[Afghan News] March 14, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Afghan official: Video shows soldier surrendering
By HEIDI VOGT and MIRWAIS KHAN | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. soldier who allegedly shot 16 Afghan villagers was caught on surveillance video that showed him walking up to his base, laying down his weapon and raising his arms in surrender, according to an Afghan official who viewed the footage.
The official said late Tuesday that U.S. authorities showed Afghan authorities the surveillance video to prove that only one perpetrator was involved in the Sunday shootings, which have further strained already shaky relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan.
A delegation investigating the shootings was meeting in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded about 600 yards (meters) away. The blast killed one Afghan intelligence official and wounded three other people, but the delegation members were unharmed.
The day before, the delegation visited the two villages in Kandahar province where the shootings took place. Two villagers who lost relatives insisted that not one — but at least two — soldiers took part in the shootings. Afghan officials have also suggested that more than one shooter was involved.
The video, taken from an overhead blimp that films the area around the base, shows a soldier in a U.S. uniform approaching the south gate of the base with a traditional Afghan shawl hiding the weapon in his hand, the official said.
He then removes the shawl as he lays his weapon on the ground and raises his arms in surrender.
The official had not been shown any footage of the soldier leaving the base. The official spoke anonymously to discuss a private briefing.
Afghan lawmakers have demanded that the alleged shooter, identified by U.S. officials as a staff sergeant, face a public trial inside Afghanistan. They have called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to suspend any negotiations with the U.S. on a long-term military pact until this happens.
"No final decision has been made yet" on the location of the trial, said Col. Gary Kolb, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan.
Kolb said that the U.S. has held courts-martial in Afghanistan before, and could try the alleged shooter in the country. "They'll take a look at all the circumstances and determine if they do it here or if it goes back to the States."
The U.S. is holding the soldier, who military officials say slipped off a U.S. base before dawn Sunday, walked to the villages, barged into their homes and opened fire. Some of the corpses were burned. Eleven were from one family. Five other people were wounded.
The military said Tuesday there was probable cause to continue holding the soldier, who has not been named, in custody. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said he could face capital punishment.
Panetta arrived in Afghanistan on Wednesday on a visit that was planned months before the weekend slaughter of Afghan villagers. But the trip propels Panetta into the center of escalating anti-American anger and sets the stage for some difficult discussions with Afghan leaders.
Panetta and other U.S. officials say the shooting spree should not derail the U.S. and NATO strategy of a gradual withdrawal of troops by the end of 2014. But it has further soured relations with war-weary Afghans, jeopardizing the U.S. strategy of working closely with Afghan forces so they can take over their country's security.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak called the massacre "deplorable" Wednesday but said the country must remember the bigger issues at stake, likely a reference to the fear that the Taliban could capitalize on a precipitous foreign withdrawal.
"I mean the stakes are much higher than this incident, which we have all have condemned, and I think we are assured that the U.S. authority will take appropriate action," said Wardak in a press conference with German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere in Kabul.
President Barack Obama has pledged a thorough investigation, saying the U.S. was taking the case "as seriously as if it was our own citizens, and our children, who were murdered."
The Taliban have vowed to take revenge for the shootings and on Tuesday fired on the government delegation visiting the villages that were attacked. One Afghan army soldier was killed and two other army personnel were wounded.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing Wednesday in Kandahar. The explosion occurred about 300 yards (meters) from the Afghan intelligence headquarters in the city, said the spokesman for the provincial governor, Zalmai Ayubi. One Afghan intelligence official was killed in the attack. Two of the three wounded were also intelligence officials, he said.
Elsewhere on southern Afghanistan, eight civilians were killed in Helmand province's Marjah district when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle, said the provincial governor's office.
Protesters in the east called for the death of the accused U.S. soldier Tuesday and burned an effigy of Obama as well as a cross, which they used as a symbol of people who — like many Americans — are Christians.
It was the first significant protest since the killings, which many had worried would spark another wave of deadly riots like those that followed the burning of Qurans at a U.S. base last month. Nearly a week of violent demonstrations and attacks left more than 30 dead, including six U.S. soldiers killed apparent reprisal attacks.
Military commanders have yet to release their final investigation on the Quran burnings, which U.S. officials say was a mistake. Five U.S. service members could face disciplinary action in connection with the incident.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday expressed deep sadness at the "shocking incident" and said the U.N. expects that an investigation will rapidly establish the facts, that those responsible will be held accountable, and that the public will be kept informed.
"When it comes to the protection of civilian populations, I have been very vocal here and all around the world, not only in Afghanistan," Ban told a group of reporters. "We will continue to urge all authorities and military personnel who are engaging in these operations to pay extreme and utmost care to protect the civilian population."

Panetta arrives in Afghanistan, pledges no change in strategy
By Greg Jaffe, The Washington Post
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, making his third trip to Afghanistan, pledged Wednesday that a recent string of setbacks would not force the United States to alter its strategy here.
The killing on Sunday of as many as 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, by a U.S. Army staff sergeant has heightened anger over the long U.S. war and occupation. That anger was also stoked in February by the burning of several Korans at a U.S. military base.
Panetta stressed that the high-profile tragedies told only part of the story in Afghanistan and said the relationship between U.S. and Afghan officials remained solid.
“I understand that questions are going to be raised as a result of the events of the last few weeks,” Panetta told reporters en route to Afghanistan. But “it is very important for policy makers to keep their eye on the target.”
In a departure from past practice, about 200 Marines at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province were told to set their rifles outside before hearing from Panetta. The Marine commander for the province said he made the decision to have the Marines set their rifles outside. The decision appears to have been made so as not to offend the Americans’ Afghan partners, about 25 of whom were invited to the meeting.
“I wanted the Marines to look just like their Afghan partners,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, the Marine commander. “This is not a big deal.”
Panetta’s security team was armed as normal. Initially it appeared as though security concerns might have driven the decision. “Someone got itchy, and we just adjust,” said Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall of the decision.
Panetta spoke to the Marines early Wednesday and used the speech to reiterate the U.S. commitment to the war in the wake of Sunday’s shooting and the recent riots following the accidental burning of Korans by U.S. troops in February.
“Each of these incidents is deeply troubling, and we have to learn lessons from each of these incidents,” he said. But the incidents are not reflective of the “overwhelming majority of ISAF troops and Afghan troops who are doing the job of protecting the country and doing it in outstanding fashion.” He referred to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Panetta told a group of provincial leaders that “those events do not represent the Afghan people, the Afghan security forces, or U.S. and [coalition] forces — the vast majority of whom are trying to do the right thing,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said, according to the Associated Press. Panetta’s visit to Afghanistan was planned months ago, but it takes place amid mounting anti-American anger and the prospect of difficult discussions with Afghan leaders.
One major point of contention with President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan leaders has been U.S. forces’ reliance on night raids in their battle against the radical Islamist Taliban movement. Karzai has demanded restrictions on the raids, claiming they result in civilian casualties. But the Americans consider them an effective tactic and say that giving them up would play into the Taliban’s hands.
“All of the night raids currently being conducted are being conducted by Afghans with coalition forces in support,” said Gurganus, the senior Marine commander for troops in Helmand province. “I don’t know how much more accommodating we can be with what is a critical element of a counterinsurgency fight. And I think they are going to have to maintain this even beyond 2014 as a capability. And that is why our counterinsurgency forces have worked so hard to develop this capability.”
U.S. officials point to recent violence statistics to prove that the Taliban insurgency is weakening. Attacks against U.S. and Afghan troops are down 24 percent for the past 12 weeks compared with a similar period a year ago.
Even in the east, along the border with Pakistan, attacks have started to drop, after holding steady or rising most of last year. Attacks on U.S. and Afghan troops in that region fell by 36 percent during the same period, according to the latest U.S. military figures.
Some of the drop in violence can be attributed to an unusually harsh winter that has snowed in passes that insurgents rely on to move fighters and weapons in from Pakistan. But Pentagon officials tout the statistics as proof that the current approach is working.
Despite the drop in violence, Washington faces major hurdles in its effort to end U.S. military operations here by late 2014.
The war effort has been hampered by an Afghan government that remains deeply unpopular and growing anti-American sentiment among a population weary of a decade of occupation.
That frustration spilled over last month following the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield, which led to a week of violent protests. Six U.S. troops were killed by rogue Afghan troops from the army and police in the aftermath of the incident.
Panetta, however, has said repeatedly that the fundamentals of the U.S. approach remain sound. He is expected to carry that message to Karzai and other senior Afghan officials over the course of his two-day visit to the country.
U.S. officials are in the midst of sensitive negotiations with Afghan officials over continuing joint U.S.-Afghan night raids, which have been a key tactic for capturing and killing Taliban leadership, but are deeply unpopular in Afghanistan.
Panetta is also expected to discuss American plans to reduce the size of its force between today and 2014 and the U.S. and NATO’s plans to eventually shrink the size of Afghan security forces to 230,000 from the current target of about 350,000. The force, which is dependent on foreign nations for support, would be more affordable if it is smaller. But senior Afghan officials have expressed worry that a 230,000-person army and police force is too small to safeguard the country.

U.S. must not repeat Afghanistan crises, Panetta says
By the CNN Wire Staff March 14, 2012
Camp Bastion, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The United States must learn from a series of crises in Afghanistan so it does not repeat them, the U.S. defense secretary told American troops in the country Wednesday, days after an American soldier was detained on suspicion of killing 16 Afghan men, women and children.
Leon Panetta said the killings Sunday, as well as the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. troops last month and deadly riots that resulted, were "deeply troubling."
"We have to learn the lessons from each incident so we do everything possible they don't happen again," Panetta said, adding that the "tragic" incidents "do not define the relationship between the coalition forces and the Afghan people."
Panetta flew into Afghanistan Wednesday, making him the first high-ranking American official to visit the country since the weekend shooting rampage being blamed on an American soldier.
Panetta's two-day trip was scheduled long before the killing spree.
The defense secretary is due to meet with Afghan tribal leaders and government ministers, but his schedule does not include a trip to the area of Kandahar province where the killings took place.
About the same time Panetta landed in Afghanistan, a "stolen vehicle incident" took place at Camp Bastion, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
One coalition service member was injured, and "the alleged perpetrator was apprehended by base security personnel." ISAF did not provide details but said it was investigating.
"At no point was the secretary or anyone on the aircraft in any danger from this incident," ISAF said.
Also Wednesday, a huge explosion killed eight people in Helmand province, which Panetta was visiting, but he was not affected.
The massive roadside blast ripped through a minivan, leaving its victims unrecognizable, the Helmand government said. The government blamed "terrorists" for the bombing.
In a separate incident, a motorcycle bomb exploded in Kandahar, killing an Afghan intelligence agency security guard who was trying to defuse it, a government media agency said. Three others, including a civilian, were injured. It was unclear if the bombing was related to Sunday's killings.
The Taliban have threatened to behead Americans in response to the shootings, and Afghan officials have expressed outrage about them, with President Hamid Karzai calling them "acts of terror and unforgivable."
Despite some protests and local violence, the country has not erupted the way it did last month when American troops burned copies of the Quran and other Islamic religious materials. Military officials said the materials had been seized from Afghan prisoners because they contained extremist messages.
President Barack Obama called that incident a mistake and apologized for it, but those efforts did not head off riots and reprisal attacks that left at least six American troops and dozens of Afghans dead.
Panetta's first stop in Afghanistan was at Camp Bastion and the adjoining base Camp Leatherneck, where he met top U.S. and British military leaders and spoke to a group of about 200 troops. From there, he will travel to a nearby forward operating base to meet more coalition troops before flying to Kabul.
His arrival comes a day after Afghan forces came under fire during a funeral for victims of the shooting rampage, while protesters angered by the killings blocked a major highway in the country's southeast.
In Washington, Obama said Tuesday that American officials were "heartbroken" by the deaths but had no plans to change course in the decade-old war in Afghanistan.
Sunday's predawn rampage, which left nine children, three women and four men dead in two villages in rural Kandahar province, has added to the strain between Washington and Kabul.
The Taliban have battled U.S. and NATO troops as well as Afghan government forces since the 2001 invasion after the September 11 attacks. Following Sunday's killings, they described U.S. troops as "sick-minded American savages." In a statement Tuesday, they said they would take revenge "by killing and beheading Americans anywhere in the country."
The U.S. military said the Army sergeant blamed for the killings acted alone. Two senior military officials told CNN that images from security cameras around his outpost showed the suspect leaving and returning alone to the base.
There is another image showing him lying prone in a field. A separate military source said there is imagery showing the suspect "low crawling" through the area outside the base. The image was collected from what the official described as an aerial asset.
The suspect then is shown getting up and walking back to the outpost, according to a senior U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the information.
The arrival and departure images were taken by base surveillance cameras.
A military search party was put together to look for the missing soldier, but it's unclear to what extent searchers got under way before he returned to the base, the official said.
The soldier, whom the military has not named, has yet to be charged. He turned himself in to his fellow Americans after the killings and could face the death penalty, Panetta has said. Afghanistan's parliament has demanded a public trial for the suspect, but U.S. officials said they will handle the investigation and prosecution themselves.
The officials have described the suspect as a staff sergeant from an infantry unit assigned to support Special Forces troops in Kandahar province, the Taliban heartland and a leading focus of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Military authorities have presented a determination of probable cause to allow them to keep the sergeant in detention, an International Security Assistance Force official told CNN.
Investigators are looking into whether alcohol may have been a factor in the attack. Toxicology tests on the suspect are not complete, the two senior military officials said.
The suspect served three tours of duty in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan, according to the U.S. military.
During the suspect's last deployment, in 2010, he was riding in a vehicle that rolled over in a wreck, according to a senior Defense Department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. After the wreck, the sergeant was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury but was treated and then found fit for duty, the official said.
Speaking Tuesday at the White House, Obama said he has told Karzai that the United States "takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered."
"The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous and it's unacceptable. It's not who we are as a country and it does not represent our military," he said. A U.S. military investigation "will follow the facts wherever they lead us, and we will make sure that anybody who was involved is held fully accountable with the full force of the law," he added.
CNN's Larry Shaughnessy and Sara Sidner and journalist Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed to this report.

An alliance the world can count on
Washington Post By Barack Obama and David Cameron Opinions March 13 , 2012
Barack Obama is president of the United States. David Cameron is prime minister of Great Britain.
Seven decades ago, as our forces began to turn the tide of World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill traveled to Washington to coordinate our joint efforts. Our victories on the battlefield proved “what can be achieved by British and Americans working together heart and hand,” he said. “In fact, one might almost feel that if they could keep it up, there is hardly anything they could not do, either in the field of war or in the not less tangled problems of peace.”
Keep it up we have — not only winning that war for our survival but also building the institutions that undergird international peace and security. The alliance between the United States and Great Britain is a partnership of the heart, bound by the history, traditions and values we share. But what makes our relationship special — a unique and essential asset — is that we join hands across so many endeavors. Put simply, we count on each other and the world counts on our alliance.
As leading world economies, we are coordinating closely with our G-8 and G-20 partners to put people back to work, sustain the global recovery, stand with our European friends as they resolve their debt crisis and curb the reckless financial practices that have cost our taxpayers dearly. We’re committed to expanding the trade and investment that support millions of jobs in our two countries.
As the two largest contributors to the international mission in Afghanistan, we’re proud of the progress our troops have made in dismantling al-Qaeda, breaking the Taliban’s momentum and training Afghan forces. But as recent events underscore, this remains a difficult mission. We honor the profound sacrifices of our forces, and in their name we’ll carry on the mission.
Over the next few days, we will consult about preparations for the NATO summit in Chicago, where our alliance will determine the next phase of the transition that we agreed to in Lisbon. This includes shifting to a support role in advance of Afghans taking full responsibility for security in 2014 and ensuring that NATO maintains an enduring commitment so that Afghanistan is never again a haven for al-Qaeda to launch attacks against our citizens.
As members of the international community, we have been united in imposing tough sanctions on the Iranian regime for failing to meet its international obligations. We believe there is time and space to pursue a diplomatic solution, and we are coordinating our diplomatic approach with China, France, Germany and Russia, our P5+1 partners. Meanwhile, as the United States imposes its strongest sanctions to date and the European Union prepares to impose an embargo on Iranian oil, the choice for Tehran will be sharpened — meet your international obligations or face the consequences.
As two nations that support the human rights and dignity of all people, we continue to stand with those brave citizens across the Middle East and North Africa who are demanding their universal rights. Having joined in the mission to protect the Libyan people last year, we support Libyan efforts to build democratic institutions and hold free and fair elections this year. We condemn the Syrian regime’s horrific violence against innocent civilians, and we are focused on the urgent humanitarian task of getting food and medicine to those in need. With our international partners, we’ll continue to tighten the noose around Bashar al-Assad and his cohorts, and we’ll work with the opposition and the United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to plan for the transition that will follow Assad’s departure from power.
As two of the world’s wealthiest nations, we embrace our responsibility as leaders in the development that enables people to live in dignity, health and prosperity. Even as we redouble our efforts to save lives in Somalia, we’re investing in agriculture to promote food security across the developing world. We’re working to improve maternal health and end preventable deaths of children. With a renewed commitment to the lifesaving work of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, we see the beginning of the end of the AIDS pandemic. Through our Open Government Partnership, we’re striving to make governments more transparent and accountable.
Finally, as two peoples who live free because of the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, we’re working together like never before to care for them when they come home. With new long-term collaborations to help our wounded warriors recover, assist in veterans’ transition back to civilian life and support military families, we recognize that our obligations to troops and veterans endure long after today’s battles end.
Our troops and citizens have long shown what can be achieved when British and Americans work together, heart and hand, and why this remains an essential relationship — to our nations and the world. So like generations before us, we’re going to keep it up. Because with confidence in our cause and faith in each other, we still believe that there is hardly anything we cannot do.

Three Polish Soldiers Acquitted Of Afghan War Crimes
March 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Poland’s highest court has acquitted three Polish soldiers facing war crimes charges over the killing of civilians in Afghanistan.
The court, however, also ruled on March 14 that four other Polish soldiers will face a retrial in connection with the case.
The seven soldiers had been tried over a 2007 incident in an Afghan village in which several civilians, including women and children, were killed.
In June of last year, a Polish court cleared the seven soldiers of war crimes, but prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court.
All the soldiers have pleaded not guilty in the case, which marks the first time Polish soldiers have been accused of violating international war conventions.
With reporting by DPA and AFP

Analysis: Crisis over Afghan killings may follow familiar script
The Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Upon receiving the first reports that a U.S. Army staff sergeant allegedly had killed 16 Afghan civilians Sunday morning, Washington sprang into crisis mode. Top White House and Pentagon officials feared that the reaction in Afghanistan would dwarf the riots and retribution killings sparked by the burning of several Korans at a U.S. base three weeks earlier.
They braced for Afghan political leaders to make even more strident demands to reduce the number of foreign troops on Afghan soil. Some civilian members of President Obama’s national security staff also viewed the killings as a siren call for a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces.
“This has the potential,” one administration official said, “to become a game-changing moment.”
The initial reaction, however, suggests that this crisis may well hew to the arc of other moments of brinkmanship in the U.S.- Afghan relationship: claims of irreparable damage and demands for profound change, followed by a grudging recognition in both capitals that the two governments have more reasons than not to stick with their previously agreed-upon strategy of fighting the Taliban, training the Afghan security forces and creating a semblance of civil administration across the country.
There still is a chance the killings could follow a different script, fracturing the shaky alliance between the U.S. and Afghan governments. The Taliban on Tuesday vowed to behead foreign troops “in every corner of the country,” and insurgents fired on an Afghan government delegation visiting the village where the shooting occurred.
But public protests and Taliban counterattacks so far have been less significant than many U.S. officials had expected, said several who described internal administration reaction on the condition of anonymity.
Troubled as the current U.S. military deployment is, American officials say a hasty drawdown could pose greater risks for Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Although he is furious over the killings, Karzai’s public expressions of anger also serve to insulate him from accusations by political rivals that he is too deferential to the Americans.
In previous crises — most notably, the Koran burnings — Karzai has sought to increase his leverage in negotiations with Washington over the contours of the American presence in Afghanistan once U.S. and NATO combat operations end in 2014. Karzai has said that he wants a smaller, more restricted U.S. presence right away, but he doesn’t favor a wholesale American departure, according to diplomats in Kabul, because U.S. troops, and U.S. financial assistance, are essential to propping up his government.
There are about 91,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Obama has ordered the Pentagon to remove 23,000 of them by September, but he has not decided on the pace of further reductions despite calls on Capitol Hill and within his administration for a steeper troop drawdown.
Vice President Biden and some others in the White House argue that the large military presence has become corrosive and counterproductive. If Obama sides with them, he risks opposition from his top military commanders as well as campaign attacks from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, should he become the Republican presidential nominee.
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John R. Allen, has told senior administration officials that he would prefer there be no more reductions — beyond the 23,000 already planned — before the end of 2013. A senior U.S. official sympathetic to Allen said the military “footprint would be so diminished that we’d lack the connectivity to support the Afghan security forces nationwide” if there were additional drawdowns next year.
With less U.S. assistance to Afghan forces, military officials warn, insurgents could reclaim recently pacified areas in the south before the Afghans are capable of protecting those places themselves.
Although polls show that a narrow majority of Americans no longer think the Afghan war is worth fighting, U.S. officials say another round of troop reductions also could scuttle efforts to forge a peace deal with the Taliban while accelerating the rearming of ethnic militias and prompting NATO allies to withdraw more of their forces.
“There will be an awful lot of gnashing of teeth over the coming days and weeks, but when all this shakes out, the overall approach won’t fundamentally change,” said one administration official who is skeptical of the current strategy. “The costs of doing so are too great.”
That often is the conclusion in Washington and Kabul after incidents that initially appear insurmountable. When the Afghan government sought to ban all private security guards in late 2010 — a decision that could have forced many development contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development to cease operations — intense lobbying by U.S. officials led Karzai to revise his edict and delay its implementation.
Similar dynamics have played out after significant civilian casualties from errant bombings and nighttime raids. Karzai has vociferously complained and threatened to prevent the use of airstrikes and night operations, leading U.S. commanders to impose new restrictions on those tactics, but they have refused to accede to his insistence for a ban.
Seeking to assuage Afghan anger, Obama said Tuesday that he told Karzai: “The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.”
“The killing of innocent civilians is outrageous and it’s unacceptable,” he said. “It’s not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military.” Obama pledged a thorough investigation by the Pentagon.
Some U.S. and Afghan officials caution that a series of events — the killings Sunday, the Koran burnings and the emergence in January of an Internet video showing three Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters — have inflamed so many Afghans that Karzai will be more insistent in demanding significant changes to U.S. operations.
The Obama administration may be more willing to compromise because it is keen to negotiate a long-term security partnership with Afghanistan — which would permit U.S. forces to remain for training and counterterrorism purposes — before a NATO summit this May.
Karzai already has won a concession, inked last week with Allen, to take control of U.S.-run prisons in six months, provided his government meets various conditions.
But in those talks, Karzai’s hand was strengthened by the large protests that erupted in several Afghan cities after the Korans were burned. Although U.S. officials were incensed that he did not do more to call for calm — the resulting violence claimed the lives of six U.S. troops and two dozen Afghans — the demonstrations were an expression of genuine Afghan revulsion at the desecration of the Muslim holy book. It did not matter that the decision to send the books to a burn pit at Bagram Airfield appears to have been an accident.
By contrast, what seems to Americans to be a far more despicable act — the killing of 16 civilians, most of them women and children — has led to fewer demonstrations in Afghanistan.
“Everyone here thought the protests would be much greater with 16 people slaughtered,” said a U.S. civilian adviser at the NATO headquarters in Kabul. “But only one act shocked the conscience here. The burning of the Korans was seen as an affront to Islam. To many Afghans, who have lived through 30 years of war, the killings are not as big of a deal.”
The inability to accurately predict how Afghans would react, the adviser said, “shows how little we know about this place after a decade of war.”

The price of a life? In Afghanistan, it's as little as $210
By Jack Kimball
KABUL (Reuters) - In Afghanistan, if NATO forces kill a member of your family, it is better in terms of money if they come from Germany or Italy than the United States or Britain.
In the cold calculation of how much to pay for victims of the decade-old war, British forces have doled out as little as $210, while German forces have paid as much as $25,000, according to a study by the human rights NGO CIVIC.
Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces hunting insurgents are a major source of friction between the Afghan government and its Western backers - all the more so after a lone U.S. soldier gunned down 16 Afghan villagers at the weekend.
"They have to ask themselves the question how much is one's life worth? You can't put a price on it," Rafi Nabi, 33 and unemployed, said in a market in the Afghan capital.
"If one were to kill an American and offer to compensate their death with money, they wouldn't accept it."
It was unclear if the United States intends to pay reparations to the families of 16 people suspected to have been killed by the U.S. staff sergeant in a remote area of the southern province of Kandahar, the traditional Taliban stronghold. Eleven victims were said to come from one family.
The United States usually pays up to $2,500 for civilians killed in lawful operations such as air strikes, according to an investigation by CIVIC, a rights advocacy group. The study, compiled two years ago, has been regularly updated.
"The shooter clearly violated the laws of war, human rights law and the U.S. military code of justice. In these type of situations, we call for accountability and justice as well as compensation for harm done," Trevor Keck, an investigator with CIVIC, told Reuters in an email.
British forces have paid out between $210 and $7,000 while German troops provided $20,000 in cash and a car worth $5,000 after shooting three people at a checkpoint in 2008, the report said. In 2009, Italy disbursed $13,500 to the family of a 14-year-old girl who was shot dead, it said.
A series of incidents over the past month, including the burning of Korans at a NATO base and the massacre in southern Afghanistan, have stirred debate about the withdrawal timetable for foreign troops, with some asking for a faster pullout.
HEIGHTENED TENSIONS
The blunders have also heightened tensions between Kabul and Washington at a time when the United States is in delicate talks with Afghanistan over its future presence after most combat troops pull out at the end of 2014.
Based on interviews with NATO and Afghan civilians, CIVIC found that compensation payments plus an apology were key to lowering hostility toward foreign troops in Afghanistan, now at a peak again over the Koran burnings and the shootings.
There is no standard mechanism for Afghans to report civilian casualties, much less seek compensation, reducing both the hope of redress and any sense that justice is being done.
Rules often require even illiterate villagers to decipher which unit came to their home and then go to its main base - sometimes hundreds of km away down unsafe roads. And to complicate matters, most villagers do not readily distinguish between foreign troops from different countries.
As the war drags on into its 11th year, security forces battling the militants killed 410 civilians in 2011, a drop of 4 percent from 2010, the United Nations said, with the total number of civilians killed last year exceeding 3,000.
"The Americans have seen that the Afghan people are poor and desperate. If a woman loses her husband, she needs money to sustain her living. What else can they do? They have no power," said film maker Maroof Nazir, 27.
"Will the government hear their voices or help them? No. When you have no power, you're forced to take the money and say thank you to the same people who killed your families, what else can you do?"
(The story alters the first paragraph to make it clear that Italy and Germany refers to NATO forces)
(Additional reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal; Editing by Rob Taylor and Ron Popeski)

In Afghanistan, Between Plague and Cholera, There’s Dr. Abdullah
(The Huffington Post, 13 mars 2012) Le 13 Mars 2012, par Bernard-Henri Lévy, pour The Huffington Post
It’s been ten years, almost to the day, since I returned from Afghanistan with the « Report » Jacques Chirac, Lionel Jospin and Hubert Védrine had commissioned, in which I described the possible contribution of France to the political, civic, cultural and military reconstruction of this country ruined by decades of dictatorship, war, and massacres.
Obviously, I shall not go into the details here of the recommendations I made then.
Nor shall I dwell on the long series of errors committed by an international community that never should have blindly depended upon the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai; nor negotiated with the fascist Taliban it had come to combat and, in principle, exclude from power; nor, finally — undoubtedly the most blatant error — announced so soon, with great fanfare, the date when it would withdraw its troops, in 2014.
Today, what is most important is the result.
And it must be said, the result is increasingly catastrophic.
The business of the Korans that were burnt in the rubbish collection site of Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
The criminal spree of this American soldier who cold-bloodedly murdered sixteen people, including nine children, in three villages of the Panjwai district, near Kandahar.
This ‘Kurtz syndrome’ that seems to threaten a however clearly small number of soldiers, driven, like Conrad’s hero in Heart of Darkness, to the end of their tether by this war without a front or a visible enemy, whose stakes are elusive, and in which yesterday’s friend can, without warning, become today’s or tomorrow’s enemy.
And, at the end of the day, the terrible paradox of an army of liberation, increasingly hated by the very people it wished to liberate.
Or, worse still: this growing fringe of the population who — occupation for occupation — may well end up preferring the « home made » occupation of the Taliban.
And, instead of a pacified country on the path to democracy we dreamed of leaving to the Afghans, a tragic situation, literally and figuratively, where all solutions — as in Hegel’s definition of the Tragic in his meditation on Antigone — prove equally disastrous.
Leave there, immediately, even before the end of 2014, the projected date? An admission of failure and impotence. Ten years of sacrifice, ending in a farce. And the quasi-certainty of seeing Mullah Omar’s men return as soon as we leave.
Stay? Prolong our presence beyond the deadline of 2014? Difficult, considering the human cost in the ranks of the Coalition of a war that has, after all, claimed the lives of over a thousand Americans, 404 Englishmen, 52 Germans, 36 Italians and 29 Frenchmen. Even impossible when it is the very people involved who don’t want us there anymore and see us, more and more often, as the Iraqis and the South Vietnamese before them finally perceived the American troops who had initially come with intentions that were not always bad.
Go and stay? Withdraw combat troops but leave the military bases and instructors ? This is what was planned. But even this minimal presence could be reconsidered if the hatred of America, the auto-demonization of the Coalition, product of its own abuses, should continue to expand. (Sometimes I wonder if America and its wars of liberation, all of which, with the exception of the war against Naziism, have turned out so badly, might exist under a blighted star.)
And then?
Then, the nature of a tragic situation is such that there is, I repeat, no way out — or in any case, no miracle solution.
But at least one can dream of one or two ideas.
Beginning with this one, which I have defended for years.
Admit that Afghanistan cannot be reduced, for all that, to a desperate confrontation between the Taliban killers and the corrupt members of Karzai’s regime.
Learn to count to three, in other words, to this third force which is the democratic opposition to both of them, incarnate in the man — Abdullah Abdullah, Commandant Massoud’s former lieutenant — who, during the blatantly fraudulent elections of 2009, managed nonetheless to garner over 30% of the ballots cast.
Remember, in other terms, that if the Tragic is one of History’s laws, it does not necessarily always constitute the last word — and that it happens that courage, just courage which is imagination by another name, succeeds in loosening the vice.
In Kabul, between the failed regimes we continue to support, through obstination and laziness, and the Taliban assassins we hire, through sheer stupidity, to make the beds, there are, then, the heirs of Massoud.
And perhaps before we pull up the ladder, it would be advisable to try to turn to them, in an ultimate attempt, a last-chance operation.
Abdullah Abdullah…
Remember this name.
Recall it, if you have forgotten it.
For Afghanistan and its friends, it is perhaps the very last card left to play.

Police Mistrust Threatens US-Afghan Alliance in Key Town
VOA News March 13, 2012 David Axe | Marzak, Afghanistan
The effort to shore up security in Afghanistan is shifting.
As U.S. and other NATO troops prepare to depart, they are stepping up the training of local security forces and weakening the Taliban where they can. In the remote eastern town of Marzak, Afghanistan, a plan to shut down a nearby Taliban supply line nearly collapsed when one police leader rebelled.
The Marzak strategy hinged on setting up a new, tribe-based local police force capable of defending the town against Taliban fighters. After two weeks of training, the first 50 police began duty.
That's when actions by one rebellious police officer threatened the entire coalition strategy.
As the first batch of Afghan local police (ALP) prepared to graduate in late January, U.S. Army Capt. Jim Perkins received disturbing news from Marzak's elders.
"This morning one of the members of the ALP decided he wanted to go out on patrol and round up people he said were Taliban. What we suspect was he had personal vendettas and issues that he had against people," said Perkins.
Local elders said an Afghan squad leader named Mohamad Aman made false accusations and he was not even authorized to make arrests on his own. The elders threatened to withdraw their support.
Coalition troops have struggled for years to train local security forces that the local population trusts. One local police officer says he saw signs of trouble coming.
"There was a dispute between Mohamad Aman and another village commander," Noor Salam, a local Afghan police officer, recalled.
Perkins and his Afghan and American sergeants reacted swiftly. Perkins apologized to elder Mullah Anwar while others seized Mohamad Aman's weapon.
Perkins told Aman he was fired and the remaining police officers graduated as planned. But the trouble was not over.
That night, 10 officers loyal to Aman said they would quit unless Perkins reinstated Aman. They reached a compromise. Perkins arranged a job for Aman in another town, and the 10 officers agreed to remain on duty.
Perkins says the coalition sometimes recruits police by appealing to their tribal loyalties. But the strategy can backfire.
"If you played on those [tribal loyalties] too much, then you start running the risk of developing tribal warfare or inflamming those tensions," Perkins noted. "So what we try to do is diffuse those tensions."
The situation in Marzak was not an isolated incident.
Rights groups in Afghanistan have harshly criticized local tribal police for abuses, including rape and murder. But tribal forces still play a key role in the coalition's Afghanistan endgame and U.S. commanders say they continue to monitor them closely.

Massacre Plays Into The Hands Of Taliban Propaganda
NPR March 13, 2012
A U.S. Soldier is accused of killing some 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar on Sunday. Some say as far as U.S. policy is concerned, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Joining the conversation with Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep are Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post, former White House adviser Vali Nasr and retired Lt. Gen. David Barno.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
One analyst calls last weekend's massacre in Afghanistan an enormous gift to the Taliban. It is the latest of several incidents that amount to lost battles in a political war.
INSKEEP: We're going to talk about the fallout and the future of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan with three experts who bring very different backgrounds to this conversation. Vali Nasr is a former State Department advisor and author of books on the Muslim world.
Welcome to the program, Vali.
VALI NASR: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: And we've also reached retired Army Lieutenant General David Barno, who's now at the Center for a New American Security. And welcome, General Barno.
GENERAL DAVID BARNO: Glad to be here.
INSKEEP: One more voice as well. Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a Washington Post correspondent and author of a forthcoming book about the war in Afghanistan. He's also in our studios.
Welcome to you.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: And let me put this to you, Rajiv, to begin these questions. How badly could this particularly awful incident damage the whole U.S. mission?
CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, pretty significantly. You know, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan has been, you know, predicated on this argument, if you will, to the Afghan people that American troops are there to help protect the good people of Afghanistan, to help rebuild their country, to help secure their future. And this just plays into the worst fears of Afghans and plays into the hand of Taliban propagandas. And so it couldn't have been a worse development at a worse time for the United States.
INSKEEP: General Barno, a friend of mine was reminding me yesterday of the notion of the strategic corporal. The idea that any soldier in a war like this can create catastrophic consequences and even affect strategy. In this case, we have a sergeant. But it sounds like that might actually be the case.
BARNO: Well, I think that's true here unfortunately. And those events of Sunday have made a tough mission even tougher for the troops that are serving over there. In this case, you've got a fairly junior enlisted soldier, a staff sergeant supposedly, from a joint base Lewis-McChord here in the U.S. who is alleged to have committed these heinous crimes which are going to have a significant impact on the mission potentially.
INSKEEP: Vali Nasr, what is that impact?
NASR: I think the greatest impact is probably in the political arena. Namely, the Taliban are poised to start reconciliation talks with the United States and the Karzai government. One major impact of this event is that Karzai's going to feel far less room in order to engage in this process. And also...
INSKEEP: President Hamid Karzai was giving some speech about conciliation as this news broke, wasn't he?
NASR: He was. And also the problem is that he will now feel compelled to ask the United States to actually shrink its footprint, to leave and to assume a much more of a distant position from the United States going into these talks.
On the other hand, the Taliban, within the Taliban, there's some disagreement as to whether or not they should engage in the reconciliation. The commanders on the ground are not happy. The base is not necessarily happy with this. First, you had the Quran burning episode. Now you have these killings.
And there's now increasing pressure on the Taliban commanders, how could you be sitting down with the United States, negotiating peace after what they have done. And I think that is where you're going to see probably the most impact between now and May when the administration was hoping to be able to announce program on the reconciliation talks.
MONTAGNE: You know, I'm wondering - and this I'd like to put to General Barno - I'm wondering if there's any mitigation here. I mean, this is an unusual - it's not - doesn't sound like a fog of war incident. It sounds very particularly like a crime has been committed, recognizably a crime. Is there any way in which the U.S. can somehow, you know, make it clear that there will be some sort of punishment? That this won't just pass unpunished.
BARNO: Well, I think that's already happening. I think the reactions of the United States and the Afghans both have been very quick after this incident occurred. We've had Secretary Panetta coming out on a trip to the region, talking about the likelihood that there's going to be, you know, should clearly bring justice to this case. And that, you know, the perpetrator will be prosecuted within the full extent of U.S. law.
But he also had to say that it won't affect the U.S. mission there. So I think that's the prevailing viewpoint on the United States' side right now. Remains to be seen how the Afghan government is going to react to that, as Vali noted.
INSKEEP: Rajiv, you were noticing that the response to this in Afghanistan has been a little bit less than with the Quran burnings, say, in which no one was killed.
CHANDRASEKARAN: Yes. At least in the first few days, the level of protests have been far lower over there than there have been in the immediate wake of that. And it poses an interesting question. Obviously, over at home here in the United States I think people's sense of revulsion at this act, the shooting, has been far greater.
And you're wondering why aren't we seeing that same sort of reaction in the streets of Kabul, for instance. And I think, you know, there're a number of reactions to this on the part of Afghans. But I think on one level they've become desensitized to 30 years of violence. This fits into a narrative for them of continued night raids. Even though this wasn't an authorized mission by any sense of the imagination, I think for many of them, they've become accustomed to news of Afghan civilians dying at the hands of American forces in the middle of the night. And I think what we often don't get back here is that respect for religion and honor, in some cases in a country that's been scarred by 30 years of war actually hits much closer to the heart than unfortunately killings.
INSKEEP: Human life is already cheap, is what you're saying and religion is something that's a little more intense. I think that the question has to be asked though. There have been a number of these incidents, politically damaging incidents in a row. Are people asking seriously if the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has begun to reach a point of diminishing returns?
CHANDRASEKARAN: Well, I think certainly at high levels of the Obama administration there is that very debate taking place, and whether the troop footprint is still too big, and whether the presence there is actually causing more trouble in certain places than it is helping.
But, you know, what this incident, you know, speaks to and a big worry from this, as well as with the Quran burnings, is that what the Obama administration wants to do is move the U.S. to a smaller posture that involves more training and advisory efforts. And, you know, it's just small, little Special Forces and conventional forces bases like this in Panjwai District that they're hoping is a model for more of that assistance. It's training efforts up in Kabul that were suspended in the wake of the Quran burning. And so, this speaks to those real challenges.
MONTAGNE: It might be worth just a moment devoted to explaining what this base was supposed to do. The sergeant was not necessarily part of what a Green Beret contingent. But it was supposed to be reaching out and effectively making friends with the local people.
BARNO: If I could jump in there. As I understand it, it's part of the Village Stability Operations program which is largely run by U.S. Army Special Forces or Green Berets, designed to raise local police forces to help secure communities there against the Taliban. And this sergeant, although not a Green Beret himself, was part of a security detachment, as I understand it that was part of this contingent that was doing this localized police training. This is a kind of a grassroots, bottom-up security force that's somewhat different from the Afghan National Police.
MONTAGNE: But the idea of this is the future or would be the future of the mission - these sorts of...
BARNO: Well, potentially these smaller missions absolutely are. And so, that's one of the more serious concerns as we look at this incident is can we continue to move forward? And I think we can, frankly, but that's going to a subject up for debate there with these smaller Special Forces-oriented mission. I think that is the future of the mission in Afghanistan.
INSKEEP: Vali Nasr, you get the last word here.
NASR: There's also larger issue here. That is that after 10 years of fighting, the United States is trying to wrap this thing up and the entire region is looking at the legacy of this war and how it's going to end. And we're reaching a point where there is bad news after bad news. And ultimately these events like this are going to be epitaph of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and that's leaving a very bad taste in the region's mouth about this war.
INSKEEP: OK, thanks very much. Vali Nasr who's author of "The Rise of Islamic Capitalism," thanks to you. Rajiv Chandrasekaran is author the forthcoming book "Little America," about the Afghan War, thanks to you. And General David Barno, thank you for joining us, as well.

Bomb Kills Anti-Taliban Militiamen in Pakistan
VOA News March 14, 2012
A bomb has killed at least five anti-Taliban militiamen in Pakistan's northwest, along the Afghan border.
Pakistani authorities say the remote control bomb exploded Wednesday as members of a pro-government militia met in the Bajaur tribal region. At least two people were wounded in the blast.
While the Pakistani military continues to battle militants throughout the northwest, Islamabad has long encouraged the formation of local militias, known as lashkars, to help in the fight against the Taliban, especially in remote areas near the Afghan border.
Members of the lashkars are often the targets of militant violence.

Calm Down and Draw Down: The New Goals in Afghanistan
By John Hudson | The Atlantic Wire
You can sum up the White House's diplomatic surge following the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians in two phrases: Keep calm and draw down. That strategy will be put forward today as President Obama negotiates an early drawdown plan in Afghanistan with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta eases tensions in Afghanistan with his unannounced arrival this morning.
After enjoying an NCAA tournament game in Dayton last night, the BBC reports that the two leaders are expected to agree on a plan to speed up the drawn down in Afghanistan. The plan is to have Afghan forces take a lead combat role by mid-2013, an earlier than expected date. Cameron told reporters in Washington "I think people want an endgame. They want to know that our troops are going to come home, they have been there a very long time." The British news service says all NATO combat troops in the country are still set to stay put until 2014, however. Touting their close relationship (the two shared a byline on an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post), Cameron added "I'm very glad I do get on so well with Barack Obama," he said. "We shouldn't have to take its temperature all the time."
In markedly different atmosphere, Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan Wednesday morning for an unannounced two-day visit with the backdrop of the massacre, which follows a spate of deadly killings. The New York Times reports that on Tuesday, assailants on motorcycles fired on a high-level Afghan government delegation with machine guns and assault rifles during the memorial service for the victims of the massacre, leaving one Afghan solider dead. In Kandahar, a security official was killed and two Afghan officials and a civilian were injured when a motorcycle filled with explosives was blown up near an Afghan intelligence directorate. Panetta has urged caution and is instructing troops to maintain their resolves. “War is hell,” he said. “These kinds of events and incidents are going to take place, they’ve taken place in any war, they’re terrible events, and this is not the first of those events and it probably will not be the last. But we cannot allow these events to undermine our strategy.”
Voice of America reports that Panetta met with provincial Afghan officials Wednesday, explaining that the actions of one soldier don't represent U.S. troops, "the vast majority of whom" want to do "the right thing." According to the Associated Press, Panetta said he is awaiting plans from the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, for his plan to bring home 23,000 troops from the 2010 surge. At this point, Panetta hasn't endorsed any one schedule yet. Allen said the rough sketch of the plan has them coming home by September. There are currently 90,000 troops in Afghanistan now.
Following some disagreements in Congress yesterday, the legislative body seems to be warming up to the administration's leadership on this issue. "Republicans and Democrats alike insist the United States should stay the course in Afghanistan, sticking to President Barack Obama's timetable for withdrawing American troops despite the massacre of Afghan civilians," reports the AP. "We're drawing down in Afghanistan and we should stick by the timeline that we have," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. His Republican counterpart Mitch McConnel agreed, saying "I think we ought to stick to the plan that's been laid out by the administration."

Kicking the Afghan Can
President Obama's Afghanistan strategy might be a political liability in November -- and he has no one to blame but himself for a war he never bothered to think through.
Foreign Policy BY MICHAEL A. COHEN MARCH 13, 2012
One of the stranger phenomenons of President Barack Obama's foreign-policy record is the extent to which he gets blamed for the things he does well -- and gets something of a pass for the places where he deserves the most criticism.
For example, perhaps the most prominent and widely expressed criticism of Obama by Republicans is that he apologizes for America -- even though he has never done any such thing. He is accused of throwing Israel under the bus -- though from any unbiased reading of the president's record on Israel he has done nothing of the sort. Even on Iran, an issue where the differences in his policy approach from Republicans are barely visible, he is regularly attacked by the GOP for insufficient rigor in seeking to prevent the mullahs in Tehran from getting a bomb.
Yet, on Afghanistan, where Obama's record is the weakest, he has operated with a surprising lack of political scrutiny. But with this weekend's massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. staff sergeant, which comes on the heels of riots over the burning of Qurans by U.S. troops (and in the harsh klieg lights of a presidential campaign), it's possible that Obama's free ride on Afghanistan might be coming to an end.
Indeed, recent poll numbers suggest that Americans are growing sick of the war -- 60 percent now say the war was not worth the cost, while 54 percent say that it's time to bring the troops home now, even if the Afghan National Army is unprepared to take over security from the U.S. and NATO. In addition, political pressure from Congress and Republican presidential aspirants is growing. Over the weekend both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senator Rick Santorum raised the prospect of a quicker troop drawdown from Afghanistan.
Such criticism of the president's policy in Afghanistan is not only warranted -- it's long overdue. After all, since January 2009, Obama's policy on Afghanistan has been a mess. He initially ordered a deployment of 17,000 troops in February 2009 without any sort of comprehensive review of the military and political strategy for winning the war. When that strategic review inside the administration did take place in April 2009, it recommended no increase in troop levels -- a decision that was reversed 8 months later after intense pressure from the military. In December 2009, when Obama ordered a surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, he did so with a fuzzy set of objectives and an approach that was based on a host of assumptions about Afghanistan and Pakistan that turned out to be quite faulty.
These included the belief that Pakistan could be a strategic partner that would work with the United States toward resolving the war in Afghanistan (they haven't and they won't); that the Hamid Karzai government could be effectively stood up as a legitimate national government (they haven't and they likely can't); that the United States was able to wage an effective population-centric counterinsurgency operation (it can't); and that the Afghan security forces could be an effective counter-insurgent force (jury is still out but it doesn't look good). Over the last two and half years each of these assumptions have been proven incorrect, but yet the president has taken very little political heat for so badly misjudging the political and military situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While Obama deserves credit for adhering to the 18-month timeline for the commencement of drawing down surge troops from Afghanistan that he announced in December 2009, it doesn't mean the policy has been fixed. The administration has been largely asleep at the wheel on Afghanistan, particularly in continuing to allow the military approach to the conflict to take precedence over a coherent political strategy (a problem that has been evident since 2009). While the White House has in recent weeks signaled a greater inclination to look for a political resolution to the war in Afghanistan -- and the recent release of five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay suggests that things are moving in the right direction -- it's a bit late to the game. And the tardiness in fully embracing and prioritizing a political strategy in Afghanistan risks imperiling the entire effort.
Yet these critiques are rarely heard outside the cloistered world of foreign policy and national security analysts. The left, while upset about the war, has generally focused far more critical energy on the administration's continuing detention policy, the ramped-up use of drones, and targeted killings than the war. Republicans have for the most part been supportive of the president's war effort in Afghanistan and only ratcheted up their verbal attacks last year when the president began talking about the drawdown of U.S. troops. But even here criticism has been relatively muted.
The problem for Obama is that the recent tragic incidents in Afghanistan have exposed even more glaringly the contradictions in U.S. policy and the lack of a clear end game to the conflict -- even though the administration continues to talk publicly about staying the course. It's difficult to imagine that the administration can continue to muddle through in Afghanistan without paying some larger political price. Indeed, one of the keys to Obama's re-election fight will be trumpeting his competence on foreign policy; but that's going to be a harder argument to make if incidents like Sunday's killings or the recent murder of U.S. advisers by an Afghan soldier in the Interior Ministry continues to occur. Bad headlines from Afghanistan are a surefire way to undercut the president's foreign policy message on the campaign trail.
While Republicans will have a hard time making the direct case for withdrawal (since they've been so recently criticizing the notion) Santorum provided a preview of how the GOP might hit Obama on this issue. After Sunday's massacre he argued that the United States should either be prepared to "make a full commitment, which this president has not done," or must "decide to get out and probably get out sooner given the president's decision to get out in 2014." It seems only a matter of time before Romney takes a similar stance. Yes, that's right; a Democratic president runs the risk of being attacked from the right for not withdrawing troops from harm's way more quickly.
The irony of this situation is that, for the most part, the White House has in recent months demonstrated far less concern than one might expect from a Democratic administration about the politics of draw-down from Afghanistan. In February, when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta accidentally revealed that the United States was thinking of withdrawing combat troops by the middle of 2013 it barely caused a ripple.
But now with the situation quickly descending into further turmoil and the relationship with Kabul deteriorating on an almost daily basis, the White House may find that the political heat on Afghanistan will start to be turned up -- and criticism for the incoherence and mismanagement of our current strategy in Afghanistan could increase. Indeed, it's hard to read reports that the White House is thinking of speeding up troop withdrawals in any other light. Clearly there is concern in the political wing of the Obama administration that Afghanistan could become a greater problem as the election gets closer. We may have finally reached the point where kicking the can down the road is no longer a viable option for the White House -- and not a moment too soon.

How to end the Afghan mission
The Washington Post By David Ignatius Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Human beings sometimes crack, as the U.S. Army staff sergeant did at 3 a.m. last Sunday when he left his base outside Kandahar and began killing Afghan civilians in an apparent spasm of rage and frustration. But nations shouldn’t crack. Even under the stress of a war that some days seems to be going horribly wrong, nations should move carefully so they don’t leave more chaos and dead bodies in their wake.
Some of the recent events in Afghanistan show the American military mission at its worst: urinating on enemy dead; accidentally burning Korans; a crazed soldier massacring civilians. We can say that most U.S. troops did nothing of the sort, and that such incidents are rare. But that doesn’t change the reality that in such moments, we see how war can degrade decent men and nations.
The question for policymakers isn’t the nature of war, but how to end it. And here, the gut reactions of this week are likely to be misleading -- in the sense that they could prompt hasty decisions that bring more loss of civilian life. A retreat under fire is dangerous in any case, but especially a pell-mell retreat that abandons previous strategies for withdrawal.
That’s why Newt Gingrich’s sudden conclusion that the war isn’t “doable” is especially unfortunate. What did he think was possible here? If he was looking to force the Taliban to a USS Missouri-style surrender, he’s in the wrong century.
President Obama has already said he intends to “responsibly wind down this war,” as he put it Tuesday. He has agreed with NATO allies to transfer the lead combat role to the Afghans by the middle of next year and withdraw most foreign troops by the end of 2014. It’s a plan framed by both the United States and its most important partners. It’s not something for Americans to discard under duress because they’re angry, aggrieved or even ashamed by recent events.
The U.S. strategy has been to shape the Afghanistan we will leave behind after 2014. Almost certainly, that country will be a mess. But as we discovered in Iraq, there’s a difference between the out-of-control, homicidal mess of 2006 and the more controlled mess of 2011 when the last U.S. troops finally departed. The civil war that so many feared hasn’t yet happened.
As in Iraq, the U.S. hopes to create conditions that can contain the disorder. That may sound like a fool’s errand, given Afghanistan’s bloody history, but it’s based on some sensible ideas: Build a good enough Afghan army to hold Kabul and maintain contact with the provinces; negotiate political power-sharing with the Taliban that can avert civil war; and work with Afghanistan’s neighbors to build a firewall that can keep the inevitable violence there from destabilizing the region.
That’s a hard strategy to pull off -- and even harder after Sunday’s massacre -- but not an impossible one. It still looks better than the alternatives, which are guaranteed versions of civil war, partition or both. The administration also hopes to maintain a counterterrorism force in Afghanistan that can prevent al-Qaeda from regaining a safe haven. That’s a platform worth fighting for, although the Iraq example isn’t encouraging about the likelihood of a residual troop presence.
Thinking about how to end the war in Afghanistan, it’s useful to consider the culture of our adversaries. The Pashtuns are good at starting wars, but they also have rituals for stopping them. The core idea is what the Pashtuns call “nanawatay,” in which one of the combatants figuratively goes into the house of the other to settle the feud. A stable settlement is one with the balance of honor that Obama often describes with the phrase “mutual interest and mutual respect.”
Obama’s special representative for the region, Marc Grossman, has been holding secret talks with the Taliban for more than a year. Until Sunday, that process seemed to be going in the right direction, toward the Taliban opening an office in Qatar and beginning real peace talks. This track will undoubtedly be harder after last Sunday’s rampage, which has given the Taliban’s hard-liners new arguments for resisting negotiations.
Grossman has also been talking with neighboring countries about building a structure to keep a future Afghanistan from disintegrating. This regional framework still seems possible, even if the talks with the Taliban prove fruitless.
The diplomatic options are uncertain, like U.S. military operations on the ground. But they are part of a withdrawal strategy that looks well-reasoned even after last Sunday’s disaster in Kandahar.
davidignatius@washpost.com

Cameron Says Afghans Won’t Have Perfect Democracy When NATO Goes
Bloomberg By Robert Hutton Mar 14, 2012
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said Afghanistan will still face huge difficulties when NATO troops leave at the end of 2014, as he traveled to the U.S. to discuss the Afghan conflict with President Barack Obama.
The premier told reporters on board a flight to Washington yesterday there was a desire for “an endgame” in Afghanistan, where North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led forces have been fighting since 2001 after invading in the wake of al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
“I accept it won’t be a perfect democracy; there will be huge development problems,” Cameron said. “What I define as doing the job is leaving Afghanistan looking after its own security, not being a haven for terror, without the involvement of foreign troops. That should be our goal.”
More detail on the timetable for withdrawal will come at a NATO summit in Chicago in May. The U.K. is aiming to have its troops step away from their lead combat role by mid-2013, moving to support and training operations as Afghanistan’s own soldiers and police take responsibility for security.
“I think people want an endgame,” the prime minister said. “They want to know that our troops are going to come home, they have been there a very long time. So that the British public, our troops and the Afghan government, frankly, know there’s an end to this.”
Six British soldiers were killed when their armored vehicle was blown up in southern Afghanistan last week, the biggest loss of life in a single enemy action since the start of the Afghan war for the 9,500-strong U.K. contingent.
Further strain has been placed on the international mission by the killing on March 11 of at least 16 Afghan civilians, allegedly by a U.S. Army staff sergeant. Obama pledged yesterday to “spare no effort” to fully investigate the killings.
Cameron and Obama, who meet at the White House today, will also discuss how to increase pressure on Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad amid his troops’ bloody crackdown on rebels in the city of Homs. Russia and China have blocked United Nations Security Council action against Assad.
“We’re all frustrated by Syria,” Cameron said. “What’s happening in Homs is completely appalling. I’m endlessly kicking the tires and asking what else can be done.”
The premier said Britain would be willing to accept a change of leadership within the Syrian regime if it brought peace. “The shortest way of ending the violence is a transition where Assad goes,” he said. “Transition at the top rather than revolution at the bottom.”

www.afghanistannewscenter.com