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Afghan president welcomes US remarks on Taliban
By Associated Press Saturday, December 31, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration saying that Taliban insurgents were not America’s enemies.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.
Biden’s comments came amid reports that the Obama administration and other governments are trying to establish a peace process with the Taliban to help end the 10-year war.
"I am very happy that the American government has announced that the Taliban are not their enemies," Karzai said in a speech to the Afghan Academy of Sciences. "We hope that this message will help the Afghans reach peace and stability."
A senior U.S. official has told The Associated Press that Washington plans to continue a series of secret meetings with Taliban representatives in Europe and the Persian Gulf region next year.
The U.S. outreach this year had progressed to the point that there was active discussion of two steps the Taliban seeks as precursors to negotiations, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Trust-building measures under discussion involve setting up a Taliban headquarters office and the release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of about five Afghan prisoners believed affiliated with the Taliban.
On Tuesday, Karzai said his government would accept the Taliban establishing a liaison office in Turkey, Qatar or Saudi Arabia for the purpose of holding peace talks.
Meanwhile, NATO troops on Saturday handed over responsibility for security in three districts of the embattled southern Helmand province to Afghan forces.
Helmand governor’s office said these included Marjah district — the site of a major offensive by coalition forces last year. Coalition operations to rout the Taliban in February 2010 yielded slower than expected returns, but a troop buildup later in the year pushed insurgents out of the main center of the district.
Nad Ali, which had been run by British troops, also transitioned from NATO to Afghan security control, a statement said.
The handovers in Helmand are part of the second phase in a transition NATO and Karzai hope will leave Afghan forces in control of the entire country by the end of 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition’s combat mission is scheduled to end.
Meanwhile, in London the Ministry of Defense announced that one of the two NATO service members killed in Afghanistan on Friday was a British soldier. The death brought to 394 the number of British troops who have died since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001.
A total of 27 NATO troops have died so far in December, while the year’s toll is 543. The yearly total is considerably lower than for 2010, when more than 700 troops died.
Over 560 ISAF troops die in Afghan war in 2011
By Joe Sinclair | AFP
Foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan continue to pay a high toll, with more than 560 killed in 2011, the second highest number in the 10-year war against the Taliban-led insurgency.
Commanders from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) say violence is declining following the US military surge which saw an extra 33,000 troops on the ground.
But the UN says violence is up, while recent mass casualty strikes by the Taliban on civilians and coalition troops have fuelled analyst predictions that more bloodshed is likely as NATO hands control for security to Afghan forces.
The death toll of coalition service personnel in 2011 was 565 and includes 417 from the US and 45 from Britain, according to an AFP tally based on figures from independent website icasualties.org.
The number is down from a wartime high of 711 in 2010 after the start of the surge but up from 521 in 2009.
The fatality count has been worsened by several devastating attacks, including the car bombing of an ISAF convoy in Kabul in October which killed 17, and the shooting down of a helicopter in Wardak, south of the capital, in August in which 30 US troops perished.
But it is Afghan civilians who have paid the highest price.
The deadliest attack saw at least 80 people killed in a shrine bombing in Kabul on the Shiite holy day of Ashura in early December.
The surge troops -- ordered in by US President Barack Obama two years ago to turn the tide in the war -- have now begun to pull out, with 10,000 already gone and the rest leaving by next autumn.
Other foreign forces are also scaling down their missions ahead of a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of all NATO combat forces. And one Western military official said some units have already been told not to carry out offensive operations.
Since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban from power in 2001, a total of 2,846 foreign troops have died in the conflict.
"We've seen a considerable reduction in enemy attacks (this year). That's a result of successes on the battle field and a reduction of their capability to attack us," said ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson.
While fewer ISAF troops on the ground in the coming years may mean fewer coalition deaths, the civilian toll will not necessarily fall.
The UN said the number of civilians killed in violence in Afghanistan rose by 15 percent in the first six months of this year to 1,462. A full-year report is due out in mid-January.
Insurgents are blamed for 80 percent of the deaths, which are mostly caused by homemade bombs or IEDs.
NATO, which says enemy attacks are down eight percent, only includes "executed attacks" and not IED finds or instances where the Taliban intimidate local people.
Haroun Mir, an analyst at Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies, said that while the Taliban were no longer engaging ISAF troops head-on, factions within the insurgency were intent on targeting civilians.
"The Taliban are deliberately targeting civilians to spread fear among the people. They want to show that despite the surge they are still active, that they have the capacity to disrupt life, especially in the cities," he said.
The international community is looking for a political solution to the war and moves have been made to establish a Taliban office, possibly in Qatar, to enable peace talks.
But Mir said although some members of the Taliban would be willing to negotiate, others, such as those based over the border in Pakistan, are likely to become increasingly isolated and unleash more violence.
"We expect more terrorist attacks and more political assassinations during the phase of transition. These radical groups will do everything possible, especially after 2014, to weaken the government," he said.
As security is handed over the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which now number more than 300,000, can also expect to take on more casualties.
Since March 21, the beginning of the Afghan year, 1,400 police, 520 soldiers and 4,275 insurgents have been killed in the conflict, according to Afghan government figures.
However, there is some optimism that the reduction in the foreign presence may in itself lead to a fall in violence.
"The hope is that as foreign troops hand security to Afghan forces fewer local people will become radicalised," said Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"And the insurgents won't kill as many civilians collaterally by using highly destructive tactics to target foreigners," he said.
U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan war fell in 2011
Amid plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. officials speak of turning a corner in 2011. From the Taliban perspective, the Americans took fewer fatalities because they lost the taste for combat.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times December 31, 2011
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - It was by no means a common occurrence. But in the year that just drew to a close, a day would often pass, sometimes several, without an American service member dying in Afghanistan.
For the first time in years, U.S. military deaths here declined in 2011. American and Taliban commanders have very different explanations, and very different views of what that means for Afghanistan in the new year and beyond.
As they prepare to accelerate their withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. officials speak of having turned a corner in 2011. From the Taliban perspective, the Americans took fewer fatalities only because they lost the taste for aggressive combat.
Until last year, U.S. fatalities in the decade-long conflict had usually climbed — sometimes sharply — from year to year, peaking in 2010 at 499. That number dropped last year to 417, according to the independent website icasualties.org — a significant drop, but still averaging more than one per day.
Overall deaths in the NATO force fell even more, from 711 in 2010 to 565 last year.
U.S. officials say successful tactics and the impact of sheer numbers broke the momentum of the Taliban and other armed militant factions in 2011, when American troop strength topped out at more than 100,000. Since summer, 10,000 U.S. troops have left, and an additional 23,000 are scheduled to depart in 2012.
The flexing of that military muscle led to some of the most triumphal rhetoric in years about the Afghanistan war effort. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, visiting the country in mid-December, told American troops that they were "winning this very tough conflict."
The commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, has been more circumspect. The standard language he used during a series of holiday visits that took him to American outposts scattered across the country was echoed in his year-end message to U.S. forces: "Every one of you here is contributing to the liberation of a country and giving Afghanistan hope."
The upbeat assessment, however, contains a paradox: If an increase in troop strength helped produce a turnaround, will the pullback set the stage for a reversal?
The insurgents insist that is already happening. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid attributed the decrease last year in Western military fatalities to a decline in major offensives.
"They have not conducted any huge operations anywhere," he said. "This year NATO forces have maintained defensive positions. They are not coming out of their bases. They have reduced their mobility everywhere."
Western commanders say that is untrue, pointing to aggressive campaigns in recent months in eastern Afghanistan, near Pakistan's tribal areas. Senior U.S. officials expect the military focus in the coming year to be on the east, a stronghold for one of the most dangerous insurgent groups, the Haqqani network.
Even though Allen has reportedly been lobbying the White House to slow down the American pullback, he and other Western commanders assert that diminishing numbers of North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops will not pose difficulties.
Afghan forces are stepping up their role, taking the lead in more and more parts of the country. Western and Afghan officials say they are on track to meet target numbers that will bring Afghan troop strength to 195,000 by October.
Another enduring question is the capability of Afghan forces.
High attrition rates make it hard for recruitment to keep pace with demand. And too-eager recruitment is thought to have been behind incidents in which Afghan troops turn their guns on Western mentors. That happened again Thursday, when an apparent Taliban sympathizer in the ranks of the Afghan army killed two French troops who were members of the Foreign Legion.
Vetting standards were tightened last year to filter out recruits with insurgent sympathies, but officials acknowledge that the task is difficult.
As the year drew to a close, Afghan military leaders also complained that they were not being provided with the sophisticated armaments they would need to take the lead in fighting insurgents by 2014, when the Western combat role is to formally end. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said he had called on the NATO force to equip the police and army with heavy weapons "so they can defend their own soil."
The Taliban, meanwhile, pointed to their ability to harry a more powerful enemy with a crude but lethal weapon of choice, the roadside bomb, which remained the single biggest killer of U.S. and other Western troops in 2011.
As in the past, troop fatalities tended to come in clusters, caused by single roadside bombings. On Dec. 22, five Polish troops in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, the capital, died in a blast that blew their armored vehicle apart.
Taliban commanders sometimes deliberately target non-U.S. contingents because they know that in many countries, public opposition to the war tracks any sudden rise in the number of battlefield deaths.
Another relatively low-tech weapon, the rocket-propelled grenade, caused the worst single U.S. troop loss of the war. Thirty Americans and eight Afghans were killed in the Aug. 6 crash of a Chinook helicopter carrying mainly elite Navy SEALs.
"In 2011 we fought more strongly than in any year before, and staged more high-profile attacks than in previous years," said Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman. Chief among those assaults, he said, were September's 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and a similar prolonged attack on the landmark Intercontinental Hotel in the capital three months earlier.
The Taliban's continuing shift away from conventional battlefield confrontations led to growing numbers of civilian deaths in the first three-quarters of last year, according to the United Nations.
There was some indication such deaths might be turning the Afghan public against the Taliban; an Asia Foundation study released in November found decreasing support among Afghans for the movement's goals. But concern over civilian casualties cuts both ways.
Throughout the year, Karzai voiced harsh criticism of U.S.-led operations that he said posed undue hazards to Afghan citizens.
The Afghan leader's demand for an end to American participation in nighttime raids on residential compounds emerged as a potentially serious obstacle to a long-term partnership agreement, which will govern the U.S. military presence after 2014.
As 2012 begins, the Afghan government and the Obama administration are looking for ways to negotiate a settlement with the Taliban.
In late December, Karzai agreed to the opening of a Taliban liaison office in Qatar, though some members of his administration fear U.S. officials will keep them in the dark about their contacts with the insurgents.
Pakistan's role will be crucial too, but the prospects for help seemed dim because of a sharp deterioration in ties between Washington and the government in Islamabad.
The Taliban leadership ended the year on a taunting note, asserting that the Americans were looking for a way out, just like the Soviet invaders who arrived 32 years ago. "They are on the point of fleeing," it said in a statement.
U.S. and NATO officials stressed that they were not abandoning the country, but preparing for an orderly transfer.
"At the end of 2011, we have three years to go, and that is more than enough to finish the job," said German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the NATO force. "We are not leaving because we have to. We are leaving because we can."
Karzai Thanks French Defense Minister For Assisting Afghanistan
December 31, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has met with French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet in Kabul and thanked Paris for the assistance it has given his country.
The French defense chief’s visit to Afghanistan comes after two French Foreign Legion soldiers were shot dead on December 29 by a man wearing an Afghan Army uniform in the eastern Kapisa Province.
Longuet, who arrived in Afghanistan on December 31 to help French forces mark the New Year, hailed the Afghan Army's progress in taking charge of more areas as foreign forces hand over control.
Currently, there are 3,600 French soldiers within the NATO/ISAF framework serving mostly in the province of Kapisa and the Surobi district in Kabul.
with agency reports
Air Force Awards Afghan Plane Contract
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE DECEMBER 30, 2011
The Air Force has awarded a contract to supply a small fleet of attack planes to Afghanistan, following a politically charged contest between rival aircraft manufacturers.
In an announcement late Friday, the Defense Department said the Air Force had awarded a contract worth $355 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. for 20 light air-support aircraft—single-engine turboprop aircraft that will serve as both trainers and ground-attack planes for Afghanistan's nascent air force.
Sierra Nevada had partnered with Brazil-based Embraer SA to offer the Super Tucano, which is currently in service with the militaries of Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
Aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft Corp. had offered the AT-6, a derivative of a training plane that the U.S. military currently operates. After the Air Force excluded the AT-6 from the running, Hawker Beechcraft lodged a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. After the GAO dismissed the protest, Hawker Beechcraft subsequently filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in the hopes of preventing the Air Force from moving forward with a contract award to the Sierra Nevada/Embraer team.
Hawker Beechcraft said in a statement Friday it would continue to contest the award, saying it learned of the contract during legal proceeding at the Court of Federal Claims.
"This is yet another example of the Air Force's lack of transparency throughout this competition," said Bill Boisture, Hawker Beechcraft chairman and CEO, in a statement. "With this development, it now seems even clearer that the Air Force intended to award the contract to Embraer from early in this process."
Lt. Col. Wesley Miller, an Air Force spokesman, said the contest "was conducted in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations" and that the evaluation of the aircraft "was fair, open and transparent."
Eleventh Georgian soldier killed in Afghanistan
AFP via Yahoo! News - Dec 31 07:18am
A Georgian soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Tbilisi said Saturday -- the 11th from the ex-Soviet state to die serving alongside NATO-led forces fighting the Taliban.
Corporal Besik Niniashvili was killed by a mine explosion in the volatile Afghan province of Helmand, the ministry said in a statement.
Georgia is a staunch ally of the United States with ambitions to join NATO and currently has more than 900 troops serving in Afghanistan -- a major contribution from a small country of 4.4 million people.
Georgia's parliament this month voted to send another battalion to Afghanistan, almost doubling its contingent there.
Tbilisi's NATO aspirations have infuriated neighbour Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over the Moscow-backed separatist region of South Ossetia.
Visiting Tbilisi last month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Georgia had "progressed significantly" in its membership bid, but said that the country needed to do more to develop democracy.
China, Afghanistan sign agreement on bilateral cooperation
KABUL, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Xu Feihong and Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul signed an agreement on bilateral economic and technical cooperation on Saturday.
The deal is a part of the grant assistance of China to the people of Afghanistan, said a press release by the Afghan Foreign Ministry.
The latest grant will be spent on the implementation of projects based on consultations between the two countries, it said.
The main projects include the reconstruction and equipping of the Jamhooryat Hospital in Kabul, the reconstruction of the Parwan Irrigation Canal, construction of the Conference Hall within the Arg premises (Afghan Presidential Palace), the reconstruction of the Ministry of Education's Center for National Science and Technology, the reconstruction of the Ministry of Higher Education 's guest house, the construction of the department of the Chinese Language in Kabul University and the provision of 100 ambulances to the Ministry of Public Health.
Since 2001, the People's Republic of China has provided a total amount of 200 million U.S. dollars to the reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, the foreign ministry said.
Afghan Insurgents Recruit Child Suicide Bombers
Bethany Matta VOA News December 30, 2011
Kandahar, Afghanistan - Throughout the war in Afghanistan, insurgents have modified their tactics to adapt to the changing battlefield. In the past year, fighters have disguised themselves in burqas, hidden bombs in turbans, and increasingly turned to children to carry out attacks. We talk with a Pakistani boy who is one the war’s youngest recruited bombers.
When 13 year-old Ali Ahmad says he wants an education, he is not talking about the education he already has. "I was taught how to use guns and weapons and they also taught me how to do a suicide attack by pressing some button. They told me I would be paid a lot of money,” he explained.
Ali lost both of his parents when he was younger. He and his younger brother were living in their uncle’s home in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Three months ago, he ran away. “I met three people near the border and asked them to give me a job. They asked to me to come with them, when I went they grabbed me and put something over my eyes so I could not see and tied my hands and legs," he recalled. "They took me to a training center where I trained for 20 days.”
Ali’s recruiters then showed him the American base in Spin Boldak where they wanted him to attack using a suicide vest. “They said when you do the suicide attack, you will go to heaven, even if you kill just one American in this attack. I said that I would be killed too, but they told me that my soul will be in peace,” he said.
Ali says he knew what would happen if he detonated the vest and was thinking of ways to escape. But before he could carry out his mission, suspicious residents turned him in to security forces.
Over the past year Kandahar officials say insurgents have chosen to fight fewer face-to-face battles with troops. Instead, they say militants favor suicide attacks and are increasingly relying on children to carry them out.
“Using children is a new enemy tactic. Children are given 50 to 100 Afghanis to carry things. They don’t know what they’re carrying and the control to detonate the bomb is with someone else. When the kids reach the tanks or police vehicles, the enemies blow them up. Many kids are told they will survive," General Abdul Raziq is Kandahar’s acting police chief stated. "Children cannot judge, and the older ones no longer want to do it.”
The Afghan Taliban, the main militant group in the province, insists it never uses children for insurgent activity. A Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, says the practice goes against Islam.
Ali remains in custody of the country’s main spy agency. Officials say they do not know what to do with him. Ali has no family and shelters refuse to take him. Ali says he worries about his younger brother and would rather be studying and playing - like other boys his age.
Afghan child bride tells of 'torture' by in-laws
AFP via Yahoo! News - Dec 31 06:23am
An Afghan child bride on Saturday spoke of how she was tortured by her mother-in-law who locked her in a toilet for six months, beat her, pulled out her fingernails and burned her with cigarettes.
Sahar Gul, 15, is recovering in hospital in Kabul, her face bruised and swollen, her skin still bearing the marks of her ordeal, barely able to speak.
Police have said she was locked up when she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution. Her brother had sold her to her husband about seven months ago for $5,000.
"For several months I was locked up in toilet by my in-laws and particularly my mother-in-law," she managed to tell media in a frail voice during a visit from Afghan health minister Dr Suraya Dalil.
"I was denied food and water. I was tortured and beaten."
The minister said it was an example of "increased cases of violence against women in Afghanistan".
Women continue to suffer in Afghanistan despite billions of dollars of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.
Dalil said Gul was suffering from severe blood loss, with multiple burns and injuries.
"She is also suffering from trauma and psychological problems," she said.
"She is still a child, below the legal age of marriage. She is only 15 and from a remote part of the country. It's a tragic and heartbreaking story for Afghanistan."
The teenager was found in the basement of her husband's house in the northeastern Baghlan province late on Monday.
Her family, from the neighbouring province of Badakhshan, had reported her disappearance to the police after being denied access to the home.
Three women including the girls's mother-in-law were arrested over the case but her husband fled.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.
And according to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.
Gul's case comes after a woman known as Gulnaz was pardoned and released earlier in December after spending two years in prison for "moral crimes".
She was jailed after she reported to police that her cousin's husband had raped her. Gulnaz gave birth to the rapist's child in prison.
In November, the United Nations said that a landmark law aiming to protect women against violence in Afghanistan had been used to prosecute just over 100 cases since being enacted two years ago.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Associated Press Saturday, December 31, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration saying that Taliban insurgents were not America’s enemies.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.
Biden’s comments came amid reports that the Obama administration and other governments are trying to establish a peace process with the Taliban to help end the 10-year war.
"I am very happy that the American government has announced that the Taliban are not their enemies," Karzai said in a speech to the Afghan Academy of Sciences. "We hope that this message will help the Afghans reach peace and stability."
A senior U.S. official has told The Associated Press that Washington plans to continue a series of secret meetings with Taliban representatives in Europe and the Persian Gulf region next year.
The U.S. outreach this year had progressed to the point that there was active discussion of two steps the Taliban seeks as precursors to negotiations, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Trust-building measures under discussion involve setting up a Taliban headquarters office and the release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of about five Afghan prisoners believed affiliated with the Taliban.
On Tuesday, Karzai said his government would accept the Taliban establishing a liaison office in Turkey, Qatar or Saudi Arabia for the purpose of holding peace talks.
Meanwhile, NATO troops on Saturday handed over responsibility for security in three districts of the embattled southern Helmand province to Afghan forces.
Helmand governor’s office said these included Marjah district — the site of a major offensive by coalition forces last year. Coalition operations to rout the Taliban in February 2010 yielded slower than expected returns, but a troop buildup later in the year pushed insurgents out of the main center of the district.
Nad Ali, which had been run by British troops, also transitioned from NATO to Afghan security control, a statement said.
The handovers in Helmand are part of the second phase in a transition NATO and Karzai hope will leave Afghan forces in control of the entire country by the end of 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition’s combat mission is scheduled to end.
Meanwhile, in London the Ministry of Defense announced that one of the two NATO service members killed in Afghanistan on Friday was a British soldier. The death brought to 394 the number of British troops who have died since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001.
A total of 27 NATO troops have died so far in December, while the year’s toll is 543. The yearly total is considerably lower than for 2010, when more than 700 troops died.
Over 560 ISAF troops die in Afghan war in 2011
By Joe Sinclair | AFP
Foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan continue to pay a high toll, with more than 560 killed in 2011, the second highest number in the 10-year war against the Taliban-led insurgency.
Commanders from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) say violence is declining following the US military surge which saw an extra 33,000 troops on the ground.
But the UN says violence is up, while recent mass casualty strikes by the Taliban on civilians and coalition troops have fuelled analyst predictions that more bloodshed is likely as NATO hands control for security to Afghan forces.
The death toll of coalition service personnel in 2011 was 565 and includes 417 from the US and 45 from Britain, according to an AFP tally based on figures from independent website icasualties.org.
The number is down from a wartime high of 711 in 2010 after the start of the surge but up from 521 in 2009.
The fatality count has been worsened by several devastating attacks, including the car bombing of an ISAF convoy in Kabul in October which killed 17, and the shooting down of a helicopter in Wardak, south of the capital, in August in which 30 US troops perished.
But it is Afghan civilians who have paid the highest price.
The deadliest attack saw at least 80 people killed in a shrine bombing in Kabul on the Shiite holy day of Ashura in early December.
The surge troops -- ordered in by US President Barack Obama two years ago to turn the tide in the war -- have now begun to pull out, with 10,000 already gone and the rest leaving by next autumn.
Other foreign forces are also scaling down their missions ahead of a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of all NATO combat forces. And one Western military official said some units have already been told not to carry out offensive operations.
Since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban from power in 2001, a total of 2,846 foreign troops have died in the conflict.
"We've seen a considerable reduction in enemy attacks (this year). That's a result of successes on the battle field and a reduction of their capability to attack us," said ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson.
While fewer ISAF troops on the ground in the coming years may mean fewer coalition deaths, the civilian toll will not necessarily fall.
The UN said the number of civilians killed in violence in Afghanistan rose by 15 percent in the first six months of this year to 1,462. A full-year report is due out in mid-January.
Insurgents are blamed for 80 percent of the deaths, which are mostly caused by homemade bombs or IEDs.
NATO, which says enemy attacks are down eight percent, only includes "executed attacks" and not IED finds or instances where the Taliban intimidate local people.
Haroun Mir, an analyst at Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies, said that while the Taliban were no longer engaging ISAF troops head-on, factions within the insurgency were intent on targeting civilians.
"The Taliban are deliberately targeting civilians to spread fear among the people. They want to show that despite the surge they are still active, that they have the capacity to disrupt life, especially in the cities," he said.
The international community is looking for a political solution to the war and moves have been made to establish a Taliban office, possibly in Qatar, to enable peace talks.
But Mir said although some members of the Taliban would be willing to negotiate, others, such as those based over the border in Pakistan, are likely to become increasingly isolated and unleash more violence.
"We expect more terrorist attacks and more political assassinations during the phase of transition. These radical groups will do everything possible, especially after 2014, to weaken the government," he said.
As security is handed over the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which now number more than 300,000, can also expect to take on more casualties.
Since March 21, the beginning of the Afghan year, 1,400 police, 520 soldiers and 4,275 insurgents have been killed in the conflict, according to Afghan government figures.
However, there is some optimism that the reduction in the foreign presence may in itself lead to a fall in violence.
"The hope is that as foreign troops hand security to Afghan forces fewer local people will become radicalised," said Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"And the insurgents won't kill as many civilians collaterally by using highly destructive tactics to target foreigners," he said.
U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan war fell in 2011
Amid plans to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. officials speak of turning a corner in 2011. From the Taliban perspective, the Americans took fewer fatalities because they lost the taste for combat.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times December 31, 2011
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - It was by no means a common occurrence. But in the year that just drew to a close, a day would often pass, sometimes several, without an American service member dying in Afghanistan.
For the first time in years, U.S. military deaths here declined in 2011. American and Taliban commanders have very different explanations, and very different views of what that means for Afghanistan in the new year and beyond.
As they prepare to accelerate their withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. officials speak of having turned a corner in 2011. From the Taliban perspective, the Americans took fewer fatalities only because they lost the taste for aggressive combat.
Until last year, U.S. fatalities in the decade-long conflict had usually climbed — sometimes sharply — from year to year, peaking in 2010 at 499. That number dropped last year to 417, according to the independent website icasualties.org — a significant drop, but still averaging more than one per day.
Overall deaths in the NATO force fell even more, from 711 in 2010 to 565 last year.
U.S. officials say successful tactics and the impact of sheer numbers broke the momentum of the Taliban and other armed militant factions in 2011, when American troop strength topped out at more than 100,000. Since summer, 10,000 U.S. troops have left, and an additional 23,000 are scheduled to depart in 2012.
The flexing of that military muscle led to some of the most triumphal rhetoric in years about the Afghanistan war effort. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, visiting the country in mid-December, told American troops that they were "winning this very tough conflict."
The commander of Western forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, has been more circumspect. The standard language he used during a series of holiday visits that took him to American outposts scattered across the country was echoed in his year-end message to U.S. forces: "Every one of you here is contributing to the liberation of a country and giving Afghanistan hope."
The upbeat assessment, however, contains a paradox: If an increase in troop strength helped produce a turnaround, will the pullback set the stage for a reversal?
The insurgents insist that is already happening. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid attributed the decrease last year in Western military fatalities to a decline in major offensives.
"They have not conducted any huge operations anywhere," he said. "This year NATO forces have maintained defensive positions. They are not coming out of their bases. They have reduced their mobility everywhere."
Western commanders say that is untrue, pointing to aggressive campaigns in recent months in eastern Afghanistan, near Pakistan's tribal areas. Senior U.S. officials expect the military focus in the coming year to be on the east, a stronghold for one of the most dangerous insurgent groups, the Haqqani network.
Even though Allen has reportedly been lobbying the White House to slow down the American pullback, he and other Western commanders assert that diminishing numbers of North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops will not pose difficulties.
Afghan forces are stepping up their role, taking the lead in more and more parts of the country. Western and Afghan officials say they are on track to meet target numbers that will bring Afghan troop strength to 195,000 by October.
Another enduring question is the capability of Afghan forces.
High attrition rates make it hard for recruitment to keep pace with demand. And too-eager recruitment is thought to have been behind incidents in which Afghan troops turn their guns on Western mentors. That happened again Thursday, when an apparent Taliban sympathizer in the ranks of the Afghan army killed two French troops who were members of the Foreign Legion.
Vetting standards were tightened last year to filter out recruits with insurgent sympathies, but officials acknowledge that the task is difficult.
As the year drew to a close, Afghan military leaders also complained that they were not being provided with the sophisticated armaments they would need to take the lead in fighting insurgents by 2014, when the Western combat role is to formally end. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said he had called on the NATO force to equip the police and army with heavy weapons "so they can defend their own soil."
The Taliban, meanwhile, pointed to their ability to harry a more powerful enemy with a crude but lethal weapon of choice, the roadside bomb, which remained the single biggest killer of U.S. and other Western troops in 2011.
As in the past, troop fatalities tended to come in clusters, caused by single roadside bombings. On Dec. 22, five Polish troops in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, the capital, died in a blast that blew their armored vehicle apart.
Taliban commanders sometimes deliberately target non-U.S. contingents because they know that in many countries, public opposition to the war tracks any sudden rise in the number of battlefield deaths.
Another relatively low-tech weapon, the rocket-propelled grenade, caused the worst single U.S. troop loss of the war. Thirty Americans and eight Afghans were killed in the Aug. 6 crash of a Chinook helicopter carrying mainly elite Navy SEALs.
"In 2011 we fought more strongly than in any year before, and staged more high-profile attacks than in previous years," said Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman. Chief among those assaults, he said, were September's 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and a similar prolonged attack on the landmark Intercontinental Hotel in the capital three months earlier.
The Taliban's continuing shift away from conventional battlefield confrontations led to growing numbers of civilian deaths in the first three-quarters of last year, according to the United Nations.
There was some indication such deaths might be turning the Afghan public against the Taliban; an Asia Foundation study released in November found decreasing support among Afghans for the movement's goals. But concern over civilian casualties cuts both ways.
Throughout the year, Karzai voiced harsh criticism of U.S.-led operations that he said posed undue hazards to Afghan citizens.
The Afghan leader's demand for an end to American participation in nighttime raids on residential compounds emerged as a potentially serious obstacle to a long-term partnership agreement, which will govern the U.S. military presence after 2014.
As 2012 begins, the Afghan government and the Obama administration are looking for ways to negotiate a settlement with the Taliban.
In late December, Karzai agreed to the opening of a Taliban liaison office in Qatar, though some members of his administration fear U.S. officials will keep them in the dark about their contacts with the insurgents.
Pakistan's role will be crucial too, but the prospects for help seemed dim because of a sharp deterioration in ties between Washington and the government in Islamabad.
The Taliban leadership ended the year on a taunting note, asserting that the Americans were looking for a way out, just like the Soviet invaders who arrived 32 years ago. "They are on the point of fleeing," it said in a statement.
U.S. and NATO officials stressed that they were not abandoning the country, but preparing for an orderly transfer.
"At the end of 2011, we have three years to go, and that is more than enough to finish the job," said German Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for the NATO force. "We are not leaving because we have to. We are leaving because we can."
Karzai Thanks French Defense Minister For Assisting Afghanistan
December 31, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has met with French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet in Kabul and thanked Paris for the assistance it has given his country.
The French defense chief’s visit to Afghanistan comes after two French Foreign Legion soldiers were shot dead on December 29 by a man wearing an Afghan Army uniform in the eastern Kapisa Province.
Longuet, who arrived in Afghanistan on December 31 to help French forces mark the New Year, hailed the Afghan Army's progress in taking charge of more areas as foreign forces hand over control.
Currently, there are 3,600 French soldiers within the NATO/ISAF framework serving mostly in the province of Kapisa and the Surobi district in Kabul.
with agency reports
Air Force Awards Afghan Plane Contract
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE DECEMBER 30, 2011
The Air Force has awarded a contract to supply a small fleet of attack planes to Afghanistan, following a politically charged contest between rival aircraft manufacturers.
In an announcement late Friday, the Defense Department said the Air Force had awarded a contract worth $355 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. for 20 light air-support aircraft—single-engine turboprop aircraft that will serve as both trainers and ground-attack planes for Afghanistan's nascent air force.
Sierra Nevada had partnered with Brazil-based Embraer SA to offer the Super Tucano, which is currently in service with the militaries of Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
Aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft Corp. had offered the AT-6, a derivative of a training plane that the U.S. military currently operates. After the Air Force excluded the AT-6 from the running, Hawker Beechcraft lodged a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. After the GAO dismissed the protest, Hawker Beechcraft subsequently filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in the hopes of preventing the Air Force from moving forward with a contract award to the Sierra Nevada/Embraer team.
Hawker Beechcraft said in a statement Friday it would continue to contest the award, saying it learned of the contract during legal proceeding at the Court of Federal Claims.
"This is yet another example of the Air Force's lack of transparency throughout this competition," said Bill Boisture, Hawker Beechcraft chairman and CEO, in a statement. "With this development, it now seems even clearer that the Air Force intended to award the contract to Embraer from early in this process."
Lt. Col. Wesley Miller, an Air Force spokesman, said the contest "was conducted in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations" and that the evaluation of the aircraft "was fair, open and transparent."
Eleventh Georgian soldier killed in Afghanistan
AFP via Yahoo! News - Dec 31 07:18am
A Georgian soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Tbilisi said Saturday -- the 11th from the ex-Soviet state to die serving alongside NATO-led forces fighting the Taliban.
Corporal Besik Niniashvili was killed by a mine explosion in the volatile Afghan province of Helmand, the ministry said in a statement.
Georgia is a staunch ally of the United States with ambitions to join NATO and currently has more than 900 troops serving in Afghanistan -- a major contribution from a small country of 4.4 million people.
Georgia's parliament this month voted to send another battalion to Afghanistan, almost doubling its contingent there.
Tbilisi's NATO aspirations have infuriated neighbour Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over the Moscow-backed separatist region of South Ossetia.
Visiting Tbilisi last month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Georgia had "progressed significantly" in its membership bid, but said that the country needed to do more to develop democracy.
China, Afghanistan sign agreement on bilateral cooperation
KABUL, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Xu Feihong and Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul signed an agreement on bilateral economic and technical cooperation on Saturday.
The deal is a part of the grant assistance of China to the people of Afghanistan, said a press release by the Afghan Foreign Ministry.
The latest grant will be spent on the implementation of projects based on consultations between the two countries, it said.
The main projects include the reconstruction and equipping of the Jamhooryat Hospital in Kabul, the reconstruction of the Parwan Irrigation Canal, construction of the Conference Hall within the Arg premises (Afghan Presidential Palace), the reconstruction of the Ministry of Education's Center for National Science and Technology, the reconstruction of the Ministry of Higher Education 's guest house, the construction of the department of the Chinese Language in Kabul University and the provision of 100 ambulances to the Ministry of Public Health.
Since 2001, the People's Republic of China has provided a total amount of 200 million U.S. dollars to the reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, the foreign ministry said.
Afghan Insurgents Recruit Child Suicide Bombers
Bethany Matta VOA News December 30, 2011
Kandahar, Afghanistan - Throughout the war in Afghanistan, insurgents have modified their tactics to adapt to the changing battlefield. In the past year, fighters have disguised themselves in burqas, hidden bombs in turbans, and increasingly turned to children to carry out attacks. We talk with a Pakistani boy who is one the war’s youngest recruited bombers.
When 13 year-old Ali Ahmad says he wants an education, he is not talking about the education he already has. "I was taught how to use guns and weapons and they also taught me how to do a suicide attack by pressing some button. They told me I would be paid a lot of money,” he explained.
Ali lost both of his parents when he was younger. He and his younger brother were living in their uncle’s home in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Three months ago, he ran away. “I met three people near the border and asked them to give me a job. They asked to me to come with them, when I went they grabbed me and put something over my eyes so I could not see and tied my hands and legs," he recalled. "They took me to a training center where I trained for 20 days.”
Ali’s recruiters then showed him the American base in Spin Boldak where they wanted him to attack using a suicide vest. “They said when you do the suicide attack, you will go to heaven, even if you kill just one American in this attack. I said that I would be killed too, but they told me that my soul will be in peace,” he said.
Ali says he knew what would happen if he detonated the vest and was thinking of ways to escape. But before he could carry out his mission, suspicious residents turned him in to security forces.
Over the past year Kandahar officials say insurgents have chosen to fight fewer face-to-face battles with troops. Instead, they say militants favor suicide attacks and are increasingly relying on children to carry them out.
“Using children is a new enemy tactic. Children are given 50 to 100 Afghanis to carry things. They don’t know what they’re carrying and the control to detonate the bomb is with someone else. When the kids reach the tanks or police vehicles, the enemies blow them up. Many kids are told they will survive," General Abdul Raziq is Kandahar’s acting police chief stated. "Children cannot judge, and the older ones no longer want to do it.”
The Afghan Taliban, the main militant group in the province, insists it never uses children for insurgent activity. A Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, says the practice goes against Islam.
Ali remains in custody of the country’s main spy agency. Officials say they do not know what to do with him. Ali has no family and shelters refuse to take him. Ali says he worries about his younger brother and would rather be studying and playing - like other boys his age.
Afghan child bride tells of 'torture' by in-laws
AFP via Yahoo! News - Dec 31 06:23am
An Afghan child bride on Saturday spoke of how she was tortured by her mother-in-law who locked her in a toilet for six months, beat her, pulled out her fingernails and burned her with cigarettes.
Sahar Gul, 15, is recovering in hospital in Kabul, her face bruised and swollen, her skin still bearing the marks of her ordeal, barely able to speak.
Police have said she was locked up when she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution. Her brother had sold her to her husband about seven months ago for $5,000.
"For several months I was locked up in toilet by my in-laws and particularly my mother-in-law," she managed to tell media in a frail voice during a visit from Afghan health minister Dr Suraya Dalil.
"I was denied food and water. I was tortured and beaten."
The minister said it was an example of "increased cases of violence against women in Afghanistan".
Women continue to suffer in Afghanistan despite billions of dollars of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.
Dalil said Gul was suffering from severe blood loss, with multiple burns and injuries.
"She is also suffering from trauma and psychological problems," she said.
"She is still a child, below the legal age of marriage. She is only 15 and from a remote part of the country. It's a tragic and heartbreaking story for Afghanistan."
The teenager was found in the basement of her husband's house in the northeastern Baghlan province late on Monday.
Her family, from the neighbouring province of Badakhshan, had reported her disappearance to the police after being denied access to the home.
Three women including the girls's mother-in-law were arrested over the case but her husband fled.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.
And according to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.
Gul's case comes after a woman known as Gulnaz was pardoned and released earlier in December after spending two years in prison for "moral crimes".
She was jailed after she reported to police that her cousin's husband had raped her. Gulnaz gave birth to the rapist's child in prison.
In November, the United Nations said that a landmark law aiming to protect women against violence in Afghanistan had been used to prosecute just over 100 cases since being enacted two years ago.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com