Tweet
Secret U.S. cable warned about Pakistani havens
By Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller, The Washington Post
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan sent a top-secret cable to Washington last month warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy, U.S. officials said.
The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing. Because of the intended secrecy of that message, Crocker sent it through CIA channels rather than the usual State Department ones.
The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.
These military officials have maintained for months that the strategy of targeting raids against Taliban leadership and building local Afghan governance is showing impressive results. But they warn that worsening conditions in Pakistan and the ability of insurgent groups to find haven there necessitates a larger American force than many in the Obama administration are advocating.
The United States is on course to reduce the size of its force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of this summer and shift from combat to more of an advisory role to Afghan forces by the middle of next year.
The coming drawdowns will put heavy pressure on the Afghan government in the east, where U.S. and Afghan forces have struggled to curb violence, in part because insurgents can flee across the border to Pakistan, U.S. officials said. The American frustration with insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan has long been a source of tension in the brittle relations between the two countries.
“The sanctuaries are a deal-killer for the [Afghan war] strategy,” said a senior defense official who is familiar with the ongoing debate and who, like several officials in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
In past years, U.S. military officials have argued that the best defense against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan was a stronger Afghan army and government. But with U.S. drawdowns looming, the need to directly address the sanctuaries seems more urgent.
The Haqqani network is responsible for some of the larger and more dramatic attacks on Kabul, including one on the U.S. Embassy last year, U.S. officials said.
The group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a major mujaheddin fighter in the CIA-backed effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He has relinquished control to his son, Sirajuddin, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and runs day-to-day operations from the network’s Pakistani base in Miran Shah.
The location has given the Haqqani leadership a measure of protection. The CIA has repeatedly refrained from launching missiles at known Haqqani targets, including a prominent religious school the network uses as a base of operations, out of concern for civilian casualties and the backlash that could ensue.
A stark message
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Crocker’s cable. “As a policy, we don’t comment as to the existence or substance of top-secret cables,” an embassy spokesperson said.
The cable has drawn attention in Washington because of its stark message and because American ambassadors rarely argue that the U.S. government must take more forceful action in another country. Officials familiar with the cable declined to name its primary recipient.
Crocker previously served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan during the George W. Bush administration and was brought out of retirement by President Obama. Crocker also built close ties to the military and to David H. Petraeus, now CIA director, when Crocker was the ambassador to Iraq and Petraeus was the top general there.
As commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus frequently voiced deep concern about the Haqqani group’s resilience.
The CIA has carried out dozens of drone strikes against Haqqani targets in Pakistan in recent years, while U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border have killed or captured Haqqani fighters at a rapid pace — only to see the flow of militants subside temporarily and then resume.
“There’s no debate about the importance of going after Haqqani . . . and Taliban militants who launch attacks into Afghanistan,” one U.S. official said. “Support for this is universal.”
Repeated vows to escalate the U.S. campaign against the Haqqani network have produced seemingly fleeting results. A CIA drone strike in October was described at the time by Obama administration officials as the opening salvo in a more aggressive assault against the group’s leadership in Pakistan. The missile attack killed Janbaz Zadran, described by CIA analysts as the main organizer of attacks against coalition targets in Kabul and southeast Afghanistan.
But the timing of Crocker’s cable — sent more than two months after that CIA strike — suggests that U.S. officials in Kabul have yet to see a shift in momentum or measurable impact. The U.S. efforts have been hampered by the group’s populated sanctuary, its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and diplomatic ruptures that caused pauses in the CIA drone campaign.
Unusual mode of delivery
The somewhat unusual mode of transmission for Crocker’s cable suggests that its contents were particularly sensitive, U.S. officials said.
American ambassadors typically send messages to Washington through State Department communications networks. But U.S. officials said cables containing references to intelligence sources or highly classified threat data can be sent across CIA networks, which are more secure. The CIA declined to comment on the cable.
Some current and former U.S. officials have questioned whether the Haqqani network presents an existential threat to the Afghan government.
The Haqqani network’s area of operation in Afghanistan is limited primarily to a handful of provinces in the east, along the border with Pakistan. Some U.S. officials have said the Afghan government’s corruption and its inability to provide services to its people pose a greater threat to the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan than the Haqqani network or even the Taliban.
Network seen as a proxy
CIA strikes in Pakistan were suspended for weeks last year after the arrest of an agency contractor on charges of killing two Pakistani men in Lahore and, later, after the U.S. strafing of a Pakistani border post in November that left two dozen of the country’s soldiers dead.
Pakistan has been unwilling to use its military against the Haqqani network, which is seen by many as a Pakistani proxy that is careful to avoid provoking its host, instead directing its attacks against American, Indian and Afghan targets.
Though secret, Crocker’s cable was the latest expression of American exasperation with the situation.
In September, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vented publicly, testifying before Congress that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
U.S. officials subsequently said Mullen’s characterization overstated the relationship, but many remain convinced that the network couldn’t operate without tacit support from Pakistan.
NATO Pulls Out of Afghan Ministries After Fatal Shootings
VOA News February 25, 2012
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan has recalled all NATO personnel from Afghan ministries after the killing of two U.S. officers in a highly secure command center in the Afghan Interior Ministry.
General John Allen released a statement just hours after Saturday's shooting, saying he is withdrawing staff from the ministries “for obvious force protection reasons.”
The Afghan Taliban has claimed responsibility for the shooting of the two officers, who served on NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Reports from Kabul say the victims are a U.S. colonel and a major, but that information has not been confirmed.
The Taliban released a statement Saturday saying the killings are retaliation for the burning of Qurans by NATO forces.
NATO said in a statement Saturday that an individual “turned his weapon against” the service members, but did not provide details on who the shooter or the victims were.
Violence continued across Afghanistan Saturday, in the the fifth straight day of protests over the burning of Qurans.
Hundreds of rock-throwing protesters attacked a United Nations compound in northern Afghanistan. Officials say at least three people died and 47 were injured in the melee in Kunduz.
Authorities say at least 27 people have died since Tuesday after reports surfaced that NATO troops had burned copies of the Quran at Bagram Air Base near Kabul.
U.S. President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have apologized for the desecration of the Muslim holy book, but the apologies have done little to quash the outrage in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's defense ministry says six Afghan soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded Saturday while trying to defuse a roadside bomb.
The ministry says the incident happened in the Muqur district of western Badghis province.
Quran-Burning Protests Escalate
At Least Seven People Killed in the Deadliest of the Clashes in Afghanistan; Demonstrators Tried to Storm U.S. Consulate
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM FEBRUARY 25, 2012
KABUL - Afghanistan's government and religious leaders struggled to mollify angry worshippers Friday, as a new wave of deadly protests against the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base swept across the country.
While most of Friday's demonstrations ended peacefully, several degenerated into turbulent clashes between Afghan police and marchers chanting anti-American slogans.
The deadliest of these clashes took place in Herat, a normally tranquil city in western Afghanistan, where demonstrators tried to march toward the U.S. consulate compound. At least seven people were killed and 65 injured during confrontations with the Afghan security forces in the province, according to Mahiddin Noori, a spokesman for the Herat governor.
At one point during the unsuccessful attempt to reach the U.S. Consulate, three demonstrators were killed when they set fire to a police truck equipped with heavy ammunition. The truck exploded amid the group of police and protesters.
In total, at least two dozen people have been killed, including two U.S. soldiers, in four days of violence that erupted after U.S.-led coalition forces at the Bagram Airfield tried to burn a truckload of Islamic literature, including copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Afghan workers said they rescued the books from the incinerator and then smuggled them off the base to show to local leaders. That ignited an escalating series of violent protests that have targeted coalition military bases, Afghan government buildings, United Nations offices and other symbols of Western presence in the country.
The U.S. has tried to mute the anger by launching an investigation and repeatedly apologizing for the occurrence. On Thursday, President Barack Obama expressed his "deep regret" to President Hamid Karzai in a personal letter to the Afghan president in which he vowed to hold to account those responsible for the Bagram incident.
U.S. military officials have said the books were set aside for destruction because Afghan detainees at the Parwan military detention center at Bagram were using them to trade messages and share extremist writing. But it remains unclear why the soldiers decided to burn copies of the Quran—a particularly incendiary affront to Muslims who view the book as the sacred word of God as relayed to the Prophet Muhammad.
On the eve of Friday's protests, Mr. Karzai and the country's religious leaders tried to limit the violence by urging people to express their anger peacefully. Preachers in mosques across Kabul sought to reinforce that message during Friday's weekly prayers.
"Those who burned the Quran are illiterate," thundered a preacher in Kabul's Khaled Ibn Walid mosque. "They don't know what religion is, but for us the solution is not violent demonstrations that kill our own people."
Similar messages in mosques across Kabul prevented chaotic anti-American marches from sweeping the city center.
Martine van Biljert, co-director of the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network, described the day as better than people feared.
"It may be difficult to explain to the rest of the world, but in a way this is what relative restraint looks like in a country awash with weapons and frustration, and that has suffered for decades from the young men itching for a fight and the leaders accustomed to using religiously fueled violence as a political tool," she wrote on her group's blog.
Across the country and in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghan police trying to block the marchers from converging on Western compounds clashed with protesters.
In Herat, shooting erupted as hundreds of protesters, some of them armed, tried to march toward the U.S. consulate, local officials said. Outside the city, demonstrators burned two police stations, Mr. Noori said.
As worshippers gathered for Friday prayers, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, urged Afghans to be patient and wait for the results of the investigation.
"Working together with the Afghan leadership is the only way for us to correct this major error and ensure that it never happens again," he said in a statement.
On Thursday night, Gen. Allen, accompanied by the Afghan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Karimi, flew to a joint U.S.-Afghan base in eastern Afghanistan where an Afghan soldier opened fire on American forces during a protest earlier that day, killing two.
"Now is not the time for revenge," Gen. Allen told U.S. soldiers gathered at the small base in Nangarhar province. "Now is the time to look deep inside your souls and remember your mission. Now is how we show the Afghan people that, as bad as that action was at Bagram, it was unintentional, and American's and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this." —Ziaulhaq Sultani and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Pakistanis Press Taliban to Start Talks With Afghans
New York Times By DECLAN WALSH and ERIC SCHMITT February 24, 2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan called for the first time on the Afghan Taliban to start talks with the Kabul government on Friday, lending diplomatic momentum to an American-sponsored peace process that is anchored in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, but which experts say is still advancing at a perilously slow pace.
After a phone discussion with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on Tuesday, the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, issued a statement calling on the Taliban and “all other Afghan groups, including Hizb-e-Islami,” a pro-Taliban militant group with historical ties to Pakistan, to participate in what is referred to as a reconciliation process.
The statement, which came less than 24 hours after the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, in London, is potentially significant because the Taliban leadership — and many of its fighters — are believed to be sheltering on Pakistani soil.
In January, Pakistan facilitated the fledgling process in Qatar, where the United States wants the Taliban to set up a liaison office for the purpose of conducting negotiations, by allowing Taliban representatives to travel to the Persian Gulf state.
Mr. Gilani’s diplomatic overture appeared to be a further admission of his country’s influence over the insurgents — although the nature of that influence is hotly debated.
While Afghan officials assert that Pakistan can deliver the militant leadership to the negotiating table, Pakistanis say otherwise.
“The Taliban are not going to wait for a statement from the Pakistani leadership to begin talks,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a retired Pakistani diplomat.
Less clear, still, is the Taliban stance. Mr. Mohmand, a former ambassador to Kabul, said that a “sizable segment” of the Taliban viewed the talks as “an American gimmick intended to cause a split in their ranks.”
Pakistan’s stance on the Taliban is also a function of its volatile relationship with Washington, which has been effectively on hold since November, when American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a confused cross-border strike.
American plans to move past that case, and reboot diplomatic relations, were stymied this week by riots in Afghanistan after Korans were burned at the country’s large NATO base on Monday night.
Under a carefully coordinated plan, the military had planned for Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make a formal apology for the American strike via telephone to Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on Thursday, according to a Defense Department official.
Mrs. Clinton was to have amplified on that apology in her meeting with Ms. Khar, the official added.
But the plan was upset by the violent rioting in Afghanistan.
Obama administration officials quickly calculated that too many regrets at once would hand ammunition to Republican presidential candidates, the official added.
A senior Pakistani official said his government also wanted the American apology to be delayed until at least mid-March, when the Pakistani Parliament is scheduled to debate the country’s policy toward America.
Michael Semple, a Afghanistan expert and former adviser to the European Union Mission in Kabul, said Mr. Gilani’s statement on Friday was more about politics than talks. “This is about Pakistan, Afghanistan and America — not the Taliban,” he said.
But, he added, rhetoric alone was not sufficient to jump-start the talks, and in the meantime all players were running out of time to make peace.
“There’s all sorts of things the Pakistanis can do to move towards reconciliation, but a statement won’t convince anyone it is actually happening,” he said. “Reconciliation is doable, but the time to do it is in 2012. And I don’t think the current trajectory will get us there.”
Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
NATO Recall As Afghan Protests Bring New Deaths, Storming Of UN Compound
February 25, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
At least four people were killed when thousands of protesters surrounded a UN compound in the northern Afghan city of Konduz to condemn the recent burning of Korans at a NATO base.
A health department director in Konduz, Dr. Saad Mukhtar, said local hospitals had reported four dead and some 50 others injured in the violence.
Other sources were citing as many as seven deaths as the UN facility was ablaze.
Police spokesman Sarwar Husaini said officers managed to stop protesters from entering the UN compound and that reinforcements had been sent to protect the complex.
He also said protesters burned cars and shops in Konduz. Witnesses described columns of smoke hanging over parts of the city.
NATO Recall After Ministry Killings
The protest violence was accompanied by a report that NATO was recalling all its staff working at ministries in the Afghan capital after two U.S. officers were shot dead inside the Interior Ministry.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, said that for "protection reasons" he has taken "immediate measures" to recall staff.
NATO said in a statement that two of its service members were killed on February 25, without revealing their nationalities. But Western news media quoted Afghan officials as saying privately that two American advisers were killed.
The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, saying they were in retaliation for the Koran burnings.
The Taliban have urged all Afghans to retaliate with violence against foreign troops.
Scattered Unrest
February 25 marked the fifth day of demonstrations over what U.S. officials say was the mistaken burning of copies of the Islamic holy book, for which President Barack Obama and others have apologized.
There were continuing protests in at least four provinces of Afghanistan over the incineration of Korans -- which prisoners were allegedly using to pass messages -- at the U.S. air base at Bagram near Kabul.
In Laghman Province, police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said some 1,000 protesters gathered in Mihtarlam for what began as a peaceful demonstration. But the protesters soon started throwing stones at police and then tried to attack the governor's residence.
Hospital officials told AFP that 15 protesters had been brought in with gunshot wounds from the unrest there.
Government and local police sources said rallies in the eastern provinces of Logar and Nangarhar, and the central province of Sari Pul, were largely peaceful.
Reports of the Koran burnings -- which came to light after workers discovered charred copies of the Islamic holy book among refuse -- have sparked Afghan protests in which at least 21 people had been killed through February 24.
President Hamid Karzai's government and the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan have appealed for calm and restraint, fearful that Taliban insurgents are trying to exploit the anti-American backlash.
U.S. President Obama sent a letter of apology to Karzai, saying the incident was a mistake and vowing to hold accountable whoever was responsible. U.S. authorities had already announced an investigation into the incinerations.
Karzai has blamed a U.S. military officer.
Based on AP and AFP reporting
U.S. Seeks Afghan Exit Routes
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE FEBRUARY 25, 2012
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials visited the capitals of all five Central Asian republics this week amid a broader diplomatic push to negotiate new transportation agreements that will enable the military to withdraw from Afghanistan when the time comes without having to rely mainly on land routes through Pakistan.
Officials said a briefing team drawn from several U.S. agencies visited Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all former Soviet republics that are close to or share borders with Afghanistan.
The officials described the trip as part of routine U.S. engagement in the region, but the visits come as the U.S. lays the groundwork for withdrawal of combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
U.S. and allied troops in landlocked Afghanistan depend heavily on supplies from what is known as the Northern Distribution Network, a system of rail, sea and truck routes that begins at Baltic and Black sea ports and winds across Central Asia.
Traffic along the route is limited by agreements to "nonlethal" cargo such as food, fuel and construction equipment, and it goes only one way: into Afghanistan. U.S. officials now want to "reverse" the network, so the American military has more options to move hardware out of Afghanistan.
Two-way transit along the Northern Distribution Network "creates welcome redundancy in a logistically challenging region," said Emily Horne, a State Department spokeswoman.
Underscoring the urgency are rocky U.S. relations with Pakistan, once the primary route for overland cargo bound for Afghanistan. In late November, Islamabad closed key border crossings into Afghanistan to North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply convoys following a U.S. airstrike that claimed the lives of Pakistani troops. Those crossings remain closed, forcing U.S. logisticians to reroute cargo into Afghanistan.
Even before the border closure, U.S. logisticians had steadily begun reducing the flow of cargo through Pakistan and shifting more supply to the Northern Distribution Network, because of attacks on supply convoys. According to figures provided by U.S. Transportation Command, the military between late September and late January moved about 25% of its Afghanistan-bound cargo through Pakistan and 41% through the northern route, with the rest flown in directly by air or from ports in the Middle East. In the year-earlier period, 34% of cargo came in through Pakistan and 28% through the north.
Reversing cargo throughput on the northern network may require intense negotiation: The opening of the Northern Distribution Network in 2009 was preceded by months of high-level discussions about customs clearances, permitting procedures and cargo routing.
"We have made great diplomatic efforts to complete the [network], get the various lines linked up, and have the ability to move equipment in and out of Afghanistan," a U.S. official said.
Expanding the network to move supplies out Afghanistan also means figuring out how to tie down and transport different kinds of equipment on railroad cars and truck beds along different routes. A defense official said planners were "testing the routes and the options for transport" of a variety of hardware from Afghanistan to make sure there would be no sticking points along the way.
The meetings in Central Asian capitals also come amid concern in the region about Afghanistan after the departure of U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. government official said the briefing team also updated Central Asian counterparts about the current situation there, where violence has escalated after a wave of protests over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base.
"Naturally, the countries that share borders with Afghanistan have ongoing interests in regional security and stability, including counternarcotics efforts and border security," the official said. "These briefings were part of our regular efforts to exchange information on these issues and update and coordinate with our bilateral partners in the region."
The Obama administration has moved to bolster ties with Uzbekistan, one key country along the northern transportation route. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently waived a ban on military assistance to the country, a move that would temporarily allow the U.S. to provide nonlethal defensive equipment to Tashkent.
Uzbekistan's railway network shares a link with northern Afghanistan; a border crossing to Hairatan, Afghanistan, is a transit point for truck, rail and river barge cargo.
Asylum Concerns Haunt Western Exchange Programs For Afghan Students
February 25, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Malali Bashir
Since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and the establishment of the elected government of Hamid Karzai,
One of the projects that foreign governments have funded since the Taliban was ousted and a UN-backed government established in Kabul is an Afghan student exchange, with the aim of brightening that country's future and increasing cross-border understanding across borders.
But such exchanges have been troubled by concerns that too many of the visitors bother returning to help rebuild Afghan society.
The fact is that only a few Afghan universities provide master's-level studies -- and those are just in literature. So there is an acute need for a wider range of fields for higher studies for Afghan students to choose.
To fill the gap, many countries invite Afghan students to attend university in the West. The United States and Britain have some of the most prestigious scholarships -- Fulbright and Chevening, respectively. Apart from government-funded programs, private and nonprofit projects also provide Afghans with educational opportunities around the world.
Afghan students are provided scholarships and fellowships for their higher aptitude and capability in return for a promise that they will return to Afghanistan after their study programs are over to help rebuild their country. To ensure this -- taking Afghan family and social structure into account -- restrictions are imposed such as a ban on taking family members as dependents along during their studies. The rule doesn't apply to students from countries whose governments pay half of the scholarships provided by foreign programs.
But despite the rule, many Afghan students never come back; they vanish before or soon after the completion of their study-abroad programs. Perceptions of a deteriorating security situation, news of the looming exit of NATO troops, and the woeful state of the critical infrastructure mean Afghan young people might also lose hope for a better future in Afghanistan.
For some Afghans, becoming a scholarship grantee has been like getting a free ticket to jump from the United States to seek asylum in Canada. Harris Najib is a Fulbright alumnus who works as a case manager with a nonprofit in Calgary, Canada. He says he didn't return to Afghanistan because of political instability.
He says Afghan students abroad "have now had the experience of engaging in dialogue without the fear of being silenced, shunned, or ridiculed," adding candidly, "A grim political environment in Afghanistan and the possibility of a Taliban takeover diminish the appetite for returning and contributing to the process of rebuilding Afghanistan."
Some criticize the U.S. State Department for not following up with employment opportunities in Afghanistan so the students gain confidence through a financially secure future there.
Ateeq Nosher, a Harvard University alumnus who lives in Kabul and works as managing director at Apex-2 Consulting, says "the job opportunities for those who come from the U.S. and Canada or other Western countries are relatively higher than those for students produced locally or in neighboring countries."
Najib adds: "Many Afghan students who have come to study in the U.S. post-Taliban have a decent amount of professional experience working for the UN or other international agencies back home. They can therefore compete for jobs with their North American or European peers within certain sectors. And, if they can find a job in Europe or North America and are able to guarantee a better future for themselves and their families, some would rather not return to Afghanistan, and wait out the current political uncertainty."
Apart from concerns over security and employment opportunities, other issues face graduates returning from their Western studies on a daily basis in Afghanistan.
"The well-educated segment of the population gets disappointed when they see weak people leading them," Nosher says. "They feel they aren't contributing to policies because [at the] end of the day, those policies are influenced by political appointees."
Students seeking asylum obviously think of their individual benefits hindering the opportunities for the rest of the batches to come.
Although there are no numbers available on students not returning to Afghanistan after going to Western countries as exchange students, one program appears to have gotten fed up with such students using their scholarship programs to seek asylum. Last year, the United States suspended its highly regarded YES youth-exchange program. Begun in 2004, YES invited hundreds of Afghan students to the U.S., but around half those students fled to Canada to claim asylum. NPR recently quoted embassy officials saying they want to restart the YES program, but only if they can ensure that students won't jump the program for asylum purposes.
The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States -- part of the U.S.-Canada Smart Border Action Plan -- aims to prevent people from filing for asylum in a country other than the one they initially entered, potentially stemming the flow unless a family member there has agreed to sponsor them.
Apart from the no-dependents rule for students, mature applicants are considered more committed to the programs and thus reliable. Dr. Maria Beebe of Afghan eQuality Alliances at Washington State University told blogger Bob McCarty about having a more selective criteria to ensure the return of Afghan students:
"So, for example, we can say only directors and assistant director levels would be considered. At that level, we will also get the older (more mature) students who have children and will have more compelling reasons to go back to Afghanistan."
Detractors might argue that such an approach contradicts the aim of providing an equal opportunity to all talented Afghans -- and particularly lets down Afghan young people, its potential future leaders -- in higher education. On the other hand, the no-dependents rule becomes irrelevant if mature single students enter into relationships with non-Afghans and decide to remain with their partners abroad.
AFGHANISTAN: Ill-prepared for cold snap
DUBAI, 24 February 2012 (IRIN) - At least 150 people in Afghanistan have died in the past month after some of the coldest weather for years. The deaths - mainly of those without adequate food, housing or heating in Kabul and the northern province of Badakhshan - have prompted some to ask how this can happen given that the country has received billions of dollars of aid since the Taliban regime fell in 2002.
Sediq Hassani, director of policy at the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said every possible effort had been made to stock food and other items in the most at-risk areas, but acknowledged: “We were not 100 percent successful. There were districts to which, due to bad roads, we couldn’t send food items before winter started.”
He blamed lack of investment by the government and international community in the last decade, but one UN official told IRIN the international community has failed to prioritize disaster reduction management in Afghanistan.
“The ones who died were mostly the children of internally displaced persons who live in tents and mud-huts in Kabul and those poor families in other parts of the country who can’t afford to keep their homes warm,” said Health Ministry spokesman Kargar Norughli.
“In the last few days, 35 children were killed by pneumonia in two districts of Badakhshan Province and more than 30 others by avalanches in the last few weeks,” Abdul Marouf Rasekh, a spokesperson for the governor of Badakhshan said.
“I thought everybody was dead after an avalanche hit our village,” Ghulam Yahya, 48, from Eshkashim District in Badakhshan Province, told IRIN in Faizabad, the provincial capital. “I saw one of our relatives die after being trapped in the snow for hours. Many houses were destroyed by the avalanche.”
NGO Save The Children has launched a rapid response to get help to families as more heavy snowfall is predicted for this coming week and temperatures are expected to drop as low as minus 17 degrees centigrade.
Art in the streets of Kabul
'If we can do graffiti all over the city, there will be nobody who doesn't know about art'
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Friday 24 February 2012
Kabul - Inside the blackened ruin of Kabul's cultural centre, a spray-painting of a woman in a burqa sits at the foot of a staircase to nowhere, beside a line of poetry mourning everything that has been lost to Afghanistan in three decades of violence.
The painting is the work of Shamsia Hassani, 24, probably her country's first serious graffiti artist.
"The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?" is her translation of the line, written under gaping holes gouged through the concrete walls by shells when battles raged through the area.
"When I heard this poem, I thought how it was about the situation in Afghanistan. A lot of people died in the war; now the situation is better, but those people cannot come back," said Hassani.
An associate professor of sculpture at Kabul University, she draws, paints in oil, and is a founding member of a contemporary art collective, Rosht, or "growth". She was introduced to graffiti when a British artist, Chu, flew out in late 2010 to hold a week-long course in street art.
She has embraced the discipline. Spray cans and stencils have more impact than traditional art, she says, because the latter is a luxury.
"If you have an exhibition, most uneducated people won't even know about it."
" But if you have art like graffiti in the street, everyone can see that If we can do graffiti all over the city, there will be nobody who doesn't know about art."
The obstacles in a city at war, policed by jittery security forces, discouraged most other students on Chu's course, even though the high walls and giant concrete blast barriers are a tempting blank canvas.
For women, there is also street harassment; even those who go out wearing the all-enveloping burqa can meet leering compliments on their hands and ankles.
So Hassani works in industrial yards and abandoned buildings, such as the cultural centre.
Or she does fantasy graffiti. "If you stand in the street, you face problems; because of this I started a new style of graffiti. I take pictures of places I like in the city, open them in a programme like Photoshop, and do digital designs. Or I print out a picture of the street and then do graffiti with a paintbrush. If you scan it back, it looks like real graffiti, but of course it isn't."
A lot of her work features women in burqas, but with a modern silhouette, with hips and sharp shoulders; or fish, trapped and silent in their watery universe.
Hassani's family are originally from Kandahar, Taliban's heartland, but she was born in Iran where her parents were refugees.
"I started art like everyone, when I was a child, but most people give it up. I had no teacher, but I continued."
When she reached ninth grade, when art classes begin in Iran, she was told they were not open to Afghans, so she studied accountancy instead.
When the family returned to Kabul, she made up for lost time at the University art department, but chaffed at the traditional bias, and started exploring contemporary art. Now as a professor she hopes to start a graffiti class and bring art to the city.
"If just 20% of students were interested, if every year we graffiti twenty walls around Kabul, in two or three years we will have lots of art on walls around the city."
"Art can bring change, I am sure. If people see an artwork, it will perhaps only cause a small shock to their mind, but that can grow and grow."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller, The Washington Post
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan sent a top-secret cable to Washington last month warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy, U.S. officials said.
The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing. Because of the intended secrecy of that message, Crocker sent it through CIA channels rather than the usual State Department ones.
The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.
These military officials have maintained for months that the strategy of targeting raids against Taliban leadership and building local Afghan governance is showing impressive results. But they warn that worsening conditions in Pakistan and the ability of insurgent groups to find haven there necessitates a larger American force than many in the Obama administration are advocating.
The United States is on course to reduce the size of its force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of this summer and shift from combat to more of an advisory role to Afghan forces by the middle of next year.
The coming drawdowns will put heavy pressure on the Afghan government in the east, where U.S. and Afghan forces have struggled to curb violence, in part because insurgents can flee across the border to Pakistan, U.S. officials said. The American frustration with insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan has long been a source of tension in the brittle relations between the two countries.
“The sanctuaries are a deal-killer for the [Afghan war] strategy,” said a senior defense official who is familiar with the ongoing debate and who, like several officials in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
In past years, U.S. military officials have argued that the best defense against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan was a stronger Afghan army and government. But with U.S. drawdowns looming, the need to directly address the sanctuaries seems more urgent.
The Haqqani network is responsible for some of the larger and more dramatic attacks on Kabul, including one on the U.S. Embassy last year, U.S. officials said.
The group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a major mujaheddin fighter in the CIA-backed effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He has relinquished control to his son, Sirajuddin, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and runs day-to-day operations from the network’s Pakistani base in Miran Shah.
The location has given the Haqqani leadership a measure of protection. The CIA has repeatedly refrained from launching missiles at known Haqqani targets, including a prominent religious school the network uses as a base of operations, out of concern for civilian casualties and the backlash that could ensue.
A stark message
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Crocker’s cable. “As a policy, we don’t comment as to the existence or substance of top-secret cables,” an embassy spokesperson said.
The cable has drawn attention in Washington because of its stark message and because American ambassadors rarely argue that the U.S. government must take more forceful action in another country. Officials familiar with the cable declined to name its primary recipient.
Crocker previously served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan during the George W. Bush administration and was brought out of retirement by President Obama. Crocker also built close ties to the military and to David H. Petraeus, now CIA director, when Crocker was the ambassador to Iraq and Petraeus was the top general there.
As commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus frequently voiced deep concern about the Haqqani group’s resilience.
The CIA has carried out dozens of drone strikes against Haqqani targets in Pakistan in recent years, while U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border have killed or captured Haqqani fighters at a rapid pace — only to see the flow of militants subside temporarily and then resume.
“There’s no debate about the importance of going after Haqqani . . . and Taliban militants who launch attacks into Afghanistan,” one U.S. official said. “Support for this is universal.”
Repeated vows to escalate the U.S. campaign against the Haqqani network have produced seemingly fleeting results. A CIA drone strike in October was described at the time by Obama administration officials as the opening salvo in a more aggressive assault against the group’s leadership in Pakistan. The missile attack killed Janbaz Zadran, described by CIA analysts as the main organizer of attacks against coalition targets in Kabul and southeast Afghanistan.
But the timing of Crocker’s cable — sent more than two months after that CIA strike — suggests that U.S. officials in Kabul have yet to see a shift in momentum or measurable impact. The U.S. efforts have been hampered by the group’s populated sanctuary, its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and diplomatic ruptures that caused pauses in the CIA drone campaign.
Unusual mode of delivery
The somewhat unusual mode of transmission for Crocker’s cable suggests that its contents were particularly sensitive, U.S. officials said.
American ambassadors typically send messages to Washington through State Department communications networks. But U.S. officials said cables containing references to intelligence sources or highly classified threat data can be sent across CIA networks, which are more secure. The CIA declined to comment on the cable.
Some current and former U.S. officials have questioned whether the Haqqani network presents an existential threat to the Afghan government.
The Haqqani network’s area of operation in Afghanistan is limited primarily to a handful of provinces in the east, along the border with Pakistan. Some U.S. officials have said the Afghan government’s corruption and its inability to provide services to its people pose a greater threat to the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan than the Haqqani network or even the Taliban.
Network seen as a proxy
CIA strikes in Pakistan were suspended for weeks last year after the arrest of an agency contractor on charges of killing two Pakistani men in Lahore and, later, after the U.S. strafing of a Pakistani border post in November that left two dozen of the country’s soldiers dead.
Pakistan has been unwilling to use its military against the Haqqani network, which is seen by many as a Pakistani proxy that is careful to avoid provoking its host, instead directing its attacks against American, Indian and Afghan targets.
Though secret, Crocker’s cable was the latest expression of American exasperation with the situation.
In September, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vented publicly, testifying before Congress that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
U.S. officials subsequently said Mullen’s characterization overstated the relationship, but many remain convinced that the network couldn’t operate without tacit support from Pakistan.
NATO Pulls Out of Afghan Ministries After Fatal Shootings
VOA News February 25, 2012
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan has recalled all NATO personnel from Afghan ministries after the killing of two U.S. officers in a highly secure command center in the Afghan Interior Ministry.
General John Allen released a statement just hours after Saturday's shooting, saying he is withdrawing staff from the ministries “for obvious force protection reasons.”
The Afghan Taliban has claimed responsibility for the shooting of the two officers, who served on NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Reports from Kabul say the victims are a U.S. colonel and a major, but that information has not been confirmed.
The Taliban released a statement Saturday saying the killings are retaliation for the burning of Qurans by NATO forces.
NATO said in a statement Saturday that an individual “turned his weapon against” the service members, but did not provide details on who the shooter or the victims were.
Violence continued across Afghanistan Saturday, in the the fifth straight day of protests over the burning of Qurans.
Hundreds of rock-throwing protesters attacked a United Nations compound in northern Afghanistan. Officials say at least three people died and 47 were injured in the melee in Kunduz.
Authorities say at least 27 people have died since Tuesday after reports surfaced that NATO troops had burned copies of the Quran at Bagram Air Base near Kabul.
U.S. President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have apologized for the desecration of the Muslim holy book, but the apologies have done little to quash the outrage in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's defense ministry says six Afghan soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded Saturday while trying to defuse a roadside bomb.
The ministry says the incident happened in the Muqur district of western Badghis province.
Quran-Burning Protests Escalate
At Least Seven People Killed in the Deadliest of the Clashes in Afghanistan; Demonstrators Tried to Storm U.S. Consulate
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM FEBRUARY 25, 2012
KABUL - Afghanistan's government and religious leaders struggled to mollify angry worshippers Friday, as a new wave of deadly protests against the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base swept across the country.
While most of Friday's demonstrations ended peacefully, several degenerated into turbulent clashes between Afghan police and marchers chanting anti-American slogans.
The deadliest of these clashes took place in Herat, a normally tranquil city in western Afghanistan, where demonstrators tried to march toward the U.S. consulate compound. At least seven people were killed and 65 injured during confrontations with the Afghan security forces in the province, according to Mahiddin Noori, a spokesman for the Herat governor.
At one point during the unsuccessful attempt to reach the U.S. Consulate, three demonstrators were killed when they set fire to a police truck equipped with heavy ammunition. The truck exploded amid the group of police and protesters.
In total, at least two dozen people have been killed, including two U.S. soldiers, in four days of violence that erupted after U.S.-led coalition forces at the Bagram Airfield tried to burn a truckload of Islamic literature, including copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Afghan workers said they rescued the books from the incinerator and then smuggled them off the base to show to local leaders. That ignited an escalating series of violent protests that have targeted coalition military bases, Afghan government buildings, United Nations offices and other symbols of Western presence in the country.
The U.S. has tried to mute the anger by launching an investigation and repeatedly apologizing for the occurrence. On Thursday, President Barack Obama expressed his "deep regret" to President Hamid Karzai in a personal letter to the Afghan president in which he vowed to hold to account those responsible for the Bagram incident.
U.S. military officials have said the books were set aside for destruction because Afghan detainees at the Parwan military detention center at Bagram were using them to trade messages and share extremist writing. But it remains unclear why the soldiers decided to burn copies of the Quran—a particularly incendiary affront to Muslims who view the book as the sacred word of God as relayed to the Prophet Muhammad.
On the eve of Friday's protests, Mr. Karzai and the country's religious leaders tried to limit the violence by urging people to express their anger peacefully. Preachers in mosques across Kabul sought to reinforce that message during Friday's weekly prayers.
"Those who burned the Quran are illiterate," thundered a preacher in Kabul's Khaled Ibn Walid mosque. "They don't know what religion is, but for us the solution is not violent demonstrations that kill our own people."
Similar messages in mosques across Kabul prevented chaotic anti-American marches from sweeping the city center.
Martine van Biljert, co-director of the independent Afghanistan Analysts Network, described the day as better than people feared.
"It may be difficult to explain to the rest of the world, but in a way this is what relative restraint looks like in a country awash with weapons and frustration, and that has suffered for decades from the young men itching for a fight and the leaders accustomed to using religiously fueled violence as a political tool," she wrote on her group's blog.
Across the country and in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghan police trying to block the marchers from converging on Western compounds clashed with protesters.
In Herat, shooting erupted as hundreds of protesters, some of them armed, tried to march toward the U.S. consulate, local officials said. Outside the city, demonstrators burned two police stations, Mr. Noori said.
As worshippers gathered for Friday prayers, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, urged Afghans to be patient and wait for the results of the investigation.
"Working together with the Afghan leadership is the only way for us to correct this major error and ensure that it never happens again," he said in a statement.
On Thursday night, Gen. Allen, accompanied by the Afghan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Karimi, flew to a joint U.S.-Afghan base in eastern Afghanistan where an Afghan soldier opened fire on American forces during a protest earlier that day, killing two.
"Now is not the time for revenge," Gen. Allen told U.S. soldiers gathered at the small base in Nangarhar province. "Now is the time to look deep inside your souls and remember your mission. Now is how we show the Afghan people that, as bad as that action was at Bagram, it was unintentional, and American's and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this." —Ziaulhaq Sultani and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Pakistanis Press Taliban to Start Talks With Afghans
New York Times By DECLAN WALSH and ERIC SCHMITT February 24, 2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan called for the first time on the Afghan Taliban to start talks with the Kabul government on Friday, lending diplomatic momentum to an American-sponsored peace process that is anchored in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, but which experts say is still advancing at a perilously slow pace.
After a phone discussion with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on Tuesday, the Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, issued a statement calling on the Taliban and “all other Afghan groups, including Hizb-e-Islami,” a pro-Taliban militant group with historical ties to Pakistan, to participate in what is referred to as a reconciliation process.
The statement, which came less than 24 hours after the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, in London, is potentially significant because the Taliban leadership — and many of its fighters — are believed to be sheltering on Pakistani soil.
In January, Pakistan facilitated the fledgling process in Qatar, where the United States wants the Taliban to set up a liaison office for the purpose of conducting negotiations, by allowing Taliban representatives to travel to the Persian Gulf state.
Mr. Gilani’s diplomatic overture appeared to be a further admission of his country’s influence over the insurgents — although the nature of that influence is hotly debated.
While Afghan officials assert that Pakistan can deliver the militant leadership to the negotiating table, Pakistanis say otherwise.
“The Taliban are not going to wait for a statement from the Pakistani leadership to begin talks,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a retired Pakistani diplomat.
Less clear, still, is the Taliban stance. Mr. Mohmand, a former ambassador to Kabul, said that a “sizable segment” of the Taliban viewed the talks as “an American gimmick intended to cause a split in their ranks.”
Pakistan’s stance on the Taliban is also a function of its volatile relationship with Washington, which has been effectively on hold since November, when American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a confused cross-border strike.
American plans to move past that case, and reboot diplomatic relations, were stymied this week by riots in Afghanistan after Korans were burned at the country’s large NATO base on Monday night.
Under a carefully coordinated plan, the military had planned for Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make a formal apology for the American strike via telephone to Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on Thursday, according to a Defense Department official.
Mrs. Clinton was to have amplified on that apology in her meeting with Ms. Khar, the official added.
But the plan was upset by the violent rioting in Afghanistan.
Obama administration officials quickly calculated that too many regrets at once would hand ammunition to Republican presidential candidates, the official added.
A senior Pakistani official said his government also wanted the American apology to be delayed until at least mid-March, when the Pakistani Parliament is scheduled to debate the country’s policy toward America.
Michael Semple, a Afghanistan expert and former adviser to the European Union Mission in Kabul, said Mr. Gilani’s statement on Friday was more about politics than talks. “This is about Pakistan, Afghanistan and America — not the Taliban,” he said.
But, he added, rhetoric alone was not sufficient to jump-start the talks, and in the meantime all players were running out of time to make peace.
“There’s all sorts of things the Pakistanis can do to move towards reconciliation, but a statement won’t convince anyone it is actually happening,” he said. “Reconciliation is doable, but the time to do it is in 2012. And I don’t think the current trajectory will get us there.”
Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
NATO Recall As Afghan Protests Bring New Deaths, Storming Of UN Compound
February 25, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
At least four people were killed when thousands of protesters surrounded a UN compound in the northern Afghan city of Konduz to condemn the recent burning of Korans at a NATO base.
A health department director in Konduz, Dr. Saad Mukhtar, said local hospitals had reported four dead and some 50 others injured in the violence.
Other sources were citing as many as seven deaths as the UN facility was ablaze.
Police spokesman Sarwar Husaini said officers managed to stop protesters from entering the UN compound and that reinforcements had been sent to protect the complex.
He also said protesters burned cars and shops in Konduz. Witnesses described columns of smoke hanging over parts of the city.
NATO Recall After Ministry Killings
The protest violence was accompanied by a report that NATO was recalling all its staff working at ministries in the Afghan capital after two U.S. officers were shot dead inside the Interior Ministry.
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, said that for "protection reasons" he has taken "immediate measures" to recall staff.
NATO said in a statement that two of its service members were killed on February 25, without revealing their nationalities. But Western news media quoted Afghan officials as saying privately that two American advisers were killed.
The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, saying they were in retaliation for the Koran burnings.
The Taliban have urged all Afghans to retaliate with violence against foreign troops.
Scattered Unrest
February 25 marked the fifth day of demonstrations over what U.S. officials say was the mistaken burning of copies of the Islamic holy book, for which President Barack Obama and others have apologized.
There were continuing protests in at least four provinces of Afghanistan over the incineration of Korans -- which prisoners were allegedly using to pass messages -- at the U.S. air base at Bagram near Kabul.
In Laghman Province, police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said some 1,000 protesters gathered in Mihtarlam for what began as a peaceful demonstration. But the protesters soon started throwing stones at police and then tried to attack the governor's residence.
Hospital officials told AFP that 15 protesters had been brought in with gunshot wounds from the unrest there.
Government and local police sources said rallies in the eastern provinces of Logar and Nangarhar, and the central province of Sari Pul, were largely peaceful.
Reports of the Koran burnings -- which came to light after workers discovered charred copies of the Islamic holy book among refuse -- have sparked Afghan protests in which at least 21 people had been killed through February 24.
President Hamid Karzai's government and the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan have appealed for calm and restraint, fearful that Taliban insurgents are trying to exploit the anti-American backlash.
U.S. President Obama sent a letter of apology to Karzai, saying the incident was a mistake and vowing to hold accountable whoever was responsible. U.S. authorities had already announced an investigation into the incinerations.
Karzai has blamed a U.S. military officer.
Based on AP and AFP reporting
U.S. Seeks Afghan Exit Routes
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE FEBRUARY 25, 2012
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials visited the capitals of all five Central Asian republics this week amid a broader diplomatic push to negotiate new transportation agreements that will enable the military to withdraw from Afghanistan when the time comes without having to rely mainly on land routes through Pakistan.
Officials said a briefing team drawn from several U.S. agencies visited Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all former Soviet republics that are close to or share borders with Afghanistan.
The officials described the trip as part of routine U.S. engagement in the region, but the visits come as the U.S. lays the groundwork for withdrawal of combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
U.S. and allied troops in landlocked Afghanistan depend heavily on supplies from what is known as the Northern Distribution Network, a system of rail, sea and truck routes that begins at Baltic and Black sea ports and winds across Central Asia.
Traffic along the route is limited by agreements to "nonlethal" cargo such as food, fuel and construction equipment, and it goes only one way: into Afghanistan. U.S. officials now want to "reverse" the network, so the American military has more options to move hardware out of Afghanistan.
Two-way transit along the Northern Distribution Network "creates welcome redundancy in a logistically challenging region," said Emily Horne, a State Department spokeswoman.
Underscoring the urgency are rocky U.S. relations with Pakistan, once the primary route for overland cargo bound for Afghanistan. In late November, Islamabad closed key border crossings into Afghanistan to North Atlantic Treaty Organization supply convoys following a U.S. airstrike that claimed the lives of Pakistani troops. Those crossings remain closed, forcing U.S. logisticians to reroute cargo into Afghanistan.
Even before the border closure, U.S. logisticians had steadily begun reducing the flow of cargo through Pakistan and shifting more supply to the Northern Distribution Network, because of attacks on supply convoys. According to figures provided by U.S. Transportation Command, the military between late September and late January moved about 25% of its Afghanistan-bound cargo through Pakistan and 41% through the northern route, with the rest flown in directly by air or from ports in the Middle East. In the year-earlier period, 34% of cargo came in through Pakistan and 28% through the north.
Reversing cargo throughput on the northern network may require intense negotiation: The opening of the Northern Distribution Network in 2009 was preceded by months of high-level discussions about customs clearances, permitting procedures and cargo routing.
"We have made great diplomatic efforts to complete the [network], get the various lines linked up, and have the ability to move equipment in and out of Afghanistan," a U.S. official said.
Expanding the network to move supplies out Afghanistan also means figuring out how to tie down and transport different kinds of equipment on railroad cars and truck beds along different routes. A defense official said planners were "testing the routes and the options for transport" of a variety of hardware from Afghanistan to make sure there would be no sticking points along the way.
The meetings in Central Asian capitals also come amid concern in the region about Afghanistan after the departure of U.S. and allied troops. The U.S. government official said the briefing team also updated Central Asian counterparts about the current situation there, where violence has escalated after a wave of protests over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base.
"Naturally, the countries that share borders with Afghanistan have ongoing interests in regional security and stability, including counternarcotics efforts and border security," the official said. "These briefings were part of our regular efforts to exchange information on these issues and update and coordinate with our bilateral partners in the region."
The Obama administration has moved to bolster ties with Uzbekistan, one key country along the northern transportation route. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently waived a ban on military assistance to the country, a move that would temporarily allow the U.S. to provide nonlethal defensive equipment to Tashkent.
Uzbekistan's railway network shares a link with northern Afghanistan; a border crossing to Hairatan, Afghanistan, is a transit point for truck, rail and river barge cargo.
Asylum Concerns Haunt Western Exchange Programs For Afghan Students
February 25, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Malali Bashir
Since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 and the establishment of the elected government of Hamid Karzai,
One of the projects that foreign governments have funded since the Taliban was ousted and a UN-backed government established in Kabul is an Afghan student exchange, with the aim of brightening that country's future and increasing cross-border understanding across borders.
But such exchanges have been troubled by concerns that too many of the visitors bother returning to help rebuild Afghan society.
The fact is that only a few Afghan universities provide master's-level studies -- and those are just in literature. So there is an acute need for a wider range of fields for higher studies for Afghan students to choose.
To fill the gap, many countries invite Afghan students to attend university in the West. The United States and Britain have some of the most prestigious scholarships -- Fulbright and Chevening, respectively. Apart from government-funded programs, private and nonprofit projects also provide Afghans with educational opportunities around the world.
Afghan students are provided scholarships and fellowships for their higher aptitude and capability in return for a promise that they will return to Afghanistan after their study programs are over to help rebuild their country. To ensure this -- taking Afghan family and social structure into account -- restrictions are imposed such as a ban on taking family members as dependents along during their studies. The rule doesn't apply to students from countries whose governments pay half of the scholarships provided by foreign programs.
But despite the rule, many Afghan students never come back; they vanish before or soon after the completion of their study-abroad programs. Perceptions of a deteriorating security situation, news of the looming exit of NATO troops, and the woeful state of the critical infrastructure mean Afghan young people might also lose hope for a better future in Afghanistan.
For some Afghans, becoming a scholarship grantee has been like getting a free ticket to jump from the United States to seek asylum in Canada. Harris Najib is a Fulbright alumnus who works as a case manager with a nonprofit in Calgary, Canada. He says he didn't return to Afghanistan because of political instability.
He says Afghan students abroad "have now had the experience of engaging in dialogue without the fear of being silenced, shunned, or ridiculed," adding candidly, "A grim political environment in Afghanistan and the possibility of a Taliban takeover diminish the appetite for returning and contributing to the process of rebuilding Afghanistan."
Some criticize the U.S. State Department for not following up with employment opportunities in Afghanistan so the students gain confidence through a financially secure future there.
Ateeq Nosher, a Harvard University alumnus who lives in Kabul and works as managing director at Apex-2 Consulting, says "the job opportunities for those who come from the U.S. and Canada or other Western countries are relatively higher than those for students produced locally or in neighboring countries."
Najib adds: "Many Afghan students who have come to study in the U.S. post-Taliban have a decent amount of professional experience working for the UN or other international agencies back home. They can therefore compete for jobs with their North American or European peers within certain sectors. And, if they can find a job in Europe or North America and are able to guarantee a better future for themselves and their families, some would rather not return to Afghanistan, and wait out the current political uncertainty."
Apart from concerns over security and employment opportunities, other issues face graduates returning from their Western studies on a daily basis in Afghanistan.
"The well-educated segment of the population gets disappointed when they see weak people leading them," Nosher says. "They feel they aren't contributing to policies because [at the] end of the day, those policies are influenced by political appointees."
Students seeking asylum obviously think of their individual benefits hindering the opportunities for the rest of the batches to come.
Although there are no numbers available on students not returning to Afghanistan after going to Western countries as exchange students, one program appears to have gotten fed up with such students using their scholarship programs to seek asylum. Last year, the United States suspended its highly regarded YES youth-exchange program. Begun in 2004, YES invited hundreds of Afghan students to the U.S., but around half those students fled to Canada to claim asylum. NPR recently quoted embassy officials saying they want to restart the YES program, but only if they can ensure that students won't jump the program for asylum purposes.
The Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States -- part of the U.S.-Canada Smart Border Action Plan -- aims to prevent people from filing for asylum in a country other than the one they initially entered, potentially stemming the flow unless a family member there has agreed to sponsor them.
Apart from the no-dependents rule for students, mature applicants are considered more committed to the programs and thus reliable. Dr. Maria Beebe of Afghan eQuality Alliances at Washington State University told blogger Bob McCarty about having a more selective criteria to ensure the return of Afghan students:
"So, for example, we can say only directors and assistant director levels would be considered. At that level, we will also get the older (more mature) students who have children and will have more compelling reasons to go back to Afghanistan."
Detractors might argue that such an approach contradicts the aim of providing an equal opportunity to all talented Afghans -- and particularly lets down Afghan young people, its potential future leaders -- in higher education. On the other hand, the no-dependents rule becomes irrelevant if mature single students enter into relationships with non-Afghans and decide to remain with their partners abroad.
AFGHANISTAN: Ill-prepared for cold snap
DUBAI, 24 February 2012 (IRIN) - At least 150 people in Afghanistan have died in the past month after some of the coldest weather for years. The deaths - mainly of those without adequate food, housing or heating in Kabul and the northern province of Badakhshan - have prompted some to ask how this can happen given that the country has received billions of dollars of aid since the Taliban regime fell in 2002.
Sediq Hassani, director of policy at the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said every possible effort had been made to stock food and other items in the most at-risk areas, but acknowledged: “We were not 100 percent successful. There were districts to which, due to bad roads, we couldn’t send food items before winter started.”
He blamed lack of investment by the government and international community in the last decade, but one UN official told IRIN the international community has failed to prioritize disaster reduction management in Afghanistan.
“The ones who died were mostly the children of internally displaced persons who live in tents and mud-huts in Kabul and those poor families in other parts of the country who can’t afford to keep their homes warm,” said Health Ministry spokesman Kargar Norughli.
“In the last few days, 35 children were killed by pneumonia in two districts of Badakhshan Province and more than 30 others by avalanches in the last few weeks,” Abdul Marouf Rasekh, a spokesperson for the governor of Badakhshan said.
“I thought everybody was dead after an avalanche hit our village,” Ghulam Yahya, 48, from Eshkashim District in Badakhshan Province, told IRIN in Faizabad, the provincial capital. “I saw one of our relatives die after being trapped in the snow for hours. Many houses were destroyed by the avalanche.”
NGO Save The Children has launched a rapid response to get help to families as more heavy snowfall is predicted for this coming week and temperatures are expected to drop as low as minus 17 degrees centigrade.
Art in the streets of Kabul
'If we can do graffiti all over the city, there will be nobody who doesn't know about art'
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Friday 24 February 2012
Kabul - Inside the blackened ruin of Kabul's cultural centre, a spray-painting of a woman in a burqa sits at the foot of a staircase to nowhere, beside a line of poetry mourning everything that has been lost to Afghanistan in three decades of violence.
The painting is the work of Shamsia Hassani, 24, probably her country's first serious graffiti artist.
"The water can come back to a dried-up river, but what about the fish that died?" is her translation of the line, written under gaping holes gouged through the concrete walls by shells when battles raged through the area.
"When I heard this poem, I thought how it was about the situation in Afghanistan. A lot of people died in the war; now the situation is better, but those people cannot come back," said Hassani.
An associate professor of sculpture at Kabul University, she draws, paints in oil, and is a founding member of a contemporary art collective, Rosht, or "growth". She was introduced to graffiti when a British artist, Chu, flew out in late 2010 to hold a week-long course in street art.
She has embraced the discipline. Spray cans and stencils have more impact than traditional art, she says, because the latter is a luxury.
"If you have an exhibition, most uneducated people won't even know about it."
" But if you have art like graffiti in the street, everyone can see that If we can do graffiti all over the city, there will be nobody who doesn't know about art."
The obstacles in a city at war, policed by jittery security forces, discouraged most other students on Chu's course, even though the high walls and giant concrete blast barriers are a tempting blank canvas.
For women, there is also street harassment; even those who go out wearing the all-enveloping burqa can meet leering compliments on their hands and ankles.
So Hassani works in industrial yards and abandoned buildings, such as the cultural centre.
Or she does fantasy graffiti. "If you stand in the street, you face problems; because of this I started a new style of graffiti. I take pictures of places I like in the city, open them in a programme like Photoshop, and do digital designs. Or I print out a picture of the street and then do graffiti with a paintbrush. If you scan it back, it looks like real graffiti, but of course it isn't."
A lot of her work features women in burqas, but with a modern silhouette, with hips and sharp shoulders; or fish, trapped and silent in their watery universe.
Hassani's family are originally from Kandahar, Taliban's heartland, but she was born in Iran where her parents were refugees.
"I started art like everyone, when I was a child, but most people give it up. I had no teacher, but I continued."
When she reached ninth grade, when art classes begin in Iran, she was told they were not open to Afghans, so she studied accountancy instead.
When the family returned to Kabul, she made up for lost time at the University art department, but chaffed at the traditional bias, and started exploring contemporary art. Now as a professor she hopes to start a graffiti class and bring art to the city.
"If just 20% of students were interested, if every year we graffiti twenty walls around Kabul, in two or three years we will have lots of art on walls around the city."
"Art can bring change, I am sure. If people see an artwork, it will perhaps only cause a small shock to their mind, but that can grow and grow."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com