[Afghan News] February 17, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Regional Leaders Consider Paths for an Afghan Peace
New York Times By DECLAN WALSH and ALISSA J. RUBIN February 16, 2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The prospect of talks with the Taliban inched closer on Thursday when the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran met to explore ways of pushing the nascent peace process forward.
The two-day trilateral meeting hosted by the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, comes as his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, claims to have opened direct discussions with the Taliban for the first time in the 11-year-old insurgency.
In an interview published in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, President Karzai said the talks had taken place over the past month thanks to an American-sponsored initiative anchored in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
The Taliban, who frequently deride Mr. Karzai as an “American puppet,” denied any such talks had taken place. “The Islamic Emirates have never talked with Kabul’s powerless administration,” said a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, in an e-mail statement.
Such conflicting statements have become common in a nervy process driven by rumors and speculation and which, at least until now, had all the clarity of a hall of mirrors.
The current talks in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, are significant because all players agree that Pakistan will play a crucial role in determining the success of any talks, largely because the Taliban leaders — and many fighters — are believed to be sheltering in Pakistan’s lawless western region.
Last month Pakistan permitting Taliban representatives, many of whom are believed to be based in or around the cities of Karachi and Quetta, to travel to Qatar to meet with American representatives.
Yet the extent and nature of any Pakistani role in peace talks remain deeply contentious, marred by deep-rooted suspicion among Afghan, Western and even Taliban officials after decades of Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs.
In Kabul, Western and Afghan officials suggested that Pakistan was using the trilateral meetings to provide a counterweight to American efforts to open a door to negotiations with the Taliban.
The officials speculate that Pakistan may try to set up a meeting between senior Taliban commanders and Mr. Karzai in Pakistan to prove their sincerity in supporting peace and to demonstrate their influence with the Taliban.
Pakistani civilian leaders insist that they are acting in good faith and have thrown their weight behind an “Afghan-led” peace process. “We will not block any process leading towards reconciliation,” the foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, told a small group of reporters late Thursday, referring to the American initiative in Qatar.
“We don’t have a formula for peace talks; in fact I don’t think anyone does yet,” a senior Foreign Ministry official added. “But one thing is clear: It will have to be the Afghans themselves who come up with it.”
Pakistani officials emphasize that they are keen to prove their good faith to their Afghan counterparts. On a recent visit to Kabul, Ms. Khar visited Afghan leaders from ethnic groups that have traditionally been hostile toward Pakistan. Her message, the official said, was the same to each: “Whatever you decide, we will be supportive of you.”
On Thursday, Mr. Zardari told Mr. Karzai that he would extend “full cooperation” to investigators looking into the death of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mr. Karzai’s main peace negotiator, who was killed in a suicide bombing last year. At the time, many Afghan officials accused Pakistan of orchestrating the assassination.
Pakistan could also leverage its presence in the peace process through its close ally Saudi Arabia, which recently offered to host a second strand of the peace talks in its capital, Riyadh.
A former Obama administration official said the Saudis had proposed the role, expressing unhappiness that Qatar had taken the lead.
On Thursday, Mr. Zardari also held a meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, during which he reiterated his commitment for the “expeditious implementation” of a long-delayed gas pipeline between the two countries, Mr. Zardari’s spokesman said.
That statement is likely to discomfit Washington, which has for years trenchantly opposed the gas project, despite energy shortages in Pakistan. Iran and Pakistan also plan to build a major cross-border electricity transmission line, and to raise the level of bilateral trade to $5 billion a year, Mr. Zardari’s spokesman added.
Officials said a summit meeting involving all three presidents, scheduled to take place on Friday, would also focus on other mutual areas of interest, like border controls, economic development and efforts to tackle drug smuggling.
Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Alissa J. Rubin from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai seeks Pakistan help in Taliban talks
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai meets with Pakistan's Yousuf Raza Gilani and Asif Ali Zardari to seek help with peace talks. But the Taliban denies it's negotiating with Karzai.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez and Laura King, February 17, 2012
Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday sought to secure help from Pakistani leaders in facilitating peace talks with Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban leaders, while the militant group denied any interest in negotiating with an "impotent" administration.
Karzai's visit to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, came amid reports that he had said in an interview that the U.S. and Afghan governments had begun secret talks with the Afghan Taliban. In recent months, U.S. officials have been meeting with Taliban envoys to discuss the establishment of a Taliban office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
But late Thursday, the Taliban issued a statement strongly denying the movement had taken part in secret talks with the Karzai government.
"We have not decided to negotiate with the Karzai regime," spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said. He accused the Afghan leader of wanting "to extend his foreign-backed power for a few more days."
"This false campaign will fail," he said.
Previously, the Taliban leadership dismissed Karzai as a "puppet" and publicly indicated willingness to talk only with the Americans and the West.
However, Haji Musa Hotak, a member of the Karzai-appointed body set up in 2010 to try to negotiate with the Taliban, said the Taliban position had changed.
"The Taliban have stopped insisting on talking to the U.S. and not the Afghan government," he said. "Now the Taliban are saying they are ready to talk with the Afghan government face to face. They said they will talk to both Americans and the Afghan government."
Karzai held separate meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari. He also met with Zardari and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also arrived in Islamabad on Thursday.
Ahmadinejad's meetings with Pakistani leaders were expected to center on plans for a pipeline that would send Iranian natural gas to Pakistan. Though Washington opposes the idea because of concern over Iran's nuclear program, Pakistan has signaled its intent to move ahead with the pipeline.
With Kabul and Washington pushing for peace talks, Pakistan is regarded by both capitals as a major obstacle in the process. Afghan and American officials maintain that Pakistan's intelligence community continues to actively support Afghan Taliban insurgents.
Washington has long alleged that top Afghan Taliban leaders remain based in the outskirts of the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, and that the biggest threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban wing known as the Haqqani network, continues to operate from havens in Pakistan's volatile tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan's links with the Haqqani group date to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when Pakistan's primary spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, backed the group's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and other resistance fighters.
Experts say Pakistan views the militant group as a key asset in a post-U.S. Afghanistan to prevent nuclear archrival India from extending its influence to Kabul. Pakistan's military leaders continue to regard India, and not Islamic extremists, as their main nemesis. Pakistan denies that it supports Haqqani militants or provides them sanctuary.
Afghan officials also suspect a link between Pakistani intelligence agents and the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was selected by Karzai to lead negotiation efforts with the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home when a man who said he was a Taliban emissary detonated a bomb hidden in his turban as the two men met.
Pakistani leaders have adamantly denied the allegation. On Thursday, Zardari said Pakistan recently sent a team to Kabul to assist Afghan officials in the investigation of Rabbani's slaying. A statement issued by Zardari's office said the president told Karzai that Rabbani "was a friend of Pakistan and an honest and serious interlocutor," and called the assassination "the work of those elements who do not want a peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan."
While in Pakistan, Karzai was also scheduled to meet with several leaders of the country's influential religious parties, including Maulana Samiul Haq, regarded as the spiritual father of the Taliban. Haq operates an Islamic seminary in northwestern Pakistan, where several Taliban leaders once studied. Haq is thought to maintain close ties with the Taliban.

Taliban reject Karzai claim of secret meetings
CNN By the CNN Wire Staff February 16, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - The Taliban rejected a claim Thursday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that it was taking part in secret talks with the Afghan government.
"The Islamic Emirate strongly rejects Karzai's remarks and adds that the Islamic Emirate has never met with the representatives of the powerless Kabul administration, and has made no decision to hold talks with the Karzai government, even in the future," the Taliban said in a statement e-mailed to CNN.
The statement followed a report in the Wall Street Journal in which Karzai said, "There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together."
Karzai's assertion suggested a change in course for peace efforts, because the Taliban has long publicly refused to meet with Karzai's government, and Afghan officials have complained they were largely sidelined in talks taking place between the United States and the Taliban.
"The last cards are with us. So far, it has been a U.S.-Taliban business. We have not been involved in this so I cannot say what was discussed," an Afghan government official told CNN last month.
In the statement Thursday, the Taliban insisted that "the enemy has only got propaganda left to show off its power, which in reality has been given to them by someone else and only for a few more days" -- an apparent reference to Karzai's government being bolstered by the United States.
"The Islamic Emirate believes that even if somebody claiming to be from the address of the Islamic Emirate has met with Karzai administration, that person is a fake and, like many times before, once again the Karzai government has been deceived."
In a statement Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid called Karzai's government "a puppet and unauthorized," and said "meeting with them will not be beneficial in solving the issue."
"The issue is ... who is powerful and has got the power to make a decision, and who hasn't, and everyone around the world knows that the one who has got the authority in opposition to the Mujahideen (the Taliban) is America," he wrote.
Last June, Karzai said the United States was involved in peace talks with the Taliban, and that representatives of the government and insurgents had been in touch, but that no high-level meetings had taken place.
Karzai arrived Thursday in Pakistan for discussions with President Asif Ali Zardari on improving relations between the two countries and peace efforts in Afghanistan.
CNN's Josh Levs, Nick Paton Walsh and Masoud Popalzai contributed to this report.

Iran Complains About Foreign Interference
VOA News February 17, 2012
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says foreign interference is the source of all problems in the region.
He did not identify which powers he meant when he made the comment Friday in Islamabad. Mr. Ahmadinejad is holding talks with the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan on steps needed to stabilize the region.
Pakistan's historic ties with the Taliban, as well as the porous borders shared among the three neighbors, provide the foundation for the summit. The Afghan Taliban and many affiliated groups are believed to be based in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised the summit as a valuable tool in the fight against terrorism, narcotics and other common threats.
The Wall Street Journal quoted President Karzai Thursday as saying that the U.S. and Afghan government have begun secret three-way talks with the Taliban. However, the insurgent group said in a statement Thursday that it has never negotiated with what it called "Mr. Karzai's puppet administration."
Preliminary peace talks said to be under way in Qatar reportedly include only U.S. and Taliban officials.
Prime Minister Gilani said that Pakistan supports any peace process in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led and Afghan-owned and called for the resumption of the joint peace commission between the two countries.

Afghan president says Taliban can not open office in Qatar
ISLAMABAD, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Friday that Taliban can not open office in Qatar and his government will decide the venue for any talks with the Taliban.
The remarks came amid reports that Taliban have opened political office in the Gulf state and have held exploratory talks with the U.S. officials. A Taliban spokesman said last week that the office in Qatar has been opened on their suggestion.
President Karzai told Pakistani TV anchors and columnists at a breakfast interaction that the United States can not hold talks with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government.
"We will hold talks with the Taliban either in Saudi Arabia or Turkey," the Pakistani TV channels quoted Afghan President as saying.
Karzai told an American newspaper ahead of his Pakistan's visit on Thursday that his government has joined talks with the Taliban.
Taliban quickly rejected Karzai's claim and a Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that Taliban representatives have neither held talks with the "powerless" Kabul administration anywhere nor has had any intention so far to hold negotiations with Karzai's administration.
During the Friday morning breakfast meeting with the local media, the Afghan President Karzai also called the Pakistani government to reopen supply line for the NATO forces in Afghanistan, which has been closed following an attack by the NATO troops on two Pakistani border check posts in Nov. 26, 2011, which killed 24 Pakistani troops and wounded a dozen others.
Pakistan Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar said this week that the NATO has been allowed to resume supply via Pakistani airspace of perishable items.
The Pakistani government had been insisting that the decision to restore the NATO supply will be taken by the parliament, but the parliament has not yet started debate on the issue.
The opposition parties in Pakistan criticized the government's decision to restore the NATO supplies without discussing the issue in the parliament.
Karzai said that the restoration of supply to NATO forces will benefit Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When asked about Pakistan's offer to impart training to Afghan National Army, the Afghan President was quoted as saying that his government has no objection to any such training.
The Afghan government has in the past rejected Pakistan's offer to train Afghan armed forces and President Karzai himself insisted on few occasions that Afghans will not repeat the former Soviet- era mistake of sending troops to neighbouring countries for training.

Former Afghan spy chief chafes at peace talks
Thu, Feb 16 2012 By Rob Taylor
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's government must not retreat from hard-won freedoms or return to strict religious curbs to reach a peace deal with the Taliban, the country's former spy chief said, warning Afghans were distrustful of the secrecy surrounding nascent talks.
After President Hamid Karzai said the U.S. and Afghan governments had opened three-way "contacts" with the Taliban in a bid to end the country's decade-long war, Amrullah Saleh said ethnic groups coalescing towards a more unified opposition were prepared to fight to prevent a return of Taliban militancy.
"We want the state to remain pluralistic, not bow to the barrel of a gun," Saleh, a former head of Afghanistan's intelligence service and now a political opposition activist, told Reuters at his heavily-guarded Kabul home.
"If the Taliban, like us, want to come and play according to the script, sure. But if they come with gun-mounted Hi-Lux trucks, no, that means continuation of civil war, of war, and fragmentation of Afghanistan," he said.
Saleh's message is likely to strike a chord with many Afghans who feel sidelined by U.S.-initiated negotiations, despite Karzai's belated insistence on control of the process and determination they be Afghan-led.
Since being sacked by Karzai in 2010 following disagreements over how to deal with the Taliban, Saleh has formed a political group called the National Movement, targeting mainly Afghans who do not belong to the majority Pashtun group from which the Taliban draw most support.
Other ethnic power brokers are also circling each other including Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum and prominent Hazara leader Mohammad Mohaqiq, eyeing a possible common front.
Karzai told The Wall Street Journal newspaper in an interview published on Thursday that he has seen enough signs to believe the Taliban were "definitively" interested in exploratory talks, seen by some as the best chance of ending the country's costly war, now entering its 11th year.
But Saleh, a strident critic of Karzai's centralized rule and efforts to reach out to the Taliban, said he did not believe the hardline Islamists would ever accept an Afghan government they had implacably opposed as a "puppet," even if some sort of deal emerged to give them a slice of power.
"Those who are against the Taliban, they are the majority, and this majority is now neglected," he said
"On one side of the table there are some mullahs, on the other side of the table is an American. Where are the Afghans? We feel unprotected, both by Karzai and by the Americans."
THREAT OF CIVIL WAR
Saleh was a former aide to former anti-Taliban hero Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance, which helped U.S.-backed forces topple the Taliban in 2001, ending a five-year rule marked by medieval brutality and oppression of both women and Afghanistan's non-Pashtun minorities.
He said if war broke out again, it would be worse than the bloody civil war that engulfed the country after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when rival warlords razed much of Kabul in a conflict that left 50,000 civilians dead.
"Fighting is not a very sophisticated path. It's easy. And (so is) recruiting people to fight in this country where unemployment is more than 50 percent. To believe that only one group can fight is naivete," he said.
"They should know that when we offer to be part of the solution, they should not underestimate us."
Karzai had been forced into dealing with the Taliban not because of a stalemate in the NATO-led war, Saleh said, but because his government's poor anti-graft record and failure to build a justice system that people had faith in, leading many Afghans to believe the Taliban could do a better job.
"If we talk to the Taliban from a position of strength, where we have bought reform, where we have restored the confidence of the people in our ability to represent Afghanistan, the Taliban become a group, not a force," he said.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Production of Afghan heroin jumps by 61%: UN
Press TV February 17, 2012
The latest UN figures indicate that the output of heroin increased by 61 percent in Afghanistan last year despite the Western claims about their will to curb the production of drugs during the invasion of the war-battered country.
Opium production by Afghan farmers rose between 2001 and 2011 from just 185 tons to a staggering 5,800 tons. Last year, levels increased by 61 percent, with more than 90 percent of heroin found on British streets being traced back to opiates cultivated in Afghanistan, according to UN figures.
The UN figures make grim reading for those who backed the invasion of Afghanistan.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in 2001 that a significant reason for deployment of foreign forces to Afghanistan was to curtail a flourishing heroin trade.
“The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. This is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy,” he said.
However, the UN figures reveal how the outcome has been so dramatically different.
Some 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross national product now comes from drug-related exports, with the trade having a net worth of up to £1.6 billion ($2.5 billion).
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told delegates at a conference in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday that Afghanistan cannot be stable while its economy depends so heavily on the drugs trade.
He noted that the problem of drug trafficking has undermined efforts to help Afghanistan emerge as a normally functioning economy.
“We cannot speak of sustainable development when opium production is the only viable economic activity in the country,” Ban told delegates of the Paris Pact Ministerial Conference.

Afghan army to cost U.S. billions of dollars after 2014 withdrawal
Washington Post By Greg Jaffe Friday, February 17, 2012
The U.S. military expects that sustaining the Afghan army and police forces after the planned withdrawal of American combat forces in 2014 will cost about $4 billion a year and that most of that money will have to come from the United States and other outside donors, said a senior military official Thursday.
The Obama administration plans to announce the enduring price tag for the Afghan troops at a NATO summit in May. The exact cost of paying, equipping and training the Afghan forces will depend on their size, which is the subject of debate in Kabul and Washington.
“If we are going to succeed in Afghanistan, we are going to have to make a commitment to sustaining the Afghan security forces, and my sense is that is recognized,” the senior military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. “That is what we are driving toward, and that is what will be announced in May at the summit.”
In recent years, the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars on Afghan forces to increase their numbers and add infrastructure. This year, the Obama administration’s budget for Afghan forces is about $11.2 billion, about twice the planned budget of $5.7 billion in 2013.
The Afghan army and police force had been expected to grow to about 350,000 troops, up from 310,000 today, but Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta suggested this month that the goal could be scaled back to save money.
The Afghan government can afford to pay only about 12 percent of the expected $4 billion annual price tag of the Afghan forces beyond 2014, said the U.S. military official. The majority of the remaining costs would be borne by the U.S. government. U.S. officials also are counting on big contributions from NATO allies to fund the Afghan forces beyond 2014.
“I think that a 2-to-1 ratio is pretty reasonable in terms of financing,” the senior military official said regarding U.S. and European contributions.
The long-term plan for U.S. and NATO troops beyond the end of 2014 — the date set for the withdrawal of all combat troops — and the possibility of accelerating fragile peace talks with the Taliban also will be major parts of the May summit, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon expects that U.S. and NATO forces will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 to train Afghan forces and possibly carry out strikes against insurgent leaders.
The United States is seeking additional commitments from NATO at the same time it reduces its force of 80,000 troops in Europe by about 15 percent. The United States plans to eliminate two brigades of combat troops in Europe, totaling about 8,000 troops, as part of a cost-saving plan to shrink the Army to about 490,000 troops. The United States also plans to pull out an Air Force squadron and support troops.
To make up for the losses, the United States will designate a brigade to focus on Europe with the hope that it will send battalions to participate in joint exercises with the NATO allies. The Pentagon also plans to dispatch additional V-22 aircraft and about 500 Marines to Europe and move four Aegis destroyers into the area to help with missile defense.

Unchecked poppy cultivation to increase Afghan instability
by Abdul Haleem, Chen Xin
KABUL, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Likewise the endemic militancy, poppy cultivation and production of illicit drugs have been continuing over the past decade in the war-torn Afghanistan, triggering criticism at home and abroad.
"Security will not return to the country unless and until those big fishes involved in producing and trafficking the illicit drugs are punished," a political observer and Editor-in-chief of the Daily Mandegar Nazari Pariani told Xinhua.
He made this comment in the wake of the concerns expressed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday.
The world body chief, according to media reports, in his address at the Third Ministerial Conference of the Paris pact held in Vienna on Thursday, expressed concern over increase of Afghan poppy production and urged the Afghan government to prioritize effort to eliminate the menace.
"Drug trafficking and transnational organized crimes undermine the health of fragile states, weaken the rule of law and hinder our attempts to meet the Millennium Development Goals," the world body chief noted in his address, according to media reports.
Based on Afghan Opium Survey 2011, released by United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes (UNODC), the world body chief told the delegates that poppy cultivation has increased by 7 percent and opium production has increased by 61 percent last year.
"We cannot expect stability when 15 percent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product comes from the drugs trade. We cannot speak of sustainable development when opium production is the only viable economic activity in the country" Ban further said, according to media reports.
The UN secretary general made these remarks while Afghan government with the support of international community and the presence of some 130,000-srong NATO-led multinational force have been fighting Taliban-led insurgency to ensure durable stability in the war-torn country.
The total area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, according to UNODC, was estimated at 131,000 hectares in 2011, a 7 percent increase compared to 2010; opium production in 2011 was estimated at 5,800 tones, a 61 percent increase compared to 2010.
Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has constantly increased over the past 10 years, in spite of international community's support in fighting militancy and injecting billions of dollars to strengthen the capacity of Afghan administration.
The production of opium poppy in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 to 5,800 tons in 2011. Even though 20 out of the country's 34 provinces have been announced poppy free, it is said that Afghanistan still supplies to the world 90 percent of the raw material used in manufacturing heroin.
"In fact, constant increase in Afghan poppy product exposes the continued failure of government and its international backers in fulfilling their promises," Pariani opined.
The analyst was of the view that producing and trafficking of drug is not the business of ordinary Afghans, saying there are big fishes and influential figures that encourage poppy cultivation and the smuggling of the product.
"Ordinary person cannot take even a small pack of opium from a village to the city. These are the powerful circles and figures that traffic tones of opium and heroin from rural areas to safer places onward abroad," he maintained.
Meantime, Afghan minister for Counter-Narcotics Zarar Ahmad Osmani, according to media reports, has said that fighting drugs is very complicated, and it requires a very comprehensive approach. According to the minister, 98 percent of Afghan opium is produced in areas where there is no security.
Kandahar the birthplace of Taliban, the neighboring Helmand and Zabul provinces and some other parts of the country have been regarded as Taliban hotbed as militants are more active there than other areas in the country.
"Afghan government will not overcome the war on drug unless it chalk out a comprehensive strategy and fight corruption tooth and nail; otherwise the menace of drug would haunt Afghans and the world for the years to come," another Afghan political analyst and former diplomat Ahmad Sayedi observed.

Special Forces in Afghanistan: not just taking out terrorists anymore
As conventional forces withdraw from Afghanistan, US Special Forces will take the lead in training Afghan soldiers and police – a task that takes Special Forces back to their roots.
Christian Science Monitor By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer February 16, 2012
Washington - From the rescue of hostages held by pirates to the SEAL Team 6 strike on Osama bin Laden's compound, the formerly secretive world of Special Forces is increasingly front and center in US operations throughout the globe.
Now these troops are about to take over more responsibilities in America's longest-running war, too.
With US force levels in Afghanistan scheduled to drop from some 90,000 currently to 68,000 troops by October, Special Operations Forces (SOF) will take on an increasingly pivotal role in the country, senior military officials say.
IN PICTURES: Special Forces around the world
In many ways, the transition will be a familiar one for SOF, returning it to its roots. Long before their secret raids became so public, SOF troops were primarily tasked with coordinating with indigenous forces of America's allies. They are now poised to do the same in Afghanistan, eventually taking over US operations there after conventional forces leave.
Specifically, they will likely stay on the ground in Afghanistan well into 2015, senior military officials say. Under current agreements, conventional US forces are scheduled to depart by 2014.
"I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan," said Adm. William McRaven, commander of US Special Operations Forces Command, during a conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7.
The Pentagon's emphasis on the role of Special Operations capabilities has been growing steadily for the past decade.
The ranks of SOF troops grew from 33,000 before the 9/11 attacks to 66,000 today. Those figures are expected to increase to 70,000 in the next few years, according to the Feb. 14 Pentagon budget.
These forces currently operate in some 70 countries around the globe. Admiral McRaven is reportedly lobbying to gain greater autonomy in determining precisely where to deploy these forces, according to the New York Times. This in turn would allow SOF to react quickly and expand into new regions. Critics point out that this also has the potential to stretch these in-demand forces thin.
Indeed, in the months to come, US Special Forces will be asked to bear an increasingly heavy load, including taking the lead in training Afghan soldiers and police – widely agreed to be America's exit strategy in the country. Their goal will be to speed this process, senior military officials say – a process which is generally agreed to be lagging.
Such a boost in speed is essential, according to a January assessment by the director of national intelligence (DNI). "In terms of security, we judge that the Afghan police and Army will continue to depend on ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] support," James Clapper, the DNI, noted in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee this month.
The effort to take off Afghan security forces' "training wheels," as US troops like to say, has been partly impeded by the capabilities of US forces themselves.
"The Afghans, if they see Americans moving forward, may have a tendency to step back," Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of Defense for Special Operations, told a Washington audience. "In my view that's got to be the most important aspect of the transition – having US forces take a step back and the Afghan security forces take a step forward."
That's where SOF comes in.
"The Special Forces operator understands that environment – he understands that advisory role," said Mr. Sheehan. "And that SOF operator is going to have to try to push his Afghan counterpart to the front of this struggle, and it's going to be a long one that's not going to go away anytime soon."
Some critics say the Obama administration is moving too fast to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said US forces could step back to an advisory role in 2013, a year earlier than planned.
But waiting "doesn't get us anywhere," Sheehan said. "Now is as good a time as ever to push the Afghans out in front."
In the months to come, the expanded SOF role will require some reorganization of the "three tribes" of SOF operations, McRaven said.
These tribes include the forces working with NATO on provincial security-response teams, those conducting "stability operations" in Afghan villages, and those conducting strikes on terrorist cells.
In the beginning, as Special Operations troops take more responsibility, they will then "integrate" conventional forces into their operations, McRaven said.
"With each cut in the conventional forces, you're going to have to basically fold smaller and smaller conventional elements into Special Forces," says Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In the process, he adds, "Special Forces will gradually take over."
This will require SOF troops to "not just be able to deal with the worst parts of enemy networks," he says, but also to return to their traditional core mission of supporting foreign armies. Today, some 3,000 additional SOF troops also operate in more than 75 countries.
"It's really an incredibly demanding mission at a time when everybody else is going to be cutting down," Dr. Cordesman says. "And it's going to get more demanding as US and allied forces ramp down, and as aid groups are pulled out of the country."

Fake Member Of Parliament Raises Alarm In Afghanistan
February 17, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Charles Dameron
Officials in Afghanistan are scratching their heads in bewilderment after discovering that an unidentified man may have collected a treasure trove of sensitive information from security and intelligence offices throughout Afghanistan's southern Kandahar Province after impersonating a ranking member of Afghanistan's parliament.
Bismallah Afghanmal, a Kandahar representative to Afghanistan's upper house of parliament, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan on February 15 that a man identifying himself as Mohammad Asif Sarhadi, a member of Afghanistan's upper house of parliament from Ghor Province, met with the governor of Kandahar Province, Tooryalai Wesa, earlier this month.
Currently, there are no Afghan members of parliament named Mohammad Asif Sarhadi.
Wesa, believing his guest to be a member of Afghanistan's parliamentary Defense Committee, facilitated an official visit to Maruf District, a mountainous region on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. There, the purported member of parliament discussed local security matters with district leaders; he later repeated his performance in Kandahar's Dand District, where he met with district governor Ahmidullah Nazek and obtained "every possible piece of information" related to the area's security, Afghanmal told RFE/RL.
"Sarhadi" capped off his visit to Kandahar with visits to a local prison and to the provincial office of Afghanistan's national intelligence agency, where he was again given a full briefing, according to Afghanmal.
'Very Dangerous'
When officials later realized that they may have been had, Nazek provided Afghanmal with the man's mobile-phone number. A phone call from Afghanmal revealed that the man, who told Afghanmal that he was currently unemployed, was not a member of the Afghan parliament.
Officials are still uncertain as to the intentions of the mystery visitor. But Mohammad Alam Ezedyar, the first deputy of the parliament's upper house, called the incident "very dangerous" and criticized local officials for the breach of security.
"He certainly belonged to an intelligence organization, and he has gathered a lot of important documents," Ezedyar said.
That characterization was disputed by Zalmay Ayubi, a spokesperson for the Kandahar governor, who told RFE/RL that the governor did not provide the man with any sensitive materials.
"We didn't exchange any documents with him, and he wasn't here to coordinate anything," Ayubi said.
The Kandahar governor would hardly be the first Afghan politician to fall victim to a clever impersonator.
In November 2010, Kabul and Washington were roiled by the discovery that a key interlocutor in peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban was not, as he had claimed, Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. Before his ruse was discovered, the impostor met three times with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, according to Afghan and NATO officials. International media organizations reported at the time that the man may have been a shopkeeper from the Pakistani border city of Quetta.
Based on reporting from Fereshta Neda in Kabul and Sadiq Reshtinai in Kandahar

Afghan Allies Must Step Up Anti Drug Fight, UN's Ban Says
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 16 February 2012
Afghanistan's allies must step up the fight to combat the production and trade of drugs because the country cannot be stable while its economy depends so heavily on narcotics, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said on Thursday in Vienna.
"We cannot speak of sustainable development when opium production is the only viable economic activity in the country," Mr Ban said at the opening of a major international conference on drugs.
"We cannot expect stability when 15 per cent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product comes from the drugs trade, the UN chief added.
More than 50 countries and international organisations attended the one-day Paris Pact Ministerial Conference, which first met in 2003.
Some experts believe that as the international community withdraws its forces from the country, a process that is scheduled for completion by the end of 2014, the Afghan government will need more help to fight poppy cultivation, which rose last year.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently announced that revenues from opium production increased by 133 per cent in 2011.
Afghanistan supplies 90 per cent of the world's opium despite the efforts of the government and its international allies to curb production.
The money earned from opium is reportedly used to provide weapons for insurgents.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan and seven other countries in the region recently agreed to booster regional efforts to fight drugs with the support of the UNODC.

Moscow hopes its Afghan rebuild to usher in stability
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman Thu Feb 16, 2012
KABUL - Russia hopes to embark on a series of ambitious construction projects in Afghanistan aimed at reinforcing fragile stability in the country where Soviet troops fought a disastrous, decade-long war, its envoy to Kabul said Thursday.
Though not connected by land, Moscow sees war-ravaged Afghanistan as a neighbor and is concerned by what it describes as the two-pronged threat of drugs and terrorism which reach Russia through ex-Soviet Central Asian countries.
Andrey Avetisyan said Russia had limited involvement in Afghan reconstruction over the last decade "because it was all about fighting, and since we are not fighting, we didn't see much place for our activity."
But that approach has changed. "Now, we're trying to kind of start anew," he told Reuters in the glistening rebuilt embassy, a third of its Soviet size during the war, whose end 23 years ago Wednesday was marked by Afghans and Russians.
Russia hopes to begin with reconstructing around 150 Soviet-era projects, from Afghanistan's most important stretch of highway, the congested and aging Salang tunnel, to a Kabul bread factory that once fed the entire Afghan security forces.
For these, many of which were built by Soviets before they invaded in 1979, the same technology, documentation and even the same engineers still exist, meaning the Russians are in prime position to take over the work, Avetisyan said.
Moscow then aims to delve into new ventures, involving oil extraction, hydroelectric projects, housing and possibly even build the country's first railway network.
The Asian Development Bank a year ago estimated Afghanistan's infrastructure requirements at more than $4 billion.
Avetisyan declined to put a price tag on the Russian projects, but said a meeting in two weeks in Moscow, with Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, should shed more light on the exact proposals and what will be agreed upon.
Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom, oil major Rosneft, state railway firm Russian Railways, second-biggest oil producer LUKOIL and state power holding company Inter RAO, as well as others, were interested in concrete projects in Afghanistan, he said.
"We're not going to tell the Afghans how to live, which life to live -- we stopped doing this 25 years ago," said Avetisyan, who worked for the Soviet government in Kabul, becoming fluent in Afghanistan's two main languages, Dari and Pashto.
"We just want to have a friendly, independent Afghanistan as our neighbor... Economic development should go first, because there cannot be security without (this). The roots of insecurity are in the problems for people to find jobs, have a home."
"PAST TEN YEARS ALMOST WASTED"
Escalating violence across Afghanistan in the 11th year of an increasingly unpopular war has sent tremors of worry across Russia, which borders mainly Muslim former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and which is battling a growing Islamist insurgency in its own volatile North Caucasus.
The flow of Afghan heroin, branded a threat to national security by the Kremlin, has also set off alarm bells in a country which health officials warn is the world's top user of heroin, spurring a crippling HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Underscoring those fears is the looming deadline of end-2014 for NATO to train a 350,000-strong force of Afghan police and soldiers who will take over all security responsibilities from foreign combat troops, who will also leave by that time.
Avetisyan said Washington was at risk of repeating the errant ways of its Cold War foe in approaching Afghanistan. "They (the U.S.) came 10 years ago, thought they could fix it very quickly, and then leave. Exactly the same mistake that the Soviet army made," he said of its dispirited 1989 exit from a war that took 15,000 Soviet lives.
After the Soviets rushed out, the Afghan communist government collapsed, leading to infighting between warlords and a vicious civil war that reduced much of Kabul to rubble and paved the way for the Taliban's rise to power in 1996.
Avetisyan lamented the slow economic development over the last decade, echoing the discontent of many ordinary Afghans who accuse the U.S. force in their country of not building enough.
"The past ten years were almost wasted in this sense," he said.
"... Why have the Americans achieved so little in terms of economic development? Because it is not in their plans and it still is not, I am afraid."
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Talking with the Taliban, making peace with the guilty
CNN By Michael V. Hayden, CNN Contributor February 16, 2012
Editor's note: Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was appointed by President George W. Bush as CIA director in 2006 and served until February 2009, is a principal with the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm. He serves on the boards of several defense firms and is a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University. Hayden is an adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He held senior staff positions at the Pentagon and, from 1999 to 2005, was director of the National Security Agency.
The recent smartphone video of Marines urinating on the bodies of slain Taliban should trouble all Americans.
It is troubling even if allowances are made for young men -- recently released from the high pressures of combat and in the euphoria of being successful and still being alive -- doing dumb things. It should trouble us even allowing for the inevitable dehumanization of the enemy that often accompanies conflict.
Keeping the human aspect of an enemy in mind is more than just a moral imperative, though. It makes good operational and strategic sense. And in this, intelligence has a special role.
One of the first briefings I gave President George W. Bush as deputy director of national intelligence was on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the fiendishly brutal head of al Qaeda in Iraq.
I began with Zarqawi's upbringing: "Raised on the mean streets of Zarqa, jailed as a teenager, he turned to religion in prison ..." Taliban: Won't talk peace with Karzai US to end Afghan combat mission in 2013
I was less trying to humanize him than to understand him, but the effect was largely the same. And even duly "humanized," Zarqawi remained our highest priority target in Iraq until we killed him the next year.
Recognizing this human aspect of an enemy takes on even greater significance when a belligerent decides that it's time to negotiate with an adversary, when it's decided (or reluctantly accepted) that you will not be able to simply impose your will on him.
This, by the way, is different than concluding that someone with whom you are still engaged in combat is no longer your enemy, as Vice President Joe Biden recently did when describing the Taliban.
But it does mean that you are willing to recognize that he has legitimate political interests and you are willing to talk about them.
Under any circumstance, talks with the Taliban will be a difficult task. For one thing, the pressure we can bring to bear on our negotiating partner diminishes daily as American troops leave Afghanistan based on an accelerated timetable rather than on battlefield conditions. A recent survey of national security wonks like myself had a full three-quarters of respondents either opposing these talks or saying they are likely to fail.
So this is going to be tough and, as in many difficult undertakings, intelligence will be expected to play an important role.
Taliban has met with U.S. officials, won't negotiate with Karzai
At the most basic level, intelligence will be asked what are the Taliban's interests or more precisely what is it they think they are.
Intelligence will work to steal secrets: What are their demands, their going-in positions, their true red lines? In this case, negotiators will also want to know whether their Taliban interlocutors actually speak for the whole. Can they deliver on an agreement?
I recall during the Bush administration, in one of our periodic crises with Syria, being asked by the president: "What does Assad want?" It was a question that went to the nature of the man.
I responded with the often true but rarely useful, "I don't know." And I little helped the situation by meekly adding that I doubted that he did either.
We did better during later negotiations with North Korea where, despite whatever negotiating strategy was being proposed, we stuck to the line that we saw little chance that Kim Jong Il would ever give up his nuclear weapons. We'll need the intelligence agencies to be equally accurate and equally firm in their judgments when it comes to the Taliban talks.
Intelligence may be able to help in other ways since it has been routine for American intelligence officials to meet with and come to agreement with foreign counterparts, many of whom share little of our world view, our values or even our interests.
A good thing, too, since one of the continuities between Presidents Bush and Obama has been the willingness to work with some unsavory partners such as President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen or several recent incarnations of Pakistan's ISI.
I can recall many a meeting with counterparts where the common space where we might find agreement was challengingly small.
In some of those sessions, my counterpart would depart the seemingly fact-based dialogue we had been sharing and launch into a series of conclusions based more on his culture's creation mythology than on any shared reality I could identify.
For a time, I thought it sufficient to simply avoid signaling any agreement at these moments and patiently tolerate the excursion. Only later did I begin to ask myself what of my commentary had my counterpart judged to be American mythology rather than hard realism.
Distinguishing and dealing with the differences will be important in the upcoming negotiations.
Steve Kappes, who has served as deputy director of CIA for me and Leon Panetta, had to do as much when he earlier negotiated the end of Libya's WMD program with a regime as vile and erratic as the Taliban.
This is not to suggest that intelligence officials will actually conduct negotiations in this instance. Marc Grossman, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, brings as much talent, hard work and knowledge to the problem as anyone could.
But I am suggesting that if these talks go forward, we will need a very deep understanding of the people across the table from us, people who when last in power imposed a hellish regime on their countrymen and who today have the blood of innocents on their hands.
Much of this will be distasteful, but even if the Taliban aren't simply contemporary manifestations of J.R.R. Tolkien's darkest characters, is there enough common ground to get us to a conclusion we might not ideally desire but is at least what David Petraeus has described in other circumstances as "Afghan good enough?"
Frankly, I don't think there is, and intelligence agencies will have to have the courage to say so if this is the case.
But we have decided to try and, if we are to have any chance of success, deep understanding of the human beings across the table from us, understanding anchored on near exquisite intelligence, will be essential.\

Fearing infiltration, Afghan army gives soldiers with ties to Pakistan an ultimatum
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Friday, February 17, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - In an effort to rid their army of Taliban infiltrators, Afghan officials have begun ordering soldiers with families in Pakistan to either move their relatives to Afghanistan or leave the military.
Afghan defense officials say the policy was crafted in response to a recent spate of incidents in which soldiers who were secretly working for the Taliban carried out attacks against NATO or Afghan troops. According to the army’s counterintelligence findings, those men often have ties to insurgent havens in Pakistan.
But the ultimatum could force painful choices for thousands of Afghan troops, and it is likely to stoke ethnic tensions just as the country’s leadership is seeking a negotiated end to the war. Purging members of the military with family in Pakistan also has the potential to aggravate long-troubled relations between Afghanistan and its eastern neighbor. Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad on Thursday in a bid to enlist Pakistan’s help in winding down the conflict.
The policy has not yet received final approval from the Defense Ministry, and Afghan officials are still weighing whether to apply it nationwide, even as implementation begins in some areas. Mere consideration of the policy reflects the depth of anxiety in Afghanistan — both among Afghan officials and Western powers — over sleeper agents within the military.
U.S. officials have expressed concern about the Taliban’s ability to penetrate Afghan security forces but have not publicly proposed concrete remedies. Afghan commanders say that the connection between sleeper agents and time spent in Pakistan has been well documented and that there is consensus on the need to act.
“When they’re in Pakistan, they can be influenced and intimidated by the enemy,” said Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the army chief of staff. “It’s a big concern, and it’s something we’re trying to change.”
Insurgent groups such as the Taliban are widely believed to operate from bases in Pakistan, and militants frequently travel back and forth across the border. Pakistan has denied long-standing allegations that it provides insurgents with support.
Afghan counterintelligence officials have already compiled lists of soldiers with ties to Pakistan. In some parts of the country, such as the battle-scarred south, soldiers on the list have been told: Move or leave the army.
“We’ve told them, ‘If you can’t move your families, you’ll be kicked out,’ ” said Col. Abdul Shokor, the top Afghan counterintelligence official in the Afghan army’s Kandahar-based 205th Corps.
On his desk, Shokor keeps a list of several hundred soldiers based in southern Afghanistan who visit Pakistan during their time off from the military. No deadline has yet been set for the families to move, he said.
If the new rule is implemented nationally, it could affect several thousand soldiers. Millions of Afghan refugees fled to Pakistan in recent decades to escape the fighting. About 1.7 million Afghans still live there, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Afghan soldiers often leave their families in Pakistan for security reasons.
The new policy would disproportionately affect Pashtuns, many of whom live in the border areas. The Taliban, which is predominantly Pashtun, has sought for years to argue that the Afghan government favors other ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Hostility among ethnic groups has been a key driver of war in Afghanistan for the past three decades, and it has the potential to become even more of a factor as Western forces withdraw.
Pashtuns have historically been underrepresented in the Afghan army, but Pashtun soldiers now make up 40 percent of it — roughly equal to their share of the overall population and a hard-won improvement from several years ago.
A closer look at recruits
Training the Afghan army has been a top U.S. priority, and the force stands at 170,000 troops. But after years of rapid growth, defense officials say it’s time to take a closer look at the quality and allegiance of soldiers rather than focusing on recruitment numbers.
“As we approach our ceiling, we’re able to be more selective about our soldiers,” Karimi said.
He insisted that the policy would not be meant as an affront to Pakistan, but as a means of strengthening the Afghan army.
After an infiltrator’s attack last month on French troops north of Kabul, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that his country’s troops would depart a year earlier than expected. The assailant had probably had contact with the Taliban in Pakistan, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet told reporters.
Shortly after the incident, the Afghan Defense Ministry sent top Afghan military officials a memo titled “Keeping the Enemy Out of the Army.” The memo highlighted the urgency of the infiltration problem and the need to make changes.
Attacks on foreign troops have inflamed tensions between Western trainers and Afghan recruits just as NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan appears to be waning. A report commissioned by the U.S. military said at least 58 Western military personnel were killed in 26 attacks by Afghan soldiers or police between May 2007 and May 2011, when the report was finished.“Such fratricide is fast leading to a crisis of trust between the two forces, if it hasn’t reached this point already,” the report concluded.
In Kandahar alone, four rogue Afghan soldiers have killed three American and two Australian soldiers in the past year. Shokor said that in each of those cases, “upon investigation, we found a relationship with Pakistan.”
Afghan officials are quick to point out that infiltrators don’t target only Western troops. Dozens of Afghan soldiers, police officers and top military officials have been killed by Taliban infiltrators in recent years, they say. Several months ago, Brig. Gen. Abdul Hamid, the top commander in southern Afghanistan, found an unexploded bomb under his desk. Last spring, a man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire inside the fortified Defense Ministry complex, intending to kill Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.
A senior Pentagon official played down the threat from Afghans with Pakistani relatives.
“Our strong sense is that the insider threat isn’t an organized effort. Insurgents are probably to blame in some cases, but sometimes it’s simply disaffected members of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]. And it’s worth noting that instances of Afghan-on-Afghan violence inside the ANSF are more frequent than ANSF-on-NATO attacks,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Afghan army has ramped up its counterintelligence operations over the past year. While its traditional vetting process required enlistees to get letters of endorsement from village elders and district governors, the army now pays increased attention to soldiers after they have been admitted into the armed forces, particularly when they are on leave and subject to Taliban threats. “We now have a special reconnaissance group to investigate what soldiers do on leave,” Hamid said.
Afghan officials have for years been weighing possible solutions to the problem of infiltration. Three years ago the country’s parliament issued a recommendation to the Defense Ministry to root out soldiers with ties to Pakistan, including those with families who own property there. The recommendation was not acted upon at the time, but it reflects the widespread sense among Afghan officials that Pakistan is at the root of their troubles.
“It’s all linked to Pakistan,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a member of the parliament’s defense subcommittee and its former chairwoman. “It’s crystal clear.”
Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

Freezing weather, cold-related diseases kill 10 children in Afghan province
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Continued freezing weather, snowfall and cold-related diseases have claimed the lives of 10 children in Badakhshan province, 315 km northeast of Kabul over the past two days, a local official said Friday.
"Ten children have lost their lives due to freezing weather, snowfall and cold-related diseases in Batasha village of Raghistan district over the past two days," spokesman for the provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh told Xinhua.
Many of the victims had contracted respiratory problems but succumbed to the curable illness due to lack of doctors, he said.
More than 50 people, with a majority of them being children, have lost their lives in Badakhshan and the neighboring Takhar province over the past month due to snowfall, avalanches and continued chilly weather.
Marouf also added the heavy snowfall over the past month has blocked several roads connecting some districts to the provincial capital Faizabad.

NATO soldier dies in Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- A soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) lost his life in Afghanistan on Thursday but in non-battle injury, a statement of the alliance released here on Friday said.
"An International Security Assistance Force service member died as a result of a non-battle related injury in eastern Afghanistan yesterday," the short statement confirmed.
It also did not reveal the nationality of the victim, saying it is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities.
Troops mostly from the U.S. have been stationed in the eastern region of Afghanistan.
So far this year, 41 service members with the NATO-led forces, with 31 of them Americans, have been killed in conflict-ridden Afghanistan.

For Punishment of Elder’s Misdeeds, Afghan Girl Pays the Price
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN February 16, 2012
ASADABAD, Afghanistan - Shakila, 8 at the time, was drifting off to sleep when a group of men carrying AK-47s barged in through the door. She recalls that they complained, as they dragged her off into the darkness, about how their family had been dishonored and about how they had not been paid.
It turns out that Shakila, who was abducted along with her cousin as part of a traditional Afghan form of justice known as “baad,” was the payment.
Although baad (also known as baadi) is illegal under Afghan and, most religious scholars say, Islamic law, the taking of girls as payment for misdeeds committed by their elders still appears to be flourishing. Shakila, because one of her uncles had run away with the wife of a district strongman, was taken and held for about a year. It was the district leader, furious at the dishonor that had been done to him, who sent his men to abduct her.
Shakila’s case is unusual both because she managed to escape and because she and her family agreed to share their plight with an outsider. The reaction of the girl’s father to the abduction also illustrates the difficulty in trying to change such a deeply rooted cultural practice: he expressed fury that she was abducted because, he said, he had already promised her in marriage to someone else.
“We did not know what was happening,” said Shakila, now about 10, who spoke softly as she repeated over and over her memory of being dragged from her family home. “They put us in a dark room with stone walls; it was dirty and they kept beating us with sticks and saying, ‘Your uncle ran away with our wife and dishonored us, and we will beat you in retaliation.’ ”
Despite being denounced by the United Nations as a “harmful traditional practice,” baad is pervasive in rural southern and eastern Afghanistan, areas that are heavily Pashtun, according to human rights workers, women’s advocates and aid experts. Baad involves giving away a young woman, often a child, into slavery and forced marriage. It is largely hidden because the girls are given to compensate for “shameful” crimes like murder and adultery and acts forbidden by custom, like elopement, say elders and women’s rights advocates.
The strength of the traditional justice system and the continuing use of baad is a sign both of Afghans’ lack of faith in the government’s justice system, which they say is corrupt, and their extreme sense of insecurity. Baad is most common in areas where it is dangerous for people to seek out government institutions. Instead of turning to the courts, they go to jirgas, assemblies of tribal elders, that use tribal law, which allows the exchange of women.
“There are two reasons people refuse the courts — first, the corrupt administration, which openly demands money for every single case, and second, instability,” said Hajji Mohammed Nader Khan, an elder from Helmand Province who often participates in judging cases that involve baad. “Also, in places where there are Taliban, they won’t allow people to go to courts and solve their problems.”
Advocates for women fear that progress made recently against baad will fade as NATO troops pull out and money for public awareness programs dwindles.
“Baad has decreased in Oruzgan over the last two years due to a strong public relations campaign that we conducted throughout the province,” said Marjana Kochai, the only woman on Oruzgan’s provincial council. “And we have been holding meetings with elders and strictly alerting them not to make such illegal and un-Islamic rulings.”
A Custom’s Deep Roots
The practice of trading women dates to before Islam, when nomadic tribes traveled Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts. Even today, outside Afghanistan’s few urban areas, many of these traditions have deep roots, experts on tribal justice systems said.
“For the nomads, there were no police, there was no court of law, no judge to organize the affairs of humans, so they resorted to the only things they had, which were violence and killing,” said Nasrine Gross, an Afghan-American sociologist who has studied the status of Afghan women.
“Then when a problem doesn’t get resolved,” Ms. Gross said, “you offer the only things you have: livestock is more precious than a girl because the livestock you can sell, so you give two rifles, one camel, five sheep and then the girls they can sell this way.”
The idea is that the giving of a girl to the aggrieved family as a de facto slave and having her marry a member of that family ties the two warring families together, so they are less likely to continue a blood feud. The practice also helps compensate the family for the labor of a lost relative.
And when the girl gives birth to children, the offspring are at least a symbolic replacement for the relative who has been lost.
However, that is little comfort for the girl, who symbolizes the family’s enemy and is completely unprepared both for the brutality she will encounter because of it and for the sexual relations often demanded of her at a young age.
“The problem with baad is it doesn’t normally appease the people,” Ms Gross said. “It appeases them to the extent that they don’t kill someone from the other side, but not enough to treat the girl right.”
There is no official count of the number of girls given each year in baad, but in Kunar Province, where Shakila’s case took place, the director of the women’s office and a female member of Kunar’s provincial council said that they were aware of one or two cases every month from the province and that many cases never came to light. They had not heard of Shakila’s situation.
A Heavy Toll on Women
A 2010 United Nations report on harmful traditional practices described baad as “still pervasive” in rural areas.
Interviews in nine Pashtun-majority provinces with government representatives, women on provincial councils, male elders and other prominent women produced a stream of stories of abuse, suicide and rape. They found that virtually everyone knew about the practice, many were ashamed of it and most people knew someone personally who had been affected by it. Afghanistan outlawed baad in 2009 when it enacted the Elimination of Violence Against Women Act, but enforcement has been spotty, especially in southern and eastern Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.
Shakila’s family, like many in rural Kunar Province, did not oppose baad, but objected that the jirga adjudicating her case had not yet issued its ruling and that Shakila had been betrothed as an infant to a cousin in Pakistan. Under the Pashtun code, the family said, she was not available to be given because she was the property of another man. (Such betrothals are illegal but common in rural Pashtun areas.)
“We did not mind giving girls,” said her father, Gul Zareen. “But she was not mine to give.”
Views of baad differ sharply between men and women, with more men seeing it as a way of preserving families and stopping blood feuds, and women seeing it in terms of the suffering of the young girl asked to pay for another’s wrongs.
“Giving baad has good and bad aspects,” said Fraidoon Mohmand, a member of Parliament from Nangarhar Province, who has led a number of jirgas. “The bad aspect is that you punish an innocent human for someone else’s wrongdoings, and the good aspect is that you rescue two families, two clans, from more bloodshed, death and misery.”
He also said he believed that a woman given in baad suffered only briefly.
“When you give a girl in baad, they are beaten maybe, maybe she will be in trouble for a year or two, but when she brings one or two babies into the world, everything will be forgotten and she will live as a normal member of the family,” he said.
Not so, said the Afghan women interviewed, especially if she is unlucky enough to give birth to a girl.
“The woman given to a family in baad will always be the miserable one,” said Nasima Shafiqzada, who is in charge of women’s affairs for Kunar Province. “She has to work a lot. She will be beaten. She has to listen to lots of bad language from the other females in the family.”
Shakila’s relatives were poor laborers who lived in the rural Naray district in Kunar Province near a small river not far from the border with Pakistan.
Shakila went to school and played with her brothers and was a healthy child, her relatives said. That changed after she was taken by Fazal Nabi’s family, part of the Gujar clan, a tribe in Kunar with a larger presence in Naray than the tribe Shakila was from.
‘They Tortured Us’
During her de facto imprisonment, Shakila and her cousin were allowed out of their dark room after three months and then only so that they could haul firewood from the mountains and lug pails of water from the river.
For the entire year or so that they were kept, neither girl was given a fresh set of clothes. For the first six months they were not even allowed to wash the ones they arrived in, turning the children into dirty-looking urchins who were that much easier for the family to hate. They were fed bread and water every other day.
“They tortured us in a way that no human being would treat another,” Shakila said.
She spoke softly and hid her face when a reporter asked her about the white scars on her forehead. “When they threw me against the stone wall,” she explained.
Her cousin escaped first, resulting in even more brutal treatment for Shakila, who was tethered inside again and beaten.
Allowed out only for her prayers, she managed to slip through the gate one day. To avoid detection, she made her way through underbrush to the village where her sister lived. When Shakila appeared at her sister’s door, she was so emaciated and dirty that her sister barely recognized her.
“She was almost finished,” Gul Zareen, her father, said. “She was so thin, she was like this,” he said, holding up an index finger and shaking his head. “She cried all the time, and now we are trying to feed her and she is slowly getting better.”
Within hours, the strongman and his guards began looking for Shakila. They searched her father’s compound, accused him of organizing her escape and threatened to kill every man in the family.
Terrified, Shakila’s father and the other relatives said they waited until dusk and then, taking almost nothing but the clothes on their backs, escaped over the mountains, walking by night along footpaths because the strongman’s guards were watching the only road.
Now living in Asadabad, the provincial capital, because they feel safer here, Shakila’s relatives said they were struggling. They left behind their few possessions, including their only cow and two goats.
Shakila’s father and uncle work as daily laborers, earning $4 a day when there is a job. The family’s small mud house has neither heat nor electricity, and cooking is done in a single stew pot over coals in the yard.
Longing to return to their village in Naray, the family members went to the courts to see if the prosecutor or judge could protect them from the Gujar clan if they returned. But the order they received from the police chief instructed them to turn to the local police in Naray for help.
Gul Zareen shook his head. The police chief is a kinsman of Fazal Nabi, the strongman who took Shakila, he said. “We cannot go back,” he said.
Shakila looked out the window into the squalid yard. “I don’t know about my future,” she said. “Whether it will be good or bad.”
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, and an employee of The New York Times from Kunar Province.

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