Tweet
U.S. diplomat: Taliban needs to renounce terror for Qatar office
By the CNN Wire Staff January 24, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar is contingent on the renunciation of international terror and the backing of a peace process to end the Afghan conflict, an American diplomat said Tuesday.
Afghanistan backs a plan for the Taliban to establish an office in Qatar to facilitate peace talks. But U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that process hasn't gotten off the ground.
He reiterated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion earlier this month after she met the Qatari foreign minister that "nothing has been concluded on the opening of an office, and more work needs to be done."
And, he repeated the words of Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, that such "work includes first, direct contact between Qatar and Afghanistan on the subject of the opening of any office."
"For an office to open, we also need to have a clear statement by the Afghan Taliban against international terrorism and in support of a peace process to end the armed conflict in Afghanistan," Crocker said.
"And for reconciliation to take place, we are in full agreement with the Government of Afghanistan that three conditions must be met by the Taliban and other armed insurgents: a complete break with al Qaeda; an end to violence; and respect for the Afghan constitution, including its protections for women and minorities."
Crocker, speaking at the Afghan Government Media Information Center, made remarks about working with the Kabul government to forge peace in Afghanistan, beset by war with Taliban and al Qaeda elements for more than a decade. He also knocked down talk that the United States "is seeking a secret deal with the Taliban at the expense of the Afghan government and people."
"Afghanistan and the United States both support a peace process for Afghanistan. But only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan," he said.
Crocker also denied rumors that the United States has a plan to divide the country and change "its form of government."
He said the United States "is committed to supporting the efforts of the central government, to build a strong, secure, democratic, and unified Afghanistan" and that "we have no other aim or goal."
A U.S. Peace with the Taliban? Don't Hold Your Breath
By John Wendle / Kabul Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 time.com
A large crystal chandelier cast a weak glow over U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin as they talked up the results of the envoys' two days of meetings with President Hamid Karzai on the question of peace talks with the Taliban. But the plaster near the ceiling of the Soviet-era ceremonial hall at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was warped and discolored from a leaky roof, and a newly installed heater hummed loudly in the background. Minutes after the press conference ended, the power cut out, leaving Afghan officials — and the media — in the dark, an eloquent commentary on the peace process itself: the trappings are there, but closer inspection reveals obvious flaws.
The main reason for Grossman's visit appears to have been to reassure Karzai and his government that they will play a key part in any peace process between the U.S. and the Taliban. But the most striking evidence that the main gears of the peace machine are out of sync came when the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said that on his way to Kabul, he had had "the good fortune to visit Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and India" and that he had "found strong support for peace in Afghanistan." That statement was notable not for the countries mentioned, but for the key omission: Pakistan.
Last week, a spokesman for Pakistan's government told Reuters, "Ambassador Grossman asked to visit Pakistan, but we conveyed to him that it was not possible at the moment." Islamabad said it first had to complete a parliamentary review of the troubled bilateral relationship with Washington. Acknowledging the importance of Pakistan and perhaps signaling an effort to reduce tensions between the two countries, Grossman said that, "There really can't be a comprehensive peace process unless Pakistan is part of it," adding in a conciliatory tone and with a smile, "I would be happy to meet them at any time or any place."
And while the opening of a Taliban office in Doha has prompted some to talk of a peace process gaining momentum, Karzai's government last month withdrew its ambassador to Qatar because Kabul felt it was being cut out of the loop in talks between the emirate and the Taliban. Asked about the significance of the Taliban office in Qatar, Grossman answered that "nothing has been concluded" and "more work needs to be done."
The U.S. envoy urged that "Qatar and Afghanistan need to be in direct contact with one another," and commended Karzai's government for welcoming a Qatari delegation to Afghanistan. Yet, right now, there is no Afghan ambassador in Doha or Qatari embassy in Kabul, and the two sides appear to talk past one another. Still, even if a Taliban office in Doha would establish the credentials of interlocutors who claim to speak for the movement's leadership, and even if Washington was able to get on the same page as both Pakistan and the Karzai government, Grossman emphasized repeatedly during the press conference that the Taliban have not yet committed to peace talks.
Grossman emphasized that "we also need to have a clear statement by the Afghan Taliban against international terrorism and in support of the peace process to end the armed conflict in Afghanistan."
So, just as a vast gap remains between the objectives of the Taliban and those of the U.S., there are also gaps between the U.S. and Afghanistan. While Deputy Foreign Minister Ludin said his government would support the transfer of Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to Qatar — which has been mooted as an important opening gesture by the U.S. to launch a peace process — Grossman said, "This is an issue in the United States of law, something on which we would want to consult our Congress," adding that "for our side, no decisions have been made." And given the nest of issues that remains to be untangled before any significant progress becomes possible, talk of a peace process at this stage remains somewhat hypothetical.
Too soon to say Taliban involved in French deaths: NATO
AFP News via Yahoo! Malaysia News - Tue Jan 24, 2:58 am ET
A NATO spokesman said Tuesday it was too early to conclude that the Taliban were involved in the killing of four French troops by an Afghan soldier last week.
"As we've seen with incidents of this type -- we have found through investigations there are many reasons for these incidents," NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on its Twitter feed.
"It is too early to make claims of Taliban involvement in such incidents at this time."
The attack on the soldiers, who were unarmed, came on Friday at a base in eastern Afghanistan and left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted angrily, threatening to pull his forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 deadline for all US-led coalition combat troops and dispatched Defence Minister Gerard Longuet to Kabul.
Longuet said in Kabul that he was told the killer was a Taliban infiltrator in the ranks of the Afghan army.
But well-placed security sources have told AFP that the man arrested for the shooting has confessed to interrogators that he did it because of a recent video showing US Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters.
The ISAF spokesman said "there are no indicators of a systemic issue of infiltration into the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces), we look at this closely every day".
He said all recruits went through an eight-step vetting process, but improvements needed to be made.
"Tragic events such as those last week will not undermine the confidence and trust between forces," he said, noting that some 130,000 foreign troops work with 300,000 members of the Afghan security forces.
"We know the suspect was a member of the Afghan National Army and the suspect is in custody of the ANA. It would be dangerous for us to come to conclusions at this point."
According to a classified coalition report published by the New York Times last Friday, a rise in attacks by allied Afghan forces on US and NATO soldiers represents a "systemic" problem and is not rooted in isolated incidents.
The report emphasises the killings are the result of a decade of contempt that each side has for each other, despite being supposed allies, and profound ill will among both civilians and militaries on both sides.
It downplayed the role of Taliban infiltrators in the incidents.
Between May 2007 and May 2011 at least 58 US and NATO personnel were killed in 26 attacks by Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified 70-page report said, according to the newspaper.
Afghans hit by food price hikes as Pakistan shutdown bites
By Rob Taylor Mon Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23 (Reuters) - With snow piled deep in front of his small Kabul shop and a border shutdown enforced by Pakistan driving up food prices and severing a vital lifeline into Afghanistan, Asmatullah is having his own winter of discontent.
Since Pakistan closed supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the coalition killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air attack in November, ordinary Afghans and foreigners alike are feeling the impact of soaring food costs.
"I have lost 50 percent of my customers," Asmatullah says, somehow managing a smile as he surveys his empty shop, surrounded by cartons of eggs and milk, boxes of cigarettes, drinks and crates of bottled water, now frozen solid on the icy pavement outside.
"Everybody has less income now, so people are just not able to buy. When the border is closed, the prices go up," he said, huddled in a black hat and leather jacket to try and keep one of the most biting winters for years at bay.
The border shutdown, which Pakistan has promised to lift at a time still to be decided, underscores Afghanistan's reliance on food imports through its mountainous eastern border, rather than from Iran in the west and longer, more costly, routes north through ex-Soviet Central Asia.
Most food imports come from India, Dubai and Pakistan, and are trucked into the landlocked country from Karachi, entering Afghanistan through turbulent southern Kandahar province, in Spin Boldak, and Torkham, in eastern Nangarhar province.
Since the Pakistan border closure, the cost of trucking or flying supplies into the country for U.S. forces has soared from $17 million a month to $104 million, figures from the Pentagon in U.S. media showed this month.
At the three-storey Finest supermarket, popular with foreigners and locals and the target of a deadly suicide bomb last year, owner Matiuddin says the cost of importing a container of food has soared from $8000 before the border closure to around $23,000.
"It's a huge problem. Everybody is yelling. If they don't solve it soon we are going to have to close our business," Matiuddin said in his cramped office, slamming his hand on an ageing fax machine in frustration.
"We are just having to let food expire and keep it on the shelves in hope of selling it."
Since the shutdown was imposed, prices for a kilo of chicken have jumped from 200 Afghani ($2) to 250 Afghani. Tomatoes have more than quadrupled and those for cheese doubled.
Housekeeper Nadira Habibi, 37, said that even with her husband and a son working, it was becoming too difficult to feed her family of seven.
"Before we spent around 20,000 Afghani a month ($400), but now it's more than 30,000, which we're just not able to afford," Habibi said. (Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
East Afghan frontline emerges as major hurdle
By Daniel Magnowski and Amie Ferris-Rotman
COMBAT OUTPOST ZEROK/JALALABAD (Reuters) - With snow past their ankles and their view of forbidding mountains blocked by low-slung cloud, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's restive east are taking advantage of a bitter winter to brace for fresh fighting in spring.
The extreme cold has forced a lull in fighting at rugged outpost Zerok in Paktika province, located 20 km (12 miles) from the porous, unruly border with Pakistan, which teems with insurgents linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Afghanistan's east has emerged as the new focus of attention as worries mount over a narrow strip of land that the United States has dubbed the most dangerous place in the world.
NATO-led forces are currently in the process of handing over control of security to the Afghans ahead of a planned exodus of foreign combat troops to be completed by the end of 2014.
But officials in the U.S. military and Afghan government are increasingly concerned by the challenge of securing the 2,640 km (1,610 mile) border that many frontline soldiers believe is too rugged to hold. Failing to do so would allow more militants to cross over, complicating peace efforts in Afghanistan.
Ringed by mountains dotted with evergreen trees, Zerok is one of a series of remote outposts that form the first line of defense against insurgents crossing the border into Afghanistan to launch attacks, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
"It is that first layer where the insurgents are met by a security element that stops their flow," said Captain Craig Halstead, commander of the U.S. Army's Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment at Zerok.
By training the Afghan army and police, who have been patrolling the frozen peaks alongside his own troops, he hopes that when fighting renews with the March thaw, the Afghans will have absorbed enough for insurgents to find a tougher, more disciplined opponent.
But U.S. officers are wary of the hurdles still ahead.
"What the (Afghan army is) not very good at is logistics, planning at levels higher than company (30-60 men)," said Major Joseph Buccino, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Paktika, where around 3,400 American soldiers are currently serving. This will drop to just over 3,000 before the summer fighting season.
American soldiers at Zerok said their Afghan partners have only recently started taking the initiative when planning operations, and handing orders down to soldiers on the ground is still relatively new for them.
Drug use, hastily trained ranks and widespread corruption are hindering the Afghan police and army nationally, some Afghan and U.S. officials say.
Halstead, who has been at Zerok since July, said another major difficulty is the support local Afghans give to the insurgency, often through fear of militant reprisals.
"The people sometimes don't have a choice, because of intimidation, threats, and the coercive tactics insurgents can use against them," he said.
"SERIOUS CROSS-BORDER THREATS"
Underscoring Afghan government concerns about the challenges, no whole provinces bordering Pakistan were chosen for the first phase of transition to Afghan security, completed last July.
Three districts in Paktika, two of which touch the border, were handed over to Afghan control in November, while for the second tranche, four areas in eastern Nangarhar province were selected, but none are actually on the border.
"We have some serious cross-border threats. We keep pushing Kabul to deal with this effectively," Nangarhar deputy governor Mohammad Hanif Gardiwal told visiting reporters, saying security forces lacked heavy weapons to counter the insurgents.
Currently, around 30,000 foreign troops are serving in the 14 provinces making up Regional Command East, around a quarter of the total in the country.
"There will be an awful lot of pressure to be very aggressive (this summer)," said Buccino, adding it will be the last time the coalition will have extra soldiers sent into the area as part of a two-year surge that began in 2010.
While numbers for 2013 are not yet known, they are certain to fall. U.S. President Barack Obama last June announced a rapid drawdown of American forces from a peak of 101,000 to around 67,000 by the end of the 2012 summer, in a high-risk strategy underpinned by the ability of the Afghan forces left behind.
Further north, not far from the Pakistan border in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, local officials and ordinary Afghans bemoaned what they said is their country's inability to secure the rugged border districts.
"Security here in the city is good but they won't be able to protect the remote areas further east," said shopkeeper Houmayin in the city from where U.S. commandos launched the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
"They are Taliban land," Houmayin said, perched upon mounds of nuts and chocolates in his shop overlooking a busy road lined with palm trees.
Jalalabad city, along with four other districts, will be officially handed over to Afghan security forces by the end of this week.
Mufti Moinshah Haqqani, a member of the provincial government, said the border was a hotbed of expert bomb-making activity, with financing from within the Pakistani government, a claim commonly made by Afghan officials.
Pakistan denies allegations it supports militant groups.
"No matter how much we equip our police and our army, or how much investment we put in, there is no way security will be improved in the Pakistani border districts," he said alongside other members of the Nangarhar provincial council.
"Unless the Pakistani government succumbs to pressure to stop interfering in Afghan affairs, transition in those areas will stay a challenge."
(Editing by Rob Taylor and Jonathan Thatcher)
Afghan withdrawal prompts rights worries
January 23, 2012 The Sydney Morning Herald
The desire by international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan has "entirely overshadowed" human rights concerns, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.
"The looming date of 2014 for withdrawal of most international troops ... begs the question of exactly what kind of Afghanistan the troops will be leaving behind," the organisation says in a report released on Sunday.
NATO's efforts to train a 134,000-strong police force and 171,600 soldiers faced "serious challenges", HRW wrote in its annual World Report, citing "attrition, insurgent infiltration, and illiteracy and substance abuse among recruits".
Advertisement: Story continues below
The US-backed Afghan local police - village-based defence forces - had been implicated in "killings, abductions, illegal raids, and beatings", most of which went unpunished, the group wrote.
Shifting power structures had led to the "appointment of individuals implicated in serious human rights abuses", including the police chiefs in the provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar, the report stated, while Kabul continued to give "free rein" to known warlords and corrupt politicians and businessmen.
HRW found Afghan society remained hostile towards "women's autonomy and ability to protect themselves from forced marriage".
It said "87 per cent of women face at least one form of physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage in their lifetimes."
The report's authors were also worried by an anticipated steep decline in foreign aid budgets this year.
"Internationally supported efforts to promote human rights, civil society, education, rule of law, governance, and access to health care are imperiled by declining international aid."
HRW noted that support had grown for a negotiated peace agreement with the Taliban, but said efforts were hampered by factors including the killing of a key negotiator, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and "pressure from Pakistan for a key role in the process".
The report said the armed conflict had escalated in 2011, spreading to new parts of the country, while the use of night raids against suspected insurgents - "widely despised by Afghans because of their infringement on family life" - had increased to a reported 300 per month.
Afghan Deputy House Speaker Elected
TOlOnews.com By Shahla Murtazawey Monday, 23 January 2012
Head of the Coalition to Support Law Enforcement, Abdul Zahir Qadir, was unanimously elected as the second deputy to the Afghan House Speaker.
Abdul Zahir Qadir won the seat by getting 140 votes on Monday, the second working day of second year, sixteenth session of the Afghan House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the candidates for the positions of second deputy of the House Speaker, first secretary and deputy secretary did not get enough votes to win the seats.
"The Constitution is our guideline. Whoever respects the constitution is loyal to this nation. I am ready to sacrifice myself to respect the constitution and will not make any kind of deal to ignore it," Zahir Qadir said.
Ahmad Behzad and Jafar Mahdawi were the candidates for the position of second deputy house keeper, Abdul Sattar Khawasi and Zaheer Saadat were the candidates for first secretary, while Farhad Azimi and Qais Hassan ran for deputy secretary of the house, none of whom won.
The second year, sixteenth session of the Afghan National Assembly was inaugurated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday.
President Karzai told lawmakers he would soon send government policy lines for parliament approval.
The President urged the House of Representatives to make its decisions based on the national interests in the country.
Defence minister wants Czech troops to stay in Afghanistan until 2014
24-01-2012 15:32 | Jan Richter Radio Prague
Czech troops may stay in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra, who is in the United States on a working visit, said he would ask the Czech Parliament to extend their mandate by another 24 months, as their current mandate will expire by the end of the year. However, the opposition has criticized Mr Vondra for announcing his plans without a prior debate in the lower house.
The Czech Republic now has around 600 soldiers serving in NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, down from some 700 troops present in the country in 2011. The Czechs run the Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Afghan province of Logar, and the Czech presence includes a chemical and biological protection team, a unit which trains helicopter pilots for the Afghan military, a field medical team, as well as a special forces contingent. Their current mandate will expire by the end of the year which is why Czech Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra announced on Tuesday he would asked the country’s Parliament to extend the troops’ mandate by another 24 months. Speaking in Washington ahead of talks with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Mr Vondra said training local units will remain the Czech troops’ main focus.
“I expect that in the spring I will ask the government and Parliament to approve another two-year mandate for our troops. Now I’m not ready to talk about numbers but I suppose our helicopters might yet go back there as our special units are only staying until the end of the year. I think we will keep focusing on training, that’s the most important thing because that’s the prerequisite for the Afghans to take care of their own security.”
The issue is likely to be a controversial one on the house floor. If agreed by the coalition government, the minister’s request should be approved by the Czech lower house where the coalition parties have a majority. But the opposition says Mr Vondra is giving Czech allies in NATO a carte blanche. Jan Hamáček is a Social Democrat MP and the party’s shadow defence minister.
“We are very concerned about this statement. We think such important announcements should be made only after a thorough debate at least in Parliament. This wasn’t the case, and this is in a way a carte blanche given by Minister Vondra to our allies and the Afghan government. We would rather expect him to come up with an exit strategy for the Czech army from Afghanistan.”
At a meeting with the US Secretary of Defence in Washington on Tuesday, Minister Vondra would also like to finalize a deal that would allow Czech companies to compete for US military contracts.
Afghan civilian death toll ebbs in 2011
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 23 04:00pm
The death toll from the Afghan conflict has fallen slightly in the last year, said a report to the US Congress on Monday, after a decade of international intervention in the war torn country.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research arm of the US Congress, 2,262 Afghan civilians died last year, compared to 2,777 in 2010.
A similar decline was seen in the Afghan army with 289 deaths last year down from 821 in the previous year. For police, the toll stood at 522, also lower than 1,292 in 2010.
The CRS however cautioned that the estimates are "based on varying time periods and have been created using different methodologies," so the figures should be treated with caution.
Since the beginning of "Enduring Freedom," launched in October 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York, a total of 1,864 US soldiers have been killed and 15,262 wounded.
US President Barack Obama has set a goal for the US military to leave Afghanistan by 2014.
U.S. Prepares To Redefine Mission In Afghanistan
by Tom Bowman NPR January 23, 2012
American commanders in Afghanistan are preparing for a major shift in their mission this year.
U.S. troops are expected to move away from their lead role in combat operations in most areas. Instead, they'll advise Afghan forces to take the lead in both operations and security duties throughout much of Afghanistan.
Both the Army and the Marine Corps are setting up training teams to advise and assist Afghan army and police units. Officials tell NPR that as many as 2,000 handpicked, non-commissioned officers and junior officers in the Army will be sent to Afghanistan as part of this effort beginning in May.
Those Army teams will begin training next month at Ft. Polk, Louisiana in preparation for their new roles. Marine officials say that some of their training teams already are starting to work in Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province.
"By this summer, we want the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) in our area to completely plan and execute operations," said one Army officer familiar with the training teams plan. "We have to continue to take the leap of faith or they'll never be truly independent."
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, has said that American forces must go from their current role, where the troops are partners with Afghan forces, to more of an advisory role, and allow Afghan forces to take over certain parts of the country.
One major area for the training teams will be in the south and southwestern part of the country, around Kandahar and Helmand Province, which have seen security gains over the past two years.
A Looming Deadline
Part of the new shift in focus is driven by the calendar. Afghan forces are scheduled to take the lead in their own security by the end of 2014. American commanders say they must start making that transition now, while there are still sizeable numbers of US troops on the ground to ease the way.
"The sense is (the Afghan forces) should be able to fail now," said another Army officer working on the training team effort, "rather than wait until 2014 when they fail and there's no time to help them or train them."
The number of U.S. forces is slated to drop from about 90,000 today to around 68,000 by September. Today, most military operations are led by U.S. soldiers and Marines with Afghan forces playing a subordinate role.
"A 'combined patrol' would be U.S. forces going out with one vehicle of ANA (Afghan National Army) in the rear," said the Army officer. "Drawdown is coming so we must put these guys out front."
American officers in Afghanistan acknowledge that the abilities of the Afghan forces are at best "spotty" and it will be some time before they are able to stand on their own without U.S. help.
NPR reporters have been on patrols with U.S. Marines and Afghan forces. In some cases the Marines planned and led the patrols – even to the point of talking with villagers through an interpreter, while the Afghan forces stood and watched.
U.S. Will Advise, But Not Lead
The U.S. training teams – with up to 30 members— will be placed throughout Afghan army and police headquarters, officials say.
While some of the teams will be in headquarters, others will go on missions, though Afghans will be leading those operations.
The teams will include U.S. personnel with a variety of skills: bomb disposal, intelligence, logistics, medical evacuation and fire support, such as calling in artillery or airstrikes.
That all makes sense to retired Lt. Gen. Dave Barno. He's a former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. And last month he co-authored a paper calling for such an advisory effort, called "The Next Fight, Time For A Change Of Mission In Afghanistan."
"I think it's very significant," said Barno. "The American commanders out there recognize that the long-term success is going to have to be achieved by Afghan forces not by American forces with Afghan forces off to the side. So that's going to really be a change of outlook and a change of approach for us."
In his paper, Barno said that Afghan units are "largely untested – and are perhaps far from ready."
"We have not put any serious, high-priority focus on the advisory effort," Barno said in an interview. "We've had so many American infantry battalions there that the counterinsurgency mission can be done by the Americans with just a few Afghans accompanying them."
There have been some U.S. military advisers with Afghan forces, said Barno. And when that happens, "their professionalism and confidence goes up and they can be pretty effective in the field."
The Iraq Model
One officer likened the plan to the teams used in Iraq to train Iraqi army and police units.
"This is a very smart move at this particular time," said retired Lt. Gen. Jim Dubik, who commanded the U.S. training effort in Iraq. "What it meant in Iraq is that coalition forces could participate less as the directors and more as the assistors. I think these teams will put us in a position to do that in Afghanistan — of course much later than most of us would have preferred, but at least we're doing it now."
Dubik said he met with Afghan defense and interior officials last fall and they are in favor of the teams. Still, Dubik said it was clear that the Afghans are not yet ready to take over the entire security effort.
"There'll be the Afghans leading in many portions of the country where their capability allows them to lead," said Dubik. "But in some of the areas (coalition) forces will still retain the lead."
One particular area where the U.S. will remain in the forefront is the mountainous eastern part of the country, hard up against the Pakistan border. Insurgents, especially members of the Haqqani network, are able to slip across the porous border, attacking U.S. and Afghan forces, and in some cases attacking Kabul itself.
Administration looking into repatriating non-Afghan detainees at U.S.-run prison
Washington Post By Peter Finn and Julie Tate Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Obama administration is considering the repatriation of most, if not all, of the non-Afghan detainees held at the main American-run prison in Afghanistan, an effort to oversee their transfer before U.S. officials relinquish control of the facility, according to administration officials.
The foreign prisoners, who number close to 50, were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
With the U.S. government planning to hand over control of the prison, American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial. By beginning the repatriation process soon, officials believe they can negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries, arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.
U.S. officials said that deliberations about the detainees, being held near Bagram Air Base, have just begun and that no final decisions have been made. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
A small number of detainees may be deemed to pose a terrorist threat, requiring their continued detention or close supervision by their home country if released from the Afghan prison, officials said. Additionally, a number of them are Yemeni, complicating their possible repatriation. President Obama has suspended the transfer home of their fellow nationals from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because of concerns about the security situation in Yemen.
The largest single group of foreign detainees at the prison is Pakistani, and there are up to two dozen Arabs of various nationalities, according to administration and foreign officials.
Among the first detainees likely to be transferred home is Yunus Rahmatullah, a Pakistani national, whose release has been demanded by a British court. Rahmatullah, a suspected extremist, was picked up by troops with Britain’s elite Special Air Service in Iraq in 2004 and handed over to U.S. forces. The CIA subsequently flew him to Afghanistan without informing the British, according to press reports and court papers.
Attorneys for Rahmatullah, 29, argued in the British courts that the transfer violated a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and British militaries, and was a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions because it involved the removal of a civilian from the war theater.
Last month, a British court granted a writ of habeas corpus and ordered the British government to get custody of Rahmatullah. The court noted that a 2010 Detainee Review Board hearing of military officers at Bagram cleared Rahmatullah for release.
The British Court of Appeal said that if the British foreign secretary and defense minister failed to secure Rahmatullah, it would “be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ.” The court set a deadline of Feb. 14 for Rahmatullah’s release.
The British government has appealed the decision, but it has also asked the United States to arrange for Rahmatullah’s swift return to Pakistan, which would satisfy the court and his lawyers.
“It would make no sense for the Obama administration to ratify this Bush-era war crime,” said Cori Crider, legal director of Reprieve, a London-base human rights group that is representing Rahmatullah. “Under the Geneva Convention, Yunus Rahmatullah is Britain’s responsibility and should never have been sent to Bagram in the first place. The man is cleared, his family are waiting, and Pakistan is apparently happy to have him — it’s high time to send him home.”
Amanatullah Ali, another Pakistani who was picked up with Rahmatullah and also taken to Bagram, is seeking his release through the U.S. courts.
Seven Pakistani detainees taken to Bagram, including Rahmatullah, are also suing the Pakistani government either for its alleged role in their capture or for failing to secure their release.
Administration officials said they are willing to transfer Rahmatullah, but do not want the basis of such a move to be a foreign court ruling. They also said that any transfer home has been complicated by the deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan.
“We will do this on our timetable,” said one official.
The case nonetheless is another incentive to begin dealing with the non-Afghan population at the prison in Afghanistan, which is known as the Parwan detention center and which replaced the facility inside the nearby Bagram Air Base.
In early January, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the United States to turn Parwan over to his government. U.S. officials had said two years ago that they expected the prison would be turned over in early 2012.
While Karzai apparently regarded that as a hard deadline, U.S. officials said it was always contingent on Afghanistan’s “demonstrated capacity” to manage the facility.
The prison now holds approximately 2,600 prisoners, up from the 600 held in 2009.
The foreign detainees include two Yemenis and one Tunisian who attempted to secure their release by filing for writs of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court in Washington in 2009. All three claimed they were captured outside Afghanistan, held at secret CIA prisons overseas, before being transferred to the detention center in Bagram.
Judge John D. Bates ruled that these non-Afghan prisoners had the right to pursue habeas cases; however, the federal court of appeals overturned that decision in 2010.
A U.S. official said the three men were among those who could be repatriated.
NATO relying on smugglers along Pakistan's border, Pakistan officials say
With the Pakistan border still closed, NATO relies on smugglers to bring needed supplies to troops in Afghanistan.
Aamir Latif January 24, 2012 07:25 Global Post
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With few other options available to it since Pakistan closed its border crossings almost two months ago, NATO has at times resorted to paying local smugglers to get much-needed supplies to its troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials say.
The Pakistani and Afghan smugglers, who must pay bribes to militants to travel safely through some areas, navigate treacherous routes over the 1,800-mile mountainous divide that separates the two countries to bring containers of oil, food and other essential items — all at a price — to soldiers on the other side.
“Borders mean nothing to us. We have been crossing in and out for centuries,” Sahib Khan, a smuggler who said NATO had hired him, told GlobalPost.
The hiring of illegal smugglers came after a failed attempt by NATO to pay private companies, which truck goods across the border under the Pakistan-Afghanistan Free Trade Agreement (PATA). These private companies, Pakistani officials said, were secretly swapping out their normal cargo for NATO supplies until Pakistani security forces caught wind of the scam.
A senior officer for the Frontier Corps, an elite military unit that is responsible for security along the border, told GlobalPost that a total ban on the movement of containers under PATA, which was signed in 2010 to promote bilateral trade, eventually foiled the strategy.
“We had concrete evidence that some of the containers being imported by private companies, under PATA, were being used to smuggle supplies for NATO troops under cover of commercial imports,” the official said.
The official said that 12 containers loaded with oil were intercepted on Jan. 19. Several more containers were stopped at the Torkhum border two weeks ago, he said.
A NATO official said he could not comment on the seized containers and denied that it is using any unconventional means to ship supplies to its troops.
“In fact, we are not facing any problems vis-à-vis logistics at the moment,” said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for coalition forces based in Kabul. “However we would welcome the reopening of the two supply routes in order to normalize ties with Pakistan.”
Pakistan shut the two main border crossings into Afghanistan, which have long been the most important routes relied upon by US and NATO troops, in November after US helicopters attacked a Pakistani military outpost, killing 24 soldiers.
A US report issued last month claimed the attack was a mistake and that blame should be shared between the two sides. But already weary of drone strikes operated by the CIA in North Waziristan, and bruised by the Navy Seals raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, the Pakistani military maintains that the United States was wholly in the wrong.
“The US investigation report is structured around the argument of ‘self-defense’ and ‘proportional use of force,’ an argument which is contrary to the facts,” a Pakistani military spokesman said in a statement issued to the press on Monday.
Despite Pakistan’s defiant tone, the country’s parliament agreed in principal last week to reopen the border in February. Lawmakers, however, will also be seeking a formal apology from the Americans, something that has so far not been forthcoming.
A Pakistani official in the country’s foreign ministry said the reopening of the border might also be contingent on NATO’s agreement to pay new taxes on any supplies it ships through Pakistan. Before the border was closed, NATO had been shipping between 70 and 80 percent of its non-lethal supplies through the Pakistani border.
NATO developed an alternative route through the Central Asian States but, according to the Pentagon, the strategy is costing the United States six times more than it did to ship supplies through Pakistan.
Smuggling between Pakistan and Afghanistan has long been a profitable and vibrant business. Various trade agreements have been signed between the two neighbors in a bid to contain the practice, but high import and export taxes coupled with little government oversight, thwarted those attempts.
Mostly items like flour, edible oil, lentils, dried vegetables, contraband cigarettes, and animals for meat are smuggled into Afghanistan, while spare auto parts, electronics and unregistered vehicles are smuggled the other direction.
Smuggling is so widespread that it has become the backbone of the economy in towns and villages along the border, where locally it is treated simply as normal trade. The mountainous terrain provides an edge over security to smugglers who regularly trickle across the border without any trouble.
Sahib said that most of the food and oil supplies he has carried across the border for NATO originate from the southern port city of Karachi, and are moved through Peshawar and Quetta, and finally through Pakistan’s tribal areas, which are largely under the authority of various militant groups.
For those militants, the smugglers have been an important source of income. Smugglers are required to pay “rahdari,” or “passage,” an unofficial tax that allows them safe passage.
“Once we are onto the route, it’s the responsibility of those who receive rahdari to ensure we are able to safely enter into Afghanistan,” Sahib said.
Any smuggling that is done on behalf of NATO can in no way make up for the closed borders, however. Smugglers say they carry between 20 and 25 small containers a day while, when the border crossings were open, NATO shipped an average of 250 large containers a day — making the reopening of the borders essential to the war effort.
Gen. David Petraeus: ‘The troops can’t quit’
Washington Post By Paula Broadwell with Vernon Loeb January 23 , 2012
“It’s ‘open the envelope time,’ ” Gen. David Petraeus told his security team as his SUV approached the White House on June 21, 2011, for his final meeting with President Obama on the drawdown of forces from Afghanistan. Petraeus had returned to Washington from his command in Kabul for consultations with Obama on the drawdown, and for a Senate committee hearing on his nomination to become the next director of the CIA. On the way from the Pentagon, retired Army general Jack Keane, a mentor and former vice chief of staff of the Army, e-mailed Petraeus with rumors of what he was hearing: The White House was going to recommend 10,000 troops depart by the end of 2011, with the remaining 23,000 surge forces out by the summer of 2012, a far more drastic timetable for withdrawal than Petraeus had recommended.
Keane was protective of his prodigy. Obama’s decision “not only protracts the war but risks the mission,” Keane said in the e-mail, then asked: “should you consider resigning?”
“I don’t think quitting would serve our country,” Petraeus responded. “More likely to create a crisis. And, I told POTUS I’d support his ultimate decision. Besides, the troops can’t quit. . . .”
During a review of Afghan policy in the fall of 2009, Obama’s senior advisers had come to see Petraeus as an inflexible commander who only wanted as many troops as possible. They had suspicions that he was a Bush general, given his close personal relationship with the former president. Petraeus had worked hard since then to win Obama’s trust. He did not want to make the president feel he was trying to limit his drawdown options. Quitting was out of the question. But being candid about the drawdown, he thought, was a matter of duty.
Petraeus refused to discuss his interactions with the president for this account, but officials briefed on the White House meeting confirmed that Obama, Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior national security officials engaged in a lengthy debate, tense but respectful, over the pace of the drawdown.
Obama expressed his gratitude that there had been no leaks and said the frank exchanges during the group’s two prior meetings had been a great help to him. The president believed that Petraeus and the international coalition he commanded had made gains that justified his commitment of extra forces, but that now it was important to signal to the American, Afghan and international communities that the coming year would be one of transition.
There was general agreement with Obama’s desire to draw down 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, though that was a larger figure than Petraeus and the military had recommended. But there was sharp disagreement over when the remaining 23,000 surge troops should leave Afghanistan. Petraeus had recommended that they stay in Afghanistan through November 2012, which marked the end of the annual fighting season.
“I don’t think quitting would serve our country,” Petraeus responded. “More likely to create a crisis. And, I told POTUS I’d support his ultimate decision. Besides, the troops can’t quit. . . .”
During a review of Afghan policy in the fall of 2009, Obama’s senior advisers had come to see Petraeus as an inflexible commander who only wanted as many troops as possible. They had suspicions that he was a Bush general, given his close personal relationship with the former president. Petraeus had worked hard since then to win Obama’s trust. He did not want to make the president feel he was trying to limit his drawdown options. Quitting was out of the question. But being candid about the drawdown, he thought, was a matter of duty.
Petraeus refused to discuss his interactions with the president for this account, but officials briefed on the White House meeting confirmed that Obama, Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior national security officials engaged in a lengthy debate, tense but respectful, over the pace of the drawdown.
Obama expressed his gratitude that there had been no leaks and said the frank exchanges during the group’s two prior meetings had been a great help to him. The president believed that Petraeus and the international coalition he commanded had made gains that justified his commitment of extra forces, but that now it was important to signal to the American, Afghan and international communities that the coming year would be one of transition.
There was general agreement with Obama’s desire to draw down 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, though that was a larger figure than Petraeus and the military had recommended. But there was sharp disagreement over when the remaining 23,000 surge troops should leave Afghanistan. Petraeus had recommended that they stay in Afghanistan through November 2012, which marked the end of the annual fighting season.
President Obama addressed the nation at 8 p.m. from the White House. Petraeus watched it with his wife, Holly, from their home at Fort Myer.
“. . . Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point,” Obama said. “After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. . . .”
Conservative writer Max Boot, whom Petraeus respected, was outraged by the speech. He told Petraeus that if he wanted to quit and run for president, he would work on his campaign. Petraeus told him quitting was not the answer. He certainly didn’t intend to run for president, either. As a student and practitioner of civil-military relations, Petraeus had thought at length about the subject of resignation in protest, turning it over in his mind many times. He was well steeped in the theory and practice and pitfalls of civil-military relations. Military decision making and the use of force as they related to civil-military relations had been foundations of his doctoral research.
Petraeus strongly believed that “military leaders should provide advice that is informed by important nonmilitary and military factors beyond their strict purview, but is driven by the situation on the ground and military considerations.” In other words, a military leader’s advice was premised first and foremost on his or her areas of expertise — military affairs, not political ones.
Petraeus fully subscribed to the oath of office, including obeying “the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over me.” Obama’s decision to draw down forces faster than he had recommended did not, in his mind, begin to approach the threshold for such an extraordinary action as resignation. He thought it would have been a selfish, grandstanding move with huge political ramifications. He had had ample opportunity to provide input and give his best advice, and now it was time to salute and carry on.
Other supporters of the war were not as sanguine. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his Republican colleague and fellow Afghan war booster, Senator John McCain of Arizona, strongly disagreed with Obama’s decision. “This is now his policy; he needs to own it,” Graham told McCain. “He did not take the advice of his military advisers, and it has put the mission in jeopardy. This assumes too much risk. His decision was political, and we need to pin it on him.” Graham was livid. “You know, as a ranking GOP member, I have supported the war and the president’s position, but he is about to lose that support and the rest of those in the party who have backed this war,” he said.
Petraeus was determined to avoid getting sucked into the politics of either side. He knew some senators would question the drawdown decision during his confirmation hearing the following day. He needed to keep the troops in Afghanistan focused, to give them energy and reassurance that the president’s decision did not call for such doomsday political rankling. He thought the best point of influence as the battlefield commander was for him to be with them, to the extent that he could from D.C.
He had his communications team arrange for him to deliver a personal message via a secure video teleconference from his Fort Myer home that evening at 11 p.m. Whatever he may have felt about the decision that day, there was no trace of disappointment on his face or in his message. His staff officers in Kabul watched him at their regular briefing on the morning after the president’s address.
“Needless to say, with the decision being announced, all of us will support the decision and strive to execute it effectively. That is our responsibility as military leaders,” Petraeus told his command staff. “ . . . In short, this is not a time to start thinking about going home. Rather, we need to stay focused on protecting the Afghan people from all threats and on helping our [Afghan military] partners develop the ability to defend their people. We need to continue to take the fight to the enemy. We need to remain on the offensive, to ensure that we do not allow the enemy any breathing space or respite.”
CIA hearing
By the time Senator Dianne Feinstein gaveled to order the hearing on his nomination as CIA director that afternoon in the Hart Senate Office Building, Petraeus had met privately or spoken with every member of the committee and to all former living CIA directors except one.
He began his prepared remarks by recognizing his wife, Holly, his partner for “37 years and 23 moves.” He then addressed, up front, some of the skepticism about his move to the CIA and what it meant. Responding to some who had wondered in print whether he would be able to “grade my own work,” he said he was “keenly aware” that as CIA director he would be an intelligence officer, not a policymaker.
By far the most dramatic moment, and a lesson for students of civil-military relations, came at the end of the hearing when Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, asked Petraeus whether he supported the president’s drawdown plan and what would have to happen before he would ever consider resigning his command. “I obviously support the ultimate decision of the commander in chief,” Petraeus said. “That is, we take an oath to obey the orders of the president of the United States and indeed do that.”
“And if you couldn’t do that — if you couldn’t do that consistent with that oath — you would resign?” asked Levin.
“Well, I’m not a quitter, chairman,” Petraeus said. “I’ve actually had people e-mail me and say that I should quit, and actually this is something I’ve thought a bit about.”
“I’m sure you have,” Levin said.
“And I don’t think it is the place for a commander to actually consider that step unless you are in a very, very dire situation,” said Petraeus. “ . . . I actually feel quite strongly about this. Our troopers don’t get to quit, and I don’t think commanders should contemplate that, again, as any kind of idle action. That would be an extraordinary action, in my view. And at the end of the day, this is not about me, it’s not about an individual commander, it’s not about a reputation. This is about our country. And the best step for our country, with the commander in chief having made a decision, is to execute that decision to the very best of our ability.”
Excerpted from “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus” by Paula Broadwell with Washington Post staff writer Vernon Loeb, to be published by Penguin Press on Monday.
EU Pledges 60 Million Euros to Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Monday, 23 January 2012
The EU has pledged 60 million Euros to Afghanistan to be used for reforms in government institutions.
The European Union Special Representative, Vygaudas Uackas said on Monday that the EU assistance to Afghanistan would continue after withdrawal of all foreign troops.
Mr Vygaudas Uackas said the EU assistance to Afghanistan would continue until 2025.
"...I am pleased to know we have pledged for years to the current level of financial support for years to come to Afghanistan which is about 1 billion euros every year," he said.
He said based on the commitments made at the Bonn conference the EU will also continue to help with the training of the Afghan National Police.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government will use international support to make Afghan security forces fully ready to be able to take over all security responsibilities and stand on their own feet.
The EU has allocated 20 million euros for reforms in the Afghan judicial organisations and 40 million for reforms in other government institutions.
Mr Uackas also announced that the draft of the long term strategic partnership between the EU and Afghanistan will be submitted for consideration of Afghan authorities in the next month and would be signed after that.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced that a regional conference will be held next year to attract cooperation to improve Afghanistan's trade and political relations with other countries.
Afghanistan's humongous holy book
The world's largest Quran weighs 1,100 pounds and took more than five years to create.
By Tom Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Amid Afghanistan’s seemingly endless war, one local calligrapher has endeavored to prove that his nation still has a rich, vibrant culture by creating the world’s largest Quran.
Measuring in at 7-1/2-by-5-feet, the recently unveiled holy book took more than five years to create. Its 218 pages are adorned with script and ornamentation that use real gold, and the book’s cover is fashioned from 21 goatskins.
The record-breaking Quran, which weighs 1,100 pounds, is now on display in a specially designed viewing area made of imported Italian and Turkish stones at Kabul’s Hakim Nasir Khusraw Balkhi Cultural Center.
While the giant Quran is a point of pride for many in the devout Muslim nation, some Afghans are raising eyebrows at the price tag of the record-breaking book and its specially designed display area, a combined cost of more than $1 million.
“This is just a heavy book in a case and no one can even use it,” says Hassan, a cellphone vender who, like many Afghans, has only one name. “It’s the holy book, but they should use the money in a good way.”
Aside from the nation’s ongoing security problems, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Less than a third of the population has access to electricity, and Kabul is the only capital city without a sewage system.
Syed Mansoor Naderi, a prominent member of Afghanistan’s Shia Ismaili community, funded the project.
Impoverished Afghan woman gives birth to sextuplets
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An impoverished young Afghan woman has given birth to sextuplets -- three boys and three girls -- producing the same number of children her countrywomen typically average over a lifetime.
Sara Gul, 22, from the northern Balkh province, said on Tuesday she tried to abort after learning she was pregnant with the brood of six, highlighting the country's poverty and ignorance surrounding birth control.
"I even jumped from a wall but nothing happened to them," Gul told Reuters in provincial capital Mazar-e-Sharif, where she gave birth -- her first -- late Monday.
Maternity ward doctor Abdul Rauf Ferogh confirmed the birth, saying five of the babies were healthy, while the last one was underweight and still in postnatal care.
Rare in nature, multiple births are often the result of medical fertility treatment, although the method does not exist in Afghanistan. Afghans take pride in having large families, but war, conflict and destitution means one in four children die before reaching the age of five.
"Allah blessed me with six children, but I am worried about their future," said Gul's 27-year-old husband Shukrullah, who is unemployed, like many others in the war-wracked country
The Ministry of Health warns Afghanistan's population of 30 million will double in as many years, stunting opportunities for economic growth in what is already one of the world's poorest nations.
Efforts to promote birth control by the government have been met with caution by aid groups who say introducing contraceptives would be extremely difficult in the ultra-conservative Muslim society, and opposition from Islamic scholars who say they are unlawful.
(Reporting by Bashir Ansari, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Ed Lane)
In Afghanistan, it’s dog-fight-dog world
NBC News By Dmitry Solovyov , NBC News’ Cameraman Reporters’ Notebook 23/01/2012
KABUL - Michael Vick would feel right at home here.
Just north of Kabul, on the edge of the mountains, around 1,000 people recently gathered in the cold for a dog fight. The crowd was basically all men, of all ages, even babies, sharing in a tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years.
Dog fights are popular all over the country, and in some cases gambling is involved. In this particular case, we were told there was no gambling taking place, although I’m not sure that was true.
The dog fight is led by an old man, the fight master, who stands with a stick. He rules the show and is very powerful and very confident. The crowds gather in a series of circles, and no one steps out of line. Only the dog owners and their dogs are allowed to enter the circle.
At the start of the fight, there is a green cloth between the dogs so they cannot see each other. The dogs are held by their owners without leashes. Then the cloth is dropped, and the dogs run towards each other and start the fight.
Contrary to common belief, the goal is not for the dogs to kill one another. The winner is the dog that best controls the other – usually by holding on to the skin that surrounds the dogs’ necks – which is decided by the old man. And once he has made his pronouncement, the fighting stops immediately.
I know that the notion of dog-fighting is very controversial. I understand this view – I have had dogs, and love these animals. But at the same time, the dogs do not die and the owners do not want their animals to get hurt.
In fact, the dog owners are very protective of their animals. After all, owning a fighting dog is an expensive proposition for an Afghan. One dog owner told us that the prices for a fighting dog start at $500 and go as high as $10,000 – a lot of money anywhere, but particularly in Afghanistan. The owners seemed to care for their dogs and treated them with respect.
That said, Afghans tend not to be concerned about cruelty to animals. Taking care of their fighting dogs is more about protecting a valuable asset.
After the fights were over, the elderly fight master told us that he has been going to fights since he was a 10-year-old, attending at first with his father. This is a part of Afghan tradition, a way of life and a bit of excitement on Fridays, the day of rest here.
NBC News’ Kiko Itasaka contributed to this report.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By the CNN Wire Staff January 24, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar is contingent on the renunciation of international terror and the backing of a peace process to end the Afghan conflict, an American diplomat said Tuesday.
Afghanistan backs a plan for the Taliban to establish an office in Qatar to facilitate peace talks. But U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that process hasn't gotten off the ground.
He reiterated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion earlier this month after she met the Qatari foreign minister that "nothing has been concluded on the opening of an office, and more work needs to be done."
And, he repeated the words of Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, that such "work includes first, direct contact between Qatar and Afghanistan on the subject of the opening of any office."
"For an office to open, we also need to have a clear statement by the Afghan Taliban against international terrorism and in support of a peace process to end the armed conflict in Afghanistan," Crocker said.
"And for reconciliation to take place, we are in full agreement with the Government of Afghanistan that three conditions must be met by the Taliban and other armed insurgents: a complete break with al Qaeda; an end to violence; and respect for the Afghan constitution, including its protections for women and minorities."
Crocker, speaking at the Afghan Government Media Information Center, made remarks about working with the Kabul government to forge peace in Afghanistan, beset by war with Taliban and al Qaeda elements for more than a decade. He also knocked down talk that the United States "is seeking a secret deal with the Taliban at the expense of the Afghan government and people."
"Afghanistan and the United States both support a peace process for Afghanistan. But only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan," he said.
Crocker also denied rumors that the United States has a plan to divide the country and change "its form of government."
He said the United States "is committed to supporting the efforts of the central government, to build a strong, secure, democratic, and unified Afghanistan" and that "we have no other aim or goal."
A U.S. Peace with the Taliban? Don't Hold Your Breath
By John Wendle / Kabul Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 time.com
A large crystal chandelier cast a weak glow over U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin as they talked up the results of the envoys' two days of meetings with President Hamid Karzai on the question of peace talks with the Taliban. But the plaster near the ceiling of the Soviet-era ceremonial hall at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was warped and discolored from a leaky roof, and a newly installed heater hummed loudly in the background. Minutes after the press conference ended, the power cut out, leaving Afghan officials — and the media — in the dark, an eloquent commentary on the peace process itself: the trappings are there, but closer inspection reveals obvious flaws.
The main reason for Grossman's visit appears to have been to reassure Karzai and his government that they will play a key part in any peace process between the U.S. and the Taliban. But the most striking evidence that the main gears of the peace machine are out of sync came when the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan said that on his way to Kabul, he had had "the good fortune to visit Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and India" and that he had "found strong support for peace in Afghanistan." That statement was notable not for the countries mentioned, but for the key omission: Pakistan.
Last week, a spokesman for Pakistan's government told Reuters, "Ambassador Grossman asked to visit Pakistan, but we conveyed to him that it was not possible at the moment." Islamabad said it first had to complete a parliamentary review of the troubled bilateral relationship with Washington. Acknowledging the importance of Pakistan and perhaps signaling an effort to reduce tensions between the two countries, Grossman said that, "There really can't be a comprehensive peace process unless Pakistan is part of it," adding in a conciliatory tone and with a smile, "I would be happy to meet them at any time or any place."
And while the opening of a Taliban office in Doha has prompted some to talk of a peace process gaining momentum, Karzai's government last month withdrew its ambassador to Qatar because Kabul felt it was being cut out of the loop in talks between the emirate and the Taliban. Asked about the significance of the Taliban office in Qatar, Grossman answered that "nothing has been concluded" and "more work needs to be done."
The U.S. envoy urged that "Qatar and Afghanistan need to be in direct contact with one another," and commended Karzai's government for welcoming a Qatari delegation to Afghanistan. Yet, right now, there is no Afghan ambassador in Doha or Qatari embassy in Kabul, and the two sides appear to talk past one another. Still, even if a Taliban office in Doha would establish the credentials of interlocutors who claim to speak for the movement's leadership, and even if Washington was able to get on the same page as both Pakistan and the Karzai government, Grossman emphasized repeatedly during the press conference that the Taliban have not yet committed to peace talks.
Grossman emphasized that "we also need to have a clear statement by the Afghan Taliban against international terrorism and in support of the peace process to end the armed conflict in Afghanistan."
So, just as a vast gap remains between the objectives of the Taliban and those of the U.S., there are also gaps between the U.S. and Afghanistan. While Deputy Foreign Minister Ludin said his government would support the transfer of Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to Qatar — which has been mooted as an important opening gesture by the U.S. to launch a peace process — Grossman said, "This is an issue in the United States of law, something on which we would want to consult our Congress," adding that "for our side, no decisions have been made." And given the nest of issues that remains to be untangled before any significant progress becomes possible, talk of a peace process at this stage remains somewhat hypothetical.
Too soon to say Taliban involved in French deaths: NATO
AFP News via Yahoo! Malaysia News - Tue Jan 24, 2:58 am ET
A NATO spokesman said Tuesday it was too early to conclude that the Taliban were involved in the killing of four French troops by an Afghan soldier last week.
"As we've seen with incidents of this type -- we have found through investigations there are many reasons for these incidents," NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on its Twitter feed.
"It is too early to make claims of Taliban involvement in such incidents at this time."
The attack on the soldiers, who were unarmed, came on Friday at a base in eastern Afghanistan and left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted angrily, threatening to pull his forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 deadline for all US-led coalition combat troops and dispatched Defence Minister Gerard Longuet to Kabul.
Longuet said in Kabul that he was told the killer was a Taliban infiltrator in the ranks of the Afghan army.
But well-placed security sources have told AFP that the man arrested for the shooting has confessed to interrogators that he did it because of a recent video showing US Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters.
The ISAF spokesman said "there are no indicators of a systemic issue of infiltration into the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces), we look at this closely every day".
He said all recruits went through an eight-step vetting process, but improvements needed to be made.
"Tragic events such as those last week will not undermine the confidence and trust between forces," he said, noting that some 130,000 foreign troops work with 300,000 members of the Afghan security forces.
"We know the suspect was a member of the Afghan National Army and the suspect is in custody of the ANA. It would be dangerous for us to come to conclusions at this point."
According to a classified coalition report published by the New York Times last Friday, a rise in attacks by allied Afghan forces on US and NATO soldiers represents a "systemic" problem and is not rooted in isolated incidents.
The report emphasises the killings are the result of a decade of contempt that each side has for each other, despite being supposed allies, and profound ill will among both civilians and militaries on both sides.
It downplayed the role of Taliban infiltrators in the incidents.
Between May 2007 and May 2011 at least 58 US and NATO personnel were killed in 26 attacks by Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified 70-page report said, according to the newspaper.
Afghans hit by food price hikes as Pakistan shutdown bites
By Rob Taylor Mon Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23 (Reuters) - With snow piled deep in front of his small Kabul shop and a border shutdown enforced by Pakistan driving up food prices and severing a vital lifeline into Afghanistan, Asmatullah is having his own winter of discontent.
Since Pakistan closed supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the coalition killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air attack in November, ordinary Afghans and foreigners alike are feeling the impact of soaring food costs.
"I have lost 50 percent of my customers," Asmatullah says, somehow managing a smile as he surveys his empty shop, surrounded by cartons of eggs and milk, boxes of cigarettes, drinks and crates of bottled water, now frozen solid on the icy pavement outside.
"Everybody has less income now, so people are just not able to buy. When the border is closed, the prices go up," he said, huddled in a black hat and leather jacket to try and keep one of the most biting winters for years at bay.
The border shutdown, which Pakistan has promised to lift at a time still to be decided, underscores Afghanistan's reliance on food imports through its mountainous eastern border, rather than from Iran in the west and longer, more costly, routes north through ex-Soviet Central Asia.
Most food imports come from India, Dubai and Pakistan, and are trucked into the landlocked country from Karachi, entering Afghanistan through turbulent southern Kandahar province, in Spin Boldak, and Torkham, in eastern Nangarhar province.
Since the Pakistan border closure, the cost of trucking or flying supplies into the country for U.S. forces has soared from $17 million a month to $104 million, figures from the Pentagon in U.S. media showed this month.
At the three-storey Finest supermarket, popular with foreigners and locals and the target of a deadly suicide bomb last year, owner Matiuddin says the cost of importing a container of food has soared from $8000 before the border closure to around $23,000.
"It's a huge problem. Everybody is yelling. If they don't solve it soon we are going to have to close our business," Matiuddin said in his cramped office, slamming his hand on an ageing fax machine in frustration.
"We are just having to let food expire and keep it on the shelves in hope of selling it."
Since the shutdown was imposed, prices for a kilo of chicken have jumped from 200 Afghani ($2) to 250 Afghani. Tomatoes have more than quadrupled and those for cheese doubled.
Housekeeper Nadira Habibi, 37, said that even with her husband and a son working, it was becoming too difficult to feed her family of seven.
"Before we spent around 20,000 Afghani a month ($400), but now it's more than 30,000, which we're just not able to afford," Habibi said. (Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
East Afghan frontline emerges as major hurdle
By Daniel Magnowski and Amie Ferris-Rotman
COMBAT OUTPOST ZEROK/JALALABAD (Reuters) - With snow past their ankles and their view of forbidding mountains blocked by low-slung cloud, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's restive east are taking advantage of a bitter winter to brace for fresh fighting in spring.
The extreme cold has forced a lull in fighting at rugged outpost Zerok in Paktika province, located 20 km (12 miles) from the porous, unruly border with Pakistan, which teems with insurgents linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Afghanistan's east has emerged as the new focus of attention as worries mount over a narrow strip of land that the United States has dubbed the most dangerous place in the world.
NATO-led forces are currently in the process of handing over control of security to the Afghans ahead of a planned exodus of foreign combat troops to be completed by the end of 2014.
But officials in the U.S. military and Afghan government are increasingly concerned by the challenge of securing the 2,640 km (1,610 mile) border that many frontline soldiers believe is too rugged to hold. Failing to do so would allow more militants to cross over, complicating peace efforts in Afghanistan.
Ringed by mountains dotted with evergreen trees, Zerok is one of a series of remote outposts that form the first line of defense against insurgents crossing the border into Afghanistan to launch attacks, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
"It is that first layer where the insurgents are met by a security element that stops their flow," said Captain Craig Halstead, commander of the U.S. Army's Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment at Zerok.
By training the Afghan army and police, who have been patrolling the frozen peaks alongside his own troops, he hopes that when fighting renews with the March thaw, the Afghans will have absorbed enough for insurgents to find a tougher, more disciplined opponent.
But U.S. officers are wary of the hurdles still ahead.
"What the (Afghan army is) not very good at is logistics, planning at levels higher than company (30-60 men)," said Major Joseph Buccino, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Paktika, where around 3,400 American soldiers are currently serving. This will drop to just over 3,000 before the summer fighting season.
American soldiers at Zerok said their Afghan partners have only recently started taking the initiative when planning operations, and handing orders down to soldiers on the ground is still relatively new for them.
Drug use, hastily trained ranks and widespread corruption are hindering the Afghan police and army nationally, some Afghan and U.S. officials say.
Halstead, who has been at Zerok since July, said another major difficulty is the support local Afghans give to the insurgency, often through fear of militant reprisals.
"The people sometimes don't have a choice, because of intimidation, threats, and the coercive tactics insurgents can use against them," he said.
"SERIOUS CROSS-BORDER THREATS"
Underscoring Afghan government concerns about the challenges, no whole provinces bordering Pakistan were chosen for the first phase of transition to Afghan security, completed last July.
Three districts in Paktika, two of which touch the border, were handed over to Afghan control in November, while for the second tranche, four areas in eastern Nangarhar province were selected, but none are actually on the border.
"We have some serious cross-border threats. We keep pushing Kabul to deal with this effectively," Nangarhar deputy governor Mohammad Hanif Gardiwal told visiting reporters, saying security forces lacked heavy weapons to counter the insurgents.
Currently, around 30,000 foreign troops are serving in the 14 provinces making up Regional Command East, around a quarter of the total in the country.
"There will be an awful lot of pressure to be very aggressive (this summer)," said Buccino, adding it will be the last time the coalition will have extra soldiers sent into the area as part of a two-year surge that began in 2010.
While numbers for 2013 are not yet known, they are certain to fall. U.S. President Barack Obama last June announced a rapid drawdown of American forces from a peak of 101,000 to around 67,000 by the end of the 2012 summer, in a high-risk strategy underpinned by the ability of the Afghan forces left behind.
Further north, not far from the Pakistan border in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, local officials and ordinary Afghans bemoaned what they said is their country's inability to secure the rugged border districts.
"Security here in the city is good but they won't be able to protect the remote areas further east," said shopkeeper Houmayin in the city from where U.S. commandos launched the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
"They are Taliban land," Houmayin said, perched upon mounds of nuts and chocolates in his shop overlooking a busy road lined with palm trees.
Jalalabad city, along with four other districts, will be officially handed over to Afghan security forces by the end of this week.
Mufti Moinshah Haqqani, a member of the provincial government, said the border was a hotbed of expert bomb-making activity, with financing from within the Pakistani government, a claim commonly made by Afghan officials.
Pakistan denies allegations it supports militant groups.
"No matter how much we equip our police and our army, or how much investment we put in, there is no way security will be improved in the Pakistani border districts," he said alongside other members of the Nangarhar provincial council.
"Unless the Pakistani government succumbs to pressure to stop interfering in Afghan affairs, transition in those areas will stay a challenge."
(Editing by Rob Taylor and Jonathan Thatcher)
Afghan withdrawal prompts rights worries
January 23, 2012 The Sydney Morning Herald
The desire by international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan has "entirely overshadowed" human rights concerns, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.
"The looming date of 2014 for withdrawal of most international troops ... begs the question of exactly what kind of Afghanistan the troops will be leaving behind," the organisation says in a report released on Sunday.
NATO's efforts to train a 134,000-strong police force and 171,600 soldiers faced "serious challenges", HRW wrote in its annual World Report, citing "attrition, insurgent infiltration, and illiteracy and substance abuse among recruits".
Advertisement: Story continues below
The US-backed Afghan local police - village-based defence forces - had been implicated in "killings, abductions, illegal raids, and beatings", most of which went unpunished, the group wrote.
Shifting power structures had led to the "appointment of individuals implicated in serious human rights abuses", including the police chiefs in the provinces of Uruzgan and Kandahar, the report stated, while Kabul continued to give "free rein" to known warlords and corrupt politicians and businessmen.
HRW found Afghan society remained hostile towards "women's autonomy and ability to protect themselves from forced marriage".
It said "87 per cent of women face at least one form of physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage in their lifetimes."
The report's authors were also worried by an anticipated steep decline in foreign aid budgets this year.
"Internationally supported efforts to promote human rights, civil society, education, rule of law, governance, and access to health care are imperiled by declining international aid."
HRW noted that support had grown for a negotiated peace agreement with the Taliban, but said efforts were hampered by factors including the killing of a key negotiator, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and "pressure from Pakistan for a key role in the process".
The report said the armed conflict had escalated in 2011, spreading to new parts of the country, while the use of night raids against suspected insurgents - "widely despised by Afghans because of their infringement on family life" - had increased to a reported 300 per month.
Afghan Deputy House Speaker Elected
TOlOnews.com By Shahla Murtazawey Monday, 23 January 2012
Head of the Coalition to Support Law Enforcement, Abdul Zahir Qadir, was unanimously elected as the second deputy to the Afghan House Speaker.
Abdul Zahir Qadir won the seat by getting 140 votes on Monday, the second working day of second year, sixteenth session of the Afghan House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the candidates for the positions of second deputy of the House Speaker, first secretary and deputy secretary did not get enough votes to win the seats.
"The Constitution is our guideline. Whoever respects the constitution is loyal to this nation. I am ready to sacrifice myself to respect the constitution and will not make any kind of deal to ignore it," Zahir Qadir said.
Ahmad Behzad and Jafar Mahdawi were the candidates for the position of second deputy house keeper, Abdul Sattar Khawasi and Zaheer Saadat were the candidates for first secretary, while Farhad Azimi and Qais Hassan ran for deputy secretary of the house, none of whom won.
The second year, sixteenth session of the Afghan National Assembly was inaugurated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday.
President Karzai told lawmakers he would soon send government policy lines for parliament approval.
The President urged the House of Representatives to make its decisions based on the national interests in the country.
Defence minister wants Czech troops to stay in Afghanistan until 2014
24-01-2012 15:32 | Jan Richter Radio Prague
Czech troops may stay in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra, who is in the United States on a working visit, said he would ask the Czech Parliament to extend their mandate by another 24 months, as their current mandate will expire by the end of the year. However, the opposition has criticized Mr Vondra for announcing his plans without a prior debate in the lower house.
The Czech Republic now has around 600 soldiers serving in NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, down from some 700 troops present in the country in 2011. The Czechs run the Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Afghan province of Logar, and the Czech presence includes a chemical and biological protection team, a unit which trains helicopter pilots for the Afghan military, a field medical team, as well as a special forces contingent. Their current mandate will expire by the end of the year which is why Czech Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra announced on Tuesday he would asked the country’s Parliament to extend the troops’ mandate by another 24 months. Speaking in Washington ahead of talks with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Mr Vondra said training local units will remain the Czech troops’ main focus.
“I expect that in the spring I will ask the government and Parliament to approve another two-year mandate for our troops. Now I’m not ready to talk about numbers but I suppose our helicopters might yet go back there as our special units are only staying until the end of the year. I think we will keep focusing on training, that’s the most important thing because that’s the prerequisite for the Afghans to take care of their own security.”
The issue is likely to be a controversial one on the house floor. If agreed by the coalition government, the minister’s request should be approved by the Czech lower house where the coalition parties have a majority. But the opposition says Mr Vondra is giving Czech allies in NATO a carte blanche. Jan Hamáček is a Social Democrat MP and the party’s shadow defence minister.
“We are very concerned about this statement. We think such important announcements should be made only after a thorough debate at least in Parliament. This wasn’t the case, and this is in a way a carte blanche given by Minister Vondra to our allies and the Afghan government. We would rather expect him to come up with an exit strategy for the Czech army from Afghanistan.”
At a meeting with the US Secretary of Defence in Washington on Tuesday, Minister Vondra would also like to finalize a deal that would allow Czech companies to compete for US military contracts.
Afghan civilian death toll ebbs in 2011
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 23 04:00pm
The death toll from the Afghan conflict has fallen slightly in the last year, said a report to the US Congress on Monday, after a decade of international intervention in the war torn country.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research arm of the US Congress, 2,262 Afghan civilians died last year, compared to 2,777 in 2010.
A similar decline was seen in the Afghan army with 289 deaths last year down from 821 in the previous year. For police, the toll stood at 522, also lower than 1,292 in 2010.
The CRS however cautioned that the estimates are "based on varying time periods and have been created using different methodologies," so the figures should be treated with caution.
Since the beginning of "Enduring Freedom," launched in October 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York, a total of 1,864 US soldiers have been killed and 15,262 wounded.
US President Barack Obama has set a goal for the US military to leave Afghanistan by 2014.
U.S. Prepares To Redefine Mission In Afghanistan
by Tom Bowman NPR January 23, 2012
American commanders in Afghanistan are preparing for a major shift in their mission this year.
U.S. troops are expected to move away from their lead role in combat operations in most areas. Instead, they'll advise Afghan forces to take the lead in both operations and security duties throughout much of Afghanistan.
Both the Army and the Marine Corps are setting up training teams to advise and assist Afghan army and police units. Officials tell NPR that as many as 2,000 handpicked, non-commissioned officers and junior officers in the Army will be sent to Afghanistan as part of this effort beginning in May.
Those Army teams will begin training next month at Ft. Polk, Louisiana in preparation for their new roles. Marine officials say that some of their training teams already are starting to work in Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province.
"By this summer, we want the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) in our area to completely plan and execute operations," said one Army officer familiar with the training teams plan. "We have to continue to take the leap of faith or they'll never be truly independent."
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, has said that American forces must go from their current role, where the troops are partners with Afghan forces, to more of an advisory role, and allow Afghan forces to take over certain parts of the country.
One major area for the training teams will be in the south and southwestern part of the country, around Kandahar and Helmand Province, which have seen security gains over the past two years.
A Looming Deadline
Part of the new shift in focus is driven by the calendar. Afghan forces are scheduled to take the lead in their own security by the end of 2014. American commanders say they must start making that transition now, while there are still sizeable numbers of US troops on the ground to ease the way.
"The sense is (the Afghan forces) should be able to fail now," said another Army officer working on the training team effort, "rather than wait until 2014 when they fail and there's no time to help them or train them."
The number of U.S. forces is slated to drop from about 90,000 today to around 68,000 by September. Today, most military operations are led by U.S. soldiers and Marines with Afghan forces playing a subordinate role.
"A 'combined patrol' would be U.S. forces going out with one vehicle of ANA (Afghan National Army) in the rear," said the Army officer. "Drawdown is coming so we must put these guys out front."
American officers in Afghanistan acknowledge that the abilities of the Afghan forces are at best "spotty" and it will be some time before they are able to stand on their own without U.S. help.
NPR reporters have been on patrols with U.S. Marines and Afghan forces. In some cases the Marines planned and led the patrols – even to the point of talking with villagers through an interpreter, while the Afghan forces stood and watched.
U.S. Will Advise, But Not Lead
The U.S. training teams – with up to 30 members— will be placed throughout Afghan army and police headquarters, officials say.
While some of the teams will be in headquarters, others will go on missions, though Afghans will be leading those operations.
The teams will include U.S. personnel with a variety of skills: bomb disposal, intelligence, logistics, medical evacuation and fire support, such as calling in artillery or airstrikes.
That all makes sense to retired Lt. Gen. Dave Barno. He's a former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. And last month he co-authored a paper calling for such an advisory effort, called "The Next Fight, Time For A Change Of Mission In Afghanistan."
"I think it's very significant," said Barno. "The American commanders out there recognize that the long-term success is going to have to be achieved by Afghan forces not by American forces with Afghan forces off to the side. So that's going to really be a change of outlook and a change of approach for us."
In his paper, Barno said that Afghan units are "largely untested – and are perhaps far from ready."
"We have not put any serious, high-priority focus on the advisory effort," Barno said in an interview. "We've had so many American infantry battalions there that the counterinsurgency mission can be done by the Americans with just a few Afghans accompanying them."
There have been some U.S. military advisers with Afghan forces, said Barno. And when that happens, "their professionalism and confidence goes up and they can be pretty effective in the field."
The Iraq Model
One officer likened the plan to the teams used in Iraq to train Iraqi army and police units.
"This is a very smart move at this particular time," said retired Lt. Gen. Jim Dubik, who commanded the U.S. training effort in Iraq. "What it meant in Iraq is that coalition forces could participate less as the directors and more as the assistors. I think these teams will put us in a position to do that in Afghanistan — of course much later than most of us would have preferred, but at least we're doing it now."
Dubik said he met with Afghan defense and interior officials last fall and they are in favor of the teams. Still, Dubik said it was clear that the Afghans are not yet ready to take over the entire security effort.
"There'll be the Afghans leading in many portions of the country where their capability allows them to lead," said Dubik. "But in some of the areas (coalition) forces will still retain the lead."
One particular area where the U.S. will remain in the forefront is the mountainous eastern part of the country, hard up against the Pakistan border. Insurgents, especially members of the Haqqani network, are able to slip across the porous border, attacking U.S. and Afghan forces, and in some cases attacking Kabul itself.
Administration looking into repatriating non-Afghan detainees at U.S.-run prison
Washington Post By Peter Finn and Julie Tate Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Obama administration is considering the repatriation of most, if not all, of the non-Afghan detainees held at the main American-run prison in Afghanistan, an effort to oversee their transfer before U.S. officials relinquish control of the facility, according to administration officials.
The foreign prisoners, who number close to 50, were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
With the U.S. government planning to hand over control of the prison, American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial. By beginning the repatriation process soon, officials believe they can negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries, arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.
U.S. officials said that deliberations about the detainees, being held near Bagram Air Base, have just begun and that no final decisions have been made. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
A small number of detainees may be deemed to pose a terrorist threat, requiring their continued detention or close supervision by their home country if released from the Afghan prison, officials said. Additionally, a number of them are Yemeni, complicating their possible repatriation. President Obama has suspended the transfer home of their fellow nationals from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because of concerns about the security situation in Yemen.
The largest single group of foreign detainees at the prison is Pakistani, and there are up to two dozen Arabs of various nationalities, according to administration and foreign officials.
Among the first detainees likely to be transferred home is Yunus Rahmatullah, a Pakistani national, whose release has been demanded by a British court. Rahmatullah, a suspected extremist, was picked up by troops with Britain’s elite Special Air Service in Iraq in 2004 and handed over to U.S. forces. The CIA subsequently flew him to Afghanistan without informing the British, according to press reports and court papers.
Attorneys for Rahmatullah, 29, argued in the British courts that the transfer violated a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and British militaries, and was a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions because it involved the removal of a civilian from the war theater.
Last month, a British court granted a writ of habeas corpus and ordered the British government to get custody of Rahmatullah. The court noted that a 2010 Detainee Review Board hearing of military officers at Bagram cleared Rahmatullah for release.
The British Court of Appeal said that if the British foreign secretary and defense minister failed to secure Rahmatullah, it would “be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ.” The court set a deadline of Feb. 14 for Rahmatullah’s release.
The British government has appealed the decision, but it has also asked the United States to arrange for Rahmatullah’s swift return to Pakistan, which would satisfy the court and his lawyers.
“It would make no sense for the Obama administration to ratify this Bush-era war crime,” said Cori Crider, legal director of Reprieve, a London-base human rights group that is representing Rahmatullah. “Under the Geneva Convention, Yunus Rahmatullah is Britain’s responsibility and should never have been sent to Bagram in the first place. The man is cleared, his family are waiting, and Pakistan is apparently happy to have him — it’s high time to send him home.”
Amanatullah Ali, another Pakistani who was picked up with Rahmatullah and also taken to Bagram, is seeking his release through the U.S. courts.
Seven Pakistani detainees taken to Bagram, including Rahmatullah, are also suing the Pakistani government either for its alleged role in their capture or for failing to secure their release.
Administration officials said they are willing to transfer Rahmatullah, but do not want the basis of such a move to be a foreign court ruling. They also said that any transfer home has been complicated by the deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan.
“We will do this on our timetable,” said one official.
The case nonetheless is another incentive to begin dealing with the non-Afghan population at the prison in Afghanistan, which is known as the Parwan detention center and which replaced the facility inside the nearby Bagram Air Base.
In early January, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the United States to turn Parwan over to his government. U.S. officials had said two years ago that they expected the prison would be turned over in early 2012.
While Karzai apparently regarded that as a hard deadline, U.S. officials said it was always contingent on Afghanistan’s “demonstrated capacity” to manage the facility.
The prison now holds approximately 2,600 prisoners, up from the 600 held in 2009.
The foreign detainees include two Yemenis and one Tunisian who attempted to secure their release by filing for writs of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court in Washington in 2009. All three claimed they were captured outside Afghanistan, held at secret CIA prisons overseas, before being transferred to the detention center in Bagram.
Judge John D. Bates ruled that these non-Afghan prisoners had the right to pursue habeas cases; however, the federal court of appeals overturned that decision in 2010.
A U.S. official said the three men were among those who could be repatriated.
NATO relying on smugglers along Pakistan's border, Pakistan officials say
With the Pakistan border still closed, NATO relies on smugglers to bring needed supplies to troops in Afghanistan.
Aamir Latif January 24, 2012 07:25 Global Post
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With few other options available to it since Pakistan closed its border crossings almost two months ago, NATO has at times resorted to paying local smugglers to get much-needed supplies to its troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials say.
The Pakistani and Afghan smugglers, who must pay bribes to militants to travel safely through some areas, navigate treacherous routes over the 1,800-mile mountainous divide that separates the two countries to bring containers of oil, food and other essential items — all at a price — to soldiers on the other side.
“Borders mean nothing to us. We have been crossing in and out for centuries,” Sahib Khan, a smuggler who said NATO had hired him, told GlobalPost.
The hiring of illegal smugglers came after a failed attempt by NATO to pay private companies, which truck goods across the border under the Pakistan-Afghanistan Free Trade Agreement (PATA). These private companies, Pakistani officials said, were secretly swapping out their normal cargo for NATO supplies until Pakistani security forces caught wind of the scam.
A senior officer for the Frontier Corps, an elite military unit that is responsible for security along the border, told GlobalPost that a total ban on the movement of containers under PATA, which was signed in 2010 to promote bilateral trade, eventually foiled the strategy.
“We had concrete evidence that some of the containers being imported by private companies, under PATA, were being used to smuggle supplies for NATO troops under cover of commercial imports,” the official said.
The official said that 12 containers loaded with oil were intercepted on Jan. 19. Several more containers were stopped at the Torkhum border two weeks ago, he said.
A NATO official said he could not comment on the seized containers and denied that it is using any unconventional means to ship supplies to its troops.
“In fact, we are not facing any problems vis-à-vis logistics at the moment,” said Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for coalition forces based in Kabul. “However we would welcome the reopening of the two supply routes in order to normalize ties with Pakistan.”
Pakistan shut the two main border crossings into Afghanistan, which have long been the most important routes relied upon by US and NATO troops, in November after US helicopters attacked a Pakistani military outpost, killing 24 soldiers.
A US report issued last month claimed the attack was a mistake and that blame should be shared between the two sides. But already weary of drone strikes operated by the CIA in North Waziristan, and bruised by the Navy Seals raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, the Pakistani military maintains that the United States was wholly in the wrong.
“The US investigation report is structured around the argument of ‘self-defense’ and ‘proportional use of force,’ an argument which is contrary to the facts,” a Pakistani military spokesman said in a statement issued to the press on Monday.
Despite Pakistan’s defiant tone, the country’s parliament agreed in principal last week to reopen the border in February. Lawmakers, however, will also be seeking a formal apology from the Americans, something that has so far not been forthcoming.
A Pakistani official in the country’s foreign ministry said the reopening of the border might also be contingent on NATO’s agreement to pay new taxes on any supplies it ships through Pakistan. Before the border was closed, NATO had been shipping between 70 and 80 percent of its non-lethal supplies through the Pakistani border.
NATO developed an alternative route through the Central Asian States but, according to the Pentagon, the strategy is costing the United States six times more than it did to ship supplies through Pakistan.
Smuggling between Pakistan and Afghanistan has long been a profitable and vibrant business. Various trade agreements have been signed between the two neighbors in a bid to contain the practice, but high import and export taxes coupled with little government oversight, thwarted those attempts.
Mostly items like flour, edible oil, lentils, dried vegetables, contraband cigarettes, and animals for meat are smuggled into Afghanistan, while spare auto parts, electronics and unregistered vehicles are smuggled the other direction.
Smuggling is so widespread that it has become the backbone of the economy in towns and villages along the border, where locally it is treated simply as normal trade. The mountainous terrain provides an edge over security to smugglers who regularly trickle across the border without any trouble.
Sahib said that most of the food and oil supplies he has carried across the border for NATO originate from the southern port city of Karachi, and are moved through Peshawar and Quetta, and finally through Pakistan’s tribal areas, which are largely under the authority of various militant groups.
For those militants, the smugglers have been an important source of income. Smugglers are required to pay “rahdari,” or “passage,” an unofficial tax that allows them safe passage.
“Once we are onto the route, it’s the responsibility of those who receive rahdari to ensure we are able to safely enter into Afghanistan,” Sahib said.
Any smuggling that is done on behalf of NATO can in no way make up for the closed borders, however. Smugglers say they carry between 20 and 25 small containers a day while, when the border crossings were open, NATO shipped an average of 250 large containers a day — making the reopening of the borders essential to the war effort.
Gen. David Petraeus: ‘The troops can’t quit’
Washington Post By Paula Broadwell with Vernon Loeb January 23 , 2012
“It’s ‘open the envelope time,’ ” Gen. David Petraeus told his security team as his SUV approached the White House on June 21, 2011, for his final meeting with President Obama on the drawdown of forces from Afghanistan. Petraeus had returned to Washington from his command in Kabul for consultations with Obama on the drawdown, and for a Senate committee hearing on his nomination to become the next director of the CIA. On the way from the Pentagon, retired Army general Jack Keane, a mentor and former vice chief of staff of the Army, e-mailed Petraeus with rumors of what he was hearing: The White House was going to recommend 10,000 troops depart by the end of 2011, with the remaining 23,000 surge forces out by the summer of 2012, a far more drastic timetable for withdrawal than Petraeus had recommended.
Keane was protective of his prodigy. Obama’s decision “not only protracts the war but risks the mission,” Keane said in the e-mail, then asked: “should you consider resigning?”
“I don’t think quitting would serve our country,” Petraeus responded. “More likely to create a crisis. And, I told POTUS I’d support his ultimate decision. Besides, the troops can’t quit. . . .”
During a review of Afghan policy in the fall of 2009, Obama’s senior advisers had come to see Petraeus as an inflexible commander who only wanted as many troops as possible. They had suspicions that he was a Bush general, given his close personal relationship with the former president. Petraeus had worked hard since then to win Obama’s trust. He did not want to make the president feel he was trying to limit his drawdown options. Quitting was out of the question. But being candid about the drawdown, he thought, was a matter of duty.
Petraeus refused to discuss his interactions with the president for this account, but officials briefed on the White House meeting confirmed that Obama, Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior national security officials engaged in a lengthy debate, tense but respectful, over the pace of the drawdown.
Obama expressed his gratitude that there had been no leaks and said the frank exchanges during the group’s two prior meetings had been a great help to him. The president believed that Petraeus and the international coalition he commanded had made gains that justified his commitment of extra forces, but that now it was important to signal to the American, Afghan and international communities that the coming year would be one of transition.
There was general agreement with Obama’s desire to draw down 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, though that was a larger figure than Petraeus and the military had recommended. But there was sharp disagreement over when the remaining 23,000 surge troops should leave Afghanistan. Petraeus had recommended that they stay in Afghanistan through November 2012, which marked the end of the annual fighting season.
“I don’t think quitting would serve our country,” Petraeus responded. “More likely to create a crisis. And, I told POTUS I’d support his ultimate decision. Besides, the troops can’t quit. . . .”
During a review of Afghan policy in the fall of 2009, Obama’s senior advisers had come to see Petraeus as an inflexible commander who only wanted as many troops as possible. They had suspicions that he was a Bush general, given his close personal relationship with the former president. Petraeus had worked hard since then to win Obama’s trust. He did not want to make the president feel he was trying to limit his drawdown options. Quitting was out of the question. But being candid about the drawdown, he thought, was a matter of duty.
Petraeus refused to discuss his interactions with the president for this account, but officials briefed on the White House meeting confirmed that Obama, Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior national security officials engaged in a lengthy debate, tense but respectful, over the pace of the drawdown.
Obama expressed his gratitude that there had been no leaks and said the frank exchanges during the group’s two prior meetings had been a great help to him. The president believed that Petraeus and the international coalition he commanded had made gains that justified his commitment of extra forces, but that now it was important to signal to the American, Afghan and international communities that the coming year would be one of transition.
There was general agreement with Obama’s desire to draw down 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, though that was a larger figure than Petraeus and the military had recommended. But there was sharp disagreement over when the remaining 23,000 surge troops should leave Afghanistan. Petraeus had recommended that they stay in Afghanistan through November 2012, which marked the end of the annual fighting season.
President Obama addressed the nation at 8 p.m. from the White House. Petraeus watched it with his wife, Holly, from their home at Fort Myer.
“. . . Starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point,” Obama said. “After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. . . .”
Conservative writer Max Boot, whom Petraeus respected, was outraged by the speech. He told Petraeus that if he wanted to quit and run for president, he would work on his campaign. Petraeus told him quitting was not the answer. He certainly didn’t intend to run for president, either. As a student and practitioner of civil-military relations, Petraeus had thought at length about the subject of resignation in protest, turning it over in his mind many times. He was well steeped in the theory and practice and pitfalls of civil-military relations. Military decision making and the use of force as they related to civil-military relations had been foundations of his doctoral research.
Petraeus strongly believed that “military leaders should provide advice that is informed by important nonmilitary and military factors beyond their strict purview, but is driven by the situation on the ground and military considerations.” In other words, a military leader’s advice was premised first and foremost on his or her areas of expertise — military affairs, not political ones.
Petraeus fully subscribed to the oath of office, including obeying “the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over me.” Obama’s decision to draw down forces faster than he had recommended did not, in his mind, begin to approach the threshold for such an extraordinary action as resignation. He thought it would have been a selfish, grandstanding move with huge political ramifications. He had had ample opportunity to provide input and give his best advice, and now it was time to salute and carry on.
Other supporters of the war were not as sanguine. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his Republican colleague and fellow Afghan war booster, Senator John McCain of Arizona, strongly disagreed with Obama’s decision. “This is now his policy; he needs to own it,” Graham told McCain. “He did not take the advice of his military advisers, and it has put the mission in jeopardy. This assumes too much risk. His decision was political, and we need to pin it on him.” Graham was livid. “You know, as a ranking GOP member, I have supported the war and the president’s position, but he is about to lose that support and the rest of those in the party who have backed this war,” he said.
Petraeus was determined to avoid getting sucked into the politics of either side. He knew some senators would question the drawdown decision during his confirmation hearing the following day. He needed to keep the troops in Afghanistan focused, to give them energy and reassurance that the president’s decision did not call for such doomsday political rankling. He thought the best point of influence as the battlefield commander was for him to be with them, to the extent that he could from D.C.
He had his communications team arrange for him to deliver a personal message via a secure video teleconference from his Fort Myer home that evening at 11 p.m. Whatever he may have felt about the decision that day, there was no trace of disappointment on his face or in his message. His staff officers in Kabul watched him at their regular briefing on the morning after the president’s address.
“Needless to say, with the decision being announced, all of us will support the decision and strive to execute it effectively. That is our responsibility as military leaders,” Petraeus told his command staff. “ . . . In short, this is not a time to start thinking about going home. Rather, we need to stay focused on protecting the Afghan people from all threats and on helping our [Afghan military] partners develop the ability to defend their people. We need to continue to take the fight to the enemy. We need to remain on the offensive, to ensure that we do not allow the enemy any breathing space or respite.”
CIA hearing
By the time Senator Dianne Feinstein gaveled to order the hearing on his nomination as CIA director that afternoon in the Hart Senate Office Building, Petraeus had met privately or spoken with every member of the committee and to all former living CIA directors except one.
He began his prepared remarks by recognizing his wife, Holly, his partner for “37 years and 23 moves.” He then addressed, up front, some of the skepticism about his move to the CIA and what it meant. Responding to some who had wondered in print whether he would be able to “grade my own work,” he said he was “keenly aware” that as CIA director he would be an intelligence officer, not a policymaker.
By far the most dramatic moment, and a lesson for students of civil-military relations, came at the end of the hearing when Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, asked Petraeus whether he supported the president’s drawdown plan and what would have to happen before he would ever consider resigning his command. “I obviously support the ultimate decision of the commander in chief,” Petraeus said. “That is, we take an oath to obey the orders of the president of the United States and indeed do that.”
“And if you couldn’t do that — if you couldn’t do that consistent with that oath — you would resign?” asked Levin.
“Well, I’m not a quitter, chairman,” Petraeus said. “I’ve actually had people e-mail me and say that I should quit, and actually this is something I’ve thought a bit about.”
“I’m sure you have,” Levin said.
“And I don’t think it is the place for a commander to actually consider that step unless you are in a very, very dire situation,” said Petraeus. “ . . . I actually feel quite strongly about this. Our troopers don’t get to quit, and I don’t think commanders should contemplate that, again, as any kind of idle action. That would be an extraordinary action, in my view. And at the end of the day, this is not about me, it’s not about an individual commander, it’s not about a reputation. This is about our country. And the best step for our country, with the commander in chief having made a decision, is to execute that decision to the very best of our ability.”
Excerpted from “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus” by Paula Broadwell with Washington Post staff writer Vernon Loeb, to be published by Penguin Press on Monday.
EU Pledges 60 Million Euros to Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Monday, 23 January 2012
The EU has pledged 60 million Euros to Afghanistan to be used for reforms in government institutions.
The European Union Special Representative, Vygaudas Uackas said on Monday that the EU assistance to Afghanistan would continue after withdrawal of all foreign troops.
Mr Vygaudas Uackas said the EU assistance to Afghanistan would continue until 2025.
"...I am pleased to know we have pledged for years to the current level of financial support for years to come to Afghanistan which is about 1 billion euros every year," he said.
He said based on the commitments made at the Bonn conference the EU will also continue to help with the training of the Afghan National Police.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government will use international support to make Afghan security forces fully ready to be able to take over all security responsibilities and stand on their own feet.
The EU has allocated 20 million euros for reforms in the Afghan judicial organisations and 40 million for reforms in other government institutions.
Mr Uackas also announced that the draft of the long term strategic partnership between the EU and Afghanistan will be submitted for consideration of Afghan authorities in the next month and would be signed after that.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced that a regional conference will be held next year to attract cooperation to improve Afghanistan's trade and political relations with other countries.
Afghanistan's humongous holy book
The world's largest Quran weighs 1,100 pounds and took more than five years to create.
By Tom Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Amid Afghanistan’s seemingly endless war, one local calligrapher has endeavored to prove that his nation still has a rich, vibrant culture by creating the world’s largest Quran.
Measuring in at 7-1/2-by-5-feet, the recently unveiled holy book took more than five years to create. Its 218 pages are adorned with script and ornamentation that use real gold, and the book’s cover is fashioned from 21 goatskins.
The record-breaking Quran, which weighs 1,100 pounds, is now on display in a specially designed viewing area made of imported Italian and Turkish stones at Kabul’s Hakim Nasir Khusraw Balkhi Cultural Center.
While the giant Quran is a point of pride for many in the devout Muslim nation, some Afghans are raising eyebrows at the price tag of the record-breaking book and its specially designed display area, a combined cost of more than $1 million.
“This is just a heavy book in a case and no one can even use it,” says Hassan, a cellphone vender who, like many Afghans, has only one name. “It’s the holy book, but they should use the money in a good way.”
Aside from the nation’s ongoing security problems, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Less than a third of the population has access to electricity, and Kabul is the only capital city without a sewage system.
Syed Mansoor Naderi, a prominent member of Afghanistan’s Shia Ismaili community, funded the project.
Impoverished Afghan woman gives birth to sextuplets
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An impoverished young Afghan woman has given birth to sextuplets -- three boys and three girls -- producing the same number of children her countrywomen typically average over a lifetime.
Sara Gul, 22, from the northern Balkh province, said on Tuesday she tried to abort after learning she was pregnant with the brood of six, highlighting the country's poverty and ignorance surrounding birth control.
"I even jumped from a wall but nothing happened to them," Gul told Reuters in provincial capital Mazar-e-Sharif, where she gave birth -- her first -- late Monday.
Maternity ward doctor Abdul Rauf Ferogh confirmed the birth, saying five of the babies were healthy, while the last one was underweight and still in postnatal care.
Rare in nature, multiple births are often the result of medical fertility treatment, although the method does not exist in Afghanistan. Afghans take pride in having large families, but war, conflict and destitution means one in four children die before reaching the age of five.
"Allah blessed me with six children, but I am worried about their future," said Gul's 27-year-old husband Shukrullah, who is unemployed, like many others in the war-wracked country
The Ministry of Health warns Afghanistan's population of 30 million will double in as many years, stunting opportunities for economic growth in what is already one of the world's poorest nations.
Efforts to promote birth control by the government have been met with caution by aid groups who say introducing contraceptives would be extremely difficult in the ultra-conservative Muslim society, and opposition from Islamic scholars who say they are unlawful.
(Reporting by Bashir Ansari, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Ed Lane)
In Afghanistan, it’s dog-fight-dog world
NBC News By Dmitry Solovyov , NBC News’ Cameraman Reporters’ Notebook 23/01/2012
KABUL - Michael Vick would feel right at home here.
Just north of Kabul, on the edge of the mountains, around 1,000 people recently gathered in the cold for a dog fight. The crowd was basically all men, of all ages, even babies, sharing in a tradition that has been going on for hundreds of years.
Dog fights are popular all over the country, and in some cases gambling is involved. In this particular case, we were told there was no gambling taking place, although I’m not sure that was true.
The dog fight is led by an old man, the fight master, who stands with a stick. He rules the show and is very powerful and very confident. The crowds gather in a series of circles, and no one steps out of line. Only the dog owners and their dogs are allowed to enter the circle.
At the start of the fight, there is a green cloth between the dogs so they cannot see each other. The dogs are held by their owners without leashes. Then the cloth is dropped, and the dogs run towards each other and start the fight.
Contrary to common belief, the goal is not for the dogs to kill one another. The winner is the dog that best controls the other – usually by holding on to the skin that surrounds the dogs’ necks – which is decided by the old man. And once he has made his pronouncement, the fighting stops immediately.
I know that the notion of dog-fighting is very controversial. I understand this view – I have had dogs, and love these animals. But at the same time, the dogs do not die and the owners do not want their animals to get hurt.
In fact, the dog owners are very protective of their animals. After all, owning a fighting dog is an expensive proposition for an Afghan. One dog owner told us that the prices for a fighting dog start at $500 and go as high as $10,000 – a lot of money anywhere, but particularly in Afghanistan. The owners seemed to care for their dogs and treated them with respect.
That said, Afghans tend not to be concerned about cruelty to animals. Taking care of their fighting dogs is more about protecting a valuable asset.
After the fights were over, the elderly fight master told us that he has been going to fights since he was a 10-year-old, attending at first with his father. This is a part of Afghan tradition, a way of life and a bit of excitement on Fridays, the day of rest here.
NBC News’ Kiko Itasaka contributed to this report.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com