[Afghan News] February 8, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Freezing Temperatures Kill At Least 16 Children In Afghanistan
February 8, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
An Afghan official has confirmed that at least 16 children have died in refugee camps outside the capital this month due to record freezing temperatures.
Dr. Ghulam Sakhi Kargar, spokesman for the Afghan Public Health Ministry, told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan on February 8 that medic teams were being sent to refugee camps to address the rising health concerns there.
He confirmed that nine children have died in Charahi Qambar, five in Bagrami, and one at Milibas refugee camps outside Kabul.
The confirmation comes after "The New York Times" reported that Afghan authorities had questioned the veracity of the deaths on February 7.
More than 30 Afghans, mostly in the country’s remote northeast, have died this winter amid heavy snow falls and record cold temperatures.
The fatalities in Kabul come as the Afghan meteorological service said Kabul is experiencing the worst weather it has had in at least 15 years.

The Afghanistan equation: U.S. + Taliban + Pakistan = peace?
A peace negotiated by outsiders will never hold, but there is a role for the United States.
By Peter Tomsen February 8, 2012 Los Angeles Times
In 1989, soon after I was appointed U.S. special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan, the late mujahedin commander Abdul Haq conveyed a warning to me. Attempts by foreigners to organize the unruly, unpredictable and divided Afghan people would always fail, he said. He compared such efforts to a bazaar merchant trying to balance the weight of frogs on opposite trays of a produce scale. The merchant can load frogs on one tray. But as he begins to load the second tray, some of the frogs on the first one will inevitably jump off. And as he reloads them, frogs on the second tray will leap to the ground. Eventually, even the most determined merchant will give up.
I have thought of that analogy often during the last year, as the United States and Germany have reached out to Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban in Pakistan. The diplomacy has been cloaked in secrecy, though occasional news of it has leaked out. And now, it has apparently produced a tentative agreement, yet to be implemented, to open a Taliban office in Qatar to begin more serious negotiations.
But these efforts seem unlikely to lead to a successful negotiated settlement of the differences between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
So far, it has been American and German diplomats — with behind-the-scenes participation by Pakistan — powering the process. The Afghan government was not even aware of key aspects of the negotiations until December. That's problematic.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has reluctantly agreed to support the establishment of a Taliban office in Qatar, and the U.S. side says his representatives will participate in the process. But the Taliban has rejected meetings with the Afghan government, which it doesn't recognize as legitimate.
Adding confusion to this already complicated scenario, on Jan. 30 the Afghan government announced that Karzai will meet with Taliban representatives outside the Qatar framework in Saudi Arabia, a claim that the Taliban publicly denies. Also, former and current administration officials say that Omar sent a letter to the White House in July on the peace talks. But on Feb. 4, the Taliban's "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" office in Pakistan said it "rejects this baseless rumor with the strongest of words."
Are you beginning to understand the frogs-on-scales analogy?
For all their differences, Karzai and the Afghan Taliban have one thing in common: a distrust of outside initiatives aimed at knitting Afghans together. Foreign forays into the forbidding Afghan political caldron have invariably spawned greater disunity. They upset traditional tribal and ethnic consensus processes that Afghans informally use to resolve their differences.
If the United States has any hope of a successful outcome in Afghanistan, these shaky steps to launch peace negotiations must be reinforced by two policy thrusts. First, though the U.S. should be encouraging and supportive, it should withdraw from direct involvement in the intra-Afghan negotiations. And second, Washington should adopt a tougher strategic posture toward Pakistani-supported terrorist groups — including the Al Qaeda-linked Quetta Shura and Haqqani network — which are fomenting terrorism in the region and globally from sanctuaries within Pakistan.
Unfortunately, there are already clear signs that direct, unilateral U.S. involvement in the Afghan reconciliation process will continue, and that it will undermine rather than assist intra-Afghan negotiations.
One problem with direct American involvement is that it could exacerbate political fragmentation inside Afghanistan. Bargaining by Americans outside Karzai's purview while he is reaching out to the Taliban separately threatens to make his negotiations irrelevant. The Northern Alliance and other opposition groups have no great desire to cooperate with the Karzai government, and if there's an American channel to the Taliban open too, they're likely to focus on that instead of on Taliban negotiations with the official Afghan government.
But this doesn't mean there is no role for United States to play. The Obama administration needs to focus on the cold reality that U.S. and Pakistani policies on Afghanistan and global terrorism are contradictory and threatening to the long-term national security interests of both the U.S. and Afghanistan. To continue to pretend otherwise will only fuel international terrorism from protected Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries in Pakistan. In recent testimony before Congress, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told skeptical senators of both parties that the administration is looking for ways to "minimize the impact of these safe havens." But that is woefully inadequate. Terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan must be dismantled.
Pakistan's interests differ from those of Afghanistan, and the Afghans will be rightfully suspicious of Pakistani influence on any negotiations. Each time Pakistan's army andInter-Services Intelligence agency have inserted themselves in the intra-Afghan dialogue over the last two decades, it has been to subvert it. The U.S. needs to focus its influence on preventing that from happening this time.
The confusing American "fight and talk" tactic toward the ISI-backed Quetta Shura and Haqqani network reflects the larger seesaw pattern of U.S. policy toward Pakistan. Last fall, tough talk from both Adm. Michael G. Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that the U.S. had lost patience with Pakistan's support for the Haqqani network and would put increasing pressure on Islamabad to close militant sanctuaries in Pakistan. But since then, the U.S. seems to have flinched, reverting to the failed policy of indulgence rather than pressing Pakistan's military to dismantle the well-documented terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan.
The Obama administration is understandably eager to show progress on the intra-Afghan negotiating front as it takes the wise and necessary step of drawing down U.S. troops and transferring lead responsibility to Afghans to defend their own country. But progress will come only through disengaging from direct involvement in the intra-Afghan dialogue, even while encouraging the Afghan sides to reach agreement. And the U.S. must demand that Pakistan do the same.
A Jan. 24 statement bythe U.S. Embassyin Kabul after a visit to the region by Marc Grossman, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had it right: "Only Afghans can decide the future of Afghanistan." This guideline should dominate U.S. policy on intra-Afghan reconciliation.
Peter Tomsen is the author of the just-published "The Wars of Afghanistan." He was U.S. special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.

Afghanistan's Cultural Riches Threatened By Mineral Wealth
February 8, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
Flanked by waves of mountains and gray desert, the road leading from the Afghan capital to the ancient ruins of Mes Aynak ends abruptly at the foot of a dusty hilltop.
From that vantage point, 40 kilometers from Kabul, one can get a clear picture of Afghanistan's rich cultural past, and its efforts to generate wealth for the future.
The grounds of Mes Aynak in Logar Province is a sprawling 9,800-acre trove of Buddhist monastery ruins, statues, and tombs that sit largely preserved under layers of unexcavated earth. It is also the site of a massive Chinese-funded project to extract an increasingly valuable regional commodity -- copper.
Mes Aynak, meaning "little copper well", was the center of a Buddhist Kingdom before Islam came to Afghanistan. It is thought that monks settled here for its ample supply of copper, which brought them great wealth and allowed them to build a grand monastery.
But if copper led to the creation of the settlement, it appears now that it will also lead to its destruction.
Crucial For Economic Future
The Chinese-government-backed China Metallurgical Group Corporation made a successful bid of $3 billion for mineral rights to the site in 2008, making the project the largest foreign investment project in the country at the time.
With geologists estimating that 2 billion tons of copper lie beneath Mes Aynak, the development of the site is key to Afghanistan's economic future.
The deal also includes infrastructure development, including the construction of a power plant at the site, a village for workers, and a railway line from western China through Tajikistan and Afghanistan to Pakistan.
And it means that Mes Aynak, which sits on the second-largest known unexploited copper deposits in the world, is slated for destruction to make way for a massive open-cast copper mine.
Repeated attempts to reach China Metallurgical Group Corporation for comment on the company's plans were unsuccessful.
But what is known is that the company first intended to start mining in 2009, but agreed to a three-year delay for a basic excavation of the site.
Race Against Time
That deadline, which was set to expire this year, was prolonged again to 2014. Now dozens of Afghan and international archaeologists, who began excavating the site since 2009, are in a race against time to save what they can.
Haji Akbar, who heads a local committee in Logar for Mes Aynak, says efforts to unearth the historical artifacts have been intensified, with hundreds of local laborers being hired to help with the digging.
Mes Aynak holds remains of civilizations going back to as far back as the 3rd century B.C.
Akbar maintains that only a small portion of the huge site has so far been fully excavated. And, according to him, what has been unearthed so far is nothing short of incredible.
"The excavation in the region is going at a tremendous pace," he says. "We have even uncovered a whole city underneath the site. We have found ancient Buddha statues and jewelry."
Akbar, who heads the local committee that supervises all the excavation activities at Mes Aynak, says he is cautiously optimistic that the intensified efforts of the excavation teams can save most of the artifacts at the site before the deadline in 2014.
So far, most of the unearthed relics have been transferred to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, while other larger artifacts are being stored at a makeshift museum in Mes Aynak.
The Afghan government plans to eventually build a museum in the area to accommodate the vast collection of artifacts after the excavation ends.
Lightning Rod For Criticism
The project does have the support of some Afghan archeologists and historians. But the mining project is also a lightning rod for criticism, with opponents saying the Afghan government is sacrificing Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage in favor of economic development.
The numbers and the potential wealth are staggering. If the predictions are correct, the mining of the site could generate more than $1 billion a year for the Afghan government. That would account for about one-tenth of Afghanistan's current GDP.
Omara Khan Massoudi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, has indicated that he is concerned about the destruction of Mes Aynak, but he remains supportive of the project, which he hopes will help the country’s dire economy and its poverty-stricken people.
"Afghanistan’s mineral wealth has yet to be fully utilized," he says. "In the face of poverty and continuing economic problems, it’s important for the Mining Ministry to sign contracts with the leading international companies to effectively use these minerals. Exploring these mines will have a huge economic benefit."
Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth has been estimated by U.S. geologists to amount to nearly $1 trillion. Reserves include large amounts of copper, gold, cobalt and lithium.
Years Of Destruction And Looting
Massoudi, who has worked at the national museum for the past 27 years, believes mining projects like Mes Aynak will create jobs as well as generate money that can be used by the Afghan government to fund other important sectors such as health and education.
He maintains that money generated by mining is becoming increasingly important as international forces leave Afghanistan and financial aid from the international community decreases.
"We will need this as it will create jobs and play a big role in the country's economy," he says. "It will also pave the road toward peace and security and trickle more money toward other sectors such as education."
Massoudi adds that the battle to rescue the ancient relics in Mes Aynak is just the latest in a long line of ordeals that Afghan historians and archeologists have had to face in the country.
He cites decades of civil war and foreign invasions that have plagued the country's recent history. In that time, Afghanistan's antiquities and historical sites have suffered years of destruction and looting.
For Massoudi, historical and cultural preservation is one of the biggest issues facing Afghanistan. But he says that battle has only just begun as the country continues to grapple with poverty, war, and extremism.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report

CIA digs in as Americans withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan
By Greg Miller, The Washington Post
The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials said that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even if they shrink from record staffing levels set at the height of American efforts in those nations to fend off insurgencies and install capable governments.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December has moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage — monitoring developments in the increasingly antagonistic government, seeking to suppress al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country and countering the influence of Iran.
In Afghanistan, the CIA is expected to have a more aggressively operational role. U.S. officials said the agency’s paramilitary capabilities are seen as tools for keeping the Taliban off balance, protecting the government in Kabul and preserving access to Afghan airstrips that enable armed CIA drones to hunt al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.
As President Obama seeks to end a decade of large-scale conflict, the emerging assignments for the CIA suggest it will play a significant part in the administration’s search for ways to exert U.S. power in more streamlined and surgical ways.
As a result, the CIA station in Kabul — which at one point had responsibility for as many as 1,000 agency employees in Afghanistan — is expected to expand its collaboration with Special Operations forces when the drawdown of conventional troops begins.
Navy Adm. William McRaven, the Special Operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, signaled the transition during remarks Tuesday in Washington. “I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan,” McRaven said.
The CIA declined to comment. But current and former intelligence officials quibbled with the accuracy of McRaven’s assertion.
“I would say the agency will be the last to leave,” said a CIA veteran with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We were the first to get there” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the former official said.
Force size evolving
U.S. officials said the size of the agency’s presence in Afghanistan over the next several years has not been determined, and the CIA’s assignment is likely to be adjusted as the administration’s troop withdrawal plans evolve.
In some scenarios, teams of CIA and Special Operations troops could divide territory and lists of Taliban targets with Afghan forces, although officials said there will probably be extensive collaboration and overlap.
CIA paramilitary operatives were the first U.S. personnel to enter Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, linking up with Northern Alliance fighters weeks before U.S. military commandos arrived. More than a decade later, the CIA still has extensive paramilitary assets there.
“Like Special Forces, the intelligence community is used to doing a lot with a small footprint, using its agility to address a host of national security concerns,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The agency controls counterterrorism pursuit teams made up of dozens of Afghan fighters funded and trained by the CIA. The CIA has largely bankrolled and built the Afghan intelligence service. And the agency maintains a constellation of bases along the border with Pakistan.
Some of those sites are likely to be closed, current and former officials said. The 2010 death of seven CIA employees and contractors in a suicide bombing by a double agent at a CIA base in Khost province underscored the vulnerability of such remote outposts. As conventional forces depart, officials said, the agency will probably concentrate more of its remaining employees at compounds in Kabul and at the Bagram air base north of the capital.
As a result, more territory may be ceded to the Taliban. “We can lose the countryside, but I don’t think we’re going to lose Kabul and Bagram,” said the former senior CIA officer, who added that the agency could end up adding paramilitary personnel in Afghanistan as the size of the U.S. military deployment shrinks.
The Obama administration has said it plans to pull about 22,000 troops out of Afghanistan by September, reducing the overall U.S. force to 68,000. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta fanned speculation that the drawdown could be accelerated by saying last week that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013.
If the agency is tapped to play an expanded role in Afghanistan and Iraq, the landscape will be familiar to many across the CIA’s senior ranks. Retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in both countries before taking over as director of the CIA. A senior CIA operative who twice served as station chief in Kabul now heads the agency’s Special Activities Division, its paramilitary branch.
Scaling back spending
The pressure to maintain a sizable presence in Kabul and Baghdad comes as the CIA and other intelligence agencies face spending cuts for the first time since their budgets began expanding after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA’s annual budget is believed to be about $5.5 billion. In congressional testimony last week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said, “We’re not going to do more with less and all these other cliches. . . . We will just simply have less capability.”
At their peak, the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad were the largest and second-largest in agency history, surpassing the size of the CIA’s station in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War. CIA veterans stressed that those totals included more security, support and analytic personnel than clandestine operatives.
At the high point of the U.S. military surge in Iraq, the CIA had as many as 700 employees in the country. Most worked in Baghdad’s Green Zone, but hundreds were also scattered across safe houses in population centers and regional U.S. military outposts.
The departure of U.S. forces in December has forced the agency to shutter many of those facilities, according to former CIA officials who said the agency’s presence has probably been reduced by half.
“We had bases all over the country, but that’s not the case anymore,” said a second former CIA officer who served in Iraq. The development is likely to hamper intelligence collection, the former officer said. “You can’t put hundreds of people in the embassy and expect that to be your platform in Iraq.”
Staff writer Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Afghan Officials Question Reports of Children Dying in Camps
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND February 7, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan government officials cast doubt Tuesday on whether more than 20 children who died in camps recently had perished from the cold.
The officials were sharply critical of some of the camp residents, complaining that they had exaggerated their circumstances to attract more aid and that news accounts of the deaths were “one-sided.”
Mohammad Daim Kakar, the director general of Afghanistan’s disaster assistance agency, confirmed that camp officials, parents and religious leaders in two of the camps in Kabul had reported the deaths of 21 children from the cold, as well as two elderly adults. The New York Times, quoting similar sources, found 22 cases of children under 5 who had died there as of last week, with a 23rd case reported on Sunday.
Mr. Kakar said all the cases his agency had been told about concerned children who were reported to have died at night. “Is that reasonable that all of them would die at night?” he said. He was also suspicious because the deaths were not registered, and he said camp officials did not take his agency’s investigators to cemeteries to show them fresh graves.
“I am not saying they are liars, but for us it is a question mark,” he said.
In the past month, temperatures at night have typically been dropping into the mid-teens, much colder than usual, and there have been several heavy snowstorms.
“Of course they die at night,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, the camp representative at the Nasaji Bagrami camp, which has had the most child deaths. “What do they expect? It is colder at night.”
He and the camp mullah, Walid Khan, furiously denied that any officials had tried to see the cemetery there and had been rebuffed.
“Let them shave off my beard if I am lying,” Mr. Ibrahim said. They led journalists from The Times to the cemetery on Tuesday and pointed out each of the stones marking the graves of the 16 children 5 and under who had died in that camp since Jan. 15, including a pair of paving stones used to mark the graves of two twin 3-month-old girls, Naghma and Nazia Jan, who died the same night, Jan. 22. The markers could just be seen poking through 18 inches of snow.
“I buried every one of them,” Mullah Khan said. The men’s accounts were corroborated by the graveyard’s caretaker, Abdul Rasoul.
Of those 16 children, the camp officials said, 15 under 5 had died of the cold; the 16th, the 5-year-old daughter of Mr. Khan, the mullah, died of burns after accidentally spilling a pot of boiling water on herself while trying to stay warm. “I blame the cold for that, too,” Mr. Khan said.
The most recent victim there was a 1-year-old, Qader, son of Sayed Azam, officials there said. He died Friday, but his death was not reported until Sunday.
Most victims were children who were discovered late at night or early in the morning, frozen and dead in unheated tents and huts after supplies of firewood and other fuel were exhausted.
Mr. Kakar said that despite his suspicions, aid supplies would be increased to the camps, which are inhabited mostly by refugees who fled fighting in other parts of Afghanistan. At the two hardest-hit camps, Nasaji Bagrami and Charahi Qambar, most of the victims were from families who fled Helmand Province in recent years. Camp officials at Charahi Qambar reported eight deaths in all, the most recent two last Thursday.
Mr. Kakar made his comments at a news conference held jointly with a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, Islammudin Jurat. Mr. Jurat was critical of what he called one-sided news reports of the camp deaths that failed to take account of efforts made in the past on behalf of the residents.
Mr. Jurat said that his ministry had warned before winter began of a possible disaster this year, but that international aid groups had ignored that warning. He also said that the ministry had offered the camp residents land on which to resettle in Helmand Province, but that they had wanted to be resettled in the Kabul area, which was not possible.
“Our vision toward them is a humanitarian vision,” Mr. Jurat said. “Nine ministries of the Afghan government are working on this issue and how to locally reintegrate them or send them to the provinces they want to go to and distribute land plots and establish towns for them in order to put an end to this problem.”
He also said that past aid efforts had failed because camp residents had sold the aid they were given. At one point, he said, rental houses were found as alternatives for camp dwellers during winter months, but they soon left them to return to their tents, instead subletting the premises for income.
“That is a lie,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “They haven’t given us anything. I’ve been to the Ministry of Refugees asking for assistance, even shouting for assistance, and nothing has happened, no help.”
Meanwhile, however, widespread Afghan news coverage about the deaths of the children has spurred action from many local sources. Private Afghan businessmen, as well as companies like Roshan, a mobile telephone carrier, and Ariana Television, through their charitable arms, have visited both of the worst-hit camps in recent days, handing out aid, including food, firewood and cash payments.
Numerous readers responded to articles in The Times about the deaths of the children by offering contributions.
The Lamia Afghan Foundation, an American charity started by Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, who is retired from the Air Force, said that because of the reports of the children’s deaths it was diverting winter aid to help people in the camps.
General Bradley said he had arranged for 25,000 pounds of winter clothing and food packets, which his organization had already shipped to Afghanistan, to be delivered to the camps this week by the Afghan aid group Aschiana.

Afghan chief Karzai arises as obstacle to U.S. talks with Taliban
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused U.S. effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, observers say.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times February 7, 2012
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, the Afghan leader is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents.
Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the "disaffected brothers" back into the social and political fold.
Karzai's self-interest is at stake. NATO's military clock is ticking down, accelerated by the United States' recently announced push to wind down its combat role next year. And without Western backing, the Afghan leader is well aware that his own survival — political, and perhaps literal — could be in doubt.
Yet Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused American effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, launching a series of actions that appear to be almost deliberate provocations aimed at the United States, diplomats, analysts and observers say.
Before the Taliban movement last month announced its intention to open an office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate an "understanding" with the U.S.-led coalition, Karzai had worked assiduously behind the scenes to scuttle any such contacts. He loudly objected to the prospective locale, and recalledAfghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, complaining that his administration had been left out of the loop in key discussions.
Under heavy U.S. pressure, Karzai grudgingly agreed to the Qatar arrangement. But within weeks, presidential aides disclosed that the Afghan leader was seeking to set up parallel meetings with the insurgents, in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban issued an unusually specific denial that it intended to talk in Saudi Arabia with the Karzai government, which it routinely mocks as a "puppet regime."
Last week, Karzai enlisted the support of visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who declared at a news conference that Pakistan would support an Afghan-led peace process, an implicit warning against too much U.S. control over the direction of the prospective talks in Qatar.
The moves leave the United States and its allies in the awkward position of publicly proclaiming that any peace process must be "Afghan-owned" and "Afghan-led," even as the Karzai administration is dismissed by the Taliban as irrelevant and continues to be a problematic partner to the West.
Many observers see the Afghan leader's role as a potential spoiler as far outweighing any other influence he wields.
"I think President Karzai is completely cut off from the process," said Haroun Mir, an analyst at the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Part of the president's aggrieved stance regarding contacts in Qatar can be traced to the spectacular failure of more than a year of high-profile efforts on his own part to open a channel to the insurgents.
In 2010, Karzai set up a body known as the High Peace Council and declared it the clearinghouse for any contacts with the Taliban. In September last year, an assassin posing as a Taliban peace envoy killed the council's head, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, with a bomb hidden in his turban.
In the wake of that debacle, Karzai found himself under fire from political rivals who had all along objected to any rapprochement with the insurgents, particularly stalwarts of the staunchly anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic Tajiks.
Even while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force tries to present at least the appearance of unity among the Afghan government and its Western allies, the mercurial president tends to react sharply to any perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the U.S.-led coalition, particularly when actions by the NATO force result in Afghan deaths.
The United Nations said Saturday that civilian deaths last year hit a record high for the 10-year war. Although most of the fatalities were blamed on insurgents, Karzai has repeatedly said the Western military must be held to a higher standard.
The president does not hesitate to push back against his Western patrons. Late last year, Karzai publicly laid down seemingly untenable conditions for a long-term American presence in Afghanistan, including an end to the U.S.-led nighttime raids that have decimated the Taliban field command structure, and a demand that American troops be subject to Afghan law in the event of alleged wrongdoing, a deal-breaker in efforts to strike a similar accord in Iraq.
Last month, the president railed against foreign efforts to turn Afghanistan into a laboratory for what he called "political experimentation," while some of his aides sought to stoke fear that the West might agree to an effective partitioning of the country to placate the Taliban. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was forced to deny the existence of any such plan.
More recently, Karzai set a deadline of this week for turning over suspected insurgents captured by the U.S.-led military coalition to Afghan authorities, and the transfer of the main U.S.-overseen detention center to full Afghan control. Although the transfer of control had been envisioned for sometime this year, the president's timeline appeared to catch the Americans by surprise, and rights groups said detainees might be subject to abuse in Afghan hands.
In the eyes of many Western diplomats, Karzai's greatest contribution to the peace process would be an indirect one: cleaning up endemic corruption within his government. The Taliban movement has long capitalized on his failure to do so.
The insurgents firmly believe that an image of incorruptibility is one of their greatest assets in the struggle for public support, according to a classified military report leaked last week, which was based on interviews with thousands of captured Taliban fighters. Popular anger against the Karzai government, the thinking goes, will help the Taliban move to the political forefront once the West has pulled out.
Another crucial factor is the stance that Pakistan will take on any peace talks. Because most of the movement's leadership is based on its soil, the Islamabad government could block Taliban representatives from leaving the country, or arrest senior Taliban figures seeking to negotiate with the West. That happened in 2010, when Pakistan detained top Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was said to have been making peace overtures at the time.
In the face of considerable mutual mistrust, the Taliban and U.S. officials have both indicated that any talks in Qatar are likely to be preceded by reciprocal confidence-building steps, including a prisoner exchange and perhaps some limited truces in parts of the country, but Karzai has made it clear that he expects to sign off personally on any such measures.
The insurgency, meanwhile, is giving little sign it will dial back the fighting even once any talks are underway. Asked about American plans to move next year from a combat role to a training and advisory one, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi was uncompromising.
"As long as they are here," he said, "our jihad goes on."

What happens when troops - and money - leave Afghanistan?
The drawdown of foreign troops – now slated for 2013 – could destabilize Afghanistan's economy – or, according to some, help stem rampant corruption.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Feb 7, 2012
After three decades of conflict, Afghanistan has a complicated relationship with war.
No one wants the fighting to continue. But many are worried what will happen if the foreign aid, social opportunity, and, in some parts of Afghanistan, relative security the fighting has brought ends.
As the international community accelerates its withdrawal from Afghanistan, many here say they'll be fine. As long as foreign spending continues, they say, security and the new status quo will remain. If the US and its allies cut development spending as their troops leave, however, many Afghans and aid workers worry that it could have a devastating affect on everything from women's rights to the stability of the entire economy.
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“There will be much corruption on one side, and on the other, there will not be enough troops to secure the country, especially the rural areas,” says Mahmood Khan, a member of parliament from Kandahar Province.
Still, reflecting the view of many Afghans, he doesn't think that Afghans or the international community will give up on the development work they have started. “Something has been done in the last 10 years, and we have spent lots of money which has come from foreign sources.”
Shifting war timetable, shifting money
Last week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that American troops would switch from a combat role to a support role in Afghanistan by mid- to late-2013, with all provinces in Afghan control by the end of 2014. The news came after French officials announced that all 3,600 of their troops stationed here will be completely withdrawn by mid-2013.
Initial estimates indicate that it will cost $6 billion annually to maintain Afghan security forces, following the drawdown – about three times Afghanistan’s current national tax revenues.
Currently, 90 percent of the Afghan government’s budget comes from foreign sources, and about 97 percent of the country’s GDP has come to depend on foreign aid and international military spending as well. The World Bank has even warned of economic collapse in Afghanistan if international donors pull funding too fast.
Indeed, the mark of foreign spending is clear. Over the past decade, NGOs and companies working with or for foreign organizations have grown, especially in the nation’s capital. As NATO looks to cut back, many of those that depend on foreign funding to survive – as well as those that are self-sustaining – are concerned.
“If the security decreases in this country, women will be the first victims. They will go back to their homes,” says Najiba Ayubi, the managing director of the Development Humanitarian Services for Afghanistan at the Killid Group. “No family will give the women their right to work. It will affect women’s rights.”
Ms. Najiba is one of many Afghan women who have benefited from the presence of foreigners. She not only has a job outside her home, but a high-level one.
Her organization has been self-sustaining since mid-2005, but she says that without foreign organizations holding the purse strings for many lucrative contracts and pressuring companies to hire women, it’s unlikely that Afghanistan would have as many women in the workplace as it does now.
Najiba says she does not think the new time table gives Afghanistan enough time to prepare.
Indeed, there are daily reminders that the country is far from secure. On Sunday, a car bomb left at least seven people dead and another 19 injured in the restive city of Kandahar. The southern region of Afghanistan has seen the largest concentration of foreign troops, yet remains one of the more troubled spots in the country.
News of the bombing came just one day after the United Nations released a report indicating that civilian causalities increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2011. The number climbed 8 percent, from 2,790 civilian deaths in 2010 to 3,021 last year.
Some say it's best that foreign military presence ends
Still, there is a population of Afghans who think they may ultimately be better off without any foreign military presence.
While it's true that his organization benefited from the help of foreign organizations, says Lal Gul Lal, who has run the Afghanistan Human Rights Organization since 1997, AHRO can survive on donations from wealthy Afghans as it did when it first began.
“After almost 11 years, they [NATO] didn’t do anything to create a permanent solution to Afghanistan’s problems,” says Mr. Lal. “I think if they leave Afghanistan there will be no effect.”
There is even some hope that cuts in foreign spending could ultimately lead to less corruption in Afghan society – a major concern in a nation ranked the second most-corrupt in the world by Transparency International.
Already, the US has determined that more than $60 billion has been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq contracting due to fraud, mismanagement, and lack of oversight.
“If we get less money than now and we have a transparent administration, I think that will be better than we are now. We have NGOs working in different sectors, but they are corrupt and grabbing money and no one knows where all the money goes,” says Ismattuallh Shinwari, a member of parliament from Nangarhar Province.
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Pakistan, NATO Hold Border Talks Following Deadly Attack
VOA News February 8, 2012
Pakistani military and NATO officials are holding talks on border security after last November's cross-border coalition attack that killed 24 Pakistani troops.
That attack brought relations between the United States and Pakistan to a new low and prompted Pakistan to block NATO supply routes into Afghanistan.
The Pakistani army said Wednesday's talks were taking place at a border coordination center in the town of Torkham. The operations chief for the Pakistani army, Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, attended the meeting.
Officials in Islamabad have said the supply routes will eventually be re-opened to NATO, but with Pakistan charging higher fees.
Last month, Pakistan's army rejected a U.S. military probe into the November 26 cross-border coalition attack. The army said it did not agree with U.S. findings that American forces acted in self-defense and with appropriate force after being fired on by Pakistani soldiers.
U.S. defense officials blamed inadequate coordination by both American and Pakistani forces.
Ties between the two countries were already strained following last May's U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden and repeated U.S. drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's northwest.
Pakistani officials say the latest drone attack, which took place in the North Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday, killed 10 people.
Officials say two missiles hit a compound suspected of belonging to militants. Security officials say the dead included foreigners and locals.
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama publicly acknowledged for the first time that the United States uses drone strikes against militants in Pakistan.
Mr. Obama defended the operations, which have greatly increased during his administration, saying they are used for “very precise, precision strikes” in the fight against al-Qaida.
The Washington-based New America Foundation says drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 1,700 and 2,700 people in the past eight years.
Pakistan rejects the attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.

After 10 years in Afghanistan, success depends on where you’re standing
Globe and Mail By Graeme Smith Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Istanbul - One of the most-discussed items on The Globe and Mail’s website yesterday was my colleague Paul Koring’s thoughtful look at the last decade of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.
I’ve been asked to write some thoughts about this milestone, 10 years after Canadian troops landed in Kandahar, and in some ways my own opinion feels about as worthy as any of the several hundreds comments on Mr. Koring's analysis. War and violence have a way of splintering our understanding of events into countless shards of individual experience; any reporter covering the police beat will tell you that every witness at the scene of a shooting has a different take on the incident.
That problem gets magnified in a country like Afghanistan, awash with gunfire and explosions, seen from a distance through the flawed instruments of the media. We end up with wildly divergent views of the battlefield. It’s also distressing for a journalist like me, who spent years trying to explain Afghanistan, to see that the newspaper’s message boards still light up with chatter about 9/11 conspiracy theories and other misinformed views.
But even if you don’t wear a tinfoil hat, you probably have entrenched opinions about the Afghan mission; this informal survey is not scientific, but suggests that the war divided Canadians into camps. Some think we were right to go into Afghanistan and should join future combat missions, while others disagree vehemently. Few respondents came down somewhere in the middle, but that’s probably where my own opinion is located. I could see the argument for military action in Afghanistan in 2001, and nothing in my reporting over the last decade suggests to me that the whole idea of humanitarian intervention is wrong.
I was standing in Benghazi as Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s tanks rolled into eastern Libya last year, before NATO took action. Ideas such as the “responsibility to protect” doctrine seem a lot less abstract in those circumstances, when you’re looking around at people who will probably die if the international community fails to intervene. (Some of the BBC’s brave reporting from Syria this week has the same effect.)
Nobody seems sure that things will work out smoothly in Libya, but it’s already clear that Afghanistan is headed down a darker path. The foreigners were promising all kinds of things when they deployed their troops, but the core elements of the international agenda in Afghanistan – peace, democracy, rule of law, good government – have not been realized, despite the huge sacrifices. As Mr. Koring correctly says: “In war, the outcome matters.”
This week, the United Nations reported that civilian deaths increased for a fifth consecutive year in 2011, and the best that can be said about the violence statistics is that the trends are leveling off, which roughly corresponds with the end of the military surges.
Counterinsurgency theory suggests that at a certain level of saturation by security forces in a particular area should eventually quell an uprising, but if that’s true then the magic number was never achieved in Afghanistan. The rest of the NATO agenda was probably best summarized in a quote at the very end of this multimedia package, from retired Colonel Pat Stogran, who said: “Claims by ministers and mandarins of great accomplishments are impossible to verify. At best there is a thin veneer of progress.... .”
I saw big changes, which you could call “progress,” on my most recent visit to Kandahar last summer. The influxes of foreign troops and money had visibly strengthened the presence of pro-government forces. But the retired colonel was right: those advances felt thin, and dangerously brittle. He’s not the only officer raising such concerns, and we should listen to these naysayers. Their advice may help Afghanistan avoid anarchy or civil war in the next decade.

Talking with the Taliban
Direct negotiations with the radical Islamists are key to lasting Afghan and regional stability
Financial Times By Ahmed Rashid
After eleven years of war the Taliban’s public declaration that they will hold talks with the United States in Qatar is a major breakthrough for the political process, for Afghanistan’s internal stability and for the relative peace that will be needed by the US and NATO in 2014 before they can exit Afghanistan in good order and without too much bloodshed. The year-long clandestine talks brokered by the Germans, fostered by Qatar and eventually ending in direct meetings between US officials and Taliban representatives will hopefully lead to a major reconciliation with the Kabul regime. The Taliban’s present insistence that they will only talk with the Americans is not realistic in the long term, while Karzai’s recent policy flip-flops and contradictory statements belie the fact that he was kept in the loop every step of the way by the Germans. The talks will go ahead because there is no other alternative to ending the war.
The metrics of calculating how successful NATO forces have been on the ground combating the Taliban, despite heady announcements by NATO generals, are mired in considerable controversy and doubt. The ability of the Taliban, unlike al-Qaeda, to rebound from severe hits has proved them to be remarkably resistant to casualties, with a deep bench of commanders, logisticians, recruiters and administrators for their cause.
In a summer offensive the Taliban can still mobilize some 25,000 fighters – the same figure they had in the 2005-6 campaigns. Taliban survival is directly linked to the sanctuary, support and logistics they receive in neighboring Pakistan from various elements in that country. The US and NATO are preparing a comprehensive transition strategy for 2014 that entails handing over control of the country to government representatives at the district level and the newly-trained Afghan security forces, who now number some 352,000. However, an exit strategy is not a political strategy and that is precisely what is lacking to ensure the future stability of Afghanistan and the volatile region which surrounds this landlocked country.
Presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai are both entangled in a series of strategic conundrums, which so far have not been adequately addressed. Karzai is determined to secure a strategic agreement with the US allowing for the presence of US trainers and special forces in the country well beyond 2014. Washington would like to do the same. But the Taliban are vehemently opposed to any such US-Kabul agreement as it will appear to be aimed at them. Karzai will find it impossible to conclude both a strategic agreement with the US and a reconciliation agreement with the Taliban. The two aims are mutually exclusive. The recent contradictory policy statements by Karzai on the issue of reconciliation and the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar point to the fact that this reality is now dawning on the Afghan government. Karzai cannot be a partner to both the US and the Taliban and expect the Taliban to buy it. The Taliban have made it clear they expect all US troops to leave by 2014. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar will find it hard enough to sell the idea of reconciliation to his fighters. He will find it impossible to sell the idea of co-habitation with the Americans beyond 2014. Many Afghans, including Karzai, want a prolonged presence of foreign troops to guarantee their own safety and security. However a Taliban-Kabul deal can only be agreed when all foreign troops have left. There is not enough consideration in Washington or Brussels of this strategic conundrum.
Moreover the US, NATO and Kabul cannot hope to achieve even a modicum of regional non-interference in Afghanistan if US forces stay beyond 2014 because most neighboring states are opposed to a prolonged US presence. In particular, China, Iran and Pakistan are extremely suspicious of US intentions (for example about US training bases in Afghanistan being used to spy on these countries.)
Here, too, a prolonged US presence would imply that no regional non-interference guarantees are possible. Finally, it is still unclear what Pakistan may demand in return for restoring relations with the US and Kabul and helping the peace process. The US, NATO and Karzai need a political strategy on several counts. Firstly, a political strategy must start by holding talks with the Taliban that lead to confidence building measures on both sides to reduce the violence so that negotiations on power-sharing between the Taliban and Karzai can take place.
However, the administrations of both Obama and Karzai are deeply divided on talking to the Taliban. The US military would like a longer lead time to mount offensives and degrade the Taliban further, while the State Department sees no way out but talks. Similarly Karzai is surrounded by differing opinions and numerous conspiracy theories among his advisers as to what the talks mean for their political future.
Secondly, a political strategy must entail a dialogue and eventual political agreement among Afghanistan’s neighbors to limit their interference in Afghanistan. Apart from India all others – China, Russia, the five Central Asian republics, Pakistan and Iran – are against any long-term presence of US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Recently intra-regional relations have gotten even worse. In the past six months we have seen the collapse of US-Pakistan relations and the refusal of Pakistan to even meet with US officials until their internal review process is over. In addition, the crisis between Iran and the rest of the world over Tehran’s nuclear weapons program has further jeopardized any hope of Iran playing ball on Afghanistan. The regime sees Afghanistan as a potential battle ground if the US/Israel were to bomb or invade Iran. Attempts at a regional reconciliation have become even more difficult.
Thirdly, there must be greater internal political cohesion inside Afghanistan. Karzai has failed to create a national consensus on supporting talks with the Taliban, nor has he offered a vision for the post-2014 Afghanistan. With many Pashtuns supporting reconciliation with the Taliban and most non-Pashtuns rejecting it, the ethnic divide in the country has widened enormously and will grow more belligerent as the Taliban talks progress. Ethnic divisions could explode after 2014. Some experts even predict civil war.
In addition, there has been little preparation done by the West or Kabul to prepare for what is going to be a huge economic downturn in the country as aid levels drop precipitously, economic panic prevails and investment is reduced. Already businessmen, regime politicians and others who can afford it are moving their families abroad. Tens of thousands of Afghans who presently work for US or NATO forces will be rendered jobless.
At the December conference in Bonn, the Afghans received a commitment from the international community that during the “Transformation Decade” from 2015 to 2024, they will pay for a substantial part of Afghanistan’s security and governmental costs. The West, however, has to provide some guarantee now that such sums will be available for several years to come. At a time of global economic recession, the US, NATO and the wider Muslim world must obviously share such a burden.
It is also uncertain what Pakistan – the main regional stakeholder with the Taliban leadership on its soil – will do given its poor relations with both Kabul and Washington. Ideally, Pakistan should be included in any talks; Islamabad should be persuaded to allow Taliban to travel and discuss the issues freely; it should free the Taliban prisoners it is holding, and ultimately it ought to give the Taliban a deadline for leaving Pakistan and returning to Afghanistan. All of these steps would speed up a peace settlement between Kabul and the Taliban. Yet at present Pakistan is far removed from even talking to the main interlocutors. Finally, there is the plethora of political events in 2014 that at present appear far too many and dangerous for a fledgling Afghan state to cope with. These include a US and NATO troop withdrawal with all its resultant side effects; the test of whether the Afghan army can hold its ground; a presidential election, as Karzai will have to step down and new presidential candidates be found. All this against the backdrop of a loss of public confidence inside Afghanistan and a lack of agreement among neighboring states. Moreover, Karzai may decide at the last moment to hang on to power, citing possible chaos after NATO’s withdrawal, in which case political calculations will be even more muddied.
To cope with all these uncertainties, the US, NATO and Karzai will have to be far more constructive, proactive and flexible in their planning than they have been so far. The outlines of a much wider and deeper strategy should be ready in time for the NATO summit in Chicago in May. They should be made public so that the Afghans and the regional states can draw confidence from such plans rather than continuing to believe in a host of conspiracy theories about US and NATO intentions. Both Afghanistan and the Western alliance still have a long way to go before all the pieces for an Afghan peace and a political exit strategy fall into place.

Afghans Worried About Early Exit Of French Troops
NPR By Ahmad Shafi February 8, 2012
On a plateau amid the towering Hindu Kush Mountains, Hukum Khan, a 31-year-old Afghan farmer, has brought his horse to a scenic bridge in the Kapisa province of Afghanistan. Unable to farm during the winter, he rents his horse out to visiting tourists who have come from Kabul, about 60 miles to the south.
Khan says the presence of French troops hasn't made much difference in his life in the last 10 years. He says if the French really wanted to help now, they should go after the corrupt officials in his province.
But local authorities in Kapisa say the 3,900 French troops deployed here have held an important line against the Taliban. With their superior weaponry and better tactics, they have prevented the Taliban from opening a northern front in their campaign to surround Kabul, according to Muhajir Agha, a local police officer.
Agha concedes that Afghan security forces are not ready to fill the gap if the French leave any time soon. He thinks it will be at least two years before his comrades will be ready to defend Kapisa alone.
But France recently announced it will pull out all combat troops by the end of 2013, a year earlier than other coalition forces. The move came after four French troops were killed by a rogue Afghan solider on Jan. 20.
The French decision has come as a surprise, says Hussian Khan, the head of the provincial council in Kapisa, and it's left many of his constituents feeling betrayed and abandoned.
"You can't fight a war if you think there will be no casualties," Khan says. "We were not expecting such a shameful reaction from a highly developed country like France. They should step up their fight, not just retreat so disgracefully".
A member of the Afghan parliament from Kapisa, Dr. Mohammad Farouq, says the Taliban is strong in three districts in the southeast of the province, despite many joint Afghan and French military operations against the insurgents.
"A premature withdrawal of French troops will lead to a crisis in this area," Farouq says. "This is not the right time for them to leave. We do not have the forces to replace them right now to stop the enemy."
Farouq is afraid the French decision might prompt other NATO countries to follow suit, leaving the Americans to do most of the combat.
Washington says Afghan security forces are growing rapidly and will be able to assume security responsibilities once France pulls out, but there is still doubt by some in the province.
A local council member, who did not want to be named, says when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan more than three decades ago, the French were quick to lend a helping hand because Europe's security was threatened. Now that Kapisa, one of the smallest provinces in Afghanistan, is threatened by a resurgent Taliban, he says the French are leaving them out in the cold.

Afghan peace efforts continues amid ifs and buts
by Abdul Haleem, Chen Xin
KABUL, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- The much-needed peace talks with the Taliban has been continuing over the past couple of years but with snail motion as stakeholders have put many ifs and buts as pre- conditions.
Media reports suggest that Taliban outfit has agreed to open a liaison office in Qatar to facilitate talks for finding a negotiated settlement to Afghan crisis.
The initiative was welcomed by the United States which has been leading the costly war on terror and has lost more than 1,890 soldiers since dethroning Afghan Taliban regime in late 2001.
Nonetheless, the much-needed and much-awaited peace talks has been hit with many ifs and buts as the powers involved in the game have forwarded their terms for dialogue.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces, in a statement released to media early January had marginalized Afghan administration, saying Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (name of ousted Taliban regime) and the United States are the real sides involved in Afghan war over the past 10 years.
In a sharp reaction Afghan government had welcomed the step but insisted that any peace talks "should be Afghan-led and Afghan owned" besides preferring Saudi Arabia and Turkey as the venue for the proposed peace talks.
Taliban militants had also demanded the release of comrades languishing in Guantanamo detention center before any talks but the United States has yet to decide on the subject.
The militants, according to reports, have also rejected the U.S. offer for ceasefire and demanded the complete pull-out of NATO-led forces from Afghanistan.
Pakistan, another stakeholder in Afghan game where the Taliban insurgents are said to have taken shelter, has also shown interest in Afghan peace talks and the Pakistani prime minister, according to media reports, visited Qatar last Monday and reiterated his government stance to support Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace dialogue.
According to media reports, Washington has linked the opening of Taliban office in Qatar to severing ties with al-Qaida network, a pre-condition hardly acceptable to Taliban fighters.
"Taliban will not have office in Qatar unless they break ties with al-Qaida and renounce violence," U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker told a local Afghan newspaper.
The ambassador in his remarks on Wednesday also emphasized, "It is an intra-Afghan dialogue and not the talks of U.S. with the Taliban", saying if the government of Afghanistan wants, the United States is ready to support Afghan government in the process.
The outlook of Afghan peace efforts with so many conditions and pre-conditions has battered the road leading to peace and eventually makes it more time consuming than expected.

Afghans Hedge Bets Amid Mixed Messages From U.S.
NPR By Quil Lawrence February 8, 2012
After a long hiatus, the Afghan and U.S. governments this week reopened talks on a strategic partnership that will determine how many American troops stay in Afghanistan past the end of the NATO mission in 2014.
The resumption of talks comes amid a flurry of contradictory statements from American officials and NATO members about the shape of the foreign mission in Afghanistan. When President Obama first arrived at the White House he said troops would begin pulling out in the summer of 2011. Then a NATO meeting pushed the end of the mission to 2014. Last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta muddied the waters further, suggesting that the U.S. combat mission might end by 2013.
U.S. officials have downplayed the mixed messages, and Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai says Kabul is not concerned.
"Frankly, we're not confused about it," he says. "We have always maintained that Afghan security is an Afghan responsibility."
Mosazai says the transition will be conditions-based and gradual, to be completed by 2014. If conditions allow foreign forces to leave sooner, that would be welcome news, he says, but Afghanistan will need international support for many years to come. The partnership agreement that Kabul and Washington are still hammering out will specify the type of support.
Until that deal is signed, though, it's hard for Afghans to know what's ahead and the uncertainty may be helping the insurgents.
Confusion And Uncertainty
U.S. Marines are credited with pushing the Taliban out of the Marjah district of southern Helmand province. As the forces pull out now, tribal elder Haji Khalifa Mohammad Shah says a strategy for security hasn't been made clear.
Shah says he is hearing too many messages at once — from the Afghan government, from the U.S. and from other NATO governments.
He quotes an Afghan proverb that says, "with too many midwives, the baby comes out backward." Shah is blunt about what he's doing: His tribe is reaching out to both the Taliban and the government because he's not sure which one will prevail if and when American troops leave.
"It's very dangerous," says Gen. Abdul Hadi Khalid, Afghanistan's former deputy interior minister. People deal with the insurgents for their own protection, he says.
Khalid says the mixed messages leaves many Afghans unable to feel confident about the future. Estimates about how many American troops will remain range from 5,000 to 30,000, he says. The size of the Afghan force after 2014 is also unknown; NATO governments recently began to lower the estimate of how large an Afghan army and police force they are willing to finance.
Khalid blames some of the confusion on election-year politics in the U.S. and elsewhere, which he says can make politicians say almost anything. In the meantime, he says, the Taliban are spreading the word about their planned return in 2014.
This week's resumption of talks is a step toward answering some of the many outstanding questions. Both sides are pushing for an agreement in time for a NATO summit in Chicago this May, at which point Afghans and Americans should have a much clearer picture of how many U.S. troops are staying in Afghanistan for the long term.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com