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US soldier charged in Afghan shooting rampage
By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder, a capital offense that could lead to the death penalty in the massacre of Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said.
The 38-year-old soldier is accused of walking off a U.S. military base with his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, before dawn on March 11, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the bodies. It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.
It's unclear what prompted the killings, but the case has drawn new attention to the debate over mental health care for the troops, who have experienced record suicide rates and high incidences of post-traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Six other Afghans — a man, a woman and four children — were wounded in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. Bales also was charged with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault in those cases, according to Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who disclosed information from the charging document.
Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Washington, was officially informed of the 29 charges just before noon local time at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is confined.
His civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that his client's mental state will be an important issue. Bales was on his fourth tour of duty, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered head and foot injuries.
The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings. A military legal official for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, noted that premeditated murder is not something that has to have been contemplated for a long time.
The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, dishonorable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances, Kolb said. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.
Legal experts have said the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military hasn't executed a service member since 1961 when an Army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria. None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians.
The charging document did not provide details about the killings, leaving the timeline unclear. The dead bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base.
Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.
It also is not known whether the suspect used grenades, Kolb said. The grenade launcher attachment is added to the standard issue M-4 rifle for some soldiers but not all, he said. Bales was assigned to provide force protection at the base.
The pre-dawn shooting spree has further frayed ties between U.S. troops and President Hamid Karzai as the two nations are negotiating agreements for America's military footprint in Afghanistan after most international combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014. After the shootings, Karzai reiterated his demand that foreign troops leave posts near Afghan villages and pull back to larger bases.
The killings also have fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where violent protests raged for nearly a week last month after Muslim holy books and other Islamic texts ended up in a garbage burn pit at a U.S. base.
"By the laws of Islam, the soldier should be hanged," Dost Mohammad, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, the provincial capital, said Friday. "While other countries' laws say that this individual should be given a life sentence, from our point of view and that of other Muslims, this guy should be hanged."
Afghan officials and villagers maintain that 16 civilians were killed. The U.S. military never announced a death toll, but said Friday that investigators had collected enough evidence to charge Bales with killing 17 civilians.
U.S. officials are working with Afghan officials to compensate relatives of the victims, money that likely would be disbursed to the eldest male of the family. Eleven of those who died were from one family.
Bales' lawyer, who is based in the state of Washington, has said that his client remembers very little or nothing from the time the military believes he went on the rampage.
Browne told CBS' "This Morning" on Friday that his client's memory problems predate the shooting spree. Browne said Bales had earlier suffered a "serious" concussion that was not treated "for a variety of reasons," which Browne did not explain.
Browne said he thinks the U.S. government will have difficulty proving its case against Bales because "there is no crime scene" and a lack of important physical evidence like fingerprints.
Two military defense attorneys also have been assigned to his case.
Browne has said that he wants to visit Afghanistan.
U.S. military officials said they would do what they can to protect Bales' legal team in the event of such a visit but warned the shootings have heightened tension between U.S. troops and villagers in the area, and decisions about where the legal team could safely travel would have to be on a case-by-case basis at the time of any visit.
The charges launch what is likely to be a lengthy legal process.
Bales was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. The U.S. Forces-Afghanistan has sent the charges to a special court-martial convening authority, the 17th Fires Brigade, an artillery unit based in Fort Lewis, Washington.
Lewis-McChord spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said Friday that officials at that base will have the legal responsibility of trying and managing the case against Bales, but it was not clear where the proceedings will actually take place, noting that Fort Leavenworth has the most updated security.
The commanding officer of that brigade has several options ranging from taking no action to ordering an Article 32 investigation, which is comparable to a preliminary hearing or grand jury process in U.S. civilian courts.
During the investigation, the defense will have an opportunity to see evidence and cross-examine government witnesses. An investigating officer will issue a report at the end of the probe in which he can recommend a court-martial; and add, delete or modify the charges. A mental assessment for Bales also is expected to be ordered.
He could be charged with other offenses later, according to the legal official. On Friday, a senior U.S. defense official said Bales was drinking in the hours before the attack on Afghan villagers, violating a U.S. military order banning alcohol in war zones.
___
Associated Press writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Mike Baker in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.
Taliban bomb maker killed in air strike in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban expert bomb maker was killed and another insurgent was injured on Friday in an air strike conducted by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in northern Afghan province of Baghlan, the ISAF forces said.
"Coalition forces killed a Taliban expert bomb maker and wounded another insurgent with a precision air strike in Baghlan-e Jadid district, Baghlan province, today," the ISAF said in a statement issued here.
The air strike took place as the two insurgents emplaced two roadside bombs. One was a pressure plate device and the other was remote controlled, the statement said.
Afghan and ISAF security forces removed and destroyed both explosives and detained the wounded insurgent.
"The expert bomb maker constructed explosive devices for attacks against Afghan and coalition troops and trained other insurgents in constructing roadside bombs," it said without mentioning the name of the killed leader.
"Before conducting the air strike, coalition forces ensured no civilians were in the area and no property would be damaged," it added.
Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and around 130,000 ISAF forces have not to confirm the death of their local leader in Baghlan.
Afghan military officials recently said that they expected " impressive attacks" in coming weeks and months as the spring known as "fighting season" is nearing in the country.
West to pay Afghan military $4 bn a year: Karzai
By Sardar Ahmad | AFP – Thu, Mar 22, 2012.
The West will subsidise Afghan security forces by more than $4 billion a year after US-led troops leave in 2014, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday, implicitly accepting a cut in the planned size of his military.
Western officials told AFP that no final agreements had been reached on funding or on the size of Afghanistan's security forces after combat troops in NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force withdraw.
But Karzai told a graduation ceremony at a military academy in Kabul: "It's set that post 2014, for the next 10 years until 2024, the international community, with the US in the lead and followed by Europe and other countries, will pay Afghanistan security forces $4.1 billion annually."
It would cover both the army and "other armed forces", he said, adding: "We agree and thank them."
Karzai's Western allies in the war against Taliban insurgents want to avoid the country descending into civil war after they leave.
But while NATO officials have long projected future Afghan forces at 352,000 men, the United States recently circulated a proposal for a total strength of 230,000, and Western officials say the $4.1 billion cost is based on that figure.
It is a fraction of current Western spending on the war. The 10-year conflict has cost the United States, alone, more than $444 billion.
But Afghan defence officials have expressed concerns over whether security forces 230,000 strong would be adequate.
The defence minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, reportedly warned that if it was not based on "realities on the ground" it could be a "disaster", "putting at risk all that we have accomplished together with so much sacrifice in blood and treasure".
Following Karzai's speech, a Western official stressed that the numbers were part of a model being discussed in the run-up to the NATO summit in Chicago in May, nothing had been decided and "everything is conditions based".
"This is part of an ongoing discussion between coalition planners and our Afghan allies and will continue in Chicago and beyond," he said, adding that under the concept Kabul would contribute $500 million to the $4.1 billion.
"The number of Afghan forces will basically come to a peak later this year" and should then reduce, he said.
"In the best of all worlds in the out years the insurgency will go down and as the insurgency goes down then fewer Afghan forces will be needed."
But a diplomat from another coalition country said the cut in numbers could "create a monster", alleging that the US plan was driven by cost-cutting considerations rather than military effectiveness.
Even so, some coalition members were as yet unwilling to pay their projected share of the money, he added.
Kanechka Sorkhabi, a researcher at the Franco-Afghan Research Initiative for Central Asia, said the proposal was worrying as it was part of a reduction in aid at all levels, "without thinking about a way out of the crisis".
He added: "It's not always quantity that counts but also quality.
"In terms of operational capacity, the Afghan forces are experienced given the recent past. They know how to fight and take positions. But they are not a conventional army. You don't build up a conventional army in five to six years."
Questions remain over the funding deal, said Karzai, with Kabul wanting to be able to spend the money on requirements other than salaries, such as weapons purchases.
"Afghanistan will be able to pay the salaries itself one day... but Afghanistan needs radar, air defence systems, warplanes, transport planes, helicopters and other equipment that improves the defence system," he said.
"If NATO or America will not give us planes, will they prevent us using this money to buy planes for our air force from other countries? If we were to buy planes from India or Russia or Iran or Pakistan or Ukraine, will our (forces') salaries still be paid from the NATO money?"
Asked about such putative purchases, another Western official said that NATO was "not thinking along those lines at all. We're heading for a deadlock."
Kabul and Washington have a frequently strained relationship, and are currently negotiating a long-term strategic partnership agreement to establish their relationship after 2014.
They are also in continuing talks over a memorandum of understanding on special operations, a US embassy spokesman said.
Karzai has long objected to night raids, which are unpopular among ordinary Afghans but which coalition military commanders argue are among their most effective tactics against the Taliban.
One battle the terrorists won
The Economist Mar 22nd 2012
THE New Republic has a brief survey of several commentators' current thinking on Afghanistan, and it's not pretty. Fouad Ajami says, "America’s time is up in Afghanistan." Steve Coll says, "The political foundation for the military transition strategy is pretty shaky...My fear is that the center will not hold when 2014 arrives," and adds that the administration should start thinking now about how to respond if Afghanistan disintegrates into civil war after American forces leave. Ahmed Rashid says America needs to be willing to take more risks to get an agreement in its negotiations for a political settlement with the Taliban, or "the alternative could be a multi-dimensional civil war that would devastate the region." Amitai Etzioni writes: "I am distressed about the size of the cemeteries Afghanistan will need."
But America's war in Afghanistan has always been in part a moral crusade, and that's the side addressed by Leon Wieseltier. He acknowledges he is "not remotely expert" on the ins and outs of the nation-building process, but generally blames the failure of Afghans to accept "the accountable democratic institutions we hoped to help them create." True enough, though it seems to me a bit like complaining that your eight-year-old has failed to master calculus despite the tutoring you offered him. But then he continues:
[I]t is sloppy of me to refer to “the Afghans,” because there are many people in Afghanistan who ardently want to bring their country into a decent modernity. For this reason, my certainty that this war is futile, and that therefore we should quit it, torments me (pardon the melodrama, but what follows is not a small matter): we will be abandoning Afghanistan—the women, the women—to the Taliban, who seem completely unreconstructed to me. But I don’t see what else we can do, except to remain there indefinitely, which would give the Afghans even less incentive to rely upon themselves and would eventually become indistinguishable from a mere occupation.
Under the paradigm of a failed American intervention and retreat, there did used to be something else we could do. We could offer those who had supported us asylum in America. After the US pulled out of South-East Asia in the early 1970s, we gave asylum to millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians who had either supported the American war efforts there or sought protection from the Communist regimes that followed our retreat. After the fall of US-backed regimes in Cuba, Ethiopia and Iran, America opened its doors to Cuban, Ethiopian and Iranian immigrants, disproportionately from middle-class, educated, pro-American or pro-Western backgrounds. Even where regimes didn't fall, America welcomed political refugees from its authoritarian or totalitarian geopolitical enemies: the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China.
Those who backed the NATO side in Afghanistan will suffer political persecution once NATO forces leave, particularly if cities like Kandahar and Kabul fall to the Taliban. Simply to be a woman in a Taliban-ruled area in Afghanistan should be sufficient justification for an asylum application on grounds of gender persecution. But as in Iraq, there will be no widespread American offers of visas, even for those who have worked for Western organisations or the US military. America today is too afraid that a broad offer of asylum would let in people who later commit terrorist acts on American soil, either because terrorist organisations deliberately use asylum offers to infiltrate sleepers, or because the feelings of many Muslim asylum seekers towards America would be too ambivalent to rule out the possibility of a shift at some point. Of course, to some extent, Western offers of asylum in the cold-war era were based on a funny bargain: we knew the Communists would try to keep people in, so we wouldn't have to accept too many of them. But the main issue is terrorism. American immigration procedures have become so tight and restrictive since the attacks of September 11th that the kind of broad-based immigration of pro-American groups from conflict countries that we saw in the 1960s and 1970s is not plausible anymore.
And this is where al-Qaeda won a battle, with lasting repercussions. Suicidal terrorist attacks by individuals or small groups are such a fluid, unpredictable threat that they sabotage the ability of states to forge stable alliances with potentially sympathetic populations abroad. The September 11th attacks, and subsequent attacks including this week's murders in Toulouse, have brought down a curtain of lasting mistrust that divides non-Muslim Americans and Europeans, on the one hand, from pretty much the entire Muslim population of the world, on the other. As much empathy as Americans and Europeans may feel for an Afghan woman who wants to study English and become a doctor, or an Afghan man who works as a translator for NATO forces, we now support them only so long as they stay where they are. As a result, when America and Europe go looking for friends in the Middle East, we can no longer offer them one of the guarantees we need in the campaign to win hearts and minds: we cannot promise to protect them if the other side wins. If the enemy overruns the countryside, the city gates will remain shut. If you lived in the countryside, then, who would you give your loyalty to?
Security Council Renews UN Mission in Afghanistan
RFE/RL March 22, 2012
The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to renew the mandate of the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) for another year.
On March 22, the council adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the mission to March 23, 2013 and it reiterated its support for the transition process that will give the government "leadership and ownership" of its future.
The council also emphasized that "there is no purely military solution to ensure the stability of Afghanistan."
Briefing the council on March 20, UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said that "the people of Afghanistan -- but also the international military forces -- are often pushed to the limit by the cumulative effects of this conflict, its tragedies and pressures."
UNAMA is expected to play a key role once international combat troops have left by the end of 2014.
U.S. Needs 'Significant' Forces In 2013
In related news, the top commander in Afghanistan has said that the United States will need "significant combat power" in the country in 2013.
Marine General John Allen's comments in a congressional appearance on March 22 came amid calls for a reduction in American forces.
Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States is on track to reduce the 23,000-member "surge" force by the end of September, leaving 68,000 American soldiers to fight militants and train Afghan forces.
It was Allen's second congressional appearance this week.
President Barack Obama faces increasing pressure to accelerate the withdrawal timetable after more than a decade of war.
Under a plan endorsed by NATO nations and the Afghan government, local forces will gradually take over and most foreign combat troops will be gone by the end of 2014.
Karzai Pledges End To NATO Night Raids
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his government is working to end controversial NATO night raids in negotiations with the United States on a long-term strategic pact.
Karzai, speaking at a military ceremony in Kabul on March 22, said some of NATO's past operations had "violated" Afghan sovereignty.
His remarks came as negotiations continue over a strategic pact, which will provide the framework for some U.S. forces to stay on after the majority of combat troops leave in 2014.
Talks have stalled as Karzai has demanded greater control over how U.S. forces operate in the country.
U.S. officials are hoping that the deal will be signed before a NATO summit in May.
With reporting by AP and Reuters
Afghanistan: Pass the $1 billion a week baton to Russia?
VOA News March 23, 2012 James Brooke VOA Moscow bureau chief
In early September 2002, one year after American troops entered Afghanistan, I reported newspaper stories from Kandahar, the main city of the Pashto-speaking southern part of Afghanistan.
I drove in from Quetta, Pakistan, and stayed 10 days at the “best” hotel on Kandahar’s main street.
For one report, I spent a morning walking the street with a Pashto-English interpreter. I talked to the video rental man, poked around the bazaar, and sipped tea with the used car dealer and his brothers. As a Westerner, I was a bit of an attraction. People were curious. Some were reserved. Some were friendly. For most of my stay, I’m sure the Taliban knew where I was.
This was back when the war’s goal was to destroy al-Qaida in Afghanistan. From the ruins I saw of Tarnak Farms, the Al Qaeda training camp near Kandahar airport, it was clear that the American and allied soldiers had done fine job of that.
Then, two Washington syndromes descended on Afghanistan.
With mission creep, getting rid of al-Qaida morphed into democratizing Afghanistan.
Without a sunset clause, the war went on and on and on.
As George Friedman, CEO of the Stratfor analytical group, wrote Monday, Afghanistan has become the longest multi-divisional war fought in American history.
And where is the progress? Ten years after I strolled in the sun down the main street of Kandahar, I now would only cover that stretch of asphalt in an armored car.
After a decade, the American public is realizing that Afghanistan is not working out as hoped. In poll after poll, two thirds of Americans want to bring our soldiers home.
With President Hamid Karzai calling American soldiers “demons” last week, the current pullout date of December 2014 seems awfully far away.
In addition to the human cost, American congressmen and American taxpayers are now focusing on the financial cost. Until recently, the calculation was $1 billion a week. Then last week, Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican of North Carolina, upped the bill, saying: “We are spending $10 billion a month that we can’t even pay for.”
In response, Moscow is saying this week: Not so fast!
A little background.
For the last five years, Russia has enjoyed the luxury of sniping from the sidelines at the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Just last month, Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner on Human Rights, used a new United Nations report to criticize NATO for rising civilian casualties. He neglected to mention that the same U.N. report said the Taliban and other insurgents caused 77 percent of documented civilian deaths.
Russian officials routinely — and correctly — note that the NATO mission has made little progress in reducing poppy crops and opium production in Afghanistan. What they fail to note is that, after decades of war against cocaine and marijuana production in Latin America, the street prices for cocaine and marijuana in North America have not changed much since my time in college (a long time ago). The current bloodbath in Mexico is the latest evidence of a failing drug war in the Americas.
According to the latest figures, the U.S. is spending over $100 million to stop heroin trafficking into Central Asia, and on to Russia. Maybe that money would be more efficiently used in the United States — on education and needle exchange programs to protect our own people?
Moscow has made a big deal about allowing NATO cargo and personnel to fly over or travel through Russia. It does not mention the fine print: Russian transport companies earn about $1 billion a year on these contracts.
But Moscow also wants people to be blind to the BIG PRINT: The United States has been giving Russia enormous help in Afghanistan for the last decade. A chaotic, unstable Afghanistan could destabilize Central Asia, and eventually Russia’s Islamic south.
Facing calls in the U.S. for a faster withdrawal, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, gave a lengthy interview Sunday to a reporter from ToloNews, the Afghan TV network.
“I don’t think the job has been done,” Lavrov warned in blunt English. Taking a legal tack, he argued that American troops can only leave Afghanistan when they can report to the United Nations that they have met their mandate to provide law and order in Afghanistan.
“It’s clear that trouble continues in Afghanistan, and that terrorist attacks have not subsided,” he continued. “We are especially concerned that terrorist activities have spread to the north of Afghanistan, where three years ago there was a quiet situation. The terrorists have basically pushed into the northern territories of Afghanistan from where they infiltrate to the Central Asian neighbors of the Russian Federation.”
Lavrov went on to unveil the development programs that Russia plans for Afghanistan: rebuilding the old Soviet cultural center in Kabul as a Russian cultural center, and reviving as many as 150 projects from the 1980s, the Soviet’s own decade-long intervention in Afghanistan.
But all this is contingent on American taxpayers continuing to spend $1-2 billion a week in an effort to keep the peace in a landlocked nation of minimal strategic value on the far side of the globe from the United States.
Here’s an idea: Maybe Russia might want to pick up the Afghan baton again? Maybe Moscow would like to take over policing Afghanistan for the next decade?
Since many Russians today indulge in selective Soviet nostalgia, wouldn’t policing Afghanistan fit perfectly into the national mood? Back to the big power 1980s!
Russia has $505 billion in foreign reserves — good for a decade of Afghan stabilization.
And on spending money, the Kremlin has a huge advantage over the American White House.
Most of Russia’s federal budget comes from taxes paid by 15 large energy and natural resource companies.
In contrast, President Obama has to deal with 100 million tax payers, most of whom plan to vote on Nov. 6. Now that Vladimir Putin has won his reelection, he does not have to worry about playing nice to voters.
I’m sure that all the Russian teachers, doctors, soldiers and pensioners who were promised big pay hikes during last month’s presidential campaign will fully understand that their pay raises will be indefinitely delayed in order to try to stabilize Afghanistan.
So far, Americans have grudgingly agreed to do their bit. But now, having done our decade in Afghanistan, Americans might like to focus on rebuilding the United States.
Since there are 52 weeks in the year and 50 states in the Union, each week, one new state would win the $1 billion lottery! And, at the end of the year, we would have $2 billion left over for Guam, Puerto Rico and American Samoa!
Sound like a plan, Moscow? Start practicing your Pashto!
Women on Afghan peace council say they are sidelined
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal March 22, 2012
KABUL - Women members of an Afghan government council charged with seeking reconciliation with the Taliban have been sidelined from main consultations and are trying to forge a united voice within the council, one of the members said.
The 70-member High Peace Council, which has been struggling to carve out a role in the negotiations since the assassination of its chief, Burhanuddin Rabbani, last year, has nine women.
While the women attend peace workshops and meetings both in the country and abroad, Gulali Noor Safi said they were not involved in making major decisions.
"We are trying to be involved in the peace process but in my opinion, most of the time we're not included in major discussions," she said.
President Hamid Karzai set up the council two years ago consisting of members drawn from Afghanistan's different ethnic and political groups to try to negotiate with the Taliban to end the war now in its eleventh year.
But the council appears to have made little progress on its own, with U.S. diplomats separately engaging the Taliban in secret discussions abroad leading to an agreement on the establishment of a Taliban office in the Gulf state of Qatar.
The Taliban have since suspended the talks, blaming the United States for ignoring its demands.
Safi, who is also a member of parliament from the northern province of Balkh, said women were not opposed to holding negotiations with the Taliban so long as rights enshrined in the constitution were protected.
She said the women on the peace council had set up a committee to ensure issues related to women were addressed by the council in negotiations with the Taliban.
"Our mission is to figure out how to keep the role of women active in the High Peace Council and not have our presence serve only as a statistic," she said.
While attention has been focused on the Taliban, women in Afghanistan had concerns that the Karzai administration itself may give up some of the gains made in recent years, she said.
Karzai provoked outrage last month after he backed recommendations from clerics to segregate the sexes in the workplace. Another recommendation allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances, reminiscent of the Taliban period.
"What is worrying is the government backing the recommendations of the Ulema council," she said, referring to the clerics. "It is the government's responsibility to protect women's rights and not have them compromised. So long as they do so, then the Taliban will have to as well."
She said the women members of the peace council were travelling around the country to gather views on women's issues in any political settlement and present them to the council.
"We haven't reached the point of sitting down with the Taliban and negotiate. What we do in the peace council now is just discuss and promote ideas of peace," said Seddiqa Balkhi, another member of the council.
(Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Obama’s ambivalent leadership on Afghanistan
The Washington Post By Michael Gerson Friday, March 23, 2012
From media reports, it is clear that America’s hold on Afghanistan is unraveling and our military faces defeat. The recent rampage of a U.S. soldier was the last straw for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the people of his country and war-weary American citizens. The Obama administration has begun searching for the exits, no matter the consequences.
Except that none of these things is true.
In the two years since the Afghan surge was announced, U.S. forces have systematically cleared out insurgent strongholds in the Taliban heartland. Afghan forces have grown in numbers and professionalism — showing admirable discipline and restraint after the recent Koran burning incident. About 90 percent of military operations are conducted jointly by Americans and Afghans. During the past 12 weeks, the number of enemy-initiated attacks has been 25 percent lower than a year ago.
The horrible murders allegedly committed by an American have not changed U.S. national interests: to stop the return of Taliban rule, to prevent the reestablishment of terrorist sanctuaries and to limit the destabilization of Pakistan. A great power that makes momentous decisions based on the deranged actions of a single soldier would cease to be a great power. It would be a historical joke.
And national security officials in the Obama administration are actively combating the idea that they are planning a hasty or chaotic retreat. At a recent round¬table with reporters, senior officials made clear they have not been asked for drawdown options beyond the reductions that have already been announced. They dismissed reports to the contrary in the New York Times as unreliable. And they affirmed the need for a significant U.S. residual force in Afghanistan after the 2014 security turnover — both to conduct counterterrorism operations and to convince the Taliban that America can’t simply be outwaited.
The Obama administration is taking a perfectly defensible military approach — the steady, responsible transition to an Afghan lead. This strategy required an increase in U.S. forces to halt and reverse Taliban momentum — the surge that is beginning to subside. It also involves a surge in Afghan security forces, now numbering more than 300,000 — an expansion that can’t be maintained forever for fiscal reasons. These overlapping surges are intended to allow the Afghan government time to build “sufficient and sustainable” security capabilities, while it pursues reconciliation with reconcilable Taliban leaders and conducts a 2014 presidential election.
This isn’t easy. But it isn’t hopeless. Given the stakes, President Obama is right to make the attempt.
There is, however, a problem on the American side of the equation. The pursuit of this strategy would require two years of hard fighting to keep the Taliban on the defensive and then a serious U.S. economic, political and military commitment to Afghanistan beyond 2014. The public constituency for this level of engagement is limited and shrinking — though opposition to the Afghan war, at present, seems more an expression of weariness than outrage.
Pursuing the approach outlined by Obama’s national security officials will require an active, sustained campaign of public persuasion by Obama himself. While in government, I saw such campaigns. Obama is not currently engaged in one.
At nearly every stage of Obama’s Afghan war, he has surrounded even reasonable decisions with a fog of ambivalence. His initial Afghan policy review was a botched mess of vicious infighting, leaked classified material and mixed messages. His decision to pursue the Afghan surge seemed more of a reluctant concession than the expression of a firm conviction. His public statements on the war and its aims are rare — mainly made in response to reporters’ questions. Obama often pairs expressions of resolve with language of internal conflict and hesitance — indicating a leader of at least two minds. And some people in his administration always seem willing to float an off-the-record trial balloon of accelerated retreat — a circumstance Obama seems content to tolerate.
It is a contradiction historians will struggle to explain. Obama has made broadly responsible decisions on Afghanistan. He bears the private burdens of wartime leadership with dignity as he comforts the families of the fallen. He has a strong national security team, a serious military strategy and measurable successes to highlight. But with a nation in need of rallying, his public voice is weak.
It was said that Winston Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Obama, for whatever reason, holds it in reserve. And he is proving that it is possible simultaneously to show credible judgment and poor leadership.
michaelgerson@washpost.co
Al Qaeda leader calls for Afghans to rise up against Western troops
CNN By Amir Ahmed March 22, 2012
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri calls on Afghans to rise up against Western troops -- especially American forces -- in their country and back the Taliban, according to a recent audio message posted on jihadist web forums Wednesday.
The message, running more than 11 minutes in length, condemns the values of "crusader secular Western civilization" and follows a series of acts by American soldiers in Afghanistan that have been heavily publicized, including U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of slain insurgents.
"This act represents their values," al-Zawahiri says,"and this is their view toward other people in general and the Muslims in particular, and this is their way of treating us." Other events inflaming Muslim passions included the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. troops and a shooting spree by an American soldier that left 16 Afghan civilians dead. The United States has apologized for the acts.
"Honorable Afghans, the way is clear! It is either to stand by the banner of Islam to fight and support the Mujahideen using your hand, tongue, money and heart," the al Qaeda leader says. "Or you will be humiliated in this life and be punished in the hereafter."
The message is the second in a week's time from al-Zawahiri.
In a video released Friday, he called on Pakistanis to join the Arab Spring uprisings and revolt against their government, saying the country's leaders are "slaves of America."
The comments refer to the Arab Spring, the pro-democracy movement that swept through North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and threatening President Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria.
Al-Zawahiri, 60, was appointed the leader of al Qaeda in June, less than two months after a U.S. raid killed Osama bin Laden in his compound in Pakistan.
Afghanistan Inches Toward Private Security Firms’ Closure
VOA News March 22, 2012
Afghanistan is another step closer to abolishing private security firms operating in the country as the deadline for them to be replaced with the Afghan Interior Ministry's new Afghan Private Protection Force approaches.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has long been opposed to the large number of private security companies in the country, set the end of March as the deadline for the move, although that timeframe has been extended for up to 90 days to facilitate the transition.
Under the plan, more than 50 private security firms will be dissolved and at least 10,000 security guards will be re-assigned or replaced.
A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, said Thursday this is an important milestone in the process of transferring all security responsibilities to Afghan forces before coalition combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
Jacobson said “the APPF is focusing now on taking over security for development projects, convoys and commercial businesses.” He said that by March 2013, all security for ISAF bases and construction sites are scheduled to transition to the Afghan force.
Mr. Karzai has said that private guards undermine his nation's army and police and also expressed concern about the conduct of some private security companies.
Some international organizations and private security companies have privately expressed reservations about whether the Afghan Interior Ministry guards can be trusted to provide the same level of protection and security. There are also concerns about the potential for corruption by ministry officials who will have exclusive control of the industry, as well as how much the service will cost.
Private development companies say that if security concerns do develop or associated costs increase significantly, they will delay or cancel projects which could cost Afghanistan billions in U.S. aid.
Afghan Father Copes With Aftermath
An Afghan Villager Who Lost 11 Members of His Family Describes What He Found.
Wall Street Journal By CHARLES LEVINSON, YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and GHOUSUDDIN FROTAN March 22, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Mohammed Wazir says he was having breakfast with his brother in the town of Spin Boldak when he received the phone call from his village three hours away. "All your family members are martyred," a neighbor told him.
When Mr. Wazir, a 33-year-old farmer with a sun-creased face and graying beard, reached his small mud home in the Panjway district of Kandahar province, he says he discovered that 11 relatives had been killed and set on fire, victims of a predawn rampage allegedly perpetrated by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
Mr. Wazir and other villagers shared with The Wall Street Journal in Kandahar their accounts of the March 11 tragedy that has inflamed anti-American sentiment here and poisoned U.S.-Afghan relations, possibly affecting the course of the war.
Panjway and the neighboring districts have been a battlefield between the Taliban and U.S.-led coalition forces for years. Many houses in the area remain in ruins and explosion craters dot the fields.
The U.S. special-operations forces base where Sgt. Bales served was set up under a strategy to protect the local population. Instead, the arrival of U.S. troops provoked Taliban attacks—and prompted more villagers to flee the already sparsely populated area.
"The only people who have remained are those who couldn't afford the expense of moving their families to the city," says Mullah Baran, a 38-year-old whose brother, Mohammad Dawood, was the first victim of the March 11 rampage, according to witnesses to the shooting, and other villagers. "The Americans said they came here to bring peace and security, but the opposite happened. Now, this village is a nest of ghosts."
Mr. Baran, who says he had to scrape his brother's brain and pieces of skull from the floor of their home, lost only one relative. His brother's wife started screaming at the intruder, he says, and the gunman spared her and her six children.
In the Wazirs' mud compound a few hundred yards away—a dwelling so poor that a piece of cloth served as a front door—no one was spared.
Mr. Wazir—judging by bloodstains, the layout of his home, and his knowledge of where his family sleeps—says his 60-year-old mother, Shah Tarina, was shot first as she greeted the intruder. In his bare bedroom, his wife Bibi Zohra was shot together with their daughters, 4-year-old Nabiya, 6-year-old Farida and 9-year-old Masooma.
In another room, Mr. Wazir's sons Faizullah, 12, and Ismatullah, 13, were shot dead in their beds. Then, in a third room, Mr. Wazir's brother, Akhtar Mohammed, 20, his brother's new bride, 18-year-old Bibi Nazia, and a nephew, Essa Mohammed, 15, were killed.
All of the bodies were found afterward, after being dragged into the front room, blankets and clothes piled on top, and then torched, Mr. Wazir and other witnesses say.
Mr. Wazir says the corpse of his 2-year-old daughter Palwasha was amid the charred bodies. He believes she was burned alive. "I checked her body, and there were no bullet marks."
The intruder faced no resistance because the locals were used to U.S. night raids. There was one in the same cluster of houses just five days earlier, Mr. Wazir says, after a roadside bomb hit a U.S. armored vehicle nearby.
He says U.S. troops threatened village elders after the bombing, warning them the village will pay a price if such attacks occur again.
A U.S.-led coalition spokesman in Kabul, U.S. Army Col. Gary Kolb, said the military "won't speak to any specifics of what some of the villagers are saying." He said he had no information about the bombing described by Mr. Wazir because not every such incident is reported to Kabul.
Like other villagers—and Afghan President Hamid Karzai—Messrs. Wazir and Baran say they believe more than one shooter was involved, if only because of the effort needed to move and burn 11 bodies. U.S. officials say they believe there was a single assailant.
Mr. Wazir says he is haunted by guilt. "It hurts me a lot when I remember occasions when I shouted at my sons because I asked them to do something and they ignored it," he says. "I feel so very sorry now."
At least, he says, he can take solace in knowing he had bought his two sons two new bicycles, which they had so badly wanted, before they died.
Mr. Wazir says his family had rolls of freshly bought cloth that his wife and mother intended to use to sew new outfits for his children for the Eid al Fitr Islamic festival—still five months away. "It is still there—and there is no one to wear them," he sighed.
Amid other mementos in his home are his children's books, pens, pencils and toys. The Wazir kids were good in school, and Pashtun literature—full of poems and folk tales about heroic ancestors—was their favorite subject, Mr. Wazir said.
The family's only other survivor is Mr. Wazir's 4-year-old son Habib, who was with him on the trip to Spin Boldak. Habib didn't realize that the burned bodies piled in his front yard were those of his mother, brothers and sisters, Mr. Wazir says.
"He was asking me about the cadavers, and I tried to make him leave, but he wouldn't, he just kept crying," says Mr. Wazir. "He keeps asking me about his mother, brothers and sisters. Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night."
The killer seemed to lose his steady aim with his next targets in Syed Jaan's household nearby.
Mr. Jaan was away, on a trip to Kandahar city, when his wife, brother, brother-in-law and three-year-old nephew were killed. Two nephews, Rafiullah, 7, and Shokriya, 8, were hit in the lower part of their bodies, but are expected to survive.
Mr. Jaan's 6-year-old niece Zardana, shot in the head, was still lying unconscious in a Kandahar hospital earlier this week, and wasn't expected to survive, he said.
U.S. defense officials on Thursday said the death toll in the massacre was 17, up from 16. They didn't immediately explain the change.
Zardana had asked Mr. Jaan, 50, to bring back new clothes on a recent trip to the city, something he couldn't afford. "Whenever I go to the hospital and see her, I remember that time and her request," Mr. Jaan says. "I feel helpless and vulnerable, and just can't hold back tears."
Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
New book warns of looming Pakistan anarchy
Reuters By Christine Kearney Thu Mar 22, 2012
NEW YORK - A Pakistani journalist and best-selling author cautions that Pakistan is heading towards anarchy in his new book that offers solutions for his country's frayed ties with the United States and how U.S. peace talks with the Taliban is crucial in its exit strategy from Afghanistan.
The writer, Ahmed Rashid, who frequents the dinner tables of the world's top leaders offering advice, gives a dire assessment of the region he has reported on for more than 30 years in "Pakistan On The Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan" released in the United States this week.
In his fifth book the Lahore-based prize-winning journalist says he fears Pakistan is on the verge of a meltdown and blames both Pakistan and the Obama administration for the deterioration in their ties due to a series of destabilizing incidents, including the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's escalating problems are rooted in its reliance on U.S. aid, its complex politics, the government's lack of control over both its military and intelligence service and its failure to protect minorities and secure regions controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups, the book maintains.
That spells more trouble for Washington if such groups gain further control in a nuclear-armed country where the military now largely controls foreign and security policies and has taken the lead in relations with the United States, he said.
"Pakistan has all the potential of becoming a failing state," Rashid, 63, said in an interview, explaining the title of the book that follows bestsellers including "Taliban" and "Descent Into Chaos" that were translated into dozens of languages.
"I feel very much that the lack of state control, the lack of state authority is going to mean there is going to be increasing anarchy in many different parts of the country," said Rashid, who has received numerous death threats and was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers.
TALIBAN DEAL CRUCIAL
Rashid argues that the Obama administration has fueled Pakistan's paranoia by locking it out of peace talks with the Taliban, not discussing its decade-long Afghan war and exit strategy and increasing relations with economic powerhouse India, Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbor and regional rival.
In turn, Pakistan has made little effort to meet US demands to weed out insurgents operating from its safe havens, including the Pakistani Taliban and the Taliban-allied Haqqani network held responsible for many attacks inside Afghanistan.
Calling those opposing positions "the standard" for ties between Washington and Islamabad since the beginning of the Afghan war, Rashid called upon both sides to "break the logjam."
"There has to be a greater willingness by Pakistan to show when and under what conditions it would be willing to give up the sanctuary for the Taliban," he said. "And on the American side, there needs to be greater American trust in discussing their withdrawal plans and future plans with the Pakistanis."
The two countries reached crisis point after a November incident in which NATO aircraft killed 24 Pakistani troops. Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan and have demanded an apology and a halt in drone strikes.
"There is so much distrust now, on both sides," Rashid said, adding ties "are certainly not going to return to what they were where there was almost a carte blanche for the Americans to do what they like in Pakistan. That is not going to happen again."
Peace talks between the Taliban and United States must be the cornerstone of the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan, said Rashid, adding that Pakistan, which has long harbored Taliban leaders, must be included in the talks.
"The key issue is to get a political settlement with the Taliban that leaves Afghanistan in peace," Rashid said. "You do not want to leave Afghanistan in a state of civil war."
Doubts about the nascent peace talks between the Taliban and the United States intensified after the recent killing of 16 Afghan civilians blamed on a lone U.S. soldier, as well as the burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO base. The Afghan Taliban blamed "shaky, erratic and vague" U.S. statements.
Rashid criticized contradictory policies of the Obama and the previous George. W. Bush administrations, including ten years of U.S. emphasis on a military solution rather than diplomatic talks, which Rashid believes has left more Afghans and Pakistanis radicalized.
Rashid cautioned Obama against waiting to announce more details on the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan for fear of losing voter support in his re-election bid in November.
The author said the Republican presidential candidates were "more confused than Obama" on Afghan peace talks and withdrawal. "They don't know which policy to follow."
(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Anthony Boadle)
Taliban's brisk trade of kidnapping in Karachi
23 March 2012 BBC News
In Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, police say the Taliban are generating funds through bank robberies, protection rackets and kidnappings.
Abductions are particularly lucrative, with ransom demands sometimes running to millions of dollars. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports on how the militants are making inroads in Pakistan's financial capital.
When the doctor had a gun put to his head by a man on motorbike in the evening traffic last month, he thought it was a robbery. He readily handed over his mobile phone and his wallet.
But when he was forced from his car, he realised that he was the prize. A routine journey to his clinic ended with imprisonment in a Taliban hideout.
"They blindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back. I was kept in a small space, with a low roof, but they gave me food and a pillow to rest on," said the softly spoken father of four. For security reasons, we are not revealing his identity.
Kidnapping is a traditional industry in Karachi, and it's on the rise. Last year there were more than 100 recorded cases of kidnap for ransom - a record high.
While gangs from Balochistan are often involved, militants are fighting for a share of the market.
"With local criminals, kidnaps can take six weeks to resolve," says Sharfudding Memon, an adviser to the government of Sindh province. "With the Taliban it can take six months, or a year. They demand payment in foreign currency and they do their homework quite well."
Under surveillance
The doctor was abducted by kidnappers who told him they had been watching him for weeks. Police say this is typical.
"They carry out recces [reconnaissances] and they know where to snatch people," said Deputy Superintendent Jahangir Khan Meher. "They know the best time to strike, when there are no police are around. They check all the locations, and pick the most secure ones, and when the time is right, they do it."
As well as being organised and tenacious, the militants are greedy. They demanded more than $6m (£3.77m) for a prominent local industrialist abducted late last year. In that case, there was no pay-out. The businessman was freed by a police raid, in which three of the kidnappers were killed.
The ransom demand for the doctor was $80,000. When his family did not pay immediately, the kidnappers telephoned his brother, and said he had already been killed. They even gave directions to a location where they said his remains could be found.
While his loved ones were tortured with claims that he was dead, the doctor was locked in his own private hell. "Those six days were like 60 years," he said. "I couldn't see the outside world from morning until night. The most painful thing for me was knowing my family was watching the door, waiting for me to come home."
The doctor believes he narrowly escaped death, when police stormed the militants' hideout.
"When the raid started, they shifted me to another place," he said. "In seconds they would have killed me, but there was a noise and I slipped out of their hands."
Two of his abductors - Taliban foot soldiers - are now being bars. Police suspect them of involvement in four other abductions.
Claim of support
Kidnapping is just one business venture for the militants. Police say they are also involved in bank robberies and protection rackets. Pakistan's financial capital - a megacity of 20 million - offers rich pickings.
We travelled to the outskirts of the city to find out more about the militants who make money here. Through a trusted local contact, we arranged a meeting with a militant codenamed Younis - who used to fight in Afghanistan and now works for the Taliban finance department.
We met in a rundown district, dotted with dilapidated apartment blocks, roadside food stalls and patches of waste ground.
Younis claims "donations" bring in $80,000 a month.
"We get help from university students and college students," he told us. "Big businessmen also support us and help us. We cannot mention their names. People give freely. We use that money for our wounded, or for other needs."
While the militants undoubtedly have some willing benefactors in Karachi, locals say that when the Taliban come calling, you don't say no. What the militants call "donations", others call "bhatta" - protection money.
Back on the streets
As night fell, we joined the police anti-terror unit as they headed into Taliban territory - a lawless sprawl called Gadap, where the doctor was found. The operation was lead by Senior Superintendent Mohammad Aslam Khan - a veteran police chief who fights fire with fire. (He denies allegations of involvement in extra-judicial killings.)
Last September the Taliban targeted his home with a 500kg (1,100lb) bomb. Though his family survived, eight people were killed. Supt Khan has vowed to fight the militants until his last breath.
"We are ready to die for this country any time," he said, holding a cigarette in one hand, and his Glock 19mm handgun in the other. "We are not scared of these people. They should be scared of us."
Under cover of darkness, his heavily armed squad advanced down a dirt track towards a remote house. They closed in on their quarry - a militant suspected of involvement in bank robberies. He was arrested without a shot being fired.
As the suspect was taken away for interrogation, Supt Khan said they would be back out on the streets again the following night - targeting the Taliban and their coffers.
"They are destabilising our country," he said, "killing innocent people, and giving a bad name to our religion. We will not spare them at any stage."
With his kidnap ordeal behind him, the doctor has already returned to work. He now tries to vary his routine, and make his movements less predictable. He knows the Taliban could try again.
Taliban bomber kills 5 rival militants in Pakistan
March 23, 2012 | Associated Press
A Taliban suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of a rival group Friday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least five fighters in the second such bombing this month, militants and a government official said.
Clashes among insurgents are common along the Afghan border, where tribal loyalties hold sway and the government has little or no control. The militants are often competing over proceeds from smuggling, kidnapping and drug production.
Over the last year, the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam have been battling for control of the Tirah Valley, a remote part of the Khyber tribal region where Friday's attack occurred. The two bombings this month indicate an escalation of that fight.
Pakistani security forces also have been battling the militants in Tirah, who threaten the nearby city of Peshawar.
The bombing killed at least five members of Lashkar-e-Islam, said Bakhtiyar Khan, a government administrator in Khyber.
Hazrat Omar, a spokesman for the group, told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location that six fighters and two passers-by died.
Mohammed Afridi, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman in Khyber, claimed responsibility for the attack in another phone call with the AP.
A Taliban suicide bomber carried out a similar attack on Lashkar-e-Islam's headquarters on March 2, killing 23 militants. The Taliban said at the time that the bombing was in revenge for an attack last month that killed members of the group.
The Pakistani Taliban is one of Pakistan's deadliest militant groups, and has links to Al Qaeda and insurgents fighting across the border in Afghanistan. Its commanders are based in the border region, but the group has allied networks throughout the country.
Security forces have launched offensives in many border regions over the last four years, losing hundreds of men and killing thousands of alleged militants. But attacks still occur regularly in the country.
A bomb hidden inside a radio exploded on a military base in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing a paramilitary soldier and his 10-year-old son as they were listening to the Asia Cup cricket final between Pakistan and Bangladesh, intelligence officials said.
Three other children were wounded in the attack at a base in Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, a key Pakistani Taliban stronghold that was targeted in a large military offensive in 2009, the officials said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Authorities are investigating how the bomb was planted in the radio.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder, a capital offense that could lead to the death penalty in the massacre of Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said.
The 38-year-old soldier is accused of walking off a U.S. military base with his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, before dawn on March 11, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the bodies. It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.
It's unclear what prompted the killings, but the case has drawn new attention to the debate over mental health care for the troops, who have experienced record suicide rates and high incidences of post-traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Six other Afghans — a man, a woman and four children — were wounded in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. Bales also was charged with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault in those cases, according to Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who disclosed information from the charging document.
Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Washington, was officially informed of the 29 charges just before noon local time at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is confined.
His civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said Friday that he believes the government will have a hard time proving its case and that his client's mental state will be an important issue. Bales was on his fourth tour of duty, having served three tours in Iraq, where he suffered head and foot injuries.
The decision to charge him with premeditated murder suggests that prosecutors plan to argue that he consciously conceived the killings. A military legal official for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, noted that premeditated murder is not something that has to have been contemplated for a long time.
The maximum punishment for a premeditated murder conviction is death, dishonorable discharge from the armed forces, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade and total forfeiture of pay and allowances, Kolb said. The mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment with the chance of parole.
Legal experts have said the death penalty would be unlikely in the case. The military hasn't executed a service member since 1961 when an Army ammunition handler was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl in Austria. None of the six men currently on death row at Fort Leavenworth was convicted for atrocities against foreign civilians.
The charging document did not provide details about the killings, leaving the timeline unclear. The dead bodies were found in Balandi and Alkozai villages — one north and one south of the base.
Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2 a.m. saw a U.S. soldier return to the base around 1:30 a.m. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4 a.m. said he saw a U.S. soldier leaving the base at 2:30 a.m. It's unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same U.S. soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.
It also is not known whether the suspect used grenades, Kolb said. The grenade launcher attachment is added to the standard issue M-4 rifle for some soldiers but not all, he said. Bales was assigned to provide force protection at the base.
The pre-dawn shooting spree has further frayed ties between U.S. troops and President Hamid Karzai as the two nations are negotiating agreements for America's military footprint in Afghanistan after most international combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014. After the shootings, Karzai reiterated his demand that foreign troops leave posts near Afghan villages and pull back to larger bases.
The killings also have fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where violent protests raged for nearly a week last month after Muslim holy books and other Islamic texts ended up in a garbage burn pit at a U.S. base.
"By the laws of Islam, the soldier should be hanged," Dost Mohammad, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, the provincial capital, said Friday. "While other countries' laws say that this individual should be given a life sentence, from our point of view and that of other Muslims, this guy should be hanged."
Afghan officials and villagers maintain that 16 civilians were killed. The U.S. military never announced a death toll, but said Friday that investigators had collected enough evidence to charge Bales with killing 17 civilians.
U.S. officials are working with Afghan officials to compensate relatives of the victims, money that likely would be disbursed to the eldest male of the family. Eleven of those who died were from one family.
Bales' lawyer, who is based in the state of Washington, has said that his client remembers very little or nothing from the time the military believes he went on the rampage.
Browne told CBS' "This Morning" on Friday that his client's memory problems predate the shooting spree. Browne said Bales had earlier suffered a "serious" concussion that was not treated "for a variety of reasons," which Browne did not explain.
Browne said he thinks the U.S. government will have difficulty proving its case against Bales because "there is no crime scene" and a lack of important physical evidence like fingerprints.
Two military defense attorneys also have been assigned to his case.
Browne has said that he wants to visit Afghanistan.
U.S. military officials said they would do what they can to protect Bales' legal team in the event of such a visit but warned the shootings have heightened tension between U.S. troops and villagers in the area, and decisions about where the legal team could safely travel would have to be on a case-by-case basis at the time of any visit.
The charges launch what is likely to be a lengthy legal process.
Bales was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. The U.S. Forces-Afghanistan has sent the charges to a special court-martial convening authority, the 17th Fires Brigade, an artillery unit based in Fort Lewis, Washington.
Lewis-McChord spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield said Friday that officials at that base will have the legal responsibility of trying and managing the case against Bales, but it was not clear where the proceedings will actually take place, noting that Fort Leavenworth has the most updated security.
The commanding officer of that brigade has several options ranging from taking no action to ordering an Article 32 investigation, which is comparable to a preliminary hearing or grand jury process in U.S. civilian courts.
During the investigation, the defense will have an opportunity to see evidence and cross-examine government witnesses. An investigating officer will issue a report at the end of the probe in which he can recommend a court-martial; and add, delete or modify the charges. A mental assessment for Bales also is expected to be ordered.
He could be charged with other offenses later, according to the legal official. On Friday, a senior U.S. defense official said Bales was drinking in the hours before the attack on Afghan villagers, violating a U.S. military order banning alcohol in war zones.
___
Associated Press writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Mike Baker in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.
Taliban bomb maker killed in air strike in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban expert bomb maker was killed and another insurgent was injured on Friday in an air strike conducted by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in northern Afghan province of Baghlan, the ISAF forces said.
"Coalition forces killed a Taliban expert bomb maker and wounded another insurgent with a precision air strike in Baghlan-e Jadid district, Baghlan province, today," the ISAF said in a statement issued here.
The air strike took place as the two insurgents emplaced two roadside bombs. One was a pressure plate device and the other was remote controlled, the statement said.
Afghan and ISAF security forces removed and destroyed both explosives and detained the wounded insurgent.
"The expert bomb maker constructed explosive devices for attacks against Afghan and coalition troops and trained other insurgents in constructing roadside bombs," it said without mentioning the name of the killed leader.
"Before conducting the air strike, coalition forces ensured no civilians were in the area and no property would be damaged," it added.
Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and around 130,000 ISAF forces have not to confirm the death of their local leader in Baghlan.
Afghan military officials recently said that they expected " impressive attacks" in coming weeks and months as the spring known as "fighting season" is nearing in the country.
West to pay Afghan military $4 bn a year: Karzai
By Sardar Ahmad | AFP – Thu, Mar 22, 2012.
The West will subsidise Afghan security forces by more than $4 billion a year after US-led troops leave in 2014, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday, implicitly accepting a cut in the planned size of his military.
Western officials told AFP that no final agreements had been reached on funding or on the size of Afghanistan's security forces after combat troops in NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force withdraw.
But Karzai told a graduation ceremony at a military academy in Kabul: "It's set that post 2014, for the next 10 years until 2024, the international community, with the US in the lead and followed by Europe and other countries, will pay Afghanistan security forces $4.1 billion annually."
It would cover both the army and "other armed forces", he said, adding: "We agree and thank them."
Karzai's Western allies in the war against Taliban insurgents want to avoid the country descending into civil war after they leave.
But while NATO officials have long projected future Afghan forces at 352,000 men, the United States recently circulated a proposal for a total strength of 230,000, and Western officials say the $4.1 billion cost is based on that figure.
It is a fraction of current Western spending on the war. The 10-year conflict has cost the United States, alone, more than $444 billion.
But Afghan defence officials have expressed concerns over whether security forces 230,000 strong would be adequate.
The defence minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, reportedly warned that if it was not based on "realities on the ground" it could be a "disaster", "putting at risk all that we have accomplished together with so much sacrifice in blood and treasure".
Following Karzai's speech, a Western official stressed that the numbers were part of a model being discussed in the run-up to the NATO summit in Chicago in May, nothing had been decided and "everything is conditions based".
"This is part of an ongoing discussion between coalition planners and our Afghan allies and will continue in Chicago and beyond," he said, adding that under the concept Kabul would contribute $500 million to the $4.1 billion.
"The number of Afghan forces will basically come to a peak later this year" and should then reduce, he said.
"In the best of all worlds in the out years the insurgency will go down and as the insurgency goes down then fewer Afghan forces will be needed."
But a diplomat from another coalition country said the cut in numbers could "create a monster", alleging that the US plan was driven by cost-cutting considerations rather than military effectiveness.
Even so, some coalition members were as yet unwilling to pay their projected share of the money, he added.
Kanechka Sorkhabi, a researcher at the Franco-Afghan Research Initiative for Central Asia, said the proposal was worrying as it was part of a reduction in aid at all levels, "without thinking about a way out of the crisis".
He added: "It's not always quantity that counts but also quality.
"In terms of operational capacity, the Afghan forces are experienced given the recent past. They know how to fight and take positions. But they are not a conventional army. You don't build up a conventional army in five to six years."
Questions remain over the funding deal, said Karzai, with Kabul wanting to be able to spend the money on requirements other than salaries, such as weapons purchases.
"Afghanistan will be able to pay the salaries itself one day... but Afghanistan needs radar, air defence systems, warplanes, transport planes, helicopters and other equipment that improves the defence system," he said.
"If NATO or America will not give us planes, will they prevent us using this money to buy planes for our air force from other countries? If we were to buy planes from India or Russia or Iran or Pakistan or Ukraine, will our (forces') salaries still be paid from the NATO money?"
Asked about such putative purchases, another Western official said that NATO was "not thinking along those lines at all. We're heading for a deadlock."
Kabul and Washington have a frequently strained relationship, and are currently negotiating a long-term strategic partnership agreement to establish their relationship after 2014.
They are also in continuing talks over a memorandum of understanding on special operations, a US embassy spokesman said.
Karzai has long objected to night raids, which are unpopular among ordinary Afghans but which coalition military commanders argue are among their most effective tactics against the Taliban.
One battle the terrorists won
The Economist Mar 22nd 2012
THE New Republic has a brief survey of several commentators' current thinking on Afghanistan, and it's not pretty. Fouad Ajami says, "America’s time is up in Afghanistan." Steve Coll says, "The political foundation for the military transition strategy is pretty shaky...My fear is that the center will not hold when 2014 arrives," and adds that the administration should start thinking now about how to respond if Afghanistan disintegrates into civil war after American forces leave. Ahmed Rashid says America needs to be willing to take more risks to get an agreement in its negotiations for a political settlement with the Taliban, or "the alternative could be a multi-dimensional civil war that would devastate the region." Amitai Etzioni writes: "I am distressed about the size of the cemeteries Afghanistan will need."
But America's war in Afghanistan has always been in part a moral crusade, and that's the side addressed by Leon Wieseltier. He acknowledges he is "not remotely expert" on the ins and outs of the nation-building process, but generally blames the failure of Afghans to accept "the accountable democratic institutions we hoped to help them create." True enough, though it seems to me a bit like complaining that your eight-year-old has failed to master calculus despite the tutoring you offered him. But then he continues:
[I]t is sloppy of me to refer to “the Afghans,” because there are many people in Afghanistan who ardently want to bring their country into a decent modernity. For this reason, my certainty that this war is futile, and that therefore we should quit it, torments me (pardon the melodrama, but what follows is not a small matter): we will be abandoning Afghanistan—the women, the women—to the Taliban, who seem completely unreconstructed to me. But I don’t see what else we can do, except to remain there indefinitely, which would give the Afghans even less incentive to rely upon themselves and would eventually become indistinguishable from a mere occupation.
Under the paradigm of a failed American intervention and retreat, there did used to be something else we could do. We could offer those who had supported us asylum in America. After the US pulled out of South-East Asia in the early 1970s, we gave asylum to millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians who had either supported the American war efforts there or sought protection from the Communist regimes that followed our retreat. After the fall of US-backed regimes in Cuba, Ethiopia and Iran, America opened its doors to Cuban, Ethiopian and Iranian immigrants, disproportionately from middle-class, educated, pro-American or pro-Western backgrounds. Even where regimes didn't fall, America welcomed political refugees from its authoritarian or totalitarian geopolitical enemies: the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China.
Those who backed the NATO side in Afghanistan will suffer political persecution once NATO forces leave, particularly if cities like Kandahar and Kabul fall to the Taliban. Simply to be a woman in a Taliban-ruled area in Afghanistan should be sufficient justification for an asylum application on grounds of gender persecution. But as in Iraq, there will be no widespread American offers of visas, even for those who have worked for Western organisations or the US military. America today is too afraid that a broad offer of asylum would let in people who later commit terrorist acts on American soil, either because terrorist organisations deliberately use asylum offers to infiltrate sleepers, or because the feelings of many Muslim asylum seekers towards America would be too ambivalent to rule out the possibility of a shift at some point. Of course, to some extent, Western offers of asylum in the cold-war era were based on a funny bargain: we knew the Communists would try to keep people in, so we wouldn't have to accept too many of them. But the main issue is terrorism. American immigration procedures have become so tight and restrictive since the attacks of September 11th that the kind of broad-based immigration of pro-American groups from conflict countries that we saw in the 1960s and 1970s is not plausible anymore.
And this is where al-Qaeda won a battle, with lasting repercussions. Suicidal terrorist attacks by individuals or small groups are such a fluid, unpredictable threat that they sabotage the ability of states to forge stable alliances with potentially sympathetic populations abroad. The September 11th attacks, and subsequent attacks including this week's murders in Toulouse, have brought down a curtain of lasting mistrust that divides non-Muslim Americans and Europeans, on the one hand, from pretty much the entire Muslim population of the world, on the other. As much empathy as Americans and Europeans may feel for an Afghan woman who wants to study English and become a doctor, or an Afghan man who works as a translator for NATO forces, we now support them only so long as they stay where they are. As a result, when America and Europe go looking for friends in the Middle East, we can no longer offer them one of the guarantees we need in the campaign to win hearts and minds: we cannot promise to protect them if the other side wins. If the enemy overruns the countryside, the city gates will remain shut. If you lived in the countryside, then, who would you give your loyalty to?
Security Council Renews UN Mission in Afghanistan
RFE/RL March 22, 2012
The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to renew the mandate of the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) for another year.
On March 22, the council adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the mission to March 23, 2013 and it reiterated its support for the transition process that will give the government "leadership and ownership" of its future.
The council also emphasized that "there is no purely military solution to ensure the stability of Afghanistan."
Briefing the council on March 20, UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said that "the people of Afghanistan -- but also the international military forces -- are often pushed to the limit by the cumulative effects of this conflict, its tragedies and pressures."
UNAMA is expected to play a key role once international combat troops have left by the end of 2014.
U.S. Needs 'Significant' Forces In 2013
In related news, the top commander in Afghanistan has said that the United States will need "significant combat power" in the country in 2013.
Marine General John Allen's comments in a congressional appearance on March 22 came amid calls for a reduction in American forces.
Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States is on track to reduce the 23,000-member "surge" force by the end of September, leaving 68,000 American soldiers to fight militants and train Afghan forces.
It was Allen's second congressional appearance this week.
President Barack Obama faces increasing pressure to accelerate the withdrawal timetable after more than a decade of war.
Under a plan endorsed by NATO nations and the Afghan government, local forces will gradually take over and most foreign combat troops will be gone by the end of 2014.
Karzai Pledges End To NATO Night Raids
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his government is working to end controversial NATO night raids in negotiations with the United States on a long-term strategic pact.
Karzai, speaking at a military ceremony in Kabul on March 22, said some of NATO's past operations had "violated" Afghan sovereignty.
His remarks came as negotiations continue over a strategic pact, which will provide the framework for some U.S. forces to stay on after the majority of combat troops leave in 2014.
Talks have stalled as Karzai has demanded greater control over how U.S. forces operate in the country.
U.S. officials are hoping that the deal will be signed before a NATO summit in May.
With reporting by AP and Reuters
Afghanistan: Pass the $1 billion a week baton to Russia?
VOA News March 23, 2012 James Brooke VOA Moscow bureau chief
In early September 2002, one year after American troops entered Afghanistan, I reported newspaper stories from Kandahar, the main city of the Pashto-speaking southern part of Afghanistan.
I drove in from Quetta, Pakistan, and stayed 10 days at the “best” hotel on Kandahar’s main street.
For one report, I spent a morning walking the street with a Pashto-English interpreter. I talked to the video rental man, poked around the bazaar, and sipped tea with the used car dealer and his brothers. As a Westerner, I was a bit of an attraction. People were curious. Some were reserved. Some were friendly. For most of my stay, I’m sure the Taliban knew where I was.
This was back when the war’s goal was to destroy al-Qaida in Afghanistan. From the ruins I saw of Tarnak Farms, the Al Qaeda training camp near Kandahar airport, it was clear that the American and allied soldiers had done fine job of that.
Then, two Washington syndromes descended on Afghanistan.
With mission creep, getting rid of al-Qaida morphed into democratizing Afghanistan.
Without a sunset clause, the war went on and on and on.
As George Friedman, CEO of the Stratfor analytical group, wrote Monday, Afghanistan has become the longest multi-divisional war fought in American history.
And where is the progress? Ten years after I strolled in the sun down the main street of Kandahar, I now would only cover that stretch of asphalt in an armored car.
After a decade, the American public is realizing that Afghanistan is not working out as hoped. In poll after poll, two thirds of Americans want to bring our soldiers home.
With President Hamid Karzai calling American soldiers “demons” last week, the current pullout date of December 2014 seems awfully far away.
In addition to the human cost, American congressmen and American taxpayers are now focusing on the financial cost. Until recently, the calculation was $1 billion a week. Then last week, Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican of North Carolina, upped the bill, saying: “We are spending $10 billion a month that we can’t even pay for.”
In response, Moscow is saying this week: Not so fast!
A little background.
For the last five years, Russia has enjoyed the luxury of sniping from the sidelines at the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Just last month, Konstantin Dolgov, the Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner on Human Rights, used a new United Nations report to criticize NATO for rising civilian casualties. He neglected to mention that the same U.N. report said the Taliban and other insurgents caused 77 percent of documented civilian deaths.
Russian officials routinely — and correctly — note that the NATO mission has made little progress in reducing poppy crops and opium production in Afghanistan. What they fail to note is that, after decades of war against cocaine and marijuana production in Latin America, the street prices for cocaine and marijuana in North America have not changed much since my time in college (a long time ago). The current bloodbath in Mexico is the latest evidence of a failing drug war in the Americas.
According to the latest figures, the U.S. is spending over $100 million to stop heroin trafficking into Central Asia, and on to Russia. Maybe that money would be more efficiently used in the United States — on education and needle exchange programs to protect our own people?
Moscow has made a big deal about allowing NATO cargo and personnel to fly over or travel through Russia. It does not mention the fine print: Russian transport companies earn about $1 billion a year on these contracts.
But Moscow also wants people to be blind to the BIG PRINT: The United States has been giving Russia enormous help in Afghanistan for the last decade. A chaotic, unstable Afghanistan could destabilize Central Asia, and eventually Russia’s Islamic south.
Facing calls in the U.S. for a faster withdrawal, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, gave a lengthy interview Sunday to a reporter from ToloNews, the Afghan TV network.
“I don’t think the job has been done,” Lavrov warned in blunt English. Taking a legal tack, he argued that American troops can only leave Afghanistan when they can report to the United Nations that they have met their mandate to provide law and order in Afghanistan.
“It’s clear that trouble continues in Afghanistan, and that terrorist attacks have not subsided,” he continued. “We are especially concerned that terrorist activities have spread to the north of Afghanistan, where three years ago there was a quiet situation. The terrorists have basically pushed into the northern territories of Afghanistan from where they infiltrate to the Central Asian neighbors of the Russian Federation.”
Lavrov went on to unveil the development programs that Russia plans for Afghanistan: rebuilding the old Soviet cultural center in Kabul as a Russian cultural center, and reviving as many as 150 projects from the 1980s, the Soviet’s own decade-long intervention in Afghanistan.
But all this is contingent on American taxpayers continuing to spend $1-2 billion a week in an effort to keep the peace in a landlocked nation of minimal strategic value on the far side of the globe from the United States.
Here’s an idea: Maybe Russia might want to pick up the Afghan baton again? Maybe Moscow would like to take over policing Afghanistan for the next decade?
Since many Russians today indulge in selective Soviet nostalgia, wouldn’t policing Afghanistan fit perfectly into the national mood? Back to the big power 1980s!
Russia has $505 billion in foreign reserves — good for a decade of Afghan stabilization.
And on spending money, the Kremlin has a huge advantage over the American White House.
Most of Russia’s federal budget comes from taxes paid by 15 large energy and natural resource companies.
In contrast, President Obama has to deal with 100 million tax payers, most of whom plan to vote on Nov. 6. Now that Vladimir Putin has won his reelection, he does not have to worry about playing nice to voters.
I’m sure that all the Russian teachers, doctors, soldiers and pensioners who were promised big pay hikes during last month’s presidential campaign will fully understand that their pay raises will be indefinitely delayed in order to try to stabilize Afghanistan.
So far, Americans have grudgingly agreed to do their bit. But now, having done our decade in Afghanistan, Americans might like to focus on rebuilding the United States.
Since there are 52 weeks in the year and 50 states in the Union, each week, one new state would win the $1 billion lottery! And, at the end of the year, we would have $2 billion left over for Guam, Puerto Rico and American Samoa!
Sound like a plan, Moscow? Start practicing your Pashto!
Women on Afghan peace council say they are sidelined
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal March 22, 2012
KABUL - Women members of an Afghan government council charged with seeking reconciliation with the Taliban have been sidelined from main consultations and are trying to forge a united voice within the council, one of the members said.
The 70-member High Peace Council, which has been struggling to carve out a role in the negotiations since the assassination of its chief, Burhanuddin Rabbani, last year, has nine women.
While the women attend peace workshops and meetings both in the country and abroad, Gulali Noor Safi said they were not involved in making major decisions.
"We are trying to be involved in the peace process but in my opinion, most of the time we're not included in major discussions," she said.
President Hamid Karzai set up the council two years ago consisting of members drawn from Afghanistan's different ethnic and political groups to try to negotiate with the Taliban to end the war now in its eleventh year.
But the council appears to have made little progress on its own, with U.S. diplomats separately engaging the Taliban in secret discussions abroad leading to an agreement on the establishment of a Taliban office in the Gulf state of Qatar.
The Taliban have since suspended the talks, blaming the United States for ignoring its demands.
Safi, who is also a member of parliament from the northern province of Balkh, said women were not opposed to holding negotiations with the Taliban so long as rights enshrined in the constitution were protected.
She said the women on the peace council had set up a committee to ensure issues related to women were addressed by the council in negotiations with the Taliban.
"Our mission is to figure out how to keep the role of women active in the High Peace Council and not have our presence serve only as a statistic," she said.
While attention has been focused on the Taliban, women in Afghanistan had concerns that the Karzai administration itself may give up some of the gains made in recent years, she said.
Karzai provoked outrage last month after he backed recommendations from clerics to segregate the sexes in the workplace. Another recommendation allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances, reminiscent of the Taliban period.
"What is worrying is the government backing the recommendations of the Ulema council," she said, referring to the clerics. "It is the government's responsibility to protect women's rights and not have them compromised. So long as they do so, then the Taliban will have to as well."
She said the women members of the peace council were travelling around the country to gather views on women's issues in any political settlement and present them to the council.
"We haven't reached the point of sitting down with the Taliban and negotiate. What we do in the peace council now is just discuss and promote ideas of peace," said Seddiqa Balkhi, another member of the council.
(Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Obama’s ambivalent leadership on Afghanistan
The Washington Post By Michael Gerson Friday, March 23, 2012
From media reports, it is clear that America’s hold on Afghanistan is unraveling and our military faces defeat. The recent rampage of a U.S. soldier was the last straw for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the people of his country and war-weary American citizens. The Obama administration has begun searching for the exits, no matter the consequences.
Except that none of these things is true.
In the two years since the Afghan surge was announced, U.S. forces have systematically cleared out insurgent strongholds in the Taliban heartland. Afghan forces have grown in numbers and professionalism — showing admirable discipline and restraint after the recent Koran burning incident. About 90 percent of military operations are conducted jointly by Americans and Afghans. During the past 12 weeks, the number of enemy-initiated attacks has been 25 percent lower than a year ago.
The horrible murders allegedly committed by an American have not changed U.S. national interests: to stop the return of Taliban rule, to prevent the reestablishment of terrorist sanctuaries and to limit the destabilization of Pakistan. A great power that makes momentous decisions based on the deranged actions of a single soldier would cease to be a great power. It would be a historical joke.
And national security officials in the Obama administration are actively combating the idea that they are planning a hasty or chaotic retreat. At a recent round¬table with reporters, senior officials made clear they have not been asked for drawdown options beyond the reductions that have already been announced. They dismissed reports to the contrary in the New York Times as unreliable. And they affirmed the need for a significant U.S. residual force in Afghanistan after the 2014 security turnover — both to conduct counterterrorism operations and to convince the Taliban that America can’t simply be outwaited.
The Obama administration is taking a perfectly defensible military approach — the steady, responsible transition to an Afghan lead. This strategy required an increase in U.S. forces to halt and reverse Taliban momentum — the surge that is beginning to subside. It also involves a surge in Afghan security forces, now numbering more than 300,000 — an expansion that can’t be maintained forever for fiscal reasons. These overlapping surges are intended to allow the Afghan government time to build “sufficient and sustainable” security capabilities, while it pursues reconciliation with reconcilable Taliban leaders and conducts a 2014 presidential election.
This isn’t easy. But it isn’t hopeless. Given the stakes, President Obama is right to make the attempt.
There is, however, a problem on the American side of the equation. The pursuit of this strategy would require two years of hard fighting to keep the Taliban on the defensive and then a serious U.S. economic, political and military commitment to Afghanistan beyond 2014. The public constituency for this level of engagement is limited and shrinking — though opposition to the Afghan war, at present, seems more an expression of weariness than outrage.
Pursuing the approach outlined by Obama’s national security officials will require an active, sustained campaign of public persuasion by Obama himself. While in government, I saw such campaigns. Obama is not currently engaged in one.
At nearly every stage of Obama’s Afghan war, he has surrounded even reasonable decisions with a fog of ambivalence. His initial Afghan policy review was a botched mess of vicious infighting, leaked classified material and mixed messages. His decision to pursue the Afghan surge seemed more of a reluctant concession than the expression of a firm conviction. His public statements on the war and its aims are rare — mainly made in response to reporters’ questions. Obama often pairs expressions of resolve with language of internal conflict and hesitance — indicating a leader of at least two minds. And some people in his administration always seem willing to float an off-the-record trial balloon of accelerated retreat — a circumstance Obama seems content to tolerate.
It is a contradiction historians will struggle to explain. Obama has made broadly responsible decisions on Afghanistan. He bears the private burdens of wartime leadership with dignity as he comforts the families of the fallen. He has a strong national security team, a serious military strategy and measurable successes to highlight. But with a nation in need of rallying, his public voice is weak.
It was said that Winston Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Obama, for whatever reason, holds it in reserve. And he is proving that it is possible simultaneously to show credible judgment and poor leadership.
michaelgerson@washpost.co
Al Qaeda leader calls for Afghans to rise up against Western troops
CNN By Amir Ahmed March 22, 2012
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri calls on Afghans to rise up against Western troops -- especially American forces -- in their country and back the Taliban, according to a recent audio message posted on jihadist web forums Wednesday.
The message, running more than 11 minutes in length, condemns the values of "crusader secular Western civilization" and follows a series of acts by American soldiers in Afghanistan that have been heavily publicized, including U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of slain insurgents.
"This act represents their values," al-Zawahiri says,"and this is their view toward other people in general and the Muslims in particular, and this is their way of treating us." Other events inflaming Muslim passions included the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. troops and a shooting spree by an American soldier that left 16 Afghan civilians dead. The United States has apologized for the acts.
"Honorable Afghans, the way is clear! It is either to stand by the banner of Islam to fight and support the Mujahideen using your hand, tongue, money and heart," the al Qaeda leader says. "Or you will be humiliated in this life and be punished in the hereafter."
The message is the second in a week's time from al-Zawahiri.
In a video released Friday, he called on Pakistanis to join the Arab Spring uprisings and revolt against their government, saying the country's leaders are "slaves of America."
The comments refer to the Arab Spring, the pro-democracy movement that swept through North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and threatening President Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria.
Al-Zawahiri, 60, was appointed the leader of al Qaeda in June, less than two months after a U.S. raid killed Osama bin Laden in his compound in Pakistan.
Afghanistan Inches Toward Private Security Firms’ Closure
VOA News March 22, 2012
Afghanistan is another step closer to abolishing private security firms operating in the country as the deadline for them to be replaced with the Afghan Interior Ministry's new Afghan Private Protection Force approaches.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has long been opposed to the large number of private security companies in the country, set the end of March as the deadline for the move, although that timeframe has been extended for up to 90 days to facilitate the transition.
Under the plan, more than 50 private security firms will be dissolved and at least 10,000 security guards will be re-assigned or replaced.
A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, said Thursday this is an important milestone in the process of transferring all security responsibilities to Afghan forces before coalition combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
Jacobson said “the APPF is focusing now on taking over security for development projects, convoys and commercial businesses.” He said that by March 2013, all security for ISAF bases and construction sites are scheduled to transition to the Afghan force.
Mr. Karzai has said that private guards undermine his nation's army and police and also expressed concern about the conduct of some private security companies.
Some international organizations and private security companies have privately expressed reservations about whether the Afghan Interior Ministry guards can be trusted to provide the same level of protection and security. There are also concerns about the potential for corruption by ministry officials who will have exclusive control of the industry, as well as how much the service will cost.
Private development companies say that if security concerns do develop or associated costs increase significantly, they will delay or cancel projects which could cost Afghanistan billions in U.S. aid.
Afghan Father Copes With Aftermath
An Afghan Villager Who Lost 11 Members of His Family Describes What He Found.
Wall Street Journal By CHARLES LEVINSON, YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and GHOUSUDDIN FROTAN March 22, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Mohammed Wazir says he was having breakfast with his brother in the town of Spin Boldak when he received the phone call from his village three hours away. "All your family members are martyred," a neighbor told him.
When Mr. Wazir, a 33-year-old farmer with a sun-creased face and graying beard, reached his small mud home in the Panjway district of Kandahar province, he says he discovered that 11 relatives had been killed and set on fire, victims of a predawn rampage allegedly perpetrated by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
Mr. Wazir and other villagers shared with The Wall Street Journal in Kandahar their accounts of the March 11 tragedy that has inflamed anti-American sentiment here and poisoned U.S.-Afghan relations, possibly affecting the course of the war.
Panjway and the neighboring districts have been a battlefield between the Taliban and U.S.-led coalition forces for years. Many houses in the area remain in ruins and explosion craters dot the fields.
The U.S. special-operations forces base where Sgt. Bales served was set up under a strategy to protect the local population. Instead, the arrival of U.S. troops provoked Taliban attacks—and prompted more villagers to flee the already sparsely populated area.
"The only people who have remained are those who couldn't afford the expense of moving their families to the city," says Mullah Baran, a 38-year-old whose brother, Mohammad Dawood, was the first victim of the March 11 rampage, according to witnesses to the shooting, and other villagers. "The Americans said they came here to bring peace and security, but the opposite happened. Now, this village is a nest of ghosts."
Mr. Baran, who says he had to scrape his brother's brain and pieces of skull from the floor of their home, lost only one relative. His brother's wife started screaming at the intruder, he says, and the gunman spared her and her six children.
In the Wazirs' mud compound a few hundred yards away—a dwelling so poor that a piece of cloth served as a front door—no one was spared.
Mr. Wazir—judging by bloodstains, the layout of his home, and his knowledge of where his family sleeps—says his 60-year-old mother, Shah Tarina, was shot first as she greeted the intruder. In his bare bedroom, his wife Bibi Zohra was shot together with their daughters, 4-year-old Nabiya, 6-year-old Farida and 9-year-old Masooma.
In another room, Mr. Wazir's sons Faizullah, 12, and Ismatullah, 13, were shot dead in their beds. Then, in a third room, Mr. Wazir's brother, Akhtar Mohammed, 20, his brother's new bride, 18-year-old Bibi Nazia, and a nephew, Essa Mohammed, 15, were killed.
All of the bodies were found afterward, after being dragged into the front room, blankets and clothes piled on top, and then torched, Mr. Wazir and other witnesses say.
Mr. Wazir says the corpse of his 2-year-old daughter Palwasha was amid the charred bodies. He believes she was burned alive. "I checked her body, and there were no bullet marks."
The intruder faced no resistance because the locals were used to U.S. night raids. There was one in the same cluster of houses just five days earlier, Mr. Wazir says, after a roadside bomb hit a U.S. armored vehicle nearby.
He says U.S. troops threatened village elders after the bombing, warning them the village will pay a price if such attacks occur again.
A U.S.-led coalition spokesman in Kabul, U.S. Army Col. Gary Kolb, said the military "won't speak to any specifics of what some of the villagers are saying." He said he had no information about the bombing described by Mr. Wazir because not every such incident is reported to Kabul.
Like other villagers—and Afghan President Hamid Karzai—Messrs. Wazir and Baran say they believe more than one shooter was involved, if only because of the effort needed to move and burn 11 bodies. U.S. officials say they believe there was a single assailant.
Mr. Wazir says he is haunted by guilt. "It hurts me a lot when I remember occasions when I shouted at my sons because I asked them to do something and they ignored it," he says. "I feel so very sorry now."
At least, he says, he can take solace in knowing he had bought his two sons two new bicycles, which they had so badly wanted, before they died.
Mr. Wazir says his family had rolls of freshly bought cloth that his wife and mother intended to use to sew new outfits for his children for the Eid al Fitr Islamic festival—still five months away. "It is still there—and there is no one to wear them," he sighed.
Amid other mementos in his home are his children's books, pens, pencils and toys. The Wazir kids were good in school, and Pashtun literature—full of poems and folk tales about heroic ancestors—was their favorite subject, Mr. Wazir said.
The family's only other survivor is Mr. Wazir's 4-year-old son Habib, who was with him on the trip to Spin Boldak. Habib didn't realize that the burned bodies piled in his front yard were those of his mother, brothers and sisters, Mr. Wazir says.
"He was asking me about the cadavers, and I tried to make him leave, but he wouldn't, he just kept crying," says Mr. Wazir. "He keeps asking me about his mother, brothers and sisters. Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night."
The killer seemed to lose his steady aim with his next targets in Syed Jaan's household nearby.
Mr. Jaan was away, on a trip to Kandahar city, when his wife, brother, brother-in-law and three-year-old nephew were killed. Two nephews, Rafiullah, 7, and Shokriya, 8, were hit in the lower part of their bodies, but are expected to survive.
Mr. Jaan's 6-year-old niece Zardana, shot in the head, was still lying unconscious in a Kandahar hospital earlier this week, and wasn't expected to survive, he said.
U.S. defense officials on Thursday said the death toll in the massacre was 17, up from 16. They didn't immediately explain the change.
Zardana had asked Mr. Jaan, 50, to bring back new clothes on a recent trip to the city, something he couldn't afford. "Whenever I go to the hospital and see her, I remember that time and her request," Mr. Jaan says. "I feel helpless and vulnerable, and just can't hold back tears."
Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
New book warns of looming Pakistan anarchy
Reuters By Christine Kearney Thu Mar 22, 2012
NEW YORK - A Pakistani journalist and best-selling author cautions that Pakistan is heading towards anarchy in his new book that offers solutions for his country's frayed ties with the United States and how U.S. peace talks with the Taliban is crucial in its exit strategy from Afghanistan.
The writer, Ahmed Rashid, who frequents the dinner tables of the world's top leaders offering advice, gives a dire assessment of the region he has reported on for more than 30 years in "Pakistan On The Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan" released in the United States this week.
In his fifth book the Lahore-based prize-winning journalist says he fears Pakistan is on the verge of a meltdown and blames both Pakistan and the Obama administration for the deterioration in their ties due to a series of destabilizing incidents, including the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's escalating problems are rooted in its reliance on U.S. aid, its complex politics, the government's lack of control over both its military and intelligence service and its failure to protect minorities and secure regions controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups, the book maintains.
That spells more trouble for Washington if such groups gain further control in a nuclear-armed country where the military now largely controls foreign and security policies and has taken the lead in relations with the United States, he said.
"Pakistan has all the potential of becoming a failing state," Rashid, 63, said in an interview, explaining the title of the book that follows bestsellers including "Taliban" and "Descent Into Chaos" that were translated into dozens of languages.
"I feel very much that the lack of state control, the lack of state authority is going to mean there is going to be increasing anarchy in many different parts of the country," said Rashid, who has received numerous death threats and was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers.
TALIBAN DEAL CRUCIAL
Rashid argues that the Obama administration has fueled Pakistan's paranoia by locking it out of peace talks with the Taliban, not discussing its decade-long Afghan war and exit strategy and increasing relations with economic powerhouse India, Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbor and regional rival.
In turn, Pakistan has made little effort to meet US demands to weed out insurgents operating from its safe havens, including the Pakistani Taliban and the Taliban-allied Haqqani network held responsible for many attacks inside Afghanistan.
Calling those opposing positions "the standard" for ties between Washington and Islamabad since the beginning of the Afghan war, Rashid called upon both sides to "break the logjam."
"There has to be a greater willingness by Pakistan to show when and under what conditions it would be willing to give up the sanctuary for the Taliban," he said. "And on the American side, there needs to be greater American trust in discussing their withdrawal plans and future plans with the Pakistanis."
The two countries reached crisis point after a November incident in which NATO aircraft killed 24 Pakistani troops. Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan and have demanded an apology and a halt in drone strikes.
"There is so much distrust now, on both sides," Rashid said, adding ties "are certainly not going to return to what they were where there was almost a carte blanche for the Americans to do what they like in Pakistan. That is not going to happen again."
Peace talks between the Taliban and United States must be the cornerstone of the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan, said Rashid, adding that Pakistan, which has long harbored Taliban leaders, must be included in the talks.
"The key issue is to get a political settlement with the Taliban that leaves Afghanistan in peace," Rashid said. "You do not want to leave Afghanistan in a state of civil war."
Doubts about the nascent peace talks between the Taliban and the United States intensified after the recent killing of 16 Afghan civilians blamed on a lone U.S. soldier, as well as the burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO base. The Afghan Taliban blamed "shaky, erratic and vague" U.S. statements.
Rashid criticized contradictory policies of the Obama and the previous George. W. Bush administrations, including ten years of U.S. emphasis on a military solution rather than diplomatic talks, which Rashid believes has left more Afghans and Pakistanis radicalized.
Rashid cautioned Obama against waiting to announce more details on the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan for fear of losing voter support in his re-election bid in November.
The author said the Republican presidential candidates were "more confused than Obama" on Afghan peace talks and withdrawal. "They don't know which policy to follow."
(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Anthony Boadle)
Taliban's brisk trade of kidnapping in Karachi
23 March 2012 BBC News
In Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, police say the Taliban are generating funds through bank robberies, protection rackets and kidnappings.
Abductions are particularly lucrative, with ransom demands sometimes running to millions of dollars. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports on how the militants are making inroads in Pakistan's financial capital.
When the doctor had a gun put to his head by a man on motorbike in the evening traffic last month, he thought it was a robbery. He readily handed over his mobile phone and his wallet.
But when he was forced from his car, he realised that he was the prize. A routine journey to his clinic ended with imprisonment in a Taliban hideout.
"They blindfolded me and tied my hands behind my back. I was kept in a small space, with a low roof, but they gave me food and a pillow to rest on," said the softly spoken father of four. For security reasons, we are not revealing his identity.
Kidnapping is a traditional industry in Karachi, and it's on the rise. Last year there were more than 100 recorded cases of kidnap for ransom - a record high.
While gangs from Balochistan are often involved, militants are fighting for a share of the market.
"With local criminals, kidnaps can take six weeks to resolve," says Sharfudding Memon, an adviser to the government of Sindh province. "With the Taliban it can take six months, or a year. They demand payment in foreign currency and they do their homework quite well."
Under surveillance
The doctor was abducted by kidnappers who told him they had been watching him for weeks. Police say this is typical.
"They carry out recces [reconnaissances] and they know where to snatch people," said Deputy Superintendent Jahangir Khan Meher. "They know the best time to strike, when there are no police are around. They check all the locations, and pick the most secure ones, and when the time is right, they do it."
As well as being organised and tenacious, the militants are greedy. They demanded more than $6m (£3.77m) for a prominent local industrialist abducted late last year. In that case, there was no pay-out. The businessman was freed by a police raid, in which three of the kidnappers were killed.
The ransom demand for the doctor was $80,000. When his family did not pay immediately, the kidnappers telephoned his brother, and said he had already been killed. They even gave directions to a location where they said his remains could be found.
While his loved ones were tortured with claims that he was dead, the doctor was locked in his own private hell. "Those six days were like 60 years," he said. "I couldn't see the outside world from morning until night. The most painful thing for me was knowing my family was watching the door, waiting for me to come home."
The doctor believes he narrowly escaped death, when police stormed the militants' hideout.
"When the raid started, they shifted me to another place," he said. "In seconds they would have killed me, but there was a noise and I slipped out of their hands."
Two of his abductors - Taliban foot soldiers - are now being bars. Police suspect them of involvement in four other abductions.
Claim of support
Kidnapping is just one business venture for the militants. Police say they are also involved in bank robberies and protection rackets. Pakistan's financial capital - a megacity of 20 million - offers rich pickings.
We travelled to the outskirts of the city to find out more about the militants who make money here. Through a trusted local contact, we arranged a meeting with a militant codenamed Younis - who used to fight in Afghanistan and now works for the Taliban finance department.
We met in a rundown district, dotted with dilapidated apartment blocks, roadside food stalls and patches of waste ground.
Younis claims "donations" bring in $80,000 a month.
"We get help from university students and college students," he told us. "Big businessmen also support us and help us. We cannot mention their names. People give freely. We use that money for our wounded, or for other needs."
While the militants undoubtedly have some willing benefactors in Karachi, locals say that when the Taliban come calling, you don't say no. What the militants call "donations", others call "bhatta" - protection money.
Back on the streets
As night fell, we joined the police anti-terror unit as they headed into Taliban territory - a lawless sprawl called Gadap, where the doctor was found. The operation was lead by Senior Superintendent Mohammad Aslam Khan - a veteran police chief who fights fire with fire. (He denies allegations of involvement in extra-judicial killings.)
Last September the Taliban targeted his home with a 500kg (1,100lb) bomb. Though his family survived, eight people were killed. Supt Khan has vowed to fight the militants until his last breath.
"We are ready to die for this country any time," he said, holding a cigarette in one hand, and his Glock 19mm handgun in the other. "We are not scared of these people. They should be scared of us."
Under cover of darkness, his heavily armed squad advanced down a dirt track towards a remote house. They closed in on their quarry - a militant suspected of involvement in bank robberies. He was arrested without a shot being fired.
As the suspect was taken away for interrogation, Supt Khan said they would be back out on the streets again the following night - targeting the Taliban and their coffers.
"They are destabilising our country," he said, "killing innocent people, and giving a bad name to our religion. We will not spare them at any stage."
With his kidnap ordeal behind him, the doctor has already returned to work. He now tries to vary his routine, and make his movements less predictable. He knows the Taliban could try again.
Taliban bomber kills 5 rival militants in Pakistan
March 23, 2012 | Associated Press
A Taliban suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of a rival group Friday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least five fighters in the second such bombing this month, militants and a government official said.
Clashes among insurgents are common along the Afghan border, where tribal loyalties hold sway and the government has little or no control. The militants are often competing over proceeds from smuggling, kidnapping and drug production.
Over the last year, the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam have been battling for control of the Tirah Valley, a remote part of the Khyber tribal region where Friday's attack occurred. The two bombings this month indicate an escalation of that fight.
Pakistani security forces also have been battling the militants in Tirah, who threaten the nearby city of Peshawar.
The bombing killed at least five members of Lashkar-e-Islam, said Bakhtiyar Khan, a government administrator in Khyber.
Hazrat Omar, a spokesman for the group, told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location that six fighters and two passers-by died.
Mohammed Afridi, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman in Khyber, claimed responsibility for the attack in another phone call with the AP.
A Taliban suicide bomber carried out a similar attack on Lashkar-e-Islam's headquarters on March 2, killing 23 militants. The Taliban said at the time that the bombing was in revenge for an attack last month that killed members of the group.
The Pakistani Taliban is one of Pakistan's deadliest militant groups, and has links to Al Qaeda and insurgents fighting across the border in Afghanistan. Its commanders are based in the border region, but the group has allied networks throughout the country.
Security forces have launched offensives in many border regions over the last four years, losing hundreds of men and killing thousands of alleged militants. But attacks still occur regularly in the country.
A bomb hidden inside a radio exploded on a military base in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing a paramilitary soldier and his 10-year-old son as they were listening to the Asia Cup cricket final between Pakistan and Bangladesh, intelligence officials said.
Three other children were wounded in the attack at a base in Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, a key Pakistani Taliban stronghold that was targeted in a large military offensive in 2009, the officials said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Authorities are investigating how the bomb was planted in the radio.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com