Afghanistan and Britain, with no mention of night raids, has already been concluded. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul.
Road out of Afghanistan: On the ground with US troops in potential final push
The recent battle for the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province, which ended with few casualties and Taliban fighters in flight, may mark the last major operation for US troops in Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent December 3, 2011
Kajaki Valley, Afghanistan - A group of marines huddles around the top enlisted marine in their unit, who had come to visit newly established US patrol bases throughout the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province.
A week earlier, they had been part of a force of 600 marines and several Afghan Army and police units who flooded the valley. Though US forces have made progress throughout Helmand during the past year, Kajaki had remained one of the last major areas still under Taliban control.
Now, with several US Marine and Afghan military bases established in the valley and little resistance from the Taliban, the Helmand operation appears to have been more successful than many marines had expected.
Afghanistan's Bonn Conference: 4 things you need to know
Looking to inspire a platoon that had three men medevacked during the initial assault and had been living outdoors without tents or cots since the operation began, the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment's Sgt. Maj. Larry Harrington tells the group of assembled marines, "It started for me in Kandahar in 2001, and now I'm seeing the end of it."
While the insurgency continues, the war is indeed nearing its end for the marines in Helmand and for other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) units elsewhere in the nation. With all the surge forces scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer, and troop levels expected to keep falling from there, this operation is quite possibly the last major US Marine offensive designed to gain and hold new ground for the rest of the war.
"From my perspective, it's the last piece of real estate that ISAF forces are going to really clear," says Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the ISAF commander in the southwest region of Afghanistan.
This ending battle echoed many that had come before, with the US overrunning its foe, the Taliban choosing to flee more often than fight. But a big question lingers over the durability of the gains. Marines express optimism that the lessons learned over the decade-long war will help them stabilize the area and hand it over to the Afghan government. A decade of war in deadliest province
There are some 140,000 international forces in Afghanistan, a little less than 100,000 are American. US and international troops came here more than a decade ago following the Sept. 11 attacks, when the ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Since then the war has grown into a large nation-building effort with the United States alone investing more than $70 billion on development projects designed to strengthen Afghanistan's government and social institutions. Meanwhile, some 1,843 US and 970 international service members have lost their lives here. Another 14,342 have been injured.
Throughout the Afghan war, the south – Helmand in particular – has seen the most fighting. More than 795 international troops have been killed in Helmand, more than in any other province and nearly twice as many as in Kandahar, the second-most deadly province.
There are about 30,000 foreign forces in Helmand, equivalent to about one-third of the US force in Afghanistan. The area has been the primary responsibility of US Marines and British troops. But will the improvements hold?
Although there are numerous indications that international forces have made progress in Helmand, there are just as many questions among locals about how long these improvements will last.
A report released by the New America Foundation in October found that while locals in Helmand say the Taliban are weaker now compared with 12 months ago, 49 percent of the population say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar say that violence will lead to a civil war after international troops withdraw in 2014.
In the face of continued skepticism from the Afghan population, the US Marines pushed into the Kajaki Valley to take this last Taliban stronghold in the hope that it could make the difference for the region's lasting stability. Kajaki is of particular importance because of a dam there that provides electricity for much of southern Afghanistan.
Though many marines say Afghan forces in Helmand are increasingly capable, they also say that it was important to take advantage of the Marine presence here to clear out the Kajaki Valley. Afghan forces still lack the specialized equipment and troop levels necessary to conduct the type of major assault required to clear an area this large under insurgent control.
"Once we leave, I think Afghan forces will absolutely be able to have the manpower to hold it, but that initial going in and trying to secure something like this, that does take a lot of force and power that they initially wouldn't have," says Capt. Brandon Turner, operations officer for 1/6 Infantry Battalion. 'Surprised' by lack of fighting'
During the initial assault, the marines and Afghan forces faced about two days of resistance that cost the lives of two marines and injured a handful of others. Shortly after, most of the valley went quiet.
The marines had expected to face much heavier fighting. Once inside the valley, they found a number of abandoned Taliban bunker complexes that indicated insurgents had been ready for a battle.
"Their unwillingness to fight surprised me," says Lance Cpl. Terr¬ence Moran, a marine from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1/6 Infantry Battalion.
When the operation started, the marines and Afghan forces inserted into the valley from the north, south, and center, which many say caused insurgents in the area to feel overwhelmed.
"I think they expected us to come from one direction, and only that direction, so they were confused," says Moran.
Prior to the operation there had been no bases inside the valley, except for a small US base next to the dam. Taliban domination of the area had grown so strong that locals said the roads leading in and out of the valley were unsafe, and villagers around the dam lived virtually under siege.
"The situation in Kajaki was really bad before the operation," says Ghulam Ali Baryal, a tribal elder from Kajaki. "People were stuck in the area around the dam. They were concerned that there would be food shortages because no food or supplies were arriving to the city and the farmers couldn't export their crops outside Kajaki." Marines bring hard-won lessons to bear
As is the plan throughout Afghanistan, the marines will gradually cede ground to their Afghan counterparts as they leave Helmand. For now, there is much optimism among the marines working here.
After 10 years of the US-led war, it's common for soldiers and marines inheriting the security responsibility of an area to be hampered by the mistakes of the unit that preceded them, or even those of units that were stationed in the area years before. But the 1/6 Infantry Battalion is the first international unit based in Kajaki Valley.
"Kajaki is kind of like a blank slate for us," says Lt. Stephen Grodek, who commands Bravo Company's 1st Platoon.
Many marines say they hope they can take what they've learned in a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and apply it here.
One example: When the military began to focus heavily on development projects as part of their strategy to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people, units would make big promises about what services they could provide. Many were broken, causing locals to lose faith in foreign forces. Marines say it is now critical to keep expectations on both sides in check and promise only what they can provide.
"We were able to take the lessons we learned in other districts ... so you don't come in and create the wrong expectations or start inadvertently working through the wrong people. We're able to take a lot of those lessons and do it the right way in Kajaki," says Lt. Col. George Benson, commander of 1/6 Infantry Battalion.
Few grand hopes for major Afghan meeting
McClatchy Newspapers By Ali Safi Saturday, December 3, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - A high-level international conference opens Monday in Germany where representatives of more than 90 countries and organizations gather to discuss the future of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign military forces.
An Afghan delegation led by President Hamid Karzai arrived in Bonn, Germany, on Friday and was welcomed by the German foreign minister, who said that the international community's message was that they would continue a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, according to a statement from Karzai's office.
But even as Afghan security forces begin taking over responsibility for new regions under the second phase of a security transition, many Afghans are skeptical about the prospects that the long-awaited conference will achieve any breakthroughs. Afghan officials are looking for concrete commitments from foreign donors, but progress could be hampered by the absence of representatives of the Taliban insurgency, who weren't invited, and of neighboring Pakistan, which is still furious over a NATO attack last month that killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers.
"Before the withdrawal, we must seek financial support to pay the salaries of our armed forces. Otherwise, the security forces will collapse immediately after the pullout" of U.S.-led international troops, said Moeen Marastyal, an Afghan politician with the newly established Right and Justice Party.
The meeting, which takes place 10 years after the U.S.-led invasion, was meant as a follow-up to a 2001 Bonn conference where the current Afghan system of government was established. German officials had high hopes for the talks, and were reportedly hoping to include Taliban representatives, but various efforts by the United States and other nations to engage politically with leaders of the organization over the past several months have failed.
The Taliban have denounced the conference and said that the first Bonn meeting "undermined the independence of Afghanistan" and paved the way for a decade of problems.
Topmost on the agenda are the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, the faltering peace process and the commitments of international community beyond 2014. But experts say that the United States and other foreign nations are unlikely to make specific guarantees of assistance.
Fazel Sancharaki, a spokesman for a political coalition led by Karzai's chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, said that the international community must provide more support to the Afghan government.
"Bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan without strengthening the political process and national participation is not possible," Sancharaki said.
With Afghanistan expected to take control of security from U.S. and NATO forces by the end of 2014, the second phase of the security handover began Thursday in the relatively peaceful northern province of Parwan. With the completion of the second phase in the coming months, Afghan forces are expected to have responsibility for areas that hold 50 percent of the country's population.
The second phase includes areas in six provinces: Balkh, Daikundi, Takhar, Samangan, Nimroz and Kabul, the capital. In addition, seven provincial capitals nationwide and three districts in southern Helmand province — a longtime Taliban stronghold — are also slated for handover.
The Obama administration continues to promote a strategy it calls "fight, talk and build" — but the "talk" plank is unlikely to go anywhere given the current furor in Pakistan, where the Afghan Taliban leadership is based, over the recent border post attack. Karzai personally asked Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to send a delegation to Bonn, the presidential palace said, but the call was refused.
"Pakistan's boycott of the conference will make any progress on reconciliation even more unlikely, as it remains the only country in the region with the ability to influence the insurgent groups operating within its borders," wrote Paraag Shukla, a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
Mahmud Saikal, a former Afghan deputy foreign minister, said that while the conference had much to discuss that didn't directly involve Pakistan, "In the area of security, there is a need for the presence of Pakistan."
In an op-ed published last week in The New York Times, Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the move would only further isolate Pakistan, whose relationship with the United States has been badly strained since the U.S. raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
"If Pakistan does not attend Bonn, it will send a dangerous message that it is not serious about working with Afghanistan and international community to promote stability," wrote Kerry, D-Mass.
(Safi is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Road Block by Pakistan Has No Logistical Implications, Isaf says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 03 December 2011
Isaf spokesman Gen. Carsten Jacobson has said that closing the supply route by Pakistan will not have negative effects on Isaf's mission in Afghanistan.
If this continues, Isaf has to look for other supply routes, he added.
"The immediate reaction of Nato was to stop additional transport going on the road to these border crossing points so that we are not forming huge tail bags in front of the border crossing," Mr. Jacobson added.
"This has at the moment no logistical implications. Stocks are high enough in Afghanistan to continue operations in Afghanistan and there is enough time to think about alternative transport, the only way where it affects us if we have for a longish period not to be able to use the Pakistani routes will make the logistics far more expensive."
Last week's Nato airstrike in tribal Mohmand Agency which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers including two officers have raised serious reactions of Pakistan and caused the country to boycott the second Bonn conference.
"It's a complicated matter, it's a very complex matter; what happened so far is collecting data, collecting of the findings of the incident itself. We will now go into the evaluation of the available data and will go into the process of the investigation," General Jacobson said. "It's like in several case this takes time and the investigation team has been told that it has got about a month time to execute the investigation."
A member of the investigation team sent to execute the investigation said to TOLOnews that primary investigations showed that Pakistani soldiers fired on Afghan and Isaf forces.
On condition of anonymity, he added that Taliban militants were seen in the area and Afghan and Isaf forces wanted to target them, but Pakistani soldiers returned fire.
"The primary investigations indicate that Pakistani soldiers formed an outpost at the zero point of the border and nearly 100 Taliban soldiers were available in the area," he added.
"When Afghan and Isaf forces wanted to surround Taliban in that area, a Pakistan helicopter appeared and fired bullets on Afghan and Isaf forces. The forces contacted Pakistani forces but they denied to have an outpost there so one jet fighter and two Isaf helicopters asked for help and targeted the outpost," he explained.
According to him Pakistan sanctioned the conference because other countries would blame Pakistan over insecurity in Afghanistan and that this was a way to escape the facts.
Five key Afghan officers visit California
A highlight is a tour of a faux Afghan village constructed at Camp Pendleton to help train Marines before they deploy to a Taliban stronghold. The officers also talk with law enforcement officials.
Los Angeles Times By Tony Perry December 4, 2011
Camp Pendleton, Calif. - Five high-ranking officers of the Afghan security forces finished a three-day visit to Southern California on Saturday after observing military training and civilian law enforcement operations in the U.S.
One of the things that impressed them most during their instructional visit reminded them of home: a faux Afghan village constructed at Camp Pendleton to help train Marines before they deploy to Helmand province, a longtime Taliban stronghold.
Maj. Gen. Sayed Malouk told reporters that he was pleased to see Marines learning how to distinguish "between innocent people and enemies."
When the Marines get to Afghanistan, he said, they are confronted by an enemy that hides behind noncombatants and tries to draw the Americans into firefights in which innocents are killed or wounded.
"The enemy are on their knees and cannot fight us face to face ... because we can easily crush them," he said.
Still, civilian casualties in the decade-long war against the Taliban continue to be a major concern to the Afghan populace, said Malouk, commanding general of the Afghan army forces in Helmand province.
Built at a cost of $28.5 million, the village is modeled after Now Zad, an Afghan farming village. Known in military lingo as the Infantry Immersion Trainer, the site has dozens of buildings, dozens of bazaar stalls, ersatz corn and poppy fields, trash heaps, rutted streets, a mock mosque and numerous vantage points where Taliban snipers could lurk.
Afghan "role players" act as villagers, some friendly, some Taliban sympathizers. The sounds and smells of a village are simulated — including the smell of cooking food, gangrenous wounds and farm animal manure. There are weapons caches hidden in the buildings that the Marines must search.
On cue, snipers "attack" the Marines, to the sound of AK-47s. Buried pyrotechnics explode, with realistic sounds. More than 200 rooftop cameras record the Marines' reactions so they can be studied and critiqued.
Marines are evaluated, among other things, on whether their responses reduce or increase the risk of civilian casualties.
The village opened last November. A similar training site has been opened at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Along with their tour of the Infantry Immersion Trainer, the Afghan officers — three from the army, two from the national police — also visited with representatives of the U.S. Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
From Southern California, the five are scheduled to go to Washington and then to New York, where they will visit the site of the 9/11 attack.
With the Border Patrol officials, the discussion concerned vehicle maintenance, electronic surveillance, the use of biometrics to keep track of those crossing the border illegally and the use of horses in areas where it is difficult for vehicles to travel.
Helmand province borders Pakistan. U.S. officials have complained continually that the Taliban uses Pakistan to smuggle fighters, weapons and bomb-making materials into Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Nabi Jan Mullah Khil, regional deputy police commander in Helmand, told reporters that although there has been progress in securing his country's border with Pakistan, more needs to be done.
The Koran, Khil said, teaches that "if you are hurt by your neighbor, he's not a true neighbor, not a person who is a true Muslim, and God will punish him."
Thoughts of Afghanistan: Sally Sara says goodbye
ABC News By Afghanistan correspondent Sally Sara December 04, 2011
After a year of covering the war in Afghanistan, ABC correspondent Sally Sara is preparing to return to Australia to become the ABC's regional and rural affairs correspondent.
She has reported from the frontline, embedded with coalition forces. She has covered terrorist attacks, political unrest and followed the rebuilding of the country.
Here she looks back on her time in Afghanistan.
I'm writing to you from where I've written many of my stories this year - the ABC's Kabul bureau. Well, it's more of a room, than a bureau. It's 12 paces long and eight paces wide. I don't have much of a commute to work in the morning - I just take a couple of steps from my bed to my desk. The walls of the room are sky blue and the window faces on to a galvanised iron fence covered in razor wire. It's difficult to see the real sky at all.
When I sit here I hear the world outside rather than see it. I hear the loudspeaker music of the ice-cream man who roams our bumpy neighbourhood. I hear bicycles with squeaky wheels, the rumbling of the wooden rubbish carts and the skidding tyres of accidents I don't see.
Our compound is not much bigger than a tennis court. Downstairs there's a safe room in case we come under attack. One night one of the blokes ran down there in his undies, thinking we'd been bombed, only to find out later the hot water service had blown up. Every few months earth tremors from the Hindu Kush rattle the walls and windows, but nothing more than a story to tell at breakfast.
This house has its own pace. Just before each meal one of the local workers walks to the bakery to get some warm, fresh Afghan bread. He takes a cotton bag and a stick carved with notches. Each notch represents five pieces of bread. It's tallied up at the end of each month when the baker is paid. The guys in the kitchen jokingly call the stick an Afghan credit card.
But living in a compound is also a bit like being under house arrest. It's not safe for me to run outside around the neighbourhood on my own, so I clock up miles on a treadmill in the basement. With running comes loud music. The Afghan guards outside have heard everything from Frank Sinatra to Sowetan gospel and thundering bursts of Powderfinger. I sing and run and think. When the power stops suddenly, I do too. I can only hope that the music is louder than my swearing.
When I get out of here on leave every few months, all I want to do is walk. Walk, walk, walk. I barely visit any tourist sites. I just want to walk outside. I can't tell you the joy of that. Sometimes I want to go up to people and shake them and tell them how amazing it is. I get excited about the normality of it all - going to a supermarket without blast doors, entering a building without being searched, brushing my teeth with tap water, not having to wear a headscarf and just this joyful sense of being safe.
I'm sitting at my desk in the room with the sky blue walls, trying to think how to explain this place to you, how to explain what's beyond our compound walls, the real Afghanistan. I have fallen in love with this country, even though I have no right to feel a sense of belonging. I feel very strongly about the people, even though what happens here stretches all the way from humbling hospitality to numbing violence, suffering and lost potential. Some kind of irrational hook has kept me here. I don't question it much. As long as it's there, I am here and I love it.
But I have seen things here too that I wish I hadn't. Minutes I wish I could scratch away. Not so much for me, but for those whose lives have fractured in front of me.
I still see one boy's face. His name was Abdul. He was an 11-year-old who had been injured in a blast in Kandahar. He was brought into the military hospital with half his face blown away. The bandages around his head were covered in dirt, gravel, blood and vomit. He screamed and cried, pleading for the pain to stop. Adbul's face was so badly injured, I spent most of the time filming his feet. His toes flexed with the waves of agony.
Abdul's suffering was not my fault but, as an adult, it was impossible not to feel responsible. I remember standing there thinking how utterly wrong it was that, live or die, this child would think this was what life was. It was just wrong.
And to think it was intentional. Someone had sat in a dusty compound somewhere, patiently lacing a homemade bomb with the nails and ball bearings that tore through this boy. A child should never know that life could be like that. The next day Abdul's dead body was carried out of the hospital, wrapped in a white sheet and cradled in the arms of his father.
I have never found violence exciting or interesting. Sometimes, the ugliest thing at the scene of a terrorist attack is not the blood and the bodies, but the intent. It's something that is almost still hanging in the air. Often journalists are given access to the scene soon after a suicide bombing. Sometimes, I've walked up the same stairs or through the same doorway as the bomber and I can't imagine what they must have been thinking in those final seconds. It's the intent. Something of the intent is still there.
But the kindness of the people has been just as deliberate too. One Saturday afternoon, we climbed a hill on the outskirts of Kabul to interview the family of a police officer killed in a suicide bombing. Samiullah Khan had hugged the bomber to shield his colleagues from the blast. His grieving family wanted to make us lunch and cups of tea. His brother said, "We will put aside our sadness to take care of you as our guests." It was very, very Afghan. My words fell away.
That's the Afghanistan I will take with me. I'll take the frustration and the madness of this place too. But I'll remember families like that. It's what doesn't come through on the television or radio news. I know that I will miss this place. It's become normal and Australia has become somewhere that feels a bit jumbled and strange to me now.
I went back to Australia in August, after the helicopter crash that killed ABC colleagues Paul Lockyer, John Bean and Gary Ticehurst. Paul Lockyer's memorial service was held at a school chapel in Sydney. That morning, students were competing in a sports carnival down on the nearby school oval. As I walked past I could see picnics and parents in deck chairs. But when the starter's gun fired at the beginning of a kids race, I ducked. I thought the shot was real.
In the hours that followed, sitting in the chapel, listening to the accounts of Paul Lockyer's life, it was a celebration of family and integrity. Paul had been a foreign correspondent too. He'd taken risks and been to the bad places. But he'd moved on. He had a family and went on to use his empathy and professionalism to give voice the people of rural and regional Australia. He didn't need a war zone to tell strong stories.
I don't know what it will be like to finally come home. I'm excited and I'll be relieved to get out of here safely. But I will carry thoughts of Afghanistan, always.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Reuters By Missy Ryan Sun Dec 4, 2011
WASHINGTON - As senior U.S. officials head to a major meeting on Afghanistan next week, underlying their talks will be a simple question: what can Washington hope to accomplish there with fewer troops, less money, and less time?
U.S. objectives in Afghanistan are far more modest than they were in the months following the September 11 attacks, when the West hoped to replace the Taliban's backwardness and brutality with a secure democracy at the crossroads of Asia.
After years in which the war was overlooked and underfunded, President Barack Obama focused this "war of necessity" in 2009 on the threat from al Qaeda and on enabling Afghanistan to fend off its enemies for itself.
Yet even U.S. goals for Afghanistan today, which include providing a modicum of security, making progress against endemic poverty and improving weak, corrupt governance are in question as Western nations move to curtail their role in a war most officials believe cannot be won on the battlefield.
The United States "has yet to present a credible and detailed plan for transition that shows the U.S. and its allies can achieve some form of stable, strategic outcome in Afghanistan that even approaches the outcome of the Iraq War," Anthony Cordesman, a long-time security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote recently.
"Far too many U.S. actions have begun to look like a cover for an exit strategy from Afghanistan."
The U.S. military and diplomatic blueprint, especially for the next two years as foreign troops hand over to local forces, takes center stage ahead of Monday's summit in Bonn, Germany.
The meeting, headlined by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will focus on Afghanistan's economic future and on defining the West's future presence in Afghanistan.
Despite plans to steadily shrink its Afghanistan force, the Obama administration has vowed it will not abandon the country as the West did following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
Officials link investment in a long-term presence in Afghanistan - which could include bases and a major diplomatic footprint even after most foreign combat troops go home at the end of 2014 - to defending U.S. national security.
Obama scored a major victory this spring in his tightly focused approach to the war when U.S. Navy SEALs tracked down al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and killed him.
The military mission on the ground in Afghanistan, however, has been much broader than just defeating al Qaeda.
U.S. commanders say Obama's 2009 decision to deploy an extra 30,000 troops has paid off in the Taliban's southern heartland. They now hope to connect that to the capital.
Yet the outlook in the country's rugged east, where militants from the Haqqani network and other groups crisscross the lawless border with Pakistan, is much more troubling.
A series of high-profile attacks this fall, including an assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the assassination of the former Afghan president, the country's top official for peace talks, also rattled the narrative of improving security.
"We have important work to do inside Afghanistan. I will say that a great deal of progress is being made. Insurgents have been under increasing pressure," Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters on Friday.
"The enemy remains dangerous, and they are capable of violence, as we have seen, regrettably," he said.
'PURE NUMBERS'
Many worry that an array of militants, in the absence of enough foreign troops and an adequate improvement in local security forces, will plunge Afghanistan back into major violence.
"If you don't deal with that, then where are you going to be five years from now?" asked Jeffrey Dressler, a security analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
"You could have even a greater sanctuary and safehaven than you had before 9/11," he said.
Military commanders are now drawing up plans for how they will stretch a shrinking force to match that threat as Obama moves to withdraw the surge force by next fall.
Underlying Obama's plans is the new fiscal reality of the U.S. government, mired in debt and facing big budget cuts.
"Here it's just pure numbers and the amount of money we're spending in Afghanistan," said Brian Katulis, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress.
The Pentagon has sunk $330 billion into Afghanistan. While lawmakers are loathe to be seen as stiffing the troops, support for future spending of that order is all but inconceivable.
Fiscal pressures are compounded by Congress' mounting exasperation with what they see as Karzai's erratic behaviour and with growing recognition that Pakistan may never cooperate as desired against militants fueling violence in Afghanistan.
Even the most Herculean of U.S. efforts may not matter without more cooperation from Pakistan, which is boycotting the Bonn conference after NATO aircraft accidentally killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border.
While the details of what happened are still unclear, the incident has laid bare lingering bilateral tensions and the gap between U.S. and Pakistani ambitions for Afghanistan.
U.S. officials are pressing ahead with efforts to broker a deal outlining the long-term U.S.-Afghan relationship even though night raids and other issues remain sticking points.
The deal will include a commitment in principle to a U.S. military presence after 2014, which will focus on supporting Afghan forces and on targeted operations against militants.
U.S. officials insist Washington is not walking away. One senior U.S. official said the goal of the conference in Bonn and an earlier one in Istanbul was "to send a message to the Taliban and anybody else that, actually, international engagement and investment in Afghanistan is not over."
FIGHT, TALK, BUILD
Despite tactical successes in the south, even Western military officials say Afghanistan cannot be won by fighting alone - it also requires effective diplomacy and a viable plan to put Afghanistan on its feet economically.
Yet the impact of the West's aid effort - Congress has provided nearly $73 billion to rebuild and train local forces since 2002 - is another question mark beyond some important achievements in education and maternal and child health.
The U.S. strategy now rests on two objectives: building a local army capable of fending off militants, and brokering a peace deal with the Taliban. Both are ambitious goals.
While Clinton has pointed to initial contact between U.S. officials and the insurgency in efforts to broker a peace deal, there is scant evidence that a substantive agreement can be reached in the near term. It is also a politically risky course for Obama with his re-election bid less than a year off.
Efforts to build a strong local security force have succeeded in adding and arming men - and in many cases teaching them to read - but it remains unclear whether this force will have the ability and desire to take on the Taliban and other groups as foreigners go home.
The West, especially the United States, will be required to underwrite that efforts for years to come.
Analysts say the U.S. effort in Afghanistan remains hobbled by bureaucratic tensions and the lack of a shared goal for what Afghanistan can and should look like after 2014.
"We fought, we tried to build, and then quite belatedly we mapped out a strategy for trying to talk," said Katulis, of the Center for American Progress, referring to Clinton's triple strategy to 'fight, talk, build' in Afghanistan.
For a Long-Term Afghan-American Accord, Night Raids Are a Sticking Point
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND December 3, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government has been talking about ending the American military’s controversial campaign of night raids for years, but now they see an opportunity to actually do something about it.
In continuing negotiations for a long-term strategic agreement between the two countries, the Afghans have made a no-compromise stand on abolishing or greatly limiting night raids, in which commandos go after people suspected of being insurgents in private homes rather than in the field.
Both sides very much want the strategic agreement. It would give bases to the American military in Afghanistan and give the Afghans assurances of continued training and financing for their rapidly growing and ever more costly security forces.
Western diplomats say that all such big issues are already settled, but night raids remain the thorn in the talks.
“It is one of the central points — yes, we hope it will not be a deal breaker,” Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said in an interview. “It is one of our primary conditions.”
There are other sticking points as well, according to Western diplomats — how to handle detentions, and how legally binding the agreement will be — but those have not attracted the same level of public interest, or put the Americans on the defensive with their Afghan allies to such a degree.
The American military sees night raids as an essential and effective part of its counterinsurgency effort, with a very high reward-to-risk ratio. But Mr. Karzai and much of his government see the raids as politically disastrous, as they enrage the populace and often set entire communities against the American military presence.
Over the past year, American commanders have greatly increased the frequency of the raids, with as many as 40 around the country being carried out on some nights, and an average of 10 a night, the military says. Even that is estimated to be twice the rate of 2010. Thousands of Taliban insurgents, hundreds of them midlevel commanders, have been captured or killed in the raids, officials have said.
Delegates at the recent loya jirga meetings convened by Mr. Karzai overwhelmingly asked the president to make an end to night raids a condition of signing a strategic agreement. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly demanded in speeches that night raids by foreign forces should end.
Most night raids are carried out by various kinds of Special Operations troops, and now the vast majority are “partnered” — conducted with Afghan troops along, the military says. A smaller number are considered “black ops,” covert missions conducted solely by specialized American units like the Army’s Delta Force, Navy Seal commandos or the C.I.A.
NATO officials say they have modified how night raids are conducted in response to the Afghan government’s concerns.
“Ninety-five percent of all night operations at this stage are already partnered,” said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the NATO spokesman in Afghanistan. “So basically the recommendation of the traditional loya jirga is already put into action.”
“It is in our combined interest that as soon as possible, Afghanization is accomplished,” he added, referring to an Afghan takeover of security responsibility.
Mr. Faizi was unimpressed by that argument. “According to reports from our officials in different provinces, the Afghan security forces are leaving with the American forces to go conduct night operations without being informed directly where they are going, which house they are searching and who is the target,” he said.
While General Jacobson said night raids averaged 10 a night now, a recent study of night raids by the Open Society Foundations, financed by George Soros, estimated that 19 a night were taking place during the first three months of 2011.
The American military is so enamored of the tactic that some generals have said that without night raids, the United States may as well go home.
General Jacobson said that 85 percent of night raids took place without a single shot fired, and that over all such operations accounted for less than one percent of all civilian casualties.
Afghans, however, complain that because night raids involve soldiers going into private homes and often seeing the women who live there, they deeply offend Afghan cultural sensitivities and have an alienating effect out of proportion to either their military value or their casualty rate.
“This has become a very sensitive issue for the Afghan people,” said Mr. Faizi, who made it clear that he was relating Mr. Karzai’s views on the subject. “In general, they are not against night raids if they are led by Afghan people.”
Mr. Faizi said the raids were the biggest complaints that Mr. Karzai heard when visitors from the provinces met with him.
“If one of the messages of the United States is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, then these night raids are totally against this,” he said. “People are becoming more and more against the international presence in Afghanistan.”
On the frontlines of southern Helmand Province, the governor of Sangin district, Mohammad Sharif, is a critic of the practice, even though his district has been the center of some of the toughest fighting of the war, with among the highest casualty rates for NATO forces. He said the Special Operations forces that carried out the raids often got the wrong people, including many pro-government people. “People are not happy, and they feel bad toward Americans,” he said.
A high-ranking official in Helmand Province saw the matter differently, although he did not want to be quoted by name endorsing night raids because of their unpopularity. “So many Taliban commanders have been killed or detained in night raids, and if it wasn’t for them, we would not have the peace we now have,” he said. “Taliban commanders are like snakes: it’s hard to catch them, and night raids are their charmers.”
He also noted that trying to arrest a Taliban commander during the day would inevitably mean a battle, which might well cause casualties among bystanders.
Mr. Faizi said the president was concerned that in many cases, Afghan families were forced to give food and shelter to insurgents, and then later were blamed for doing so and arrested. “We think that all these night raids, they bring the conflict directly to the homes of the Afghan people,” he said. “It has to be the opposite, the fight has to be fought somewhere else.”
Hajji Faizullah, a money changer in Kandahar who lost his leg fighting the Soviets, said a nephew and son-in-law were seized six months ago in night raids in the city of Kandahar. They are still in detention.
“In our customs, if a strange man enters your house, you are allowed to kill him, he has come either to rob or to dishonor you,” Mr. Faizullah said. “So the Americans are violating our houses at night and dishonoring us but we are feeble and cannot resist them.”
With both sides’ views on night raids seemingly set in stone, that is one of the reasons the strategic agreement talks between the United States and Afghanistan have taken months more than originally expected — talks have been going on in earnest since March and at first had been expected to conclude by summer.
An agreement between Afghanistan and Britain, with no mention of night raids, has already been concluded. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul.
Road out of Afghanistan: On the ground with US troops in potential final push
The recent battle for the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province, which ended with few casualties and Taliban fighters in flight, may mark the last major operation for US troops in Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent December 3, 2011
Kajaki Valley, Afghanistan - A group of marines huddles around the top enlisted marine in their unit, who had come to visit newly established US patrol bases throughout the Kajaki Valley in Helmand Province.
A week earlier, they had been part of a force of 600 marines and several Afghan Army and police units who flooded the valley. Though US forces have made progress throughout Helmand during the past year, Kajaki had remained one of the last major areas still under Taliban control.
Now, with several US Marine and Afghan military bases established in the valley and little resistance from the Taliban, the Helmand operation appears to have been more successful than many marines had expected.
Afghanistan's Bonn Conference: 4 things you need to know
Looking to inspire a platoon that had three men medevacked during the initial assault and had been living outdoors without tents or cots since the operation began, the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment's Sgt. Maj. Larry Harrington tells the group of assembled marines, "It started for me in Kandahar in 2001, and now I'm seeing the end of it."
While the insurgency continues, the war is indeed nearing its end for the marines in Helmand and for other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) units elsewhere in the nation. With all the surge forces scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer, and troop levels expected to keep falling from there, this operation is quite possibly the last major US Marine offensive designed to gain and hold new ground for the rest of the war.
"From my perspective, it's the last piece of real estate that ISAF forces are going to really clear," says Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the ISAF commander in the southwest region of Afghanistan.
This ending battle echoed many that had come before, with the US overrunning its foe, the Taliban choosing to flee more often than fight. But a big question lingers over the durability of the gains. Marines express optimism that the lessons learned over the decade-long war will help them stabilize the area and hand it over to the Afghan government. A decade of war in deadliest province
There are some 140,000 international forces in Afghanistan, a little less than 100,000 are American. US and international troops came here more than a decade ago following the Sept. 11 attacks, when the ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Since then the war has grown into a large nation-building effort with the United States alone investing more than $70 billion on development projects designed to strengthen Afghanistan's government and social institutions. Meanwhile, some 1,843 US and 970 international service members have lost their lives here. Another 14,342 have been injured.
Throughout the Afghan war, the south – Helmand in particular – has seen the most fighting. More than 795 international troops have been killed in Helmand, more than in any other province and nearly twice as many as in Kandahar, the second-most deadly province.
There are about 30,000 foreign forces in Helmand, equivalent to about one-third of the US force in Afghanistan. The area has been the primary responsibility of US Marines and British troops. But will the improvements hold?
Although there are numerous indications that international forces have made progress in Helmand, there are just as many questions among locals about how long these improvements will last.
A report released by the New America Foundation in October found that while locals in Helmand say the Taliban are weaker now compared with 12 months ago, 49 percent of the population say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Helmand and Kandahar say that violence will lead to a civil war after international troops withdraw in 2014.
In the face of continued skepticism from the Afghan population, the US Marines pushed into the Kajaki Valley to take this last Taliban stronghold in the hope that it could make the difference for the region's lasting stability. Kajaki is of particular importance because of a dam there that provides electricity for much of southern Afghanistan.
Though many marines say Afghan forces in Helmand are increasingly capable, they also say that it was important to take advantage of the Marine presence here to clear out the Kajaki Valley. Afghan forces still lack the specialized equipment and troop levels necessary to conduct the type of major assault required to clear an area this large under insurgent control.
"Once we leave, I think Afghan forces will absolutely be able to have the manpower to hold it, but that initial going in and trying to secure something like this, that does take a lot of force and power that they initially wouldn't have," says Capt. Brandon Turner, operations officer for 1/6 Infantry Battalion. 'Surprised' by lack of fighting'
During the initial assault, the marines and Afghan forces faced about two days of resistance that cost the lives of two marines and injured a handful of others. Shortly after, most of the valley went quiet.
The marines had expected to face much heavier fighting. Once inside the valley, they found a number of abandoned Taliban bunker complexes that indicated insurgents had been ready for a battle.
"Their unwillingness to fight surprised me," says Lance Cpl. Terr¬ence Moran, a marine from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1/6 Infantry Battalion.
When the operation started, the marines and Afghan forces inserted into the valley from the north, south, and center, which many say caused insurgents in the area to feel overwhelmed.
"I think they expected us to come from one direction, and only that direction, so they were confused," says Moran.
Prior to the operation there had been no bases inside the valley, except for a small US base next to the dam. Taliban domination of the area had grown so strong that locals said the roads leading in and out of the valley were unsafe, and villagers around the dam lived virtually under siege.
"The situation in Kajaki was really bad before the operation," says Ghulam Ali Baryal, a tribal elder from Kajaki. "People were stuck in the area around the dam. They were concerned that there would be food shortages because no food or supplies were arriving to the city and the farmers couldn't export their crops outside Kajaki." Marines bring hard-won lessons to bear
As is the plan throughout Afghanistan, the marines will gradually cede ground to their Afghan counterparts as they leave Helmand. For now, there is much optimism among the marines working here.
After 10 years of the US-led war, it's common for soldiers and marines inheriting the security responsibility of an area to be hampered by the mistakes of the unit that preceded them, or even those of units that were stationed in the area years before. But the 1/6 Infantry Battalion is the first international unit based in Kajaki Valley.
"Kajaki is kind of like a blank slate for us," says Lt. Stephen Grodek, who commands Bravo Company's 1st Platoon.
Many marines say they hope they can take what they've learned in a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and apply it here.
One example: When the military began to focus heavily on development projects as part of their strategy to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people, units would make big promises about what services they could provide. Many were broken, causing locals to lose faith in foreign forces. Marines say it is now critical to keep expectations on both sides in check and promise only what they can provide.
"We were able to take the lessons we learned in other districts ... so you don't come in and create the wrong expectations or start inadvertently working through the wrong people. We're able to take a lot of those lessons and do it the right way in Kajaki," says Lt. Col. George Benson, commander of 1/6 Infantry Battalion.
Few grand hopes for major Afghan meeting
McClatchy Newspapers By Ali Safi Saturday, December 3, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - A high-level international conference opens Monday in Germany where representatives of more than 90 countries and organizations gather to discuss the future of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign military forces.
An Afghan delegation led by President Hamid Karzai arrived in Bonn, Germany, on Friday and was welcomed by the German foreign minister, who said that the international community's message was that they would continue a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, according to a statement from Karzai's office.
But even as Afghan security forces begin taking over responsibility for new regions under the second phase of a security transition, many Afghans are skeptical about the prospects that the long-awaited conference will achieve any breakthroughs. Afghan officials are looking for concrete commitments from foreign donors, but progress could be hampered by the absence of representatives of the Taliban insurgency, who weren't invited, and of neighboring Pakistan, which is still furious over a NATO attack last month that killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers.
"Before the withdrawal, we must seek financial support to pay the salaries of our armed forces. Otherwise, the security forces will collapse immediately after the pullout" of U.S.-led international troops, said Moeen Marastyal, an Afghan politician with the newly established Right and Justice Party.
The meeting, which takes place 10 years after the U.S.-led invasion, was meant as a follow-up to a 2001 Bonn conference where the current Afghan system of government was established. German officials had high hopes for the talks, and were reportedly hoping to include Taliban representatives, but various efforts by the United States and other nations to engage politically with leaders of the organization over the past several months have failed.
The Taliban have denounced the conference and said that the first Bonn meeting "undermined the independence of Afghanistan" and paved the way for a decade of problems.
Topmost on the agenda are the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces, the faltering peace process and the commitments of international community beyond 2014. But experts say that the United States and other foreign nations are unlikely to make specific guarantees of assistance.
Fazel Sancharaki, a spokesman for a political coalition led by Karzai's chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, said that the international community must provide more support to the Afghan government.
"Bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan without strengthening the political process and national participation is not possible," Sancharaki said.
With Afghanistan expected to take control of security from U.S. and NATO forces by the end of 2014, the second phase of the security handover began Thursday in the relatively peaceful northern province of Parwan. With the completion of the second phase in the coming months, Afghan forces are expected to have responsibility for areas that hold 50 percent of the country's population.
The second phase includes areas in six provinces: Balkh, Daikundi, Takhar, Samangan, Nimroz and Kabul, the capital. In addition, seven provincial capitals nationwide and three districts in southern Helmand province — a longtime Taliban stronghold — are also slated for handover.
The Obama administration continues to promote a strategy it calls "fight, talk and build" — but the "talk" plank is unlikely to go anywhere given the current furor in Pakistan, where the Afghan Taliban leadership is based, over the recent border post attack. Karzai personally asked Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to send a delegation to Bonn, the presidential palace said, but the call was refused.
"Pakistan's boycott of the conference will make any progress on reconciliation even more unlikely, as it remains the only country in the region with the ability to influence the insurgent groups operating within its borders," wrote Paraag Shukla, a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
Mahmud Saikal, a former Afghan deputy foreign minister, said that while the conference had much to discuss that didn't directly involve Pakistan, "In the area of security, there is a need for the presence of Pakistan."
In an op-ed published last week in The New York Times, Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the move would only further isolate Pakistan, whose relationship with the United States has been badly strained since the U.S. raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
"If Pakistan does not attend Bonn, it will send a dangerous message that it is not serious about working with Afghanistan and international community to promote stability," wrote Kerry, D-Mass.
(Safi is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
Road Block by Pakistan Has No Logistical Implications, Isaf says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 03 December 2011
Isaf spokesman Gen. Carsten Jacobson has said that closing the supply route by Pakistan will not have negative effects on Isaf's mission in Afghanistan.
If this continues, Isaf has to look for other supply routes, he added.
"The immediate reaction of Nato was to stop additional transport going on the road to these border crossing points so that we are not forming huge tail bags in front of the border crossing," Mr. Jacobson added.
"This has at the moment no logistical implications. Stocks are high enough in Afghanistan to continue operations in Afghanistan and there is enough time to think about alternative transport, the only way where it affects us if we have for a longish period not to be able to use the Pakistani routes will make the logistics far more expensive."
Last week's Nato airstrike in tribal Mohmand Agency which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers including two officers have raised serious reactions of Pakistan and caused the country to boycott the second Bonn conference.
"It's a complicated matter, it's a very complex matter; what happened so far is collecting data, collecting of the findings of the incident itself. We will now go into the evaluation of the available data and will go into the process of the investigation," General Jacobson said. "It's like in several case this takes time and the investigation team has been told that it has got about a month time to execute the investigation."
A member of the investigation team sent to execute the investigation said to TOLOnews that primary investigations showed that Pakistani soldiers fired on Afghan and Isaf forces.
On condition of anonymity, he added that Taliban militants were seen in the area and Afghan and Isaf forces wanted to target them, but Pakistani soldiers returned fire.
"The primary investigations indicate that Pakistani soldiers formed an outpost at the zero point of the border and nearly 100 Taliban soldiers were available in the area," he added.
"When Afghan and Isaf forces wanted to surround Taliban in that area, a Pakistan helicopter appeared and fired bullets on Afghan and Isaf forces. The forces contacted Pakistani forces but they denied to have an outpost there so one jet fighter and two Isaf helicopters asked for help and targeted the outpost," he explained.
According to him Pakistan sanctioned the conference because other countries would blame Pakistan over insecurity in Afghanistan and that this was a way to escape the facts.
Five key Afghan officers visit California
A highlight is a tour of a faux Afghan village constructed at Camp Pendleton to help train Marines before they deploy to a Taliban stronghold. The officers also talk with law enforcement officials.
Los Angeles Times By Tony Perry December 4, 2011
Camp Pendleton, Calif. - Five high-ranking officers of the Afghan security forces finished a three-day visit to Southern California on Saturday after observing military training and civilian law enforcement operations in the U.S.
One of the things that impressed them most during their instructional visit reminded them of home: a faux Afghan village constructed at Camp Pendleton to help train Marines before they deploy to Helmand province, a longtime Taliban stronghold.
Maj. Gen. Sayed Malouk told reporters that he was pleased to see Marines learning how to distinguish "between innocent people and enemies."
When the Marines get to Afghanistan, he said, they are confronted by an enemy that hides behind noncombatants and tries to draw the Americans into firefights in which innocents are killed or wounded.
"The enemy are on their knees and cannot fight us face to face ... because we can easily crush them," he said.
Still, civilian casualties in the decade-long war against the Taliban continue to be a major concern to the Afghan populace, said Malouk, commanding general of the Afghan army forces in Helmand province.
Built at a cost of $28.5 million, the village is modeled after Now Zad, an Afghan farming village. Known in military lingo as the Infantry Immersion Trainer, the site has dozens of buildings, dozens of bazaar stalls, ersatz corn and poppy fields, trash heaps, rutted streets, a mock mosque and numerous vantage points where Taliban snipers could lurk.
Afghan "role players" act as villagers, some friendly, some Taliban sympathizers. The sounds and smells of a village are simulated — including the smell of cooking food, gangrenous wounds and farm animal manure. There are weapons caches hidden in the buildings that the Marines must search.
On cue, snipers "attack" the Marines, to the sound of AK-47s. Buried pyrotechnics explode, with realistic sounds. More than 200 rooftop cameras record the Marines' reactions so they can be studied and critiqued.
Marines are evaluated, among other things, on whether their responses reduce or increase the risk of civilian casualties.
The village opened last November. A similar training site has been opened at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Along with their tour of the Infantry Immersion Trainer, the Afghan officers — three from the army, two from the national police — also visited with representatives of the U.S. Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
From Southern California, the five are scheduled to go to Washington and then to New York, where they will visit the site of the 9/11 attack.
With the Border Patrol officials, the discussion concerned vehicle maintenance, electronic surveillance, the use of biometrics to keep track of those crossing the border illegally and the use of horses in areas where it is difficult for vehicles to travel.
Helmand province borders Pakistan. U.S. officials have complained continually that the Taliban uses Pakistan to smuggle fighters, weapons and bomb-making materials into Afghanistan.
Maj. Gen. Nabi Jan Mullah Khil, regional deputy police commander in Helmand, told reporters that although there has been progress in securing his country's border with Pakistan, more needs to be done.
The Koran, Khil said, teaches that "if you are hurt by your neighbor, he's not a true neighbor, not a person who is a true Muslim, and God will punish him."
Thoughts of Afghanistan: Sally Sara says goodbye
ABC News By Afghanistan correspondent Sally Sara December 04, 2011
After a year of covering the war in Afghanistan, ABC correspondent Sally Sara is preparing to return to Australia to become the ABC's regional and rural affairs correspondent.
She has reported from the frontline, embedded with coalition forces. She has covered terrorist attacks, political unrest and followed the rebuilding of the country.
Here she looks back on her time in Afghanistan.
I'm writing to you from where I've written many of my stories this year - the ABC's Kabul bureau. Well, it's more of a room, than a bureau. It's 12 paces long and eight paces wide. I don't have much of a commute to work in the morning - I just take a couple of steps from my bed to my desk. The walls of the room are sky blue and the window faces on to a galvanised iron fence covered in razor wire. It's difficult to see the real sky at all.
When I sit here I hear the world outside rather than see it. I hear the loudspeaker music of the ice-cream man who roams our bumpy neighbourhood. I hear bicycles with squeaky wheels, the rumbling of the wooden rubbish carts and the skidding tyres of accidents I don't see.
Our compound is not much bigger than a tennis court. Downstairs there's a safe room in case we come under attack. One night one of the blokes ran down there in his undies, thinking we'd been bombed, only to find out later the hot water service had blown up. Every few months earth tremors from the Hindu Kush rattle the walls and windows, but nothing more than a story to tell at breakfast.
This house has its own pace. Just before each meal one of the local workers walks to the bakery to get some warm, fresh Afghan bread. He takes a cotton bag and a stick carved with notches. Each notch represents five pieces of bread. It's tallied up at the end of each month when the baker is paid. The guys in the kitchen jokingly call the stick an Afghan credit card.
But living in a compound is also a bit like being under house arrest. It's not safe for me to run outside around the neighbourhood on my own, so I clock up miles on a treadmill in the basement. With running comes loud music. The Afghan guards outside have heard everything from Frank Sinatra to Sowetan gospel and thundering bursts of Powderfinger. I sing and run and think. When the power stops suddenly, I do too. I can only hope that the music is louder than my swearing.
When I get out of here on leave every few months, all I want to do is walk. Walk, walk, walk. I barely visit any tourist sites. I just want to walk outside. I can't tell you the joy of that. Sometimes I want to go up to people and shake them and tell them how amazing it is. I get excited about the normality of it all - going to a supermarket without blast doors, entering a building without being searched, brushing my teeth with tap water, not having to wear a headscarf and just this joyful sense of being safe.
I'm sitting at my desk in the room with the sky blue walls, trying to think how to explain this place to you, how to explain what's beyond our compound walls, the real Afghanistan. I have fallen in love with this country, even though I have no right to feel a sense of belonging. I feel very strongly about the people, even though what happens here stretches all the way from humbling hospitality to numbing violence, suffering and lost potential. Some kind of irrational hook has kept me here. I don't question it much. As long as it's there, I am here and I love it.
But I have seen things here too that I wish I hadn't. Minutes I wish I could scratch away. Not so much for me, but for those whose lives have fractured in front of me.
I still see one boy's face. His name was Abdul. He was an 11-year-old who had been injured in a blast in Kandahar. He was brought into the military hospital with half his face blown away. The bandages around his head were covered in dirt, gravel, blood and vomit. He screamed and cried, pleading for the pain to stop. Adbul's face was so badly injured, I spent most of the time filming his feet. His toes flexed with the waves of agony.
Abdul's suffering was not my fault but, as an adult, it was impossible not to feel responsible. I remember standing there thinking how utterly wrong it was that, live or die, this child would think this was what life was. It was just wrong.
And to think it was intentional. Someone had sat in a dusty compound somewhere, patiently lacing a homemade bomb with the nails and ball bearings that tore through this boy. A child should never know that life could be like that. The next day Abdul's dead body was carried out of the hospital, wrapped in a white sheet and cradled in the arms of his father.
I have never found violence exciting or interesting. Sometimes, the ugliest thing at the scene of a terrorist attack is not the blood and the bodies, but the intent. It's something that is almost still hanging in the air. Often journalists are given access to the scene soon after a suicide bombing. Sometimes, I've walked up the same stairs or through the same doorway as the bomber and I can't imagine what they must have been thinking in those final seconds. It's the intent. Something of the intent is still there.
But the kindness of the people has been just as deliberate too. One Saturday afternoon, we climbed a hill on the outskirts of Kabul to interview the family of a police officer killed in a suicide bombing. Samiullah Khan had hugged the bomber to shield his colleagues from the blast. His grieving family wanted to make us lunch and cups of tea. His brother said, "We will put aside our sadness to take care of you as our guests." It was very, very Afghan. My words fell away.
That's the Afghanistan I will take with me. I'll take the frustration and the madness of this place too. But I'll remember families like that. It's what doesn't come through on the television or radio news. I know that I will miss this place. It's become normal and Australia has become somewhere that feels a bit jumbled and strange to me now.
I went back to Australia in August, after the helicopter crash that killed ABC colleagues Paul Lockyer, John Bean and Gary Ticehurst. Paul Lockyer's memorial service was held at a school chapel in Sydney. That morning, students were competing in a sports carnival down on the nearby school oval. As I walked past I could see picnics and parents in deck chairs. But when the starter's gun fired at the beginning of a kids race, I ducked. I thought the shot was real.
In the hours that followed, sitting in the chapel, listening to the accounts of Paul Lockyer's life, it was a celebration of family and integrity. Paul had been a foreign correspondent too. He'd taken risks and been to the bad places. But he'd moved on. He had a family and went on to use his empathy and professionalism to give voice the people of rural and regional Australia. He didn't need a war zone to tell strong stories.
I don't know what it will be like to finally come home. I'm excited and I'll be relieved to get out of here safely. But I will carry thoughts of Afghanistan, always.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com