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Guantanamo Taliban inmates 'agree to Qatar transfer'
10 March 2012 BBC News
Five senior Taliban fighters held at Guantanamo Bay have agreed to be moved to custody in Qatar as part of a peace plan, Afghan government officials say.
The US administration has not approved the transfer but is considering it as an incentive for the militants to enter negotiations in Afghanistan.
None of the five inmates is accused of directly killing Americans.
They would be re-united with their families in Qatar, which is playing an increasing role in negotiations.
They reportedly agreed to the transfer when they met Afghan government officials who visited the US prison this week on a mission from President Hamid Karzai.
Correspondents point out that the visit to the US prison on Cuba would not have been possible without US approval.
Aside from the aim of ending the war in Afghanistan, the prospect of transferring Taliban detainees proves once again that, more than three years after he promised to close it, Guantanamo Bay remains a thorn in President Obama's side, the BBC's Jonathan Blake reports from Washington.
If the president pursues this strategy, though, he will need support from wary politicians in Congress, our correspondent says.
Many there see a transfer of what they call the most dangerous inmates at Guantanamo as a step too far, he adds.
'No decision'
Ibrahim Spinzada, a senior President Karzai aide, visited Guantanamo on Monday, according to Reuters.
Both he and Shahida Abdali, a senior Afghan security official, also visited the US this week, the White House said without giving details.
"We are hopeful this will be a positive step towards peace efforts," Mr Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, told Reuters news agency.
Asked about the transfer plan, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: "The United States has not decided to transfer any Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay.
"We are not in a position to discuss ongoing deliberations or individual detainees, but our goal of closing Guantanamo is well established and widely understood."
The spokeswoman pointed out that any decision on transfers would be undertaken in accordance with US law and in consultation with Congress.
US officials are hoping that President Obama can announce the establishment of fully fledged political talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban at a Nato summit in May.
The international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan is due to finish at the end of 2014.
A total of 171 detainees were still being held at Guantanamo as of this month, Reuters reports.
In January, the Taliban announced it was opening a political office in Qatar.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool is expected to visit the Gulf state this month for talks with government officials on reconciliation with the Taliban.
Afghan foreign minister to visit Qatar to discuss Taliban talks
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi 10/03/2012
KABUL - Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool will visit Qatar to meet government officials to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban, a ministry spokesman said on Saturday, a sign the nascent peace process could gain momentum.
Rasool is scheduled to leave for Qatar in under ten days, Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai told Reuters.
The Afghan Taliban announced in January it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations that would be likely to give it Afghan government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
Initially the Kabul government was cool to the idea of the Taliban holding talks with U.S. officials in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar.
President Hamid Karzai withdrew his ambassador to Doha, apparently angry he had not been properly consulted or worried his government could be excluded from talks.
An Afghan government official described Rasool's visit as a "very important step" and that the Afghan ambassador would soon return to Qatar.
Afghan officials have since pledged support for the Qatar reconciliation efforts, but also want Saudi Arabia and Turkey to facilitate talks to make the process more comprehensive.
The Afghan government has had some contact with the Taliban, who have made a strong comeback after being toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2001, but there are no signs that fully-fledged peace talks will happen soon.
U.S. diplomats have also been seeking to broaden exploratory talks that began clandestinely in Germany in late 2010 after the Taliban offered to open a representative office in Qatar.
The United States hopes to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table so Afghanistan can be stabilised before foreign combat troops head home at the end of 2014.
GUANTANAMO VISIT
In another signal of possible progress, an Afghan government delegation visited the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military prison this week to secure approval from five Taliban detainees who may soon be moved to Qatar.
The delegation, which visited the top-security detention centre in Cuba on Monday, included Ibrahim Spinzada, a senior foreign policy aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, sources familiar with the subject said.
Government sources in Kabul said Spinzada and Shahida Abdali, a senior Afghan security official, visited the United States this week. The White House said the two officials were in Washington briefly but both the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment on the Guantanamo visit.
Karzai's government has demanded the five former senior members of the Taliban government, held at Guantanamo Bay for a decade, give their consent before they are transferred to the small country where they would under Qatar's custody.
The transfer would be one of a series of good-faith measures that, if U.S. diplomats can surmount remaining hurdles, would set in motion the first substantial political negotiations on the conflict in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.
A year after it was unveiled, the Obama administration's peace initiative may soon offer the United States an opportunity to broker an end to a conflict that began as the response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The war has dragged on for a decade at huge financial and human cost.
(Additonal reporting by Missy Ryan in WASHINGTON; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
Pakistan names new spymaster
Washington Post By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung 09/03/2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, perhaps the most crucial but least trusted player in the U.S.-led battle against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has a new spymaster.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced on Friday that Karachi-based Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam will head Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), replacing Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has led the agency since 2008 — and whose retirement may improve the troubled U.S.-Pakistan alliance against terrorism.
“Personal relationships with General Pasha have worn a bit thin,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It might be good to start afresh.”
Pasha’s term already had been extended — unusual in the top echelons of the Pakistani military — so the appointment of a new spy chief was anticipated. Pasha had also faced criticism in the ranks for his perceived failures surrounding the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden last May.
The U.S. counterterrorism community relies to a certain degree on the ISI to identify al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal regions, especially in the CIA’s long-running drone war. But the U.S. decision not to inform Pakistan about the impending raid on bin Laden’s compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad spoke volumes about the degree to which Washington mistrusted its supposed ally’s spy agency and military.
Pasha’s successor was appointed the top military commander in the southern port city of Karachi in October 2010 — a post perceived as one of the army’s most important. Islam is close to the nation’s armed forces chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani; both served in the infantry in the army’s Punjab regiment.
Islam had also served as deputy director general of the ISI, in charge of domestic intelligence-gathering, according to military officials here.
A U.S. official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity noted that many of Islam’s army assignments had been focused on India but that he also had ties to the United States. “During his career, Zaheer traveled to the U.S. to participate in U.S. military-sponsored training and international fellowship programs,” the official said.
Although U.S. officials have often harshly criticized the ISI, accusing it of sheltering militants in Pakistan and tolerating their attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan, the change of leadership brings an opportunity to reset the relationship.
“We would expect General Zaheer to continue cooperation with the United States in our mutual fight against terrorism,” the U.S. official said. “It would not be a surprise to see a brief transition period as the new head of ISI gets up to speed, but that shouldn’t have much impact on counterterrorism cooperation.”
Pakistanis often refer to general officers, even in a formal context, by their rank and first name.
Relations between the CIA and ISI have been consistently strained. Last fall Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly charged that the Haqqani network, the Pakistani-based militant organization U.S. forces in Afghanistan consider their most potent nemesis, was a “veritable arm” of the ISI. Although Pakistan has said it does not know the exact location of the network, U.S. intelligence officials maintain it has provided coordinates and photographs of Haqqani headquarters in the tribal region town of Miranshah, near a Pakistani military base and airstrip.
Despite the ruptured relationship, which snapped in November after Afghan-based U.S. aircraft inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border raid, Pasha has maintained cordial ties with the current CIA director, David H. Petraeus, and his predecessor, Leon E. Panetta. Even as Pakistani and U.S. diplomats and military commanders have remained at arm’s length since November, Pasha met secretly with Petraeus in a third country early last month.
Ties also neared a breaking point early last year when a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, shot and killed two Pakistanis while driving through Lahore. Although the Pakistanis immediately labeled Davis an intelligence agent, the Obama administration insisted he was a diplomat working in the Lahore consulate and had diplomatic immunity. After two months of U.S. pressure, Pakistan allowed Davis to leave the country. The administration later acknowledged his CIA status.
Pakistan has charged the United States with placing numerous intelligence personnel inside the country without acknowledging their status, and has sporadically refused to issue visas to the CIA.
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Afghans responsible for Qur'an burning: Gingrich
Press TV March 10, 2012
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has blamed Afghans for the burning of the Holy Qur'an by US troops, saying prisoners in the US base were using its pages to transmit messages from jails.
Speaking to an audience of supporters in Meridian, Mississippi, on Friday, Gingrich claimed that Afghan prisoners were “using the Qu'ran for communication from jail, and it's a pity that the religious leaders in Afghanistan aren't condemning the people who were defacing the Qu'ran. Because it is those people who are responsible for the Qu'ran ending up being burned, because if they hadn't defaced it, it wouldn't have been confiscated.”
Gingrich added that he was offended when US President Barack Obama apologized to Afghans over the sacrilegious act.
Gingrich went on to say that he would stand up for American troops in similar situations if he becomes president.
Last week, Gingrich told CNN's State of the Union program that "I don't believe the president saved lives by what he did."
"I believe the president set a terrible precedent of a commander in chief not standing up for American troops," he added.
The desecration of Islam's holy book at the US military’s Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan sparked days of violenct protests in Afghanistan where dozens of people, including several US forces, were killed.
The desecration of the Holy Qur’an underscores the insensitivity of the US-led forces about the cultural and religious values and rituals of Afghanistan, more than 10 years after they invaded the Asian nation to remove the Taliban from power.
Insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of some 130,000 US-led forces in the war-torn country.
U.S. aid agency prepares switch to Afghan security
Reuters By Susan Cornwell Fri Mar 9, 2012
WASHINGTON - The main U.S. foreign aid agency is preparing to switch from private security contractors in Afghanistan to Afghan government-provided security this month under a new policy mandated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, raising concern in Washington that this could put U.S. civilians at greater risk.
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah says the agency may be able to negotiate waivers from the policy for some major infrastructure projects so that they could continue to have access to private security.
But U.S. AID officials also said this week that only 25 percent of U.S.-funded development projects in Afghanistan require security guards, suggesting the changeover to Afghan government-provided security this month that Karzai has ordered may not be so dramatic.
"Seventy-five percent of our assistance portfolio does not require private security contractors today. So a lot of our partners, and a lot of the way we are doing business is not affected by this at all," Alex Thier, Shah's assistant for Afghanistan and Pakistan programs, said in an interview.
Private security contractors working for foreign companies, who have numbered in the thousands, are no longer allowed on aid and development programs after March 20 under Karzai's decree. If these programs want armed escorts or guards for their compounds, they are supposed to contract with a branch of the Afghan police, the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF).
Karzai has long been critical of private contractors and other "parallel institutions" in Afghanistan and wants them under the control of the Afghan government.
Yet it's far from clear that the Afghan Public Protection force can provide the same level of security.
Security has deteriorated markedly across Afghanistan over the past two years. A spate of bloody protests and attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan following the recent burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. troops have raised more concern on Capitol Hill about the safety of American soldiers as well as civilians in programs to improve Afghan health, education and the economy.
"In fact, this new violence calls into question whether the current assistance strategy can be successful if Americans are not even safe to work in ministries alongside Afghan staff who should be our partners," Representative Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House subcommittee on foreign aid, said this week.
Shah told Granger's panel that his agency was working with Afghans as well as NATO forces to negotiate a series of "exclusions" from Karzai's decree for some U.S. assistance projects. He said he believed this would work out for some of U.S. AID's most "visible" projects, but did not name them.
Some major U.S. AID-supported infrastructure projects are in dangerous places, such as repairs to the Kajaki dam in southern Helmand province, where it has been a challenge to get materials needed to install a turbine because of the dam's location in one of the Taliban's strongholds.
GRADUAL DECLINE IN AID?
U.S. AID has about 380 employees in Afghanistan, and also funds many projects that are carried out by non-governmental organizations and the Afghan government.
A major implementer of U.S. foreign aid programs, the Arlington, Virginia-based International Relief and Development (IRD), signed the first contracts with the Afghan Public Protection Force this week, a statement from IRD said on Friday.
The contracts will cover security protection for agricultural, civilian assistance and engineering services programs implemented by IRD and funded by U.S. AID in Afghanistan, the statement said.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan are in the process of handing responsibility for security over to the Afghan army and police. The United States and other western nations plan to withdraw most of their troops by the end of 2014.
But Thier argued that there should not be a sudden drop-off in U.S. assistance after 2014.
"I think that everybody who thinks about Afghanistan, on the civilian side, sees this incredible investment that we have made in Afghanistan, and nobody wants that to unwind," Thier said.
In recent years, U.S. AID funding for Afghanistan has averaged about $2 billion annually. The Obama administration has requested $1.85 billion for these programs in fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. This remains a tiny fraction of the huge amounts Washington spends on military operations in the country.
Whether Congress will fund that level of assistance is uncertain.
"It's very important that our funding levels are predictable, and even if there is some decline, that it's gradual," Thier said. "Because what we really need in Afghanistan is a ramp, not a cliff. Cliffs are dangerous."
(Editing by Warren Stroebel; Desking by Eric Walsh)
Afghan forces evict Taliban fighters, recapture district in Kandahar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led troops after days of operations evicted Taliban militants from Ghorak district in the southern Kandahar province 450 km south of capital city Kabul on Friday night and established government control there, provincial police chief Abdul Raziq said Saturday.
"At last our police with the support of national army and the NATO-led forces recaptured Ghorak district after four years, and established the rule of law there," Raziq told Xinhua.
Ghorak district had been ruled by Taliban over the past four years, the official admitted.
During the operation that lasted for several days only two police sustained injuries, he said.
As for Taliban casualties, he stressed all the insurgents had fled away and the search operation is underway to locate and capture if any Taliban fighter is hidden among the locals.
The security in-charge in southern zone Assadullah Khalid has also visited Ghorak district, the police chief said, adding the government would launch reconstruction projects in Ghorak district to strengthen security and improve living condition there.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
Afghan police kill 3 irresponsible armed men, capture 10
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Police have eliminated three irresponsible armed men and arrested 10 others during an operation in Baghlan province, 160 km north of capital Kabul, an official said Saturday. "A unit of police force raided the hideout of irresponsible armed men in Pul-e-Hisar district on Friday, as a result three irresponsible armed men were killed and 10 others arrested," Mohammad Rasoul, head of Provincial Council, told Xinhua.
These people had disrupted law and order in the mentioned district, he added.
According to law, no one has the right to carry arms in Afghanistan except police and army. Nevertheless, many irresponsible people besides Taliban militants carry arms in Afghanistan, especially in the far-flanged rural areas where the presence of security personnel is poor and security situation is fragile.
Taliban militants set school on fire in Afghan town: official
QALAI-E-NOW, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The suspected Taliban insurgents set on fire a school in Badghis province 555 km northwest of capital city Kabul on Friday night, spokesman for provincial administration Sharafudin Majidi said Saturday.
"Taliban insurgents set ablaze a primary school in Balamurghab district of Badghis province last night as a result a major part of the school building, stationary and text books were destroyed," Majidi told Xinhua.
Girls of several villages attended the school in the morning shift; while the boys attended it in the afternoon, the official further said, adding that damaging the school would deprive the pupils from education at least for several months to rebuild it.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan government and opposing education for girls have yet to make comment.
According to the official, the Taliban militants abducted four employees of National Statistics last Wednesday in Muqar district and efforts are underway to secure their safe release.
A century after banning railways, Afghanistan rushing to build new lines to outside world
Associated Press Saturday, March 10, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - More than a century ago, fearing that his country might be swallowed up in the Great Game rivalry between the British empire to the east and the Russian army to the north, an Afghan king made a radical decision: He banned railroads.
That edict effectively kept out foreign troops for a number of years. But it also left the Afghan economy, once a wealthy crossroads of the ancient Silk Road trading routes, largely cut off from the world at a time when trains were the engines of development.
Now, Afghanistan has just opened its first major railroad and is planning a half dozen more. The government is also inviting other countries to build tracks, part of plans for a “New Silk Route” that the U.S. hopes will help stabilize the region by promoting trading links.
China, Iran, Pakistan and India all have government or corporate plans for separate railroad projects across Afghanistan. Turkmenistan is completing its own plans for another line. And Uzbekistan has already built the first major rail link, a 47-mile (75-kilometer) line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan’s north.
One reason so many countries are helping Afghanistan belatedly join the rail age: They need trains if their companies hope to export the country’s vast, untapped mineral wealth, estimated by U.S. surveys at nearly $1 trillion.
Both the railway projects and the prospects for future mining wealth will depend largely on whether the country can keep violence from escalating once the international military force withdraws most of its troops by the end of 2014. For investors, it’s a question of whether the increased commerce is worth the risk and effort.
“Now there is genuine trade and traffic going on, especially in the north of Afghanistan, so it makes sense,” says Andrew Grantham, an editor for Railway Gazette who runs a website chronicling the history of Afghanistan’s failed railroad projects. “It’s not just people drawing lines on maps and saying, “Wouldn’t this be nice?”
Competing for contracts to mine deposits of copper, gold, iron and lithium is Afghanistan’s modern Great Game, and one of the prices the government is extracting from eager companies is a promise to develop the railroads necessary to carry the heavy cargo.
“This will be critical to get anything to markets,” says Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the $165 million Uzbek-built railroad. The bank is also pushing a plan to link landlocked Afghanistan into the rail networks of all five of its neighbors.
For now, plans for Afghanistan’s railroads are progressing bit by bit. As part of its agreement to develop a massive copper mine in Aynak, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is being asked to build a 575-mile (920-kilometer) railway from the mine southeast of Kabul. One branch would head to the Pakistani border, another in the opposite direction through the capital and connecting with the new Hairatan line in the north.
The Afghan government is also negotiating with the Indian-led consortium that won the contract for the equally huge iron deposits at Tajigak in central Afghanistan for the companies to fund a 560-mile (900-kilometer) railroad — likely through Iran — to bring out the heavy ore.
The story of how Afghanistan never got a major railroad pivots around Abdur Rahman Khan, the emir who ruled Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. During his reign, Afghanistan was sandwiched between the British colonial rulers of India, which then encompassed modern-day Pakistan, and the Russian empire that extended into Caucasus areas of Central Asia.
Both sides were engaged in what was known as the Great Game to control the region. They were racing to build railroads in areas under their control as a way of quickly moving troops. By the 1880s, both the British and the Russians had built tracks that went right up to Afghanistan’s border.
Rahman Khan responded with a decree that no railroad would be allowed to enter Afghan territory, reasoning that without them, it would be difficult for invading troops to cross the mountainous frontier, according to Grantham.
Afghanistan is “almost unique worldwide” in its history of actively working to stop railroads, Grantham says. “Most countries wanted railways.”
In fact, the emir’s gambit may have worked: Afghanistan never was annexed by either great power.
“It is one of the factors that probably kept the country together, but the price was Afghanistan became a complete backwater economically,” says Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
In the 1920s, Rahman Khan’s modern-minded grandson, King Amanullah, planned a modern rail network in Afghanistan and even built 5-mile (8-kilometer) track with steam locomotives running between Kabul and his European-style palace of Darulaman. But his plans for a wider network met with opposition, and the line fell into disrepair after he was overthrown in 1929. The locomotives are now in a Kabul museum, next to Amanullah’s bombed-out palace.
Soviet occupiers abandoned a few rail projects in the 1980s, and later years of civil war made such construction impossible.
Now, the Afghan government, seeking to lift the country out of poverty, is trying to catch up to its neighbors by building links to Central Asia’s fairly well-developed rail networks.
The plan is to build a series of short, cross-border tracks to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Iran. The tracks would connect to each other inside the country’s north by railways built by Iran from the west and China from the east.
“We would be able to import and export to Russia, Turkey, and even European countries,” says Noor Gul Mangal, Afghanistan’s deputy public works minister. Opening new transport gateways would also reduce Afghanistan’s dependance on neighboring Pakistan as its only link to sea ports.
Only one line is finished and several of the rest are delayed or face funding problems. But already, the prospect of restoring Afghanistan’s status as the crossroads for goods traveling from India, China and Europe has kindled enthusiasm.
Instead of silk, spices and tea, the New Silk Route would carry washing machines from India, heavy machinery from Europe and T-shirts from Pakistan over interconnecting railroads that are faster than container ships and cheaper than air freight.
“Afghanistan is the key. It’s the hub,” Starr says.
It can all sound like a far-fetched dream for Afghanistan, with Taliban violence spiraling and international troops preparing to withdraw from the decade-long war. If President Hamid Karzai’s government cannot prevent the country from plunging further into civil war, the mining companies may cut their losses. In which case more railroad projects will gather dust.
UN agencies hold photo exhibit on Afghan women in Kabul
KABUL, March 10 (Xinhua) -- A photo exhibition kicked off Saturday at Kabul's historic Babur Garden by the UN agencies in Afghanistan to highlight the reality of women in the war-hit country.
The month-long photo exhibit was jointly organized on the occasion of the International Women's Day by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and UN Women Afghanistan with the support of Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs.
The pictures on show clearly reflect the reality of women's achievements and status in the Afghan society, said Syed Sadiq, acting country director of UN Women Afghanistan.
"In these photos, you will see women in different roles exemplifying their equal contribution to peace and overall development of Afghanistan," Sadiq told Xinhua at the exhibit.
According to UN officials, the global theme for 2012 Women's Day is "Empower Rural Women -- end poverty and hunger," while the Afghanistani national theme is "Ending Violence against Women and Girls."
In line with the national theme, a series of activities have been planned by various organizations across the country. On Thursday the Women's Day, Kabul opened its first female-only internet cafe, in a bid to offer women a chance to connect to the world without disturbance from the male.
Afghanistan: Western Advisers Withdrawn Following Killings
TIME By JOHN WENDLE 09/03/2012
KABUL - Amid the routine confusion at the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, changes are immediately apparent to the returning visitor: conspicuously absent is the usual contingent of foreign soldiers and police advisers arriving for meetings in armored SUVs, freshly pressed shirts, body armor, crew cuts and wraparound shades; instead, they seem to have been replaced with Kalashnikov-toting Afghan police, who stand a silent watch amid the chaotic hustle of the ministry compound.
The absence of foreign advisers and security personnel is a consequence of the incident a week and a half earlier, when two high-ranking U.S. officers were shot and killed at a secured office in the ministry amid a wave of riots sweeping the country following the burning of Korans and other religious materials at the U.S. base at Bagram. Hours after those shootings, NATO withdrew all of its military and civilian advisers from Afghan government ministries -- and they have not returned, despite a frenzy of debate in the U.S. over the consequences for the Obama Administration's withdrawal plan of U.S. personnel being unable, temporarily and for security reasons, to mentor their Afghan counterparts.
Many Western advisers stationed in Kabul opposed the decision by General John Allen, commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to withdraw them from their offices, even if -- as NATO insisted -- the move was temporary. "Pulling all advisers from the ministries as a blanket reaction to an incident at the Interior Ministry was an extreme reaction, giving the message that we don't trust anyone," says Santwana Dasgupta, an American support manager at the Ministry of Higher Education. "During these times, I believe it is even more important for the international community to reach out to the Afghans they know, express their dismay at the Koran burnings and not to hide in fear," Dasgupta tells TIME. "I think it is a shame that internationals are asked to run and hide."
"My beef is not that we were under lockdown -- this has happened before for a variety of reasons -- but more about the public way it was mandated that no Americans should visit any ministries," says Dasgupta. "It smacked of tit for tat, and given the cordial relationships we at the Higher Education Project enjoy with the ministry and universities, this message was disappointing." She does concede, though, that she would rather stay home than risk her Afghan colleagues getting injured if she were targeted.
But not all advisers were withdrawn -- some of those not working in U.S. State Department or NATO programs have remained. "We were never sent home," says a European adviser speaking on condition of anonymity. "And, actually, I feel safer at my office than I do in my house because the security is quite good at the ministry. I haven't received any updated security restrictions from my embassy." This adviser, who has only been in Kabul for a little over a month, says that right now "there's no friction between the Afghan and foreign staff after the Koran burnings. They are all educated and know us and our customs, so they understood that it was a mistake. Also, I don't advise the military, I work in development, so there is not as much of a threat."
Many other foreign advisers, however, particularly those working with the Afghan military, continue to do their works as best they can from their bedrooms, guesthouses, dormitories and barracks. TIME's request to interview military advisers affected by Allen's orders were declined until such time as they're cleared to return to their positions.
As NATO has struggled militarily in the face of rising insurgency, the training of Afghan security forces has become the centerpiece of the mission there. Viable government and security institutions are deemed vital to prospects of withdrawing U.S. and NATO troops. But if the advisers are unable to advise their Afghan counterparts, many ask, then why is the U.S. still in Afghanistan?
A June 2011 report by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee entitled "Evaluating U.S. Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan" clearly shows the importance the Obama Administration has placed on building the capacity of the Afghan government and the optimistic light in which it paints those prospects. "The Administration's fiscal year 2012 request for Afghanistan includes roughly $3.2 billion in foreign aid. This funding level reflects the pivotal role the State Department and USAID are expected to play to help consolidate our military gains and ensure a successful transition. It gives our Embassy and USAID Mission in Kabul the necessary resources to build basic Afghan capacity," the report argues, adding that this request is a 22% decrease from fiscal year 2010–enacted levels
The report does warn that despite the best efforts of the State Department and USAID to build capacity, Afghan ministries may not be ready to stand on their own after U.S. withdrawal, and it also warns that "our overreliance on international technical advisors to build Afghan capacity may undermine these efforts. Our aid projects need to focus more on sustainability so that Afghans can absorb our programs when donor funds recede." It also cautions that a sudden drop in aid could trigger a major economic recession in Afghanistan, further imperiling the country's security prospects.
Westerners working in Kabul, however, warn that if advisers are kept out of Afghan ministries -- either for security reasons or because of funding cutbacks -- the 10 years of work the U.S. has put into its nation-building exercise in Afghanistan will be jeopardized.
"I understand why the military advisers were pulled as they are a definite target, but where this all went wrong was pulling out the civilian advisers," says a senior foreign adviser at one of the ministries. "I don't think it was right to pull the civilian advisors out of the ministries for two reasons: first, it encourages similar attacks when Taliban see they can easily disrupt the government by attacking the international staff; and second, the disruption caused to our work by not being on site was huge. We cannot be active advisors and capacity builders of the Afghan government from a distance." Echoing a sentiment widely shared by Westerners involved in capacity building in Afghanistan, this adviser warns, "We must be able to interact with our national colleagues and should not appear to be more precious than them."
Afghans Hinder Smuggling Inquiry, 2 U.S. Officials Say
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG March 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan defense officials are impeding an investigation into accusations that members of their air force are smuggling opium and weapons and that an Afghan officer who shot and killed eight American service members last year may have been involved in the suspected trafficking, two American officials said.
The accusations first surfaced in 2010 when some Afghan Air Force personnel voiced suspicions to American officers that smuggling was occurring on the military side of Kabul’s airport. But the American officials, who have knowledge of the investigation, say the inquiry by the American-led coalition has made scant progress in large part because top Afghan generals and defense ministry officials have provided only minimal cooperation, a fact that has deepened American suspicions.
The investigators have been given limited access to Afghan military personnel who could provide needed evidence, and they have been kept away from parts of the airport where they suspect smuggling may still be taking place, the two American officials said.
For now, no direct links between Afghan Air Force personnel and known international drug trafficking networks have been found. The Americans’ suspicions are based on tips from informants they consider credible and on circumstantial evidence. That evidence includes unexplained flights and cargo deliveries by Afghan helicopters and other aircraft, many of which take place under the cover of darkness, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified for fear of angering Afghan officials and their own bosses.
“You could say that in a way we’re being stonewalled,” one of the officials said. “Nobody’s coming out saying ‘no, you can’t look into this or you can’t look into that.’ But they’re not making it easy.”
The lack of Afghan cooperation in the investigation sharply illustrates what for the United States has become an uncomfortable facet of the war in Afghanistan: By continuing to finance and work with an Afghan government and military seen as corrupt at almost all levels, America and its allies have helped create a problem they now seem powerless to fix.
The United States, for example, spent $20 billion over the last two fiscal years to train and equip Afghanistan’s security forces, including its air force, but it has limited ability to ensure the money is being well used — or at least not misused. Another $5.7 billion is earmarked for the coming fiscal year to aid Afghan security forces, and billions more are being spent on civilian aid.
The American officials with knowledge of the investigation said the Afghans had resisted coalition pressure to suspend officers suspected of involvement, and Afghan defense officials dismissed the smuggling allegations, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The allegations are “baseless and they must be proven,” Maj. Gen. Abdul Wahab Wardak, commander of the Afghan Air Force, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “We never do such things.”
Coalition leaders have complained in the past of a lack of cooperation, or even seeming obstruction, from Afghan officials in corruption cases. In the summer of 2010, President Hamid Karzai personally shut down an investigation into one of his aides, who had been arrested by a joint Afghan and American anticorruption task force after Western officials said he was heard on a wiretapped telephone conversation negotiating a bribe from an Afghan banker suspected of laundering money for opium traffickers and the Taliban. (The banker was trying to stop an investigation into his own activities, the officials said.)
Soon after, Mr. Karzai began limiting the role of his government’s anticorruption units and prosecutors, which were financed, trained and backed by Western advisors.
American officials initially tried to resist President Karzai’s moves but eventually acquiesced. Fighting corruption, once seen by some American officials as vital to building an Afghan government that could provide a credible alternative to the Taliban, is now a relatively low priority as the Obama administration focuses on scaling back its commitments in Afghanistan.
The American officials with knowledge of the current investigation into the air force said they hoped that in this case their superiors would press the Afghans to cooperate because of the possible tie between the smuggling and the deaths of eight United States Air Force officers and an American civilian.
The nine were killed in April 2011 by an Afghan air force colonel, Ahmed Gul, who then killed himself. A report on the killings released by the United States Air Force in January found that Colonel Gul had become radicalized and harbored long-standing hostility to Americans. Yet it also suggested financial problems might have played into his actions.
Colonel Gul coordinated the Afghan Air Force’s cargo movement, and most of his victims played some part in initial American efforts to determine why Afghan helicopters were making unscheduled runs at odd hours of the night to other parts of Afghanistan.
One of the American service members quoted in the United States Air Force report said the Americans were at the time of the killings trying to enforce oversight rules — like requiring cargo planes to file flight plans — that likely would have cut into any money Afghan Air Force officers might have been earning from the after-hours flights. “It was a business to them,” the American was quoted as saying in the report.
Still, the American officials knowledgeable about the smuggling investigation cautioned that they have no hard evidence Colonel Gul was directly involved in any scheme to traffic opium or weapons.
U.S. 'Strong Engagement' To Continue In Central Asia After Afghan Withdrawal
RFE/RL March 09, 2012
In connection with the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, the neighboring countries of Central Asia have moved up in recent years on Washington's list of foreign policy priorities. Now, with the 2014 withdrawal of U.S. troops on the horizon, governments of the region are wondering how that departure will affect them, as well as American interest in Central Asia. RFE/RL Washington correspondent Richard Solash spoke to Robert Blake, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, about this and other issues, ranging from human rights in the region to Russian plans for a "Eurasian Union."
RFE/RL: Some critics have said that Central Asia's new strategic importance has trumped U.S. concern over its troubling human rights standards. Speaking at Johns Hopkins University on January 25, you responded, "We do not see our engagement with Central Asia as an either-or choice between developing security relationships at the expense of core values like human rights. Progress on one issue can help reinforce, or create incentives for, progress on other issues.” Has increased security cooperation led to human rights progress?
Robert Blake: I would say that our increased cooperation with Central Asia across the board -- not just on security measures and on the Northern Distribution Network -- has really helped to increase the level of trust and confidence between the United States and all of the Central Asian countries. In some cases, there has been some limited human rights progress, but I don't want to overstate that. I think all of the Central Asian states, to a varying degree, are concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and very much have their eye on whether there are levels of growing Islamic influence in their region -- and for those reasons, they're not really moving very quickly to open up their systems as fast as we hope they would.
But nonetheless, the fact that we have this intensified engagement now with all the Central Asian governments has led to much better dialogue on these issues, where we talk very, very openly, and frankly, speak openly with our partners about why we think it's in their interest to, for example, allow greater religious freedom or to allow greater press freedom, and how we think that it's actually detrimental to their stability to now allow more of these human liberties.
One of the things we've been working really hard on is trafficking in persons. There has been quite a lot of progress in places like Tajikistan, where we actually moved them off of what [the U.S. State Department] calls the Tier 2 watch list onto the Tier 2 of cooperating countries. We've been engaging with all of the countries of Central Asia a lot on that particular issue. I think there's been some release of dissidents in places like Uzbekistan. These are people that we've talked quietly to the government about. So there have been some examples like that. But I don't want to overstate this. There hasn't been huge progress on human rights. On the contrary, there has been in many cases a deterioration of rights. So this remains a very important part of our agenda with all of these countries.
RFE/RL: Many in Central Asia now are wondering how U.S. involvement in the region will change after Washington withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Can you look into the future a bit to address that question?
Blake: It's always a little bit hazardous to talk about relations two years hence, but I think it's safe to say that the United States will continue to attach great importance to our relations with Central Asia, well beyond 2014, just as we will attach great importance to our relations with Afghanistan.
There's a misimpression in many parts of the region that, just because most of the American troops in Afghanistan will be pulling out as a result of the transition at the end of 2014, that somehow the United States is going to abandon Afghanistan. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States is going to have a long-term partnership with Afghanistan, particularly on the economic side. We will continue to have some residual military presence there as well, at least to provide training [and] to engage in counterterrorism efforts. The exact nature of that is under negotiation with the Afghan government.
Likewise, we will continue to have a very strong engagement with all of the Central Asian countries, because it's very, very important to us that this be a region of stability and that this be a region of economic opportunity and that this region help to really lead the process of regional integration. And we think that there's a really important opportunity now, and we're really just starting on that process. That's going to continue well beyond 2014.
RFE/RL: What will be the biggest threat facing Central Asia after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan? Are the region's countries prepared to deal with that threat?
Blake: Again, I don't want to get into trying to predict what the situation's going to be like after 2014. We don't know. But we're certainly making every effort we can now to, again, support this very important security transition that's taking place in Afghanistan, but then equally important, to build up the private sector in Afghanistan by establishing these regional linkages that I talked about earlier -- and then working closely with our friends in Central Asia, who believe strongly in this regional vision and want to contribute to the stability of Afghanistan."
RFE/RL: Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has said that there should be no foreign troop presence at the country's Manas air base by mid-2014, when the current U.S. lease expires. Is that your understanding? Will that complicate withdrawal plans and future shipments of supplies to Afghanistan?
Blake: Well, first of all, let me express our appreciation to the government of Kyrgyzstan for their continued hosting of the Manas transit center. This remains a very important part of the overall effort in Afghanistan because it's a vital logistics hub. It's the center through which all of our troops pass before they go into Afghanistan. So we very much appreciate the hosting of this by the government of Kyrgyzstan.
We're just really beginning the conversation now with the government about what the future of the Manas transit center is going to be. As you know, we've had some initial conversations with [Atambaev] and with members of his team. I think we've going to have more technical-level discussions at some point about the future of that and I don't want to try to anticipate what those are going to be like. Again, we see this as something that's very much in our interest but also in the interests of Kyrgyzstan, and we very much want to listen to the ideas that President Atambaev and his team have about the future. We'll do our best to work in a very cooperative fashion to find a way forward that's going to be to the satisfaction of us and to Kyrgyzstan and not be of any concern to important allies like Russia.
RFE/RL: So it still remains to be seen whether the U.S. presence at Manas will continue post-2014, correct?
Blake: That's right. All of that is going to be under discussion.
RFE/RL: To continue on Kyrgyzstan, in a few months we will be at the two-year anniversary of citizens' approving a new constitution, which paved the way for the creation of Central Asia's first parliamentary democracy. Reflecting on what has happened since then, how do you assess the speed and quality of progress?
Blake: Kyrgyzstan has gone through an enormous transition over the last two years. I think that they've faced challenges that would have been much more difficult for many other countries that didn't have the kind of democratic system that they've had. I think it's a real tribute, both to the democratic system that they're developing, but also to the leadership of [former] President [Roza] Otunbaeva and now President Atambaev, that they've been able to overcome many of the difficulties that they've faced.At the same time, I think President Atambaev would be the first to say that his country still faces many challenges. As you know, during his inaugural address, he talked very openly about how they need to do more on things like reconciliation [and] things like corruption. And that's a good thing; that shows that he's listening to the concerns of his people and that those are very much at the forefront of his agenda. That's the value of a democratic system: It provides feedback to the leaders and the leaders can then act on those very important issues. So I think that they are taking steps, but there's quite a lot to be done, particularly on the reconciliation side. I think tensions remain high in southern Kyrgyzstan, so it's very, very important for Kyrgyzstan to address those, to try to bring the communities together, to provide economic opportunity for everyone in that important region, and to work closely with countries like Uzbekistan as well, that can help provide some of that economic opportunity by opening up the borders and trade routes.
RFE/RL: There has been talk in the Russian press, and some conflicting reports, about Central Asia providing an exit route for U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan. Will troops and cargo leave the region through Uzbekistan, as some reports say? The related possibility being mentioned is that the U.S. will leave some of its weaponry in Uzbekistan. Some consider that an alarming prospect, given the repressive nature of the government. Is that true?
Blake: I don't want to comment on any specific routes or the specific logistics patterns, for obvious security reasons. But let me say that as American units begin to rotate out of Afghanistan, or continue to rotate out of Afghanistan, they also take their equipment, and that's standard operating procedure everywhere. Some equipment will be left in Afghanistan, but obviously Afghanistan doesn't need all of the equipment that is now there. So some of that equipment will be rotated out [and] some of that will rotate out through the Northern Distribution Network. It is possible that some of that might be made available through what's called 'excess defense articles,' but that's a very detailed process that goes on between the Pentagon and these countries. Those would be subject to the same restrictions that we have that govern normal arms transfers to Uzbekistan or any other country.
I don't want your listeners or anybody to think that there will be some sort of exceptional process here governing excess defense articles. Those will be done in the normal way, and thus far, we have not been willing to transfer any kind of lethal weapons to Uzbekistan. The majority of the assistance that we've been providing as a result of the waver has been protective equipment and non-lethal assistance to help them to defend themselves against potential retribution for the support that they're providing to the United States.
RFE/RL: On Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was reelected in February with 97 percent of the vote. The OSCE decided not to monitor it, saying in a statement that "the deployment of an election observation mission, even of a limited nature, would add value at this point in time." What is the U.S. reaction to the election and do you see any chance for political plurality in Turkmenistan in the future?
Blake: Well, I think it was good that at least there were some other candidates that did run, but I don't think that there was any adversarial effort. Almost all the candidates, to my knowledge, endorsed the president himself, so I don't consider that that was a serious, democratic effort. But we are encouraging Turkmenistan and all of the other countries in Central Asia to move toward more competitive, democratic practices, including in their presidential elections. We saw a little bit of that in Kazakhstan where, for example, now they have some new parties that are represented in the Kazakh parliament, and that's certainly welcome. But even in Kazakhstan there were a lot of questions that the OSCE raised about the parliamentary elections as well.This is going to be a gradual process, but we think it's very, very important to show progress and for the governments to show their own people that there's going to be progress. But [for Turkmenistan], I can't say that this [election] marked significant new progress, no.
RFE/RL: Finally, a question about newly reelected Russian President Vladimir Putin's vision of creating a "Eurasian Union." In the newspaper "Izvestiya," he wrote that, not unlike the Soviet Union, it should have "a developed system of regional production specialization and a common space of language, science and culture." Many are reading this plan as a move to consolidate Russian influence. Your thoughts?
Blake: First of all, we haven't seen much practical progress towards this Eurasian Union, so it's very difficult to assess how seriously Russia is pursuing this. Our main interest is in ensuring that whatever is intended, they don't try to establish a zone of exclusion. We think that, on the contrary, what is needed is to encourage economic integration and regional economic integration in particular, and that therefore, what's needed is to open up the trade routes, to open up greater opportunities for trade, both within Central Asia but also between Central Asia and all of its regional partners, particularly its partners to the South -- to India, which is going to be the largest market for all of these countries over the next 50 years. Many of the economies of the region and the leaders of the region see that this is going to be a real pole of opportunity, and therefore it's not in any of their interests to see any of these regional trade opportunities get locked in a Eurasian Union. On the contrary, we need to keep these trade routes open and these trade opportunities open. That's certainly the message that we're conveying to our friends in Russia and to everybody else in the region.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
10 March 2012 BBC News
Five senior Taliban fighters held at Guantanamo Bay have agreed to be moved to custody in Qatar as part of a peace plan, Afghan government officials say.
The US administration has not approved the transfer but is considering it as an incentive for the militants to enter negotiations in Afghanistan.
None of the five inmates is accused of directly killing Americans.
They would be re-united with their families in Qatar, which is playing an increasing role in negotiations.
They reportedly agreed to the transfer when they met Afghan government officials who visited the US prison this week on a mission from President Hamid Karzai.
Correspondents point out that the visit to the US prison on Cuba would not have been possible without US approval.
Aside from the aim of ending the war in Afghanistan, the prospect of transferring Taliban detainees proves once again that, more than three years after he promised to close it, Guantanamo Bay remains a thorn in President Obama's side, the BBC's Jonathan Blake reports from Washington.
If the president pursues this strategy, though, he will need support from wary politicians in Congress, our correspondent says.
Many there see a transfer of what they call the most dangerous inmates at Guantanamo as a step too far, he adds.
'No decision'
Ibrahim Spinzada, a senior President Karzai aide, visited Guantanamo on Monday, according to Reuters.
Both he and Shahida Abdali, a senior Afghan security official, also visited the US this week, the White House said without giving details.
"We are hopeful this will be a positive step towards peace efforts," Mr Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, told Reuters news agency.
Asked about the transfer plan, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: "The United States has not decided to transfer any Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay.
"We are not in a position to discuss ongoing deliberations or individual detainees, but our goal of closing Guantanamo is well established and widely understood."
The spokeswoman pointed out that any decision on transfers would be undertaken in accordance with US law and in consultation with Congress.
US officials are hoping that President Obama can announce the establishment of fully fledged political talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban at a Nato summit in May.
The international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan is due to finish at the end of 2014.
A total of 171 detainees were still being held at Guantanamo as of this month, Reuters reports.
In January, the Taliban announced it was opening a political office in Qatar.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool is expected to visit the Gulf state this month for talks with government officials on reconciliation with the Taliban.
Afghan foreign minister to visit Qatar to discuss Taliban talks
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi 10/03/2012
KABUL - Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool will visit Qatar to meet government officials to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban, a ministry spokesman said on Saturday, a sign the nascent peace process could gain momentum.
Rasool is scheduled to leave for Qatar in under ten days, Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai told Reuters.
The Afghan Taliban announced in January it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations that would be likely to give it Afghan government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
Initially the Kabul government was cool to the idea of the Taliban holding talks with U.S. officials in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar.
President Hamid Karzai withdrew his ambassador to Doha, apparently angry he had not been properly consulted or worried his government could be excluded from talks.
An Afghan government official described Rasool's visit as a "very important step" and that the Afghan ambassador would soon return to Qatar.
Afghan officials have since pledged support for the Qatar reconciliation efforts, but also want Saudi Arabia and Turkey to facilitate talks to make the process more comprehensive.
The Afghan government has had some contact with the Taliban, who have made a strong comeback after being toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2001, but there are no signs that fully-fledged peace talks will happen soon.
U.S. diplomats have also been seeking to broaden exploratory talks that began clandestinely in Germany in late 2010 after the Taliban offered to open a representative office in Qatar.
The United States hopes to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table so Afghanistan can be stabilised before foreign combat troops head home at the end of 2014.
GUANTANAMO VISIT
In another signal of possible progress, an Afghan government delegation visited the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military prison this week to secure approval from five Taliban detainees who may soon be moved to Qatar.
The delegation, which visited the top-security detention centre in Cuba on Monday, included Ibrahim Spinzada, a senior foreign policy aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, sources familiar with the subject said.
Government sources in Kabul said Spinzada and Shahida Abdali, a senior Afghan security official, visited the United States this week. The White House said the two officials were in Washington briefly but both the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment on the Guantanamo visit.
Karzai's government has demanded the five former senior members of the Taliban government, held at Guantanamo Bay for a decade, give their consent before they are transferred to the small country where they would under Qatar's custody.
The transfer would be one of a series of good-faith measures that, if U.S. diplomats can surmount remaining hurdles, would set in motion the first substantial political negotiations on the conflict in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.
A year after it was unveiled, the Obama administration's peace initiative may soon offer the United States an opportunity to broker an end to a conflict that began as the response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The war has dragged on for a decade at huge financial and human cost.
(Additonal reporting by Missy Ryan in WASHINGTON; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
Pakistan names new spymaster
Washington Post By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung 09/03/2012
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, perhaps the most crucial but least trusted player in the U.S.-led battle against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has a new spymaster.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced on Friday that Karachi-based Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam will head Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), replacing Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has led the agency since 2008 — and whose retirement may improve the troubled U.S.-Pakistan alliance against terrorism.
“Personal relationships with General Pasha have worn a bit thin,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It might be good to start afresh.”
Pasha’s term already had been extended — unusual in the top echelons of the Pakistani military — so the appointment of a new spy chief was anticipated. Pasha had also faced criticism in the ranks for his perceived failures surrounding the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden last May.
The U.S. counterterrorism community relies to a certain degree on the ISI to identify al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal regions, especially in the CIA’s long-running drone war. But the U.S. decision not to inform Pakistan about the impending raid on bin Laden’s compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad spoke volumes about the degree to which Washington mistrusted its supposed ally’s spy agency and military.
Pasha’s successor was appointed the top military commander in the southern port city of Karachi in October 2010 — a post perceived as one of the army’s most important. Islam is close to the nation’s armed forces chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani; both served in the infantry in the army’s Punjab regiment.
Islam had also served as deputy director general of the ISI, in charge of domestic intelligence-gathering, according to military officials here.
A U.S. official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity noted that many of Islam’s army assignments had been focused on India but that he also had ties to the United States. “During his career, Zaheer traveled to the U.S. to participate in U.S. military-sponsored training and international fellowship programs,” the official said.
Although U.S. officials have often harshly criticized the ISI, accusing it of sheltering militants in Pakistan and tolerating their attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan, the change of leadership brings an opportunity to reset the relationship.
“We would expect General Zaheer to continue cooperation with the United States in our mutual fight against terrorism,” the U.S. official said. “It would not be a surprise to see a brief transition period as the new head of ISI gets up to speed, but that shouldn’t have much impact on counterterrorism cooperation.”
Pakistanis often refer to general officers, even in a formal context, by their rank and first name.
Relations between the CIA and ISI have been consistently strained. Last fall Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly charged that the Haqqani network, the Pakistani-based militant organization U.S. forces in Afghanistan consider their most potent nemesis, was a “veritable arm” of the ISI. Although Pakistan has said it does not know the exact location of the network, U.S. intelligence officials maintain it has provided coordinates and photographs of Haqqani headquarters in the tribal region town of Miranshah, near a Pakistani military base and airstrip.
Despite the ruptured relationship, which snapped in November after Afghan-based U.S. aircraft inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border raid, Pasha has maintained cordial ties with the current CIA director, David H. Petraeus, and his predecessor, Leon E. Panetta. Even as Pakistani and U.S. diplomats and military commanders have remained at arm’s length since November, Pasha met secretly with Petraeus in a third country early last month.
Ties also neared a breaking point early last year when a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, shot and killed two Pakistanis while driving through Lahore. Although the Pakistanis immediately labeled Davis an intelligence agent, the Obama administration insisted he was a diplomat working in the Lahore consulate and had diplomatic immunity. After two months of U.S. pressure, Pakistan allowed Davis to leave the country. The administration later acknowledged his CIA status.
Pakistan has charged the United States with placing numerous intelligence personnel inside the country without acknowledging their status, and has sporadically refused to issue visas to the CIA.
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Afghans responsible for Qur'an burning: Gingrich
Press TV March 10, 2012
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has blamed Afghans for the burning of the Holy Qur'an by US troops, saying prisoners in the US base were using its pages to transmit messages from jails.
Speaking to an audience of supporters in Meridian, Mississippi, on Friday, Gingrich claimed that Afghan prisoners were “using the Qu'ran for communication from jail, and it's a pity that the religious leaders in Afghanistan aren't condemning the people who were defacing the Qu'ran. Because it is those people who are responsible for the Qu'ran ending up being burned, because if they hadn't defaced it, it wouldn't have been confiscated.”
Gingrich added that he was offended when US President Barack Obama apologized to Afghans over the sacrilegious act.
Gingrich went on to say that he would stand up for American troops in similar situations if he becomes president.
Last week, Gingrich told CNN's State of the Union program that "I don't believe the president saved lives by what he did."
"I believe the president set a terrible precedent of a commander in chief not standing up for American troops," he added.
The desecration of Islam's holy book at the US military’s Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan sparked days of violenct protests in Afghanistan where dozens of people, including several US forces, were killed.
The desecration of the Holy Qur’an underscores the insensitivity of the US-led forces about the cultural and religious values and rituals of Afghanistan, more than 10 years after they invaded the Asian nation to remove the Taliban from power.
Insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of some 130,000 US-led forces in the war-torn country.
U.S. aid agency prepares switch to Afghan security
Reuters By Susan Cornwell Fri Mar 9, 2012
WASHINGTON - The main U.S. foreign aid agency is preparing to switch from private security contractors in Afghanistan to Afghan government-provided security this month under a new policy mandated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, raising concern in Washington that this could put U.S. civilians at greater risk.
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah says the agency may be able to negotiate waivers from the policy for some major infrastructure projects so that they could continue to have access to private security.
But U.S. AID officials also said this week that only 25 percent of U.S.-funded development projects in Afghanistan require security guards, suggesting the changeover to Afghan government-provided security this month that Karzai has ordered may not be so dramatic.
"Seventy-five percent of our assistance portfolio does not require private security contractors today. So a lot of our partners, and a lot of the way we are doing business is not affected by this at all," Alex Thier, Shah's assistant for Afghanistan and Pakistan programs, said in an interview.
Private security contractors working for foreign companies, who have numbered in the thousands, are no longer allowed on aid and development programs after March 20 under Karzai's decree. If these programs want armed escorts or guards for their compounds, they are supposed to contract with a branch of the Afghan police, the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF).
Karzai has long been critical of private contractors and other "parallel institutions" in Afghanistan and wants them under the control of the Afghan government.
Yet it's far from clear that the Afghan Public Protection force can provide the same level of security.
Security has deteriorated markedly across Afghanistan over the past two years. A spate of bloody protests and attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan following the recent burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. troops have raised more concern on Capitol Hill about the safety of American soldiers as well as civilians in programs to improve Afghan health, education and the economy.
"In fact, this new violence calls into question whether the current assistance strategy can be successful if Americans are not even safe to work in ministries alongside Afghan staff who should be our partners," Representative Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House subcommittee on foreign aid, said this week.
Shah told Granger's panel that his agency was working with Afghans as well as NATO forces to negotiate a series of "exclusions" from Karzai's decree for some U.S. assistance projects. He said he believed this would work out for some of U.S. AID's most "visible" projects, but did not name them.
Some major U.S. AID-supported infrastructure projects are in dangerous places, such as repairs to the Kajaki dam in southern Helmand province, where it has been a challenge to get materials needed to install a turbine because of the dam's location in one of the Taliban's strongholds.
GRADUAL DECLINE IN AID?
U.S. AID has about 380 employees in Afghanistan, and also funds many projects that are carried out by non-governmental organizations and the Afghan government.
A major implementer of U.S. foreign aid programs, the Arlington, Virginia-based International Relief and Development (IRD), signed the first contracts with the Afghan Public Protection Force this week, a statement from IRD said on Friday.
The contracts will cover security protection for agricultural, civilian assistance and engineering services programs implemented by IRD and funded by U.S. AID in Afghanistan, the statement said.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan are in the process of handing responsibility for security over to the Afghan army and police. The United States and other western nations plan to withdraw most of their troops by the end of 2014.
But Thier argued that there should not be a sudden drop-off in U.S. assistance after 2014.
"I think that everybody who thinks about Afghanistan, on the civilian side, sees this incredible investment that we have made in Afghanistan, and nobody wants that to unwind," Thier said.
In recent years, U.S. AID funding for Afghanistan has averaged about $2 billion annually. The Obama administration has requested $1.85 billion for these programs in fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. This remains a tiny fraction of the huge amounts Washington spends on military operations in the country.
Whether Congress will fund that level of assistance is uncertain.
"It's very important that our funding levels are predictable, and even if there is some decline, that it's gradual," Thier said. "Because what we really need in Afghanistan is a ramp, not a cliff. Cliffs are dangerous."
(Editing by Warren Stroebel; Desking by Eric Walsh)
Afghan forces evict Taliban fighters, recapture district in Kandahar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led troops after days of operations evicted Taliban militants from Ghorak district in the southern Kandahar province 450 km south of capital city Kabul on Friday night and established government control there, provincial police chief Abdul Raziq said Saturday.
"At last our police with the support of national army and the NATO-led forces recaptured Ghorak district after four years, and established the rule of law there," Raziq told Xinhua.
Ghorak district had been ruled by Taliban over the past four years, the official admitted.
During the operation that lasted for several days only two police sustained injuries, he said.
As for Taliban casualties, he stressed all the insurgents had fled away and the search operation is underway to locate and capture if any Taliban fighter is hidden among the locals.
The security in-charge in southern zone Assadullah Khalid has also visited Ghorak district, the police chief said, adding the government would launch reconstruction projects in Ghorak district to strengthen security and improve living condition there.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
Afghan police kill 3 irresponsible armed men, capture 10
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Police have eliminated three irresponsible armed men and arrested 10 others during an operation in Baghlan province, 160 km north of capital Kabul, an official said Saturday. "A unit of police force raided the hideout of irresponsible armed men in Pul-e-Hisar district on Friday, as a result three irresponsible armed men were killed and 10 others arrested," Mohammad Rasoul, head of Provincial Council, told Xinhua.
These people had disrupted law and order in the mentioned district, he added.
According to law, no one has the right to carry arms in Afghanistan except police and army. Nevertheless, many irresponsible people besides Taliban militants carry arms in Afghanistan, especially in the far-flanged rural areas where the presence of security personnel is poor and security situation is fragile.
Taliban militants set school on fire in Afghan town: official
QALAI-E-NOW, Afghanistan, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The suspected Taliban insurgents set on fire a school in Badghis province 555 km northwest of capital city Kabul on Friday night, spokesman for provincial administration Sharafudin Majidi said Saturday.
"Taliban insurgents set ablaze a primary school in Balamurghab district of Badghis province last night as a result a major part of the school building, stationary and text books were destroyed," Majidi told Xinhua.
Girls of several villages attended the school in the morning shift; while the boys attended it in the afternoon, the official further said, adding that damaging the school would deprive the pupils from education at least for several months to rebuild it.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan government and opposing education for girls have yet to make comment.
According to the official, the Taliban militants abducted four employees of National Statistics last Wednesday in Muqar district and efforts are underway to secure their safe release.
A century after banning railways, Afghanistan rushing to build new lines to outside world
Associated Press Saturday, March 10, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - More than a century ago, fearing that his country might be swallowed up in the Great Game rivalry between the British empire to the east and the Russian army to the north, an Afghan king made a radical decision: He banned railroads.
That edict effectively kept out foreign troops for a number of years. But it also left the Afghan economy, once a wealthy crossroads of the ancient Silk Road trading routes, largely cut off from the world at a time when trains were the engines of development.
Now, Afghanistan has just opened its first major railroad and is planning a half dozen more. The government is also inviting other countries to build tracks, part of plans for a “New Silk Route” that the U.S. hopes will help stabilize the region by promoting trading links.
China, Iran, Pakistan and India all have government or corporate plans for separate railroad projects across Afghanistan. Turkmenistan is completing its own plans for another line. And Uzbekistan has already built the first major rail link, a 47-mile (75-kilometer) line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan’s north.
One reason so many countries are helping Afghanistan belatedly join the rail age: They need trains if their companies hope to export the country’s vast, untapped mineral wealth, estimated by U.S. surveys at nearly $1 trillion.
Both the railway projects and the prospects for future mining wealth will depend largely on whether the country can keep violence from escalating once the international military force withdraws most of its troops by the end of 2014. For investors, it’s a question of whether the increased commerce is worth the risk and effort.
“Now there is genuine trade and traffic going on, especially in the north of Afghanistan, so it makes sense,” says Andrew Grantham, an editor for Railway Gazette who runs a website chronicling the history of Afghanistan’s failed railroad projects. “It’s not just people drawing lines on maps and saying, “Wouldn’t this be nice?”
Competing for contracts to mine deposits of copper, gold, iron and lithium is Afghanistan’s modern Great Game, and one of the prices the government is extracting from eager companies is a promise to develop the railroads necessary to carry the heavy cargo.
“This will be critical to get anything to markets,” says Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the $165 million Uzbek-built railroad. The bank is also pushing a plan to link landlocked Afghanistan into the rail networks of all five of its neighbors.
For now, plans for Afghanistan’s railroads are progressing bit by bit. As part of its agreement to develop a massive copper mine in Aynak, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is being asked to build a 575-mile (920-kilometer) railway from the mine southeast of Kabul. One branch would head to the Pakistani border, another in the opposite direction through the capital and connecting with the new Hairatan line in the north.
The Afghan government is also negotiating with the Indian-led consortium that won the contract for the equally huge iron deposits at Tajigak in central Afghanistan for the companies to fund a 560-mile (900-kilometer) railroad — likely through Iran — to bring out the heavy ore.
The story of how Afghanistan never got a major railroad pivots around Abdur Rahman Khan, the emir who ruled Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. During his reign, Afghanistan was sandwiched between the British colonial rulers of India, which then encompassed modern-day Pakistan, and the Russian empire that extended into Caucasus areas of Central Asia.
Both sides were engaged in what was known as the Great Game to control the region. They were racing to build railroads in areas under their control as a way of quickly moving troops. By the 1880s, both the British and the Russians had built tracks that went right up to Afghanistan’s border.
Rahman Khan responded with a decree that no railroad would be allowed to enter Afghan territory, reasoning that without them, it would be difficult for invading troops to cross the mountainous frontier, according to Grantham.
Afghanistan is “almost unique worldwide” in its history of actively working to stop railroads, Grantham says. “Most countries wanted railways.”
In fact, the emir’s gambit may have worked: Afghanistan never was annexed by either great power.
“It is one of the factors that probably kept the country together, but the price was Afghanistan became a complete backwater economically,” says Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
In the 1920s, Rahman Khan’s modern-minded grandson, King Amanullah, planned a modern rail network in Afghanistan and even built 5-mile (8-kilometer) track with steam locomotives running between Kabul and his European-style palace of Darulaman. But his plans for a wider network met with opposition, and the line fell into disrepair after he was overthrown in 1929. The locomotives are now in a Kabul museum, next to Amanullah’s bombed-out palace.
Soviet occupiers abandoned a few rail projects in the 1980s, and later years of civil war made such construction impossible.
Now, the Afghan government, seeking to lift the country out of poverty, is trying to catch up to its neighbors by building links to Central Asia’s fairly well-developed rail networks.
The plan is to build a series of short, cross-border tracks to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Iran. The tracks would connect to each other inside the country’s north by railways built by Iran from the west and China from the east.
“We would be able to import and export to Russia, Turkey, and even European countries,” says Noor Gul Mangal, Afghanistan’s deputy public works minister. Opening new transport gateways would also reduce Afghanistan’s dependance on neighboring Pakistan as its only link to sea ports.
Only one line is finished and several of the rest are delayed or face funding problems. But already, the prospect of restoring Afghanistan’s status as the crossroads for goods traveling from India, China and Europe has kindled enthusiasm.
Instead of silk, spices and tea, the New Silk Route would carry washing machines from India, heavy machinery from Europe and T-shirts from Pakistan over interconnecting railroads that are faster than container ships and cheaper than air freight.
“Afghanistan is the key. It’s the hub,” Starr says.
It can all sound like a far-fetched dream for Afghanistan, with Taliban violence spiraling and international troops preparing to withdraw from the decade-long war. If President Hamid Karzai’s government cannot prevent the country from plunging further into civil war, the mining companies may cut their losses. In which case more railroad projects will gather dust.
UN agencies hold photo exhibit on Afghan women in Kabul
KABUL, March 10 (Xinhua) -- A photo exhibition kicked off Saturday at Kabul's historic Babur Garden by the UN agencies in Afghanistan to highlight the reality of women in the war-hit country.
The month-long photo exhibit was jointly organized on the occasion of the International Women's Day by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and UN Women Afghanistan with the support of Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs.
The pictures on show clearly reflect the reality of women's achievements and status in the Afghan society, said Syed Sadiq, acting country director of UN Women Afghanistan.
"In these photos, you will see women in different roles exemplifying their equal contribution to peace and overall development of Afghanistan," Sadiq told Xinhua at the exhibit.
According to UN officials, the global theme for 2012 Women's Day is "Empower Rural Women -- end poverty and hunger," while the Afghanistani national theme is "Ending Violence against Women and Girls."
In line with the national theme, a series of activities have been planned by various organizations across the country. On Thursday the Women's Day, Kabul opened its first female-only internet cafe, in a bid to offer women a chance to connect to the world without disturbance from the male.
Afghanistan: Western Advisers Withdrawn Following Killings
TIME By JOHN WENDLE 09/03/2012
KABUL - Amid the routine confusion at the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, changes are immediately apparent to the returning visitor: conspicuously absent is the usual contingent of foreign soldiers and police advisers arriving for meetings in armored SUVs, freshly pressed shirts, body armor, crew cuts and wraparound shades; instead, they seem to have been replaced with Kalashnikov-toting Afghan police, who stand a silent watch amid the chaotic hustle of the ministry compound.
The absence of foreign advisers and security personnel is a consequence of the incident a week and a half earlier, when two high-ranking U.S. officers were shot and killed at a secured office in the ministry amid a wave of riots sweeping the country following the burning of Korans and other religious materials at the U.S. base at Bagram. Hours after those shootings, NATO withdrew all of its military and civilian advisers from Afghan government ministries -- and they have not returned, despite a frenzy of debate in the U.S. over the consequences for the Obama Administration's withdrawal plan of U.S. personnel being unable, temporarily and for security reasons, to mentor their Afghan counterparts.
Many Western advisers stationed in Kabul opposed the decision by General John Allen, commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to withdraw them from their offices, even if -- as NATO insisted -- the move was temporary. "Pulling all advisers from the ministries as a blanket reaction to an incident at the Interior Ministry was an extreme reaction, giving the message that we don't trust anyone," says Santwana Dasgupta, an American support manager at the Ministry of Higher Education. "During these times, I believe it is even more important for the international community to reach out to the Afghans they know, express their dismay at the Koran burnings and not to hide in fear," Dasgupta tells TIME. "I think it is a shame that internationals are asked to run and hide."
"My beef is not that we were under lockdown -- this has happened before for a variety of reasons -- but more about the public way it was mandated that no Americans should visit any ministries," says Dasgupta. "It smacked of tit for tat, and given the cordial relationships we at the Higher Education Project enjoy with the ministry and universities, this message was disappointing." She does concede, though, that she would rather stay home than risk her Afghan colleagues getting injured if she were targeted.
But not all advisers were withdrawn -- some of those not working in U.S. State Department or NATO programs have remained. "We were never sent home," says a European adviser speaking on condition of anonymity. "And, actually, I feel safer at my office than I do in my house because the security is quite good at the ministry. I haven't received any updated security restrictions from my embassy." This adviser, who has only been in Kabul for a little over a month, says that right now "there's no friction between the Afghan and foreign staff after the Koran burnings. They are all educated and know us and our customs, so they understood that it was a mistake. Also, I don't advise the military, I work in development, so there is not as much of a threat."
Many other foreign advisers, however, particularly those working with the Afghan military, continue to do their works as best they can from their bedrooms, guesthouses, dormitories and barracks. TIME's request to interview military advisers affected by Allen's orders were declined until such time as they're cleared to return to their positions.
As NATO has struggled militarily in the face of rising insurgency, the training of Afghan security forces has become the centerpiece of the mission there. Viable government and security institutions are deemed vital to prospects of withdrawing U.S. and NATO troops. But if the advisers are unable to advise their Afghan counterparts, many ask, then why is the U.S. still in Afghanistan?
A June 2011 report by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee entitled "Evaluating U.S. Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan" clearly shows the importance the Obama Administration has placed on building the capacity of the Afghan government and the optimistic light in which it paints those prospects. "The Administration's fiscal year 2012 request for Afghanistan includes roughly $3.2 billion in foreign aid. This funding level reflects the pivotal role the State Department and USAID are expected to play to help consolidate our military gains and ensure a successful transition. It gives our Embassy and USAID Mission in Kabul the necessary resources to build basic Afghan capacity," the report argues, adding that this request is a 22% decrease from fiscal year 2010–enacted levels
The report does warn that despite the best efforts of the State Department and USAID to build capacity, Afghan ministries may not be ready to stand on their own after U.S. withdrawal, and it also warns that "our overreliance on international technical advisors to build Afghan capacity may undermine these efforts. Our aid projects need to focus more on sustainability so that Afghans can absorb our programs when donor funds recede." It also cautions that a sudden drop in aid could trigger a major economic recession in Afghanistan, further imperiling the country's security prospects.
Westerners working in Kabul, however, warn that if advisers are kept out of Afghan ministries -- either for security reasons or because of funding cutbacks -- the 10 years of work the U.S. has put into its nation-building exercise in Afghanistan will be jeopardized.
"I understand why the military advisers were pulled as they are a definite target, but where this all went wrong was pulling out the civilian advisers," says a senior foreign adviser at one of the ministries. "I don't think it was right to pull the civilian advisors out of the ministries for two reasons: first, it encourages similar attacks when Taliban see they can easily disrupt the government by attacking the international staff; and second, the disruption caused to our work by not being on site was huge. We cannot be active advisors and capacity builders of the Afghan government from a distance." Echoing a sentiment widely shared by Westerners involved in capacity building in Afghanistan, this adviser warns, "We must be able to interact with our national colleagues and should not appear to be more precious than them."
Afghans Hinder Smuggling Inquiry, 2 U.S. Officials Say
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG March 9, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan defense officials are impeding an investigation into accusations that members of their air force are smuggling opium and weapons and that an Afghan officer who shot and killed eight American service members last year may have been involved in the suspected trafficking, two American officials said.
The accusations first surfaced in 2010 when some Afghan Air Force personnel voiced suspicions to American officers that smuggling was occurring on the military side of Kabul’s airport. But the American officials, who have knowledge of the investigation, say the inquiry by the American-led coalition has made scant progress in large part because top Afghan generals and defense ministry officials have provided only minimal cooperation, a fact that has deepened American suspicions.
The investigators have been given limited access to Afghan military personnel who could provide needed evidence, and they have been kept away from parts of the airport where they suspect smuggling may still be taking place, the two American officials said.
For now, no direct links between Afghan Air Force personnel and known international drug trafficking networks have been found. The Americans’ suspicions are based on tips from informants they consider credible and on circumstantial evidence. That evidence includes unexplained flights and cargo deliveries by Afghan helicopters and other aircraft, many of which take place under the cover of darkness, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified for fear of angering Afghan officials and their own bosses.
“You could say that in a way we’re being stonewalled,” one of the officials said. “Nobody’s coming out saying ‘no, you can’t look into this or you can’t look into that.’ But they’re not making it easy.”
The lack of Afghan cooperation in the investigation sharply illustrates what for the United States has become an uncomfortable facet of the war in Afghanistan: By continuing to finance and work with an Afghan government and military seen as corrupt at almost all levels, America and its allies have helped create a problem they now seem powerless to fix.
The United States, for example, spent $20 billion over the last two fiscal years to train and equip Afghanistan’s security forces, including its air force, but it has limited ability to ensure the money is being well used — or at least not misused. Another $5.7 billion is earmarked for the coming fiscal year to aid Afghan security forces, and billions more are being spent on civilian aid.
The American officials with knowledge of the investigation said the Afghans had resisted coalition pressure to suspend officers suspected of involvement, and Afghan defense officials dismissed the smuggling allegations, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The allegations are “baseless and they must be proven,” Maj. Gen. Abdul Wahab Wardak, commander of the Afghan Air Force, was quoted as saying by Reuters. “We never do such things.”
Coalition leaders have complained in the past of a lack of cooperation, or even seeming obstruction, from Afghan officials in corruption cases. In the summer of 2010, President Hamid Karzai personally shut down an investigation into one of his aides, who had been arrested by a joint Afghan and American anticorruption task force after Western officials said he was heard on a wiretapped telephone conversation negotiating a bribe from an Afghan banker suspected of laundering money for opium traffickers and the Taliban. (The banker was trying to stop an investigation into his own activities, the officials said.)
Soon after, Mr. Karzai began limiting the role of his government’s anticorruption units and prosecutors, which were financed, trained and backed by Western advisors.
American officials initially tried to resist President Karzai’s moves but eventually acquiesced. Fighting corruption, once seen by some American officials as vital to building an Afghan government that could provide a credible alternative to the Taliban, is now a relatively low priority as the Obama administration focuses on scaling back its commitments in Afghanistan.
The American officials with knowledge of the current investigation into the air force said they hoped that in this case their superiors would press the Afghans to cooperate because of the possible tie between the smuggling and the deaths of eight United States Air Force officers and an American civilian.
The nine were killed in April 2011 by an Afghan air force colonel, Ahmed Gul, who then killed himself. A report on the killings released by the United States Air Force in January found that Colonel Gul had become radicalized and harbored long-standing hostility to Americans. Yet it also suggested financial problems might have played into his actions.
Colonel Gul coordinated the Afghan Air Force’s cargo movement, and most of his victims played some part in initial American efforts to determine why Afghan helicopters were making unscheduled runs at odd hours of the night to other parts of Afghanistan.
One of the American service members quoted in the United States Air Force report said the Americans were at the time of the killings trying to enforce oversight rules — like requiring cargo planes to file flight plans — that likely would have cut into any money Afghan Air Force officers might have been earning from the after-hours flights. “It was a business to them,” the American was quoted as saying in the report.
Still, the American officials knowledgeable about the smuggling investigation cautioned that they have no hard evidence Colonel Gul was directly involved in any scheme to traffic opium or weapons.
U.S. 'Strong Engagement' To Continue In Central Asia After Afghan Withdrawal
RFE/RL March 09, 2012
In connection with the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, the neighboring countries of Central Asia have moved up in recent years on Washington's list of foreign policy priorities. Now, with the 2014 withdrawal of U.S. troops on the horizon, governments of the region are wondering how that departure will affect them, as well as American interest in Central Asia. RFE/RL Washington correspondent Richard Solash spoke to Robert Blake, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, about this and other issues, ranging from human rights in the region to Russian plans for a "Eurasian Union."
RFE/RL: Some critics have said that Central Asia's new strategic importance has trumped U.S. concern over its troubling human rights standards. Speaking at Johns Hopkins University on January 25, you responded, "We do not see our engagement with Central Asia as an either-or choice between developing security relationships at the expense of core values like human rights. Progress on one issue can help reinforce, or create incentives for, progress on other issues.” Has increased security cooperation led to human rights progress?
Robert Blake: I would say that our increased cooperation with Central Asia across the board -- not just on security measures and on the Northern Distribution Network -- has really helped to increase the level of trust and confidence between the United States and all of the Central Asian countries. In some cases, there has been some limited human rights progress, but I don't want to overstate that. I think all of the Central Asian states, to a varying degree, are concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and very much have their eye on whether there are levels of growing Islamic influence in their region -- and for those reasons, they're not really moving very quickly to open up their systems as fast as we hope they would.
But nonetheless, the fact that we have this intensified engagement now with all the Central Asian governments has led to much better dialogue on these issues, where we talk very, very openly, and frankly, speak openly with our partners about why we think it's in their interest to, for example, allow greater religious freedom or to allow greater press freedom, and how we think that it's actually detrimental to their stability to now allow more of these human liberties.
One of the things we've been working really hard on is trafficking in persons. There has been quite a lot of progress in places like Tajikistan, where we actually moved them off of what [the U.S. State Department] calls the Tier 2 watch list onto the Tier 2 of cooperating countries. We've been engaging with all of the countries of Central Asia a lot on that particular issue. I think there's been some release of dissidents in places like Uzbekistan. These are people that we've talked quietly to the government about. So there have been some examples like that. But I don't want to overstate this. There hasn't been huge progress on human rights. On the contrary, there has been in many cases a deterioration of rights. So this remains a very important part of our agenda with all of these countries.
RFE/RL: Many in Central Asia now are wondering how U.S. involvement in the region will change after Washington withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Can you look into the future a bit to address that question?
Blake: It's always a little bit hazardous to talk about relations two years hence, but I think it's safe to say that the United States will continue to attach great importance to our relations with Central Asia, well beyond 2014, just as we will attach great importance to our relations with Afghanistan.
There's a misimpression in many parts of the region that, just because most of the American troops in Afghanistan will be pulling out as a result of the transition at the end of 2014, that somehow the United States is going to abandon Afghanistan. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States is going to have a long-term partnership with Afghanistan, particularly on the economic side. We will continue to have some residual military presence there as well, at least to provide training [and] to engage in counterterrorism efforts. The exact nature of that is under negotiation with the Afghan government.
Likewise, we will continue to have a very strong engagement with all of the Central Asian countries, because it's very, very important to us that this be a region of stability and that this be a region of economic opportunity and that this region help to really lead the process of regional integration. And we think that there's a really important opportunity now, and we're really just starting on that process. That's going to continue well beyond 2014.
RFE/RL: What will be the biggest threat facing Central Asia after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan? Are the region's countries prepared to deal with that threat?
Blake: Again, I don't want to get into trying to predict what the situation's going to be like after 2014. We don't know. But we're certainly making every effort we can now to, again, support this very important security transition that's taking place in Afghanistan, but then equally important, to build up the private sector in Afghanistan by establishing these regional linkages that I talked about earlier -- and then working closely with our friends in Central Asia, who believe strongly in this regional vision and want to contribute to the stability of Afghanistan."
RFE/RL: Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has said that there should be no foreign troop presence at the country's Manas air base by mid-2014, when the current U.S. lease expires. Is that your understanding? Will that complicate withdrawal plans and future shipments of supplies to Afghanistan?
Blake: Well, first of all, let me express our appreciation to the government of Kyrgyzstan for their continued hosting of the Manas transit center. This remains a very important part of the overall effort in Afghanistan because it's a vital logistics hub. It's the center through which all of our troops pass before they go into Afghanistan. So we very much appreciate the hosting of this by the government of Kyrgyzstan.
We're just really beginning the conversation now with the government about what the future of the Manas transit center is going to be. As you know, we've had some initial conversations with [Atambaev] and with members of his team. I think we've going to have more technical-level discussions at some point about the future of that and I don't want to try to anticipate what those are going to be like. Again, we see this as something that's very much in our interest but also in the interests of Kyrgyzstan, and we very much want to listen to the ideas that President Atambaev and his team have about the future. We'll do our best to work in a very cooperative fashion to find a way forward that's going to be to the satisfaction of us and to Kyrgyzstan and not be of any concern to important allies like Russia.
RFE/RL: So it still remains to be seen whether the U.S. presence at Manas will continue post-2014, correct?
Blake: That's right. All of that is going to be under discussion.
RFE/RL: To continue on Kyrgyzstan, in a few months we will be at the two-year anniversary of citizens' approving a new constitution, which paved the way for the creation of Central Asia's first parliamentary democracy. Reflecting on what has happened since then, how do you assess the speed and quality of progress?
Blake: Kyrgyzstan has gone through an enormous transition over the last two years. I think that they've faced challenges that would have been much more difficult for many other countries that didn't have the kind of democratic system that they've had. I think it's a real tribute, both to the democratic system that they're developing, but also to the leadership of [former] President [Roza] Otunbaeva and now President Atambaev, that they've been able to overcome many of the difficulties that they've faced.At the same time, I think President Atambaev would be the first to say that his country still faces many challenges. As you know, during his inaugural address, he talked very openly about how they need to do more on things like reconciliation [and] things like corruption. And that's a good thing; that shows that he's listening to the concerns of his people and that those are very much at the forefront of his agenda. That's the value of a democratic system: It provides feedback to the leaders and the leaders can then act on those very important issues. So I think that they are taking steps, but there's quite a lot to be done, particularly on the reconciliation side. I think tensions remain high in southern Kyrgyzstan, so it's very, very important for Kyrgyzstan to address those, to try to bring the communities together, to provide economic opportunity for everyone in that important region, and to work closely with countries like Uzbekistan as well, that can help provide some of that economic opportunity by opening up the borders and trade routes.
RFE/RL: There has been talk in the Russian press, and some conflicting reports, about Central Asia providing an exit route for U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan. Will troops and cargo leave the region through Uzbekistan, as some reports say? The related possibility being mentioned is that the U.S. will leave some of its weaponry in Uzbekistan. Some consider that an alarming prospect, given the repressive nature of the government. Is that true?
Blake: I don't want to comment on any specific routes or the specific logistics patterns, for obvious security reasons. But let me say that as American units begin to rotate out of Afghanistan, or continue to rotate out of Afghanistan, they also take their equipment, and that's standard operating procedure everywhere. Some equipment will be left in Afghanistan, but obviously Afghanistan doesn't need all of the equipment that is now there. So some of that equipment will be rotated out [and] some of that will rotate out through the Northern Distribution Network. It is possible that some of that might be made available through what's called 'excess defense articles,' but that's a very detailed process that goes on between the Pentagon and these countries. Those would be subject to the same restrictions that we have that govern normal arms transfers to Uzbekistan or any other country.
I don't want your listeners or anybody to think that there will be some sort of exceptional process here governing excess defense articles. Those will be done in the normal way, and thus far, we have not been willing to transfer any kind of lethal weapons to Uzbekistan. The majority of the assistance that we've been providing as a result of the waver has been protective equipment and non-lethal assistance to help them to defend themselves against potential retribution for the support that they're providing to the United States.
RFE/RL: On Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was reelected in February with 97 percent of the vote. The OSCE decided not to monitor it, saying in a statement that "the deployment of an election observation mission, even of a limited nature, would add value at this point in time." What is the U.S. reaction to the election and do you see any chance for political plurality in Turkmenistan in the future?
Blake: Well, I think it was good that at least there were some other candidates that did run, but I don't think that there was any adversarial effort. Almost all the candidates, to my knowledge, endorsed the president himself, so I don't consider that that was a serious, democratic effort. But we are encouraging Turkmenistan and all of the other countries in Central Asia to move toward more competitive, democratic practices, including in their presidential elections. We saw a little bit of that in Kazakhstan where, for example, now they have some new parties that are represented in the Kazakh parliament, and that's certainly welcome. But even in Kazakhstan there were a lot of questions that the OSCE raised about the parliamentary elections as well.This is going to be a gradual process, but we think it's very, very important to show progress and for the governments to show their own people that there's going to be progress. But [for Turkmenistan], I can't say that this [election] marked significant new progress, no.
RFE/RL: Finally, a question about newly reelected Russian President Vladimir Putin's vision of creating a "Eurasian Union." In the newspaper "Izvestiya," he wrote that, not unlike the Soviet Union, it should have "a developed system of regional production specialization and a common space of language, science and culture." Many are reading this plan as a move to consolidate Russian influence. Your thoughts?
Blake: First of all, we haven't seen much practical progress towards this Eurasian Union, so it's very difficult to assess how seriously Russia is pursuing this. Our main interest is in ensuring that whatever is intended, they don't try to establish a zone of exclusion. We think that, on the contrary, what is needed is to encourage economic integration and regional economic integration in particular, and that therefore, what's needed is to open up the trade routes, to open up greater opportunities for trade, both within Central Asia but also between Central Asia and all of its regional partners, particularly its partners to the South -- to India, which is going to be the largest market for all of these countries over the next 50 years. Many of the economies of the region and the leaders of the region see that this is going to be a real pole of opportunity, and therefore it's not in any of their interests to see any of these regional trade opportunities get locked in a Eurasian Union. On the contrary, we need to keep these trade routes open and these trade opportunities open. That's certainly the message that we're conveying to our friends in Russia and to everybody else in the region.
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