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Mullah Omar Sent a Letter to Obama Last Year: Officials
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 04 February 2012
Former US officials have told media that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar had sent a letter to US President Barack Obama last year expressing willingness to hold talks.
The anonymous officials have said that the unsigned letter had reached President Obama in July last year through a Taliban mediator.
If the letter is officially confirmed to have been sent by the Taliban leader, it will show Taliban's strong willingness to hold peace talks.
It comes as Kabul and Washington have agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and stressed that the talks have to be led by Afghans.
But the main precondition of the Taliban to hold talks is the release of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
The US Intelligence Department is assessing the risks of transferring five senior Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a third country as part of the efforts to set peace talks with Taliban, US Intelligence Chief, General David Petraeus told the US Congress.
In his testimony before the Congress the spy chief didn't mention any third country but there are reports that Taliban detainees could be transferred to Qatar which is acting as a mediator in peace negotiations.
Previously, there were reports that three high profile Taliban prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay detention centre and transferred to Qatar.
Pakistan's Umat Daily reported that Mullah Khair Khwah, Mullah Noorullah and Mullah Afzal Akhund had been released and taken to Qatar.
Transfer of Taliban detainees was strongly criticised by Top US Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss,
There are also some reports that Afghan government will hold talks with Taliban in Saudi Arabia, while it agreed with the Taliban's political office in Qatar.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Hinna Rabbani Khar while visiting Kabul on Wednesday said that her country supported Afghan peace talks.
Afghan officials have said that Pakistan is an important player in the efforts to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan because many of the leaders of the insurgency are said to be sheltering on its territory.
Afghan officials have asked Pakistan's full cooperation in fighting terrorism.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Pakistan's Prime Minister will travel to the Gulf state of Qatar next week to talk with government leaders there about moves to broker a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban.
The Taliban last month announced its was setting up a political office in Qatar to facilitate talks.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Yosuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday that the premier would be in Qatar on Monday to discuss the peace process with the government there.
Afghan and US officials have frequently blamed Pakistan for creating instability in Afghanistan and accused the country of supporting terrorist networks. But Pakistan has always denied such allegations.
Qatar New Focus for Afghan Reconciliation
VOA News February 4, 2012
Pakistan's prime minister is headed to Qatar next week to discuss ways to bring peace to Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials announced the trip to the Gulf emirate Saturday. They said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will meet with Qatari leaders about reconciliation efforts meant to end fighting between the Afghan government and the insurgent Taliban.
The Afghan Taliban announced last moth that it planned to open a political office in Qatar, ahead of expected peace talks with the United States. An Afghan Taliban delegation has also met with U.S. officials in Qatar for preliminary discussions.
Earlier this week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and said Islamabad is willing to push Afghan insurgents to make peace, if asked to do so by the Afghan government. She also said Pakistan has no “hidden agenda” in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is seen as a key player in that process because of its historical ties to the Taliban. Many of the Afghan insurgent group's leaders are believed to be based in Pakistan.
On Wednesday, Pakistan dismissed a leaked NATO report that accused its military intelligence agency, the ISI, of supporting the Afghan Taliban. The classified report was compiled from the interrogations of 4,000 captured Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
Obama Got Message Supporting Talks With Taliban, but Maybe Not From Its Leader
New York Times By MARK LANDLER February 3, 2012
WASHINGTON - President Obama received a message last year, purporting to be from the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, in which he expressed an interest in opening talks that could end the war in Afghanistan, according to several current and former administration officials.
The message, which was received last summer, also pressed Mr. Obama on the issue of releasing Taliban prisoners held in American custody, these officials said. The communication, however, was not signed by Mullah Omar, and its authenticity could not be verified by American officials, some of whom have doubts about whether it came from him or from other Taliban leaders.
Still, as one senior official put it, “it tracks with what we’ve heard from other Taliban intermediaries.” And a former senior official said the White House took the message seriously, whatever its source.
The disclosure of the message comes at a delicate moment, after the Taliban announced that they would open a political office in Qatar and the administration sent a senior diplomat to the Middle East to prepare the ground with allies for resuming preliminary negotiations with a representative of the group.
It also comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and some inside the administration, have expressed opposition to releasing any Taliban prisoners. And it is surfacing as a campaign issue, with the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, saying that the nation should not be talking to its enemies.
The White House would not comment on the letter, which was first disclosed Friday by The Associated Press.
Among the hurdles in interpreting the message, officials said, are the mysteries around Mullah Omar, a shadowy figure who served as de facto leader of Afghanistan but who went into hiding after the September 2001 terrorist attacks and whose exact whereabouts and role in the Taliban leadership are not clear.
“The question has always been, ‘Is Mullah Omar in the loop and in favor?’ ” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence analyst who led the White House’s policy review on Afghanistan in 2009. “A message from him, or purportedly from him, would help answer that $64 million question.”
American intelligence officials believe that Mullah Omar is in hiding in Pakistan, perhaps in Karachi. Some administration officials remain convinced that he plays a central role in directing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and that he would have to be involved in any credible reconciliation process.
If authentic, the message would not be the first time that Mullah Omar has reached out to American officials. In 1998, two days after an American cruise missile strike on an training camp for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he unexpectedly telephoned a State Department official, Michael E. Malinowski, who took the call on his porch at 2:30 a.m. According to declassified records, Mullah Omar demanded proof that Osama bin Laden, the intended target of the strike, was involved in terrorism.
The message to Mr. Obama, a former official said, indicated that Mullah Omar was serious about talks. But it also reveals his frustration that the administration seems resistant to releasing Taliban prisoners, the former official said. Under a plan being discussed, at least five senior Taliban prisoners held in the military jail in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be transferred to house arrest in Qatar.
Among other hurdles is the role of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, whose views on the process have been unpredictable. This week, the Afghan government said it wanted to pursue its own talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia — a reflection, some officials said, of Mr. Karzai’s frustration that he had been left out of the American effort to help open the office in Qatar. Adding to the complexity is the role of the Pakistanis, who have their own interests.
The negotiations could also be affected by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s disclosure on Wednesday that American troops planned to end their combat role in Afghanistan in mid-2013, 18 months early — a signal, some analysts said, that the United States was rushing for the exit.
The Obama administration has defended the effort to explore talks with the Taliban, even as it concedes the risks.
“The reality is, we never have the luxury of negotiating for peace with our friends,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the initiative earlier this month. “If you’re sitting across the table discussing a peaceful resolution to a conflict, you’re sitting across from people who you by definition don’t agree with and who you may previously have been across a battlefield from.”
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
Obama gambles on new schedule for Afghan pull-out
Financial Times By Geoff Dyer February 3, 2012
Washington - The announcement that US troops will finish combat operations in Afghanistan next year is a bold political gamble that could help buttress President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign but which opens him up to substantial risks.
With the last US troops having pulled out of Iraq before Christmas, Mr Obama will be able to tell voters in the autumn that 11 years after the 9/11 attacks he is bringing to an end two hugely unpopular and draining wars.
The announcement by defence secretary Leon Panetta that US troops will shift to training Afghan forces from the middle of 2013 is likely to be part of a series of statements about a reduced US military role in the country, according to officials. A Nato summit in May in Chicago, Mr Obama’s home town, will provide a platform to drive the message home.
The killing of Osama bin Laden last year has both strengthened Mr Obama’s national security credentials and also paved the way for an accelerated wind-down of operations in Afghanistan, which had been due to finish at the end of 2014. al-Qaeda is “in the weakest position they have been in clearly since 2001 and we are on the road to degrading them even further”, Tom Donilon, national security adviser, said this week.
Republicans wasted no time in denouncing the apparent shift in strategy, with Mitt Romney, the frontrunner to be the party’s presidential candidate, accusing Mr Obama of putting the US mission at risk with his “naiveties”. “Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the day you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense,” said Mr Romney at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.
The political risks for Mr Obama go well beyond his Republican opponents trying to label him as weak on foreign policy issues. The shift in strategy in Afghanistan could open the administration up to criticism from parts of the military, which in 2009 pushed for substantially more resources for a new offensive against the Taliban.
While such criticism would be particularly uncomfortable for a Democratic president, the administration received some political cover for its Afghanistan announcement from David Petraeus, the former general who is now head of the Central Intelligence Agency and who was the military leader lobbying hardest for the 2009 troops surge. Mr Panetta’s announcement about shifting to a training role has been “overanalyzed”, he said.
“If you’re going to have it completed totally by the end of 2014, obviously somewhere in 2013 you have to initiate that [transition],” Mr Petraeus said. “The idea is that we gradually stop leading combat operations and the Afghan forces gradually take the leadership.”
The administration would be more vulnerable if violence started to escalate, which Afghan politicians warned would be the result of an accelerated withdrawal, and if other countries involved in the Nato mission decide they should start to pull out quickly. France is already looking to withdraw its troops earlier than planned.
More broadly, the new timetable for ending combat operations underlines the gaps in the rest of the administration’s strategy for Afghanistan, whether it be over peace negotiations with the Taliban and other parties, over how to deal with Pakistan or how to actually handover security to an undertrained Afghan military. “The US has never set meaningful strategic goals for the war,” says Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It has talked loosely about ending the threat of terrorism, but has not set any goal for what it is seeking in Afghanistan.”
Yet Mr Obama’s Republican critics also risk painting themselves into a corner over a war that is extremely unpopular. A December poll by Rasmussen found that 59 per cent of Americans wanted the troops to be withdrawn within a year, while only 29 per cent thought the war could be won.
Republicans also have to bear in mind the resilient popularity in this year’s primaries of Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate who favours a much more modest foreign policy. Mr Paul, whose boisterous campaign rallies have been punctured by cheers of “Bring ‘em home!”, is the one candidate to bring in substantial numbers of young and independent voters.
Hekmatyar Refuses to Open a Political Office outside Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 04 February 2012
Leader of the hardline Hezb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has rejected calls to open a political office for his party outside Afghanistan.
Mr Hekmatyar has said his party has been suggested to open a political office in a country outside Afghanistan, but he has refused to do so because according to him opening an office outside the country would mean that his party is exiled.
The Hezb-e-Islami leader also slammed secret talks between the US and the Taliban saying such talks are not in the interest of Afghanistan.
He has said that the Kabul government will not survive after the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It comes as last month Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's appointed delegation led by Qutbuddin Hilal and Ghairat Baheer recently met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss peace talks and the Afghan government expressed optimism about the talks.
The comments come after Kabul and Washington recently agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and emphasised that the talks would be Afghan-led.
Meanwhile, it is said that Pakistan and Afghanistan are also making efforts to open talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.
Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan summit to be held soon: FM
Shahr-e rey, Tehran prov, Feb 4, IRNA – Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said here on Saturday that Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan will hold their second summit soon.
He made the remark while talking to IRNA at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic Republic the Late Imam Khomeini. He paid tribute to the Father of the Islamic Revolution on the occasion of the ten-day celebrations of the 33rd victory anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in the country.
Noting that the first summit meeting of the three countries was held in Iran, he said the next meeting is taking place in Pakistan.
Referring to the importance of the three countries in the region and also given the fact that the NATO is to leave Afghanistan in 2014, he announced the issue of Afghan stability is to be discussed in the meeting.
According to Salehi, the meeting is of prime importance for the three nations.
The foreign minister further hoped that the meeting would help participating countries achieve their desired goals.
UN: Afghan Civilian Deaths Up for 5th Straight Year
VOA News February 4, 2012
A United Nations report says more than 3,000 civilians died in Afghanistan's conflict last year, the worst annual toll in the decade-long war.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said Saturday that 3,021 civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent increase over the previous year, and the fifth year in a row that the death toll has risen.
The report says insurgents were responsible for 77 percent of the Afghan civilian deaths. NATO-led and Afghan government forces caused 410 civilian deaths, a decrease of 4 percent from 2010. A further 279 civilian deaths could not be attributed to either the militants or the government forces.
The report said bombs, including roadside mines detonated by people stepping on them or vehicles driving over them, were the “single, largest killer of Afghan children, women and men” in 2011, taking the lives of about one-third of the civilians killed. The death toll from suicide attacks rose dramatically in 2011 to 450, an increase of 80 percent over 2010.
U.N. special representative Jan Kubis said “Afghan children, women and men continue to be killed in this war in ever-increasing numbers.”
Can the Afghan economy be saved?
CNN By Javid Ahmad and Louise Langeby Friday, February 3, 2012
Whipsawed by a long-drawn U.S.-led military operation and a decade of erratic international economic assistance, Afghanistan is in shambles. With economic development always considered secondary to security concerns, little has been done in the past decade to establish a sustainable Afghan economy. While the international community has tried to generate a steady flow of aid, the Afghan government is still unable to cater to the population's basic needs. Moreover, the little economy we have seen evolve in Afghanistan since 2001 is predominantly based on the international security presence. The bulk of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP) stems from international aid, and the impending 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of international combat troops will be accompanied by a parallel reduction in aid money. Thus, as the tide of war recedes, a large chunk of the economy will also disappear, posing an increasing threat to stability. The country's current economic trajectory beyond 2014 is fraught with corruption and uncertainty. However, despite the dire situation, Afghanistan's economic transition has received only minor policy attention, with the focus remaining on the ongoing security transition. Thus the question remains: How will Afghanistan sustain its economy beyond 2014?
The decrease in foreign assistance is like to cause today's economic bubble to burst, potentially plunging the country into an economic recession. And if the security environment further deteriorates, the country could face full economic collapse. A financing gap of 25 percent of GDP by 2022 due to increased military and non-military spending by the Afghan government further puts Afghanistan's economic stability at risk. While the international donor community can help to prevent a total collapse of the economy by decreasing aid gradually, the key to a prosperous Afghanistan is to invest in the long-term economic advantages the country has to offer.
One such advantage may lie in Afghanistan's geographic location. The New Silk Road strategy, often promoted by the United States, aims at linking Afghanistan with its South and Central Asian neighbors, transforming the country into a nucleus for regional trade. Focus should also be placed on rebuilding the oil and gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and on to Pakistan and India. If done right, these initiatives might enable Afghanistan to attract increased foreign investment, connect the country to foreign markets, and promote growth, gradually reducing its dependence on foreign aid. However, the key to such a scenario lies in Afghanistan's relations with regional players, in particular Pakistan. Given its location, Pakistan is expected to serve as the main transit route for Afghan exports and access to the port cities of Gwadar and Karachi will remain crucial to Afghanistan's development. However, a volatile relationship with its eastern neighbor could mean a precarious dependency for Afghanistan.
Another potential economic trigger may be found in Afghanistan's untapped mineral reserves, ostensibly valued in the trillions of dollars. Based on cautiously optimistic assumptions by the World Bank, the iron ore project at Hajigak and copper mine at Aynak could deliver $2 to $3 billion to the extractive industry, with each deposit potentially generating over half a billion dollars in government revenue in just a few years. The mining industry may appear at first glance to be a potential panacea for the Afghan economy, but it will take decades before the country can reap the benefits of such a project. The Afghan mineral reserves require significant investments in infrastructure, and more importantly, effective and accountable governance that can efficiently and transparently manage revenues. Furthermore, in 2010, of the total $17 billion government expenditure, only $1.9 billion of the spending were drawn from Afghanistan's own sources of revenue; the rest: foreign assistance. Hence, besides the projected tax revenues and some foreign aid, even if mineral resources did manage to generate the estimated revenue, the Afghan budget would still face an annual deficit of $7 billion.
Rebuilding after more than a decade of conflict must also involve encouraging growth in Afghanistan's nascent private sector, a sector that has been stifled to some degree by the international donor presence. In a "donor drunk" economy, there are a large number of foreign, private NGOs, which dominate the private sector and make entry into it difficult for Afghan organizations. Although some of these private entities are effective development organizations at the grassroots level, many carry a negative perception among the Afghan people, who see the ubiquitous "briefcase NGOs" as money-making mechanisms for the people involved. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign money and employers has also artificially inflated labor costs for low-skilled workers over the past years, and has made Afghanistan an attractive venue for external laborers from neighboring countries such as Pakistan. However, as the flow of aid dwindles, those who have been paid hefty salaries over much of the past decade for low-skilled work for foreign entities may now prove more affordable to Afghan businesses, and will also open up more jobs for Afghan workers. While the initial transition phase from a military focused economy to a regular one will be difficult, it will leave room for a more long-term, sustainable economy to develop.
Regardless of Afghanistan's many potential sources of revenue, any real progress will be limited without the long-term support of the international community. While the West's future commitment to Afghanistan is vague at best, the increasing number of strategic partnerships with key allies signals a willingness by certain powers to remain involved in shaping Afghanistan's future beyond 2014. In the past week, Afghanistan has signed strategic partnership agreements with key European allies such as the UK, France, and Italy that ensure an enduring commitment and cooperation with Afghanistan in key areas, including economy, security, and governance. While only time will tell if the West really will stay committed to Afghanistan, this week's agreements are at least a step in the right direction.
Similarly, any future foreign aid funneled by the West to the Afghan government is effectively futile without properly addressing the raging corruption and lack of transparency and accountability in public finances. As the world's second most corrupt nation, any failure by the West and the Afghan government in tackling this menace in the so-called "transformation decade" would mean repeating and wasting yet another inefficient ten years of international assistance.
Today, as U.S. and NATO troops prepare to assume a lighter military presence, many Afghans fear a serious economic downturn when foreign aid and spending recede, leaving Afghanistan with little or nothing to fall back on. It is still uncertain if and how the Afghan government will function after 2014 without an open-ended $8 to $10 billion yearly commitment from the United States and Europe. However, responsibility for a stable and secure Afghanistan ultimately rests with the Afghans themselves, and there is still a sense of optimism among the Afghan people about the future of their country. The Afghan government, for its part, must foster transparency and accountability in public finances drawn from foreign aid, and work to cut leaks that enable corruption. If these reforms and the myriad of other challenges go unaddressed, the hard work and accomplishments of the past decade could easily unravel and ultimately lead to an even more troubled Afghanistan than we have seen in the past ten years.
Javid Ahmad, a native of Kabul, is Program Coordinator with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC. Louise Langeby is a Program Associate with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels. The views reflected here are their own.
Record Number of Afghan Civilians Died in 2011, Mostly in Insurgent Attacks, U.N. Says
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN February 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A record number of Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict here last year, the majority at the hands of the Taliban and other insurgent groups whose use of homemade bombs became more prevalent and whose suicide bombers killed more people each time, according to the annual United Nations report on civilian casualties.
Although the number killed — 3,021 civilians — represented a relatively small 8 percent increase in casualties over 2010, it was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose. The overall trend suggested that the fighting was worsening and that, for all the talk about peace efforts and a drastic increase in the number of insurgents that NATO had killed and captured, day-to-day dangers for Afghan civilians were rising.
“To the Afghan people, the credibility and value of a peace negotiation process and progress toward peace will be measured by reduced civilian casualties and improvements in security,” said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the United Nations office here and the leader of the team that produced the report.
“Only through increased actions to protect civilians will the relentless toll of death and injury to Afghan children, women and men be ended during and following a peace process.”
The report, which has been released in each of the last five years, records the deaths of all noncombatants based on the United Nations’ reporting and investigations, and it has come to serve as a grim metronome of the war.
Of the documented deaths, 77 percent were caused by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, an increase from 2010 despite repeated pledges by the Taliban to try to avoid killing civilians. By contrast, the number of civilians killed by pro-government forces, including NATO troops, the Afghan Army and government-backed militias, fell to 410, or 14 percent of the total killed. In 9 percent of cases, the party responsible was not clear.
The Taliban’s responsibility for a rising number of deaths raises questions about the sincerity of their public pledges to try to avoid harming civilians. In both the code of conduct issued under the name of the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and in subsequent Taliban statements, the insurgents have pledged to be careful not to hurt civilians.
The Taliban and other insurgents have given accounts of receiving instructions from commanders in Pakistan and on the field in Afghanistan to look after civilians, according to a NATO report, leaked this week, that was based on thousands of interviews of detainees in Afghanistan. Yet the Taliban’s statements did not square with the facts, and they adopted increasingly harmful tactics, according to the United Nations report.
Most injurious were homemade bombs, which accounted for 967 deaths. Most are victim-activated antipersonnel mines, some so sensitive that a 45-pound child who treads on one while playing in a field can set it off, United Nations officials said. Such bombs do not differentiate between military and civilian targets and appear frequently to be scattered in areas regularly traversed by civilians.
Casualties from suicide bombings increased 80 percent, with 431 civilians dying in suicide attacks. The techniques used and the targeting of civilians were clear in most of those cases, the report said. Among the most devastating was one in Kabul on Dec. 6, when tens of thousands worshipers gathered to mourn Imam Hussein, one of the pivotal figures in the Shiite branch of Islam. A man wearing a suicide vest killed 56 people, according to the United Nations.
By contrast, there has been a gradual drop in casualties attributed to NATO troops since 2009. Although the drop was relatively small in 2011, it occurred despite intensive combat operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Generally, when NATO increases operations, there is also an increase in casualties. The United Nations praised NATO’s efforts both to adjust its tactical directives to troops and to retrain them to adhere to the new standards.
Still, aerial attacks by NATO accounted for the most civilian deaths of those attributed to government forces, with 187 people killed when NATO used aircraft to bomb houses it believed held insurgents.
Over all, the 39-page report charts a series of disturbing signs that suggest the country is becoming ever more dangerous for ordinary Afghans.
The report notes that more than 185,000 Afghans, a 45 percent increase over 2010 and more than in any previous year, were displaced in 2011, many as they fled conflict. The report also points out that while casualties caused by NATO are dropping, those that were the fault of Afghan government forces rose almost 200 percent just for the six-month period of June to December.
In that period, Afghan security forces killed 41 civilians, almost twice the number killed in the same six-month period in 2010. As Afghan forces take over more tasks currently carried out by NATO troops, there are serious concerns that casualties by pro-government forces could rise again.
One of the many Afghan civilians interviewed by the report’s authors described the underlying fear that many people live with here.
“I was late that day for work and missed the shuttle. A bomb hit their bus and killed them,” said the civilian, a member of the border police who works at an airport in Herat. “They were not just colleagues, they were my friends. It is difficult being a female police officer, and those women were my friends. We worked together, ate together and supported each other.”
She added: “My daughter is 9 years old, and every day before I leave for work, she cries and says, ‘Mama, don’t go to work. I don’t need to eat.’
22 Children Killed by Afghan Winter's Cold
VOA News February 4, 2012
A report in The New York Times says at least 22 Afghan children, all under the age of 5, have frozen to death in the past month in two refugee camps in the capital, Kabul, after fleeing with their families from Afghanistan's war zones. The newspaper says the dead children include 3-month-old twin girls and a month-old boy.
The report says government officials have sought to "suppress or play down" the deaths. However, The New York Times says the children's deaths have prompted "soul searching among aid workers" who question how children could be dying of something as "predictable and manageable as the cold" in a country that has received tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and international development assistance. Afghanistan is experiencing one its coldest winters in decades, with temperatures reaching far below the freezing point most nights.
A U.N. official told the newspaper there are 35,000 people in the two Kabul camps without heat or electricity. He said the situation is "a humanitarian crisis."
The Times says the camps do not qualify for development aid because they are viewed as temporary facilities and because "many Afghan officials oppose their presence."
An Afghan aid worker told the newspaper the camp residents do not have access to health care, education, food, sanitation or water. Camp residents say food distribution by the World Food Program stopped last year.
The New York Times reports a French aid group, Solidarities International, has recently surveyed the mortality rates in the camps. The group said the death rate for children under 5 was 144 per 1,000 children, meaning one out of 7 children in the Kabul camps is not living until his or her 6th birthday.
Afghans View Peace Talks With Hope, Suspicion
NPR By Quil Lawrence February 3, 2012
The surprise announcement last month that the U.S. and the Taliban could soon begin peace talks in the Gulf state of Qatar may have increased the chances of a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.
But Afghans are treating the prospect with equal measures of hope and suspicion — perhaps more of the latter from the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Coupled with Pentagon comments this week that U.S. troops might end combat operations a year early, some Afghans are beginning to wonder: Are talks with the Taliban about stabilizing Afghanistan, or just helping the Americans leave?
After lengthy discussions between the Taliban, the Americans, Qatar and Germany, the Taliban decided to open an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
What seemed like a breakthrough was not greeted warmly by Karzai. Afghan officials say they were deliberately bypassed in a concession to the Taliban, which has always refused to negotiate with what it labels the "puppet" Karzai government.
Advancing The Peace Process
This week, Karzai announced he had his own initiative, and would be meeting Taliban leaders in Saudi Arabia. In another snub, the Taliban denied Karzai's claim in a phone interview Friday.
Reports that talks will start in Saudi Arabia are completely false, said Qari Yusef, one of the names used by regular Taliban spokesmen.
Yusef said the Taliban is in the process of reaching an understanding with the international community through confidence-building measures that haven't taken place yet.
He was referring to a possible exchange of prisoners, in which Taliban fighters held in Guantanamo Bay would be released into Qatari custody. There is speculation that the Taliban, in turn, would set free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier held since June 2009.
The White House says releasing prisoners from Guantanamo would likely require congressional approval. It's also fairly clear that the process needs some sort of approval from neighboring Pakistan, which is believed to control the movement of most Taliban leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made a rare visit to Kabul this week, and spoke to reporters at a news conference.
"Pakistan would stand behind any initiative, any initiative whatsoever that Afghanistan would take," she said. "So our only prerequisite in support of any initiative is that it should be Afghan-led, it should be Afghan-owned, it should be Afghan-driven, and it should be Afghan-backed."
Khar denied longstanding charges that the Pakistani intelligence service is funding and supporting the Taliban. And while Pakistan is widely blamed in Kabul for keeping the insurgency going, some Afghans agreed with Khar's point that the Afghan government needs to be in the lead of any peace talks.
For Afghans, Uncertainty Ahead
Sami Sadat, a former official in the Afghan Interior Ministry, says so far, the process has not only left out Karzai, it has also ignored the Afghan public.
"It's a political process. Unfortunately, it doesn't have its basis in the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. The majority of the Afghans feel it's a kind of a deal for the Americans to find their way out of Afghanistan," Sadat says.
He says a peace deal must not allow the Taliban to threaten the gains Afghans have made in the past decade. Sadat's fears rose this week when U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta remarked that the U.S. might transition from a combat role in Afghanistan by the middle of next year — a year sooner than previously expected.
Panetta later tried to clarify his remarks, but the Obama administration has yet to explain how quickly American troops will draw down from Afghanistan, and how many soldiers might stay on past 2014 as part of a strategic agreement with Kabul.
The uncertainty leaves Afghans hoping that some sort of peace plan can be worked out — and soon, says Sadat. Because if there's no peace deal by the time U.S. troops go, he says, the Afghans will be left once again at the mercy of the Taliban.
The Coming Civil War in Afghanistan
It's not inevitable, but it's more likely than ever before. Here's how to avoid the worst.
Foreign Policy BY ARIF RAFIQ FEBRUARY 3, 2012
By the end of this summer, the 30,000 U.S. troops "surged" into Afghanistan by President Barack Obama's administration will have returned home. And according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the remaining 68,000 American soldiers could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, more than a year ahead of the White House's deadline for leaving the country.
America's war in Afghanistan is by no means over, but its end has already begun. That reality is clear to all Afghan factional chiefs and power brokers, who are preparing for the transition to a post-American Afghanistan. As Afghanistan's alliances and power dynamics shift, the risk of cvil, ethnic conflict breaking out in the country rises -- endangering not only Afghans, but their Pakistani neighbors as well. And ironically, talk of peace and a U.S. withdrawal is contributing to a widening gap between key Afghan factions, which, if not properly contained, could lead to a renewed civil war.
President Hamid Karzai's intentions remain one potential source of instability looming in Afghanistan's future. Karzai has said that he will retire from public office in 2014, but many Afghans believe he will remain in power through unconventional or extra-constitutional measures. The president reportedly supported U.S. plans to accelerate the withdrawal by a year, lending weight to the theory that he is looking for greater maneuverability to prolong his rule.
If Karzai steps down, his replacement -- should one not come from his own family -- is likely to adopt a more hostile approach toward the Taliban, increasing the odds that the insurgency will fester. Abdullah Abdullah, who came in second in the rigged 2009 elections and could throw his hat in the ring once again, is a major Taliban opponent. But if Karzai seeks to stick around, doing so will be no cakewalk. Karzai will face stiff resistance from both a parliament that increasingly demands an expansion of its oversight powers and a rejuvenated political opposition, the National Front for Afghanistan (NFA).
The NFA is a bloc of leaders from three major non-Pashtun communities -- the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara -- all of whom opposed the Taliban and Pakistan during the 1990s and remain hostile to both. As Karzai apparently seeks to hold on to executive power, the NFA is pushing for an overhaul of the country's political system. It advocates restructuring Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation and locally-devolved power -- both of which would benefit non-Pashtuns.
Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, seeks a political settlement with the three major insurgent factions -- all Pashtuns as well -- led by Mullah Muhammad Omar's Afghan Taliban. But the NFA, as well as a large bloc of parliamentarians from a diverse assortment of ethnic groups and political parties, are hostile to talks with the Taliban, and will at the very least demand a meaningful role in the peace process.
That remains difficult to imagine, as few Afghans aside from the insurgents remain involved in the peace talks. The most promising dialogue track has so far taken place outside of Afghanistan and involves the Afghan Taliban and the governments of Germany, Qatar, and the United States. The location of the Taliban's new office in Qatar was decided against the wishes of the Afghan government, which wanted the office to be in Ankara or Riyadh.
Karzai himself remains minimally involved in the talks and is trying to set up his own negotiations with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. However, neither the Saudis nor the Taliban are keen on participating. The Saudis have distrusted the Taliban ever since it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden; they will engage the militant group only when it formally breaks ties with al Qaeda. The Taliban, meanwhile, want to cut out Karzai and engage directly with the United States to increase their negotiating leverage.
Karzai faces a difficult balancing act: He must first insert himself into a peace process the Taliban want him to have no part in, and then somehow manage to maintain ties with both the Pashtun Taliban and the non-Pashtun NFA. In any negotiations, the Taliban will undoubtedly push for greater implementation of Islamic law. But members of the NFA, female parliamentarians, and religious minorities such as the Hazara Shiites will resist what they will view as a possible reversion to second-class status.
Building trust between the NFA and the Taliban is key to a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan, but it will be no easy task. The Taliban believe that the NFA seeks a soft partition of the country under the guise of federalism, describing the group's leadership as "infamous warlords." And it is a giant and improbable leap for the Taliban to go from advocating the reestablishment of an authoritarian Islamic emirate to accepting the NFA's demand for a parliamentary democracy.
The underlying divisions between the three insurgent groups will also likely come out into the open if peace talks progress. In contrast to the Afghan Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami (HIG) calls for a republican-style Islamic government that is more reconcilable with today's Afghan constitution. And Hekmatyar, who briefly served as Afghanistan's prime minister until he fled the Taliban's advance in 1997, likely remains an aspirant for the country's leadership. Both the parliament and Karzai's cabinet are replete with ex-HIG members, and Hekmatyar could present himself as a more practical, Islamic alternative to Mullah Omar. As a result, Hekmatyar's tactical alliance with the Taliban will likely come to an end once the U.S. presence recedes.
The future of the infamous Haqqani network is also unclear. While it does not have a rich political history, it is a group with a radical agenda and potent reach. In a stable political environment, the Haqqani network is likely to remain on board with the Taliban. Amid a political vacuum, the Haqqanis could seek to claim space in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, posing a particular security threat in Afghanistan's southeastern Loya Paktia region and the adjacent Kurram and North Waziristan tribal areas across the Durand Line.
With Afghanistan's three major political blocs and three major insurgent groups moving in opposite directions, the country is facing the prospect of total fragmentation. Here's the worst-case scenario: The U.S. military reaches a settlement with the Afghan Taliban that does not address the country's political future, Karzai holds on to power illegitimately while pressing for his own peace deal with the Taliban, non-Pashtuns rise in opposition to both Karzai and the Taliban, and the national security forces fracture along ethnic lines. At the same time, the three insurgent factions turn against one another as the Haqqani network exploits the chaos and maintains a rear defensive position in Pakistani safe havens. Meanwhile, Pakistan's own domestic Taliban resurges and Islamabad faces yet another wave of terrorism and Afghan refugees.
Such a catastrophe should encourage leaders in Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad to do everything in their power to reach a broad-based political settlement. To avoid this scenario, the U.S.-Taliban talks should somehow be transitioned to an Afghan-led process involving not only the Karzai government but also the NFA. Afghans will have to come to a consensus about the future of their system of government and power-sharing, with final approval from a loya jirga or grand council.
A lasting Afghan peace might be a pipe dream in the short term, but both Afghanistan and the United States should try to coax Pakistan into making the Taliban more amenable to one. In return, Pakistan would get an official seat at the table. While there can and likely will be multiple, parallel negotiating tracks, they should ultimately lead up to a multi-party conference involving the Karzai government, the NFA, Pakistan, the United States, and each of the three major insurgent groups.
Finally, to contain the Taliban's ambitions, it is imperative that coalition forces and Kabul focus on improving the quality, not the quantity, of the Afghan national army and police. The 300,000 army soldiers and nearly 150,000 national policemen -- in addition to the country's unruly local militias -- are not only financially unsustainable, but also dangerous. The massive number of unpaid, armed troops in this conflict-ridden country is a recipe for disaster. The militias should be phased out, and the army professionalized to serve as a bulwark against fragmentation. Only then, perhaps, can Afghanistan avoid the perils of its post-American future.
Please tell me again What is the war in Afghanistan about?
Foreign Policy Journal By William Blum February 4, 2012
With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent or better than nothing or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9/11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.
President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”[1]
Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?
Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.
The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”[2]
Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions.[3] Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:
The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.
When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9/11.
The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.
Notes
[1] Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009
[2] Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007
[3] See, for example, the December 17, 1997 article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas“. For further discussion of the TAPI pipeline and related issues, see this article by international petroleum engineer John Foster.
Charges dropped against U.S. soldier in Afghan murder case
Reuters By Laura L. Myers Sat Feb 4, 2012
SEATTLE - The U.S. Army has dismissed all charges against the last of five soldiers to face a court-martial in the slaying of unarmed Afghan civilians, officials from their home base near Tacoma, Washington, said on Friday.
Army Specialist Michael Wagnon had been charged with premediated murder in the death of a villager in Afghanistan during a tour of duty in February 2010.
"As of right now, he's pretty much a free man," said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. "He is still in the Army but a free man."
Wagnon, 31, was released from military detention and placed under home confinement in April.
Dangerfield would not say why the charges were dropped, and a statement from the base said only that the move was "in the interest of justice."
Five members of the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with killing Afghan civilians in cold blood in random attacks staged to look like legitimate combat engagements. Seven other soldiers were charged with lesser offenses in a case that began as an investigation into rampant hashish abuse within the unit.
Wagnon's initial reaction to news of the dismissal was stunned disbelief, his defense attorney Colby Vokey told Reuters. He then became "ecstatic" and "really relieved," Vokey added.
'THE RIGHT THING TO DO'
Vokey, based in Dallas, called the dismissal "fantastic news." He said the "Army did the right thing. We maintained all along his innocence and the government said it was the right thing to do."
Pentagon officials have said that misconduct exposed by the case had damaged the image of the United States abroad.
Photographs entered as evidence showed the accused ringleader of the group, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons to the to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004.
Gibbs was convicted by court-martial in November of murdering three unarmed civilians, drawing an automatic life prison sentence, but he will be eligible for parole in 8 1/2 years.
His chief accuser and onetime right-hand man, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced in March of last year to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same three murders. As part of his plea deal, Morlock had agreed to testify against the remaining witnesses, including Wagnon.
A third soldier charged with murder, Adam Winfield, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. A fourth, Andrew Holmes, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to a single count of murder.
Wagnon was the last to face court-martial.
The dismissal of charges comes less than two weeks after a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty. As part of his plea deal, the Marine, Frank Wuterich he was spared jail time and instead faces a maximum penalty of demotion to the rank of private.
Wuterich initially was charged with murder in connection with the Haditha killings. Six of the seven other Marines originally accused in that case previously had their charges dismissed by military judges, while another was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
(Additional reporting and writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Steve Gorman and Will Dunham)
Tracking Down Shady Passport Trade in Afghanistan
Clandestine meetings and confrontational officials make pinning down details of illicit passport sales a difficult job.
IWPR By Abdol Wahed Faramarz 3 Feb 12
Afghanistan - It was eight in the evening when my mobile phone started ringing. It was a friend, Nazer Hussein, who had just returned to Afghanistan after two years away working in Iran. Now he wanted to go back there again, but although he had a permit for Iran, it was proving near-impossible to get a new Afghan passport.
Passport officials said that a pre-existing shortage had been made worse by high demand from Afghans travelling to Saudi Arabia to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage, so no new passports were to be issued for a few months. They asked people to be patient until new passports were printed.
However, some passport officers made it clear one could still obtain new documents – at a price. Officials had squirrelled away blank passports and were issuing them for money.
That was my friend Nazer’s experience. Despite visiting the passport office every day for three weeks, standing in line from early morning in the bitter winter cold, he never made it past the first security gate. In the end, he managed to obtain a passport by paying 400 US dollars to an intermediary.
When he told me about his experience, I shared it with the IWPR office in Kabul and they told me to go ahead and write the story.
I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I knew I would face many problems along the way. It would not be easy to trace people who had paid bribes to get passports, or to find the brokers who were in touch with department officials. Then there was the likely reaction of the passport department to the very sensitive story I was investigating. What if officials realised I was a reporter during the course of my investigations and decided to have me arrested?
It did prove hard to find an intermediary who was prepared to cooperate, even when I finally tracked some of them down through friends. Eventually, I found a go-between who was willing to talks. He called me late one winter night.
“Hurry up,” he told me. “The passport officer is waiting.”
Sleepily, I picked up my mobile phone and slipped out of my house without any of my family noticing.
Outside in the alley, all the houses lay in darkness. In the car, I asked my contact where we were heading, but he said nothing. We drove on, and after a while I realised we were in a part of town that was all but deserted at night, with just a few houses on the hills alongside the road and almost no traffic. Then I noticed there was a pistol underneath the driver’s seat. Fear began slowly creeping up on me. I thought it might be some kind of trap.
When we arrived at the location where the deal was to take place, the passport officer was shocked to find a journalist present and at first refused to conclude the transfer in my presence or even talk to me. I promised to protect his identity, and he laughed as he handed over a consignment of passports to the broker.
“I really feel sorry for you reporters,” he said. “You work hard, but no one listens. This trade is like a chain – everyone has a share in it, just like links in a chain. Go home and sleep.”
When I found some people who had paid money for passports, most were too scared to talk to me. From those who were willing to speak, I learned that the going rate was as high as 800 dollars a passport, although if you had a good relationship with an official, you might be able to buy one for as little as 300 dollars.
It was time to go to the passport office itself. There I found dozens of people waiting in line at the gate. I reached the policeman at the gate with difficulty and introduced myself.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Don’t talk too much. Dozens of journalists come here every day. The director isn’t here.”
I said I would interview the deputy director, but the policeman said he too was not there. I then said I would talk to any official who was available.
“You’re a tough cookie,” he conceded. “Go in, but you won’t get anything.”
When I entered the department, I found that the director, General Ayub, was in fact in his office, even though I had previously tried to call him on his numerous phone numbers without success.
He welcomed me warmly, but as soon as I asked a question about alleged corrupt practices, he became angry.
“These are rumours spread by brokers who manufacture fake passports and visas,” he told me. “They want to defame officials in this department. I vehemently deny this charge.”
My report was duly published, including comments from the passport agency head.
Shortly afterwards, I called an official at the interior ministry about a different matter. Before I could even speak, he said angrily, “The report on passports that you published is not true at all. It was irresponsible, and you have defamed the country’s police.”
He demanded that I present myself at the ministry immediately. I calmly replied that he could refer me to the commission which addresses media offences, and that if it believed that officials had a case against IWPR, we would cooperate with any investigation.
This only made him angrier. “Do you have a permit to work as a reporter?” he continued. “Does your office have a license and permit? Where’s your office? Who is your boss? Give me his telephone number.”
I answered that we had all these details, but then he put the phone down.
Although the principles of democracy and freedom of speech have supposedly been applied in Afghanistan for the last ten years, it seems that some of those appointed to safeguard these values are actually against them – and that different forms of pressure are exerted to stop publication of the truth.
Abdul Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 04 February 2012
Former US officials have told media that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar had sent a letter to US President Barack Obama last year expressing willingness to hold talks.
The anonymous officials have said that the unsigned letter had reached President Obama in July last year through a Taliban mediator.
If the letter is officially confirmed to have been sent by the Taliban leader, it will show Taliban's strong willingness to hold peace talks.
It comes as Kabul and Washington have agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and stressed that the talks have to be led by Afghans.
But the main precondition of the Taliban to hold talks is the release of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
The US Intelligence Department is assessing the risks of transferring five senior Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a third country as part of the efforts to set peace talks with Taliban, US Intelligence Chief, General David Petraeus told the US Congress.
In his testimony before the Congress the spy chief didn't mention any third country but there are reports that Taliban detainees could be transferred to Qatar which is acting as a mediator in peace negotiations.
Previously, there were reports that three high profile Taliban prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay detention centre and transferred to Qatar.
Pakistan's Umat Daily reported that Mullah Khair Khwah, Mullah Noorullah and Mullah Afzal Akhund had been released and taken to Qatar.
Transfer of Taliban detainees was strongly criticised by Top US Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss,
There are also some reports that Afghan government will hold talks with Taliban in Saudi Arabia, while it agreed with the Taliban's political office in Qatar.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Hinna Rabbani Khar while visiting Kabul on Wednesday said that her country supported Afghan peace talks.
Afghan officials have said that Pakistan is an important player in the efforts to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan because many of the leaders of the insurgency are said to be sheltering on its territory.
Afghan officials have asked Pakistan's full cooperation in fighting terrorism.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Pakistan's Prime Minister will travel to the Gulf state of Qatar next week to talk with government leaders there about moves to broker a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban.
The Taliban last month announced its was setting up a political office in Qatar to facilitate talks.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Yosuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday that the premier would be in Qatar on Monday to discuss the peace process with the government there.
Afghan and US officials have frequently blamed Pakistan for creating instability in Afghanistan and accused the country of supporting terrorist networks. But Pakistan has always denied such allegations.
Qatar New Focus for Afghan Reconciliation
VOA News February 4, 2012
Pakistan's prime minister is headed to Qatar next week to discuss ways to bring peace to Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials announced the trip to the Gulf emirate Saturday. They said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will meet with Qatari leaders about reconciliation efforts meant to end fighting between the Afghan government and the insurgent Taliban.
The Afghan Taliban announced last moth that it planned to open a political office in Qatar, ahead of expected peace talks with the United States. An Afghan Taliban delegation has also met with U.S. officials in Qatar for preliminary discussions.
Earlier this week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and said Islamabad is willing to push Afghan insurgents to make peace, if asked to do so by the Afghan government. She also said Pakistan has no “hidden agenda” in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is seen as a key player in that process because of its historical ties to the Taliban. Many of the Afghan insurgent group's leaders are believed to be based in Pakistan.
On Wednesday, Pakistan dismissed a leaked NATO report that accused its military intelligence agency, the ISI, of supporting the Afghan Taliban. The classified report was compiled from the interrogations of 4,000 captured Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
Obama Got Message Supporting Talks With Taliban, but Maybe Not From Its Leader
New York Times By MARK LANDLER February 3, 2012
WASHINGTON - President Obama received a message last year, purporting to be from the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, in which he expressed an interest in opening talks that could end the war in Afghanistan, according to several current and former administration officials.
The message, which was received last summer, also pressed Mr. Obama on the issue of releasing Taliban prisoners held in American custody, these officials said. The communication, however, was not signed by Mullah Omar, and its authenticity could not be verified by American officials, some of whom have doubts about whether it came from him or from other Taliban leaders.
Still, as one senior official put it, “it tracks with what we’ve heard from other Taliban intermediaries.” And a former senior official said the White House took the message seriously, whatever its source.
The disclosure of the message comes at a delicate moment, after the Taliban announced that they would open a political office in Qatar and the administration sent a senior diplomat to the Middle East to prepare the ground with allies for resuming preliminary negotiations with a representative of the group.
It also comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and some inside the administration, have expressed opposition to releasing any Taliban prisoners. And it is surfacing as a campaign issue, with the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, saying that the nation should not be talking to its enemies.
The White House would not comment on the letter, which was first disclosed Friday by The Associated Press.
Among the hurdles in interpreting the message, officials said, are the mysteries around Mullah Omar, a shadowy figure who served as de facto leader of Afghanistan but who went into hiding after the September 2001 terrorist attacks and whose exact whereabouts and role in the Taliban leadership are not clear.
“The question has always been, ‘Is Mullah Omar in the loop and in favor?’ ” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence analyst who led the White House’s policy review on Afghanistan in 2009. “A message from him, or purportedly from him, would help answer that $64 million question.”
American intelligence officials believe that Mullah Omar is in hiding in Pakistan, perhaps in Karachi. Some administration officials remain convinced that he plays a central role in directing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and that he would have to be involved in any credible reconciliation process.
If authentic, the message would not be the first time that Mullah Omar has reached out to American officials. In 1998, two days after an American cruise missile strike on an training camp for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he unexpectedly telephoned a State Department official, Michael E. Malinowski, who took the call on his porch at 2:30 a.m. According to declassified records, Mullah Omar demanded proof that Osama bin Laden, the intended target of the strike, was involved in terrorism.
The message to Mr. Obama, a former official said, indicated that Mullah Omar was serious about talks. But it also reveals his frustration that the administration seems resistant to releasing Taliban prisoners, the former official said. Under a plan being discussed, at least five senior Taliban prisoners held in the military jail in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be transferred to house arrest in Qatar.
Among other hurdles is the role of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, whose views on the process have been unpredictable. This week, the Afghan government said it wanted to pursue its own talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia — a reflection, some officials said, of Mr. Karzai’s frustration that he had been left out of the American effort to help open the office in Qatar. Adding to the complexity is the role of the Pakistanis, who have their own interests.
The negotiations could also be affected by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s disclosure on Wednesday that American troops planned to end their combat role in Afghanistan in mid-2013, 18 months early — a signal, some analysts said, that the United States was rushing for the exit.
The Obama administration has defended the effort to explore talks with the Taliban, even as it concedes the risks.
“The reality is, we never have the luxury of negotiating for peace with our friends,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the initiative earlier this month. “If you’re sitting across the table discussing a peaceful resolution to a conflict, you’re sitting across from people who you by definition don’t agree with and who you may previously have been across a battlefield from.”
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
Obama gambles on new schedule for Afghan pull-out
Financial Times By Geoff Dyer February 3, 2012
Washington - The announcement that US troops will finish combat operations in Afghanistan next year is a bold political gamble that could help buttress President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign but which opens him up to substantial risks.
With the last US troops having pulled out of Iraq before Christmas, Mr Obama will be able to tell voters in the autumn that 11 years after the 9/11 attacks he is bringing to an end two hugely unpopular and draining wars.
The announcement by defence secretary Leon Panetta that US troops will shift to training Afghan forces from the middle of 2013 is likely to be part of a series of statements about a reduced US military role in the country, according to officials. A Nato summit in May in Chicago, Mr Obama’s home town, will provide a platform to drive the message home.
The killing of Osama bin Laden last year has both strengthened Mr Obama’s national security credentials and also paved the way for an accelerated wind-down of operations in Afghanistan, which had been due to finish at the end of 2014. al-Qaeda is “in the weakest position they have been in clearly since 2001 and we are on the road to degrading them even further”, Tom Donilon, national security adviser, said this week.
Republicans wasted no time in denouncing the apparent shift in strategy, with Mitt Romney, the frontrunner to be the party’s presidential candidate, accusing Mr Obama of putting the US mission at risk with his “naiveties”. “Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the day you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense,” said Mr Romney at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.
The political risks for Mr Obama go well beyond his Republican opponents trying to label him as weak on foreign policy issues. The shift in strategy in Afghanistan could open the administration up to criticism from parts of the military, which in 2009 pushed for substantially more resources for a new offensive against the Taliban.
While such criticism would be particularly uncomfortable for a Democratic president, the administration received some political cover for its Afghanistan announcement from David Petraeus, the former general who is now head of the Central Intelligence Agency and who was the military leader lobbying hardest for the 2009 troops surge. Mr Panetta’s announcement about shifting to a training role has been “overanalyzed”, he said.
“If you’re going to have it completed totally by the end of 2014, obviously somewhere in 2013 you have to initiate that [transition],” Mr Petraeus said. “The idea is that we gradually stop leading combat operations and the Afghan forces gradually take the leadership.”
The administration would be more vulnerable if violence started to escalate, which Afghan politicians warned would be the result of an accelerated withdrawal, and if other countries involved in the Nato mission decide they should start to pull out quickly. France is already looking to withdraw its troops earlier than planned.
More broadly, the new timetable for ending combat operations underlines the gaps in the rest of the administration’s strategy for Afghanistan, whether it be over peace negotiations with the Taliban and other parties, over how to deal with Pakistan or how to actually handover security to an undertrained Afghan military. “The US has never set meaningful strategic goals for the war,” says Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It has talked loosely about ending the threat of terrorism, but has not set any goal for what it is seeking in Afghanistan.”
Yet Mr Obama’s Republican critics also risk painting themselves into a corner over a war that is extremely unpopular. A December poll by Rasmussen found that 59 per cent of Americans wanted the troops to be withdrawn within a year, while only 29 per cent thought the war could be won.
Republicans also have to bear in mind the resilient popularity in this year’s primaries of Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate who favours a much more modest foreign policy. Mr Paul, whose boisterous campaign rallies have been punctured by cheers of “Bring ‘em home!”, is the one candidate to bring in substantial numbers of young and independent voters.
Hekmatyar Refuses to Open a Political Office outside Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 04 February 2012
Leader of the hardline Hezb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has rejected calls to open a political office for his party outside Afghanistan.
Mr Hekmatyar has said his party has been suggested to open a political office in a country outside Afghanistan, but he has refused to do so because according to him opening an office outside the country would mean that his party is exiled.
The Hezb-e-Islami leader also slammed secret talks between the US and the Taliban saying such talks are not in the interest of Afghanistan.
He has said that the Kabul government will not survive after the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.
It comes as last month Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's appointed delegation led by Qutbuddin Hilal and Ghairat Baheer recently met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss peace talks and the Afghan government expressed optimism about the talks.
The comments come after Kabul and Washington recently agreed to the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar and emphasised that the talks would be Afghan-led.
Meanwhile, it is said that Pakistan and Afghanistan are also making efforts to open talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.
Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan summit to be held soon: FM
Shahr-e rey, Tehran prov, Feb 4, IRNA – Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said here on Saturday that Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan will hold their second summit soon.
He made the remark while talking to IRNA at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic Republic the Late Imam Khomeini. He paid tribute to the Father of the Islamic Revolution on the occasion of the ten-day celebrations of the 33rd victory anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in the country.
Noting that the first summit meeting of the three countries was held in Iran, he said the next meeting is taking place in Pakistan.
Referring to the importance of the three countries in the region and also given the fact that the NATO is to leave Afghanistan in 2014, he announced the issue of Afghan stability is to be discussed in the meeting.
According to Salehi, the meeting is of prime importance for the three nations.
The foreign minister further hoped that the meeting would help participating countries achieve their desired goals.
UN: Afghan Civilian Deaths Up for 5th Straight Year
VOA News February 4, 2012
A United Nations report says more than 3,000 civilians died in Afghanistan's conflict last year, the worst annual toll in the decade-long war.
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said Saturday that 3,021 civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent increase over the previous year, and the fifth year in a row that the death toll has risen.
The report says insurgents were responsible for 77 percent of the Afghan civilian deaths. NATO-led and Afghan government forces caused 410 civilian deaths, a decrease of 4 percent from 2010. A further 279 civilian deaths could not be attributed to either the militants or the government forces.
The report said bombs, including roadside mines detonated by people stepping on them or vehicles driving over them, were the “single, largest killer of Afghan children, women and men” in 2011, taking the lives of about one-third of the civilians killed. The death toll from suicide attacks rose dramatically in 2011 to 450, an increase of 80 percent over 2010.
U.N. special representative Jan Kubis said “Afghan children, women and men continue to be killed in this war in ever-increasing numbers.”
Can the Afghan economy be saved?
CNN By Javid Ahmad and Louise Langeby Friday, February 3, 2012
Whipsawed by a long-drawn U.S.-led military operation and a decade of erratic international economic assistance, Afghanistan is in shambles. With economic development always considered secondary to security concerns, little has been done in the past decade to establish a sustainable Afghan economy. While the international community has tried to generate a steady flow of aid, the Afghan government is still unable to cater to the population's basic needs. Moreover, the little economy we have seen evolve in Afghanistan since 2001 is predominantly based on the international security presence. The bulk of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP) stems from international aid, and the impending 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of international combat troops will be accompanied by a parallel reduction in aid money. Thus, as the tide of war recedes, a large chunk of the economy will also disappear, posing an increasing threat to stability. The country's current economic trajectory beyond 2014 is fraught with corruption and uncertainty. However, despite the dire situation, Afghanistan's economic transition has received only minor policy attention, with the focus remaining on the ongoing security transition. Thus the question remains: How will Afghanistan sustain its economy beyond 2014?
The decrease in foreign assistance is like to cause today's economic bubble to burst, potentially plunging the country into an economic recession. And if the security environment further deteriorates, the country could face full economic collapse. A financing gap of 25 percent of GDP by 2022 due to increased military and non-military spending by the Afghan government further puts Afghanistan's economic stability at risk. While the international donor community can help to prevent a total collapse of the economy by decreasing aid gradually, the key to a prosperous Afghanistan is to invest in the long-term economic advantages the country has to offer.
One such advantage may lie in Afghanistan's geographic location. The New Silk Road strategy, often promoted by the United States, aims at linking Afghanistan with its South and Central Asian neighbors, transforming the country into a nucleus for regional trade. Focus should also be placed on rebuilding the oil and gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and on to Pakistan and India. If done right, these initiatives might enable Afghanistan to attract increased foreign investment, connect the country to foreign markets, and promote growth, gradually reducing its dependence on foreign aid. However, the key to such a scenario lies in Afghanistan's relations with regional players, in particular Pakistan. Given its location, Pakistan is expected to serve as the main transit route for Afghan exports and access to the port cities of Gwadar and Karachi will remain crucial to Afghanistan's development. However, a volatile relationship with its eastern neighbor could mean a precarious dependency for Afghanistan.
Another potential economic trigger may be found in Afghanistan's untapped mineral reserves, ostensibly valued in the trillions of dollars. Based on cautiously optimistic assumptions by the World Bank, the iron ore project at Hajigak and copper mine at Aynak could deliver $2 to $3 billion to the extractive industry, with each deposit potentially generating over half a billion dollars in government revenue in just a few years. The mining industry may appear at first glance to be a potential panacea for the Afghan economy, but it will take decades before the country can reap the benefits of such a project. The Afghan mineral reserves require significant investments in infrastructure, and more importantly, effective and accountable governance that can efficiently and transparently manage revenues. Furthermore, in 2010, of the total $17 billion government expenditure, only $1.9 billion of the spending were drawn from Afghanistan's own sources of revenue; the rest: foreign assistance. Hence, besides the projected tax revenues and some foreign aid, even if mineral resources did manage to generate the estimated revenue, the Afghan budget would still face an annual deficit of $7 billion.
Rebuilding after more than a decade of conflict must also involve encouraging growth in Afghanistan's nascent private sector, a sector that has been stifled to some degree by the international donor presence. In a "donor drunk" economy, there are a large number of foreign, private NGOs, which dominate the private sector and make entry into it difficult for Afghan organizations. Although some of these private entities are effective development organizations at the grassroots level, many carry a negative perception among the Afghan people, who see the ubiquitous "briefcase NGOs" as money-making mechanisms for the people involved. Meanwhile, the influx of foreign money and employers has also artificially inflated labor costs for low-skilled workers over the past years, and has made Afghanistan an attractive venue for external laborers from neighboring countries such as Pakistan. However, as the flow of aid dwindles, those who have been paid hefty salaries over much of the past decade for low-skilled work for foreign entities may now prove more affordable to Afghan businesses, and will also open up more jobs for Afghan workers. While the initial transition phase from a military focused economy to a regular one will be difficult, it will leave room for a more long-term, sustainable economy to develop.
Regardless of Afghanistan's many potential sources of revenue, any real progress will be limited without the long-term support of the international community. While the West's future commitment to Afghanistan is vague at best, the increasing number of strategic partnerships with key allies signals a willingness by certain powers to remain involved in shaping Afghanistan's future beyond 2014. In the past week, Afghanistan has signed strategic partnership agreements with key European allies such as the UK, France, and Italy that ensure an enduring commitment and cooperation with Afghanistan in key areas, including economy, security, and governance. While only time will tell if the West really will stay committed to Afghanistan, this week's agreements are at least a step in the right direction.
Similarly, any future foreign aid funneled by the West to the Afghan government is effectively futile without properly addressing the raging corruption and lack of transparency and accountability in public finances. As the world's second most corrupt nation, any failure by the West and the Afghan government in tackling this menace in the so-called "transformation decade" would mean repeating and wasting yet another inefficient ten years of international assistance.
Today, as U.S. and NATO troops prepare to assume a lighter military presence, many Afghans fear a serious economic downturn when foreign aid and spending recede, leaving Afghanistan with little or nothing to fall back on. It is still uncertain if and how the Afghan government will function after 2014 without an open-ended $8 to $10 billion yearly commitment from the United States and Europe. However, responsibility for a stable and secure Afghanistan ultimately rests with the Afghans themselves, and there is still a sense of optimism among the Afghan people about the future of their country. The Afghan government, for its part, must foster transparency and accountability in public finances drawn from foreign aid, and work to cut leaks that enable corruption. If these reforms and the myriad of other challenges go unaddressed, the hard work and accomplishments of the past decade could easily unravel and ultimately lead to an even more troubled Afghanistan than we have seen in the past ten years.
Javid Ahmad, a native of Kabul, is Program Coordinator with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC. Louise Langeby is a Program Associate with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels. The views reflected here are their own.
Record Number of Afghan Civilians Died in 2011, Mostly in Insurgent Attacks, U.N. Says
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN February 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A record number of Afghan civilians were killed in the conflict here last year, the majority at the hands of the Taliban and other insurgent groups whose use of homemade bombs became more prevalent and whose suicide bombers killed more people each time, according to the annual United Nations report on civilian casualties.
Although the number killed — 3,021 civilians — represented a relatively small 8 percent increase in casualties over 2010, it was the fifth straight year in which civilian casualties rose. The overall trend suggested that the fighting was worsening and that, for all the talk about peace efforts and a drastic increase in the number of insurgents that NATO had killed and captured, day-to-day dangers for Afghan civilians were rising.
“To the Afghan people, the credibility and value of a peace negotiation process and progress toward peace will be measured by reduced civilian casualties and improvements in security,” said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the United Nations office here and the leader of the team that produced the report.
“Only through increased actions to protect civilians will the relentless toll of death and injury to Afghan children, women and men be ended during and following a peace process.”
The report, which has been released in each of the last five years, records the deaths of all noncombatants based on the United Nations’ reporting and investigations, and it has come to serve as a grim metronome of the war.
Of the documented deaths, 77 percent were caused by the Taliban and other insurgent groups, an increase from 2010 despite repeated pledges by the Taliban to try to avoid killing civilians. By contrast, the number of civilians killed by pro-government forces, including NATO troops, the Afghan Army and government-backed militias, fell to 410, or 14 percent of the total killed. In 9 percent of cases, the party responsible was not clear.
The Taliban’s responsibility for a rising number of deaths raises questions about the sincerity of their public pledges to try to avoid harming civilians. In both the code of conduct issued under the name of the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and in subsequent Taliban statements, the insurgents have pledged to be careful not to hurt civilians.
The Taliban and other insurgents have given accounts of receiving instructions from commanders in Pakistan and on the field in Afghanistan to look after civilians, according to a NATO report, leaked this week, that was based on thousands of interviews of detainees in Afghanistan. Yet the Taliban’s statements did not square with the facts, and they adopted increasingly harmful tactics, according to the United Nations report.
Most injurious were homemade bombs, which accounted for 967 deaths. Most are victim-activated antipersonnel mines, some so sensitive that a 45-pound child who treads on one while playing in a field can set it off, United Nations officials said. Such bombs do not differentiate between military and civilian targets and appear frequently to be scattered in areas regularly traversed by civilians.
Casualties from suicide bombings increased 80 percent, with 431 civilians dying in suicide attacks. The techniques used and the targeting of civilians were clear in most of those cases, the report said. Among the most devastating was one in Kabul on Dec. 6, when tens of thousands worshipers gathered to mourn Imam Hussein, one of the pivotal figures in the Shiite branch of Islam. A man wearing a suicide vest killed 56 people, according to the United Nations.
By contrast, there has been a gradual drop in casualties attributed to NATO troops since 2009. Although the drop was relatively small in 2011, it occurred despite intensive combat operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Generally, when NATO increases operations, there is also an increase in casualties. The United Nations praised NATO’s efforts both to adjust its tactical directives to troops and to retrain them to adhere to the new standards.
Still, aerial attacks by NATO accounted for the most civilian deaths of those attributed to government forces, with 187 people killed when NATO used aircraft to bomb houses it believed held insurgents.
Over all, the 39-page report charts a series of disturbing signs that suggest the country is becoming ever more dangerous for ordinary Afghans.
The report notes that more than 185,000 Afghans, a 45 percent increase over 2010 and more than in any previous year, were displaced in 2011, many as they fled conflict. The report also points out that while casualties caused by NATO are dropping, those that were the fault of Afghan government forces rose almost 200 percent just for the six-month period of June to December.
In that period, Afghan security forces killed 41 civilians, almost twice the number killed in the same six-month period in 2010. As Afghan forces take over more tasks currently carried out by NATO troops, there are serious concerns that casualties by pro-government forces could rise again.
One of the many Afghan civilians interviewed by the report’s authors described the underlying fear that many people live with here.
“I was late that day for work and missed the shuttle. A bomb hit their bus and killed them,” said the civilian, a member of the border police who works at an airport in Herat. “They were not just colleagues, they were my friends. It is difficult being a female police officer, and those women were my friends. We worked together, ate together and supported each other.”
She added: “My daughter is 9 years old, and every day before I leave for work, she cries and says, ‘Mama, don’t go to work. I don’t need to eat.’
22 Children Killed by Afghan Winter's Cold
VOA News February 4, 2012
A report in The New York Times says at least 22 Afghan children, all under the age of 5, have frozen to death in the past month in two refugee camps in the capital, Kabul, after fleeing with their families from Afghanistan's war zones. The newspaper says the dead children include 3-month-old twin girls and a month-old boy.
The report says government officials have sought to "suppress or play down" the deaths. However, The New York Times says the children's deaths have prompted "soul searching among aid workers" who question how children could be dying of something as "predictable and manageable as the cold" in a country that has received tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and international development assistance. Afghanistan is experiencing one its coldest winters in decades, with temperatures reaching far below the freezing point most nights.
A U.N. official told the newspaper there are 35,000 people in the two Kabul camps without heat or electricity. He said the situation is "a humanitarian crisis."
The Times says the camps do not qualify for development aid because they are viewed as temporary facilities and because "many Afghan officials oppose their presence."
An Afghan aid worker told the newspaper the camp residents do not have access to health care, education, food, sanitation or water. Camp residents say food distribution by the World Food Program stopped last year.
The New York Times reports a French aid group, Solidarities International, has recently surveyed the mortality rates in the camps. The group said the death rate for children under 5 was 144 per 1,000 children, meaning one out of 7 children in the Kabul camps is not living until his or her 6th birthday.
Afghans View Peace Talks With Hope, Suspicion
NPR By Quil Lawrence February 3, 2012
The surprise announcement last month that the U.S. and the Taliban could soon begin peace talks in the Gulf state of Qatar may have increased the chances of a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.
But Afghans are treating the prospect with equal measures of hope and suspicion — perhaps more of the latter from the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Coupled with Pentagon comments this week that U.S. troops might end combat operations a year early, some Afghans are beginning to wonder: Are talks with the Taliban about stabilizing Afghanistan, or just helping the Americans leave?
After lengthy discussions between the Taliban, the Americans, Qatar and Germany, the Taliban decided to open an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
What seemed like a breakthrough was not greeted warmly by Karzai. Afghan officials say they were deliberately bypassed in a concession to the Taliban, which has always refused to negotiate with what it labels the "puppet" Karzai government.
Advancing The Peace Process
This week, Karzai announced he had his own initiative, and would be meeting Taliban leaders in Saudi Arabia. In another snub, the Taliban denied Karzai's claim in a phone interview Friday.
Reports that talks will start in Saudi Arabia are completely false, said Qari Yusef, one of the names used by regular Taliban spokesmen.
Yusef said the Taliban is in the process of reaching an understanding with the international community through confidence-building measures that haven't taken place yet.
He was referring to a possible exchange of prisoners, in which Taliban fighters held in Guantanamo Bay would be released into Qatari custody. There is speculation that the Taliban, in turn, would set free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier held since June 2009.
The White House says releasing prisoners from Guantanamo would likely require congressional approval. It's also fairly clear that the process needs some sort of approval from neighboring Pakistan, which is believed to control the movement of most Taliban leaders. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made a rare visit to Kabul this week, and spoke to reporters at a news conference.
"Pakistan would stand behind any initiative, any initiative whatsoever that Afghanistan would take," she said. "So our only prerequisite in support of any initiative is that it should be Afghan-led, it should be Afghan-owned, it should be Afghan-driven, and it should be Afghan-backed."
Khar denied longstanding charges that the Pakistani intelligence service is funding and supporting the Taliban. And while Pakistan is widely blamed in Kabul for keeping the insurgency going, some Afghans agreed with Khar's point that the Afghan government needs to be in the lead of any peace talks.
For Afghans, Uncertainty Ahead
Sami Sadat, a former official in the Afghan Interior Ministry, says so far, the process has not only left out Karzai, it has also ignored the Afghan public.
"It's a political process. Unfortunately, it doesn't have its basis in the hearts and minds of the Afghan population. The majority of the Afghans feel it's a kind of a deal for the Americans to find their way out of Afghanistan," Sadat says.
He says a peace deal must not allow the Taliban to threaten the gains Afghans have made in the past decade. Sadat's fears rose this week when U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta remarked that the U.S. might transition from a combat role in Afghanistan by the middle of next year — a year sooner than previously expected.
Panetta later tried to clarify his remarks, but the Obama administration has yet to explain how quickly American troops will draw down from Afghanistan, and how many soldiers might stay on past 2014 as part of a strategic agreement with Kabul.
The uncertainty leaves Afghans hoping that some sort of peace plan can be worked out — and soon, says Sadat. Because if there's no peace deal by the time U.S. troops go, he says, the Afghans will be left once again at the mercy of the Taliban.
The Coming Civil War in Afghanistan
It's not inevitable, but it's more likely than ever before. Here's how to avoid the worst.
Foreign Policy BY ARIF RAFIQ FEBRUARY 3, 2012
By the end of this summer, the 30,000 U.S. troops "surged" into Afghanistan by President Barack Obama's administration will have returned home. And according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the remaining 68,000 American soldiers could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, more than a year ahead of the White House's deadline for leaving the country.
America's war in Afghanistan is by no means over, but its end has already begun. That reality is clear to all Afghan factional chiefs and power brokers, who are preparing for the transition to a post-American Afghanistan. As Afghanistan's alliances and power dynamics shift, the risk of cvil, ethnic conflict breaking out in the country rises -- endangering not only Afghans, but their Pakistani neighbors as well. And ironically, talk of peace and a U.S. withdrawal is contributing to a widening gap between key Afghan factions, which, if not properly contained, could lead to a renewed civil war.
President Hamid Karzai's intentions remain one potential source of instability looming in Afghanistan's future. Karzai has said that he will retire from public office in 2014, but many Afghans believe he will remain in power through unconventional or extra-constitutional measures. The president reportedly supported U.S. plans to accelerate the withdrawal by a year, lending weight to the theory that he is looking for greater maneuverability to prolong his rule.
If Karzai steps down, his replacement -- should one not come from his own family -- is likely to adopt a more hostile approach toward the Taliban, increasing the odds that the insurgency will fester. Abdullah Abdullah, who came in second in the rigged 2009 elections and could throw his hat in the ring once again, is a major Taliban opponent. But if Karzai seeks to stick around, doing so will be no cakewalk. Karzai will face stiff resistance from both a parliament that increasingly demands an expansion of its oversight powers and a rejuvenated political opposition, the National Front for Afghanistan (NFA).
The NFA is a bloc of leaders from three major non-Pashtun communities -- the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara -- all of whom opposed the Taliban and Pakistan during the 1990s and remain hostile to both. As Karzai apparently seeks to hold on to executive power, the NFA is pushing for an overhaul of the country's political system. It advocates restructuring Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation and locally-devolved power -- both of which would benefit non-Pashtuns.
Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, seeks a political settlement with the three major insurgent factions -- all Pashtuns as well -- led by Mullah Muhammad Omar's Afghan Taliban. But the NFA, as well as a large bloc of parliamentarians from a diverse assortment of ethnic groups and political parties, are hostile to talks with the Taliban, and will at the very least demand a meaningful role in the peace process.
That remains difficult to imagine, as few Afghans aside from the insurgents remain involved in the peace talks. The most promising dialogue track has so far taken place outside of Afghanistan and involves the Afghan Taliban and the governments of Germany, Qatar, and the United States. The location of the Taliban's new office in Qatar was decided against the wishes of the Afghan government, which wanted the office to be in Ankara or Riyadh.
Karzai himself remains minimally involved in the talks and is trying to set up his own negotiations with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. However, neither the Saudis nor the Taliban are keen on participating. The Saudis have distrusted the Taliban ever since it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden; they will engage the militant group only when it formally breaks ties with al Qaeda. The Taliban, meanwhile, want to cut out Karzai and engage directly with the United States to increase their negotiating leverage.
Karzai faces a difficult balancing act: He must first insert himself into a peace process the Taliban want him to have no part in, and then somehow manage to maintain ties with both the Pashtun Taliban and the non-Pashtun NFA. In any negotiations, the Taliban will undoubtedly push for greater implementation of Islamic law. But members of the NFA, female parliamentarians, and religious minorities such as the Hazara Shiites will resist what they will view as a possible reversion to second-class status.
Building trust between the NFA and the Taliban is key to a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan, but it will be no easy task. The Taliban believe that the NFA seeks a soft partition of the country under the guise of federalism, describing the group's leadership as "infamous warlords." And it is a giant and improbable leap for the Taliban to go from advocating the reestablishment of an authoritarian Islamic emirate to accepting the NFA's demand for a parliamentary democracy.
The underlying divisions between the three insurgent groups will also likely come out into the open if peace talks progress. In contrast to the Afghan Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami (HIG) calls for a republican-style Islamic government that is more reconcilable with today's Afghan constitution. And Hekmatyar, who briefly served as Afghanistan's prime minister until he fled the Taliban's advance in 1997, likely remains an aspirant for the country's leadership. Both the parliament and Karzai's cabinet are replete with ex-HIG members, and Hekmatyar could present himself as a more practical, Islamic alternative to Mullah Omar. As a result, Hekmatyar's tactical alliance with the Taliban will likely come to an end once the U.S. presence recedes.
The future of the infamous Haqqani network is also unclear. While it does not have a rich political history, it is a group with a radical agenda and potent reach. In a stable political environment, the Haqqani network is likely to remain on board with the Taliban. Amid a political vacuum, the Haqqanis could seek to claim space in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, posing a particular security threat in Afghanistan's southeastern Loya Paktia region and the adjacent Kurram and North Waziristan tribal areas across the Durand Line.
With Afghanistan's three major political blocs and three major insurgent groups moving in opposite directions, the country is facing the prospect of total fragmentation. Here's the worst-case scenario: The U.S. military reaches a settlement with the Afghan Taliban that does not address the country's political future, Karzai holds on to power illegitimately while pressing for his own peace deal with the Taliban, non-Pashtuns rise in opposition to both Karzai and the Taliban, and the national security forces fracture along ethnic lines. At the same time, the three insurgent factions turn against one another as the Haqqani network exploits the chaos and maintains a rear defensive position in Pakistani safe havens. Meanwhile, Pakistan's own domestic Taliban resurges and Islamabad faces yet another wave of terrorism and Afghan refugees.
Such a catastrophe should encourage leaders in Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad to do everything in their power to reach a broad-based political settlement. To avoid this scenario, the U.S.-Taliban talks should somehow be transitioned to an Afghan-led process involving not only the Karzai government but also the NFA. Afghans will have to come to a consensus about the future of their system of government and power-sharing, with final approval from a loya jirga or grand council.
A lasting Afghan peace might be a pipe dream in the short term, but both Afghanistan and the United States should try to coax Pakistan into making the Taliban more amenable to one. In return, Pakistan would get an official seat at the table. While there can and likely will be multiple, parallel negotiating tracks, they should ultimately lead up to a multi-party conference involving the Karzai government, the NFA, Pakistan, the United States, and each of the three major insurgent groups.
Finally, to contain the Taliban's ambitions, it is imperative that coalition forces and Kabul focus on improving the quality, not the quantity, of the Afghan national army and police. The 300,000 army soldiers and nearly 150,000 national policemen -- in addition to the country's unruly local militias -- are not only financially unsustainable, but also dangerous. The massive number of unpaid, armed troops in this conflict-ridden country is a recipe for disaster. The militias should be phased out, and the army professionalized to serve as a bulwark against fragmentation. Only then, perhaps, can Afghanistan avoid the perils of its post-American future.
Please tell me again What is the war in Afghanistan about?
Foreign Policy Journal By William Blum February 4, 2012
With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent or better than nothing or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9/11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.
President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”[1]
Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.
Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?
Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.
The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”[2]
Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions.[3] Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:
The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.
When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9/11.
The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.
Notes
[1] Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009
[2] Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007
[3] See, for example, the December 17, 1997 article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas“. For further discussion of the TAPI pipeline and related issues, see this article by international petroleum engineer John Foster.
Charges dropped against U.S. soldier in Afghan murder case
Reuters By Laura L. Myers Sat Feb 4, 2012
SEATTLE - The U.S. Army has dismissed all charges against the last of five soldiers to face a court-martial in the slaying of unarmed Afghan civilians, officials from their home base near Tacoma, Washington, said on Friday.
Army Specialist Michael Wagnon had been charged with premediated murder in the death of a villager in Afghanistan during a tour of duty in February 2010.
"As of right now, he's pretty much a free man," said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. "He is still in the Army but a free man."
Wagnon, 31, was released from military detention and placed under home confinement in April.
Dangerfield would not say why the charges were dropped, and a statement from the base said only that the move was "in the interest of justice."
Five members of the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with killing Afghan civilians in cold blood in random attacks staged to look like legitimate combat engagements. Seven other soldiers were charged with lesser offenses in a case that began as an investigation into rampant hashish abuse within the unit.
Wagnon's initial reaction to news of the dismissal was stunned disbelief, his defense attorney Colby Vokey told Reuters. He then became "ecstatic" and "really relieved," Vokey added.
'THE RIGHT THING TO DO'
Vokey, based in Dallas, called the dismissal "fantastic news." He said the "Army did the right thing. We maintained all along his innocence and the government said it was the right thing to do."
Pentagon officials have said that misconduct exposed by the case had damaged the image of the United States abroad.
Photographs entered as evidence showed the accused ringleader of the group, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons to the to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004.
Gibbs was convicted by court-martial in November of murdering three unarmed civilians, drawing an automatic life prison sentence, but he will be eligible for parole in 8 1/2 years.
His chief accuser and onetime right-hand man, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced in March of last year to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same three murders. As part of his plea deal, Morlock had agreed to testify against the remaining witnesses, including Wagnon.
A third soldier charged with murder, Adam Winfield, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. A fourth, Andrew Holmes, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to a single count of murder.
Wagnon was the last to face court-martial.
The dismissal of charges comes less than two weeks after a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty. As part of his plea deal, the Marine, Frank Wuterich he was spared jail time and instead faces a maximum penalty of demotion to the rank of private.
Wuterich initially was charged with murder in connection with the Haditha killings. Six of the seven other Marines originally accused in that case previously had their charges dismissed by military judges, while another was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
(Additional reporting and writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Steve Gorman and Will Dunham)
Tracking Down Shady Passport Trade in Afghanistan
Clandestine meetings and confrontational officials make pinning down details of illicit passport sales a difficult job.
IWPR By Abdol Wahed Faramarz 3 Feb 12
Afghanistan - It was eight in the evening when my mobile phone started ringing. It was a friend, Nazer Hussein, who had just returned to Afghanistan after two years away working in Iran. Now he wanted to go back there again, but although he had a permit for Iran, it was proving near-impossible to get a new Afghan passport.
Passport officials said that a pre-existing shortage had been made worse by high demand from Afghans travelling to Saudi Arabia to perform the annual hajj pilgrimage, so no new passports were to be issued for a few months. They asked people to be patient until new passports were printed.
However, some passport officers made it clear one could still obtain new documents – at a price. Officials had squirrelled away blank passports and were issuing them for money.
That was my friend Nazer’s experience. Despite visiting the passport office every day for three weeks, standing in line from early morning in the bitter winter cold, he never made it past the first security gate. In the end, he managed to obtain a passport by paying 400 US dollars to an intermediary.
When he told me about his experience, I shared it with the IWPR office in Kabul and they told me to go ahead and write the story.
I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I knew I would face many problems along the way. It would not be easy to trace people who had paid bribes to get passports, or to find the brokers who were in touch with department officials. Then there was the likely reaction of the passport department to the very sensitive story I was investigating. What if officials realised I was a reporter during the course of my investigations and decided to have me arrested?
It did prove hard to find an intermediary who was prepared to cooperate, even when I finally tracked some of them down through friends. Eventually, I found a go-between who was willing to talks. He called me late one winter night.
“Hurry up,” he told me. “The passport officer is waiting.”
Sleepily, I picked up my mobile phone and slipped out of my house without any of my family noticing.
Outside in the alley, all the houses lay in darkness. In the car, I asked my contact where we were heading, but he said nothing. We drove on, and after a while I realised we were in a part of town that was all but deserted at night, with just a few houses on the hills alongside the road and almost no traffic. Then I noticed there was a pistol underneath the driver’s seat. Fear began slowly creeping up on me. I thought it might be some kind of trap.
When we arrived at the location where the deal was to take place, the passport officer was shocked to find a journalist present and at first refused to conclude the transfer in my presence or even talk to me. I promised to protect his identity, and he laughed as he handed over a consignment of passports to the broker.
“I really feel sorry for you reporters,” he said. “You work hard, but no one listens. This trade is like a chain – everyone has a share in it, just like links in a chain. Go home and sleep.”
When I found some people who had paid money for passports, most were too scared to talk to me. From those who were willing to speak, I learned that the going rate was as high as 800 dollars a passport, although if you had a good relationship with an official, you might be able to buy one for as little as 300 dollars.
It was time to go to the passport office itself. There I found dozens of people waiting in line at the gate. I reached the policeman at the gate with difficulty and introduced myself.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Don’t talk too much. Dozens of journalists come here every day. The director isn’t here.”
I said I would interview the deputy director, but the policeman said he too was not there. I then said I would talk to any official who was available.
“You’re a tough cookie,” he conceded. “Go in, but you won’t get anything.”
When I entered the department, I found that the director, General Ayub, was in fact in his office, even though I had previously tried to call him on his numerous phone numbers without success.
He welcomed me warmly, but as soon as I asked a question about alleged corrupt practices, he became angry.
“These are rumours spread by brokers who manufacture fake passports and visas,” he told me. “They want to defame officials in this department. I vehemently deny this charge.”
My report was duly published, including comments from the passport agency head.
Shortly afterwards, I called an official at the interior ministry about a different matter. Before I could even speak, he said angrily, “The report on passports that you published is not true at all. It was irresponsible, and you have defamed the country’s police.”
He demanded that I present myself at the ministry immediately. I calmly replied that he could refer me to the commission which addresses media offences, and that if it believed that officials had a case against IWPR, we would cooperate with any investigation.
This only made him angrier. “Do you have a permit to work as a reporter?” he continued. “Does your office have a license and permit? Where’s your office? Who is your boss? Give me his telephone number.”
I answered that we had all these details, but then he put the phone down.
Although the principles of democracy and freedom of speech have supposedly been applied in Afghanistan for the last ten years, it seems that some of those appointed to safeguard these values are actually against them – and that different forms of pressure are exerted to stop publication of the truth.
Abdul Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul
www.afghanistannewscenter.com