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Afghan Massacre Families Paid Compensation
VOA News March 25, 2012
Afghan authorities say the United States has paid tens of thousands of dollars to the families of victims killed in a shooting rampage allegedly by an American soldier.
Kandahar provincial council member Haji Agha Lali Dastageri told VOA Sunday that authorities paid the compensation a day earlier during a ceremony in the governor's office. Relatives of the victims received $50,000 per person killed and $11,000 per person wounded in the March 11 shooting rampage in Panjwai district of Kandahar province.
Dastageri said that the victims' families had requested that media not be present for the ceremony because of possible insurgent threats.
A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members often make compensation payments, they usually are confidential.
By Afghan tradition, those responsible for someone's death must pay the victim's family compensation to make amends. Earlier, an investigating Afghan delegation had paid each family a smaller sum in compensation.
On Friday, U.S. authorities investigating the killings charged Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales with 17 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder.
Bales, an 11-year military veteran, is alleged to have walked out of his southern Afghanistan military post under the cover of darkness and gunned down nine children and eight adults.
The New York Times quoted an unnamed U.S. official Sunday as saying investigators believe Bales left his base twice on March 11, allegedly carrying out the shootings in two villages in separate operations. It was after his return from the second outing that Bales surrendered to authorities.
Bales' civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, has admitted that his client had something to drink before the shooting spree, despite a military alcohol ban, but insists his client has no memory of the night and was likely suffering from combat stress.
Bales, who served three tours of duty in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan last December, suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq in 2010. A day before the massacre, he witnessed one of his fellow soldiers get his leg blown off.
News reports have emerged that Bales has had past brushes with the law in the U.S. involving alcohol. He also is reportedly facing financial troubles at home, and had a $1.5 million securities fraud judgement issued against him several years ago.
Bales could face the death penalty for his shooting rampage. The U.S. military has not executed a service member in five decades.
Afghan Shootings Carried Out In 2 Operations, Inquiry Finds
The New York Times March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - Military investigators suspect that the American soldier charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other charges in connection with the attacks against Afghan civilians this month committed the shootings during two separate operations, a United States official said Saturday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said that the investigators believed that the soldier, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left his Afghanistan base and carried out the first set of killings, returned to the combat outpost and then, sometime later that evening, went out and attacked a second village.
It was on his return from the second trip from the base that Sergeant Bales was detained, the official said.
The Associated Press first reported the military’s findings about the two separate operations.
The official said this account emerged from a range of interviews that Army investigators had conducted over the last several days as they tried to piece together what happened that night and why.
The series of events, he said, seems to support the United States government’s assertion that the killings were carried out by one person.
Sergeant Bales, 38, was formally charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 6 counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the March 13 attacks.
In Afghanistan, Taliban seems divided at a key juncture
While the U.S. is scrambling to react to a series of damaging setbacks, the Taliban has not taken full advantage, apparently because it is divided over its strategy.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 25, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - Lately, it has seemed that the Taliban can just sit back and wait for the next American mistake.
Over the last three months, a series of highly damaging events has forced U.S. commanders and officials to adopt a posture of nonstop crisis management. Even so, the insurgents have not taken full advantage of the American setbacks, in part because the movement appears divided over its own strategy.
This month, the Taliban leadership abruptly suspended preliminary peace contacts with the Americans, a move seen by some as tactical and temporary, but interpreted by others as reflecting internal argument over whether negotiations were even worthwhile at this point.
Within the movement, some believe it might make more sense to wait out the U.S. militarypresence rather than come to the bargaining table. The insurgents are well aware of growing calls in the United States for a sped-up pullout from Afghanistan, calls that intensified after the massacre of 17 villagers in Kandahar province, in which aU.S. Army staff sergeant has been charged.
Heading into the spring "fighting season," some Taliban field operatives boast that large-scale attacks might not be needed to erode Western forces' sway, especially in rural districts where American troops were disliked and distrusted even before the Kandahar killings.
It appeared a different story as 2012 began and the Taliban announced its readiness to open a liaison office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. U.S. officials characterized the move as the most definitive sign yet that the insurgents were ready to begin steps toward forging a political accord to end the decade-old war.
Weeks later, an inflammatory video emerged of U.S. Marines urinating on what were believed to be the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. In February, the apparently mistaken burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered a week of deadly riots across Afghanistan. And on Friday, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the shootings in Kandahar's Panjwayi district on March 11. Nine of the victims were children.
"The Taliban are benefiting from these incidents," said Mullah Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a former Taliban envoy who is now a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is trying to draw the insurgents into talks.
Others, though, see any benefit to the insurgents as short-lived.
"I don't think the U.S. should completely lie down and play dead because of this tragedy," said Daoud Sultanzoy, a former lawmaker who is now a broadcaster and analyst. "But a reckless response will play into their hands."
Because Taliban statements so often characterize actions by U.S. troops as atrocities, the movement seemed briefly flummoxed over how to respond to a string of incidents that angered so many Afghans.
The Taliban railed against the urination video, the Koran burning and the Kandahar killings, but did not cite any of those as reasons for breaking off preliminary talks. Rather, its leadership pointed to "unacceptable" conditions posed by the U.S., thought to center on delays in arranging the transfer of five senior Taliban prisoners from U.S. military detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar.
Subsequent statements, though, have made it clear that the insurgents were focusing on ways to tap public animosity toward Americans over the Kandahar shootings.
As the formal charges against Bales were presented, the Taliban scoffed at the notion that any punishment meted out by the U.S. military would fit the crime and revived claims put forth by some Afghan officials and villagers that many American troops had taken part in the attack. The military says Bales is the sole suspect.
In a statement posted on its website Friday, the Taliban called the Koran burning and the Kandahar shootings part of a pattern of atrocities that would naturally affect "the atmosphere of negotiations," signaling, perhaps, that U.S. concessions would be needed to revive any dialogue.
A well-worn weapon in the Taliban arsenal is that of depicting the government of President Hamid Karzai as an American lap dog. Seeking to dispel any such image, the Afghan leader has recently taken a particularly combative stance toward his U.S. patrons, calling for American forces to withdraw from rural areas such as the one where the Kandahar shootings occurred, and digging in his heels on terms of a long-term agreement governing the terms of a U.S. military presence after 2014, when NATO's combat mission is to end.
A key sticking point in negotiating the so-called strategic partnership agreement has been night raids spearheaded by U.S. forces. The insurgents stand to benefit from Karzai's efforts to curtail the raids, including a potential compromise that would give Afghan authorities greater control over who would be targeted. Previously, U.S. intelligence leading to raids has been as tightly held as possible, for fear of compromising the operations.
The Taliban leadership pays close attention to official pronouncements about American troop strength, which peaked last year at about 100,000. It now stands at about 90,000, and is to fall to 68,000 by the autumn.
U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, lobbied Congress last week for a hiatus in the drawdown after that number is reached. But if Allen is overruled by President Obama, the Taliban may be emboldened by the prospect of facing an American force whose numbers could diminish even more sharply.
In the Taliban heartland of the south, fighters are beginning to mobilize for the upsurge in battlefield activity that normally accompanies warming temperatures. But one field commander in Kandahar province, who has a small cell of fighters reporting to him, said there was no need to make major battlefield sacrifices simply to harry an enemy already in retreat.
"Look at what we can do to them with [roadside bombs] that kill them as soon as they leave their bases, and by reminding people in the villages what great harm the foreign forces do in this country," he said. "No one can say that is not the truth."
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash and a special correspondent in Kandahar province contributed to this report.
U.S. Plans No Charges Over Deadly Strike in Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - The United States military has decided that no service members will face disciplinary charges for their involvement in a NATO airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, an accident that plunged relations between the two countries to new depths and has greatly complicated the allied mission in Afghanistan.
An American investigation in December found fault with both American and Pakistani troops for the deadly exchange of fire, but noted that the Pakistanis fired first from two border posts that were not on coalition maps, and that they kept firing even after the Americans tried to warn them that they were shooting at allied troops. Pakistan has rejected these conclusions and ascribed most of the blame to the American forces.
The American findings set up a second inquiry to determine whether any American military personnel should be punished. That recently completed review said no, three senior military officials said, explaining that the Americans fired in self-defense. Other mistakes that contributed to the fatal cross-border strike were the regrettable result of battlefield confusion, they said.
“We found nothing criminally negligent on the part of any individual in our investigations of the incident,” said one senior American military official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results of the review had not been made public.
The military’s decision is expected to anger Pakistani officials at a time when the two countries are gingerly trying to patch up a security relationship left in tatters over the past year from a series of episodes, including the shooting of two Pakistanis in Lahore by a C.I.A. contractor, the Navy SEALs raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden and the deadly airstrike in November.
Pakistan’s Parliament is scheduled to resume debate as early as Monday on a major review of relations with the United States, a debate that the Obama administration hopes will bring a resumption of full diplomatic relations and the reopening of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through Pakistan. As part of that debate, Pakistani legislators have demanded an unconditional formal apology from the United States for the fatal airstrike.
In the highest-level parley of leaders of the two countries since the accident, President Obama is to meet with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea, after a nuclear security conference there, to discuss Afghanistan and other security issues. But Mr. Obama is not expected to go beyond the regrets he conveyed to Pakistan soon after the airstrike on Nov. 25.
Some administration aides said at the time that they worried that if Mr. Obama formally apologized to Pakistan, it could provide ammunition for his Republican opponents in the presidential race.
By contrast, Mr. Obama offered a personal apology last month to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan for the burning of Korans by American soldiers there, as well as regrets about the massacre of Afghan civilians in which an Army staff sergeant has been charged.
Gen. James N. Mattis, the head of the military’s Central Command, is scheduled to hold long-delayed meetings this week in Islamabad with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff, to discuss the airstrike investigation, as well as new border coordination procedures to prevent a recurrence of the episode.
General Mattis will also discuss opportunities for training, arms sales and improving border coordination centers, military officials said. Other senior American officials, like Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides, and Marc Grossman, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, are also expected to meet soon with senior Pakistani officials to begin mending relations.
The accidental cross-border attack in November set in motion two inquiries. The first investigation, conducted by the Central Command in December, found that Pakistani troops fired first on a joint Afghan-American patrol, prompting the deadly return fire. That inquiry also concluded that checks and balances put in place to prevent cross-border accidents with Pakistan failed in part because American officials did not trust their Pakistani counterparts enough to give them detailed information about American troop locations in Afghanistan.
That investigation also determined that it took about 45 minutes for a NATO operations officer in Afghanistan to notify a senior allied commander about Pakistan’s calls that its outposts were under attack, one of several breakdowns in communication that contributed to the airstrike.
Once alerted, the commander immediately ordered a halt to the American attacks. By then, communications between the two militaries had sorted out the chain of errors and the shooting stopped. The delay, by at least one officer and possibly a second, raised questions about whether a faster response could have spared some lives.
Officials “did not respond correctly, quickly enough or with the sense of urgency or initiative required given the gravity of the situation and the well-known sensitivity surrounding the Afghan-Pakistan border region,” the December report found.
Pakistan’s military in January issued a withering rejection of the American investigation. It stated that the report was “factually not correct” and that the Americans attacked first; accused the United States of failing to share information “at any level”; and denied any responsibility for the lethal episode.
Pakistan’s generals are likely to be privately angered by the latest American decision, although in public the military is deferring to the parliamentary process. “A full investigation was done by our military, and the conclusions were sent to the parliamentary committee,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military’s spokesman. “Now the government should communicate to the U.S. whatever they want.”
Armed with the information from the first inquiry, the American chain of command in Afghanistan and at the Central Command set out to determine any culpability. They found none that warranted criminal charges, military officials said, nor significant discipline like fines or demotions. It is possible, the officials said, that at some level of the chain of command a soldier could receive an administrative reprimand, but those matters are held privately within the unit or command.
American military legal experts said that the episode illustrated the difficulties of assigning blame when an unintended chain of events results in tragedy.
“The absence of disciplinary action in a specific case doesn’t mean that there was a cover-up or anything like that,” said Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general who served as deputy judge advocate general and is now executive director of the Duke University Law School’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. “Rather, it may well simply indicate that a tragic accident occurred, and the fog and friction of war make the facts such that assigning criminal responsibility is just not the right thing to do.”
Under orders from General Mattis, American commanders have taken several steps in the wake of the airstrike to prevent such an accident from happening again. These changes include reviewing and harmonizing all directives related to border operations, increased training and coordination, improved surveillance before missions, and more current information on the location of border installations on both sides.
“Cross-border communications have been improved, command levels at border coordination centers have increased, and command relationships have been redefined where needed,” Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr., a NATO spokesman, wrote by e-mail.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
8 Killed in Afghan Bomb Blast
VOA News March 25, 2012
Officials in Afghanistan say a bomb blast has killed at least 8 people, including several police officers. Authorities say the explosion happened Saturday in Arghandab, in the southern province of Kandahar.
NATO said Saturday one of its service members had died in a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear if this referred to the incident in Kandahar or an incident elsewhere in southern Afghanistan.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and remains a stronghold of the militants who have been fighting the government of President Hamid Karzai and its Western allies since being ousted from power a decade ago.
Pakistan Taliban warns MPs against NATO supply restoration
ISLAMABAD, March 25 (Xinhua) -- The Pakistan Taliban Sunday warned members of parliament against restoration of the supply line for NATO troops in Afghanistan and said they would target MPs and their leaders if they recommended restoration of supplies.
Pakistan suspended supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan in November 2011 after the U.S. fighter jets and helicopters raided two Pakistani posts and killed 24 soldiers.
The parliament will begin on Monday a debate on the future relationship with the U.S and the country's future terms of engagements with the NATO in Afghanistan.
The MPs will also make a decision whether or not to recommend to the government restoration of supplies.
"If the parliament opened the land route for NATO troops, we will target members of the parliament and their party leaders," Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said.
"We are aware that the pro-American parliamentarians have started efforts to legalize a route to NATO forces," the TTP spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said.
The Parliamentary Committee on National Security has recommended to the government conditional restoration of the supply line for NATO troops with the imposition of tax on NATO supply trucks.
Officials say that nearly 70 percent of supplies are transported for some 150,000 U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan via Pakistan.
Pakistan's Communication Minister Arbab Alamgir said that NATO containers have badly affected the country's road infrastructure in the northwest and southwest, which had main border points with Afghanistan. He also said he would recommend to the government to demand compensation for damage caused to the roads.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that the parliament will take a decision on NATO supply and he will not accept any pressure on the issue.
Islamic parties have also opposed restoration of the NATO supply line and said they will protest in Islamabad against any possible decision on restoration of supplies.
A leader of Jamiat ulema-e-Islam party, Maulana Faza-ur-Rahman, Sunday told a public meeting of thousands of his supporters in the northwestern city of Peshawar that the nation will stand against the NATO supplies.
The TTP spokesman said in a statement that the parliamentarians should know that they "would not be safe" if they favor restoration supplies for NATO forces.
He also asked the drivers not to carry supplies for NATO troops.
Taliban militants had routinely been attacking and torching NATO trucks until after Pakistan cut off the line.
The U.S. has already struck a deal with Russia and several Central Asian states for an alternate supply route in view of attacks on NATO trucks in Pakistan.
General Mathis of the U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM, said that the U.S. will also need Pakistan's land route during withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. He said earlier this month that he will discuss the issue with Pakistan's military during his coming visit.
Karzai Urges Taliban To Stop Attacking Schools
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 24 March 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban in a speech on Saturday to stop closing schools in some parts of Afghanistan because it prevented the country from rebuilding.
Education is "the only way" to develop Afghanistan, Karzai said in a ceremony in Kabul to mark the beginning of the school year.
He accused insurgents of being enemies of Islam for preventing children from attending school.
The Taliban is responsible for closing and burning some schools in provinces where it is more active.
"I call upon all the armed opposition parties to stop this because it's the enemy of Islam and the people of Afghanistan," Karzai said.
"If they want a free Afghanistan, the only way to have a free Afghanistan is to educate people."
Karzai also encouraged young people to study Islam inside Afghanistan.
"I am really happy seeing Afghan youth going to the Afghan Madrasas - they should be encouraged to study inside Afghanistan," he said.
The Afghan Minister of Education Farooq Wardak, who also spoke at the ceremony, acknowledged that there are concerns over a lack of professional teachers in the education sector, but he said recent efforts of the Ministry of Education to fight illiteracy have given some hope.
"We have started a three campaigns to enroll all Afghan children in school," he said.
Statistics show that more than 34 per cent of Afghan children have no access to schools and several schools have been closed in at least nine provinces.
Republicans Offer Few Details On Afghanistan Plans
The Associated Press March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - As Afghanistan seizes more of the political spotlight, the Republican presidential candidates are quick to criticize President Barack Obama's handling of the war but struggle to explain how they would change the strategy they would inherit.
GOP front-runner Mitt Romney says Obama has exhibited "failed leadership" and should not have set a timetable for ending the war. But Romney won't say whether he would scrap the president's plans to bring the war to a close by the end of 2014. Rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have questioned whether the U.S. should be in Afghanistan at all, but neither has plans for withdrawing tens of thousands of American troops.
The Republican reluctance to outline specific policy positions is evidence of the complex nature of managing the decade-long war as public support dwindles, and concerns that detailed campaign promises could pigeonhole a candidate if he goes on to win the White House.
It's a role reversal for the parties from 2008, when a Republican president was mired in a long and unpopular war and Democratic candidates, including Obama, tried to convince voters that they should take the reins.
But the political calculus for the current crop of Republicans is more complicated than it was for Obama in 2008. Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start and his election-year promise to bring it to an end put him in lockstep with the rest of his party.
This year's GOP candidates, however, find their party's hawkish tendencies butting up against the public's growing impatience with the Afghan war.
Six in 10 Americans see the war as not worth its costs, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this month. Opposition to the war is bipartisan, and for the first time, the Post-ABC poll showed more Republicans "strongly" see the war as not worth fighting than say the opposite.
Yet many in the GOP have agreed with some of Obama's aggressiveness in Afghanistan, from increasing U.S. troop levels to ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks that drew the U.S. into the war in the first place.
Defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon said those actions have made it harder for Republican to come up with a distinctive and specific alternative war strategy.
"I think it reflects that this is not an issue that is so simple that reflexively turning to a Republican line of attack is going to be the answer," said O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
But the recent series of troubling episodes in Afghanistan, including the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. forces and the alleged killing of 17 Afghan civilians by an American soldier, have focused fresh attention on how the U.S. plans to get out of Afghanistan and whether a Republican president would pursue a different course than Obama.
The president's withdrawal plan, in coordination with NATO allies and Afghanistan, calls for the U.S. to move into a support role in Afghanistan in 2013 and hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014. The administration is negotiating with Afghanistan about a U.S. presence there after 2014 and is trying to reach a political breakthrough with the Taliban.
Republicans have criticized the 2014 benchmark, saying Obama's decision to put a timetable on withdrawal puts U.S. gains in Afghanistan at risk.
"Why in the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the date you're pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense," Romney said in February.
Santorum said it "gave them something which you should never give an enemy, which is hope."
But neither candidate has said whether he would abandon the NATO-backed 2014 withdrawal plan, which would be well under way by the time either took office in January. Nor has either said whether his own war strategy would keep the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan past that date.
Romney, who is on track to win the nomination, has been especially vague about how many U.S. forces he would keep in Afghanistan and for how long. He has both pledged to ensure a "force level necessary to secure our gains and complete our mission successfully" while also promising to bring troops home "as soon as humanly possible."
The former Massachusetts governor says he can't get more specific until he gets guidance from the military, and plans to conduct a full interagency war review upon taking office.
Democrats say Romney's lack of clarity on Afghanistan will be a liability in a general election race against Obama.
"What's clear is that he's lacking a core set of experiences so he gets pulled back and forth between the 'let's double down' strategy and public opinion polls that think that 10 years is enough," said Heather Hurlburt, a foreign policy expert who worked in the Clinton administration and now heads the National Security Network, a progressive organization.
Romney has drawn one clear distinction with the president. He opposes Taliban negotiations and says the U.S. should not hold talks with a group trying to kill American soldiers.
As Romney seeks the right strategy for success in Afghanistan, Santorum and Gingrich have started to question whether there is even a mission in Afghanistan worth completing.
"We have to either make a decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out and probably get out sooner" than planned in 2014, Santorum said in a recent interview.
Gingrich has said the U.S. is "risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may, frankly, not be doable."
Neither candidate, however, has said how those concerns would translate into an actual war strategy or whether he would speed up Obama's withdrawal timetable if elected.
The only Republican contender with a clearly articulated war strategy is Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The Libertarian-leaning Paul long has opposed the war and says he would quickly end the war once in the White House.
Stuck Afghan plant books delivered to Kabul
BBC News By Huw Williams BBC Scotland reporter 24 March 2012
I must admit, I didn't pay much attention to the plants of Afghanistan during the short trip I made there in 2010.
I was part of a small BBC team, following a Scottish expedition to previously unclimbed peaks in the Wakhan valley.
I do remember a field of bright blue flowers, soon after we crossed the border. But, to be honest, I was more interested in the remains of a Soviet era tank by the roadside.
And there were the lush plants growing in the river bed, as we neared the end of the road at a place called Sarhad I Wakhan, where the two climbers we were travelling with planned to hire animals for their trek.
But, again, I'm afraid my mind was on other things. Chiefly the fact that the river bed was also the road.
The guide we'd hired in the village of Ishkashim, Adab Shah, and our driver discussed how to negotiate a way over the stones, and through the fast-flowing water.
But for Ian Hedge from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, the plants of that part of the world have been a lifetime's study.
He went there in the 1960s - during a brief period when travel to Afghanistan was easy. He photographed and recorded dozens and dozens of species - many of them completely new to science.
He used that expertise to contribute to a field guide to the flora and vegetation of Afghanistan, compiled and edited by a crack, international team of botanists.
Four thousand copies of the book were sent to Kabul, so they could be given to universities, colleges, and environmental organisations throughout Afghanistan.
But a decision was made to send that consignment - which weighed more than 10 tonnes - by ship via Karachi, in Pakistan.
And for over a year, that's where the books stayed. Stuck in customs. While fearsome bureaucracies debated how best to process them, so they could proceed. 'Fantastic news'
I reported on that story at the end of January. Since then, I've stayed in touch with Ian, the book's editors who are based in Germany, and the Pakistan High Commission in London. Any news? Any explanation about why it was all taking so long?
Eventually the request came back from officialdom in Pakistan - please supply full details of when the shipment was dispatched, by which shipping agency, and please quote the Afghan Clearance number if one has been obtained.
I got scans of a whole sheaf of documentation, and sent it off. Not really expecting much. But - by complete coincidence - later that very afternoon, I got an email. The books had all arrived in Kabul.
Ian told me it was "fantastic news". Now that they were in Afghanistan, the books could play their part in, as he put it, "re-vivifying" academic life there. The publishers in Germany told me they'd be celebrating with a glass of red wine. Last copy
And that was the end of the story. Oh, except that there is one more important detail.
Adab Shah, our fixer and guide from the Afghan border village of Ishkashim, has been given a grant by the Linda Norgrove Foundation - a charity based on the Isle of Lewis, which was set-up to commemorate the aid worker killed in Afghanistan.
Adab has used the money to buy trekking gear, so he can run a tourism business for people who visit the Wakhan. So he'll be in contact with more mountaineers and walkers, like the expedition we were following.
Now Ian is sending Adab a copy of the field guide to plants, so he and his clients can identify the species they see.
Actually, not just "a" copy. It was the last copy of the book. Which he'd been saving, to give to someone special.
So, of course the news from Afghanistan continues to be bleak, with reports of carnage and the courage of British service men and women there.
But sometimes, in the middle of all that, I stop and think about that bright young man. With the initiative and drive to start his own business.
I imagine him looking at that book. Learning more about his country. Caring for it. Promoting it. And growing a future for himself.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News March 25, 2012
Afghan authorities say the United States has paid tens of thousands of dollars to the families of victims killed in a shooting rampage allegedly by an American soldier.
Kandahar provincial council member Haji Agha Lali Dastageri told VOA Sunday that authorities paid the compensation a day earlier during a ceremony in the governor's office. Relatives of the victims received $50,000 per person killed and $11,000 per person wounded in the March 11 shooting rampage in Panjwai district of Kandahar province.
Dastageri said that the victims' families had requested that media not be present for the ceremony because of possible insurgent threats.
A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan declined to confirm or deny the payments, saying that while coalition members often make compensation payments, they usually are confidential.
By Afghan tradition, those responsible for someone's death must pay the victim's family compensation to make amends. Earlier, an investigating Afghan delegation had paid each family a smaller sum in compensation.
On Friday, U.S. authorities investigating the killings charged Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales with 17 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder.
Bales, an 11-year military veteran, is alleged to have walked out of his southern Afghanistan military post under the cover of darkness and gunned down nine children and eight adults.
The New York Times quoted an unnamed U.S. official Sunday as saying investigators believe Bales left his base twice on March 11, allegedly carrying out the shootings in two villages in separate operations. It was after his return from the second outing that Bales surrendered to authorities.
Bales' civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, has admitted that his client had something to drink before the shooting spree, despite a military alcohol ban, but insists his client has no memory of the night and was likely suffering from combat stress.
Bales, who served three tours of duty in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan last December, suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq in 2010. A day before the massacre, he witnessed one of his fellow soldiers get his leg blown off.
News reports have emerged that Bales has had past brushes with the law in the U.S. involving alcohol. He also is reportedly facing financial troubles at home, and had a $1.5 million securities fraud judgement issued against him several years ago.
Bales could face the death penalty for his shooting rampage. The U.S. military has not executed a service member in five decades.
Afghan Shootings Carried Out In 2 Operations, Inquiry Finds
The New York Times March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - Military investigators suspect that the American soldier charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other charges in connection with the attacks against Afghan civilians this month committed the shootings during two separate operations, a United States official said Saturday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said that the investigators believed that the soldier, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left his Afghanistan base and carried out the first set of killings, returned to the combat outpost and then, sometime later that evening, went out and attacked a second village.
It was on his return from the second trip from the base that Sergeant Bales was detained, the official said.
The Associated Press first reported the military’s findings about the two separate operations.
The official said this account emerged from a range of interviews that Army investigators had conducted over the last several days as they tried to piece together what happened that night and why.
The series of events, he said, seems to support the United States government’s assertion that the killings were carried out by one person.
Sergeant Bales, 38, was formally charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 6 counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the March 13 attacks.
In Afghanistan, Taliban seems divided at a key juncture
While the U.S. is scrambling to react to a series of damaging setbacks, the Taliban has not taken full advantage, apparently because it is divided over its strategy.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 25, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - Lately, it has seemed that the Taliban can just sit back and wait for the next American mistake.
Over the last three months, a series of highly damaging events has forced U.S. commanders and officials to adopt a posture of nonstop crisis management. Even so, the insurgents have not taken full advantage of the American setbacks, in part because the movement appears divided over its own strategy.
This month, the Taliban leadership abruptly suspended preliminary peace contacts with the Americans, a move seen by some as tactical and temporary, but interpreted by others as reflecting internal argument over whether negotiations were even worthwhile at this point.
Within the movement, some believe it might make more sense to wait out the U.S. militarypresence rather than come to the bargaining table. The insurgents are well aware of growing calls in the United States for a sped-up pullout from Afghanistan, calls that intensified after the massacre of 17 villagers in Kandahar province, in which aU.S. Army staff sergeant has been charged.
Heading into the spring "fighting season," some Taliban field operatives boast that large-scale attacks might not be needed to erode Western forces' sway, especially in rural districts where American troops were disliked and distrusted even before the Kandahar killings.
It appeared a different story as 2012 began and the Taliban announced its readiness to open a liaison office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. U.S. officials characterized the move as the most definitive sign yet that the insurgents were ready to begin steps toward forging a political accord to end the decade-old war.
Weeks later, an inflammatory video emerged of U.S. Marines urinating on what were believed to be the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. In February, the apparently mistaken burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered a week of deadly riots across Afghanistan. And on Friday, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the shootings in Kandahar's Panjwayi district on March 11. Nine of the victims were children.
"The Taliban are benefiting from these incidents," said Mullah Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a former Taliban envoy who is now a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is trying to draw the insurgents into talks.
Others, though, see any benefit to the insurgents as short-lived.
"I don't think the U.S. should completely lie down and play dead because of this tragedy," said Daoud Sultanzoy, a former lawmaker who is now a broadcaster and analyst. "But a reckless response will play into their hands."
Because Taliban statements so often characterize actions by U.S. troops as atrocities, the movement seemed briefly flummoxed over how to respond to a string of incidents that angered so many Afghans.
The Taliban railed against the urination video, the Koran burning and the Kandahar killings, but did not cite any of those as reasons for breaking off preliminary talks. Rather, its leadership pointed to "unacceptable" conditions posed by the U.S., thought to center on delays in arranging the transfer of five senior Taliban prisoners from U.S. military detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Qatar.
Subsequent statements, though, have made it clear that the insurgents were focusing on ways to tap public animosity toward Americans over the Kandahar shootings.
As the formal charges against Bales were presented, the Taliban scoffed at the notion that any punishment meted out by the U.S. military would fit the crime and revived claims put forth by some Afghan officials and villagers that many American troops had taken part in the attack. The military says Bales is the sole suspect.
In a statement posted on its website Friday, the Taliban called the Koran burning and the Kandahar shootings part of a pattern of atrocities that would naturally affect "the atmosphere of negotiations," signaling, perhaps, that U.S. concessions would be needed to revive any dialogue.
A well-worn weapon in the Taliban arsenal is that of depicting the government of President Hamid Karzai as an American lap dog. Seeking to dispel any such image, the Afghan leader has recently taken a particularly combative stance toward his U.S. patrons, calling for American forces to withdraw from rural areas such as the one where the Kandahar shootings occurred, and digging in his heels on terms of a long-term agreement governing the terms of a U.S. military presence after 2014, when NATO's combat mission is to end.
A key sticking point in negotiating the so-called strategic partnership agreement has been night raids spearheaded by U.S. forces. The insurgents stand to benefit from Karzai's efforts to curtail the raids, including a potential compromise that would give Afghan authorities greater control over who would be targeted. Previously, U.S. intelligence leading to raids has been as tightly held as possible, for fear of compromising the operations.
The Taliban leadership pays close attention to official pronouncements about American troop strength, which peaked last year at about 100,000. It now stands at about 90,000, and is to fall to 68,000 by the autumn.
U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, lobbied Congress last week for a hiatus in the drawdown after that number is reached. But if Allen is overruled by President Obama, the Taliban may be emboldened by the prospect of facing an American force whose numbers could diminish even more sharply.
In the Taliban heartland of the south, fighters are beginning to mobilize for the upsurge in battlefield activity that normally accompanies warming temperatures. But one field commander in Kandahar province, who has a small cell of fighters reporting to him, said there was no need to make major battlefield sacrifices simply to harry an enemy already in retreat.
"Look at what we can do to them with [roadside bombs] that kill them as soon as they leave their bases, and by reminding people in the villages what great harm the foreign forces do in this country," he said. "No one can say that is not the truth."
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash and a special correspondent in Kandahar province contributed to this report.
U.S. Plans No Charges Over Deadly Strike in Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - The United States military has decided that no service members will face disciplinary charges for their involvement in a NATO airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, an accident that plunged relations between the two countries to new depths and has greatly complicated the allied mission in Afghanistan.
An American investigation in December found fault with both American and Pakistani troops for the deadly exchange of fire, but noted that the Pakistanis fired first from two border posts that were not on coalition maps, and that they kept firing even after the Americans tried to warn them that they were shooting at allied troops. Pakistan has rejected these conclusions and ascribed most of the blame to the American forces.
The American findings set up a second inquiry to determine whether any American military personnel should be punished. That recently completed review said no, three senior military officials said, explaining that the Americans fired in self-defense. Other mistakes that contributed to the fatal cross-border strike were the regrettable result of battlefield confusion, they said.
“We found nothing criminally negligent on the part of any individual in our investigations of the incident,” said one senior American military official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results of the review had not been made public.
The military’s decision is expected to anger Pakistani officials at a time when the two countries are gingerly trying to patch up a security relationship left in tatters over the past year from a series of episodes, including the shooting of two Pakistanis in Lahore by a C.I.A. contractor, the Navy SEALs raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden and the deadly airstrike in November.
Pakistan’s Parliament is scheduled to resume debate as early as Monday on a major review of relations with the United States, a debate that the Obama administration hopes will bring a resumption of full diplomatic relations and the reopening of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan through Pakistan. As part of that debate, Pakistani legislators have demanded an unconditional formal apology from the United States for the fatal airstrike.
In the highest-level parley of leaders of the two countries since the accident, President Obama is to meet with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea, after a nuclear security conference there, to discuss Afghanistan and other security issues. But Mr. Obama is not expected to go beyond the regrets he conveyed to Pakistan soon after the airstrike on Nov. 25.
Some administration aides said at the time that they worried that if Mr. Obama formally apologized to Pakistan, it could provide ammunition for his Republican opponents in the presidential race.
By contrast, Mr. Obama offered a personal apology last month to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan for the burning of Korans by American soldiers there, as well as regrets about the massacre of Afghan civilians in which an Army staff sergeant has been charged.
Gen. James N. Mattis, the head of the military’s Central Command, is scheduled to hold long-delayed meetings this week in Islamabad with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff, to discuss the airstrike investigation, as well as new border coordination procedures to prevent a recurrence of the episode.
General Mattis will also discuss opportunities for training, arms sales and improving border coordination centers, military officials said. Other senior American officials, like Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides, and Marc Grossman, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, are also expected to meet soon with senior Pakistani officials to begin mending relations.
The accidental cross-border attack in November set in motion two inquiries. The first investigation, conducted by the Central Command in December, found that Pakistani troops fired first on a joint Afghan-American patrol, prompting the deadly return fire. That inquiry also concluded that checks and balances put in place to prevent cross-border accidents with Pakistan failed in part because American officials did not trust their Pakistani counterparts enough to give them detailed information about American troop locations in Afghanistan.
That investigation also determined that it took about 45 minutes for a NATO operations officer in Afghanistan to notify a senior allied commander about Pakistan’s calls that its outposts were under attack, one of several breakdowns in communication that contributed to the airstrike.
Once alerted, the commander immediately ordered a halt to the American attacks. By then, communications between the two militaries had sorted out the chain of errors and the shooting stopped. The delay, by at least one officer and possibly a second, raised questions about whether a faster response could have spared some lives.
Officials “did not respond correctly, quickly enough or with the sense of urgency or initiative required given the gravity of the situation and the well-known sensitivity surrounding the Afghan-Pakistan border region,” the December report found.
Pakistan’s military in January issued a withering rejection of the American investigation. It stated that the report was “factually not correct” and that the Americans attacked first; accused the United States of failing to share information “at any level”; and denied any responsibility for the lethal episode.
Pakistan’s generals are likely to be privately angered by the latest American decision, although in public the military is deferring to the parliamentary process. “A full investigation was done by our military, and the conclusions were sent to the parliamentary committee,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military’s spokesman. “Now the government should communicate to the U.S. whatever they want.”
Armed with the information from the first inquiry, the American chain of command in Afghanistan and at the Central Command set out to determine any culpability. They found none that warranted criminal charges, military officials said, nor significant discipline like fines or demotions. It is possible, the officials said, that at some level of the chain of command a soldier could receive an administrative reprimand, but those matters are held privately within the unit or command.
American military legal experts said that the episode illustrated the difficulties of assigning blame when an unintended chain of events results in tragedy.
“The absence of disciplinary action in a specific case doesn’t mean that there was a cover-up or anything like that,” said Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general who served as deputy judge advocate general and is now executive director of the Duke University Law School’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. “Rather, it may well simply indicate that a tragic accident occurred, and the fog and friction of war make the facts such that assigning criminal responsibility is just not the right thing to do.”
Under orders from General Mattis, American commanders have taken several steps in the wake of the airstrike to prevent such an accident from happening again. These changes include reviewing and harmonizing all directives related to border operations, increased training and coordination, improved surveillance before missions, and more current information on the location of border installations on both sides.
“Cross-border communications have been improved, command levels at border coordination centers have increased, and command relationships have been redefined where needed,” Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr., a NATO spokesman, wrote by e-mail.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
8 Killed in Afghan Bomb Blast
VOA News March 25, 2012
Officials in Afghanistan say a bomb blast has killed at least 8 people, including several police officers. Authorities say the explosion happened Saturday in Arghandab, in the southern province of Kandahar.
NATO said Saturday one of its service members had died in a bomb blast in southern Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear if this referred to the incident in Kandahar or an incident elsewhere in southern Afghanistan.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and remains a stronghold of the militants who have been fighting the government of President Hamid Karzai and its Western allies since being ousted from power a decade ago.
Pakistan Taliban warns MPs against NATO supply restoration
ISLAMABAD, March 25 (Xinhua) -- The Pakistan Taliban Sunday warned members of parliament against restoration of the supply line for NATO troops in Afghanistan and said they would target MPs and their leaders if they recommended restoration of supplies.
Pakistan suspended supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan in November 2011 after the U.S. fighter jets and helicopters raided two Pakistani posts and killed 24 soldiers.
The parliament will begin on Monday a debate on the future relationship with the U.S and the country's future terms of engagements with the NATO in Afghanistan.
The MPs will also make a decision whether or not to recommend to the government restoration of supplies.
"If the parliament opened the land route for NATO troops, we will target members of the parliament and their party leaders," Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said.
"We are aware that the pro-American parliamentarians have started efforts to legalize a route to NATO forces," the TTP spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said.
The Parliamentary Committee on National Security has recommended to the government conditional restoration of the supply line for NATO troops with the imposition of tax on NATO supply trucks.
Officials say that nearly 70 percent of supplies are transported for some 150,000 U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan via Pakistan.
Pakistan's Communication Minister Arbab Alamgir said that NATO containers have badly affected the country's road infrastructure in the northwest and southwest, which had main border points with Afghanistan. He also said he would recommend to the government to demand compensation for damage caused to the roads.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that the parliament will take a decision on NATO supply and he will not accept any pressure on the issue.
Islamic parties have also opposed restoration of the NATO supply line and said they will protest in Islamabad against any possible decision on restoration of supplies.
A leader of Jamiat ulema-e-Islam party, Maulana Faza-ur-Rahman, Sunday told a public meeting of thousands of his supporters in the northwestern city of Peshawar that the nation will stand against the NATO supplies.
The TTP spokesman said in a statement that the parliamentarians should know that they "would not be safe" if they favor restoration supplies for NATO forces.
He also asked the drivers not to carry supplies for NATO troops.
Taliban militants had routinely been attacking and torching NATO trucks until after Pakistan cut off the line.
The U.S. has already struck a deal with Russia and several Central Asian states for an alternate supply route in view of attacks on NATO trucks in Pakistan.
General Mathis of the U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM, said that the U.S. will also need Pakistan's land route during withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. He said earlier this month that he will discuss the issue with Pakistan's military during his coming visit.
Karzai Urges Taliban To Stop Attacking Schools
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 24 March 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban in a speech on Saturday to stop closing schools in some parts of Afghanistan because it prevented the country from rebuilding.
Education is "the only way" to develop Afghanistan, Karzai said in a ceremony in Kabul to mark the beginning of the school year.
He accused insurgents of being enemies of Islam for preventing children from attending school.
The Taliban is responsible for closing and burning some schools in provinces where it is more active.
"I call upon all the armed opposition parties to stop this because it's the enemy of Islam and the people of Afghanistan," Karzai said.
"If they want a free Afghanistan, the only way to have a free Afghanistan is to educate people."
Karzai also encouraged young people to study Islam inside Afghanistan.
"I am really happy seeing Afghan youth going to the Afghan Madrasas - they should be encouraged to study inside Afghanistan," he said.
The Afghan Minister of Education Farooq Wardak, who also spoke at the ceremony, acknowledged that there are concerns over a lack of professional teachers in the education sector, but he said recent efforts of the Ministry of Education to fight illiteracy have given some hope.
"We have started a three campaigns to enroll all Afghan children in school," he said.
Statistics show that more than 34 per cent of Afghan children have no access to schools and several schools have been closed in at least nine provinces.
Republicans Offer Few Details On Afghanistan Plans
The Associated Press March 24, 2012
WASHINGTON - As Afghanistan seizes more of the political spotlight, the Republican presidential candidates are quick to criticize President Barack Obama's handling of the war but struggle to explain how they would change the strategy they would inherit.
GOP front-runner Mitt Romney says Obama has exhibited "failed leadership" and should not have set a timetable for ending the war. But Romney won't say whether he would scrap the president's plans to bring the war to a close by the end of 2014. Rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have questioned whether the U.S. should be in Afghanistan at all, but neither has plans for withdrawing tens of thousands of American troops.
The Republican reluctance to outline specific policy positions is evidence of the complex nature of managing the decade-long war as public support dwindles, and concerns that detailed campaign promises could pigeonhole a candidate if he goes on to win the White House.
It's a role reversal for the parties from 2008, when a Republican president was mired in a long and unpopular war and Democratic candidates, including Obama, tried to convince voters that they should take the reins.
But the political calculus for the current crop of Republicans is more complicated than it was for Obama in 2008. Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start and his election-year promise to bring it to an end put him in lockstep with the rest of his party.
This year's GOP candidates, however, find their party's hawkish tendencies butting up against the public's growing impatience with the Afghan war.
Six in 10 Americans see the war as not worth its costs, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this month. Opposition to the war is bipartisan, and for the first time, the Post-ABC poll showed more Republicans "strongly" see the war as not worth fighting than say the opposite.
Yet many in the GOP have agreed with some of Obama's aggressiveness in Afghanistan, from increasing U.S. troop levels to ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks that drew the U.S. into the war in the first place.
Defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon said those actions have made it harder for Republican to come up with a distinctive and specific alternative war strategy.
"I think it reflects that this is not an issue that is so simple that reflexively turning to a Republican line of attack is going to be the answer," said O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
But the recent series of troubling episodes in Afghanistan, including the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. forces and the alleged killing of 17 Afghan civilians by an American soldier, have focused fresh attention on how the U.S. plans to get out of Afghanistan and whether a Republican president would pursue a different course than Obama.
The president's withdrawal plan, in coordination with NATO allies and Afghanistan, calls for the U.S. to move into a support role in Afghanistan in 2013 and hand over security responsibility to the Afghans by the end of 2014. The administration is negotiating with Afghanistan about a U.S. presence there after 2014 and is trying to reach a political breakthrough with the Taliban.
Republicans have criticized the 2014 benchmark, saying Obama's decision to put a timetable on withdrawal puts U.S. gains in Afghanistan at risk.
"Why in the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the date you're pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense," Romney said in February.
Santorum said it "gave them something which you should never give an enemy, which is hope."
But neither candidate has said whether he would abandon the NATO-backed 2014 withdrawal plan, which would be well under way by the time either took office in January. Nor has either said whether his own war strategy would keep the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan past that date.
Romney, who is on track to win the nomination, has been especially vague about how many U.S. forces he would keep in Afghanistan and for how long. He has both pledged to ensure a "force level necessary to secure our gains and complete our mission successfully" while also promising to bring troops home "as soon as humanly possible."
The former Massachusetts governor says he can't get more specific until he gets guidance from the military, and plans to conduct a full interagency war review upon taking office.
Democrats say Romney's lack of clarity on Afghanistan will be a liability in a general election race against Obama.
"What's clear is that he's lacking a core set of experiences so he gets pulled back and forth between the 'let's double down' strategy and public opinion polls that think that 10 years is enough," said Heather Hurlburt, a foreign policy expert who worked in the Clinton administration and now heads the National Security Network, a progressive organization.
Romney has drawn one clear distinction with the president. He opposes Taliban negotiations and says the U.S. should not hold talks with a group trying to kill American soldiers.
As Romney seeks the right strategy for success in Afghanistan, Santorum and Gingrich have started to question whether there is even a mission in Afghanistan worth completing.
"We have to either make a decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out and probably get out sooner" than planned in 2014, Santorum said in a recent interview.
Gingrich has said the U.S. is "risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may, frankly, not be doable."
Neither candidate, however, has said how those concerns would translate into an actual war strategy or whether he would speed up Obama's withdrawal timetable if elected.
The only Republican contender with a clearly articulated war strategy is Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The Libertarian-leaning Paul long has opposed the war and says he would quickly end the war once in the White House.
Stuck Afghan plant books delivered to Kabul
BBC News By Huw Williams BBC Scotland reporter 24 March 2012
I must admit, I didn't pay much attention to the plants of Afghanistan during the short trip I made there in 2010.
I was part of a small BBC team, following a Scottish expedition to previously unclimbed peaks in the Wakhan valley.
I do remember a field of bright blue flowers, soon after we crossed the border. But, to be honest, I was more interested in the remains of a Soviet era tank by the roadside.
And there were the lush plants growing in the river bed, as we neared the end of the road at a place called Sarhad I Wakhan, where the two climbers we were travelling with planned to hire animals for their trek.
But, again, I'm afraid my mind was on other things. Chiefly the fact that the river bed was also the road.
The guide we'd hired in the village of Ishkashim, Adab Shah, and our driver discussed how to negotiate a way over the stones, and through the fast-flowing water.
But for Ian Hedge from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, the plants of that part of the world have been a lifetime's study.
He went there in the 1960s - during a brief period when travel to Afghanistan was easy. He photographed and recorded dozens and dozens of species - many of them completely new to science.
He used that expertise to contribute to a field guide to the flora and vegetation of Afghanistan, compiled and edited by a crack, international team of botanists.
Four thousand copies of the book were sent to Kabul, so they could be given to universities, colleges, and environmental organisations throughout Afghanistan.
But a decision was made to send that consignment - which weighed more than 10 tonnes - by ship via Karachi, in Pakistan.
And for over a year, that's where the books stayed. Stuck in customs. While fearsome bureaucracies debated how best to process them, so they could proceed. 'Fantastic news'
I reported on that story at the end of January. Since then, I've stayed in touch with Ian, the book's editors who are based in Germany, and the Pakistan High Commission in London. Any news? Any explanation about why it was all taking so long?
Eventually the request came back from officialdom in Pakistan - please supply full details of when the shipment was dispatched, by which shipping agency, and please quote the Afghan Clearance number if one has been obtained.
I got scans of a whole sheaf of documentation, and sent it off. Not really expecting much. But - by complete coincidence - later that very afternoon, I got an email. The books had all arrived in Kabul.
Ian told me it was "fantastic news". Now that they were in Afghanistan, the books could play their part in, as he put it, "re-vivifying" academic life there. The publishers in Germany told me they'd be celebrating with a glass of red wine. Last copy
And that was the end of the story. Oh, except that there is one more important detail.
Adab Shah, our fixer and guide from the Afghan border village of Ishkashim, has been given a grant by the Linda Norgrove Foundation - a charity based on the Isle of Lewis, which was set-up to commemorate the aid worker killed in Afghanistan.
Adab has used the money to buy trekking gear, so he can run a tourism business for people who visit the Wakhan. So he'll be in contact with more mountaineers and walkers, like the expedition we were following.
Now Ian is sending Adab a copy of the field guide to plants, so he and his clients can identify the species they see.
Actually, not just "a" copy. It was the last copy of the book. Which he'd been saving, to give to someone special.
So, of course the news from Afghanistan continues to be bleak, with reports of carnage and the courage of British service men and women there.
But sometimes, in the middle of all that, I stop and think about that bright young man. With the initiative and drive to start his own business.
I imagine him looking at that book. Learning more about his country. Caring for it. Promoting it. And growing a future for himself.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com