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Western forces kill 15 civilians in Afghanistan - Kabul government
By Ahmad Nadem Sunday, March 11, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Coalition forces killed 15 civilians in a shooting spree in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in an incident likely to deepen the growing divide between Washington and Kabul.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.
An Afghan minister earlier told Reuters that a lone U.S. soldier had killed up to 16 people when he burst into homes in villages near his base in the middle of the night.
Panjwayi district is about 35 km (22 miles) west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban.
"The defence minister ... is deeply shocked and saddened by the killings of 15 innocent civilians and the wounding of nine more at the hands of the coalition forces," the ministry in Kabul said in a statement.
The incident comes just weeks after U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, triggering widespread anti-Western protests, and plunging already strained U.S.-Afghan ties to a new low.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had detained one of its soldiers and that an investigation was under way. It said the soldier reportedly went to more than one village near his base.
"I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts, but they were in no way part of authorized ISAF military activity," ISAF deputy commander Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw said in the statement.
The Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, who is investigating the incident, said the soldier entered three homes, killing 11 people in the first one.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Interior Ministry condemned the shootings, which could intensify friction between Washington and Kabul as NATO prepares to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by the end of 2014, a process which has already started.
The Koran burning and the violence that followed, including a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, tested brittle ties between the governments of Karzai and President Barack Obama and underscored the challenges that the West faces even as it moves to withdraw.
All foreign combat troops will withdraw by end-2014 from a costly war that has become increasingly unpopular.
Afghan Defense Ministry condemns killing civilians by NATO soldier
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Defense Ministry has condemned the reported killing of over a dozen civilians in southern Kandahar province by a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Sunday morning and called for the punishment of those responsible for the callous act, a statement released here said.
"The Defense Ministry condemns in its strongest term the killing of 15 innocent civilians and injuring nine others including women, men, old and young people by NATO-led troops in Zangabad village, Panjwai district of Kandahar province," the statement added.
The statement noted, "Afghan Defense Ministry wants ISAF officials to bring to justice at its earliest those responsible for committing the inhumane and heinous crime."
According to locals, 16 people, all civilians including women and children lost their lives when a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) walks out from his base early in the morning and opened indiscriminate fire on the neighborhood around and inflicting the casualties.
Meantime, some people in Zangabad village claim they had saw a chopper over the affected area and heard big bang.
However, the security in-charge in southern region Assadullah Khalid said investigation is underway to determine the fact behind the tragic incident.
Earlier Sunday, Kandahar provincial governor Toryali Weesa told a press briefing that a U.S. soldier opened fire on civilians in the wee hours Sunday in Zangabad area of Panjwai district leaving several civilians dead or injured.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) detained a U.S. service member in connection to an incident that resulted civilian casualties in Kandahar province, the ISAF forces said in a statement released here.
Meantime, ISAF Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Adrian J. Bradshaw expressed his regret over the tragic incident and promised to investigate and punish those behind the crime.
"In my role as in-theatre Commander of ISAF in General Allen' s temporary absence on duty, I wish to convey my profound regrets and dismay at the actions apparently taken by one coalition member in Kandahar province," the deputy commander said in a statement released here in the afternoon.
He also noted that, "An investigation is already underway and every effort will be made to establish the facts and hold anyone responsible to account."
U.S. soldier detained in Afghanistan for shooting civilians
Reuters Sun Mar 11, 2012
KABUL - A U.S. soldier has been detained in Afghanistan for shooting and wounding several civilians in southern province Kandahar, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition said on Sunday.
"It was a shooting incident involving multiple civilians wounded," said the spokesman, Captain Justin Brockhoff, adding that there were no initial reports of deaths in the attack which took place on Sunday.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in cooperation with Afghan authorities, will investigate this incident," ISAF said in a statement.
"This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved."
Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wisa earlier told Reuters a U.S. soldier left his base in Kandahar and opened fire on civilians. He said initial reports indicated up to 16 civilians were killed.
Anti-American sentiment is running high in Afghanistan and it may deepen if news of the shooting spreads.
Anger gripped the country after U.S. soldiers burned a large number of copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month. NATO said it was a tragic blunder.
Thirty people were killed in protests and Afghan forces turned their weapons on U.S. soldiers, killing six.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
2 insurgents killed, 7 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban insurgents were killed and seven others detained during joint operations between Afghan and NATO-led troops, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan national police, Afghan army and international coalition forces have launched nine joint operations in Nangarhar, Kunduz, Helmand, Ghazni and Logar provinces over the past 24 hours, " the ministry said in a statement.
"As a result of these operations, two armed insurgents were killed, one wounded and seven others were arrested," it said.
The joint forces also seized weapons and defused three anti- vehicle mines and a suicide vest, the statement added.
Over 240 insurgents have been killed and more than 690 others detained in the country since the beginning of this year, according to the Interior Ministry.
Our big mistake was to assume we had won, says British ambassador to Afghanistan
Sir William Patey, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, has spoken frankly about what he sees as the errors and failings in the country over the past decade.
Telegraph.co.uk By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 10 Mar 2012
Kabul - With two weeks left of his diplomatic career, Sir William Patey could be forgiven for being discreet. Instead, as he sits in his office in Kabul, the British ambassador to Afghanistan is undiplomatically frank about what he sees as the errors and failings over the past decade.
Principal among them is the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, taken less than two years after Britain, America and an alliance including Australia and France went into Afghanistan to depose the Taliban.
Sir William told The Sunday Telegraph that both Washington and Downing Street wrongly assumed that the war was “won and the Taliban had run away”. But that led to a long-running problem: “years of missed opportunity” followed because the focus was on Iraq instead of Afghanistan.
The 58 year-old said the opportunity to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces to fill the power vacuum was missed, allowing the Taliban to return. “We were too focused on Iraq and we took our eye off the ball. We thought we had won [in Afghanistan] and the Taliban had run away and we just sort of left it to the Afghans to get on with it and we very quickly switched our focus to Iraq. You don’t normally write history so quickly but I’m pretty clear that we won’t have to wait too long for history to make that judgment.”
Speaking the day before six British soldiers were killed in Kandahar, the ambassador also suggested that the presence of International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) had become a hindrance to the stability of the country.
Asked if foreign troops were now part of the problem, Sir William responded: “Could be”, adding: “Afghans have never been comfortable with foreigners and there comes a point — no matter how benign the intentions, and how much you explain that this [ISAF] is not an occupying force, that we are here under a UN mandate agreed with the Afghans — when you just outstay your welcome.”
But he said that ISAF now had a transition plan which, once complete in 2014, would mean the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of Afghanistan.
He went on: “It will be very difficult for the Taliban to argue they are fighting a foreign invader when the people on the streets are their own police and army.”
The ambassador also said the role of British and ISAF troops had changed in the past few years and was less about killing the Taliban and more about “buying time”.
Sir William has risen to the top of the diplomatic service while shattering the stereotypical image of the Eton-educated diplomat.
He was born in Edinburgh, speaks with a thick Scottish accent, is grammar-school educated and went to Dundee University where he read history. His language is often colourful and his off-the-record assessments of certain public individuals are accompanied by howls of mischievous, throaty laughter.
For the next two weeks he will be in charge of Britain’s biggest embassy before retirement beckons. Despite his criticism of the Labour government’s past failings, he believes the country will have a bright future providing the West does not lose interest in Afghanistan’s development.
He added: “Afghanistan will be a mess for many years to come, but it will be an improving mess”, he says, smiling. “There is one end of the scale where we leave, the Afghans bicker amongst themselves, the Taliban don’t sign up to negotiations and there is internal strife. I don’t think that’s the most likely, but it is within the range of possibilities just as it is that the Afghans get everything right.”
Pointing to past failures when the Russians were in charge, he adds: “The reason why the Afghan National Army (ANA) fell apart in the 1990s was not because the Russians had left, but because they had stopped paying and that’s when the warlords came in and started fighting amongst themselves.
This latest plan has learnt the lessons of history. Under the Russians, the ANA was a large force but lacked quality, so what we have to do is concentrate on the quality because we have the numbers.
“You ask me what the biggest risk to the success of our strategy is? Well, it’s us. It is the West being diverted somewhere else or the international community not being prepared to ante up the money.”
But Sir William said that Afghanistan could not expect endless unconditional funding from the international community. “It is important that Afghanistan continues to make progress on reinforcing democratic institutions, having free and fair elections, and there is no regression in human rights.
"So it’s not just, 'Here’s a pile of money for 10 years’. We don’t expect Afghanistan to have eliminated corruption, but we do expect to see some improvements.”
He said the annual cost of running the Afghan security forces would be around £2.62 billion, the vast majority of which would have to be found by Western governments. Such decisions, he said, would be decided at the Nato summits in Chicago and Tokyo later this year when members of the international community disclose their future commitment to the development of the country.
But Sir William also believes the Taliban must play a part in the country’s future if peace is to stand any chance. He said: “Our preference is for the Taliban to reintegrate and reconcile. Nobody has objected to the Taliban becoming a political party, nobody has objected to the Taliban taking part in politics or holding government positions or district-level positions if that’s how it turns out.”
In two weeks’ time the Foreign Office will lose one of its most capable and influential diplomats. But the pipe and slippers will have to wait. “I hope to enter the private sector — I still have some time to give.” And the inevitable biography? “That will have to wait for about five years.”
US lawmaker wants Afghanistan's Karzai investigated
AFP 10/03/2012
WASHINGTON - The head of a US congressional subcommittee is asking a federal agency to investigate whether Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is misappropriating foreign aid funding to benefit himself and his family.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher announced on his website that he has requested an investigation by the US Government Accountability Office.
The request for an investigation coincides with consideration in Congress of President Barack Obama's 2013 budget proposal that includes $2.5 billion for Afghanistan.
Rohrabacher's March 7 letter to the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office asked for a report to Congress on US foreign aid funds that "have been stolen, diverted or otherwise inappropriately gone to, or benefited Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his family."
Rohrabacher is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
"American taxpayer money must cease being diverted and abused by the leader of a country whose people America has tried so valiantly to help," Rohrabacher's letter said. "A report that thoroughly quantifies how much US foreign aid has gone to the Karzai family is urgently needed."
He cited media reports and Wikileaks cables as sources for his allegations.
The New York Times reported March 7 that Karzai's brother, Mahmoud Karzai, received interest-free loans to buy a stake in the Kabul Bank, where the allegations of financial corruption are centered.
They involve suspicions that bank and government officials skimmed foreign aid money intended to support US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The bank came close to insolvency but was bailed out by the Afghan government with funds partially subsidized by Western nations.
"It is time to know for sure, on the record, exactly how dishonest the government in Kabul has become and how much money we are wasting there," Rohrabacher wrote.
Karzai's Office Rejects Corruption Claims
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 10 March 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office has responded to calls for an investigation into allegations of the Karzai family's misuse of foreign aid by demanding proof of the claims.
The US Congress subcommittee, Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations, requested the US Government Accountability Office investigate what amount of funds "have been stolen, diverted, or otherwise inappropriately gone to, or benefited Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his family" in a letter dated March 7, signed by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the subcommittee chairman.
Karzai's spokesman, Imal Faizi, rejected the claims, telling TOLOnews "if they have documents on it, show it to the media and the Afghan people".
The US Embassy in Kabul sought to distance itself from the claims, indicating that the contents of the letter were the personal views of Congressman Rohrabacher, not an official statement from the government.
"Members of the US Congress express their own views, which do not represent those of the Obama Administration, the State Department, nor any part of the Executive Branch of the US Government," a US Embassy spokesman told TOLOnews.
Rohrabacher's office publicly released the letter on Friday, US time, saying that numerous accusations had been made about the corruption of President Karzai and his family in media reports and WikiLeaks cables.
The letter said an investigation was needed on what was being done with foreign aid to Afghanistan given that Congress is now considering the 2013 budget proposal which includes a further $2.5 billion in foreign aid to the country.
"American tax payer money must cease being diverted and abused by the leader of a country whose people America has tried so valiantly to help. A report that thoroughly quantifies how much US foreign aid has gone to the Karzai family is urgently needed," the letter states.
Rohrabacher's office specifically cited reports of Karzai's brother in the release on its website.
Mahmoud Karzai has received "interest free loans to buy a stake in the Kabul Bank, the center of financial scandals, massive embezzlement and political corruption involving skimming from US and Coalition transactions and project funding" the office said.
Afghan Governor: US-Taliban Talks Lack Transparency
March 11, 2012 Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Afghan provincial official criticized the mechanism adopted by the US for the so-called peace negotiations with the Taliban, and dismissed the talks as "secretive and non-transparent".
"This trend which is pushed ahead in a non-transparent and secretive manner now is not defendable and will hit a heavy blow at Afghanistan's national unity and constitution," Governor-General of Afghanistan's Northern province of Balkh General Atta Mohammad Noor said on Sunday.
He said that people of Afghanistan will support the so-called peace talks only if the deal doesn't sacrifice the achievements of the last 10 years and the country's constitution for the sake of a political deal with the Taliban.
Meantime, he called on all Afghan political parties to hammer out and boost national unity in their war-torn country, and cautioned about the outbreak of another civil war in Afghanistan in the wake of a weak national unity.
Most politicians and political analysts are skeptical of the prospects for meaningful peace negotiations with the Taliban.
Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told FNA last month that said that the US is seeking to legitimize the Taliban through holding negotiations with the belligerent group, but meantime underlined that the US has failed to attain its goal.
"… No doubt the Taliban is eager to negotiate with the US since the group sees the talks a positive step towards its legitimacy," Abdullah Abdullah stated.
He said that some foreign countries have taken advantage and get involved in Afghan peace talks after the Afghan government failed to encourage the Taliban to hold talks with the central government within the geographical borders of Afghanistan.
UN Says 145 Presumed Dead In Afghan Avalanche
March 11, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United Nations says at least 145 people are missing and presumed dead after an avalanche hit a remote village in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province last week.
Afghan officials had earlier put the death toll from a series of avalanches in the province's Shekay district at 56.
The mountainous Badakhshan Province has seen heavy snowfalls and avalanches this winter, causing blockages on many roads and highways and leaving villages isolated.
With AFP and AP reports
Afghanistan joins railroad era -- 100 years late
Sunday, March 11, 2012 By Kay Johnson, Associated Press
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 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.
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.
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 railway from the mine southeast of Kabul.
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 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, said Andrew Grantham, an editor for Railway Gazette who runs a website chronicling the history of the country's failed railroad projects.
Their drill may be out of step, but Afghan army is ready for the fight
The intensive training being given to the Afghan army in preparation for withdrawl of coalition forces from the country in 2014 can be revealed in unprecidented detail.
Telegraph.co.uk By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 11 Mar 2012
Kabul - Beneath a leaden sky on a bitter morning on the outskirts of Kabul, hundreds of Afghan army recruits are marching to the sound of a drum.
It is the daily drill lesson at the vast Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC), once a former Soviet army base, now the main military academy of the Afghan National Army.
The march of choice is the goose-step, one of the many peculiarities inherited from the Russian occupation — and the parade is an impressive spectacle.
The recruits’ uniforms might not be a perfect fit and many have yet to master the morning shave, but there is no doubting their commitment.
Three years ago, the British Army and other members of the international coalition were right at the heart of the Afghan army training programme, teaching the fundamentals of shooting, map-reading and drills.
But today the Afghans themselves are in charge and the small team of International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) instructors play only an advisory role.
“What you have here is the future,” WO1 Daz Freeman, the Regimental Sergeant Major of the KMTC Officer Training School, explains as the Afghan recruits marched past.
“When we go they will have to confront the Taliban and, believe me, they are up for the fight. We’ve got two years to get them ready and failure is not an option.”
As WO1 Freeman explains Soviet drill, a squad marches past clearly out of step. The RSM shakes his head before adding: “They might not be world class but then they don’t need to be.”
Not just at marching; in the words of Col Mike Minor, the Canadian commander of the KMTC Advisory Group, the aim is to get the recruits to a level where they are “Afghan good enough”.
It is a phrase that rings around the ISAF headquarters and represents a more qualified understanding of what is achievable.
It also forms the basis of the ISAF withdrawal plan: the minimum level which must be achieved by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) if they are to stand any chance against the Taliban once the majority of the 130,000 ISAF troops depart.
And time is running out. By the end of 2014, “transition”, the process in which responsibility for security of country will move from ISAF to the Afghans, must be complete.
But the road to withdrawal will not be easy or without risk as was tragically demonstrated last week when six British soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device destroyed a Warrior armoured vehicle.
The soldiers were on patrol in the border area between Helmand and Kandahar province.
In Helmand and throughout Afghanistan the role of British and ISAF troops is not so much about killing the Taliban but more about buying time — with their lives if necessary — to allow the Afghans to reach a level where they can face the terror group on their own.
It is a tough task for the British troops who have seen 404 of their number killed in action and thousands more wounded. Many more are likely to be killed in action before transition is complete.
To have a fighting chance against the Taliban, the ANA must reach a level of 195,000 troops — twice the size of the British Army — by the end of 2014, which will give the combined ANSF a total strength of around 340,000.
As I observed last week at the KMTC, a few miles east of the capital, there is no shortage of raw recruits willing to join the Afghan army despite the prospect of being sent to the front line.
And, considering the package on offer, it is not too surprising. As well as a basic salary of £115 a month, double the national average, recruits also receive 64 hours of literacy during the eight-week basic training course.
Every day around 2,800 recruits sit down in a tented camp known as “Literacy Village” where they are taught how to read, write and count by a small group of 100 teachers. Only six per cent of fresh recruits are literate but most should be able to read and write to the standard of a British child leaving primary school by the end of training.
It may be the most valuable part of training, as literacy is such a rare skill in Afghanistan that simply possessing it offers the prospect of greater prosperity after the five years of compulsory service for which recruits sign up.
Everything about the KMTC is on a large scale. It sits on a site of 22,000 acres and over 1,400 recruits, or warriors as they are known in the ANA, pass through basic training every week. Several massive kitchens feed 13,000 recruits a day, who also consume 45,000 loaves of naan bread.
Conditions seem austere by Western standards, but are regarded as luxurious by many of the young Afghans. Training also includes being shown how to use a flushing lavatory and showers — such comforts are absent in rural Afghanistan.
In rows of Russian-built barrack blocks recruits sleep 12 to a room on bunk beds with rubber-covered sponge mattresses and, according to WO1 Freeman, the majority are very happy with life.
“This is like the British Army 50 years ago but for a lot of these young lads this is the lap of luxury — so morale is pretty high,” he said.
WO1 Freeman has been in the British Army for 24 years and is coming to the end of his second tour in Afghanistan. Like all British soldiers working alongside their Afghan counterparts, he carries a rifle and a pistol at all times following the shooting dead of two US officers by a member of the ANSF, which include the army and the police.
“The Afghan army has improved a lot in the last few years, but there is a lot of work to do before the end of 2014. But I reckon they’ll get there. The mistake is to compare them to the British Army, which has been around for 400 years — they’ve only be in existence for 10,” said WO1 Freeman.
Up on a hill outside the camp, recruits are being taught how to clear houses of enemy combatants. It is freezing and the ground is covered in snow, but the 100 recruits, lined up waiting for their turn to attack, seem cheerful and enthusiastic.
Overseeing the training is Command Sergeant Major Sarder Alam — possibly the most respected soldier in the entire camp.
He joined the army as a 17-year-old during the Soviet occupation and rose to the rank of Lt Col before the anarchy of the 1990s. He rejoined the Afghan army in 2001 after the Taliban had been forced out. Such is his standing within the base that even senior officers salute him.
As the recruits charge into the buildings to kill an imaginary insurgent, CSM Alam tells me of his hopes for the future.
“When ISAF leaves the Taliban will no longer have any reason to fight,” he says.
“But if they do we will be able to beat them. Our soldiers are better trained now than they were when the Russians were here. Every man is a volunteer and what we want is to end the war and build our country.”
The Afghan army also has a role for women and an aspiration eventually to recruit 19,000 into its ranks.
Women in uniform still remain something of an oddity in Afghanistan and their barracks are kept strictly separated from male recruits by armed guards.
During a map-reading lesson, Officer Cadet Fieshta Hussini, tells me that she wanted to join the army to “do something different”. “I want to progress up through the ranks and become a general so that I can serve my country.”
The 20 year-old cadet, who was born in Kunduz, but grew up in Iran while the Taliban were in power, adds: “I joined the army with my father’s blessing. He is very proud of what I am doing. The training is very interesting and I feel that I will be contributing to my country’s future.
“The most important things in my life are Afghanistan and freedom. I hope the Taliban will never return — that is something none of us wants.”
The desire to serve is a common theme among all the recruits and was similarly expressed by three 19-year-old male officers who have recently started a 24-week course.
Officer Cadet Rabiullah Kohistany can still recall the “bad days” when the Taliban was in power.
“I joined because I want my country to be free and for the insurgency to end,” he told me shivering as snow began to fall.
“I know that when I finish my training I might be sent to the front line to fight the Taliban, but that does not worry me. I want to serve my country and I am prepared to make any sacrifice necessary.”
Once the recruits have completed their eight-week basic training course — and few, if any, fail, although 10 per cent of every intake simply vanishes — they will be sent to other areas of the army to learn the basics of artillery, logistics or signals.
The commandant of the KMTC is Brig Gen Aminullah Patyani, who first joined the army in the 1970s and spent four years at a Russian tank school in Moscow.
He is confident that his soldiers will be capable of thwarting any attempt by the Taliban to overrun the country once ISAF has departed.
“I have no doubt that the ANA will be able to defeat the Taliban,” he said. “Every soldier in our army is a volunteer, they want to serve their country, they have high morale and they want to fight.
“But what we would like is peace with the Taliban — if they were prepared to lay down their weapons they would be welcome to join the government.
“We are prepared to work with them and they would be welcome to join the army. They are Afghans also.”
But for now there is still a battle with the Taliban and getting the ANA “Afghan good enough” is vital to the exit strategy for British soldiers.
Lt Gen Adrian Bradshaw, the British deputy commander of the ISAF, has to make that transition work — and is confident it can.
Afghanistan, he said was on course for completion by the end of 2014, the date which the Prime Minister has ruled Britain will withdraw from combat operations. Lt Gen Bradshaw also said that in Helmand, where 9,000 British troops are based, the Afghan security forces were planning and executing military operations while the British troops were taking “more and more” of a background role.
To illustrate how the ANSF were improving, Lt Gen Bradshaw described an incident a few weeks ago in which a government compound was infiltrated by insurgents.
He explained that the clearance operation was ordered by the Afghans and executed by their version of a quick reaction force, a provincial response company (PRC).
“Nato personnel, who were present, were ready to give advice if needed, but the PRC, who had only formed up in the summer, went in and cleared the building, killed the terrorists and were seen to do so by their fellows from the ANSF and by the locals who were there also,” he said.
For Afghans to see that the Taliban are being fought by Afghans is vital — as is a sense of normal life.
“People should be able to live their lives unthreatened by roadside bombs or caught in a shoot-out with the Taliban,” Lt Gen Bradshaw said. “For that reason we have to create ANSF which are capable of carrying out counter-insurgency — and that is not a simple task. But the Afghans are proving pretty adept at doing it.”
But last week’s British deaths — which happened after Lt Gen Bradshaw spoke to me — show that “Afghan good enough” is still to be reached.
In the general’s words: “We are building the ANSF and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Security Fears Lead Groups to Rethink Work in Afghanistan
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and GRAHAM BOWLEY March 10, 2012
WASHINGTON - The management at a company that does aid and development work for the American government knows that some of its employees in Afghanistan are keeping weapons in their rooms — and is choosing to look the other way. At another company in the same business, lawyers are examining whether the company can sue the United States Agency for International Development for material breach of contract, citing the deteriorating security in Afghanistan.
An Afghan government plan to abolish private security companies at the end of this month, along with the outbreak of anti-American demonstrations and attacks in the past month, has left the private groups that carry out most of the American-financed development work in Afghanistan scrambling to sort out their operations, imperiling billions of dollars in projects, officials say.
That, in turn, threatens a vital part of the Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan, which envision a continuing development mission after the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014.
The recent upheaval, set off by the burning of Korans by American military personnel on Feb. 20, cast sudden doubt on nearly every facet of the American presence in Afghanistan, including a long-term strategic partnership deal. On Friday, some progress was made when the United States and Afghanistan reached an agreement for the Afghans to take control of the main coalition prison in six months.
But the fallout on the civilian development side of the mission is having an immediate effect, development workers and experts said. In particular, it is magnifying concerns about the new security arrangements being dictated by the Afghan government, which by March 20 aims to replace the private security companies that now guard aid workers with a hastily raised Afghan force.
Faced with the prospect of sudden change in their security arrangements, with no assurance that the Afghan force can be arranged in time or meet their specific needs, organizations are weighing the future of their operations in the country.
Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council in Washington, which represents about two dozen private aid contractors, said he knew of two companies that had already decided to finish their current projects and pull out, although he would not name them.
“They just made a decision that there was so much uncertainty, so much risk that they were just not going to continue,” Mr. Soloway said.
An American employee of one of the aid companies was more blunt. Soldiers are armed and can defend themselves, he said, “but me and my people, we’re easy pickings; we’re meat.” He asked not to be identified because his company told its employees not to speak with reporters about the security situation.
The employee was among the hundreds of civilian “mentors” from companies contracted by the American aid agency to help run the Afghan government who were pulled from their jobs during the unrest. As they continue to return, some are now operating under far stricter security constraints, the employee and others said.
One of U.S.A.I.D.’s top managers for Afghanistan acknowledged the development groups’ concerns, though officials at the agency said that many of its projects did not require guards. For those that do, “we are working closely with our staff and partners in Afghanistan to ensure a safe working environment, and we remain fully committed to our strategy of working with our Afghan partners toward a more stable and secure Afghanistan,” said the official, J Alexander Thier.
One of largest companies working for the aid agency said it planned to station security guards with its people who work in Afghan government ministries, according to an executive at the company, which is based in Washington.
The executive acknowledged that the setup was not ideal. The guards would not be allowed into the ministries, and would instead wait out front during the workday, clearly visible to all those who enter, which “isn’t the image we want to show to everyday Afghans,” the executive said. But “we’ve got to look out for our people.”
The executive also said he and others at his company’s Washington headquarters knew that some employees in Afghanistan were keeping weapons in their rooms in case their compounds were attacked, and that management had so far turned a blind eye to the practice, which goes against local law.
The executive, along with many others interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified to avoid angering officials at U.S.A.I.D., the largest donor in the country, or the Afghans their employees work alongside.
While some of the executives’ talk appeared to be aimed at pressing American officials to slow down the transition to the new guard force, they all emphasized that their worries about the new guard force were well founded and widespread.
The Afghan operations of many aid groups were already facing cutbacks before the unrest because of declining aid budgets. Development aid to Afghanistan managed by U.S.A.I.D. was reduced to $2 billion in the 2011 fiscal year from $3.4 billion in the 2010 fiscal year.
But there are still major projects under way, and no one is expecting an all-out exodus of aid workers from Afghanistan anytime soon.
Many of the independent aid groups that are not tied financially to the United States say the unrest has hardly affected their operations in large part because they do not believe Afghans associate their groups with the United States. The groups also rarely rely on private security guards the way the aid agency contractors do, and thus are not affected by the Afghan government’s abolition of the security companies.
“I don’t buy any of that, ‘This is a whole new paradigm,’ ” said an official who works in the humanitarian aid community.
Workers at the aid groups tied to the United States, however, say it is a new situation for them.
Through U.S.A.I.D., the American government contracts billions of dollars in projects to private companies based in the United States. The companies provide for their own security in Afghanistan as required under their contracts with the agency.
Until now, that has meant hiring private security companies, which in most cases provide expatriate managers — usually former American or British soldiers — to oversee Afghan guards. Private security companies also provide security for embassies and the United Nations, all of which are being allowed to keep their existing security arrangements.
The expatriate and Afghan guards, armed with handguns and assault rifles, have long been a fixture on the streets of Kabul, and President Hamid Karzai has railed against their presence as an affront to Afghan dignity and a threat to law and order for almost as long. In 2010, he abruptly ordered the security companies disbanded and replaced by a new force that he said the Afghan government would raise.
The plan that has since taken shape calls for private Afghan guards to become part of the new force, known as the Afghan Public Protection Force, which will be responsible for guarding everything from aid projects to NATO supply convoys.
The force has already trained 8,000 new guards, said Siddiq Siddiqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. He carries his own sidearm for protection.
The roughly 11,000 Afghan guards working for the 45 private security companies operating in Afghanistan will be subsumed into the force this month, he said. They will then be sent back to the same places they worked before, and the companies that had formerly paid a private security company for the guards would instead pay the Interior Ministry to cover their salaries, plus a 20 percent fee for overhead and to provide a profit — in itself, a useful arrangement for the financially strained government.
The first two American companies — International Relief and Development and a joint venture between Louis Berger Group and Black & Veatch — signed contracts to work with the new guard force last week with the Afghan Interior Ministry. American officials hailed the moves as the first sign that the new guard was earning the confidence of the international community.
Many who are to be guarded by the new force are less enthusiastic. There are fears that the guards will prove even less effective than Afghanistan’s struggling army or its police force, which are widely viewed as corrupt and have repeatedly turned their guns on the Western forces they work alongside.
Mohammad Hashim Mayar, an adviser to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group for nongovernmental aid organizations, said he feared that the new force would be poorly trained and end up as little more than a militia for the variety of power brokers who dominate Afghan politics — or the Taliban.
“Right now we think they will be with the government but I am not sure they are with the Taliban,” he said in an interview. “They are working for their own interests.”
Most of the independent aid organizations expect to weather the transition as NATO departs, determined to stay in Afghanistan, although in reduced form. CARE, for example, has already reduced its staff to about 450 employees from 1,100 six months ago, mostly because international aid is drying up. Budget cutbacks forced the closing of two of its biggest programs: a teacher-training program aimed in large part at girls’ education in the provinces, and a program of works projects in Kabul.
Most of its staff members are Afghans, but its international staff of 16 has also fallen to about 6, and aid workers who could travel more freely two years ago are now confined to the capital, Kabul, because of intensifying security worries.
Its Afghan employees are also finding the space in which they can safely work increasingly restricted. In a central Afghan province close to Kabul, local employees used to be able to reach a project they were working on in the next province by a route that took two hours; now they must make a circuitous 14-hour journey through two other provinces to avoid a widening conflict zone.
“It is getting harder,” said Jennifer Rowell, advocacy coordinator for CARE in Afghanistan. “The conflict is getting worse. It will continue to get worse.”
“The country is in a state of slow decline,” she said.
Matthew Rosenberg reported from Washington, and Graham Bowley from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Rock Star Trashes The Afghan Art Scene
March 11, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Disfigured dolls. Toilet-paper rolls. Old toy guns.
Most people would look at such items and see trash. Not Masoud Hasan Zada. He sees art.
The 31-year-old's unusual artworks are applauded by some and scorned by others in one of the world's most conservative and deeply religious countries.
Zada's "Memory Box" exhibition, on view this month at the French Cultural Center in Kabul, marks his debut on the country's art scene.
Best known in Afghanistan for his rock music and poetry, Zada says he hopes his show will elevate the low standing of art in the country and introduce an art form that can be appreciated by everyone.
Based in Kabul, Zada takes his trash seriously, calling his works a blunt criticism of the slow pace of progress in Afghanistan since the ouster of the extremist Taliban regime in late 2001.
'Very Worrying'
Zada says the culture of guns, violence, and intolerance that dominated Taliban rule continues to shape Afghan society today. As evidence, he points to the number of women still wearing burqas, the widespread obsession with weapons, and the ignorance and intolerance that pervades society.
"I'm critical of the current situation," he says. "I think that despite all the progress we have made and the positives compared to the Taliban period, we have inherited many problems. The current politics in Afghanistan is very worrying."
For Zada, using discarded objects like broken dolls, old newspapers, and toy guns has become key to conveying his message. He says trash art employs tools that are simple and recognizable to people from all walks of life, something that other art forms lack.
"I was using things close to my hands. Two things are prominent in my work and they're newspaper propaganda and guns. They have been things that have, unfortunately, been integral to Afghan life," Zada says. "I was trying to show that with a little creativity you can give meaning to things that you would normally throw away. These tools express something that other forms of art perhaps can't."
Talking About Art
Zada, who is self-taught, says he has received mixed responses from his audiences, with some left in shock and others applauding his innovation. The most important thing, he says, is that he has Afghans talking about art.
"Some of the feedback I have received regarding the exhibition is in the form of questions," he says. "For example, people have asked me why I use trash in my art. Others question the meaning of art within the context of the current political situation in Afghanistan. I'm pleased because instead of receiving unnecessary praise, I'm being questioned."
Zada is no stranger to Afghan counterculture. He is the lead singer of the rock band Murcha, or Ants. In an ironic twist, he says his interest in art began as a teenager during the rule of the Taliban, which banned all forms of art, music, and entertainment.
He says art gave him an opportunity to express himself and find a release in a society based on conformity to strict religious values.
Zada says he began writing song lyrics and playing the guitar in secret during his teenage years. Benefiting from his home in western Afghanistan, he crossed the border into neighboring Iran to attend art and music classes.
'Government Has Done Nothing'
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, he entered university and majored in music and literature. During that time, Zada also began taking afternoon classes in one of the few art schools in Kabul.
His big breakthrough came last year when the French Cultural Center in Kabul came across his work and asked him to exhibit.
Although Zada is proud of his achievement, he says he and other Afghan artists face many challenges. He lists the lack of government funding as one of the biggest issues facing artists and says the government must do more to develop homegrown culture and art.
"There are a lot of problems. As a person who has worked the art and culture scene, I can confidently say that in the last 10 years the government has done nothing for culture and art," he says. "Any achievements have been due to private individuals."
Zada is now hoping to take his work on tour. He says that through his art, music, and writing he hopes to enlighten and provide inspiration to the people of Afghanistan.
Double sacrifice: Family loses sons in Afghanistan
By JEANNIE NUSS | Associated Press
PRESCOTT, Ark. (AP) — When their older brother Jeremy died in Afghanistan, Ben and Beau Wise did what loyal brothers and soldiers do. They stood solemnly in uniform at his memorial, laid red roses in front of his picture, and Ben spoke bravely to a chapel full of loved ones who came to mourn.
Soldiers themselves, Ben and Beau knew what their fallen brother had experienced and seen. They knew the difficulties of being a warrior and a devoted husband, and what a testament it was to Jeremy's character that he had excelled at both.
"Jeremy, I miss you and I love you, brother," Ben said. "And see you again."
Two years later, Ben died at a hospital in Germany after an insurgent attack left him with injuries that first cost him his legs, then cost him his life. He was 34, a year younger than Jeremy was when a suicide bomber killed him at a CIA base where he was working as a defense contractor.
For a family that had already paid the highest price of war, it was time for another funeral, another eulogy, another grave.
The eldest Wise boys are two of the thousands of Americans who have died since the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan began. But they share a link that most do not: They were brothers.
"They laid down their lives, both of them, so that others could live," their mother, Mary Wise, said.
____
Jeremy, Ben and Beau played with soldiers long before they became soldiers themselves.
Playtime was something of a battlefield rehearsal. When the G.I. Joes were idle, their toys morphed into land mines, waiting to be stepped on in the carpet at the family's home in southern Arkansas.
The three Wise boys and their sister, Heather, grew up in a small town called El Dorado. It wasn't a far drive from the country, where their father, Jean, taught the boys to hunt squirrels and deer when he wasn't treating patients as an ear, nose and throat doctor.
The house was always full of something: the smell of mom's venison fried up with lemon pepper, the sound of the kids riffing on guitars or banging on drums. Amid the chaos, though, was harmony. A friend once asked why they didn't have cable. Ben looked at him and said, "We've got each other."
At night, when Beau was tucked into bed, the big kids would have story time. Ben and Heather would sit with legs crossed and listen to Jeremy, who even as a teenager, saw himself as a protector: sword in hand, clad in armor, crossing bridges to battle monsters with glowing eyes and yellow breath.
"In the story, of course, he's always the hero," their sister, Heather Skaleski, said.
As they grew older, military dreams turned into career plans. Ben aired his by the time he was in Sunday school.
Most of his classmates raised their hands when a teacher asked what they wanted to do when they grew up. Not Ben. He got up from his seat and drew a picture of a soldier on the board.
Years later, in 2000, he enlisted in the Army — and then told his mother.
"I was indignant because I was Mommy and I thought he should talk with me, which I realize now was laughable," his mother said.
Jeremy signed up next, dropping out of medical school to become a Navy SEAL.
The last to join the military was Beau. Determined to keep her last son out of harm's way, his mother refused to cook for him for two weeks when he announced he was going to become a Marine.
"I was just so mad because I wanted to protect him," Mary Wise said.
Her protests didn't work. He followed his brothers.
___
Once the deployments began, they seemed constant.
Beau shipped off to Afghanistan for the first time in 2009. Ben had finished a deployment earlier that year and was preparing for another with his Special Forces unit in 2010.
"One was always coming or two were there and one was home," their mother said.
Jeremy had just retired as a Navy SEAL and was working as a defense contractor in Afghanistan. He thought he could spend more time with his family that way and still serve his country. When he was home in Virginia, he played ninjas with his stepson, Ethan, and hung around his wife, Dana, even if she was doing something as mundane as laundry.
"He loved us almost suffocatingly so," she said.
When he was working in Afghanistan, Jeremy called home often and made the adventure sound like a vacation. He talked about the food, the hotels — not the danger.
"He wouldn't tell me anything about it because he didn't want me to worry," his sister, Heather, said.
The risk became real at the end of 2009, when the Wise parents were celebrating the birth of Ben's baby boy in Washington state. Amid the celebration, word came from overseas: A suicide bomber had killed Jeremy at a CIA base in Afghanistan.
His family met his remains in Dover, Del. It was a cold, gray day and the family waited inside a bus that felt like a funeral parlor, Heather recalled. Ben took Heather's hand in his and they whispered memories about their brother.
Deployments were harder after that.
Ben and Beau headed back overseas not long after the funeral. The war started wearing on Ben, a medic who repaired the wounds that men inflict on each other. He worried about his younger brother serving in another part of Afghanistan.
"(Beau's) heading home here in the next few days, which is a huge load off my mind," Ben wrote in a Facebook message to a friend.
He waited for his own homecoming. During his final deployment, Ben would tell his sister stories about his son, Luke. Then he would cut himself off, unable to talk about the baby boy he couldn't hold in his arms.
"The pain comes in when you have to think about home, think about the people you love and then just try to block it out ... for your family and for your fellow soldiers," Heather recalled him saying.
He prayed. He had faith that he would come home. So much faith that he turned down a friend's offer to ship him a care package in December, telling him that he would be packing up by the time it arrived.
The next month, an insurgent shot Ben after he and his fellow soldiers saved a number of women and children in Afghanistan. A medic unto the end, he helped tend to his own wounds before he was flown to a hospital in Germany.
Beau caught a flight and accompanied Ben's wife to the hospital, where she saw her husband for the last time before becoming a widow. Ben fought to stay alive, even after doctors cut off his legs, even as his body failed, even as his organs started shutting down. He died on Jan. 15, shortly before his parents arrived to say goodbye.
Beau called Heather.
"We were crying and I said, 'It's just you and me now, bro,'" she said. "Just us two."
___
Again, the family found themselves in the same chapel, the same veterans cemetery, to say goodbye.
They moved Jeremy's grave so that the brothers could lie side by side in Suffolk, Va.
"To lose Jeremy was devastating," his widow, Dana, said. "To lose Ben was just ... you throw your hands up in the air."
Each brother's tombstone cites part of the Bible. Jeremy's points to a chapter that's often read at happier times: 1 Corinthians 13. Part of it reads: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
The family still calls them boys.
The youngest, Beau, is planning to move closer to Ben's family. Later this year, his mother says, he'll transfer from his base in Hawaii to one on the mainland. He'll remain in the military, at least for now.
He will not deploy for war again.
Though the Marines will not talk specifically about Beau's case, the military has policies in place to protect surviving sons like Beau and families like the Wises. It's rare for brothers to die in the same war, but not unheard of. One of the most famous cases of siblings dying in war is the five Sullivan brothers, who died together at sea during a battle in World War II.
Mary Wise says the military assured her that Beau won't be sent into conflict again.
Their family has sacrificed enough. More than enough.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Ahmad Nadem Sunday, March 11, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Coalition forces killed 15 civilians in a shooting spree in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in an incident likely to deepen the growing divide between Washington and Kabul.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at around 2 am, enter homes and open fire.
An Afghan minister earlier told Reuters that a lone U.S. soldier had killed up to 16 people when he burst into homes in villages near his base in the middle of the night.
Panjwayi district is about 35 km (22 miles) west of the provincial capital Kandahar city. The district is considered the spiritual home of the Taliban.
"The defence minister ... is deeply shocked and saddened by the killings of 15 innocent civilians and the wounding of nine more at the hands of the coalition forces," the ministry in Kabul said in a statement.
The incident comes just weeks after U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, triggering widespread anti-Western protests, and plunging already strained U.S.-Afghan ties to a new low.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had detained one of its soldiers and that an investigation was under way. It said the soldier reportedly went to more than one village near his base.
"I cannot explain the motivation behind such callous acts, but they were in no way part of authorized ISAF military activity," ISAF deputy commander Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw said in the statement.
The Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, who is investigating the incident, said the soldier entered three homes, killing 11 people in the first one.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Interior Ministry condemned the shootings, which could intensify friction between Washington and Kabul as NATO prepares to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by the end of 2014, a process which has already started.
The Koran burning and the violence that followed, including a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. soldiers, tested brittle ties between the governments of Karzai and President Barack Obama and underscored the challenges that the West faces even as it moves to withdraw.
All foreign combat troops will withdraw by end-2014 from a costly war that has become increasingly unpopular.
Afghan Defense Ministry condemns killing civilians by NATO soldier
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Defense Ministry has condemned the reported killing of over a dozen civilians in southern Kandahar province by a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Sunday morning and called for the punishment of those responsible for the callous act, a statement released here said.
"The Defense Ministry condemns in its strongest term the killing of 15 innocent civilians and injuring nine others including women, men, old and young people by NATO-led troops in Zangabad village, Panjwai district of Kandahar province," the statement added.
The statement noted, "Afghan Defense Ministry wants ISAF officials to bring to justice at its earliest those responsible for committing the inhumane and heinous crime."
According to locals, 16 people, all civilians including women and children lost their lives when a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) walks out from his base early in the morning and opened indiscriminate fire on the neighborhood around and inflicting the casualties.
Meantime, some people in Zangabad village claim they had saw a chopper over the affected area and heard big bang.
However, the security in-charge in southern region Assadullah Khalid said investigation is underway to determine the fact behind the tragic incident.
Earlier Sunday, Kandahar provincial governor Toryali Weesa told a press briefing that a U.S. soldier opened fire on civilians in the wee hours Sunday in Zangabad area of Panjwai district leaving several civilians dead or injured.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) detained a U.S. service member in connection to an incident that resulted civilian casualties in Kandahar province, the ISAF forces said in a statement released here.
Meantime, ISAF Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Adrian J. Bradshaw expressed his regret over the tragic incident and promised to investigate and punish those behind the crime.
"In my role as in-theatre Commander of ISAF in General Allen' s temporary absence on duty, I wish to convey my profound regrets and dismay at the actions apparently taken by one coalition member in Kandahar province," the deputy commander said in a statement released here in the afternoon.
He also noted that, "An investigation is already underway and every effort will be made to establish the facts and hold anyone responsible to account."
U.S. soldier detained in Afghanistan for shooting civilians
Reuters Sun Mar 11, 2012
KABUL - A U.S. soldier has been detained in Afghanistan for shooting and wounding several civilians in southern province Kandahar, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition said on Sunday.
"It was a shooting incident involving multiple civilians wounded," said the spokesman, Captain Justin Brockhoff, adding that there were no initial reports of deaths in the attack which took place on Sunday.
Civilian casualties have been a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in cooperation with Afghan authorities, will investigate this incident," ISAF said in a statement.
"This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved."
Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wisa earlier told Reuters a U.S. soldier left his base in Kandahar and opened fire on civilians. He said initial reports indicated up to 16 civilians were killed.
Anti-American sentiment is running high in Afghanistan and it may deepen if news of the shooting spreads.
Anger gripped the country after U.S. soldiers burned a large number of copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month. NATO said it was a tragic blunder.
Thirty people were killed in protests and Afghan forces turned their weapons on U.S. soldiers, killing six.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
2 insurgents killed, 7 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban insurgents were killed and seven others detained during joint operations between Afghan and NATO-led troops, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan national police, Afghan army and international coalition forces have launched nine joint operations in Nangarhar, Kunduz, Helmand, Ghazni and Logar provinces over the past 24 hours, " the ministry said in a statement.
"As a result of these operations, two armed insurgents were killed, one wounded and seven others were arrested," it said.
The joint forces also seized weapons and defused three anti- vehicle mines and a suicide vest, the statement added.
Over 240 insurgents have been killed and more than 690 others detained in the country since the beginning of this year, according to the Interior Ministry.
Our big mistake was to assume we had won, says British ambassador to Afghanistan
Sir William Patey, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, has spoken frankly about what he sees as the errors and failings in the country over the past decade.
Telegraph.co.uk By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 10 Mar 2012
Kabul - With two weeks left of his diplomatic career, Sir William Patey could be forgiven for being discreet. Instead, as he sits in his office in Kabul, the British ambassador to Afghanistan is undiplomatically frank about what he sees as the errors and failings over the past decade.
Principal among them is the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, taken less than two years after Britain, America and an alliance including Australia and France went into Afghanistan to depose the Taliban.
Sir William told The Sunday Telegraph that both Washington and Downing Street wrongly assumed that the war was “won and the Taliban had run away”. But that led to a long-running problem: “years of missed opportunity” followed because the focus was on Iraq instead of Afghanistan.
The 58 year-old said the opportunity to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces to fill the power vacuum was missed, allowing the Taliban to return. “We were too focused on Iraq and we took our eye off the ball. We thought we had won [in Afghanistan] and the Taliban had run away and we just sort of left it to the Afghans to get on with it and we very quickly switched our focus to Iraq. You don’t normally write history so quickly but I’m pretty clear that we won’t have to wait too long for history to make that judgment.”
Speaking the day before six British soldiers were killed in Kandahar, the ambassador also suggested that the presence of International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) had become a hindrance to the stability of the country.
Asked if foreign troops were now part of the problem, Sir William responded: “Could be”, adding: “Afghans have never been comfortable with foreigners and there comes a point — no matter how benign the intentions, and how much you explain that this [ISAF] is not an occupying force, that we are here under a UN mandate agreed with the Afghans — when you just outstay your welcome.”
But he said that ISAF now had a transition plan which, once complete in 2014, would mean the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of Afghanistan.
He went on: “It will be very difficult for the Taliban to argue they are fighting a foreign invader when the people on the streets are their own police and army.”
The ambassador also said the role of British and ISAF troops had changed in the past few years and was less about killing the Taliban and more about “buying time”.
Sir William has risen to the top of the diplomatic service while shattering the stereotypical image of the Eton-educated diplomat.
He was born in Edinburgh, speaks with a thick Scottish accent, is grammar-school educated and went to Dundee University where he read history. His language is often colourful and his off-the-record assessments of certain public individuals are accompanied by howls of mischievous, throaty laughter.
For the next two weeks he will be in charge of Britain’s biggest embassy before retirement beckons. Despite his criticism of the Labour government’s past failings, he believes the country will have a bright future providing the West does not lose interest in Afghanistan’s development.
He added: “Afghanistan will be a mess for many years to come, but it will be an improving mess”, he says, smiling. “There is one end of the scale where we leave, the Afghans bicker amongst themselves, the Taliban don’t sign up to negotiations and there is internal strife. I don’t think that’s the most likely, but it is within the range of possibilities just as it is that the Afghans get everything right.”
Pointing to past failures when the Russians were in charge, he adds: “The reason why the Afghan National Army (ANA) fell apart in the 1990s was not because the Russians had left, but because they had stopped paying and that’s when the warlords came in and started fighting amongst themselves.
This latest plan has learnt the lessons of history. Under the Russians, the ANA was a large force but lacked quality, so what we have to do is concentrate on the quality because we have the numbers.
“You ask me what the biggest risk to the success of our strategy is? Well, it’s us. It is the West being diverted somewhere else or the international community not being prepared to ante up the money.”
But Sir William said that Afghanistan could not expect endless unconditional funding from the international community. “It is important that Afghanistan continues to make progress on reinforcing democratic institutions, having free and fair elections, and there is no regression in human rights.
"So it’s not just, 'Here’s a pile of money for 10 years’. We don’t expect Afghanistan to have eliminated corruption, but we do expect to see some improvements.”
He said the annual cost of running the Afghan security forces would be around £2.62 billion, the vast majority of which would have to be found by Western governments. Such decisions, he said, would be decided at the Nato summits in Chicago and Tokyo later this year when members of the international community disclose their future commitment to the development of the country.
But Sir William also believes the Taliban must play a part in the country’s future if peace is to stand any chance. He said: “Our preference is for the Taliban to reintegrate and reconcile. Nobody has objected to the Taliban becoming a political party, nobody has objected to the Taliban taking part in politics or holding government positions or district-level positions if that’s how it turns out.”
In two weeks’ time the Foreign Office will lose one of its most capable and influential diplomats. But the pipe and slippers will have to wait. “I hope to enter the private sector — I still have some time to give.” And the inevitable biography? “That will have to wait for about five years.”
US lawmaker wants Afghanistan's Karzai investigated
AFP 10/03/2012
WASHINGTON - The head of a US congressional subcommittee is asking a federal agency to investigate whether Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is misappropriating foreign aid funding to benefit himself and his family.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher announced on his website that he has requested an investigation by the US Government Accountability Office.
The request for an investigation coincides with consideration in Congress of President Barack Obama's 2013 budget proposal that includes $2.5 billion for Afghanistan.
Rohrabacher's March 7 letter to the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office asked for a report to Congress on US foreign aid funds that "have been stolen, diverted or otherwise inappropriately gone to, or benefited Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his family."
Rohrabacher is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
"American taxpayer money must cease being diverted and abused by the leader of a country whose people America has tried so valiantly to help," Rohrabacher's letter said. "A report that thoroughly quantifies how much US foreign aid has gone to the Karzai family is urgently needed."
He cited media reports and Wikileaks cables as sources for his allegations.
The New York Times reported March 7 that Karzai's brother, Mahmoud Karzai, received interest-free loans to buy a stake in the Kabul Bank, where the allegations of financial corruption are centered.
They involve suspicions that bank and government officials skimmed foreign aid money intended to support US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The bank came close to insolvency but was bailed out by the Afghan government with funds partially subsidized by Western nations.
"It is time to know for sure, on the record, exactly how dishonest the government in Kabul has become and how much money we are wasting there," Rohrabacher wrote.
Karzai's Office Rejects Corruption Claims
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 10 March 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office has responded to calls for an investigation into allegations of the Karzai family's misuse of foreign aid by demanding proof of the claims.
The US Congress subcommittee, Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations, requested the US Government Accountability Office investigate what amount of funds "have been stolen, diverted, or otherwise inappropriately gone to, or benefited Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his family" in a letter dated March 7, signed by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the subcommittee chairman.
Karzai's spokesman, Imal Faizi, rejected the claims, telling TOLOnews "if they have documents on it, show it to the media and the Afghan people".
The US Embassy in Kabul sought to distance itself from the claims, indicating that the contents of the letter were the personal views of Congressman Rohrabacher, not an official statement from the government.
"Members of the US Congress express their own views, which do not represent those of the Obama Administration, the State Department, nor any part of the Executive Branch of the US Government," a US Embassy spokesman told TOLOnews.
Rohrabacher's office publicly released the letter on Friday, US time, saying that numerous accusations had been made about the corruption of President Karzai and his family in media reports and WikiLeaks cables.
The letter said an investigation was needed on what was being done with foreign aid to Afghanistan given that Congress is now considering the 2013 budget proposal which includes a further $2.5 billion in foreign aid to the country.
"American tax payer money must cease being diverted and abused by the leader of a country whose people America has tried so valiantly to help. A report that thoroughly quantifies how much US foreign aid has gone to the Karzai family is urgently needed," the letter states.
Rohrabacher's office specifically cited reports of Karzai's brother in the release on its website.
Mahmoud Karzai has received "interest free loans to buy a stake in the Kabul Bank, the center of financial scandals, massive embezzlement and political corruption involving skimming from US and Coalition transactions and project funding" the office said.
Afghan Governor: US-Taliban Talks Lack Transparency
March 11, 2012 Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Afghan provincial official criticized the mechanism adopted by the US for the so-called peace negotiations with the Taliban, and dismissed the talks as "secretive and non-transparent".
"This trend which is pushed ahead in a non-transparent and secretive manner now is not defendable and will hit a heavy blow at Afghanistan's national unity and constitution," Governor-General of Afghanistan's Northern province of Balkh General Atta Mohammad Noor said on Sunday.
He said that people of Afghanistan will support the so-called peace talks only if the deal doesn't sacrifice the achievements of the last 10 years and the country's constitution for the sake of a political deal with the Taliban.
Meantime, he called on all Afghan political parties to hammer out and boost national unity in their war-torn country, and cautioned about the outbreak of another civil war in Afghanistan in the wake of a weak national unity.
Most politicians and political analysts are skeptical of the prospects for meaningful peace negotiations with the Taliban.
Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told FNA last month that said that the US is seeking to legitimize the Taliban through holding negotiations with the belligerent group, but meantime underlined that the US has failed to attain its goal.
"… No doubt the Taliban is eager to negotiate with the US since the group sees the talks a positive step towards its legitimacy," Abdullah Abdullah stated.
He said that some foreign countries have taken advantage and get involved in Afghan peace talks after the Afghan government failed to encourage the Taliban to hold talks with the central government within the geographical borders of Afghanistan.
UN Says 145 Presumed Dead In Afghan Avalanche
March 11, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United Nations says at least 145 people are missing and presumed dead after an avalanche hit a remote village in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province last week.
Afghan officials had earlier put the death toll from a series of avalanches in the province's Shekay district at 56.
The mountainous Badakhshan Province has seen heavy snowfalls and avalanches this winter, causing blockages on many roads and highways and leaving villages isolated.
With AFP and AP reports
Afghanistan joins railroad era -- 100 years late
Sunday, March 11, 2012 By Kay Johnson, Associated Press
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 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.
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.
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 railway from the mine southeast of Kabul.
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 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, said Andrew Grantham, an editor for Railway Gazette who runs a website chronicling the history of the country's failed railroad projects.
Their drill may be out of step, but Afghan army is ready for the fight
The intensive training being given to the Afghan army in preparation for withdrawl of coalition forces from the country in 2014 can be revealed in unprecidented detail.
Telegraph.co.uk By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent 11 Mar 2012
Kabul - Beneath a leaden sky on a bitter morning on the outskirts of Kabul, hundreds of Afghan army recruits are marching to the sound of a drum.
It is the daily drill lesson at the vast Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC), once a former Soviet army base, now the main military academy of the Afghan National Army.
The march of choice is the goose-step, one of the many peculiarities inherited from the Russian occupation — and the parade is an impressive spectacle.
The recruits’ uniforms might not be a perfect fit and many have yet to master the morning shave, but there is no doubting their commitment.
Three years ago, the British Army and other members of the international coalition were right at the heart of the Afghan army training programme, teaching the fundamentals of shooting, map-reading and drills.
But today the Afghans themselves are in charge and the small team of International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) instructors play only an advisory role.
“What you have here is the future,” WO1 Daz Freeman, the Regimental Sergeant Major of the KMTC Officer Training School, explains as the Afghan recruits marched past.
“When we go they will have to confront the Taliban and, believe me, they are up for the fight. We’ve got two years to get them ready and failure is not an option.”
As WO1 Freeman explains Soviet drill, a squad marches past clearly out of step. The RSM shakes his head before adding: “They might not be world class but then they don’t need to be.”
Not just at marching; in the words of Col Mike Minor, the Canadian commander of the KMTC Advisory Group, the aim is to get the recruits to a level where they are “Afghan good enough”.
It is a phrase that rings around the ISAF headquarters and represents a more qualified understanding of what is achievable.
It also forms the basis of the ISAF withdrawal plan: the minimum level which must be achieved by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) if they are to stand any chance against the Taliban once the majority of the 130,000 ISAF troops depart.
And time is running out. By the end of 2014, “transition”, the process in which responsibility for security of country will move from ISAF to the Afghans, must be complete.
But the road to withdrawal will not be easy or without risk as was tragically demonstrated last week when six British soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device destroyed a Warrior armoured vehicle.
The soldiers were on patrol in the border area between Helmand and Kandahar province.
In Helmand and throughout Afghanistan the role of British and ISAF troops is not so much about killing the Taliban but more about buying time — with their lives if necessary — to allow the Afghans to reach a level where they can face the terror group on their own.
It is a tough task for the British troops who have seen 404 of their number killed in action and thousands more wounded. Many more are likely to be killed in action before transition is complete.
To have a fighting chance against the Taliban, the ANA must reach a level of 195,000 troops — twice the size of the British Army — by the end of 2014, which will give the combined ANSF a total strength of around 340,000.
As I observed last week at the KMTC, a few miles east of the capital, there is no shortage of raw recruits willing to join the Afghan army despite the prospect of being sent to the front line.
And, considering the package on offer, it is not too surprising. As well as a basic salary of £115 a month, double the national average, recruits also receive 64 hours of literacy during the eight-week basic training course.
Every day around 2,800 recruits sit down in a tented camp known as “Literacy Village” where they are taught how to read, write and count by a small group of 100 teachers. Only six per cent of fresh recruits are literate but most should be able to read and write to the standard of a British child leaving primary school by the end of training.
It may be the most valuable part of training, as literacy is such a rare skill in Afghanistan that simply possessing it offers the prospect of greater prosperity after the five years of compulsory service for which recruits sign up.
Everything about the KMTC is on a large scale. It sits on a site of 22,000 acres and over 1,400 recruits, or warriors as they are known in the ANA, pass through basic training every week. Several massive kitchens feed 13,000 recruits a day, who also consume 45,000 loaves of naan bread.
Conditions seem austere by Western standards, but are regarded as luxurious by many of the young Afghans. Training also includes being shown how to use a flushing lavatory and showers — such comforts are absent in rural Afghanistan.
In rows of Russian-built barrack blocks recruits sleep 12 to a room on bunk beds with rubber-covered sponge mattresses and, according to WO1 Freeman, the majority are very happy with life.
“This is like the British Army 50 years ago but for a lot of these young lads this is the lap of luxury — so morale is pretty high,” he said.
WO1 Freeman has been in the British Army for 24 years and is coming to the end of his second tour in Afghanistan. Like all British soldiers working alongside their Afghan counterparts, he carries a rifle and a pistol at all times following the shooting dead of two US officers by a member of the ANSF, which include the army and the police.
“The Afghan army has improved a lot in the last few years, but there is a lot of work to do before the end of 2014. But I reckon they’ll get there. The mistake is to compare them to the British Army, which has been around for 400 years — they’ve only be in existence for 10,” said WO1 Freeman.
Up on a hill outside the camp, recruits are being taught how to clear houses of enemy combatants. It is freezing and the ground is covered in snow, but the 100 recruits, lined up waiting for their turn to attack, seem cheerful and enthusiastic.
Overseeing the training is Command Sergeant Major Sarder Alam — possibly the most respected soldier in the entire camp.
He joined the army as a 17-year-old during the Soviet occupation and rose to the rank of Lt Col before the anarchy of the 1990s. He rejoined the Afghan army in 2001 after the Taliban had been forced out. Such is his standing within the base that even senior officers salute him.
As the recruits charge into the buildings to kill an imaginary insurgent, CSM Alam tells me of his hopes for the future.
“When ISAF leaves the Taliban will no longer have any reason to fight,” he says.
“But if they do we will be able to beat them. Our soldiers are better trained now than they were when the Russians were here. Every man is a volunteer and what we want is to end the war and build our country.”
The Afghan army also has a role for women and an aspiration eventually to recruit 19,000 into its ranks.
Women in uniform still remain something of an oddity in Afghanistan and their barracks are kept strictly separated from male recruits by armed guards.
During a map-reading lesson, Officer Cadet Fieshta Hussini, tells me that she wanted to join the army to “do something different”. “I want to progress up through the ranks and become a general so that I can serve my country.”
The 20 year-old cadet, who was born in Kunduz, but grew up in Iran while the Taliban were in power, adds: “I joined the army with my father’s blessing. He is very proud of what I am doing. The training is very interesting and I feel that I will be contributing to my country’s future.
“The most important things in my life are Afghanistan and freedom. I hope the Taliban will never return — that is something none of us wants.”
The desire to serve is a common theme among all the recruits and was similarly expressed by three 19-year-old male officers who have recently started a 24-week course.
Officer Cadet Rabiullah Kohistany can still recall the “bad days” when the Taliban was in power.
“I joined because I want my country to be free and for the insurgency to end,” he told me shivering as snow began to fall.
“I know that when I finish my training I might be sent to the front line to fight the Taliban, but that does not worry me. I want to serve my country and I am prepared to make any sacrifice necessary.”
Once the recruits have completed their eight-week basic training course — and few, if any, fail, although 10 per cent of every intake simply vanishes — they will be sent to other areas of the army to learn the basics of artillery, logistics or signals.
The commandant of the KMTC is Brig Gen Aminullah Patyani, who first joined the army in the 1970s and spent four years at a Russian tank school in Moscow.
He is confident that his soldiers will be capable of thwarting any attempt by the Taliban to overrun the country once ISAF has departed.
“I have no doubt that the ANA will be able to defeat the Taliban,” he said. “Every soldier in our army is a volunteer, they want to serve their country, they have high morale and they want to fight.
“But what we would like is peace with the Taliban — if they were prepared to lay down their weapons they would be welcome to join the government.
“We are prepared to work with them and they would be welcome to join the army. They are Afghans also.”
But for now there is still a battle with the Taliban and getting the ANA “Afghan good enough” is vital to the exit strategy for British soldiers.
Lt Gen Adrian Bradshaw, the British deputy commander of the ISAF, has to make that transition work — and is confident it can.
Afghanistan, he said was on course for completion by the end of 2014, the date which the Prime Minister has ruled Britain will withdraw from combat operations. Lt Gen Bradshaw also said that in Helmand, where 9,000 British troops are based, the Afghan security forces were planning and executing military operations while the British troops were taking “more and more” of a background role.
To illustrate how the ANSF were improving, Lt Gen Bradshaw described an incident a few weeks ago in which a government compound was infiltrated by insurgents.
He explained that the clearance operation was ordered by the Afghans and executed by their version of a quick reaction force, a provincial response company (PRC).
“Nato personnel, who were present, were ready to give advice if needed, but the PRC, who had only formed up in the summer, went in and cleared the building, killed the terrorists and were seen to do so by their fellows from the ANSF and by the locals who were there also,” he said.
For Afghans to see that the Taliban are being fought by Afghans is vital — as is a sense of normal life.
“People should be able to live their lives unthreatened by roadside bombs or caught in a shoot-out with the Taliban,” Lt Gen Bradshaw said. “For that reason we have to create ANSF which are capable of carrying out counter-insurgency — and that is not a simple task. But the Afghans are proving pretty adept at doing it.”
But last week’s British deaths — which happened after Lt Gen Bradshaw spoke to me — show that “Afghan good enough” is still to be reached.
In the general’s words: “We are building the ANSF and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Security Fears Lead Groups to Rethink Work in Afghanistan
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and GRAHAM BOWLEY March 10, 2012
WASHINGTON - The management at a company that does aid and development work for the American government knows that some of its employees in Afghanistan are keeping weapons in their rooms — and is choosing to look the other way. At another company in the same business, lawyers are examining whether the company can sue the United States Agency for International Development for material breach of contract, citing the deteriorating security in Afghanistan.
An Afghan government plan to abolish private security companies at the end of this month, along with the outbreak of anti-American demonstrations and attacks in the past month, has left the private groups that carry out most of the American-financed development work in Afghanistan scrambling to sort out their operations, imperiling billions of dollars in projects, officials say.
That, in turn, threatens a vital part of the Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan, which envision a continuing development mission after the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014.
The recent upheaval, set off by the burning of Korans by American military personnel on Feb. 20, cast sudden doubt on nearly every facet of the American presence in Afghanistan, including a long-term strategic partnership deal. On Friday, some progress was made when the United States and Afghanistan reached an agreement for the Afghans to take control of the main coalition prison in six months.
But the fallout on the civilian development side of the mission is having an immediate effect, development workers and experts said. In particular, it is magnifying concerns about the new security arrangements being dictated by the Afghan government, which by March 20 aims to replace the private security companies that now guard aid workers with a hastily raised Afghan force.
Faced with the prospect of sudden change in their security arrangements, with no assurance that the Afghan force can be arranged in time or meet their specific needs, organizations are weighing the future of their operations in the country.
Stan Soloway of the Professional Services Council in Washington, which represents about two dozen private aid contractors, said he knew of two companies that had already decided to finish their current projects and pull out, although he would not name them.
“They just made a decision that there was so much uncertainty, so much risk that they were just not going to continue,” Mr. Soloway said.
An American employee of one of the aid companies was more blunt. Soldiers are armed and can defend themselves, he said, “but me and my people, we’re easy pickings; we’re meat.” He asked not to be identified because his company told its employees not to speak with reporters about the security situation.
The employee was among the hundreds of civilian “mentors” from companies contracted by the American aid agency to help run the Afghan government who were pulled from their jobs during the unrest. As they continue to return, some are now operating under far stricter security constraints, the employee and others said.
One of U.S.A.I.D.’s top managers for Afghanistan acknowledged the development groups’ concerns, though officials at the agency said that many of its projects did not require guards. For those that do, “we are working closely with our staff and partners in Afghanistan to ensure a safe working environment, and we remain fully committed to our strategy of working with our Afghan partners toward a more stable and secure Afghanistan,” said the official, J Alexander Thier.
One of largest companies working for the aid agency said it planned to station security guards with its people who work in Afghan government ministries, according to an executive at the company, which is based in Washington.
The executive acknowledged that the setup was not ideal. The guards would not be allowed into the ministries, and would instead wait out front during the workday, clearly visible to all those who enter, which “isn’t the image we want to show to everyday Afghans,” the executive said. But “we’ve got to look out for our people.”
The executive also said he and others at his company’s Washington headquarters knew that some employees in Afghanistan were keeping weapons in their rooms in case their compounds were attacked, and that management had so far turned a blind eye to the practice, which goes against local law.
The executive, along with many others interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified to avoid angering officials at U.S.A.I.D., the largest donor in the country, or the Afghans their employees work alongside.
While some of the executives’ talk appeared to be aimed at pressing American officials to slow down the transition to the new guard force, they all emphasized that their worries about the new guard force were well founded and widespread.
The Afghan operations of many aid groups were already facing cutbacks before the unrest because of declining aid budgets. Development aid to Afghanistan managed by U.S.A.I.D. was reduced to $2 billion in the 2011 fiscal year from $3.4 billion in the 2010 fiscal year.
But there are still major projects under way, and no one is expecting an all-out exodus of aid workers from Afghanistan anytime soon.
Many of the independent aid groups that are not tied financially to the United States say the unrest has hardly affected their operations in large part because they do not believe Afghans associate their groups with the United States. The groups also rarely rely on private security guards the way the aid agency contractors do, and thus are not affected by the Afghan government’s abolition of the security companies.
“I don’t buy any of that, ‘This is a whole new paradigm,’ ” said an official who works in the humanitarian aid community.
Workers at the aid groups tied to the United States, however, say it is a new situation for them.
Through U.S.A.I.D., the American government contracts billions of dollars in projects to private companies based in the United States. The companies provide for their own security in Afghanistan as required under their contracts with the agency.
Until now, that has meant hiring private security companies, which in most cases provide expatriate managers — usually former American or British soldiers — to oversee Afghan guards. Private security companies also provide security for embassies and the United Nations, all of which are being allowed to keep their existing security arrangements.
The expatriate and Afghan guards, armed with handguns and assault rifles, have long been a fixture on the streets of Kabul, and President Hamid Karzai has railed against their presence as an affront to Afghan dignity and a threat to law and order for almost as long. In 2010, he abruptly ordered the security companies disbanded and replaced by a new force that he said the Afghan government would raise.
The plan that has since taken shape calls for private Afghan guards to become part of the new force, known as the Afghan Public Protection Force, which will be responsible for guarding everything from aid projects to NATO supply convoys.
The force has already trained 8,000 new guards, said Siddiq Siddiqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. He carries his own sidearm for protection.
The roughly 11,000 Afghan guards working for the 45 private security companies operating in Afghanistan will be subsumed into the force this month, he said. They will then be sent back to the same places they worked before, and the companies that had formerly paid a private security company for the guards would instead pay the Interior Ministry to cover their salaries, plus a 20 percent fee for overhead and to provide a profit — in itself, a useful arrangement for the financially strained government.
The first two American companies — International Relief and Development and a joint venture between Louis Berger Group and Black & Veatch — signed contracts to work with the new guard force last week with the Afghan Interior Ministry. American officials hailed the moves as the first sign that the new guard was earning the confidence of the international community.
Many who are to be guarded by the new force are less enthusiastic. There are fears that the guards will prove even less effective than Afghanistan’s struggling army or its police force, which are widely viewed as corrupt and have repeatedly turned their guns on the Western forces they work alongside.
Mohammad Hashim Mayar, an adviser to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group for nongovernmental aid organizations, said he feared that the new force would be poorly trained and end up as little more than a militia for the variety of power brokers who dominate Afghan politics — or the Taliban.
“Right now we think they will be with the government but I am not sure they are with the Taliban,” he said in an interview. “They are working for their own interests.”
Most of the independent aid organizations expect to weather the transition as NATO departs, determined to stay in Afghanistan, although in reduced form. CARE, for example, has already reduced its staff to about 450 employees from 1,100 six months ago, mostly because international aid is drying up. Budget cutbacks forced the closing of two of its biggest programs: a teacher-training program aimed in large part at girls’ education in the provinces, and a program of works projects in Kabul.
Most of its staff members are Afghans, but its international staff of 16 has also fallen to about 6, and aid workers who could travel more freely two years ago are now confined to the capital, Kabul, because of intensifying security worries.
Its Afghan employees are also finding the space in which they can safely work increasingly restricted. In a central Afghan province close to Kabul, local employees used to be able to reach a project they were working on in the next province by a route that took two hours; now they must make a circuitous 14-hour journey through two other provinces to avoid a widening conflict zone.
“It is getting harder,” said Jennifer Rowell, advocacy coordinator for CARE in Afghanistan. “The conflict is getting worse. It will continue to get worse.”
“The country is in a state of slow decline,” she said.
Matthew Rosenberg reported from Washington, and Graham Bowley from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Rock Star Trashes The Afghan Art Scene
March 11, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Disfigured dolls. Toilet-paper rolls. Old toy guns.
Most people would look at such items and see trash. Not Masoud Hasan Zada. He sees art.
The 31-year-old's unusual artworks are applauded by some and scorned by others in one of the world's most conservative and deeply religious countries.
Zada's "Memory Box" exhibition, on view this month at the French Cultural Center in Kabul, marks his debut on the country's art scene.
Best known in Afghanistan for his rock music and poetry, Zada says he hopes his show will elevate the low standing of art in the country and introduce an art form that can be appreciated by everyone.
Based in Kabul, Zada takes his trash seriously, calling his works a blunt criticism of the slow pace of progress in Afghanistan since the ouster of the extremist Taliban regime in late 2001.
'Very Worrying'
Zada says the culture of guns, violence, and intolerance that dominated Taliban rule continues to shape Afghan society today. As evidence, he points to the number of women still wearing burqas, the widespread obsession with weapons, and the ignorance and intolerance that pervades society.
"I'm critical of the current situation," he says. "I think that despite all the progress we have made and the positives compared to the Taliban period, we have inherited many problems. The current politics in Afghanistan is very worrying."
For Zada, using discarded objects like broken dolls, old newspapers, and toy guns has become key to conveying his message. He says trash art employs tools that are simple and recognizable to people from all walks of life, something that other art forms lack.
"I was using things close to my hands. Two things are prominent in my work and they're newspaper propaganda and guns. They have been things that have, unfortunately, been integral to Afghan life," Zada says. "I was trying to show that with a little creativity you can give meaning to things that you would normally throw away. These tools express something that other forms of art perhaps can't."
Talking About Art
Zada, who is self-taught, says he has received mixed responses from his audiences, with some left in shock and others applauding his innovation. The most important thing, he says, is that he has Afghans talking about art.
"Some of the feedback I have received regarding the exhibition is in the form of questions," he says. "For example, people have asked me why I use trash in my art. Others question the meaning of art within the context of the current political situation in Afghanistan. I'm pleased because instead of receiving unnecessary praise, I'm being questioned."
Zada is no stranger to Afghan counterculture. He is the lead singer of the rock band Murcha, or Ants. In an ironic twist, he says his interest in art began as a teenager during the rule of the Taliban, which banned all forms of art, music, and entertainment.
He says art gave him an opportunity to express himself and find a release in a society based on conformity to strict religious values.
Zada says he began writing song lyrics and playing the guitar in secret during his teenage years. Benefiting from his home in western Afghanistan, he crossed the border into neighboring Iran to attend art and music classes.
'Government Has Done Nothing'
After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, he entered university and majored in music and literature. During that time, Zada also began taking afternoon classes in one of the few art schools in Kabul.
His big breakthrough came last year when the French Cultural Center in Kabul came across his work and asked him to exhibit.
Although Zada is proud of his achievement, he says he and other Afghan artists face many challenges. He lists the lack of government funding as one of the biggest issues facing artists and says the government must do more to develop homegrown culture and art.
"There are a lot of problems. As a person who has worked the art and culture scene, I can confidently say that in the last 10 years the government has done nothing for culture and art," he says. "Any achievements have been due to private individuals."
Zada is now hoping to take his work on tour. He says that through his art, music, and writing he hopes to enlighten and provide inspiration to the people of Afghanistan.
Double sacrifice: Family loses sons in Afghanistan
By JEANNIE NUSS | Associated Press
PRESCOTT, Ark. (AP) — When their older brother Jeremy died in Afghanistan, Ben and Beau Wise did what loyal brothers and soldiers do. They stood solemnly in uniform at his memorial, laid red roses in front of his picture, and Ben spoke bravely to a chapel full of loved ones who came to mourn.
Soldiers themselves, Ben and Beau knew what their fallen brother had experienced and seen. They knew the difficulties of being a warrior and a devoted husband, and what a testament it was to Jeremy's character that he had excelled at both.
"Jeremy, I miss you and I love you, brother," Ben said. "And see you again."
Two years later, Ben died at a hospital in Germany after an insurgent attack left him with injuries that first cost him his legs, then cost him his life. He was 34, a year younger than Jeremy was when a suicide bomber killed him at a CIA base where he was working as a defense contractor.
For a family that had already paid the highest price of war, it was time for another funeral, another eulogy, another grave.
The eldest Wise boys are two of the thousands of Americans who have died since the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan began. But they share a link that most do not: They were brothers.
"They laid down their lives, both of them, so that others could live," their mother, Mary Wise, said.
____
Jeremy, Ben and Beau played with soldiers long before they became soldiers themselves.
Playtime was something of a battlefield rehearsal. When the G.I. Joes were idle, their toys morphed into land mines, waiting to be stepped on in the carpet at the family's home in southern Arkansas.
The three Wise boys and their sister, Heather, grew up in a small town called El Dorado. It wasn't a far drive from the country, where their father, Jean, taught the boys to hunt squirrels and deer when he wasn't treating patients as an ear, nose and throat doctor.
The house was always full of something: the smell of mom's venison fried up with lemon pepper, the sound of the kids riffing on guitars or banging on drums. Amid the chaos, though, was harmony. A friend once asked why they didn't have cable. Ben looked at him and said, "We've got each other."
At night, when Beau was tucked into bed, the big kids would have story time. Ben and Heather would sit with legs crossed and listen to Jeremy, who even as a teenager, saw himself as a protector: sword in hand, clad in armor, crossing bridges to battle monsters with glowing eyes and yellow breath.
"In the story, of course, he's always the hero," their sister, Heather Skaleski, said.
As they grew older, military dreams turned into career plans. Ben aired his by the time he was in Sunday school.
Most of his classmates raised their hands when a teacher asked what they wanted to do when they grew up. Not Ben. He got up from his seat and drew a picture of a soldier on the board.
Years later, in 2000, he enlisted in the Army — and then told his mother.
"I was indignant because I was Mommy and I thought he should talk with me, which I realize now was laughable," his mother said.
Jeremy signed up next, dropping out of medical school to become a Navy SEAL.
The last to join the military was Beau. Determined to keep her last son out of harm's way, his mother refused to cook for him for two weeks when he announced he was going to become a Marine.
"I was just so mad because I wanted to protect him," Mary Wise said.
Her protests didn't work. He followed his brothers.
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Once the deployments began, they seemed constant.
Beau shipped off to Afghanistan for the first time in 2009. Ben had finished a deployment earlier that year and was preparing for another with his Special Forces unit in 2010.
"One was always coming or two were there and one was home," their mother said.
Jeremy had just retired as a Navy SEAL and was working as a defense contractor in Afghanistan. He thought he could spend more time with his family that way and still serve his country. When he was home in Virginia, he played ninjas with his stepson, Ethan, and hung around his wife, Dana, even if she was doing something as mundane as laundry.
"He loved us almost suffocatingly so," she said.
When he was working in Afghanistan, Jeremy called home often and made the adventure sound like a vacation. He talked about the food, the hotels — not the danger.
"He wouldn't tell me anything about it because he didn't want me to worry," his sister, Heather, said.
The risk became real at the end of 2009, when the Wise parents were celebrating the birth of Ben's baby boy in Washington state. Amid the celebration, word came from overseas: A suicide bomber had killed Jeremy at a CIA base in Afghanistan.
His family met his remains in Dover, Del. It was a cold, gray day and the family waited inside a bus that felt like a funeral parlor, Heather recalled. Ben took Heather's hand in his and they whispered memories about their brother.
Deployments were harder after that.
Ben and Beau headed back overseas not long after the funeral. The war started wearing on Ben, a medic who repaired the wounds that men inflict on each other. He worried about his younger brother serving in another part of Afghanistan.
"(Beau's) heading home here in the next few days, which is a huge load off my mind," Ben wrote in a Facebook message to a friend.
He waited for his own homecoming. During his final deployment, Ben would tell his sister stories about his son, Luke. Then he would cut himself off, unable to talk about the baby boy he couldn't hold in his arms.
"The pain comes in when you have to think about home, think about the people you love and then just try to block it out ... for your family and for your fellow soldiers," Heather recalled him saying.
He prayed. He had faith that he would come home. So much faith that he turned down a friend's offer to ship him a care package in December, telling him that he would be packing up by the time it arrived.
The next month, an insurgent shot Ben after he and his fellow soldiers saved a number of women and children in Afghanistan. A medic unto the end, he helped tend to his own wounds before he was flown to a hospital in Germany.
Beau caught a flight and accompanied Ben's wife to the hospital, where she saw her husband for the last time before becoming a widow. Ben fought to stay alive, even after doctors cut off his legs, even as his body failed, even as his organs started shutting down. He died on Jan. 15, shortly before his parents arrived to say goodbye.
Beau called Heather.
"We were crying and I said, 'It's just you and me now, bro,'" she said. "Just us two."
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Again, the family found themselves in the same chapel, the same veterans cemetery, to say goodbye.
They moved Jeremy's grave so that the brothers could lie side by side in Suffolk, Va.
"To lose Jeremy was devastating," his widow, Dana, said. "To lose Ben was just ... you throw your hands up in the air."
Each brother's tombstone cites part of the Bible. Jeremy's points to a chapter that's often read at happier times: 1 Corinthians 13. Part of it reads: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
The family still calls them boys.
The youngest, Beau, is planning to move closer to Ben's family. Later this year, his mother says, he'll transfer from his base in Hawaii to one on the mainland. He'll remain in the military, at least for now.
He will not deploy for war again.
Though the Marines will not talk specifically about Beau's case, the military has policies in place to protect surviving sons like Beau and families like the Wises. It's rare for brothers to die in the same war, but not unheard of. One of the most famous cases of siblings dying in war is the five Sullivan brothers, who died together at sea during a battle in World War II.
Mary Wise says the military assured her that Beau won't be sent into conflict again.
Their family has sacrificed enough. More than enough.
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