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Afghanistan cabinet OKs oil deal with China's CNPC
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's cabinet cleared the way for the war-torn state to sign a deal with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) for the development of oil blocks in the Amu Darya basin, the Afghan president's office said on Monday.
The deal covering drilling and a refinery in the northern provinces of Sar-e Pul and Faryab will be the first international oil production agreement entered into by the Afghan government for several decades.
It marks the second major deal for China in Afghanistan after Metallurgical Corp of China signed a contract in 2008 to develop the huge Aynak copper mine south of Kabul, which is due to start producing by the end of 2014.
"The Afghan cabinet has ordered Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani to sign an oil exploration contract for Amu Darya with China National Petroleum Corporation," the statement said.
Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the mines ministry, said the contract would be signed on Wednesday.
State-owned CNPC and joint venture partner Watan Group -- a diversified Afghan company -- will explore for oil in three fields in the basin - Kashkari, Bazarkhami and Zamarudsay, which are estimated to hold around 87 million barrels of oil.
Under the contract, CNPC will agree to pay a 15 percent royalty on oil, a 20 percent corporate tax and give up to 70 percent of its profit from the project to the Afghan government.
The mines ministry said in October that the deal was likely to result in government revenues of $5 billion over the next 10 years.
Indian and Chinese bidders have been front-runners for deals to develop Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits, which are valued at $3 trillion, worrying Western firms that have hesitated to invest in the country due to security concerns.
Experts have warned that mining projects in Afghanistan are likely targets for insurgents, that production and transport costs will be high and that sovereign risk is a serious concern.
But China and India, where demand for energy and industrial inputs is booming, are willing to take risks to secure supplies.
(Writing by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jane Baird)
Afghan peace official: No foreign interference will be allowed if Taliban decide to talk
By Associated Press, December 26
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan government body seeking a negotiated peace deal with the Taliban insisted Monday it would not tolerate foreign interference in any talks.
The head of the foreign relations department of the High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, emphasized the government’s position in reaction to Afghan media reports that the U.S. and other foreign governments with a stake in the war may try to strike a separate deal with the Taliban.
“Afghans must be in the lead in the talks,” Qasimyar told The Associated Press. “No foreign involvement in the Afghan peace talks is acceptable.”
The peace council is a group of about 70 influential Afghans and former Taliban appointed by President Hamid Karzai to try to reconcile with the insurgents. The former head of the council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated on Sept. 20. Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan, was killed by a suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban.
After Rabbani’s death, Karzai said peace efforts could only take place if the Taliban established a political office that would be authorized to conduct talks on a peaceful end to the 10-year war. He proposed that it be set up in Saudi Arabia or in Turkey if the insurgent movement did not want to establish it in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have not publicly responded to Karzai’s demands. The insurgents, who perceive themselves as winning the war, have repeatedly said they would not engage in peace talks with the government while foreign troops remain on Afghan soil.
On Monday, the Taliban repeated that they were confident of ultimate victory and said that the NATO forces would face the same fate as the Soviet invaders who withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after an almost decade-long war.
The insurgents “are successfully withstanding all the coalition forces led by the U.S. invaders and will make them all face the same fate that befell the Red Army,” said statement marking the 32nd anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1979.
Meanwhile, a gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire on coalition troops in western Afghanistan, military authorities said Monday. Several coalition troops were wounded and the gunman was killed, said an official who asked not to be named because the investigation was ongoing.
The shooting took place Saturday at an outpost in Bala Boluk district, about 340 miles (700 kilometers) west of Kabul, said Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi. A NATO statement said there were no fatalities among alliance soldiers.
If the probe confirms the gunman was a soldier, the shooting would be the latest in a series of attacks by Afghans against coalition partners. Those shootings have raised fears of Taliban infiltration as NATO speeds up the training of Afghan security forces.
The expansion of the army and police is a critical element in NATO’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Coalition troops are to end their combat role in 2014, and the goal is to have 195,000 trained Afghan troops in service by next October.
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Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich
Afghanistan to Disband Irregular Police Force Set Up Under NATO
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times December 26, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai has taken steps to disband a little-known, irregular police force financed by the American military with members in at least four northern provinces. Some members of the force are former militiamen and thugs known as much for extorting money from ordinary citizens as for intimidating insurgents and upholding the law.
The decision appeared aimed at stopping at least some of the militias that are beyond the control of Mr. Karzai’s administration and could one day challenge the government. It also appeared to be an effort to constrain the independence of northern Afghanistan, where strongmen and power brokers, especially the governor of Balkh Province, have often seemed to operate with only nominal deference to the central government in Kabul.
Additionally, it was a slap at NATO, which has had a hand in establishing this particular force, known as the Critical Infrastructure Police.
For Mr. Karzai, the potential long-term threat posed by an irregular police force outweighed any short-term gains it could deliver, said Shaida M. Abdali, Afghanistan’s deputy national security adviser. The force is distinct from a far larger irregular police force, the Afghan Local Police, which Mr. Karzai is preserving, and which is under the control of the Interior Ministry. “We don’t want a force that is likely to be out of control. We don’t want a force that will become a future security threat,” Mr. Abdali said.
The Critical Infrastructure Police has members in Balkh, Kunduz, Jowzjan and Faryab Provinces, according to a letter sent this month to the governors of those provinces by Maj. Gen. Markus Kneip of Germany, the head of NATO’s Regional Command North. Mr. Karzai’s disbandment announcement, released Sunday, said the force also operates in Sar-i-Pul Province.
The force, officially set up in August by Regional Command North, was organized in part to fill a security gap, but it also appears to have been an effort to get control of the scores of often lawless militia groups that intimidate residents in the region.
In Kunduz Province, for instance, local officials and tribal leaders said that many of the infrastructure police officers were simply militiamen renamed. Numbering 1,200 to 1,700 men, according to the estimates of local officials, the infrastructure police officers are untrained, mostly self-armed or armed by the strongmen who are their patrons. They do not wear uniforms.
Formerly unpaid, the force’s members used to routinely extort money, food, fuel and other support in areas under their jurisdiction. NATO then used an American discretionary fund to pay monthly salaries of $150 per officer and $200 per commander, partly in hopes that they would stop such behavior. But it still happens, according to local police officials, one of whom described the force members as “thieves and lowlifes.”
“Now they are trying to behave better,” said an official with a nongovernmental organization in Balkh Province, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “Before they were roving around the countryside, looking to support themselves with their gun,” he said.
Ethnicity is an underlying problem: many of the infrastructure force members are Tajiks or Uzbeks and have exploited their positions to intimidate Pashtuns, who are less numerous in the north. Hazrat Mohammad, 45, a Pashtun resident of Charbolak District in Balkh Province, said last week that he believed he had lost a land dispute to some local power brokers because he had complained about the Critical Infrastructure Police.
“How could the people be happy with the thieves?” Mr. Mohammad said. He said the force’s members had belonged to a gang that demanded $20 in monthly protection money from every house in the district.
Gen. John R. Allen, the senior commander for Afghanistan, described the force in an interview last week as “a temporary solution.” At the time the force was created, he said, Afghanistan lacked the Special Operations forces required to train and vet members of the Afghan Local Police.
The short history of the infrastructure police illustrates how Afghan authorities and NATO commanders often created new problems as they struggled to contain an insurgency after a decade of war. A favored solution has been to establish auxiliary police forces, of which the infrastructure police is just one example. It has proved to be a risky proposition in a country riven by ethnic divisions and saddled with a history of warlords who have employed their own militias to gain dominance and raise money through illegal taxation.
The decision to disband the force appeared to come in part because Mr. Karzai and his aides were not even aware of its existence until he was asked about it by reporters during a visit to Germany this month. He expressed concern about the force’s behavior and asked his staff to look into it.
Dismantling the force may be easier said than done. Neither Mr. Abdali, the deputy national security adviser, nor Sediq Sediqi, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, could say how it would be done. Disarmament efforts have proved extremely difficult in Afghanistan, where many militiamen simply bury their guns for another day.
NATO did not respond on Monday to requests for comment on how the group would be disarmed and disbanded.
Matthew Rosenberg reported from Kabul, and Alissa J. Rubin from New York. Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul.
Top Canadian officials visit troops in Afghanistan
AFP - Mon Dec 26, 6:11 pm ET
Canada's Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Governor General David Johnston traveled to Italy and Afghanistan to spend Christmas with Canadian troops, authorities said Monday.
MacKay and Johnston headed to Rome with General Walt Natynczyk, chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces, to pay a visit to sailors on the frigate Vancouver, which took part in NATO operations off Libya's coast.
Johnston, who represents Queen Elizabeth II in Canada, then attended the funeral of former Czech president Vaclav Havel in Prague, before heading to Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials.
MacKay paid a visit to the Canadian Intermediate Staging Terminal in Kuwait, where 160 Canadian troops are based, before heading to Afghanistan.
The pair met with Canadian troops training Afghan security forces, their offices said.
Canada's longest-running combat mission officially ended in July with handover of security duties in Kandahar province to US and Afghan troops. Canadian forces are now training the Afghan army and police in and near Kabul.
"Canadian forces members have worked tirelessly, at home and abroad, to save lives, provide security, and promote peace," MacKay said.
"It has been a busy, challenging year. As we celebrate the holidays, we should also take time to think of those who are still deployed throughout the world."
4 militants killed in E. Afghanistan in NATO air raid
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Four militants were killed in an air raid in the eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province Sunday night, a local official said Monday.
"Four militants were planting an Improvised Explosive Device ( IED) along a road in Ghani Khil district of Nangarhar province overnight but based on accurate intelligence reports, an aircraft of NATO-led Coalition forces carried out an airstrike killing all militants on the spot," district administration chief Hajji Zualmi told Xinhua.
He said the killed militants had the intention of attacking security forces by an IED in the Ghani Khil district in the province with Jalalabad as its capital 120 km east of capital city of Kabul.
Meantime, a Taliban purported spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told local media via cell phone from undiclsoed location that four of the outfit's insurgents were killed in Nangarhar province.
Separately, Afghan police and army, backed by NATO troops, have killed three insurgents and detained 24 suspected during 10 joint operations in different Afghan provinces over the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday morning.
It said the joint forces also found and seized a handful of weapons in the above operations launched in the Kabul, Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman, Baghlan, Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni and Khost provinces.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch a rebel offensive from May 1 against Afghan and over 130,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the central Asian country.
Afghan president condemns suicide bombing on funeral ceremony
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned a suicide bomb attack on a funeral ceremony in the country's northern Takhar province on Sunday that left at least 19 people dead and injured over 40 others, Karzai's office said on Monday.
The incident happened at around 02:30 p.m. local time on Sunday in Sarhi-e-Sang area of the provincial capital Taluqan city when a suicide bomber blew his explosive vest up in the crowd of people who gathered in a funeral ceremony held for an influential tribal elder, according to officials.
"This ruthless act of terror to target innocent people who had gathered for a religious ceremony yet again demonstrates the vile and vicious nature of the enemy who do not want to see the Muslim people of Afghanistan to perform even their Islamic rituals," Karzai was quoted in a statement as saying while strongly condemning the attack.
A member of Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Afghan parliament Abdul Mutalib Baig was also killed in the attack in the relatively peaceful province, 245 km north of Kabul.
It was not immediately known whether Mutalib Baig, the representative of Takhar people in the parliament, a former Jihadi leader and an anti-Taliban commander, was the likely target of the attack.
"Initial reports indicate that 19 people including Abdul Mutalib Baig, a member of the parliament were killed and 40 others were injured in the incident," the statement said.
"According to latest reports, a total of 20 people were killed and over 45 others were injured in Sunday's suicide bombing in Takhar province, but the causalities could further rise as some injured remain in critical conditions," deputy provincial police chief Mahmood Assan told Xinhua on Monday morning.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. Taliban militants who largely rely on roadside bombings and suicide attacks have yet to make comments.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch a rebel offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The Taliban outfit has also warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants.
Meantime, top U.S. and NATO commander in the country General John R. Allen also condemned the attack, said a press release of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those affected with the loss of life and injuries in today's barbaric attack," said Allen.
"These attackers are cowards, callously targeting and killing families and friends who had gathered to mourn a loved one. Those responsible for this shameful act must only be interested in destruction, alienating themselves from the Afghan people. They are neither Afghan nor are they true Muslims," the top NATO commander said, adding "ISAF remains committed to stopping acts of terror and building an increased security environment to promote peace and prosperity for Afghanistan."
This is the second bloody suicide attack in the insurgency-hit country since the beginning of December this year.
A total of 80 people were killed and over 190 others were injured when a suicide bomber targeted a shrine where hundreds of mourners were observing Ashura, the Muslim day of mourning on Dec. 6 in capital city of Kabul.
Afghanistan Low on News Agenda
By BRIAN STELTER December 25, 2011, 7:46 pm The New York Times
The 10-year-old war in Afghanistan remained just a blip on the American news media’s radar in 2011.
CBS Lara Logan interviewing Capt. John Hintz in Afghanistan.
Of all the news content in newspapers and on the Web, television and radio this year, Afghanistan accounted for about 2 percent of coverage, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center.
Six other subjects were given more sustained attention than the war there. In descending order, they were the economy in the United States; the unrest in the Middle East; the 2012 presidential election; the earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster in Japan; the killing of Osama bin Laden; and the shooting in Tucson in which six were killed and Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, was critically injured.
The figures come from the project’s weekly monitoring of 52 major papers, news Web sites, TV networks and stations, and radio stations. The project uses that sample to show what is atop the national news agenda, and what is not.
In a year-end report last week, the project’s researchers noted that “despite a drop in coverage of the war in Afghanistan,” there was an increase in international news over all, owing largely to the war in Libya and the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries. The United States’ withdrawal from Iraq accounted for less than 1 percent of all news coverage.
Since Pew started its weekly monitoring in 2007, the war in Afghanistan has never accounted for more than 5 percent of all news coverage on an annual basis. In 2010, Afghanistan accounted for 4 percent of all news coverage.
The United States has about 91,000 troops in Afghanistan now. For much of this year and last, about 100,000 United States troops were in the country.
The news executives that pay for bureaus in Afghanistan have had to contend with tight news-gathering budgets, safety concerns and, in some cases, a perception that American audiences are not interested in the situation.
The relative dearth of coverage has brought occasional criticism in the United States, particularly from those who recall vigorous coverage of the Vietnam War. “Other than in its early stages in 2001-2002, the American press has greatly underreported this war,” John Hanrahan, formerly the executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, wrote in an essay for Nieman Watchdog in August.
“This paucity of reporting — the almost total reliance on just a few reporters — has stark implications for how the war is perceived back home,” Mr. Hanrahan wrote. “The fewer the reporters, the fewer the first-hand accounts needed for citizens to form knowledgeable opinions of the war.”
Afghan president appoints new election officials
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has named three new commissioners, including a former provincial governor, to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), a body that has faced criticism in the past for failing to stand up to government pressure.
The internationally-funded IEC has been at the centre of a standoff between the Karzai administration and parliament over a fraud-marred 2010 vote in which it threw out nearly a quarter of all votes over fraud and technical complaints.
Two of the new commissioners are former members of parliament, Rida Azimi from Parwan province, and Sayed Hashim Folad from Nangarhar, while the third official is Ghulam Dastagir Azad, who was earlier appointed by Karzai as governor of Uruzgan province.
A spokesman for the seven-member IEC said the appointments had been made following the end of the three-year terms of three officials. The terms of two other officials was extended, while the remaining officials were in the middle of their term.
"Their term was over. They had to be either extended or replaced. This is President's decision," Noor Ahmad said.
The presidency was not immediately available for comment.
Karzai is in his second term in office. According to the Afghan constitution, he is not allowed to run for a third term, although the opposition has accused him of wanting to change the rules to be able to do so. Karzai has denied the allegation.
The changes at the election commission follow replacements of four people at the national human rights commission including Ahmad Nader Nadery, an outspoken critic of Karzai, last week.
Some analysts said the administration was quietly pushing through the appointments during the holiday season.
The IEC said in August it would replace nine parliamentarians it had earlier declared as winners in the parliament vote, in line with a ruling by a court appointed by Karzai to investigate election fraud.
The election body which ran the foreign-funded parliamentary election last year had initially objected to the poll court's June ruling as unconstitutional, but later softened its stance and assented to the replacement of nine legislators.
Critics say the court was set up to further Karzai's political agenda and silence an opposition that made major gains in the 2010 parliamentary vote.
The IEC oversaw Karzai's last election in 2009, a vote also marred by widespread fraud.
(Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Al-Qaida leadership almost wiped out in Pakistan, British officials believe
Senior members of al-Qaida are feared to be moving to north Africa to open up a new front after being weakened in Pakistan
Guardian.co.uk By Jason Burke Sunday 25 December 2011
Senior British officials believe that a "last push" in 2012 is likely to definitively destroy al-Qaida's remaining senior leadership in Pakistan, opening a new phase in the battle against Islamist terrorism.
So many senior members of the organisation have been killed in an intense campaign of air strikes involving missiles launched from unmanned drones that "only a handful of the key players" remain alive, one official said.
However, well-informed sources outside government and close to Islamist groups in north Africa said at least two relatively senior al-Qaida figures have already made their way to Libya, with others intercepted en route, raising fears that north Africa could become a new "theatre of jihad" in coming months or years.
"A group of very experienced figures from north Africa left camps in Afghanistan's [north-eastern] Kunar province where they have been based for several years and travelled back across the Middle East," one source said. "Some got stopped but a few got through."
It is unclear whether the moves from west Asia to north Africa are prompted by a desire for greater security – which seems unlikely as Nato forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan – or part of a strategic attempt to exploit the aftermath of the Arab spring. They may even be trying to shift the centre of gravity of al-Qaida's effort back to the homelands of the vast majority of its members.
Since the death of Osama bin Laden in a US special forces raid in Pakistan last May, other senior leaders have also been eliminated, even though the numbers of strikes are lower than last year.
The problems for al-Qaida in west Asia have been compounded by a smaller flow of volunteers reaching makeshift bases in Pakistan's tribal zones. "I think they are really very much weakened," said the official. "You can't say they don't pose a threat – they do – but it's a much lesser one."
British and US intelligence sources have told the Guardian they estimate that there are less than 100 "al-Qaida or al-Qaida-affiliated" militants in Afghanistan, of whom only "a handful" were seen to pose a threat internationally to the UK or other western nations.
Officials dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan say they see al-Qaida's activity as "effectively marginal" to events there. Instead, local networks, such as that run by the Haqqani family in the semi-autonomous tribal agency of North Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border, are deemed more important.
Repeated efforts to push the Pakistani authorities to take military action against the Haqqanis have been rebuffed. Western and international officials said senior Pakistani military officers insisted they needed the Haqqani network, which has not attacked Pakistani targets though it has repeatedly struck Nato and other western targets in Afghanistan, to keep militant groups that make up the Pakistani Taliban network "under control". These latter have repeatedly struck civilian and military targets within Pakistan.
Western officials dismissed the argument as far-fetched and unrealistic. One international official said, however, that there was evidence the Haqqani family had been acting as intermediaries between the Pakistani secret services and militant groups and described the Pakistani position as "understandable".
"To move against the Haqqanis is a no-win option for the Pakistani military. If they suffer heavy casualties and fail to eliminate the group, they lose their authority and a key interlocutor. If they succeed, they lose a key asset," the official said.
Though the hunt for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the veteran Egyptian militant strategist who replaced Bin Laden as leader of al-Qaida, is a top priority, western officials say there is equal emphasis on eliminating those immediately below him in the now somewhat chaotic hierarchy.
These include Saif al-Adel, an experienced operator who may have returned to Pakistan, and Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan in his mid-40s who escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan and has featured in propaganda videos.
Adel interests western intelligence services as "he is exactly the sort of low-profile, effective type who you don't want". Some doubt he is in Pakistan at all, suggesting he may be in detention in Iran.
"The fact that we can't be sure where someone like [Adel] actually is underlines how problematic dealing with this whole issue still is. There's still a lot we simply don't know," one official said.
Few doubt that al-Qaida is evolving. "Al-Zawahiri's leadership is transitional and he is handicapped by his own old school background. We are waiting to see what a new al-Qaida might look like," the official said.
Overall, analysts say, the picture is one of fragmentation, with groups in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere pursuing local agendas. One example is the apparent move of al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia into humanitarian aid, a departure from the core leadership's past strategies. In Nigeria, the Boko Haram group has had financial help from the affiliate al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb but is not thought to have any interest in being part of al-Qaida global.
In Europe, security services say levels of radicalisation have stabilised. Analysis of a list of "recent martyrs" published by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which shares al-Qaida's ideology and is also based in Pakistan's tribal areas, appears to show that fewer number of Europeans than feared reached the group, previously been favoured by German-based extremists. Of the near 100 listed, only one was German and most appeared to be local men.
The move to Libya is seen as particularly alarming. William Hague, the foreign secretary, recently warned that mercenaries driven out of Libya could switch allegiance to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. While this seems unlikely, sources in Libyan mainstream Islamist groups say there is evidence of grassroots activism by individuals linked to al-Qaida that could lead to new cells being formed.
In a recent communique, Zawahiri made a particular appeal to Libyan fighters not to lay down or hand in their weapons.
Training stepped up for Afghan special forces
By DEB RIECHMANN | AP – Sun, Dec 25, 2011.
CAMP SCORPION, Afghanistan (AP) — "Attention! Attention! You are surrounded by Afghan forces. Come out with your hands up."
The order barked by an Afghan soldier launched a training exercise last week that pitted members of the nation's growing elite force against actors posing as Taliban fighters.
Afghanistan and the U.S.-led coalition have stepped up training of the Afghan special forces unit to fill the vacuum that will be left by foreign troops slated to end their combat mission in 2014. In the future, it will be Afghan special forces countering insurgents in villages across the country.
As the force expands, they will also lead more of the controversial house searches — something that could mitigate Afghan President Hamid Karzai's intense opposition to the nighttime raids by international troops that Afghans have found culturally offensive.
Even though Afghan troops have been along for the more than 2,800 raids during the past year, Karzai has argued that the teams often treat innocent Afghans as if they were insurgents and violate citizens' privacy in the conservative Afghan society.
Karzai wants all raids halted. He wants foreign troops to stop entering Afghan homes. The thorny issue is being negotiated by U.S. and Afghan officials crafting a strategic agreement that will govern how remaining American forces operate in Afghanistan after 2014.
A recent national assembly of elders advised the Karzai government to allow the raids to continue as long as they are conducted solely by Afghans. If so, many more Afghan special forces soldiers need to be trained.
Neither NATO nor the Afghan Ministry of Defense would disclose how many Afghan special forces had been trained or how large the force will become. Jalaluddin Yaftali, a special forces team leader at the training site, said the force currently numbered 1,000 to 1,500.
"It takes time. It's like nation-building — an endless task. It will take years, but the will is there and right now the force is growing," said Afghan army Col. Mohammad Farid Ahmadi.
"The program started two years ago, but now we are jointly working with the coalition forces to Afghanize as soon as possible. We have already started. It's growing."
So far, most have been recruited from the Afghan National Army Commandos, a quick reaction force regarded as the most professional unit in the Afghan army. Commandos receive 10 weeks of training on top of the roughly 10 weeks they completed to become an Afghan soldier. Moreover, Afghan soldiers usually serve about four years as commandos before being selected for special forces training.
Their training is further refined while partnered with American forces. Eventually, they will be tasked with a variety of operational missions, including night raids, throughout the country.
"It not only takes a long time to select the right people for the job, but also to bring them through a training program so they are capable of operating with other special forces or on their own," German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO spokesman, said at the training site on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
While some are already conducting solo operations, the Afghan special forces will continue to need coalition air power, intelligence and other support for years to come, he said.
Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. political scientist who advised the commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, said it's hard to rush special forces training.
"The Afghan program, which was first conceptualized in 2009 and established in 2010, is relatively new. I remember participating in the brainstorming sessions as we helped build the Afghan special forces," Jones said.
"Focusing on numbers, rather than quality, and trying to mass produce Afghan special forces would be a serious mistake. I'm not suggesting anyone is doing this yet, but it should be monitored very closely."
The Afghan soldiers conducting the training exercise crouched in shadows at the foot of man-made hills surrounding the practice compound. The residential compound resembled a western cowboy movie set.
"Drop your weapons!" the Afghan soldier barked into a bullhorn. "Keep your hands raised and come out."
Trying to give the occupants time to cooperate, the more than 20-man Afghan special forces team waited patiently, their guns drawn. When nobody came out, they tossed two harmless grenades that made loud bangs when they landed in front of the house.
A few minutes later, an actress covered in a red shawl slowly emerged with her hands raised. The soldier with the bullhorn asked her to reveal her face so the troops could be sure she was a woman and not a man. When it was clear that she was female, she was led away to be searched by a female Afghan soldier.
Having male troops search females is taboo in Afghanistan. So is touching a family's Quran, the Muslim holy book, or entering a home without being invited — things that foreign forces have learned in the decade-long war.
Soon after the woman left, two men walked from the house with their hands held high. Making sure they weren't armed, the troops ordered them to lift their shirts and pant legs. The would-be Afghan suspects then were cuffed and taken away.
"We are asking the Defense Ministry to make one special forces platoon of just female soldiers so they can go talk to the families, the children, the women," Yaftali said. "If you are a female, you can talk openly with the family."
It was clear to onlookers that the more than 20 Afghan special forces soldiers who conducted the house search and did a live ammunition training exercise with M4 rifles and 9mm pistols were the best of the elite force. With their dark glasses, night vision headsets, microphones and radios, they looked just like their U.S. Special Operations forces counterparts.
Jones said the first Afghan special forces soldiers trained were very competent because they were recruited directly from the Afghan National Army Commandos.
"In practical terms, this suggests that there will be some variation in the competence of Afghan special forces by 2014," Jones said. "Some will be fully capable ... but others may struggle."
Afghan Commandos Kill Nearly 70 Insurgents
TOLOnews.com Monday, 26 December 2011
Nearly seventy insurgents have been killed during recent operations conducted by the Afghan National Army commandos, officials said on Sunday.
The operations were conducted in different parts of the country over the past three months.
Around seventy other militants were wounded during the operations, according to Gen. Sayed Abdul Karim, the commander of the commando unit of the Afghan National Army.
Gen. Karim said that the Afghan commandos are now able to conduct night raids.
Night raids have been the point of tensions between the Afghan government and the United States.
Foreign military officials argue that the night raids have been effective in tracking insurgents and said that they would increase Afghan forces' involvement in such raids in the future.
According to Nato no shot has been fired during 85 percent of night raids and have vowed to take all measures to decrease civilian casualties.
It is said that the number of Afghan commandos have reached 9,000 and the number is expected to increase.
Afghan commandos are said to be conducting independent and partnered operations against insurgents in different parts of the country.
The commandos are equipped with modern equipment based on Nato standards, officials say.
Afghan commandos are receiving special trainings and efforts are being made to improve their capabilities to conduct operations independently.
Officials say that National Army helicopters are also involved in some air attacks against insurgents.
U.S. Report Faults NATO Delays on Pakistan Strike
By ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times December 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — A military investigation has concluded that it took about 45 minutes for a NATO operations officer in Afghanistan to notify a senior allied commander about Pakistan’s calls that its outposts were under attack, one of several breakdowns in communication that contributed to airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers last month.
Once alerted, the commander immediately ordered a halt to American attacks on two Pakistani border posts. By then, communications between the two militaries had sorted out a chain of errors and the shooting had stopped. The delay, by at least one officer and possibly a second, raises questions about whether a faster response could have spared the lives of some Pakistani soldiers.
Officials “did not respond correctly, quickly enough or with the sense of urgency or initiative required given the gravity of the situation and the well known sensitivity surrounding the Afghan-Pakistan border region,” the report found.
An unclassified version of the report, released Monday by the military’s Central Command, also revealed for the first time that an American AC-130 gunship flew two miles into Pakistan’s airspace to return fire on Pakistani troops who had attacked a joint American-Afghan ground patrol just across the border in Afghanistan.
The 30-page report, which expanded upon a briefing last week by the chief investigator, Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Clark of the Air Force, also found that competing NATO and American rules of engagement related to operations along the border “lacked clarity and precision, and were not followed.”
The full report alters and expands upon the impression of the inquiry’s findings created by General Clark’s briefing, which had emphasized how checks on both sides failed. Among the reason the checks failed, he said, were because American officials did not trust Pakistan enough to give it detailed information about American troop locations in Afghanistan, and Pakistan had not informed NATO of the locations of its new border posts.
The details released Monday add to those failures unexplained delays and a lack of urgency by NATO officers in notifying their superiors of the unfolding late-night debacle that has plunged relations between the two countries to new lows.
The report recommended nine changes, including reviewing and harmonizing all directives related to border operations, increased training and coordination, improved surveillance before missions, and more current information on the location of border installations on both sides of the boundary.
Most of all, General Clark said, the two countries must take steps toward resolving the deep mistrust that prevented both sides from sharing vital information about their locations and operations.
“The way to long-term peace and stability along the border is to be found in resolving the longstanding border disputes that perpetuate a state of uncertainty and mistrust,” he wrote.
In a statement on Monday, Gen. James N. Mattis, who leads the Central Command, directed the top allied officer in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, to carry out most of the recommendations “as soon as operationally possible.”
The episode, the worst in nearly a decade of fatal cross-border mistakes, exposed the flaws in a system devised to avoid such mistakes. The report criticized an allied practice, in place since at least August, of not divulging to Pakistan the precise location of allied ground troops in Afghanistan for fear Pakistan might jeopardize their operations.
Indeed, the report said that in October allied troops were forced to abort an assault on the same target — the village of Maya, Afghanistan, where as many as 50 Taliban fighters were believed to be operating — when they came under heavy rocket-propelled-grenade fire. Allied troops suspected Pakistani sympathizers had tipped off the insurgents.
In his briefing last week, General Clark outlined a series of miscommunications on both sides that he said contributed to the accident. But the report offered new details.
At 12:35 a.m. on Nov. 26, about halfway through the episode, a NATO liaison officer in Pakistan notified the night director in an allied operations center in Afghanistan that Pakistan said its troops were under attack, presumably from NATO aircraft. The liaison officer did not alert a top general in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. James Laster, until 1:20 a.m., after the firefight had ended.
Before the mission began, General Laster had ordered two precautions to reduce the risk of accidental contact. He moved the ground patrol’s helicopter landing zone farther away from the Pakistani border, and he requested the location of any nearby Pakistani outposts. The list he received was outdated.
Pakistan has insisted that its forces did nothing wrong, and that they did not fire the first shots. Senior Pakistani military and civilian officials have accused the United States of intentionally striking the border posts, even after Pakistani officers called their counterparts to complain that they were under allied attack.
General Clark’s report acknowledged that a pivotal allied mistake was not informing Pakistan about the patrol. Without that warning, the Pakistani soldiers would not have known to expect allied forces nearby. NATO and Pakistani forces are supposed to inform each other about operations on the border to avoid this kind of mistake.
U.S. Prepares for a Curtailed Relationship With Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT December 25, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - With the United States facing the reality that its broad security partnership with Pakistan is over, American officials are seeking to salvage a more limited counterterrorism alliance that they acknowledge will complicate their ability to launch attacks against extremists and move supplies into Afghanistan.
The United States will be forced to restrict drone strikes, limit the number of its spies and soldiers on the ground and spend more to transport supplies through Pakistan to allied troops in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials said. United States aid to Pakistan will also be reduced sharply, they said.
“We’ve closed the chapter on the post-9/11 period,” said a senior United States official, who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing Pakistani officials. “Pakistan has told us very clearly that they are re-evaluating the entire relationship.”
American officials say that the relationship will endure in some form, but that the contours will not be clear until Pakistan completes its wide-ranging review in the coming weeks.
The Obama administration got a taste of the new terms immediately after an American airstrike killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border last month. Pakistan closed the supply routes into Afghanistan, boycotted a conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan and forced the United States to shut its drone operations at a base in southwestern Pakistan.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, an opposition political party, summed up the anger that he said many harbored: “We feel like the U.S. treats Pakistan like a rainy-day girlfriend.”
Whatever emerges will be a shadow of the sweeping strategic relationship that Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, championed before his death a year ago. Officials from both countries filled more than a dozen committees to work on issues like health, the rule of law and economic development.
All of that has been abandoned and will most likely be replaced by a much narrower set of agreements on core priorities — countering terrorists, stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring the safety of Pakistan’s arsenal of more than 100 nuclear weapons — that Pakistan will want spelled out in writing and agreed to in advance.
With American diplomats essentially waiting quietly and Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes on hold since Nov. 16 — the longest pause since 2008 — Pakistan’s government is drawing up what Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called “red lines” for a new relationship that protects his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Said an American official: “Both countries recognize the benefits of partnering against common threats, but those must be balanced against national interests as well. The balancing is a continuous process.”
First, officials said, will likely be a series of step-by-step agreements on military cooperation, intelligence sharing and counterterrorism operations, including stricter targeting criteria and revamped flight zones over Pakistan’s largely ungoverned borderlands where C.I.A. drones will be allowed to hunt a shrinking number of Al Qaeda leaders and other militants.
The C.I.A. has conducted 64 missile attacks in Pakistan using drones this year, compared with 117 last year and 53 in 2009, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the strikes.
In one of the most visible signs of rising anti-American sentiment in this country, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Lahore and Peshawar this month. And on Sunday in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, at least 100,000 people rallied to support Imran Khan, a cricket celebrity and rising opposition politician who is outspoken in his criticism of the drone strikes and ties with the United States.
Some Pakistani officers talk openly about shooting down any American drones that violate Pakistani sovereignty. “Nothing is happening on counterterrorism right now,” said a senior Pakistani security official. “It will never go back to the way it was.”
Any new security framework will also require increased transit fees for the thousands of trucks that supply NATO troops in Afghanistan, a bill that allied officials say could run millions of dollars in extra costs.
Officials from Pakistan and the United States anticipate steep reductions in American security aid, including the continued suspension of more than $1 billion in military assistance and equipment, frozen since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
The number of American military officers, enlisted troops and contractors in Pakistan has dropped to about 100, from about 400 more than a year ago, including scores of American trainers who have all been sent home. Pakistan is also restricting visas to dozens of other embassy personnel, from spies to aid workers.
Of the nearly two dozen American, Western and Pakistani officials interviewed for this article, a few sought to put the best face on a worsening situation. With Pakistan taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council for two years beginning next month, these officials argued that too much was at stake to rupture ties completely. “It is better to have a predictable, more focused relationship than an incredibly ambitious out-of-control relationship,” said one Western official.
But another Western diplomat put it more bluntly: “It’s a fairly gloomy picture.”
Just two months ago, a visit here by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director; and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to begin to thaw relations that had been nearly frozen since Raymond Davis, a C.I.A. security contractor, shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January and Navy Seals killed Bin Laden in May.
Pakistani manufacturers of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a component of homemade bombs used against American soldiers in Afghanistan, tentatively agreed to dye it for easier tracing, American officials said. Interior Ministry officials pledged to track large, unexplained purchases of the substance.
At the same time, Pakistani officials indicated that they would help rein in attacks by the Haqqani network, an insurgent group that is the main killer of allied troops in Afghanistan, and there were hints that Pakistan would pave the way for peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But the fatal airstrike on Nov. 26 erased that preliminary progress, dealing the most serious blow to reconciliation talks involving Pakistan. “It’s not happening,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister.
All of this comes as the Pakistani economy is in a free fall, civilian and military leaders are clashing over purported coup plots, and 150,000 Pakistani troops are stuck in a stalemate fighting a witches’ brew of militants along the Afghan border.
“These people are stuck there very badly,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired lieutenant general and a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan’s main spy agency.
The number of attacks from homemade bombs throughout the country, but mostly focused in the border areas, skyrocketed to 1,036 through November this year, compared with 413 for all of 2007, according to the Pakistani military. More than 3,500 Pakistani soldiers and police have been killed since 2002.
The Obama administration is desperately trying to preserve the critical pieces of the relationship. General Dempsey asked the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a phone call on Wednesday if the relationship could be repaired, a person briefed on the conversation said. General Kayani said that he thought it could, but that Pakistan needed some space.
The State Department this month quietly dispatched a senior diplomat and South Asia specialist, Robin Raphel, to canvass a wide spectrum of Pakistanis. She returned with a sober assessment and the view that many Pakistanis will not move forward without a formal apology from President Obama for the airstrike, which White House aides say is not in the offing.
Still, administration officials held out hope. “We’ve been very forthright in acknowledging that this is a relationship that needs to work,” a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said on Friday.
Pakistan PM denies reports govt wants to sack army, intel chiefs
By Faisal Aziz
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Monday denied domestic media reports he was planning to sack the powerful army and intelligence chiefs, saying the military supported democracy.
The reports about army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence (DG-ISI), Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, were the latest in what has been feverish press speculation about a rift between civilian politicians and the military.
"As far as the rumors that the government wants to remove the DG-ISI and General Kayani, this impression is simply a fools' talk," Gilani told reporters in comments broadcast on television.
"It is wrong to spread such talk. If this was the case, I wouldn't have given them extensions.... I am happy with his (army chief's) work and I want to dispel this impression."
The government last year extended Kayani's term of office to 2013, while Pasha's term was extended to March 2012.
Speculation of a rift between the civilian government and the army follows publication of an unsigned memo seeking Washington's help to rein in the military after U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
Pakistan's then ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has been accused of writing the memo on behalf of the government. He denies involvement but has resigned pending an investigation.
The army, which ruled Pakistan for almost half of its 64-year history, said last week it was not planning to take over after a spate of rumors it might move against President Asif Ali Zardari.
Gilani said Kayani was pro-democracy, and he was not willing to remove him when the country was in the middle of a war.
The Supreme Court is looking into a petition demanding an inquiry into what has become known as "memogate." Kayani has called for an investigation into the memo.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Congress calls on Twitter to block Taliban
American congressmen are calling on Twitter to block Taliban propagandists from the micro-blogging site.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 25 Dec 2011
Kabul - Senators want to stop feeds which boast of insurgent attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan and the casualties they inflict.
Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt to eliminate violent Islamist extremist propaganda from the internet and social media.
The Taliban movement has embraced the social network as part of its propaganda effort and regularly tweets about attacks or posts links to its statements.
The information has ranged from highly accurate, up-to-the-minute accounts of unfolding spectacular attacks, to often completely fabricated or wildly exaggerated reports of American and British casualties.
Twitter feeds including @ABalkhi, which has more than 4,100 followers, and @alemarahweb, which has more than 6,200 followers, regularly feature tweeted boasts about the deaths of "cowardly invaders" and "puppet" Afghan government forces.
Taliban spokesmen also frequently spar with Nato press officers on Twitter, as they challenge and rebut each other's statements.
Twitter declined to say if the company had been asked to block the feeds by Mr Lieberman.
Rachel Bremer, a spokesman for Twitter, said: "This isn't something we'd comment on."
In 2008 Google agreed to tighten its rules for hosting videos on YouTube after Mr Lieberman complained the site hosted films from al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist movements showing attacks on American forces in Iraq.
Leslie Phillips, a spokesman for the senate homeland security committee, said: "Senator Lieberman's efforts to eliminate violent Islamist extremism propaganda from the internet and social media has been a campaign of persuasion.
"He has written letters, for example to Google seeking the company to enforce more strongly its terms of service, which ban the sort of thing that we see from violent Islamist extremists.
"Google responded positively to the Senator's letter."
However Twitter is reported to be rejecting the move after pointing out that unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban movement is not registered by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organisation.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's cabinet cleared the way for the war-torn state to sign a deal with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) for the development of oil blocks in the Amu Darya basin, the Afghan president's office said on Monday.
The deal covering drilling and a refinery in the northern provinces of Sar-e Pul and Faryab will be the first international oil production agreement entered into by the Afghan government for several decades.
It marks the second major deal for China in Afghanistan after Metallurgical Corp of China signed a contract in 2008 to develop the huge Aynak copper mine south of Kabul, which is due to start producing by the end of 2014.
"The Afghan cabinet has ordered Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani to sign an oil exploration contract for Amu Darya with China National Petroleum Corporation," the statement said.
Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the mines ministry, said the contract would be signed on Wednesday.
State-owned CNPC and joint venture partner Watan Group -- a diversified Afghan company -- will explore for oil in three fields in the basin - Kashkari, Bazarkhami and Zamarudsay, which are estimated to hold around 87 million barrels of oil.
Under the contract, CNPC will agree to pay a 15 percent royalty on oil, a 20 percent corporate tax and give up to 70 percent of its profit from the project to the Afghan government.
The mines ministry said in October that the deal was likely to result in government revenues of $5 billion over the next 10 years.
Indian and Chinese bidders have been front-runners for deals to develop Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits, which are valued at $3 trillion, worrying Western firms that have hesitated to invest in the country due to security concerns.
Experts have warned that mining projects in Afghanistan are likely targets for insurgents, that production and transport costs will be high and that sovereign risk is a serious concern.
But China and India, where demand for energy and industrial inputs is booming, are willing to take risks to secure supplies.
(Writing by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jane Baird)
Afghan peace official: No foreign interference will be allowed if Taliban decide to talk
By Associated Press, December 26
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan government body seeking a negotiated peace deal with the Taliban insisted Monday it would not tolerate foreign interference in any talks.
The head of the foreign relations department of the High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, emphasized the government’s position in reaction to Afghan media reports that the U.S. and other foreign governments with a stake in the war may try to strike a separate deal with the Taliban.
“Afghans must be in the lead in the talks,” Qasimyar told The Associated Press. “No foreign involvement in the Afghan peace talks is acceptable.”
The peace council is a group of about 70 influential Afghans and former Taliban appointed by President Hamid Karzai to try to reconcile with the insurgents. The former head of the council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated on Sept. 20. Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan, was killed by a suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban.
After Rabbani’s death, Karzai said peace efforts could only take place if the Taliban established a political office that would be authorized to conduct talks on a peaceful end to the 10-year war. He proposed that it be set up in Saudi Arabia or in Turkey if the insurgent movement did not want to establish it in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have not publicly responded to Karzai’s demands. The insurgents, who perceive themselves as winning the war, have repeatedly said they would not engage in peace talks with the government while foreign troops remain on Afghan soil.
On Monday, the Taliban repeated that they were confident of ultimate victory and said that the NATO forces would face the same fate as the Soviet invaders who withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after an almost decade-long war.
The insurgents “are successfully withstanding all the coalition forces led by the U.S. invaders and will make them all face the same fate that befell the Red Army,” said statement marking the 32nd anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1979.
Meanwhile, a gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire on coalition troops in western Afghanistan, military authorities said Monday. Several coalition troops were wounded and the gunman was killed, said an official who asked not to be named because the investigation was ongoing.
The shooting took place Saturday at an outpost in Bala Boluk district, about 340 miles (700 kilometers) west of Kabul, said Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi. A NATO statement said there were no fatalities among alliance soldiers.
If the probe confirms the gunman was a soldier, the shooting would be the latest in a series of attacks by Afghans against coalition partners. Those shootings have raised fears of Taliban infiltration as NATO speeds up the training of Afghan security forces.
The expansion of the army and police is a critical element in NATO’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
Coalition troops are to end their combat role in 2014, and the goal is to have 195,000 trained Afghan troops in service by next October.
___
Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich
Afghanistan to Disband Irregular Police Force Set Up Under NATO
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times December 26, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai has taken steps to disband a little-known, irregular police force financed by the American military with members in at least four northern provinces. Some members of the force are former militiamen and thugs known as much for extorting money from ordinary citizens as for intimidating insurgents and upholding the law.
The decision appeared aimed at stopping at least some of the militias that are beyond the control of Mr. Karzai’s administration and could one day challenge the government. It also appeared to be an effort to constrain the independence of northern Afghanistan, where strongmen and power brokers, especially the governor of Balkh Province, have often seemed to operate with only nominal deference to the central government in Kabul.
Additionally, it was a slap at NATO, which has had a hand in establishing this particular force, known as the Critical Infrastructure Police.
For Mr. Karzai, the potential long-term threat posed by an irregular police force outweighed any short-term gains it could deliver, said Shaida M. Abdali, Afghanistan’s deputy national security adviser. The force is distinct from a far larger irregular police force, the Afghan Local Police, which Mr. Karzai is preserving, and which is under the control of the Interior Ministry. “We don’t want a force that is likely to be out of control. We don’t want a force that will become a future security threat,” Mr. Abdali said.
The Critical Infrastructure Police has members in Balkh, Kunduz, Jowzjan and Faryab Provinces, according to a letter sent this month to the governors of those provinces by Maj. Gen. Markus Kneip of Germany, the head of NATO’s Regional Command North. Mr. Karzai’s disbandment announcement, released Sunday, said the force also operates in Sar-i-Pul Province.
The force, officially set up in August by Regional Command North, was organized in part to fill a security gap, but it also appears to have been an effort to get control of the scores of often lawless militia groups that intimidate residents in the region.
In Kunduz Province, for instance, local officials and tribal leaders said that many of the infrastructure police officers were simply militiamen renamed. Numbering 1,200 to 1,700 men, according to the estimates of local officials, the infrastructure police officers are untrained, mostly self-armed or armed by the strongmen who are their patrons. They do not wear uniforms.
Formerly unpaid, the force’s members used to routinely extort money, food, fuel and other support in areas under their jurisdiction. NATO then used an American discretionary fund to pay monthly salaries of $150 per officer and $200 per commander, partly in hopes that they would stop such behavior. But it still happens, according to local police officials, one of whom described the force members as “thieves and lowlifes.”
“Now they are trying to behave better,” said an official with a nongovernmental organization in Balkh Province, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “Before they were roving around the countryside, looking to support themselves with their gun,” he said.
Ethnicity is an underlying problem: many of the infrastructure force members are Tajiks or Uzbeks and have exploited their positions to intimidate Pashtuns, who are less numerous in the north. Hazrat Mohammad, 45, a Pashtun resident of Charbolak District in Balkh Province, said last week that he believed he had lost a land dispute to some local power brokers because he had complained about the Critical Infrastructure Police.
“How could the people be happy with the thieves?” Mr. Mohammad said. He said the force’s members had belonged to a gang that demanded $20 in monthly protection money from every house in the district.
Gen. John R. Allen, the senior commander for Afghanistan, described the force in an interview last week as “a temporary solution.” At the time the force was created, he said, Afghanistan lacked the Special Operations forces required to train and vet members of the Afghan Local Police.
The short history of the infrastructure police illustrates how Afghan authorities and NATO commanders often created new problems as they struggled to contain an insurgency after a decade of war. A favored solution has been to establish auxiliary police forces, of which the infrastructure police is just one example. It has proved to be a risky proposition in a country riven by ethnic divisions and saddled with a history of warlords who have employed their own militias to gain dominance and raise money through illegal taxation.
The decision to disband the force appeared to come in part because Mr. Karzai and his aides were not even aware of its existence until he was asked about it by reporters during a visit to Germany this month. He expressed concern about the force’s behavior and asked his staff to look into it.
Dismantling the force may be easier said than done. Neither Mr. Abdali, the deputy national security adviser, nor Sediq Sediqi, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, could say how it would be done. Disarmament efforts have proved extremely difficult in Afghanistan, where many militiamen simply bury their guns for another day.
NATO did not respond on Monday to requests for comment on how the group would be disarmed and disbanded.
Matthew Rosenberg reported from Kabul, and Alissa J. Rubin from New York. Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul.
Top Canadian officials visit troops in Afghanistan
AFP - Mon Dec 26, 6:11 pm ET
Canada's Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Governor General David Johnston traveled to Italy and Afghanistan to spend Christmas with Canadian troops, authorities said Monday.
MacKay and Johnston headed to Rome with General Walt Natynczyk, chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces, to pay a visit to sailors on the frigate Vancouver, which took part in NATO operations off Libya's coast.
Johnston, who represents Queen Elizabeth II in Canada, then attended the funeral of former Czech president Vaclav Havel in Prague, before heading to Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials.
MacKay paid a visit to the Canadian Intermediate Staging Terminal in Kuwait, where 160 Canadian troops are based, before heading to Afghanistan.
The pair met with Canadian troops training Afghan security forces, their offices said.
Canada's longest-running combat mission officially ended in July with handover of security duties in Kandahar province to US and Afghan troops. Canadian forces are now training the Afghan army and police in and near Kabul.
"Canadian forces members have worked tirelessly, at home and abroad, to save lives, provide security, and promote peace," MacKay said.
"It has been a busy, challenging year. As we celebrate the holidays, we should also take time to think of those who are still deployed throughout the world."
4 militants killed in E. Afghanistan in NATO air raid
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Four militants were killed in an air raid in the eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province Sunday night, a local official said Monday.
"Four militants were planting an Improvised Explosive Device ( IED) along a road in Ghani Khil district of Nangarhar province overnight but based on accurate intelligence reports, an aircraft of NATO-led Coalition forces carried out an airstrike killing all militants on the spot," district administration chief Hajji Zualmi told Xinhua.
He said the killed militants had the intention of attacking security forces by an IED in the Ghani Khil district in the province with Jalalabad as its capital 120 km east of capital city of Kabul.
Meantime, a Taliban purported spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told local media via cell phone from undiclsoed location that four of the outfit's insurgents were killed in Nangarhar province.
Separately, Afghan police and army, backed by NATO troops, have killed three insurgents and detained 24 suspected during 10 joint operations in different Afghan provinces over the past 24 hours, the country's Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday morning.
It said the joint forces also found and seized a handful of weapons in the above operations launched in the Kabul, Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman, Baghlan, Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni and Khost provinces.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch a rebel offensive from May 1 against Afghan and over 130,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the central Asian country.
Afghan president condemns suicide bombing on funeral ceremony
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned a suicide bomb attack on a funeral ceremony in the country's northern Takhar province on Sunday that left at least 19 people dead and injured over 40 others, Karzai's office said on Monday.
The incident happened at around 02:30 p.m. local time on Sunday in Sarhi-e-Sang area of the provincial capital Taluqan city when a suicide bomber blew his explosive vest up in the crowd of people who gathered in a funeral ceremony held for an influential tribal elder, according to officials.
"This ruthless act of terror to target innocent people who had gathered for a religious ceremony yet again demonstrates the vile and vicious nature of the enemy who do not want to see the Muslim people of Afghanistan to perform even their Islamic rituals," Karzai was quoted in a statement as saying while strongly condemning the attack.
A member of Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Afghan parliament Abdul Mutalib Baig was also killed in the attack in the relatively peaceful province, 245 km north of Kabul.
It was not immediately known whether Mutalib Baig, the representative of Takhar people in the parliament, a former Jihadi leader and an anti-Taliban commander, was the likely target of the attack.
"Initial reports indicate that 19 people including Abdul Mutalib Baig, a member of the parliament were killed and 40 others were injured in the incident," the statement said.
"According to latest reports, a total of 20 people were killed and over 45 others were injured in Sunday's suicide bombing in Takhar province, but the causalities could further rise as some injured remain in critical conditions," deputy provincial police chief Mahmood Assan told Xinhua on Monday morning.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. Taliban militants who largely rely on roadside bombings and suicide attacks have yet to make comments.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch a rebel offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The Taliban outfit has also warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants.
Meantime, top U.S. and NATO commander in the country General John R. Allen also condemned the attack, said a press release of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those affected with the loss of life and injuries in today's barbaric attack," said Allen.
"These attackers are cowards, callously targeting and killing families and friends who had gathered to mourn a loved one. Those responsible for this shameful act must only be interested in destruction, alienating themselves from the Afghan people. They are neither Afghan nor are they true Muslims," the top NATO commander said, adding "ISAF remains committed to stopping acts of terror and building an increased security environment to promote peace and prosperity for Afghanistan."
This is the second bloody suicide attack in the insurgency-hit country since the beginning of December this year.
A total of 80 people were killed and over 190 others were injured when a suicide bomber targeted a shrine where hundreds of mourners were observing Ashura, the Muslim day of mourning on Dec. 6 in capital city of Kabul.
Afghanistan Low on News Agenda
By BRIAN STELTER December 25, 2011, 7:46 pm The New York Times
The 10-year-old war in Afghanistan remained just a blip on the American news media’s radar in 2011.
CBS Lara Logan interviewing Capt. John Hintz in Afghanistan.
Of all the news content in newspapers and on the Web, television and radio this year, Afghanistan accounted for about 2 percent of coverage, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center.
Six other subjects were given more sustained attention than the war there. In descending order, they were the economy in the United States; the unrest in the Middle East; the 2012 presidential election; the earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster in Japan; the killing of Osama bin Laden; and the shooting in Tucson in which six were killed and Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, was critically injured.
The figures come from the project’s weekly monitoring of 52 major papers, news Web sites, TV networks and stations, and radio stations. The project uses that sample to show what is atop the national news agenda, and what is not.
In a year-end report last week, the project’s researchers noted that “despite a drop in coverage of the war in Afghanistan,” there was an increase in international news over all, owing largely to the war in Libya and the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries. The United States’ withdrawal from Iraq accounted for less than 1 percent of all news coverage.
Since Pew started its weekly monitoring in 2007, the war in Afghanistan has never accounted for more than 5 percent of all news coverage on an annual basis. In 2010, Afghanistan accounted for 4 percent of all news coverage.
The United States has about 91,000 troops in Afghanistan now. For much of this year and last, about 100,000 United States troops were in the country.
The news executives that pay for bureaus in Afghanistan have had to contend with tight news-gathering budgets, safety concerns and, in some cases, a perception that American audiences are not interested in the situation.
The relative dearth of coverage has brought occasional criticism in the United States, particularly from those who recall vigorous coverage of the Vietnam War. “Other than in its early stages in 2001-2002, the American press has greatly underreported this war,” John Hanrahan, formerly the executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, wrote in an essay for Nieman Watchdog in August.
“This paucity of reporting — the almost total reliance on just a few reporters — has stark implications for how the war is perceived back home,” Mr. Hanrahan wrote. “The fewer the reporters, the fewer the first-hand accounts needed for citizens to form knowledgeable opinions of the war.”
Afghan president appoints new election officials
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has named three new commissioners, including a former provincial governor, to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), a body that has faced criticism in the past for failing to stand up to government pressure.
The internationally-funded IEC has been at the centre of a standoff between the Karzai administration and parliament over a fraud-marred 2010 vote in which it threw out nearly a quarter of all votes over fraud and technical complaints.
Two of the new commissioners are former members of parliament, Rida Azimi from Parwan province, and Sayed Hashim Folad from Nangarhar, while the third official is Ghulam Dastagir Azad, who was earlier appointed by Karzai as governor of Uruzgan province.
A spokesman for the seven-member IEC said the appointments had been made following the end of the three-year terms of three officials. The terms of two other officials was extended, while the remaining officials were in the middle of their term.
"Their term was over. They had to be either extended or replaced. This is President's decision," Noor Ahmad said.
The presidency was not immediately available for comment.
Karzai is in his second term in office. According to the Afghan constitution, he is not allowed to run for a third term, although the opposition has accused him of wanting to change the rules to be able to do so. Karzai has denied the allegation.
The changes at the election commission follow replacements of four people at the national human rights commission including Ahmad Nader Nadery, an outspoken critic of Karzai, last week.
Some analysts said the administration was quietly pushing through the appointments during the holiday season.
The IEC said in August it would replace nine parliamentarians it had earlier declared as winners in the parliament vote, in line with a ruling by a court appointed by Karzai to investigate election fraud.
The election body which ran the foreign-funded parliamentary election last year had initially objected to the poll court's June ruling as unconstitutional, but later softened its stance and assented to the replacement of nine legislators.
Critics say the court was set up to further Karzai's political agenda and silence an opposition that made major gains in the 2010 parliamentary vote.
The IEC oversaw Karzai's last election in 2009, a vote also marred by widespread fraud.
(Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Al-Qaida leadership almost wiped out in Pakistan, British officials believe
Senior members of al-Qaida are feared to be moving to north Africa to open up a new front after being weakened in Pakistan
Guardian.co.uk By Jason Burke Sunday 25 December 2011
Senior British officials believe that a "last push" in 2012 is likely to definitively destroy al-Qaida's remaining senior leadership in Pakistan, opening a new phase in the battle against Islamist terrorism.
So many senior members of the organisation have been killed in an intense campaign of air strikes involving missiles launched from unmanned drones that "only a handful of the key players" remain alive, one official said.
However, well-informed sources outside government and close to Islamist groups in north Africa said at least two relatively senior al-Qaida figures have already made their way to Libya, with others intercepted en route, raising fears that north Africa could become a new "theatre of jihad" in coming months or years.
"A group of very experienced figures from north Africa left camps in Afghanistan's [north-eastern] Kunar province where they have been based for several years and travelled back across the Middle East," one source said. "Some got stopped but a few got through."
It is unclear whether the moves from west Asia to north Africa are prompted by a desire for greater security – which seems unlikely as Nato forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan – or part of a strategic attempt to exploit the aftermath of the Arab spring. They may even be trying to shift the centre of gravity of al-Qaida's effort back to the homelands of the vast majority of its members.
Since the death of Osama bin Laden in a US special forces raid in Pakistan last May, other senior leaders have also been eliminated, even though the numbers of strikes are lower than last year.
The problems for al-Qaida in west Asia have been compounded by a smaller flow of volunteers reaching makeshift bases in Pakistan's tribal zones. "I think they are really very much weakened," said the official. "You can't say they don't pose a threat – they do – but it's a much lesser one."
British and US intelligence sources have told the Guardian they estimate that there are less than 100 "al-Qaida or al-Qaida-affiliated" militants in Afghanistan, of whom only "a handful" were seen to pose a threat internationally to the UK or other western nations.
Officials dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan say they see al-Qaida's activity as "effectively marginal" to events there. Instead, local networks, such as that run by the Haqqani family in the semi-autonomous tribal agency of North Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border, are deemed more important.
Repeated efforts to push the Pakistani authorities to take military action against the Haqqanis have been rebuffed. Western and international officials said senior Pakistani military officers insisted they needed the Haqqani network, which has not attacked Pakistani targets though it has repeatedly struck Nato and other western targets in Afghanistan, to keep militant groups that make up the Pakistani Taliban network "under control". These latter have repeatedly struck civilian and military targets within Pakistan.
Western officials dismissed the argument as far-fetched and unrealistic. One international official said, however, that there was evidence the Haqqani family had been acting as intermediaries between the Pakistani secret services and militant groups and described the Pakistani position as "understandable".
"To move against the Haqqanis is a no-win option for the Pakistani military. If they suffer heavy casualties and fail to eliminate the group, they lose their authority and a key interlocutor. If they succeed, they lose a key asset," the official said.
Though the hunt for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the veteran Egyptian militant strategist who replaced Bin Laden as leader of al-Qaida, is a top priority, western officials say there is equal emphasis on eliminating those immediately below him in the now somewhat chaotic hierarchy.
These include Saif al-Adel, an experienced operator who may have returned to Pakistan, and Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan in his mid-40s who escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan and has featured in propaganda videos.
Adel interests western intelligence services as "he is exactly the sort of low-profile, effective type who you don't want". Some doubt he is in Pakistan at all, suggesting he may be in detention in Iran.
"The fact that we can't be sure where someone like [Adel] actually is underlines how problematic dealing with this whole issue still is. There's still a lot we simply don't know," one official said.
Few doubt that al-Qaida is evolving. "Al-Zawahiri's leadership is transitional and he is handicapped by his own old school background. We are waiting to see what a new al-Qaida might look like," the official said.
Overall, analysts say, the picture is one of fragmentation, with groups in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere pursuing local agendas. One example is the apparent move of al-Qaida-linked militants in Somalia into humanitarian aid, a departure from the core leadership's past strategies. In Nigeria, the Boko Haram group has had financial help from the affiliate al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb but is not thought to have any interest in being part of al-Qaida global.
In Europe, security services say levels of radicalisation have stabilised. Analysis of a list of "recent martyrs" published by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which shares al-Qaida's ideology and is also based in Pakistan's tribal areas, appears to show that fewer number of Europeans than feared reached the group, previously been favoured by German-based extremists. Of the near 100 listed, only one was German and most appeared to be local men.
The move to Libya is seen as particularly alarming. William Hague, the foreign secretary, recently warned that mercenaries driven out of Libya could switch allegiance to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. While this seems unlikely, sources in Libyan mainstream Islamist groups say there is evidence of grassroots activism by individuals linked to al-Qaida that could lead to new cells being formed.
In a recent communique, Zawahiri made a particular appeal to Libyan fighters not to lay down or hand in their weapons.
Training stepped up for Afghan special forces
By DEB RIECHMANN | AP – Sun, Dec 25, 2011.
CAMP SCORPION, Afghanistan (AP) — "Attention! Attention! You are surrounded by Afghan forces. Come out with your hands up."
The order barked by an Afghan soldier launched a training exercise last week that pitted members of the nation's growing elite force against actors posing as Taliban fighters.
Afghanistan and the U.S.-led coalition have stepped up training of the Afghan special forces unit to fill the vacuum that will be left by foreign troops slated to end their combat mission in 2014. In the future, it will be Afghan special forces countering insurgents in villages across the country.
As the force expands, they will also lead more of the controversial house searches — something that could mitigate Afghan President Hamid Karzai's intense opposition to the nighttime raids by international troops that Afghans have found culturally offensive.
Even though Afghan troops have been along for the more than 2,800 raids during the past year, Karzai has argued that the teams often treat innocent Afghans as if they were insurgents and violate citizens' privacy in the conservative Afghan society.
Karzai wants all raids halted. He wants foreign troops to stop entering Afghan homes. The thorny issue is being negotiated by U.S. and Afghan officials crafting a strategic agreement that will govern how remaining American forces operate in Afghanistan after 2014.
A recent national assembly of elders advised the Karzai government to allow the raids to continue as long as they are conducted solely by Afghans. If so, many more Afghan special forces soldiers need to be trained.
Neither NATO nor the Afghan Ministry of Defense would disclose how many Afghan special forces had been trained or how large the force will become. Jalaluddin Yaftali, a special forces team leader at the training site, said the force currently numbered 1,000 to 1,500.
"It takes time. It's like nation-building — an endless task. It will take years, but the will is there and right now the force is growing," said Afghan army Col. Mohammad Farid Ahmadi.
"The program started two years ago, but now we are jointly working with the coalition forces to Afghanize as soon as possible. We have already started. It's growing."
So far, most have been recruited from the Afghan National Army Commandos, a quick reaction force regarded as the most professional unit in the Afghan army. Commandos receive 10 weeks of training on top of the roughly 10 weeks they completed to become an Afghan soldier. Moreover, Afghan soldiers usually serve about four years as commandos before being selected for special forces training.
Their training is further refined while partnered with American forces. Eventually, they will be tasked with a variety of operational missions, including night raids, throughout the country.
"It not only takes a long time to select the right people for the job, but also to bring them through a training program so they are capable of operating with other special forces or on their own," German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a NATO spokesman, said at the training site on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital.
While some are already conducting solo operations, the Afghan special forces will continue to need coalition air power, intelligence and other support for years to come, he said.
Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. political scientist who advised the commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, said it's hard to rush special forces training.
"The Afghan program, which was first conceptualized in 2009 and established in 2010, is relatively new. I remember participating in the brainstorming sessions as we helped build the Afghan special forces," Jones said.
"Focusing on numbers, rather than quality, and trying to mass produce Afghan special forces would be a serious mistake. I'm not suggesting anyone is doing this yet, but it should be monitored very closely."
The Afghan soldiers conducting the training exercise crouched in shadows at the foot of man-made hills surrounding the practice compound. The residential compound resembled a western cowboy movie set.
"Drop your weapons!" the Afghan soldier barked into a bullhorn. "Keep your hands raised and come out."
Trying to give the occupants time to cooperate, the more than 20-man Afghan special forces team waited patiently, their guns drawn. When nobody came out, they tossed two harmless grenades that made loud bangs when they landed in front of the house.
A few minutes later, an actress covered in a red shawl slowly emerged with her hands raised. The soldier with the bullhorn asked her to reveal her face so the troops could be sure she was a woman and not a man. When it was clear that she was female, she was led away to be searched by a female Afghan soldier.
Having male troops search females is taboo in Afghanistan. So is touching a family's Quran, the Muslim holy book, or entering a home without being invited — things that foreign forces have learned in the decade-long war.
Soon after the woman left, two men walked from the house with their hands held high. Making sure they weren't armed, the troops ordered them to lift their shirts and pant legs. The would-be Afghan suspects then were cuffed and taken away.
"We are asking the Defense Ministry to make one special forces platoon of just female soldiers so they can go talk to the families, the children, the women," Yaftali said. "If you are a female, you can talk openly with the family."
It was clear to onlookers that the more than 20 Afghan special forces soldiers who conducted the house search and did a live ammunition training exercise with M4 rifles and 9mm pistols were the best of the elite force. With their dark glasses, night vision headsets, microphones and radios, they looked just like their U.S. Special Operations forces counterparts.
Jones said the first Afghan special forces soldiers trained were very competent because they were recruited directly from the Afghan National Army Commandos.
"In practical terms, this suggests that there will be some variation in the competence of Afghan special forces by 2014," Jones said. "Some will be fully capable ... but others may struggle."
Afghan Commandos Kill Nearly 70 Insurgents
TOLOnews.com Monday, 26 December 2011
Nearly seventy insurgents have been killed during recent operations conducted by the Afghan National Army commandos, officials said on Sunday.
The operations were conducted in different parts of the country over the past three months.
Around seventy other militants were wounded during the operations, according to Gen. Sayed Abdul Karim, the commander of the commando unit of the Afghan National Army.
Gen. Karim said that the Afghan commandos are now able to conduct night raids.
Night raids have been the point of tensions between the Afghan government and the United States.
Foreign military officials argue that the night raids have been effective in tracking insurgents and said that they would increase Afghan forces' involvement in such raids in the future.
According to Nato no shot has been fired during 85 percent of night raids and have vowed to take all measures to decrease civilian casualties.
It is said that the number of Afghan commandos have reached 9,000 and the number is expected to increase.
Afghan commandos are said to be conducting independent and partnered operations against insurgents in different parts of the country.
The commandos are equipped with modern equipment based on Nato standards, officials say.
Afghan commandos are receiving special trainings and efforts are being made to improve their capabilities to conduct operations independently.
Officials say that National Army helicopters are also involved in some air attacks against insurgents.
U.S. Report Faults NATO Delays on Pakistan Strike
By ERIC SCHMITT The New York Times December 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — A military investigation has concluded that it took about 45 minutes for a NATO operations officer in Afghanistan to notify a senior allied commander about Pakistan’s calls that its outposts were under attack, one of several breakdowns in communication that contributed to airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers last month.
Once alerted, the commander immediately ordered a halt to American attacks on two Pakistani border posts. By then, communications between the two militaries had sorted out a chain of errors and the shooting had stopped. The delay, by at least one officer and possibly a second, raises questions about whether a faster response could have spared the lives of some Pakistani soldiers.
Officials “did not respond correctly, quickly enough or with the sense of urgency or initiative required given the gravity of the situation and the well known sensitivity surrounding the Afghan-Pakistan border region,” the report found.
An unclassified version of the report, released Monday by the military’s Central Command, also revealed for the first time that an American AC-130 gunship flew two miles into Pakistan’s airspace to return fire on Pakistani troops who had attacked a joint American-Afghan ground patrol just across the border in Afghanistan.
The 30-page report, which expanded upon a briefing last week by the chief investigator, Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Clark of the Air Force, also found that competing NATO and American rules of engagement related to operations along the border “lacked clarity and precision, and were not followed.”
The full report alters and expands upon the impression of the inquiry’s findings created by General Clark’s briefing, which had emphasized how checks on both sides failed. Among the reason the checks failed, he said, were because American officials did not trust Pakistan enough to give it detailed information about American troop locations in Afghanistan, and Pakistan had not informed NATO of the locations of its new border posts.
The details released Monday add to those failures unexplained delays and a lack of urgency by NATO officers in notifying their superiors of the unfolding late-night debacle that has plunged relations between the two countries to new lows.
The report recommended nine changes, including reviewing and harmonizing all directives related to border operations, increased training and coordination, improved surveillance before missions, and more current information on the location of border installations on both sides of the boundary.
Most of all, General Clark said, the two countries must take steps toward resolving the deep mistrust that prevented both sides from sharing vital information about their locations and operations.
“The way to long-term peace and stability along the border is to be found in resolving the longstanding border disputes that perpetuate a state of uncertainty and mistrust,” he wrote.
In a statement on Monday, Gen. James N. Mattis, who leads the Central Command, directed the top allied officer in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, to carry out most of the recommendations “as soon as operationally possible.”
The episode, the worst in nearly a decade of fatal cross-border mistakes, exposed the flaws in a system devised to avoid such mistakes. The report criticized an allied practice, in place since at least August, of not divulging to Pakistan the precise location of allied ground troops in Afghanistan for fear Pakistan might jeopardize their operations.
Indeed, the report said that in October allied troops were forced to abort an assault on the same target — the village of Maya, Afghanistan, where as many as 50 Taliban fighters were believed to be operating — when they came under heavy rocket-propelled-grenade fire. Allied troops suspected Pakistani sympathizers had tipped off the insurgents.
In his briefing last week, General Clark outlined a series of miscommunications on both sides that he said contributed to the accident. But the report offered new details.
At 12:35 a.m. on Nov. 26, about halfway through the episode, a NATO liaison officer in Pakistan notified the night director in an allied operations center in Afghanistan that Pakistan said its troops were under attack, presumably from NATO aircraft. The liaison officer did not alert a top general in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. James Laster, until 1:20 a.m., after the firefight had ended.
Before the mission began, General Laster had ordered two precautions to reduce the risk of accidental contact. He moved the ground patrol’s helicopter landing zone farther away from the Pakistani border, and he requested the location of any nearby Pakistani outposts. The list he received was outdated.
Pakistan has insisted that its forces did nothing wrong, and that they did not fire the first shots. Senior Pakistani military and civilian officials have accused the United States of intentionally striking the border posts, even after Pakistani officers called their counterparts to complain that they were under allied attack.
General Clark’s report acknowledged that a pivotal allied mistake was not informing Pakistan about the patrol. Without that warning, the Pakistani soldiers would not have known to expect allied forces nearby. NATO and Pakistani forces are supposed to inform each other about operations on the border to avoid this kind of mistake.
U.S. Prepares for a Curtailed Relationship With Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT December 25, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - With the United States facing the reality that its broad security partnership with Pakistan is over, American officials are seeking to salvage a more limited counterterrorism alliance that they acknowledge will complicate their ability to launch attacks against extremists and move supplies into Afghanistan.
The United States will be forced to restrict drone strikes, limit the number of its spies and soldiers on the ground and spend more to transport supplies through Pakistan to allied troops in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials said. United States aid to Pakistan will also be reduced sharply, they said.
“We’ve closed the chapter on the post-9/11 period,” said a senior United States official, who requested anonymity to avoid antagonizing Pakistani officials. “Pakistan has told us very clearly that they are re-evaluating the entire relationship.”
American officials say that the relationship will endure in some form, but that the contours will not be clear until Pakistan completes its wide-ranging review in the coming weeks.
The Obama administration got a taste of the new terms immediately after an American airstrike killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border last month. Pakistan closed the supply routes into Afghanistan, boycotted a conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan and forced the United States to shut its drone operations at a base in southwestern Pakistan.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, an opposition political party, summed up the anger that he said many harbored: “We feel like the U.S. treats Pakistan like a rainy-day girlfriend.”
Whatever emerges will be a shadow of the sweeping strategic relationship that Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, championed before his death a year ago. Officials from both countries filled more than a dozen committees to work on issues like health, the rule of law and economic development.
All of that has been abandoned and will most likely be replaced by a much narrower set of agreements on core priorities — countering terrorists, stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring the safety of Pakistan’s arsenal of more than 100 nuclear weapons — that Pakistan will want spelled out in writing and agreed to in advance.
With American diplomats essentially waiting quietly and Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes on hold since Nov. 16 — the longest pause since 2008 — Pakistan’s government is drawing up what Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called “red lines” for a new relationship that protects his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Said an American official: “Both countries recognize the benefits of partnering against common threats, but those must be balanced against national interests as well. The balancing is a continuous process.”
First, officials said, will likely be a series of step-by-step agreements on military cooperation, intelligence sharing and counterterrorism operations, including stricter targeting criteria and revamped flight zones over Pakistan’s largely ungoverned borderlands where C.I.A. drones will be allowed to hunt a shrinking number of Al Qaeda leaders and other militants.
The C.I.A. has conducted 64 missile attacks in Pakistan using drones this year, compared with 117 last year and 53 in 2009, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks the strikes.
In one of the most visible signs of rising anti-American sentiment in this country, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Lahore and Peshawar this month. And on Sunday in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, at least 100,000 people rallied to support Imran Khan, a cricket celebrity and rising opposition politician who is outspoken in his criticism of the drone strikes and ties with the United States.
Some Pakistani officers talk openly about shooting down any American drones that violate Pakistani sovereignty. “Nothing is happening on counterterrorism right now,” said a senior Pakistani security official. “It will never go back to the way it was.”
Any new security framework will also require increased transit fees for the thousands of trucks that supply NATO troops in Afghanistan, a bill that allied officials say could run millions of dollars in extra costs.
Officials from Pakistan and the United States anticipate steep reductions in American security aid, including the continued suspension of more than $1 billion in military assistance and equipment, frozen since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
The number of American military officers, enlisted troops and contractors in Pakistan has dropped to about 100, from about 400 more than a year ago, including scores of American trainers who have all been sent home. Pakistan is also restricting visas to dozens of other embassy personnel, from spies to aid workers.
Of the nearly two dozen American, Western and Pakistani officials interviewed for this article, a few sought to put the best face on a worsening situation. With Pakistan taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council for two years beginning next month, these officials argued that too much was at stake to rupture ties completely. “It is better to have a predictable, more focused relationship than an incredibly ambitious out-of-control relationship,” said one Western official.
But another Western diplomat put it more bluntly: “It’s a fairly gloomy picture.”
Just two months ago, a visit here by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director; and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to begin to thaw relations that had been nearly frozen since Raymond Davis, a C.I.A. security contractor, shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January and Navy Seals killed Bin Laden in May.
Pakistani manufacturers of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a component of homemade bombs used against American soldiers in Afghanistan, tentatively agreed to dye it for easier tracing, American officials said. Interior Ministry officials pledged to track large, unexplained purchases of the substance.
At the same time, Pakistani officials indicated that they would help rein in attacks by the Haqqani network, an insurgent group that is the main killer of allied troops in Afghanistan, and there were hints that Pakistan would pave the way for peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But the fatal airstrike on Nov. 26 erased that preliminary progress, dealing the most serious blow to reconciliation talks involving Pakistan. “It’s not happening,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister.
All of this comes as the Pakistani economy is in a free fall, civilian and military leaders are clashing over purported coup plots, and 150,000 Pakistani troops are stuck in a stalemate fighting a witches’ brew of militants along the Afghan border.
“These people are stuck there very badly,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired lieutenant general and a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan’s main spy agency.
The number of attacks from homemade bombs throughout the country, but mostly focused in the border areas, skyrocketed to 1,036 through November this year, compared with 413 for all of 2007, according to the Pakistani military. More than 3,500 Pakistani soldiers and police have been killed since 2002.
The Obama administration is desperately trying to preserve the critical pieces of the relationship. General Dempsey asked the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a phone call on Wednesday if the relationship could be repaired, a person briefed on the conversation said. General Kayani said that he thought it could, but that Pakistan needed some space.
The State Department this month quietly dispatched a senior diplomat and South Asia specialist, Robin Raphel, to canvass a wide spectrum of Pakistanis. She returned with a sober assessment and the view that many Pakistanis will not move forward without a formal apology from President Obama for the airstrike, which White House aides say is not in the offing.
Still, administration officials held out hope. “We’ve been very forthright in acknowledging that this is a relationship that needs to work,” a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said on Friday.
Pakistan PM denies reports govt wants to sack army, intel chiefs
By Faisal Aziz
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Monday denied domestic media reports he was planning to sack the powerful army and intelligence chiefs, saying the military supported democracy.
The reports about army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence (DG-ISI), Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, were the latest in what has been feverish press speculation about a rift between civilian politicians and the military.
"As far as the rumors that the government wants to remove the DG-ISI and General Kayani, this impression is simply a fools' talk," Gilani told reporters in comments broadcast on television.
"It is wrong to spread such talk. If this was the case, I wouldn't have given them extensions.... I am happy with his (army chief's) work and I want to dispel this impression."
The government last year extended Kayani's term of office to 2013, while Pasha's term was extended to March 2012.
Speculation of a rift between the civilian government and the army follows publication of an unsigned memo seeking Washington's help to rein in the military after U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.
Pakistan's then ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has been accused of writing the memo on behalf of the government. He denies involvement but has resigned pending an investigation.
The army, which ruled Pakistan for almost half of its 64-year history, said last week it was not planning to take over after a spate of rumors it might move against President Asif Ali Zardari.
Gilani said Kayani was pro-democracy, and he was not willing to remove him when the country was in the middle of a war.
The Supreme Court is looking into a petition demanding an inquiry into what has become known as "memogate." Kayani has called for an investigation into the memo.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Congress calls on Twitter to block Taliban
American congressmen are calling on Twitter to block Taliban propagandists from the micro-blogging site.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 25 Dec 2011
Kabul - Senators want to stop feeds which boast of insurgent attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan and the casualties they inflict.
Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt to eliminate violent Islamist extremist propaganda from the internet and social media.
The Taliban movement has embraced the social network as part of its propaganda effort and regularly tweets about attacks or posts links to its statements.
The information has ranged from highly accurate, up-to-the-minute accounts of unfolding spectacular attacks, to often completely fabricated or wildly exaggerated reports of American and British casualties.
Twitter feeds including @ABalkhi, which has more than 4,100 followers, and @alemarahweb, which has more than 6,200 followers, regularly feature tweeted boasts about the deaths of "cowardly invaders" and "puppet" Afghan government forces.
Taliban spokesmen also frequently spar with Nato press officers on Twitter, as they challenge and rebut each other's statements.
Twitter declined to say if the company had been asked to block the feeds by Mr Lieberman.
Rachel Bremer, a spokesman for Twitter, said: "This isn't something we'd comment on."
In 2008 Google agreed to tighten its rules for hosting videos on YouTube after Mr Lieberman complained the site hosted films from al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist movements showing attacks on American forces in Iraq.
Leslie Phillips, a spokesman for the senate homeland security committee, said: "Senator Lieberman's efforts to eliminate violent Islamist extremism propaganda from the internet and social media has been a campaign of persuasion.
"He has written letters, for example to Google seeking the company to enforce more strongly its terms of service, which ban the sort of thing that we see from violent Islamist extremists.
"Google responded positively to the Senator's letter."
However Twitter is reported to be rejecting the move after pointing out that unlike al-Qaeda, the Taliban movement is not registered by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organisation.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com