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Afghan army says Taliban infiltration very sophisticated
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi March 3, 2012
KABUL - The Taliban have a sophisticated system in place to infiltrate Afghanistan's security forces and vetting of recruits must be severely tightened, an Afghan army general said on Saturday.
Infiltration has come under sharper focus because of a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. soldiers since the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base last month ignited widespread protests.
"Placing the rogues inside the army is well-planned by the enemies. The Taliban give them special training," General Abdul Hameed, top army commander for the southern region of Afghanistan, told Reuters by telephone.
"We must enhance intelligence gathering on the movements of recruits, tap their cellphones and we must find out who they are in contact with outside the army." Two U.S. soldiers were shot and killed on Thursday in an attack involving at least one Afghan believed to be a soldier and a civilian, Western and Afghan officials said.
The killings at a base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan came less than a week after two senior U.S. officers were gunned down in the Afghan Interior Ministry by what Afghan security officials say was a police intelligence officer.
About 70 members of the NATO-led force were killed in 42 insider attacks from May 2007 through the end of January this year.
These attacks have become more frequent as the United States has sent tens of thousands of more soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a surge to fight in Taliban strongholds.
Some of these incidents have been carried out by Afghan security forces reacting to the recent Koran burning, some have been due to private grievances and others have been carried out by Taliban insurgents who infiltrated the security forces.
The killings in the Interior Ministry stunned NATO and cast doubt on its strategy of replacing large combat units with advisers as it tries to wind down the war, now in its 11th year.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the double murder but there has been no independent confirmation of that.
Such attacks cast doubt on the effectiveness of Afghan government forces, which will be tasked with taking over security in one of the world's most unstable countries once foreign combat troops head home at the end of 2014.
The Taliban have proven remarkably resilient in the face of far superior Western firepower.
But poor management of the recruiting process for the army and police has also given them an opportunity to infiltrate.
"One of the reasons enemies infiltrated inside the army is because they are not properly identified when they are enrolled," said Hameed.
"The procedure is that new recruits must present birth certificate or any other documents to prove their identity but many present fake documents or don't have any."
A Ministry of Defence official said the large size of the Afghan army and police -- about 250,000 -- made it difficult to stop infiltration. Afghanistan hopes to create a force of about 350,000 and then trim some of it.
"We have identified and detained a number of suspicious soldiers recently who planned to carry out such (insider) attacks," said Hameed.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
AP Sources: CIA-led force may speed Afghan exit
March 03, 2012|Kimberly Dozier, AP Intelligence Writer
Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, sources told The Associated Press.
The plan is one of several possible scenarios being debated by Pentagon staffers. It has not yet been presented to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the White House or Congress, the sources said.
If the plan were adopted, the U.S. and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.
No matter who’s in charge, the special operations units still would target militants on joint raids with Afghans and keep training Afghan forces to do the job on their own.
The idea floated by a senior defense intelligence official comes as U.S. defense chiefs try to figure out how to draw down troops fast enough to meet the White House’s 2014 deadline. Pentagon staffers already have put forward a plan to hand over much of the war-fighting to special operations troops. This idea would take that plan one step further, shrinking the U.S. presence to less than 20,000 troops after 2014, according to four current and two former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the program involves classified operatives.
Pentagon spokesman George Little denied the idea is being discussed. “Any suggestion that such a plan exists is simply wrong,’’ Little said Saturday. “United States special operations forces continue to work closely with the intelligence community to confront a range of national security challenges across the world.’’
Reducing the U.S. presence faster would be a political boon for the White House and the Afghan government, with Afghan sentiment raw over incidents ranging from civilian casualties from U.S. strike operations to the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops.
But a CIA-run war would mean that the U.S. public would not be informed about funding or operations, as they are in a traditional war. Oversight would fall to the White House, top intelligence officials, and a few congressional committees. Embedding journalists would be out of the question.
Two senior defense officials said that neither the CIA nor Special Operations Command has put this plan forward officially to Panetta. The other officials who said they have been part of discussions about the plan say it would require the assent of the White House and congressional oversight committees, and would be contingent upon the approval of the Afghan government. The idea has not yet been presented at any of those levels, the sources said.
Afghan investigator insists Quran burnings intentional
Associated Press By Patrick Quinn 04/03/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - While U.S. investigators say the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. military base was a mistake involving at least five Americans who may face a disciplinary review, Afghan investigators claimed it was an intentional desecration.
The conflicting accounts highlight rising tensions between the two countries following the Feb. 20 discovery of charred Qurans and other religious literature in a burn pit at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
Anger over the burnings already has led the deaths of more than 30 Afghans during violent protests as well as six U.S. soldiers.
A Western official said that preliminary findings from a joint investigation by senior Afghan and U.S. military officials that was ordered by Marine Gen. John Allen has convinced them that although mistakes were made, there was no intent to desecrate the Qurans or other material.
The official, who has knowledge of the investigation but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said it could lead to a disciplinary review of at least five U.S. military personnel involved.
The Western official confirmed earlier reports that extremist inscriptions were found inside the texts, including notations apparently scribbled by detainees exchanging messages. He said that after the writings were discovered, two Afghan-American interpreters were assigned to go through the library materials, and 1,652 items were removed and placed in boxes.
A decision was made to dispose of the material because of a lack of storage space and the notes inside, but a group of three soldiers on a garbage detail removed the books before that could be done properly, the official said. He said the soldiers had no idea what they were throwing into the burn pit and insisted none of the material was destroyed before it was removed by Afghan workers.
However, Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a top Afghan religious leader who was on a different panel appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident, claimed the burning was intentional.
Dad said U.S. officials informed Afghan authorities about their suspicions that notes inside the books were being used as a way for detainees to communicate with comrades outside the prison. The Americans believed that a bookseller, who had a contract to take care of the library, was acting as a mediator and told him not to show up for work on the day that two translators were scouring the materials.
The translators later told the Afghan delegation that U.S. officials had told them that the books pulled from the shelves were headed for storage.
According to Dad's account, the books were kept in a place where refuse is picked up and taken to a garbage burn pit on the base. Afghan workers at the base noticed the religious books and notified an Afghan army commander who questioned U.S. troops about the books and was satisfied when he was told they would be stored somewhere safe.
But the Afghan workers later noticed the books had been set on fire. The workers and two Afghan officers rescued 216 books, including 48 Qurans, from being burned, Dad said. They were shouting and pulling the books from the burn pit, preventing the U.S. troops from throwing the remaining four cartons of books into the fire, he said.
"They lied to the Afghan workers and the Afghan National Army officers, telling them they were going to store the books in a container, then they went and burned the books. If it was not intentional, they would not have lied," Dad said.
Dad also claimed the investigation had shown that some detainees had written their names, their father's names, their inmate identification numbers and the date they were detained in some of the books that were not destroyed. Some of the books written in Arabic also had definitions of Arabic words scribbled in Dari or Pashto, the two Afghan languages.
"I didn't see anything that suggested that messages were being exchanged between prisoners or with outsiders," he said.
Full details of the incident are expected to be included in the joint Afghan-U.S. probe that is being reviewed by a coalition legal expert. A date for its release has not been set. A more formal U.S. military investigation is still weeks away from completion.
Local Taliban leader killed in Afghan Kunduz province
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader was killed Sunday during a joint Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops operation in northern Afghan province of Kunduz, a police source said.
"Based on intelligence, a joint unit of special operation force of Afghan army and international forces killed a local Taliban leader namely Seyd Gul during an operation in surrounding area of provincial capital Kunduz city early this morning," a provincial police spokesman Seyd Sarwar Houssaini told Xinhua.
He said that the deceased Taliban leader was responsible for several attacks on security forces and directed the emplacement of roadside bombs and provided weapons and funds to the insurgents across in the province.
The joint forces also found and seized a handful of weapons during the raid, he said.
Taliban militants have yet to confirm the death of their local leader in Kunduz province some 250 km north of capital city of Kabul.
Afghan police kill 2 militants, detain 12
KABUL, March 4 (Xinhua)-- Afghan police backed by army and the NATO-led troops have killed two anti-government militants and captured a dozen others over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here Sunday.
"During the past 24 hours, Afghan National Police, Afghan National Army and Coalition Forces launched five joint operations in Nangarhar, Baghlan, Kunduz, Kandahar and Helmand provinces as a result of these operations, two armed insurgents were killed and 12 others were arrested by Afghan National Police," the statement added.
Also, during these operations, Afghan National Police discovered and confiscated a number of arms and ammunitions including one rocket launcher, 200 light rounds, 20 heavy rounds, 11 anti-vehicle mines, eight boxes of machine gun bullets, 10 hand grenades and 30 kilograms of opium, the statement further said.
However, it did not say if there was any causality on the security forces.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
22 anti-gov't militants give up fighting in N. Afghanistan
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Twenty two anti- government militants gave up militancy and handed over their weapons to authorities in Baghlan province 160 km north of capital Kabul on Sunday.
"With joining these people to the peace process and handing over their weapons to government the security situation will be further improved in Baghlan," provincial governor Munshi Majid told the audience in a ceremony to welcome the former insurgents.
"There people were active in Baghlam-e-Markazi district and with joining them to the peace process the government control will be further strengthen," the governor added.
He also called upon other anti-government fighters to follow the step and give up fighting.
"My demand from the government is to ensure my security and the security of my men and their families," the group commander Mohammad Yasin told newsmen.
He also said that he had fought in the rank of Hizb-e-Islami party, the second largest group after Taliban outfit fighting Afghan government.
The Hizb-e-Islami or Islamic party, led by Gulbudin Hekmatyar has not to make comment yet.
How to get Afghans to trust us once again
Washington Post By Fernando M. Luján March 3, 2012
“Ooooh, Major Far-nan-do, we’re gonna sell you to the Taliban for a million dollars . . . laa-di-laaa . . . we’re gonna trade you for a new truck . . . for a new house!”
It was late at night in Helmand province last summer, and my Afghan army companions — Jawad and Raz Mohammed — were improvising a song in Dari, clapping their hands to the beat. They could barely get through a verse without bursting into laughter. I did my best to laugh, too. We were friends, and they were joking, but for a moment it made me wonder: Could I trust these men? Would they try to sell me? And what was I doing out here alone? In fact, was it safe for any of us, a few thousand U.S. advisers, to be embedded in Afghan military units across the country?
After the recent burning of Korans at a NATO base and the violence that has followed, I’m not the only one worried about the prospects for the advisory mission in Afghanistan. The accidental desecration of Islam’s holy book, in which five U.S. soldiers were found to be involved, and the resulting riots and killings of American troops reveal a crisis of trust between Afghans and Americans. To rebuild that relationship, we need to focus not just on the Taliban insurgency, but also on dissolving Afghan security forces’ resentment of coalition troops and defeating the pervasive notion that our forces are in Afghanistan to destroy Islam.
As an Army major, it is not my role to debate policy. However, my job in Afghanistan over the past year gave me a unique perspective on the difficulties of building trust. I was on a small team of special operators, governance experts, and Dari- or Pashto-speaking U.S. officers embedded with coalition and Afghan units across the country, coaching, advising and listening to their problems. Sometimes we wore beards and Afghan uniforms and patrolled in Ford Rangers rather than armored trucks, and often we were the only Americans on remote bases — all in hopes of getting a real sense of what Afghan soldiers thought when their Western partners weren’t around.
One of the first things we learned was the power of a simple narrative, repeated endlessly by the Taliban: The coalition is here to occupy Afghanistan and destroy Islam. This message is at the core of the Taliban’s strategy; the group uses it to draw recruits, win sympathy from civilians and encourage soldiers to defect. While the Afghans we worked with protected us from harm — often at great risk to themselves — sometimes doubt would creep into our conversations: Why do you speak our language? Are you a Muslim? Why not? Do you want to take away our religion?
Many of these men had never heard of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They didn’t know why we were in their country.
Any coalition action in Afghanistan — no matter how accidental — that feeds the perception of a Western-led war on Islam endangers the mission and destroys trust. The smallest mistakes are amplified by the Taliban through videos, magazines, DVDs, Web sites, personal visits and other methods. A committed cadre of Taliban agents will infiltrate peaceful demonstrations to incite violence and provoke a strong coalition reaction — so that the cycle of mistrust can begin again. To defeat this threat to the U.S.-Afghan relationship, leaders at all levels must not only avoid making unforced errors but also take actions every day to convince their Afghan colleagues, then the local population, that they respect Islam.
For example, just west of Kandahar last summer, my team came across an American platoon that worked with the Afghan army to engage local religious leaders. Though hesitant at first, the Afghan soldiers got permission to pray in the village mosque alongside the civilians they protected. Later, when two young children were killed by a Taliban mine, the soldiers — at their advisers’ recommendation — encouraged the mullah to denounce the incident from his mosque’s loudspeaker, sending a powerful message to the population about the hypocrisy of the Taliban’s actions: What kind of Muslim would kill our innocent children?
In the aftermath of the Koran-burning incident, it is this type of local, immediate response — from Afghan to Afghan — that has the best chance of shaping perceptions. During this tense time, American advisers all over the country should sit down with their Afghan colleagues to discuss the Muslim faith, and should listen more than they talk. I did this nearly every time I visited a new Afghan unit, in response to questions about my own faith. Once the Afghans saw I was eager to learn about Islam, they took care of me and defended my presence to the local population.
As damaging as religious misunderstandings can be, the gradual drawdown of coalition troops presents its own challenges. Advisers, working in remote areas and facing the threat of Taliban infiltration, sometimes respond by separating themselves from the Afghans, withdrawing behind barricades, strict rules and technology. On one patrol in southeast Afghanistan last year, we watched a line of sputtering Afghan army pickup trucks try to clear a road laden with IEDs while American forces trailed at the rear in heavily armored vehicles bristling with advanced anti-mine devices. The Afghans muttered as they hopped down from their trucks to search for the explosives by hand: “Are they cowards? Are their lives more important than ours?”
Later, we saw a well-known Afghan colonel who had fought the Taliban for many years get roughly searched; he was nearly denied admission to an operations briefing with American forces. In both cases, the Americans were following procedure — yet they were unknowingly sabotaging their mission. While Afghan officers may smile politely in meetings, they trust you only if you’ve shared danger and hardship. There is no shortcut to earning their respect.
Of course, the U.S. military should not do away with armored vehicles or rules, but it should pay close attention to the experience, training and judgment of those selected to be advisers. Not everyone can do this type of mission. Every day, with every action, an adviser must weigh the impact it could have on Afghan relationships. In this sense, NATO’s withdrawal of personnel from Kabul ministries after the shootings of American officers, while understandable, has temporarily achieved the Taliban’s intent — separating coalition advisers from their Afghan partners.
Yet even in some of the most dangerous areas of Kandahar, we saw the best advisers bridge this gap: They smiled and made friends but carried a loaded pistol under their shirt. They spent hours drinking tea but looked doubly close at the Afghan who claimed to have just returned from leave in Pakistan.
The last obstacle to the American-Afghan relationship is resentment within the Afghan security forces. I do not imply that Afghan units are hotbeds of anti-Americanism — they are not. My team of advisers embedded with nearly 20 Afghan battalions across Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and we were always well received and protected. But when we talked to the Afghan soldiers in their language, we heard many frustrations with how coalition soldiers treated them.
They complained of young U.S. soldiers acting like drill sergeants, screaming and cursing at the Afghans and making them do push-ups. (While this behavior is common in American basic training, in the respect-based culture of Afghanistan, such treatment is a violation of one’s honor.) We stayed in camps where the Afghans slept in straw huts with smoke from a trash fire blowing on them, while coalition members lounged in air-conditioned trailers. During Ramadan, a month in which Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sundown, we watched American troops dragging their Afghan colleagues on an operation and noisily drinking water in front of them in midday summer heat.
These types of cultural misunderstandings and oversights rarely lead to “green-on-blue” (Afghan-against-American) violence. More often, they erode trust and respect — and with them, the ability of coalition units to influence their Afghan partners.
Yet the raw talent to succeed in the advisory mission is there within the ranks: Nearly everywhere we visited, we encountered advisers doing phenomenal work with their Afghan colleagues, fighting the challenges I’ve described and building trust in the process. In this environment, language, cultural fluency and long-term relationships are priceless. But advisers rarely receive serious language training and usually quickly rotate through Afghan units, making it difficult to form close relationships. And while last year’s surge in resources and troops has allowed the coalition to reverse the Taliban’s momentum in southern Afghanistan, it has occasionally bred arrogance: Why work through Afghans when you can do the job yourself?
Thus, the true challenge of the advisory mission is not finding brave and talented Americans, but overcoming institutional and bureaucratic hurdles — the tendency to assign jobs without regard to skill or aptitude, to think in terms of resources instead of relationships, to neglect training that doesn’t come on the rifle range. This is a challenge that can be overcome if leaders are willing to break with conventional practices and embrace the idea of smaller embedded teams of well-trained advisers. Even if they are vastly outnumbered, Americans will be safer and more effective if they are forced to rely on the Afghans.
The loss of U.S. soldiers on secure bases, at the hands of Afghans we thought to be allies, is much harder to accept than the loss of soldiers on patrol. Yet this is a fundamental part of the conflict in Afghanistan. Even if coalition forces refuse to let the threat of Taliban infiltration alienate them from their Afghan partners, even if they continue to demonstrate respect for Islam and bridge cultural divides, we will lose good people in similar incidents. The Taliban is ruthless and committed. But the Afghans don’t hate us, despite the fact that sometimes we try really hard to make them hate us.
I never told my singing Afghan friends, but later that night in Helmand, I was startled from my sleep, nervous about their joke. When I opened my eyes, I saw a shadow in the doorway. Struck with fear, I reached for my pistol, only to realize that the shadow was Jawad, the one who had joked about selling me to the Taliban. He was guarding me as I slept.
flujan@cnas.org
Fernando M. Luján, a major in the U.S. Army Special Forces, is a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
21 Tonnes of Drugs Torched in Helmand
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Sunday, 04 March 2012
The Afghan authorities set light to 21 tonnes of illegal drugs seized in southern Helmand province on Saturday.
The haul is one of the largest yet discovered in what remains one of the nation's largest opium-producing regions. It includes raw opium, hashish, chemicals used to process opium into cocaine, and also alcohol.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently said that revenues from opium production in the country rose 133 per cent in 2011.
Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium despite the efforts of the government and its international allies to curb production.
The money earned from the opium is reportedly used to provide weapons for the insurgents.
Efforts are continuing in Helmand and other areas of Afghanistan to wean poor farmers away the cash crop and to encourage them to grow agricultural produce instead.
The head of the British PRT in Helmand, Michael O'Neill, said on Saturday that Afghanistan will face security challenges after 2014 when all foreign forces leave the country.
"There will continue to be security challenges in Helmand and in other parts of Afghanistan," he said. "There are many countries in the world, including this region with security challenges, so I don't think they will disappear completely."
He said that while there has been progress in the area of security, insurgents are still active in some parts of the country.
Mr O'Neill believes that the insurgency gets some supports in the region.
"This is a complicated region as you know very well and the relationships are complicated," he said. "It is very important to recognise, or rather there will be security challenges for many years."
Britain has around 9,000 troops in Afghanistan mainly stationed in Helmand province. The country has lost 398 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001.
Paul says Afghanistan apology evidence of larger problem
CNN's Kevin Liptak
(CNN) – Rep. Ron Paul, who has long espoused a non-interventionist foreign policy, said Sunday that President Barack Obama’s apology for the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan was indicative of a larger problem with America’s foreign policy.
Speaking from Alaska, where the Texas congressman is campaigning for votes ahead of Super Tuesday, Paul said America shouldn’t be engaged in conflicts that require the president to apologize for troops’ missteps.
“We should change our policy, so if we have a policy going on in the Middle East that is begging that we apologize now and then, and others condemning it because they don't think we should apologize, I think we should reassess our foreign policy,” Paul said to CNN Chief Political Correspondent on “State of the Union.”
Paul described Republicans who condemned Obama for apologizing for the burning as “a little over the top,” saying the very act of invading Afghanistan was deserving of an apology from the American president.
“I’m personally more apologetic for invading countries who never did anything to us and occupying it, disrupting it, causing thousands of deaths of our own people and causing hundreds of thousands of refugees,” Paul said. “This is the thing that I feel sad about, what about the pictures of torture? Weren't they every bit as bad? I mean this is what incites the hatred.”
As for Iran, Paul said the United States should follow the pattern of the Cold War.
“You know, it doesn't make any sense to bomb a country that is no threat to anybody just because they might get a weapon,” Paul said. “Containment worked pretty well with the Soviets, and they were rather ruthless people, killing millions and millions of their own people, and we stood them down in the Cold War. So I'd try to calm it down a little bit, but, quite frankly, I don't think we should tell Israel what they should do or shouldn't do.”
US troops could face disciplinary action over Qur'an burning in Afghanistan
Afghan-US military inquiry may lead to review of at least five personnel despite concluding burning of texts unintentional
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 March 2012
At least five US military personnel could face a disciplinary review following the burning of copies of the Qur'an by American soldiers in Afghanistan.
A joint investigation by senior Afghan and US military officials has concluded that although mistakes were made when troops at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, had burned copies of the Qur'an and other religious literature along with piles of waste paper, there was no intent to desecrate the Islamic religious texts.
A western official said the investigation could lead to a disciplinary review of at least five US military personnel involved.
But a different panel appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to investigate the incident, has concluded that the burning of the holy books was deliberate.
Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a senior Afghan religious leader on the panel, said US troops told Afghans at the base that the religious materials pulled from a detention centre library were to be stored, but were then sent for incineration.
"They are claiming that it was not intentional. Our investigative team says it was intentional," Dad said.
After the panel presented its findings, Afghanistan's top religious leaders demanded on Friday that those involved be put on public trial and be punished, a position that Karzai backs.
Barack Obama and other US officials have apologised for the incident on 20 February, which triggered six days of riots across Afghanistan. The apologies, which described the incineration as accident, have failed to quell the anger in the country, although the violent protests that killed more than 30 Afghans and six US troops have subsided.
Karzai's office said on Saturday it had only seen the report drafted by the religious leaders and had not yet been given the joint report, so could not comment on it.
"We are waiting for the result of the investigation by Nato, which will probably show who is involved in this and how many people are involved. After studying it we will announce our stance," said a presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "What the Afghan president has requested from US officials and the US military is a trial and punishment."
Australia's Afghanistan mission has failed, says Professor Hugh White
The Australian March 04, 2012
THE Australian military's mission in Afghanistan has failed and the Federal Government has done a bad job of explaining Australia's role there, a defence strategist says.
Professor Hugh White from the Strategic Studies Institute at the Australian National University said it is "past the point where the Government can credibly claim that they've got an orderly plan".
"For a long time now the government's been saying that we're going to pull out of Afghanistan when the job is done," Professor White told the Ten Network.
"I think it's now clear that the job's not going to be done, that the United States, for example, is talking about pulling its forces out, not just in 2014, which seems very soon, but in 2013."
Professor White said Australia will leave Afghanistan "very much the way it looks at the moment".
He unequivocally held the Government responsible for the way the conflict has been outlined to the general public.
"I think (Defence Minister) Stephen Smith has done a very bad job of really explaining to the Australian people in the light of that fact why we're there, what we're still doing there, why we can't get out sooner," he said.
He said the Government has become fixated on not appearing to go soft on the issue of national security.
"I think they've been terrified that if they do appear to be stepping back from the Afghanistan commitment they'll be seen and portrayed by the coalition as being weak on defence and weak on support for the US alliance.
"So I think they've had a very strong political imperative to stay engaged and I think that has overwritten the strategic judgements that they should have been making about what we're really achieving in Afghanistan."
Professor White said the cost to Australia includes the loss of life.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi March 3, 2012
KABUL - The Taliban have a sophisticated system in place to infiltrate Afghanistan's security forces and vetting of recruits must be severely tightened, an Afghan army general said on Saturday.
Infiltration has come under sharper focus because of a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. soldiers since the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base last month ignited widespread protests.
"Placing the rogues inside the army is well-planned by the enemies. The Taliban give them special training," General Abdul Hameed, top army commander for the southern region of Afghanistan, told Reuters by telephone.
"We must enhance intelligence gathering on the movements of recruits, tap their cellphones and we must find out who they are in contact with outside the army." Two U.S. soldiers were shot and killed on Thursday in an attack involving at least one Afghan believed to be a soldier and a civilian, Western and Afghan officials said.
The killings at a base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan came less than a week after two senior U.S. officers were gunned down in the Afghan Interior Ministry by what Afghan security officials say was a police intelligence officer.
About 70 members of the NATO-led force were killed in 42 insider attacks from May 2007 through the end of January this year.
These attacks have become more frequent as the United States has sent tens of thousands of more soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a surge to fight in Taliban strongholds.
Some of these incidents have been carried out by Afghan security forces reacting to the recent Koran burning, some have been due to private grievances and others have been carried out by Taliban insurgents who infiltrated the security forces.
The killings in the Interior Ministry stunned NATO and cast doubt on its strategy of replacing large combat units with advisers as it tries to wind down the war, now in its 11th year.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the double murder but there has been no independent confirmation of that.
Such attacks cast doubt on the effectiveness of Afghan government forces, which will be tasked with taking over security in one of the world's most unstable countries once foreign combat troops head home at the end of 2014.
The Taliban have proven remarkably resilient in the face of far superior Western firepower.
But poor management of the recruiting process for the army and police has also given them an opportunity to infiltrate.
"One of the reasons enemies infiltrated inside the army is because they are not properly identified when they are enrolled," said Hameed.
"The procedure is that new recruits must present birth certificate or any other documents to prove their identity but many present fake documents or don't have any."
A Ministry of Defence official said the large size of the Afghan army and police -- about 250,000 -- made it difficult to stop infiltration. Afghanistan hopes to create a force of about 350,000 and then trim some of it.
"We have identified and detained a number of suspicious soldiers recently who planned to carry out such (insider) attacks," said Hameed.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
AP Sources: CIA-led force may speed Afghan exit
March 03, 2012|Kimberly Dozier, AP Intelligence Writer
Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year’s raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, sources told The Associated Press.
The plan is one of several possible scenarios being debated by Pentagon staffers. It has not yet been presented to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the White House or Congress, the sources said.
If the plan were adopted, the U.S. and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.
No matter who’s in charge, the special operations units still would target militants on joint raids with Afghans and keep training Afghan forces to do the job on their own.
The idea floated by a senior defense intelligence official comes as U.S. defense chiefs try to figure out how to draw down troops fast enough to meet the White House’s 2014 deadline. Pentagon staffers already have put forward a plan to hand over much of the war-fighting to special operations troops. This idea would take that plan one step further, shrinking the U.S. presence to less than 20,000 troops after 2014, according to four current and two former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the program involves classified operatives.
Pentagon spokesman George Little denied the idea is being discussed. “Any suggestion that such a plan exists is simply wrong,’’ Little said Saturday. “United States special operations forces continue to work closely with the intelligence community to confront a range of national security challenges across the world.’’
Reducing the U.S. presence faster would be a political boon for the White House and the Afghan government, with Afghan sentiment raw over incidents ranging from civilian casualties from U.S. strike operations to the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops.
But a CIA-run war would mean that the U.S. public would not be informed about funding or operations, as they are in a traditional war. Oversight would fall to the White House, top intelligence officials, and a few congressional committees. Embedding journalists would be out of the question.
Two senior defense officials said that neither the CIA nor Special Operations Command has put this plan forward officially to Panetta. The other officials who said they have been part of discussions about the plan say it would require the assent of the White House and congressional oversight committees, and would be contingent upon the approval of the Afghan government. The idea has not yet been presented at any of those levels, the sources said.
Afghan investigator insists Quran burnings intentional
Associated Press By Patrick Quinn 04/03/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - While U.S. investigators say the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. military base was a mistake involving at least five Americans who may face a disciplinary review, Afghan investigators claimed it was an intentional desecration.
The conflicting accounts highlight rising tensions between the two countries following the Feb. 20 discovery of charred Qurans and other religious literature in a burn pit at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
Anger over the burnings already has led the deaths of more than 30 Afghans during violent protests as well as six U.S. soldiers.
A Western official said that preliminary findings from a joint investigation by senior Afghan and U.S. military officials that was ordered by Marine Gen. John Allen has convinced them that although mistakes were made, there was no intent to desecrate the Qurans or other material.
The official, who has knowledge of the investigation but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said it could lead to a disciplinary review of at least five U.S. military personnel involved.
The Western official confirmed earlier reports that extremist inscriptions were found inside the texts, including notations apparently scribbled by detainees exchanging messages. He said that after the writings were discovered, two Afghan-American interpreters were assigned to go through the library materials, and 1,652 items were removed and placed in boxes.
A decision was made to dispose of the material because of a lack of storage space and the notes inside, but a group of three soldiers on a garbage detail removed the books before that could be done properly, the official said. He said the soldiers had no idea what they were throwing into the burn pit and insisted none of the material was destroyed before it was removed by Afghan workers.
However, Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a top Afghan religious leader who was on a different panel appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the incident, claimed the burning was intentional.
Dad said U.S. officials informed Afghan authorities about their suspicions that notes inside the books were being used as a way for detainees to communicate with comrades outside the prison. The Americans believed that a bookseller, who had a contract to take care of the library, was acting as a mediator and told him not to show up for work on the day that two translators were scouring the materials.
The translators later told the Afghan delegation that U.S. officials had told them that the books pulled from the shelves were headed for storage.
According to Dad's account, the books were kept in a place where refuse is picked up and taken to a garbage burn pit on the base. Afghan workers at the base noticed the religious books and notified an Afghan army commander who questioned U.S. troops about the books and was satisfied when he was told they would be stored somewhere safe.
But the Afghan workers later noticed the books had been set on fire. The workers and two Afghan officers rescued 216 books, including 48 Qurans, from being burned, Dad said. They were shouting and pulling the books from the burn pit, preventing the U.S. troops from throwing the remaining four cartons of books into the fire, he said.
"They lied to the Afghan workers and the Afghan National Army officers, telling them they were going to store the books in a container, then they went and burned the books. If it was not intentional, they would not have lied," Dad said.
Dad also claimed the investigation had shown that some detainees had written their names, their father's names, their inmate identification numbers and the date they were detained in some of the books that were not destroyed. Some of the books written in Arabic also had definitions of Arabic words scribbled in Dari or Pashto, the two Afghan languages.
"I didn't see anything that suggested that messages were being exchanged between prisoners or with outsiders," he said.
Full details of the incident are expected to be included in the joint Afghan-U.S. probe that is being reviewed by a coalition legal expert. A date for its release has not been set. A more formal U.S. military investigation is still weeks away from completion.
Local Taliban leader killed in Afghan Kunduz province
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader was killed Sunday during a joint Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops operation in northern Afghan province of Kunduz, a police source said.
"Based on intelligence, a joint unit of special operation force of Afghan army and international forces killed a local Taliban leader namely Seyd Gul during an operation in surrounding area of provincial capital Kunduz city early this morning," a provincial police spokesman Seyd Sarwar Houssaini told Xinhua.
He said that the deceased Taliban leader was responsible for several attacks on security forces and directed the emplacement of roadside bombs and provided weapons and funds to the insurgents across in the province.
The joint forces also found and seized a handful of weapons during the raid, he said.
Taliban militants have yet to confirm the death of their local leader in Kunduz province some 250 km north of capital city of Kabul.
Afghan police kill 2 militants, detain 12
KABUL, March 4 (Xinhua)-- Afghan police backed by army and the NATO-led troops have killed two anti-government militants and captured a dozen others over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here Sunday.
"During the past 24 hours, Afghan National Police, Afghan National Army and Coalition Forces launched five joint operations in Nangarhar, Baghlan, Kunduz, Kandahar and Helmand provinces as a result of these operations, two armed insurgents were killed and 12 others were arrested by Afghan National Police," the statement added.
Also, during these operations, Afghan National Police discovered and confiscated a number of arms and ammunitions including one rocket launcher, 200 light rounds, 20 heavy rounds, 11 anti-vehicle mines, eight boxes of machine gun bullets, 10 hand grenades and 30 kilograms of opium, the statement further said.
However, it did not say if there was any causality on the security forces.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
22 anti-gov't militants give up fighting in N. Afghanistan
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Twenty two anti- government militants gave up militancy and handed over their weapons to authorities in Baghlan province 160 km north of capital Kabul on Sunday.
"With joining these people to the peace process and handing over their weapons to government the security situation will be further improved in Baghlan," provincial governor Munshi Majid told the audience in a ceremony to welcome the former insurgents.
"There people were active in Baghlam-e-Markazi district and with joining them to the peace process the government control will be further strengthen," the governor added.
He also called upon other anti-government fighters to follow the step and give up fighting.
"My demand from the government is to ensure my security and the security of my men and their families," the group commander Mohammad Yasin told newsmen.
He also said that he had fought in the rank of Hizb-e-Islami party, the second largest group after Taliban outfit fighting Afghan government.
The Hizb-e-Islami or Islamic party, led by Gulbudin Hekmatyar has not to make comment yet.
How to get Afghans to trust us once again
Washington Post By Fernando M. Luján March 3, 2012
“Ooooh, Major Far-nan-do, we’re gonna sell you to the Taliban for a million dollars . . . laa-di-laaa . . . we’re gonna trade you for a new truck . . . for a new house!”
It was late at night in Helmand province last summer, and my Afghan army companions — Jawad and Raz Mohammed — were improvising a song in Dari, clapping their hands to the beat. They could barely get through a verse without bursting into laughter. I did my best to laugh, too. We were friends, and they were joking, but for a moment it made me wonder: Could I trust these men? Would they try to sell me? And what was I doing out here alone? In fact, was it safe for any of us, a few thousand U.S. advisers, to be embedded in Afghan military units across the country?
After the recent burning of Korans at a NATO base and the violence that has followed, I’m not the only one worried about the prospects for the advisory mission in Afghanistan. The accidental desecration of Islam’s holy book, in which five U.S. soldiers were found to be involved, and the resulting riots and killings of American troops reveal a crisis of trust between Afghans and Americans. To rebuild that relationship, we need to focus not just on the Taliban insurgency, but also on dissolving Afghan security forces’ resentment of coalition troops and defeating the pervasive notion that our forces are in Afghanistan to destroy Islam.
As an Army major, it is not my role to debate policy. However, my job in Afghanistan over the past year gave me a unique perspective on the difficulties of building trust. I was on a small team of special operators, governance experts, and Dari- or Pashto-speaking U.S. officers embedded with coalition and Afghan units across the country, coaching, advising and listening to their problems. Sometimes we wore beards and Afghan uniforms and patrolled in Ford Rangers rather than armored trucks, and often we were the only Americans on remote bases — all in hopes of getting a real sense of what Afghan soldiers thought when their Western partners weren’t around.
One of the first things we learned was the power of a simple narrative, repeated endlessly by the Taliban: The coalition is here to occupy Afghanistan and destroy Islam. This message is at the core of the Taliban’s strategy; the group uses it to draw recruits, win sympathy from civilians and encourage soldiers to defect. While the Afghans we worked with protected us from harm — often at great risk to themselves — sometimes doubt would creep into our conversations: Why do you speak our language? Are you a Muslim? Why not? Do you want to take away our religion?
Many of these men had never heard of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They didn’t know why we were in their country.
Any coalition action in Afghanistan — no matter how accidental — that feeds the perception of a Western-led war on Islam endangers the mission and destroys trust. The smallest mistakes are amplified by the Taliban through videos, magazines, DVDs, Web sites, personal visits and other methods. A committed cadre of Taliban agents will infiltrate peaceful demonstrations to incite violence and provoke a strong coalition reaction — so that the cycle of mistrust can begin again. To defeat this threat to the U.S.-Afghan relationship, leaders at all levels must not only avoid making unforced errors but also take actions every day to convince their Afghan colleagues, then the local population, that they respect Islam.
For example, just west of Kandahar last summer, my team came across an American platoon that worked with the Afghan army to engage local religious leaders. Though hesitant at first, the Afghan soldiers got permission to pray in the village mosque alongside the civilians they protected. Later, when two young children were killed by a Taliban mine, the soldiers — at their advisers’ recommendation — encouraged the mullah to denounce the incident from his mosque’s loudspeaker, sending a powerful message to the population about the hypocrisy of the Taliban’s actions: What kind of Muslim would kill our innocent children?
In the aftermath of the Koran-burning incident, it is this type of local, immediate response — from Afghan to Afghan — that has the best chance of shaping perceptions. During this tense time, American advisers all over the country should sit down with their Afghan colleagues to discuss the Muslim faith, and should listen more than they talk. I did this nearly every time I visited a new Afghan unit, in response to questions about my own faith. Once the Afghans saw I was eager to learn about Islam, they took care of me and defended my presence to the local population.
As damaging as religious misunderstandings can be, the gradual drawdown of coalition troops presents its own challenges. Advisers, working in remote areas and facing the threat of Taliban infiltration, sometimes respond by separating themselves from the Afghans, withdrawing behind barricades, strict rules and technology. On one patrol in southeast Afghanistan last year, we watched a line of sputtering Afghan army pickup trucks try to clear a road laden with IEDs while American forces trailed at the rear in heavily armored vehicles bristling with advanced anti-mine devices. The Afghans muttered as they hopped down from their trucks to search for the explosives by hand: “Are they cowards? Are their lives more important than ours?”
Later, we saw a well-known Afghan colonel who had fought the Taliban for many years get roughly searched; he was nearly denied admission to an operations briefing with American forces. In both cases, the Americans were following procedure — yet they were unknowingly sabotaging their mission. While Afghan officers may smile politely in meetings, they trust you only if you’ve shared danger and hardship. There is no shortcut to earning their respect.
Of course, the U.S. military should not do away with armored vehicles or rules, but it should pay close attention to the experience, training and judgment of those selected to be advisers. Not everyone can do this type of mission. Every day, with every action, an adviser must weigh the impact it could have on Afghan relationships. In this sense, NATO’s withdrawal of personnel from Kabul ministries after the shootings of American officers, while understandable, has temporarily achieved the Taliban’s intent — separating coalition advisers from their Afghan partners.
Yet even in some of the most dangerous areas of Kandahar, we saw the best advisers bridge this gap: They smiled and made friends but carried a loaded pistol under their shirt. They spent hours drinking tea but looked doubly close at the Afghan who claimed to have just returned from leave in Pakistan.
The last obstacle to the American-Afghan relationship is resentment within the Afghan security forces. I do not imply that Afghan units are hotbeds of anti-Americanism — they are not. My team of advisers embedded with nearly 20 Afghan battalions across Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and we were always well received and protected. But when we talked to the Afghan soldiers in their language, we heard many frustrations with how coalition soldiers treated them.
They complained of young U.S. soldiers acting like drill sergeants, screaming and cursing at the Afghans and making them do push-ups. (While this behavior is common in American basic training, in the respect-based culture of Afghanistan, such treatment is a violation of one’s honor.) We stayed in camps where the Afghans slept in straw huts with smoke from a trash fire blowing on them, while coalition members lounged in air-conditioned trailers. During Ramadan, a month in which Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sundown, we watched American troops dragging their Afghan colleagues on an operation and noisily drinking water in front of them in midday summer heat.
These types of cultural misunderstandings and oversights rarely lead to “green-on-blue” (Afghan-against-American) violence. More often, they erode trust and respect — and with them, the ability of coalition units to influence their Afghan partners.
Yet the raw talent to succeed in the advisory mission is there within the ranks: Nearly everywhere we visited, we encountered advisers doing phenomenal work with their Afghan colleagues, fighting the challenges I’ve described and building trust in the process. In this environment, language, cultural fluency and long-term relationships are priceless. But advisers rarely receive serious language training and usually quickly rotate through Afghan units, making it difficult to form close relationships. And while last year’s surge in resources and troops has allowed the coalition to reverse the Taliban’s momentum in southern Afghanistan, it has occasionally bred arrogance: Why work through Afghans when you can do the job yourself?
Thus, the true challenge of the advisory mission is not finding brave and talented Americans, but overcoming institutional and bureaucratic hurdles — the tendency to assign jobs without regard to skill or aptitude, to think in terms of resources instead of relationships, to neglect training that doesn’t come on the rifle range. This is a challenge that can be overcome if leaders are willing to break with conventional practices and embrace the idea of smaller embedded teams of well-trained advisers. Even if they are vastly outnumbered, Americans will be safer and more effective if they are forced to rely on the Afghans.
The loss of U.S. soldiers on secure bases, at the hands of Afghans we thought to be allies, is much harder to accept than the loss of soldiers on patrol. Yet this is a fundamental part of the conflict in Afghanistan. Even if coalition forces refuse to let the threat of Taliban infiltration alienate them from their Afghan partners, even if they continue to demonstrate respect for Islam and bridge cultural divides, we will lose good people in similar incidents. The Taliban is ruthless and committed. But the Afghans don’t hate us, despite the fact that sometimes we try really hard to make them hate us.
I never told my singing Afghan friends, but later that night in Helmand, I was startled from my sleep, nervous about their joke. When I opened my eyes, I saw a shadow in the doorway. Struck with fear, I reached for my pistol, only to realize that the shadow was Jawad, the one who had joked about selling me to the Taliban. He was guarding me as I slept.
flujan@cnas.org
Fernando M. Luján, a major in the U.S. Army Special Forces, is a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
21 Tonnes of Drugs Torched in Helmand
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Sunday, 04 March 2012
The Afghan authorities set light to 21 tonnes of illegal drugs seized in southern Helmand province on Saturday.
The haul is one of the largest yet discovered in what remains one of the nation's largest opium-producing regions. It includes raw opium, hashish, chemicals used to process opium into cocaine, and also alcohol.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently said that revenues from opium production in the country rose 133 per cent in 2011.
Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium despite the efforts of the government and its international allies to curb production.
The money earned from the opium is reportedly used to provide weapons for the insurgents.
Efforts are continuing in Helmand and other areas of Afghanistan to wean poor farmers away the cash crop and to encourage them to grow agricultural produce instead.
The head of the British PRT in Helmand, Michael O'Neill, said on Saturday that Afghanistan will face security challenges after 2014 when all foreign forces leave the country.
"There will continue to be security challenges in Helmand and in other parts of Afghanistan," he said. "There are many countries in the world, including this region with security challenges, so I don't think they will disappear completely."
He said that while there has been progress in the area of security, insurgents are still active in some parts of the country.
Mr O'Neill believes that the insurgency gets some supports in the region.
"This is a complicated region as you know very well and the relationships are complicated," he said. "It is very important to recognise, or rather there will be security challenges for many years."
Britain has around 9,000 troops in Afghanistan mainly stationed in Helmand province. The country has lost 398 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001.
Paul says Afghanistan apology evidence of larger problem
CNN's Kevin Liptak
(CNN) – Rep. Ron Paul, who has long espoused a non-interventionist foreign policy, said Sunday that President Barack Obama’s apology for the burning of Qurans in Afghanistan was indicative of a larger problem with America’s foreign policy.
Speaking from Alaska, where the Texas congressman is campaigning for votes ahead of Super Tuesday, Paul said America shouldn’t be engaged in conflicts that require the president to apologize for troops’ missteps.
“We should change our policy, so if we have a policy going on in the Middle East that is begging that we apologize now and then, and others condemning it because they don't think we should apologize, I think we should reassess our foreign policy,” Paul said to CNN Chief Political Correspondent on “State of the Union.”
Paul described Republicans who condemned Obama for apologizing for the burning as “a little over the top,” saying the very act of invading Afghanistan was deserving of an apology from the American president.
“I’m personally more apologetic for invading countries who never did anything to us and occupying it, disrupting it, causing thousands of deaths of our own people and causing hundreds of thousands of refugees,” Paul said. “This is the thing that I feel sad about, what about the pictures of torture? Weren't they every bit as bad? I mean this is what incites the hatred.”
As for Iran, Paul said the United States should follow the pattern of the Cold War.
“You know, it doesn't make any sense to bomb a country that is no threat to anybody just because they might get a weapon,” Paul said. “Containment worked pretty well with the Soviets, and they were rather ruthless people, killing millions and millions of their own people, and we stood them down in the Cold War. So I'd try to calm it down a little bit, but, quite frankly, I don't think we should tell Israel what they should do or shouldn't do.”
US troops could face disciplinary action over Qur'an burning in Afghanistan
Afghan-US military inquiry may lead to review of at least five personnel despite concluding burning of texts unintentional
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 March 2012
At least five US military personnel could face a disciplinary review following the burning of copies of the Qur'an by American soldiers in Afghanistan.
A joint investigation by senior Afghan and US military officials has concluded that although mistakes were made when troops at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, had burned copies of the Qur'an and other religious literature along with piles of waste paper, there was no intent to desecrate the Islamic religious texts.
A western official said the investigation could lead to a disciplinary review of at least five US military personnel involved.
But a different panel appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to investigate the incident, has concluded that the burning of the holy books was deliberate.
Maulvi Khaliq Dad, a senior Afghan religious leader on the panel, said US troops told Afghans at the base that the religious materials pulled from a detention centre library were to be stored, but were then sent for incineration.
"They are claiming that it was not intentional. Our investigative team says it was intentional," Dad said.
After the panel presented its findings, Afghanistan's top religious leaders demanded on Friday that those involved be put on public trial and be punished, a position that Karzai backs.
Barack Obama and other US officials have apologised for the incident on 20 February, which triggered six days of riots across Afghanistan. The apologies, which described the incineration as accident, have failed to quell the anger in the country, although the violent protests that killed more than 30 Afghans and six US troops have subsided.
Karzai's office said on Saturday it had only seen the report drafted by the religious leaders and had not yet been given the joint report, so could not comment on it.
"We are waiting for the result of the investigation by Nato, which will probably show who is involved in this and how many people are involved. After studying it we will announce our stance," said a presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "What the Afghan president has requested from US officials and the US military is a trial and punishment."
Australia's Afghanistan mission has failed, says Professor Hugh White
The Australian March 04, 2012
THE Australian military's mission in Afghanistan has failed and the Federal Government has done a bad job of explaining Australia's role there, a defence strategist says.
Professor Hugh White from the Strategic Studies Institute at the Australian National University said it is "past the point where the Government can credibly claim that they've got an orderly plan".
"For a long time now the government's been saying that we're going to pull out of Afghanistan when the job is done," Professor White told the Ten Network.
"I think it's now clear that the job's not going to be done, that the United States, for example, is talking about pulling its forces out, not just in 2014, which seems very soon, but in 2013."
Professor White said Australia will leave Afghanistan "very much the way it looks at the moment".
He unequivocally held the Government responsible for the way the conflict has been outlined to the general public.
"I think (Defence Minister) Stephen Smith has done a very bad job of really explaining to the Australian people in the light of that fact why we're there, what we're still doing there, why we can't get out sooner," he said.
He said the Government has become fixated on not appearing to go soft on the issue of national security.
"I think they've been terrified that if they do appear to be stepping back from the Afghanistan commitment they'll be seen and portrayed by the coalition as being weak on defence and weak on support for the US alliance.
"So I think they've had a very strong political imperative to stay engaged and I think that has overwritten the strategic judgements that they should have been making about what we're really achieving in Afghanistan."
Professor White said the cost to Australia includes the loss of life.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com