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A Taliban ‘Rope-a-Dope’ Strategy?
By Karl F. Inderfurth Wednesday, January 25, 2012 Foreign Policy
The on-again, off-again effort by the Obama administration to begin preliminary peace talks with the Taliban is still struggling to get off the ground. The first move focuses on a statement by the Taliban against international terrorism and in support of a peace process and the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. For this the Taliban have called for the release of its prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.
To garner support for this initiative, the administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Marc Grossman, has been traveling in the region, including meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to make sure he is on board. Afghan officials have expressed concern about the possibility of a ‘secret deal' being struck between the Taliban and the U.S.
But that would be unlikely, given the administration's oft-repeated public assurance that it supports an "Afghan-led and Afghan-owned" reconciliation process. In fact, what is more likely than a ‘secret deal' is no deal at all.
Earlier high-level efforts by the U.S. government to have ‘peace talks' with the Taliban may be instructive. As Winston Churchill said: "The further back you look, the farther forward you can see."
The Taliban history of negotiating with its opponents reveals little reason for optimism. Striking a deal with its sworn enemies does not appear to be in the Taliban's DNA. Instead, past experience suggests it has adopted the negotiating equivalent of the "rope-a-dope' strategy in boxing -- agreeing to enter the ring, playing for time, evading and avoiding committing itself, letting the opponent wear himself out, then hitting back hard as it had intended to do all the time.
In April 1998, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, in order to bring them to the table to discuss the possibilities for peace. He also tried to persuade the Taliban either to expel Osama bin Laden or extradite him to the U.S. for his complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In his memoir Between Worlds, Richardson described the outcome: "Flying back to Pakistan that night, I thought, Well, this was a good day's work. Peace talks would get started later in the month, and if they went well, we might get bin Laden after all. But it wasn't to be. The agreement held for a while, but we quickly learned that the Taliban had no intention of making peace with the Northern Alliance. By early May, a belated spring offensive had begun and the two sides were at it again."
In February 1999 there was another attempt at direct talks with the Taliban. After the bin Laden-directed bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, I traveled to Islamabad with the State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan, to meet with Mullah Abdul Jalil, a close adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (from 1997-2001 I attended some 20 meetings with Taliban officials). The U.S. government had repeatedly demanded that the Taliban stop giving safe haven to terrorists. Now we told Jalil that the U.S. would hold the Taliban itself directly responsible for bin Laden's actions, and respond accordingly.
Mullah Jalil said that bin Laden was becoming a burden on Afghanistan, but that he was under the Taliban's control and he could not possibly be operating a worldwide network as we suggested. Later efforts were made to provide the Taliban with more information about the U.S. case against bin Laden, but they never responded.
Subsequently the UN Security Council tried to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Two resolutions were adopted, and sanctions were imposed, but, again, the Taliban defied these calls by the international community. On a scale of one to ten on good faith negotiations, the Taliban proved to be a zero.
Are the Taliban likely to be any more accommodating today, specifically the Quetta Shura faction still led by Mullah Omar? Recent statements issued by the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" on January 3 and January 12 suggest not. That was the name the Taliban gave Afghanistan during its rule from 1996 to 2001. The international community never recognized it. The Taliban still stick to it.
Taken together, these statements lay out the Taliban's ‘going in' position for peace talks, including the departure of all U.S. and foreign forces and a continuation of their "jihad" until that goal is accomplished. Also, the movement remains at least in rhetoric opposed to negotiations with the Karzai government (referred to as "the stooge Kabul administration") as well as acceptance of the Afghan constitution.
Administration officials say that while they are under no illusion about the chances of success in opening direct talks with the Taliban, they are convinced that a political settlement is the only solution to the war. But they also need to be convinced that the Taliban is serious about a future for Afghanistan that is not a return to the days of the "Islamic Emirate."
In this regard, several probing questions need to be asked of Taliban representatives during what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says is "still in the preliminary stages of testing whether [talks] can be successful":
Do the Taliban accept a political solution to the Afghanistan conflict, and what is their vision of it?
Do the Taliban have a political and economic plan for the future of Afghanistan?
Will they accept the international instruments to which Afghanistan has acceded, particularly with regard to human rights?
Will they honor and enforce the rights of women, minorities and ethnic groups?
Will they respect the role of shuras (tribal councils): local, provincial and national?
Are they willing to support and abide by internationally acceptable mechanisms of legitimization, like elections, referendums or tribal consensus?
During the years of repressive Taliban rule, none of these questions could have been answered in the affirmative. Can they be today?
And, more importantly, what concrete steps can be taken by the Taliban to demonstrate that they will abide by their declarations and assurances in the future? A good, measureable place to start for the Taliban to establish their bona fides would be an end to all suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Other confidence building measures would need to follow.
Another quote by Winston Churchill that relates to opening up direct talks with the Taliban is one of his most famous: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." It is axiomatic at this point that the conflict in Afghanistan will not end by military means alone. And the search for a political settlement must reach out to all parties -- but with eyes wide open.
Karl F. Inderfurth is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration (1997-2001).
New U.N. Envoy Urges Afghans to Take Part in Peace Process
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The new United Nations representative to Afghanistan urged Afghans on Wednesday to embrace an inclusive peace process in which all the elements of society would have a voice.
Speaking to reporters for the first time since his arrival on Jan. 17, the new envoy, Jan Kubis, said that “it should be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process, because it is about the country and the people of the country.”
Any effort to end the conflict in the country can succeed only if “it is based on wide participation, on representative participation, not only of political forces but eventually of civil society,” he said, adding that it was important “that no major relevant party is excluded from that process.”
Mr. Kubis, who is from Slovakia, succeeds Staffan de Mistura, who left in December a post that is one of the United Nations’ most prominent, not least because the United Nations is one of the few organizations that is in touch with all parties in the country.
In recent years, the world body has taken a particularly strong stand here on human rights, pushing both the Taliban and the NATO coalition to take more care to avoid killing civilians caught in the fighting.
The United Nations also runs large humanitarian programs in Afghanistan, distributing food through the World Food Program and promoting development, children’s health, women’s rights and support for refugees.
Nearly 1,000 Westerners and 4,000 to 5,000 Afghans work for the United Nations here; the Westerners have been targets of insurgent attacks, most recently last April when the United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif was attacked and seven employees were killed.
The possibility of peace talks has been at the center of the news here in recent weeks, as fears emerged that Washington might negotiate directly with the Taliban without the participation of Afghan officials. American diplomats here have tried to reassure the Afghan government; Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said Tuesday that the claim that the United States wanted “a secret deal with the Taliban” was “a false and absurd rumor.”
Mr. Kubis said Wednesday that the United Nations would support an Afghan-led peace process in whatever way the Afghan government asked. One example of the world body’s commitment, he said, was its support of the government-appointed High Peace Council, which includes representatives of all major groups in the country.
Suicide Bomber Attacks Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan
VOA News January 26, 2012
Afghan officials say a suicide car bomber has killed four civilians in an attack on a NATO-affiliated provincial reconstruction team in southern Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the governor of Helmand province said Thursday's attack took place in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
Officials say the bomber hit a convoy of armored vehicles passing near the education department building.
A child was among those killed in the attack. Officials says some 31 others were wounded, including three foreigners — two men and a woman.
At least 17 civilian cars were damaged, some bursting into flames.
NATO has declined to comment on the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed the “enemy” of the Afghan people.
Mr. Karzai, who is in Italy, condemned the attack as inhuman and un-Islamic.
NATO transferred security control of Lashkar Gah to Afghan forces last year.
The Afghan president and NATO also condemned Wednesday's rocket attack in the eastern Afghan province of Kapisa that killed a woman and a child.
Taliban leader captured in Afghan Helmand province: NATO
KABUL, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Thursday detained a local Taliban leader in Helmand province, 555 km south of capital Kabul, the alliance said in a statement. "An Afghan led and coalition supported security forces captured a Taliban leader during an operation in Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province, today,"said the statement.
Without revealing the name of the suspected Taliban commander, the statement stated that "the leader coordinated roadside bomb and ambush attacks against Afghan forces in Helmand province".
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Afghan jailed for 16 years for spying for Iran
AFP 25/01/2012
HERAT - An Afghan man found in possession of photographs of NATO bases in Afghanistan has been jailed for 16 years for spying for neighbouring Iran, officials said Wednesday.
The 23-year-old man, named only as Mahmmood, had Iranian intelligence officials' phone numbers in his notebook and pictures of foreign and Afghan military installations in western Herat province, an official told AFP.
Afghan intelligence had been able to listen to conversations between him and Iranian intelligence over the border, the official said.
Mahmood was arrested while taking photographs of a government weapons depot, local media reported.
"We found you guilty of betrayal and treason to the people, national sovereignty, independence, internal security and covert activities against the government of Afghanistan," judge Serajuddin Naser told Mahmood in Herat city court Tuesday.
Mahmood, who is originally from Herat but has lived most of his life in Iran, had pleaded not guilty and continued to protest his innocence after being sentenced to 16 years in prison.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has accused Iran of providing equipment and support to Afghan militants waging an insurgency against the Afghan government and US-led international troops.
But Iran has rejected this, with a foreign ministry spokesman describing the allegations last year as "baseless and unacceptable."
Iran is sometimes seen as hostile to Taliban militants for religious reasons but analysts suggest it could support insurgents as a counterweight to arch-enemy the US, which has nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of a 140,000-strong international force.
How Iran Controls Afghanistan
FoxNews.com By Fariba Nawa January 25, 2012
Afghanistan has suffered from foreign meddling since its inception. But while Pakistan’s role has been widely discussed -- most Afghans will point to concrete examples -- Iran’s involvement is more subtle.
Iranian influence is all encompassing--the Islamic government funds Afghan Shiite sects and politicians, has invested in building roads and providing fuel and transport, and is fighting hard against the Afghan opium trade that supplies millions of addicts. But Iran’s lasting power on Afghanistan is cultural as well as political, broadcasting state radio and television programs inside Afghanistan.
Yet the country’s biggest cultural influence is not imposed by the Iranian government.
The more than one million repatriating Afghan refugees from Iran – tens of thousands have been deported –bring the dialect, food, music, and clothes particular to Iran.
Some of the Afghans repatriates are migrant workers, similar to Mexicans in the U.S., some are construction workers who became addicted to drugs in Iran, others were able to get an education and acquire job skills, and most have lived there for over three decades.
Yet Iran will not grant them legal status; they do not have a right to a higher education, to own property, or to work. Most voluntarily return to Afghanistan because there are more opportunities in their home country. These Afghans are changing Afghanistan’s identity to be more Iranian – for better or worse.
My family escaped the Soviet invasion in 1982 and settled in the U.S.
I first returned to Afghanistan in 2000 when the Taliban reigned, but it was after the group’s ouster that I witnessed the cultural changes brought on by immigration.
I was traveling through Afghanistan researching the drug trade for my book "Opium Nation" from 2002 to 2007, and my first confrontation with Iran’s cultural impact was language.
Iran and Afghanistan both speak Farsi, but the Afghan dialect is called “Dari.” I’m fluent in Dari but I no longer understood what many of the families in my hometown, Herat are saying.
Common words, idioms, and even Iran’s use of French terms have invaded Afghan speech. The Herati folk songs I recalled hearing in shops as a child were replaced by Iranian pop produced in Los Angeles. The young Afghan activists and artists read Iranian websites and books.
These changes have given rise to tension between the Afghans who never left home and the Afghan returnees.
The skilled repatriates are resented for getting better jobs with aid companies and the Afghan government.
Conservatives view the Afghan women who grew up in Iran with disdain because they appear more liberal and courageous--they sing on TV, they’re news broadcasters, business owners, and government workers. They voice their opinions loudly in a male dominated country.
The Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan who were historically the poorest of minorities return richer, more literate, and united. They have made unprecedented advances in Afghanistan, including in the arts and in the government.
These returnees are called “Afghan-e badal,” or counterfeit Afghans. Few of them have political connections to Iran, but their time living in the Islamic Republic taints themin the eyes of the Afghans who didn’t leave as culturally inauthentic and politically suspect.
Several Afghans at NGOs I met told me that their returnee colleagues had clandestine connections to Iran. When I asked for tangible evidence, one of them told me. “I just know by that accent they use. They’re sellouts.”
While I’m not fully comfortable with this cultural invasion, I understand that Iran advanced while Afghanistan struggled to survive in the last three decades.
Culture is fluid and both countries share a common history. After all, my own husband is one of these Afghan returnees and he’s a true patriot.
Repatriating Afghans have enough of a hard time readjusting to their battered country – ostracizing them is simply cruel.
However, Afghan bitterness toward the Iranian government is justifiable. The Islamic Republic backs religious divisions inside Afghanistan, using Afghan Shiites as pawns.
Shiite Afghans, who come from other ethnic groups as well, are encouraged to watch Iranian clerics give fiery speeches against Sunni Afghans. Iran built the road from Herat City to its border, one of the finest rebuilt highways, but the signs alongside the road bear Koranic verses picked by Iran‘s government.
My homeland is geographically determined as a buffer zone where empires and nations have fought their battles using Afghans as their pawns.
Extremist Sunni groups cross the Pakistani border to kill Afghan Shiite children and women. The carnage last month in Kabul at a Shiite mosque killed eighty people and was a new height in religious sectarian violence for Afghanistan. It won’t be long before Iran recruits a group to bomb a Sunni mosque.
Iran and Pakistan were not such deadly influences on Afghanistan before the revolutions and wars inside these countries.
A harmonious cultural exchange was common among these neighbors. Pakistani couples took their honeymoon in Kabul while Iranian singers traveled to give concerts in Kabul in the 1960s.
Before the Soviet invasion, my mother, a Sunni, joined her Shiite friends to commemorate the death of Prophet Mohammed’s grandsons during the month of Muharram.
One of my uncles married a Shiite woman, and while throughout history tensions existed between the two sects, the result was not as violent.
I can take pop music and the Iranian Farsi drawl, but Iran’s sponsorship of sectarian violence must be stopped -- by the U.S. and other foreign powers invested in Afghanistan -- but mostly, by Afghans themselves who must unite to stand up to their neighbors.
Fariba Nawa is the author of "Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan." She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters. Visit her online: http://www.faribanawa.com/.
The Afghan divide
Is the United States succeeding in Afghanistan? It depends on what you measure and whom you ask.
Los Angles Times By Sarah Chayes January 26, 2012 Op-Ed
How should we measure success in Afghanistan? It's a crucial question, but there isn't much agreement on an answer.
In mid-January, this newspaper ran a story on the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, a classified assessment drafted by analysts at more than a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies. According to The Times, the report "warns that security gains from an increase in troops have been undercut by pervasive corruption, incompetent governance and Taliban fighters operating from neighboring Pakistan."
Those with direct responsibility for the war — top military commanders and the U.S. ambassador to Kabul — reportedly contested the report's findings in a written dissent. The dispute highlights an ongoing struggle to shape U.S. perceptions on Afghanistan.
Analysts like using numbers to bolster their arguments because numbers seem hard and fast. But they don't always agree. Last summer, for example, the NATO command in Kabul announced that for the first time since 2006, insurgent attacks were down compared with the previous year. But United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations were reporting large upticks in violence and its effect on civilians.
Numbers draw their significance from what they count. In this case, the military tallied attacks that insurgents initiated where international troops were present, including improvised bombs that exploded but not ones that had been defused.
Humanitarian groups, by contrast, were tabulating all violence suffered by civilians, no matter who the perpetrator, including kidnappings and shootings at the hands of the militias that the U.S. militaryhas armed to fight the Taliban.
Afghans themselves are attuned to something less tangible: the likelihood of danger. Take last September's attack by a few militants shooting rocket-launched grenades from a tower in central Kabul, which shut downthe U.S. Embassyand nearby NATO headquarters for 20 hours.
Foreign officials might record such an incident as a single attack. But to Kabul residents, it sent an overpowering message that their city was unsafe, that the terrorists could do what they wanted.
Underlying the current dispute over the intelligence estimate is another, deeper divide. The assessment reportedly acknowledges the hard work by Afghan and foreign troops in driving the Taliban out of many of its strongholds. That success is clearly visible in Kandahar, where I have lived for most of the last decade. But its significance is less clear.
"Yes, we've made gains against the Taliban around Kandahar," a minister and former Kandahar governor told me recently. "But it takes 18,000 men for a single district. We can't sustain that."
And there have been other costs. As troops moved into rural districts the Taliban had held, they built dirt roads right through farmers' vineyards and orchards. I saw the results when I went to visit a friend's family land. Debris had been shoved into an irrigation channel that once watered the whole village, razor wire had been looped across a road, and buildings where families dry their grapes to make prized raisins had been destroyed.
There were good tactical reasons for inflicting such damage. Many of the buildings had been booby-trapped by the retreating Taliban, or they obstructed the troops' lines of sight. But the local economy, already one of the most threadbare on Earth, has been badly hurt. Compensation money was paid out, but still, success against the Taliban came at great cost to residents.
They are left with the question: What now? If their grapevines or fruit trees dry out, what should they plant? If insurgents offer poppy seeds, should they accept? And what about the Afghan soldiers who stole the furniture out of the blown-up buildings? Villagers can't take them to court because the judicial system is deeply corrupt. So who can give them recourse? A sense of justice? Maybe the Taliban.
If, on the other hand, the Taliban does move back in, or if it is given power in some deal negotiated by the United States and an Afghan government most of its citizens don't view as legitimate, how will the many Afghans who don't wish to be subjected to Taliban rule react?
The Afghan security forces the United States has been working so hard to build up are largely commanded by viscerally anti-Taliban groups. Is U.S. policy driving Afghanistan back toward civil war?
It is this potential for systemic collapse that the intelligence estimate reportedly highlights, to the dismay of the dissenting officials.
But even if withdrawing on the current schedule brings about Afghanistan'simplosion, that might still be the right thing to do. If the U.S. government chooses not to address the two fundamental political and diplomatic challenges its intelligence estimate is said to highlight — corrupt government and Pakistan's support for extremist violence — then why waste more blood and treasure? But President Obama must make that decision in full cognizance of the dangers, so he can plan for them and try to mitigate some of them. He needs more divergent views, not fewer.
The aggressive efforts by some to spin perceptions of Afghanistan have grown unseemly as well as dangerous. I've seen dissent disappear from interagency documents. I've heard officials tell public affairs officers to pressure reporters about their stories.
Though I doubt the nation's intelligence community can be easily cowed, even by three generals and an ambassador, the impulse to interfere is wrong. Writing problems out of documents won't make them go away. Obama deserves a clear exposition of competing assessments of national security issues. Then it's for him to hash out the differences in internal debate.
Sarah Chayes lived and worked in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010. She advised the NATO command in Kabul and the U.S. Joint Staff, wrote "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban," and is a contributing writer to Opinion.
Germany begins cutting troops in Afghanistan
DW 25/01/2012
The German parliament is starting to lower the number of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Two years ahead of the planned complete withdrawal of troops, many questions remain unresolved.
One thing is certain: by the end of 2014, international combat troops are supposed to be completely pulled out of Afghanistan. Germany's Bundeswehr is therefore already reducing the ceiling of its mandate from the current 5,350 to 4,900 soldiers. The extended mandate, which the German parliament, the Bundestag, will finalize on Thursday, will be valid until January 2013.
Johannes Pflug, spokesman for the "Task Force Afghanistan/Pakistan" in the Social Democrats' parliamentary group, does not believe that the deployment of German soldiers will be completed at that time.
"We want our combat troops to have left Afghanistan by 2013/2014," Pflug said. "But I assume that we will see at least two more extensions of the mandate."
The German government's goal is to reduce the number of German soldiers to 4,400 by January 2013. Whether this will be successful is also dependent on how the security situation in Afghanistan continues to develop. Crucial security training
There are a number of clear priorities derived from the international community's withdrawal plans by 2014 that apply to the German deployment. In the remaining period, the Bundeswehr is supposed to speed up the development of Afghan security forces and help them to limit the Taliban's mobility as much as possible.
In total, NATO wants to train 350,000 Afghan soldiers and police. But the killing of four French troops by an Afghan soldier last week shows how massive the problems can be in the process. According to a report in the New York Times, Afghan security forces killed 58 soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the period between May 2007 and May 2011 alone.
The military training of the ANA, the Afghan national army, is only one side of the story. The soldiers also want to be paid. Figures show how dependent the army is on western funds and support: in 2012 alone, Afghanistan received eight billion euros ($10.4 billion) for troop training. But even after 2014, the military costs are estimated to reach at least six billion euros a year. If the United States and other donor countries reduce their financing as planned, a situation could develop that could leave over 100,000 of these security forces unemployed, said Pflug. This is an enormous risk.
"You don't need a vivid imagination to envision what would happen if they all run over to the other side," he said.
A dwindling economic factor
Timo Christians, Afghanistan expert for the German aid agency Welthungerhilfe, said he believes that the Afghan economy will experience an economic shock after international forces withdraw. The withdrawal, he said, would have serious implications for security policy.
"Also, the income source 'international community' will significantly decline in the next few years," Christians said. "That will not remain without consequences."
The Welthungerhilfe, which has been active in Afghanistan since 1992, wants to remain involved in the country beyond 2014. It is focusing its work on food security projects in the northern and eastern regions of the country. This involvement is not affected by the planned withdrawal of the Bundeswehr.
However, the aid workers do expect that the conflict will intensify after foreign troops pull out. In addition, there will also be fewer contracts for the Afghan economy.
"Old and new divides will open up because everyone will have to come to terms with the lesser resources available," Christians said. "Everyone is positioning themselves for the day that the foreign troops leave the country."
Diplomatic support from Germany
The extension of the Bundeswehr mandate puts the deployment in its 11th year. In the meantime, hardly anyone still believes in a military solution. In the US, but also in Germany, great hope is being placed in negotiations with the Taliban. Western diplomats consider the opening of a liaison office for the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha a positive signal - especially since President Hamid Karzai has meanwhile grudgingly given up his resistance to talks with the Taliban.
"That took some doing," said Pflug and points out the significant role which the German special representative Michael Steiner played in the process.
With the liaison office, Qatar wants to become the leading mediator in the conflict between the West and the Taliban. But for a successful course of negotiations, Afghanistan's direct neighbor Pakistan plays an even more significant role.
"Nothing will work without Pakistan," Pflug said. He said he hopes that China, which played "a very constructive role" at the Afghanistan Conference in Bonn in December, will exert pressure accordingly on its ally. Pakistan boycotted the Bonn conference after a deadly NATO air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
Difficult negotiations
The negotiations with the Taliban will also deal with constitutional issues, for example women's rights. The right to unhindered schooling for girls is a thorn in the Taliban's side, but essential for the West. Everything that has been achieved in Afghanistan so far, however, is by no means only being put into question by the Taliban, said Christians.
"The current people in power are also putting many freedoms and human rights under pressure," he said.
An entirely different question will be who specifically will take part in the negotiations. For example: who will be representing Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader living in exile who has been repeatedly declared dead, but who still controls many Taliban-related activities.
One option is the Taliban representative Tayeb Agha, with whom the German intelligence service BND has established contact. Participation by the longtime Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is also disputed. Pflug said the Hizb-i-Islami leader - the perhaps most significant radical Islamic group after the Taliban - was an "evil war criminal."
But German parliamentary circles would be happy if negotiations even got off the ground in the near future. In fall 2013, Germany elects a new lower house of parliament. This could lead to higher hurdles for a renewal of the Bundeswehr mandate again, Pflug said.
"Extending the mandate has already not always gone smoothly until now and the new members of the Bundestag will find it very difficult, as well," he said.
Author: Daniel Scheschkewitz / sac Editor: Rob Mudge
The Swede Who Convinced Taliban To Allow Girls Schools
January 26, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Abubakar Siddique
These days Anders Fange, 65, lectures on Afghanistan in his native Sweden. His main challenge is to convince skeptical audiences to shed preconceptions when they think about Afghanistan. He hones this point by drawing on nearly three decades of experience in that mountainous country.
Fange's public speaking engagements and private conversations are deeply engaging owing to his detailed knowledge of Afghanistan. Anecdotes from his long years there are more than a match for the dry academic comparisons that frequently dominate such events in the West.
Fange first went to Afghanistan as a young radio journalist in the early 1980s after Afghans began fighting against the Soviet occupation. He later moved to humanitarian relief work and even worked for the United Nations political mission in the country.
"Afghanistan always continues to surprise you. You always get new explanations for things," Fange says. "It's a complicated country in many ways -- that makes it difficult and it makes it exciting."
In 1984, Fange spent three months walking with the mujahedin through valleys, passes, and forests. They often stayed in village mosques. He witnessed their attacks against Soviet convoys and government garrisons.
"From those years, I took with me the thing that I have been saying since then: that the future of Afghanistan is not decided in Kabul," he says. "It is decided out in the valleys. It is decided in the rural areas."
He was fascinated by the Afghan culture -- in particular, the practice of hospitality. "It's most impolite to leave a guest alone. From my upbringing in Sweden, I was used to [having] my own room. But there, you could never be alone," he says of the days he spent in remote Afghan villages.
In the early 1990s, Fange joined the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) and began living in Peshawar in western Pakistan.
In his role as an aid worker, he experienced Afghan suffering first-hand. But he was impressed by Afghan resilience.
"Their capacity for work, their capacity for being able to carrying through in very difficult circumstances -- I doubt that there is any other people on earth who had this kind of capacity," he says.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan became one of the largest aid groups at the height of Afghan civil war, when the Taliban militia swept through much of the country. Fange dealt with many Taliban officials.
"Most of the Taliban, even the ministers we dealt with in Kabul, had a pretty pragmatic view," he says. "Somehow it was understood that they needed this humanitarian assistance of which we were one of the providers."
One of the most sensitive issues he negotiated with the Taliban was rural schools where some 40,000 Afghan girls were educated. After long talks with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the regime's minister of education, the Taliban agreed to sign a protocol allowing the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan to work in the country.
"When we finalized these negotiations, he told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools. We know it, but don't tell us,' he said,'" Fange says as he recalls the conversation. "In other words, it was a very Afghan view that if it's not official, then a lot more is tolerated and allowed than what's in official life."
The schools, however, were not immune to Taliban interference. In the summer of 2001, Fange says, some local mullahs in remote rural districts attempted to close down a school. His answer to such a menace was to threaten the closure of all Swedish Committee for Afghanistan education, health care, and agriculture projects in the area.
"Without exception, they came back the day after or even the same day and said, 'OK, you can stick to the girls schools, but keep a low profile,'" he recalls of the often tricky negotiations with rural clerics. "During Taliban [rule] we never were actually forced really to close girls schools."
After 9/11, Fange became a leading member or the UN political mission in Afghanistan. But he was soon disappointed at what he regarded as political blunders made by Afghan leaders and the international community in rebuilding the country, including disenfranchising certain segments of the population while reenergizing and empowering some of the most notorious warlords.
"The West is obsessed with its own political system as a perfect political system," he says, adding that Western states have struggled for centuries to improve their democracies. "Then we throw it on Afghanistan and say, 'You have 10 years to fix this,'" he says. "Of course it doesn't work."
Pakistan’s three-way power struggle: a dispute with much at stake
Washington Post By Editorial Board Thursday, January 26, 2012
THE CRISIS IN U.S. relations with Pakistan has been overtaken, in Pakistan itself, by a power struggle among three competing authorities: the civilian government, the military and the judiciary. Its outcome could determine whether Pakistan will seek to repair its alliance with the United States or become a more open adversary in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Not coincidentally, it will also show whether the country’s powerful military and intelligence service can be checked by civil institutions. Though history would suggest that the generals are bound to win, so far the result has been a stalemate.
At the center of the furor is Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, a highly capable representative of the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and a longtime advocate of democracy and civilian rule. Mr. Haqqani was forced to resign his post in November and now is under investigation by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. A Pakistani businessman claimed that Mr. Haqqani helped craft an appeal to the Obama administration to protect the civilian government from a possible military coup; this is being treated as an act of treason. Mr. Haqqani, who denies the story, has taken refuge in the home of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. He has good reason to fear he will be targeted for assassination, like other liberal politicians slain in the last year.
Besides the military and Mr. Zardari’s government, the third party to the dispute is the court, which seems to have embraced the generals’ cause of ousting the civilian government. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry has had outsize political ambitions ever since he helped depose former president Pervez Musharraf. He has sought since 2009 to prosecute Mr. Zardari for corruption, even though he enjoys immunity as president. In addition to investigating Mr. Haqqani, the court is threatening to hold Mr. Gilani in contempt for failing to ask Switzerland to reopen a financial investigation of Mr. Zardari.
The good news in this complex struggle is that the case against Mr. Haqqani appears to be crumbling — as it should be — for lack of evidence. Mr. Gilani has pushed back against the military, by firing the defense secretary. And Mr. Chaudhry’s overweening actions have divided a legal community that once supported him overwhelmingly. With luck, Mr. Zardari’s government will survive until an election in March for the upper house of parliament, which the ruling party is likely to win; that could provide more leverage against the generals.
The Obama administration has been outwardly supportive of Pakistan’s civilian government but has often bypassed it, dealing directly with the chiefs of the army and intelligence agency on matters such as Afghanistan. While there is a certain pragmatic logic to this, what the past two years have demonstrated — again — is that an enduring partnership between Pakistan and the United States will be possible only if moderate civilians establish control over the military and dismantle its toxic nationalist agenda, which is founded on enmity toward India and rejects an independent and stable Afghanistan. There may not be much the Obama administration can do to tip the ongoing power struggle in Islamabad, and any overt attempt to intervene would probably backfire. But the administration should be hoping that Mr. Haqqani’s side wins — or at least survives.
Afghan Olive Farms Waiting for Water
Once-thriving industry now in poor shape.
IWPR By Mina Habib 25 Jan 12
Afghanistan - The southeastern Afghan province of Nangarhar was once home to thousands of hectares of olive groves, but residents say water and electricity shortages, combined with land-grabs and war, have left the industry devastated.
State-run farms here once produced 8,000 tons of olives in a season, but in the decade since the fall of the Taleban, labourers have harvested a total of just 1,400 tons. Last year, the harvest was little over half a ton.
The olive industry grew up around the 1960s Nangarhar Canal, which was intended as a huge income generator for eastern Afghanistan. In its heyday, the 70-kilometres waterway provided the irrigation that enabled local producers to export their olives and fruit.
Today, however, officials say the canal system and the surrounding agriculture have been undermined by the dilapidated state of the Darunta hydroelectric dam, built in 1964 on the Kabul river.
The canal needs electricity to pump water along it, and its managers say they get far less than the amount they are supposed to get – 65 per cent of the power generated by the dam.
“Believe me, we hardly get five hours of electricity a week,” said Ziyarat-Gul Rahel, director of the Nangarhar Canal Project.
Mohammad Shoja, deputy director of Nangarhar’s energy department, said the reason the Darunta power station could not supply enough electricity to the canal was that there was not enough water dammed up to keep it fully operational. Only one of the dam’s three turbines was currently working, he said.
“We’re faced with a lack of water,” he said. “The problem is that the canal department is asking for both water and electricity at the same time – and we can’t satisfy both demands simultaneously.”
The United States Agency for International Development said last year that it was refurbishing and modernising the dam, where the turbine-driven generators were in poor condition and at risk of failing. It said it planned to finish the repair work by mid-2012.
But as Hezatullah, head of the Nangarhar Olive Factory, pointed out, the industry has declined not just because of water shortages, but also as a result of years of war and poor maintenance of farms.
There used to be 700,000 olive trees in the province, which borders on Pakistan, but three-quarters of theme were destroyed by decades of war starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, he said. The farms once employed 12,000 workers, but now ran on a skeleton staff of 800.
“There isn’t enough water to irrigate the olive trees, nor are there enough people to maintain the farms – not to mention a host of other problems,” Hezatollah said. “The canal was a significant undertaking for this eastern region, so the government should revive this now dilapidated project.”
One major obstacle to recovery is that state-owned farmlands have been seized and the trees chopped down.
Rahel said that of the 14,000 hectares once held by the Nangarhar Canal Project, only 1,100 hectares remained. “The rest has been taken illegally,” he said.
Local resident Naqib Ahmad recalled his father working on the olive farms, but he said that after the Taleban government was ousted in 2001, opportunists rushed in to grab government-owned land and cut down the olive trees.
As a result, Nangarhar residents find it harder and harder to buy locally-pressed olive oil.
Mohibullah said he went shopping for olive oil to treat pains in his grandfather’s feet, but was only able to find inferior Iranian and Pakistani products at the local markets. He went to the olive factory, but was turned away at the gates.
“The staff there are just standing around in the sun,” he complained. “The plant hasn’t functioned for several years; its an olive factory in name only.”
Faced with such customers, local shopkeeper Ziaurrahman Arab said that he sometimes lies and tells people the products they are buying are not foreign but Afghan.
Hejratullah Ekhtiyar is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Karl F. Inderfurth Wednesday, January 25, 2012 Foreign Policy
The on-again, off-again effort by the Obama administration to begin preliminary peace talks with the Taliban is still struggling to get off the ground. The first move focuses on a statement by the Taliban against international terrorism and in support of a peace process and the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. For this the Taliban have called for the release of its prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.
To garner support for this initiative, the administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Marc Grossman, has been traveling in the region, including meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to make sure he is on board. Afghan officials have expressed concern about the possibility of a ‘secret deal' being struck between the Taliban and the U.S.
But that would be unlikely, given the administration's oft-repeated public assurance that it supports an "Afghan-led and Afghan-owned" reconciliation process. In fact, what is more likely than a ‘secret deal' is no deal at all.
Earlier high-level efforts by the U.S. government to have ‘peace talks' with the Taliban may be instructive. As Winston Churchill said: "The further back you look, the farther forward you can see."
The Taliban history of negotiating with its opponents reveals little reason for optimism. Striking a deal with its sworn enemies does not appear to be in the Taliban's DNA. Instead, past experience suggests it has adopted the negotiating equivalent of the "rope-a-dope' strategy in boxing -- agreeing to enter the ring, playing for time, evading and avoiding committing itself, letting the opponent wear himself out, then hitting back hard as it had intended to do all the time.
In April 1998, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, in order to bring them to the table to discuss the possibilities for peace. He also tried to persuade the Taliban either to expel Osama bin Laden or extradite him to the U.S. for his complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In his memoir Between Worlds, Richardson described the outcome: "Flying back to Pakistan that night, I thought, Well, this was a good day's work. Peace talks would get started later in the month, and if they went well, we might get bin Laden after all. But it wasn't to be. The agreement held for a while, but we quickly learned that the Taliban had no intention of making peace with the Northern Alliance. By early May, a belated spring offensive had begun and the two sides were at it again."
In February 1999 there was another attempt at direct talks with the Taliban. After the bin Laden-directed bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, I traveled to Islamabad with the State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan, to meet with Mullah Abdul Jalil, a close adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (from 1997-2001 I attended some 20 meetings with Taliban officials). The U.S. government had repeatedly demanded that the Taliban stop giving safe haven to terrorists. Now we told Jalil that the U.S. would hold the Taliban itself directly responsible for bin Laden's actions, and respond accordingly.
Mullah Jalil said that bin Laden was becoming a burden on Afghanistan, but that he was under the Taliban's control and he could not possibly be operating a worldwide network as we suggested. Later efforts were made to provide the Taliban with more information about the U.S. case against bin Laden, but they never responded.
Subsequently the UN Security Council tried to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden. Two resolutions were adopted, and sanctions were imposed, but, again, the Taliban defied these calls by the international community. On a scale of one to ten on good faith negotiations, the Taliban proved to be a zero.
Are the Taliban likely to be any more accommodating today, specifically the Quetta Shura faction still led by Mullah Omar? Recent statements issued by the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" on January 3 and January 12 suggest not. That was the name the Taliban gave Afghanistan during its rule from 1996 to 2001. The international community never recognized it. The Taliban still stick to it.
Taken together, these statements lay out the Taliban's ‘going in' position for peace talks, including the departure of all U.S. and foreign forces and a continuation of their "jihad" until that goal is accomplished. Also, the movement remains at least in rhetoric opposed to negotiations with the Karzai government (referred to as "the stooge Kabul administration") as well as acceptance of the Afghan constitution.
Administration officials say that while they are under no illusion about the chances of success in opening direct talks with the Taliban, they are convinced that a political settlement is the only solution to the war. But they also need to be convinced that the Taliban is serious about a future for Afghanistan that is not a return to the days of the "Islamic Emirate."
In this regard, several probing questions need to be asked of Taliban representatives during what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says is "still in the preliminary stages of testing whether [talks] can be successful":
Do the Taliban accept a political solution to the Afghanistan conflict, and what is their vision of it?
Do the Taliban have a political and economic plan for the future of Afghanistan?
Will they accept the international instruments to which Afghanistan has acceded, particularly with regard to human rights?
Will they honor and enforce the rights of women, minorities and ethnic groups?
Will they respect the role of shuras (tribal councils): local, provincial and national?
Are they willing to support and abide by internationally acceptable mechanisms of legitimization, like elections, referendums or tribal consensus?
During the years of repressive Taliban rule, none of these questions could have been answered in the affirmative. Can they be today?
And, more importantly, what concrete steps can be taken by the Taliban to demonstrate that they will abide by their declarations and assurances in the future? A good, measureable place to start for the Taliban to establish their bona fides would be an end to all suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Other confidence building measures would need to follow.
Another quote by Winston Churchill that relates to opening up direct talks with the Taliban is one of his most famous: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." It is axiomatic at this point that the conflict in Afghanistan will not end by military means alone. And the search for a political settlement must reach out to all parties -- but with eyes wide open.
Karl F. Inderfurth is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration (1997-2001).
New U.N. Envoy Urges Afghans to Take Part in Peace Process
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN January 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The new United Nations representative to Afghanistan urged Afghans on Wednesday to embrace an inclusive peace process in which all the elements of society would have a voice.
Speaking to reporters for the first time since his arrival on Jan. 17, the new envoy, Jan Kubis, said that “it should be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process, because it is about the country and the people of the country.”
Any effort to end the conflict in the country can succeed only if “it is based on wide participation, on representative participation, not only of political forces but eventually of civil society,” he said, adding that it was important “that no major relevant party is excluded from that process.”
Mr. Kubis, who is from Slovakia, succeeds Staffan de Mistura, who left in December a post that is one of the United Nations’ most prominent, not least because the United Nations is one of the few organizations that is in touch with all parties in the country.
In recent years, the world body has taken a particularly strong stand here on human rights, pushing both the Taliban and the NATO coalition to take more care to avoid killing civilians caught in the fighting.
The United Nations also runs large humanitarian programs in Afghanistan, distributing food through the World Food Program and promoting development, children’s health, women’s rights and support for refugees.
Nearly 1,000 Westerners and 4,000 to 5,000 Afghans work for the United Nations here; the Westerners have been targets of insurgent attacks, most recently last April when the United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif was attacked and seven employees were killed.
The possibility of peace talks has been at the center of the news here in recent weeks, as fears emerged that Washington might negotiate directly with the Taliban without the participation of Afghan officials. American diplomats here have tried to reassure the Afghan government; Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said Tuesday that the claim that the United States wanted “a secret deal with the Taliban” was “a false and absurd rumor.”
Mr. Kubis said Wednesday that the United Nations would support an Afghan-led peace process in whatever way the Afghan government asked. One example of the world body’s commitment, he said, was its support of the government-appointed High Peace Council, which includes representatives of all major groups in the country.
Suicide Bomber Attacks Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan
VOA News January 26, 2012
Afghan officials say a suicide car bomber has killed four civilians in an attack on a NATO-affiliated provincial reconstruction team in southern Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the governor of Helmand province said Thursday's attack took place in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.
Officials say the bomber hit a convoy of armored vehicles passing near the education department building.
A child was among those killed in the attack. Officials says some 31 others were wounded, including three foreigners — two men and a woman.
At least 17 civilian cars were damaged, some bursting into flames.
NATO has declined to comment on the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed the “enemy” of the Afghan people.
Mr. Karzai, who is in Italy, condemned the attack as inhuman and un-Islamic.
NATO transferred security control of Lashkar Gah to Afghan forces last year.
The Afghan president and NATO also condemned Wednesday's rocket attack in the eastern Afghan province of Kapisa that killed a woman and a child.
Taliban leader captured in Afghan Helmand province: NATO
KABUL, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Thursday detained a local Taliban leader in Helmand province, 555 km south of capital Kabul, the alliance said in a statement. "An Afghan led and coalition supported security forces captured a Taliban leader during an operation in Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province, today,"said the statement.
Without revealing the name of the suspected Taliban commander, the statement stated that "the leader coordinated roadside bomb and ambush attacks against Afghan forces in Helmand province".
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
Afghan jailed for 16 years for spying for Iran
AFP 25/01/2012
HERAT - An Afghan man found in possession of photographs of NATO bases in Afghanistan has been jailed for 16 years for spying for neighbouring Iran, officials said Wednesday.
The 23-year-old man, named only as Mahmmood, had Iranian intelligence officials' phone numbers in his notebook and pictures of foreign and Afghan military installations in western Herat province, an official told AFP.
Afghan intelligence had been able to listen to conversations between him and Iranian intelligence over the border, the official said.
Mahmood was arrested while taking photographs of a government weapons depot, local media reported.
"We found you guilty of betrayal and treason to the people, national sovereignty, independence, internal security and covert activities against the government of Afghanistan," judge Serajuddin Naser told Mahmood in Herat city court Tuesday.
Mahmood, who is originally from Herat but has lived most of his life in Iran, had pleaded not guilty and continued to protest his innocence after being sentenced to 16 years in prison.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has accused Iran of providing equipment and support to Afghan militants waging an insurgency against the Afghan government and US-led international troops.
But Iran has rejected this, with a foreign ministry spokesman describing the allegations last year as "baseless and unacceptable."
Iran is sometimes seen as hostile to Taliban militants for religious reasons but analysts suggest it could support insurgents as a counterweight to arch-enemy the US, which has nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of a 140,000-strong international force.
How Iran Controls Afghanistan
FoxNews.com By Fariba Nawa January 25, 2012
Afghanistan has suffered from foreign meddling since its inception. But while Pakistan’s role has been widely discussed -- most Afghans will point to concrete examples -- Iran’s involvement is more subtle.
Iranian influence is all encompassing--the Islamic government funds Afghan Shiite sects and politicians, has invested in building roads and providing fuel and transport, and is fighting hard against the Afghan opium trade that supplies millions of addicts. But Iran’s lasting power on Afghanistan is cultural as well as political, broadcasting state radio and television programs inside Afghanistan.
Yet the country’s biggest cultural influence is not imposed by the Iranian government.
The more than one million repatriating Afghan refugees from Iran – tens of thousands have been deported –bring the dialect, food, music, and clothes particular to Iran.
Some of the Afghans repatriates are migrant workers, similar to Mexicans in the U.S., some are construction workers who became addicted to drugs in Iran, others were able to get an education and acquire job skills, and most have lived there for over three decades.
Yet Iran will not grant them legal status; they do not have a right to a higher education, to own property, or to work. Most voluntarily return to Afghanistan because there are more opportunities in their home country. These Afghans are changing Afghanistan’s identity to be more Iranian – for better or worse.
My family escaped the Soviet invasion in 1982 and settled in the U.S.
I first returned to Afghanistan in 2000 when the Taliban reigned, but it was after the group’s ouster that I witnessed the cultural changes brought on by immigration.
I was traveling through Afghanistan researching the drug trade for my book "Opium Nation" from 2002 to 2007, and my first confrontation with Iran’s cultural impact was language.
Iran and Afghanistan both speak Farsi, but the Afghan dialect is called “Dari.” I’m fluent in Dari but I no longer understood what many of the families in my hometown, Herat are saying.
Common words, idioms, and even Iran’s use of French terms have invaded Afghan speech. The Herati folk songs I recalled hearing in shops as a child were replaced by Iranian pop produced in Los Angeles. The young Afghan activists and artists read Iranian websites and books.
These changes have given rise to tension between the Afghans who never left home and the Afghan returnees.
The skilled repatriates are resented for getting better jobs with aid companies and the Afghan government.
Conservatives view the Afghan women who grew up in Iran with disdain because they appear more liberal and courageous--they sing on TV, they’re news broadcasters, business owners, and government workers. They voice their opinions loudly in a male dominated country.
The Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan who were historically the poorest of minorities return richer, more literate, and united. They have made unprecedented advances in Afghanistan, including in the arts and in the government.
These returnees are called “Afghan-e badal,” or counterfeit Afghans. Few of them have political connections to Iran, but their time living in the Islamic Republic taints themin the eyes of the Afghans who didn’t leave as culturally inauthentic and politically suspect.
Several Afghans at NGOs I met told me that their returnee colleagues had clandestine connections to Iran. When I asked for tangible evidence, one of them told me. “I just know by that accent they use. They’re sellouts.”
While I’m not fully comfortable with this cultural invasion, I understand that Iran advanced while Afghanistan struggled to survive in the last three decades.
Culture is fluid and both countries share a common history. After all, my own husband is one of these Afghan returnees and he’s a true patriot.
Repatriating Afghans have enough of a hard time readjusting to their battered country – ostracizing them is simply cruel.
However, Afghan bitterness toward the Iranian government is justifiable. The Islamic Republic backs religious divisions inside Afghanistan, using Afghan Shiites as pawns.
Shiite Afghans, who come from other ethnic groups as well, are encouraged to watch Iranian clerics give fiery speeches against Sunni Afghans. Iran built the road from Herat City to its border, one of the finest rebuilt highways, but the signs alongside the road bear Koranic verses picked by Iran‘s government.
My homeland is geographically determined as a buffer zone where empires and nations have fought their battles using Afghans as their pawns.
Extremist Sunni groups cross the Pakistani border to kill Afghan Shiite children and women. The carnage last month in Kabul at a Shiite mosque killed eighty people and was a new height in religious sectarian violence for Afghanistan. It won’t be long before Iran recruits a group to bomb a Sunni mosque.
Iran and Pakistan were not such deadly influences on Afghanistan before the revolutions and wars inside these countries.
A harmonious cultural exchange was common among these neighbors. Pakistani couples took their honeymoon in Kabul while Iranian singers traveled to give concerts in Kabul in the 1960s.
Before the Soviet invasion, my mother, a Sunni, joined her Shiite friends to commemorate the death of Prophet Mohammed’s grandsons during the month of Muharram.
One of my uncles married a Shiite woman, and while throughout history tensions existed between the two sects, the result was not as violent.
I can take pop music and the Iranian Farsi drawl, but Iran’s sponsorship of sectarian violence must be stopped -- by the U.S. and other foreign powers invested in Afghanistan -- but mostly, by Afghans themselves who must unite to stand up to their neighbors.
Fariba Nawa is the author of "Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan." She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters. Visit her online: http://www.faribanawa.com/.
The Afghan divide
Is the United States succeeding in Afghanistan? It depends on what you measure and whom you ask.
Los Angles Times By Sarah Chayes January 26, 2012 Op-Ed
How should we measure success in Afghanistan? It's a crucial question, but there isn't much agreement on an answer.
In mid-January, this newspaper ran a story on the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan, a classified assessment drafted by analysts at more than a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies. According to The Times, the report "warns that security gains from an increase in troops have been undercut by pervasive corruption, incompetent governance and Taliban fighters operating from neighboring Pakistan."
Those with direct responsibility for the war — top military commanders and the U.S. ambassador to Kabul — reportedly contested the report's findings in a written dissent. The dispute highlights an ongoing struggle to shape U.S. perceptions on Afghanistan.
Analysts like using numbers to bolster their arguments because numbers seem hard and fast. But they don't always agree. Last summer, for example, the NATO command in Kabul announced that for the first time since 2006, insurgent attacks were down compared with the previous year. But United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations were reporting large upticks in violence and its effect on civilians.
Numbers draw their significance from what they count. In this case, the military tallied attacks that insurgents initiated where international troops were present, including improvised bombs that exploded but not ones that had been defused.
Humanitarian groups, by contrast, were tabulating all violence suffered by civilians, no matter who the perpetrator, including kidnappings and shootings at the hands of the militias that the U.S. militaryhas armed to fight the Taliban.
Afghans themselves are attuned to something less tangible: the likelihood of danger. Take last September's attack by a few militants shooting rocket-launched grenades from a tower in central Kabul, which shut downthe U.S. Embassyand nearby NATO headquarters for 20 hours.
Foreign officials might record such an incident as a single attack. But to Kabul residents, it sent an overpowering message that their city was unsafe, that the terrorists could do what they wanted.
Underlying the current dispute over the intelligence estimate is another, deeper divide. The assessment reportedly acknowledges the hard work by Afghan and foreign troops in driving the Taliban out of many of its strongholds. That success is clearly visible in Kandahar, where I have lived for most of the last decade. But its significance is less clear.
"Yes, we've made gains against the Taliban around Kandahar," a minister and former Kandahar governor told me recently. "But it takes 18,000 men for a single district. We can't sustain that."
And there have been other costs. As troops moved into rural districts the Taliban had held, they built dirt roads right through farmers' vineyards and orchards. I saw the results when I went to visit a friend's family land. Debris had been shoved into an irrigation channel that once watered the whole village, razor wire had been looped across a road, and buildings where families dry their grapes to make prized raisins had been destroyed.
There were good tactical reasons for inflicting such damage. Many of the buildings had been booby-trapped by the retreating Taliban, or they obstructed the troops' lines of sight. But the local economy, already one of the most threadbare on Earth, has been badly hurt. Compensation money was paid out, but still, success against the Taliban came at great cost to residents.
They are left with the question: What now? If their grapevines or fruit trees dry out, what should they plant? If insurgents offer poppy seeds, should they accept? And what about the Afghan soldiers who stole the furniture out of the blown-up buildings? Villagers can't take them to court because the judicial system is deeply corrupt. So who can give them recourse? A sense of justice? Maybe the Taliban.
If, on the other hand, the Taliban does move back in, or if it is given power in some deal negotiated by the United States and an Afghan government most of its citizens don't view as legitimate, how will the many Afghans who don't wish to be subjected to Taliban rule react?
The Afghan security forces the United States has been working so hard to build up are largely commanded by viscerally anti-Taliban groups. Is U.S. policy driving Afghanistan back toward civil war?
It is this potential for systemic collapse that the intelligence estimate reportedly highlights, to the dismay of the dissenting officials.
But even if withdrawing on the current schedule brings about Afghanistan'simplosion, that might still be the right thing to do. If the U.S. government chooses not to address the two fundamental political and diplomatic challenges its intelligence estimate is said to highlight — corrupt government and Pakistan's support for extremist violence — then why waste more blood and treasure? But President Obama must make that decision in full cognizance of the dangers, so he can plan for them and try to mitigate some of them. He needs more divergent views, not fewer.
The aggressive efforts by some to spin perceptions of Afghanistan have grown unseemly as well as dangerous. I've seen dissent disappear from interagency documents. I've heard officials tell public affairs officers to pressure reporters about their stories.
Though I doubt the nation's intelligence community can be easily cowed, even by three generals and an ambassador, the impulse to interfere is wrong. Writing problems out of documents won't make them go away. Obama deserves a clear exposition of competing assessments of national security issues. Then it's for him to hash out the differences in internal debate.
Sarah Chayes lived and worked in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2010. She advised the NATO command in Kabul and the U.S. Joint Staff, wrote "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban," and is a contributing writer to Opinion.
Germany begins cutting troops in Afghanistan
DW 25/01/2012
The German parliament is starting to lower the number of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Two years ahead of the planned complete withdrawal of troops, many questions remain unresolved.
One thing is certain: by the end of 2014, international combat troops are supposed to be completely pulled out of Afghanistan. Germany's Bundeswehr is therefore already reducing the ceiling of its mandate from the current 5,350 to 4,900 soldiers. The extended mandate, which the German parliament, the Bundestag, will finalize on Thursday, will be valid until January 2013.
Johannes Pflug, spokesman for the "Task Force Afghanistan/Pakistan" in the Social Democrats' parliamentary group, does not believe that the deployment of German soldiers will be completed at that time.
"We want our combat troops to have left Afghanistan by 2013/2014," Pflug said. "But I assume that we will see at least two more extensions of the mandate."
The German government's goal is to reduce the number of German soldiers to 4,400 by January 2013. Whether this will be successful is also dependent on how the security situation in Afghanistan continues to develop. Crucial security training
There are a number of clear priorities derived from the international community's withdrawal plans by 2014 that apply to the German deployment. In the remaining period, the Bundeswehr is supposed to speed up the development of Afghan security forces and help them to limit the Taliban's mobility as much as possible.
In total, NATO wants to train 350,000 Afghan soldiers and police. But the killing of four French troops by an Afghan soldier last week shows how massive the problems can be in the process. According to a report in the New York Times, Afghan security forces killed 58 soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the period between May 2007 and May 2011 alone.
The military training of the ANA, the Afghan national army, is only one side of the story. The soldiers also want to be paid. Figures show how dependent the army is on western funds and support: in 2012 alone, Afghanistan received eight billion euros ($10.4 billion) for troop training. But even after 2014, the military costs are estimated to reach at least six billion euros a year. If the United States and other donor countries reduce their financing as planned, a situation could develop that could leave over 100,000 of these security forces unemployed, said Pflug. This is an enormous risk.
"You don't need a vivid imagination to envision what would happen if they all run over to the other side," he said.
A dwindling economic factor
Timo Christians, Afghanistan expert for the German aid agency Welthungerhilfe, said he believes that the Afghan economy will experience an economic shock after international forces withdraw. The withdrawal, he said, would have serious implications for security policy.
"Also, the income source 'international community' will significantly decline in the next few years," Christians said. "That will not remain without consequences."
The Welthungerhilfe, which has been active in Afghanistan since 1992, wants to remain involved in the country beyond 2014. It is focusing its work on food security projects in the northern and eastern regions of the country. This involvement is not affected by the planned withdrawal of the Bundeswehr.
However, the aid workers do expect that the conflict will intensify after foreign troops pull out. In addition, there will also be fewer contracts for the Afghan economy.
"Old and new divides will open up because everyone will have to come to terms with the lesser resources available," Christians said. "Everyone is positioning themselves for the day that the foreign troops leave the country."
Diplomatic support from Germany
The extension of the Bundeswehr mandate puts the deployment in its 11th year. In the meantime, hardly anyone still believes in a military solution. In the US, but also in Germany, great hope is being placed in negotiations with the Taliban. Western diplomats consider the opening of a liaison office for the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha a positive signal - especially since President Hamid Karzai has meanwhile grudgingly given up his resistance to talks with the Taliban.
"That took some doing," said Pflug and points out the significant role which the German special representative Michael Steiner played in the process.
With the liaison office, Qatar wants to become the leading mediator in the conflict between the West and the Taliban. But for a successful course of negotiations, Afghanistan's direct neighbor Pakistan plays an even more significant role.
"Nothing will work without Pakistan," Pflug said. He said he hopes that China, which played "a very constructive role" at the Afghanistan Conference in Bonn in December, will exert pressure accordingly on its ally. Pakistan boycotted the Bonn conference after a deadly NATO air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
Difficult negotiations
The negotiations with the Taliban will also deal with constitutional issues, for example women's rights. The right to unhindered schooling for girls is a thorn in the Taliban's side, but essential for the West. Everything that has been achieved in Afghanistan so far, however, is by no means only being put into question by the Taliban, said Christians.
"The current people in power are also putting many freedoms and human rights under pressure," he said.
An entirely different question will be who specifically will take part in the negotiations. For example: who will be representing Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader living in exile who has been repeatedly declared dead, but who still controls many Taliban-related activities.
One option is the Taliban representative Tayeb Agha, with whom the German intelligence service BND has established contact. Participation by the longtime Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is also disputed. Pflug said the Hizb-i-Islami leader - the perhaps most significant radical Islamic group after the Taliban - was an "evil war criminal."
But German parliamentary circles would be happy if negotiations even got off the ground in the near future. In fall 2013, Germany elects a new lower house of parliament. This could lead to higher hurdles for a renewal of the Bundeswehr mandate again, Pflug said.
"Extending the mandate has already not always gone smoothly until now and the new members of the Bundestag will find it very difficult, as well," he said.
Author: Daniel Scheschkewitz / sac Editor: Rob Mudge
The Swede Who Convinced Taliban To Allow Girls Schools
January 26, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Abubakar Siddique
These days Anders Fange, 65, lectures on Afghanistan in his native Sweden. His main challenge is to convince skeptical audiences to shed preconceptions when they think about Afghanistan. He hones this point by drawing on nearly three decades of experience in that mountainous country.
Fange's public speaking engagements and private conversations are deeply engaging owing to his detailed knowledge of Afghanistan. Anecdotes from his long years there are more than a match for the dry academic comparisons that frequently dominate such events in the West.
Fange first went to Afghanistan as a young radio journalist in the early 1980s after Afghans began fighting against the Soviet occupation. He later moved to humanitarian relief work and even worked for the United Nations political mission in the country.
"Afghanistan always continues to surprise you. You always get new explanations for things," Fange says. "It's a complicated country in many ways -- that makes it difficult and it makes it exciting."
In 1984, Fange spent three months walking with the mujahedin through valleys, passes, and forests. They often stayed in village mosques. He witnessed their attacks against Soviet convoys and government garrisons.
"From those years, I took with me the thing that I have been saying since then: that the future of Afghanistan is not decided in Kabul," he says. "It is decided out in the valleys. It is decided in the rural areas."
He was fascinated by the Afghan culture -- in particular, the practice of hospitality. "It's most impolite to leave a guest alone. From my upbringing in Sweden, I was used to [having] my own room. But there, you could never be alone," he says of the days he spent in remote Afghan villages.
In the early 1990s, Fange joined the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) and began living in Peshawar in western Pakistan.
In his role as an aid worker, he experienced Afghan suffering first-hand. But he was impressed by Afghan resilience.
"Their capacity for work, their capacity for being able to carrying through in very difficult circumstances -- I doubt that there is any other people on earth who had this kind of capacity," he says.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan became one of the largest aid groups at the height of Afghan civil war, when the Taliban militia swept through much of the country. Fange dealt with many Taliban officials.
"Most of the Taliban, even the ministers we dealt with in Kabul, had a pretty pragmatic view," he says. "Somehow it was understood that they needed this humanitarian assistance of which we were one of the providers."
One of the most sensitive issues he negotiated with the Taliban was rural schools where some 40,000 Afghan girls were educated. After long talks with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the regime's minister of education, the Taliban agreed to sign a protocol allowing the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan to work in the country.
"When we finalized these negotiations, he told me, 'We know you have these girls' schools. We know it, but don't tell us,' he said,'" Fange says as he recalls the conversation. "In other words, it was a very Afghan view that if it's not official, then a lot more is tolerated and allowed than what's in official life."
The schools, however, were not immune to Taliban interference. In the summer of 2001, Fange says, some local mullahs in remote rural districts attempted to close down a school. His answer to such a menace was to threaten the closure of all Swedish Committee for Afghanistan education, health care, and agriculture projects in the area.
"Without exception, they came back the day after or even the same day and said, 'OK, you can stick to the girls schools, but keep a low profile,'" he recalls of the often tricky negotiations with rural clerics. "During Taliban [rule] we never were actually forced really to close girls schools."
After 9/11, Fange became a leading member or the UN political mission in Afghanistan. But he was soon disappointed at what he regarded as political blunders made by Afghan leaders and the international community in rebuilding the country, including disenfranchising certain segments of the population while reenergizing and empowering some of the most notorious warlords.
"The West is obsessed with its own political system as a perfect political system," he says, adding that Western states have struggled for centuries to improve their democracies. "Then we throw it on Afghanistan and say, 'You have 10 years to fix this,'" he says. "Of course it doesn't work."
Pakistan’s three-way power struggle: a dispute with much at stake
Washington Post By Editorial Board Thursday, January 26, 2012
THE CRISIS IN U.S. relations with Pakistan has been overtaken, in Pakistan itself, by a power struggle among three competing authorities: the civilian government, the military and the judiciary. Its outcome could determine whether Pakistan will seek to repair its alliance with the United States or become a more open adversary in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Not coincidentally, it will also show whether the country’s powerful military and intelligence service can be checked by civil institutions. Though history would suggest that the generals are bound to win, so far the result has been a stalemate.
At the center of the furor is Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, a highly capable representative of the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and a longtime advocate of democracy and civilian rule. Mr. Haqqani was forced to resign his post in November and now is under investigation by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. A Pakistani businessman claimed that Mr. Haqqani helped craft an appeal to the Obama administration to protect the civilian government from a possible military coup; this is being treated as an act of treason. Mr. Haqqani, who denies the story, has taken refuge in the home of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. He has good reason to fear he will be targeted for assassination, like other liberal politicians slain in the last year.
Besides the military and Mr. Zardari’s government, the third party to the dispute is the court, which seems to have embraced the generals’ cause of ousting the civilian government. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry has had outsize political ambitions ever since he helped depose former president Pervez Musharraf. He has sought since 2009 to prosecute Mr. Zardari for corruption, even though he enjoys immunity as president. In addition to investigating Mr. Haqqani, the court is threatening to hold Mr. Gilani in contempt for failing to ask Switzerland to reopen a financial investigation of Mr. Zardari.
The good news in this complex struggle is that the case against Mr. Haqqani appears to be crumbling — as it should be — for lack of evidence. Mr. Gilani has pushed back against the military, by firing the defense secretary. And Mr. Chaudhry’s overweening actions have divided a legal community that once supported him overwhelmingly. With luck, Mr. Zardari’s government will survive until an election in March for the upper house of parliament, which the ruling party is likely to win; that could provide more leverage against the generals.
The Obama administration has been outwardly supportive of Pakistan’s civilian government but has often bypassed it, dealing directly with the chiefs of the army and intelligence agency on matters such as Afghanistan. While there is a certain pragmatic logic to this, what the past two years have demonstrated — again — is that an enduring partnership between Pakistan and the United States will be possible only if moderate civilians establish control over the military and dismantle its toxic nationalist agenda, which is founded on enmity toward India and rejects an independent and stable Afghanistan. There may not be much the Obama administration can do to tip the ongoing power struggle in Islamabad, and any overt attempt to intervene would probably backfire. But the administration should be hoping that Mr. Haqqani’s side wins — or at least survives.
Afghan Olive Farms Waiting for Water
Once-thriving industry now in poor shape.
IWPR By Mina Habib 25 Jan 12
Afghanistan - The southeastern Afghan province of Nangarhar was once home to thousands of hectares of olive groves, but residents say water and electricity shortages, combined with land-grabs and war, have left the industry devastated.
State-run farms here once produced 8,000 tons of olives in a season, but in the decade since the fall of the Taleban, labourers have harvested a total of just 1,400 tons. Last year, the harvest was little over half a ton.
The olive industry grew up around the 1960s Nangarhar Canal, which was intended as a huge income generator for eastern Afghanistan. In its heyday, the 70-kilometres waterway provided the irrigation that enabled local producers to export their olives and fruit.
Today, however, officials say the canal system and the surrounding agriculture have been undermined by the dilapidated state of the Darunta hydroelectric dam, built in 1964 on the Kabul river.
The canal needs electricity to pump water along it, and its managers say they get far less than the amount they are supposed to get – 65 per cent of the power generated by the dam.
“Believe me, we hardly get five hours of electricity a week,” said Ziyarat-Gul Rahel, director of the Nangarhar Canal Project.
Mohammad Shoja, deputy director of Nangarhar’s energy department, said the reason the Darunta power station could not supply enough electricity to the canal was that there was not enough water dammed up to keep it fully operational. Only one of the dam’s three turbines was currently working, he said.
“We’re faced with a lack of water,” he said. “The problem is that the canal department is asking for both water and electricity at the same time – and we can’t satisfy both demands simultaneously.”
The United States Agency for International Development said last year that it was refurbishing and modernising the dam, where the turbine-driven generators were in poor condition and at risk of failing. It said it planned to finish the repair work by mid-2012.
But as Hezatullah, head of the Nangarhar Olive Factory, pointed out, the industry has declined not just because of water shortages, but also as a result of years of war and poor maintenance of farms.
There used to be 700,000 olive trees in the province, which borders on Pakistan, but three-quarters of theme were destroyed by decades of war starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, he said. The farms once employed 12,000 workers, but now ran on a skeleton staff of 800.
“There isn’t enough water to irrigate the olive trees, nor are there enough people to maintain the farms – not to mention a host of other problems,” Hezatollah said. “The canal was a significant undertaking for this eastern region, so the government should revive this now dilapidated project.”
One major obstacle to recovery is that state-owned farmlands have been seized and the trees chopped down.
Rahel said that of the 14,000 hectares once held by the Nangarhar Canal Project, only 1,100 hectares remained. “The rest has been taken illegally,” he said.
Local resident Naqib Ahmad recalled his father working on the olive farms, but he said that after the Taleban government was ousted in 2001, opportunists rushed in to grab government-owned land and cut down the olive trees.
As a result, Nangarhar residents find it harder and harder to buy locally-pressed olive oil.
Mohibullah said he went shopping for olive oil to treat pains in his grandfather’s feet, but was only able to find inferior Iranian and Pakistani products at the local markets. He went to the olive factory, but was turned away at the gates.
“The staff there are just standing around in the sun,” he complained. “The plant hasn’t functioned for several years; its an olive factory in name only.”
Faced with such customers, local shopkeeper Ziaurrahman Arab said that he sometimes lies and tells people the products they are buying are not foreign but Afghan.
Hejratullah Ekhtiyar is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com