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Suicide bomber kills 12 in northern Afghanistan
By Enayat Najafizada | AFP – Wed, Apr 4, 2012
A suicide bomber attacked foreign military forces in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people including three international troops, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on foreign troops filming interviews in a park in Maymana, the capital of Faryab province, as NATO's fatalities in the decade-long conflict passed the 100 mark for 2012.
NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said only that three service members died after an explosion in northern Afghanistan, without giving nationalities. Western sources said that it was the same incident.
Video footage from the scene showed a number of foreign troops lying immobile on the ground in the aftermath of the blast, while blood-soaked civilian and military victims writhed in pain from savage wounds including severed limbs.
"A suicide bomber targeted a group of foreign friends," Faryab governor Abdul Haq Shafaq told AFP. "They were military. There are casualties, dead and wounded."
Faryab, which borders Turkmenistan, is far from centres of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan's south and east, but it suffers sporadic attacks.
There were conflicting reports about the exact death toll and the identity of the victims after the suicide bomber, who police said was riding an explosives-packed motorcycle, blew himself up.
Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, described the blast as "powerful" and put the death toll at 10. He said six civilians and four policemen were killed, with 20 people wounded, including four police.
"A suicide bomber with a suicide vest full of explosives and on a explosive-laden motorcycle targeted some foreign forces near a UN compound in Maymana," he said.
Most foreign troops in Faryab are Norwegian and Lieutenant Colonel John Espen Lien, a spokesman for Norway's armed forces, told AFP there were "at least 12 killed, but this number is not definitive".
No Norwegian ISAF personnel were nearby at the time, he added.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the group's website, saying "at least 16 invaders and 12 puppets (Afghan government forces)" were killed. The Taliban routinely exaggerate their claims.
NATO has 130,000 soldiers helping Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government fight the Taliban, but is scheduled to hand responsibility for security across the country to Afghans and withdraw most of its troops by the end of 2014.
But relations between the allies have been strained this year by a series of killings of Western troops by Afghan security personnel, a massacre of 17 civilians blamed on a US soldier and the burning of Korans at a US base.
Night raids by special forces against insurgent hideouts have also triggered popular anger and long been a source of friction with Karzai, who has denounced the NATO operations as reckless.
But US officials said Tuesday Washington and Kabul were close to an agreement giving Afghans more authority over the raids, with Afghan judges issuing warrants for the operations and Afghans in the lead on the ground.
Such a deal could remove the last obstacle to final negotiations on a long-term security agreement, which US officials hope to ink in time for a NATO summit in May in Chicago.
The Faryab attack came as the number of NATO troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year passed 100, according to an AFP count based on the independent icasualties.org website.
The war has cost the West hundreds of billions of dollars and almost 3,000 lives so far. The United States has suffered the most deaths at 1,924, according to icasualties, with Britain next on 407.
ISAF declined to confirm the total figure for 2012 so far, but according to icasualties it is slightly lower than in 2011, when 109 troops had been killed by the end of March.
ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings said that across Afghanistan, insurgent attacks fell by nine percent in 2011 and in January and February they were down 22 percent.
"Every month since May 2011, there have been fewer enemy-initiated attacks than in the same period the year before," he said. "This is the longest sustained downward trend recorded by ISAF."
In February, the United Nations said civilian deaths from the Afghan conflict reached a record high in 2011, when 3,021 civilians died -- mostly at the hands of insurgents -- up eight percent from 2,790 in 2010.
Leading Afghans cast doubt on election schedule
Talk in Kabul that presidential vote due in 2014 could be delayed or brought forward by a year, threatening constitutional crisis
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone in Islamabad and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul Tuesday 3 April 2012
Influential Afghans have questioned whether the country's next presidential election can go ahead on schedule in 2014, raising doubts about a vote the west is counting on to lay the foundations of a stable government after foreign combat troops leave.
There has been talk in Kabul of either delaying the vote or bringing it forward by a year, even though both options would strain or break conditions laid out in the constitution.
The independent election commission has said it will not move the date, and no one else has the authority to do so. The last presidential election was delayed for several months in 2009 due to issues with the weather, logistics and security.
The questioning of a schedule fixed by the constitution is a reminder of how vulnerable the framework of Afghanistan's fledgling democracy remains, despite a decade of western military and political support and millions of dollars of aid.
There is growing anxiety among many Afghans about the changes 2014 will bring, even as powerbrokers start manoeuvring to take advantage. The last foreign combat troops are due to return home that year, leaving Afghan police and soldiers to fight the Taliban, and there will be huge pressure for a smooth transition.
But violence is spreading in much of the country. Omar Daudzai, a former presidential chief of staff and one of Hamid Karzai's confidants, said security problems could render a poll impossible unless efforts to bring the Taliban into peace talks bear fruit soon.
"We have no choice but to make progress on the peace effort," said Daudzai, now ambassador to Islamabad and a key player in the Afghan government's efforts to pursue negotiations. "Under the current circumstances, or even under a worse situation if the Taliban's presence becomes more dominant, they will intimidate people from coming out to vote. If a significant proportion of the population can't come out to vote, you can't have an election. No election commission will take the risk."
Daudzai said it was possible some Taliban fighters might participate in the elections as candidates for the presidency or for provincial councils. "If we make progress on the peace front quite a sizeable number of them will stand for election," he said. "If we manage to bring some Taliban leaders into electioneering, that will mean that instead of preventing people to vote they will actually encourage them."
The Taliban often denounce Karzai's government as illegitimate and recently halted preliminary talks with the US government. The outlook for speedy progress on a political process is gloomy.
Some Afghan politicians have proposed bringing the vote forward, arguing that an election in 2014 could bring too much turmoil in an already turbulent year. An earlier date could mean more western security support.
William Patey, the outgoing British ambassador to Kabul, said: "I've heard people talk about that, we wouldn't have any objections to it all we want is a free and fair election."
He said an election in 2013 was "doable" but had not been formally discussed by western diplomats. "There are perfectly good arguments why 2013 would be a good time [but] by holding it in 2013 you risk an argument that foreigners brought it forward so they can control it," he said.
It is hard to see what Karzai would gain from cutting short his mandate, when the constitution forbids him from running again. He has repeatedly said he will not seek another term in office, but both Afghan rivals and western diplomats in Kabul are concerned he may use worries about security and stability to extend his rule. According to an influential member of the Kabul establishment, Karzai believes that if elections cannot take place in 2014, "he will hang in there for a couple more years".
A failure to hold elections could create a constitutional crisis and perhaps spur unrest among powerful leaders who for much of the last decade have respected at least the broad outlines of Afghanistan's post-Taliban democracy.
"A new president will allow us to press the reset button, domestically and vis-a-vis the international community," the source said. "Another two years of Karzai could literally drown the country and our international relationships."
Karzai's spokesman said suggestions he wanted to stay in power after 2014 were baseless. "We strongly reject allegations that the president wants to delay the elections. The Afghan government will try its best to make sure the elections happen on time according to the constitution," the spokesman said.
Even if the poll is held on time, the government will struggle with concerns about its legitimacy, after accusations of widespread fraud marred the 2009 presidential poll and the 2010 parliamentary elections.
The election commission is drafting a list of changes to the polling system, including a more transparent arbitration system and improvements to voter registration, which will eventually be presented to parliament as the basis of a new electoral law. There are concerns it is already too late to sort voter lists in time for the presidential election, given the challenges of widespread illiteracy, a huge population without formal identity documents, and worsening security problems.
Abdullah Ahmadzai, the chief electoral officer , said the commission was focused on creating a sustainable solution to the voter registration problems. "Some improvements will be implemented by the 2014 election," he said.
Civil society activists warn that the election commission itself needs reforms to the systems for appointing its members, if the credibility of polls is to improve. Currently Karzai appoints its members directly. Members of parliament are discussing a draft law governing the duties and structure of the commission that would give other groups a say in its makeup.
Jandad Spinghar, executive director of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said: "The first stage is independence of the electoral administration. We have plenty of time to amend the electoral law."
The presidential poll is just one part of Afghanistan's election headaches. A system of staggered elections should see the country hold polls for provincial councils in 2013, the presidency in 2014 and parliament in 2015.
In a country where votes are expensive and hugely disruptive, there will be a temptation to defy the constitution and reschedule at least one of those. If the provincial council elections are held on schedule, it could add weight to any attempt to delay the presidential election to 2015 to coincide with the parliamentary vote.
U.S., Afghanistan Near Agreement On Night Raids
April 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United States and Afghanistan are reportedly close to an agreement to change the way night raids are carried out in Afghanistan.
According to U.S. officials, Afghan security forces would be given the lead role and judicial oversight would be put in place.
The officials said a deal could be done as early as this week.
But The Associated Press says there is still disagreement over how long individuals detained in such raids can be held.
The overnight raids are scorned by Afghans, but seen as effective by U.S. forces.
The deal is expected to help clear the way for a broader strategic partnership agreement that will govern the U.S. presence in Afghanistan once Afghan forces take full responsibility for security by the end of 2014.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
Deal Close on Night Raids, U.S. and Afghan Officials Say
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG April 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - After years of insisting that American forces end covert nighttime raids on Afghan homes, President Hamid Karzai’s government was close to completing a deal that would give the Afghan authorities legal oversight of the raids, while allowing American forces to retain a guiding role in conducting them, officials from both countries said Tuesday.
The night raids’ deep unpopularity with the Afghan public has long put Mr. Karzai at odds with his American backers, who say the operations are among the most effective tools they have to combat the Taliban.
An agreement on the raids, after months of sometimes contentious negotiations, would allow Kabul and Washington to move toward completion of a broader pact that lays out the strategic relationship between the two countries after the official end of the NATO combat mission here in 2014. Afghan and American officials hope to have that broader agreement concluded in time for a NATO summit meeting planned for May in Chicago.
The deal that is nearing completion would give Afghan military forces a lead role in all the raids — officials say they already take part in most of them — and would also bring the operations under Afghan legal jurisdiction by requiring a court warrant within 48 hours of a raid in order to continue detention of any suspects, according to American and Afghan officials close to the negotiations.
Most of the officials commented on the condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been concluded.
At the same time, it would include a series of face-saving compromises to allow American forces to retain the freedom of action that commanders believe is necessary for the operations to remain effective. The raids would still rely heavily on American intelligence, and most would include American or allied forces for the foreseeable future, the officials said.
“We are very close to signing” an agreement on the raids, said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai. He said an agreement could come before the end of the week, and that it would “make sure that all nighttime raids are conducted fully in accordance with the laws of Afghanistan.”
As late as Tuesday afternoon, the two sides thought they had reached agreement, and Afghan and American officials were making preparations for a signing ceremony on Wednesday.
But the plans were put on hold on Tuesday evening after a last-minute dispute over whether the Afghans or Americans would hold people detained in the raids after a warrant was granted, the officials said.
American officials have pushed to retain custody of the detainees for a limited time so they could be interrogated, the officials said. The interrogations are an important source of intelligence that American officials said they were not yet ready to give up.
Neither Afghan nor American officials would say how long the Americans wanted to keep the detainees. It also was not clear where American forces would hold them, since the United States agreed last month to hand over its main prison here to Afghan authorities within six months.
An agreement on night raids, coming on the heels of the prison deal, would go a long way toward restoring trust that has broken down between the two governments after a string of recent crises, including the killing of Afghan civilians by an American soldier on March 16.
That rampage prompted Mr. Karzai to renew his longstanding calls for an end to night raids, which he has argued violate Afghan culture and values. While American officials have insisted that the killings were part of an isolated criminal act under cover of darkness, not a night raid, the distinction is not shared by most Afghans, including Mr. Karzai.
He has portrayed it as the latest in a long string of episodes where coalition forces have killed innocent Afghans. But Afghan and American officials said Tuesday that Mr. Karzai understood the importance of preserving the ability of Afghan and American forces to conduct the raids.
Coalition forces have come to increasingly rely on them in recent years, as they seek to kill or capture midlevel insurgents and, in the process, separate foot soldiers from the Taliban’s top leadership.
Finding a way to continue the raids is also considered essential for the post-2014 plan that is shaping up. The plan, in essence, envisions the United States’ leaving behind a small force that would focus on counterterrorism. For that kind of mission to work, the force would probably need to be able to carry out night raids.
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Washington.
Afghanistan Needs Leeway on Iran Sanctions, Minister Says
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Apr 4, 2012
Afghanistan’s commerce minister said his country hopes the U.S. will give it leeway from economic sanctions intended to curb imports of oil from Iran.
“We hope that our special situation should be taken into consideration,” Anwar-Ul-Haq Ahady, the Afghan minister of commerce and industries, said yesterday in an interview in Washington. “We don’t have much of an alternative.”
The request exposes a conflict between the Obama administration’s efforts to curb Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its campaign to bolster Afghanistan’s economy and government so the NATO-led international coalition is able to withdraw most of its forces by the end of 2014.
Afghanistan is struggling to shore up its finances, and one of Ahady’s deputy ministers, Mutasil Komaki, said in an interview in Kabul last month that Iran provides about 50 percent of the country’s oil imports. The next-biggest sources are Russia and then Turkmenistan, which supplies mainly natural gas, Ahady said, and now the war-torn nation is looking to those countries and others to reduce its dependence on Iran.
“The conflict between Iran and the United States is, to some extent, played out in Afghanistan, especially as Iran tries to counter U.S. influence in that country,” Alireza Nader, a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, Virginia, said in an e-mail. “The effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program may at the same time hurt other U.S. policy objectives -- for example, maintaining a secure and stable Afghanistan.” Projected Growth
The more favorable scenarios for Afghanistan project economic growth of 4.5 percent to 6.2 percent a year through 2018, down from an average 9.1 percent in the past seven years with the influx of foreign aid, according to statistics from the World Bank and the Afghan Ministry of Finance.
President Barack Obama cleared the way last week for sanctions on banks in countries that import Iranian oil. Under a law he signed Dec. 31, banks that settle petroleum-related transactions through Iran’s central bank in any country that has failed to show a “significant reduction” in Iranian oil imports would be cut off from the U.S. banking system.
The law requires reductions by June 28 and countries can avoid the sanctions if they take steps by then. The law doesn’t define the steps needed to qualify for an exemption.
U.S. State Department officials have said they’re working with countries who would be affected by the sanctions to implement the requirements.
“In all our consultations, we have made clear the importance of reducing reliance on Iranian oil and unwinding business dealings with the Central Bank of Iran,” said Laura Lucas, a State Department spokeswoman. “No commitments have been made to any country regarding prospective exceptions to U.S. law.” Trade With Iran
Afghanistan’s trade with Iran has grown to more than $1 billion annually, placing Iran second after Pakistan’s $3 billion when transit trade via the Pakistani port of Karachi is included. The next-largest trade partners are China and India, Ahady said.
“Iran is becoming a very large trade partner,” Ahady said during a briefing yesterday for reporters in Washington. The estimated $1 billion in commerce with Iran is dominated by oil and fuel, as well as some consumer and industrial goods, he said.
Trade with Pakistan continues to be hampered by border delays and regulatory disagreements that too often require high- level intervention and cost Afghan business owners in the meantime, Ahady said. Foreign Investment
Violence and uncertainty over how Afghanistan will fare politically and in terms of security after 2014 are dogging efforts to attract foreign investment. Some of those doing business in the country probably are hedging their bets with alternative plans, Ahady said.
“It’s only natural when there is a level of uncertainty,” he said. “Businesspeople, they tend to be conservative in committing their resources. There is some degree of uncertainty in Afghanistan.”
Private investment in Afghanistan is described as low by the World Bank, at 8.5 percent of gross domestic product, while exports make up 2.5 percent. It has increased slightly in the past two years, Ahady said, without providing figures. Agriculture’s Role
Agriculture accounts for about 35 percent of Afghanistan’s economy, down from as much as 70 percent as foreign projects and other development boost industries such as construction. Agriculture has “considerable” room for growth as new farming technology stimulates production, Ahady said. The country also is counting on untapped mining resources such as copper and iron ore to fill some of the revenue gaps in the future.
The World Bank estimates Afghanistan’s operating expenses will reach almost twice the level of domestic revenue by 2021, and that the projected financing gap will be $7.2 billion in today’s prices. The country of 30.6 million people, 75 percent of whom are illiterate, had gross domestic product equal to $528 per person in the fiscal year that ended in 2011.
Afghanistan will need $4.1 billion a year to cover its security expenses after 2014, including about $500 million from its own coffers, and an additional $5 billion in economic and development assistance, Ahady said.
While the country probably can get by with slightly less in contributions, a failure by foreign donors to come through would prompt an economic crisis, he said.
“There would be serious contraction to the point of depression and a situation where you would have 20 or 25 percent contraction in the economy,” he said. “I don’t think the donors are going to leave us alone there.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Probe underway into death of New Zealand soldier in Afghanistan
WELLINGTON, April 4 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Army chiefs have launched an investigation into the death of a soldier in Afghanistan after confirming Thursday that the man had not died in combat.
The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) said Corporal Douglas Hughes, aged 26, died just days before returning home at the end of his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Chief of Defense Force Lieutenant General Rhys Jones confirmed an investigation had begun into the death, which occurred Wednesday.
Hughes, a rifleman from the 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, had been deployed with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan province in September 2011.
"He was coming towards the end of a six-month deployment to Afghanistan serving with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan Province. The contingent is due back in New Zealand later this month," said Jones in a statement.
"An incident occurred at Forward Patrol Base Romero at approximately 1040 hours New Zealand time yesterday."
Hughes had been flown by air to Bagram Air Base, accompanied by his patrol commander, but was pronounced dead.
"He remains in Bagram Air Base while arrangements are made for his repatriation. The Defense Force intends to return Corporal Hughes to his family as quickly and expeditiously as possible, while supporting his family in this process," said Jones.
"This is a sad day and, on behalf of the entire New Zealand Defense Force, I extend my deepest sympathies to the family, colleagues and friends of Corporal Hughes."
The NZDF was working with the New Zealand Police and Coroner's Office on the matter.
"While there has been some speculation in the media around the nature of Corporal Hughes' death, we will be unable to confirm this until a full investigation has been completed."
Hughes was the fifth New Zealand soldier to die in Afghanistan in less than two years. Three were killed in action and another man died in a vehicle accident.
Qatar To Open Kabul Embassy In Bid To Reinvigorate Peace Process
April 3, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry says Qatar will open an embassy in Kabul to deepen relations and play a greater role in Afghanistan's peace process.
The development comes after Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool met on April 3 in Doha with senior Qatari officials.
Khalid Muhammad al-Attiyah, Qatar's minister for international cooperation, confirmed plans to talk to all Afghan parties -- including the Kabul government and the Taliban -- to help reinvigorate the peace process.
Qatar is allowing Afghanistan's Taliban to open a political office on its soil. But the Taliban in March suspended confidence building talks with U.S. officials in Doha after the killing of 16 Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier.
Those talks included the issue of potentially transferring Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
With reporting by Reuters
Afghanistan Falls Apart
A string of disasters has left the Kabul elite wondering whether it's possible to pick up the pieces of their shattered alliance with the United States.
Foreign Policy BY KAREN LEIGH APRIL 3, 2012
KABUL - Near a busy intersection where burqa-clad women beg for spare change at car windows, Mahmoud Saikal, Afghanistan's former deputy foreign minister, sat under a photo of this capital city's crowded hillside neighborhoods in the stately living room of his compound.
"If you are from Kabul," he says, "you can find your place of birth in this photo."
It's the only landscape not changing in Afghanistan.
A series of American blunders in the past few months has raised questions about whether the decade-long U.S. mission in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. In February, reports that copies of the Quran had been burnt at a NATO base sparked protests across the country that left dozens dead. And last month, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales murdered 17 Afghan civilians in cold blood -- returning to his base in Kandahar province mid-massacre before going out to kill again. Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces are increasingly turning on their trainers: Three NATO soldiers were killed by Afghan police and military members on March 26 -- the latest of more than 80 coalition troops who have lost their lives in this way since 2007.
The escalating string of disasters has led to an increasingly contentious debate within President Hamid Karzai's inner circle between officials who say Afghanistan is better off without the United States and those who see the American presence as necessary for security. But even among America's erstwhile allies, there is a profound disappointment at the gap between the grandiose U.S. pledges and the dismal reality on the ground in Afghanistan.
"The U.S. could have been a more responsible superpower, a caring superpower," Saikal says. "It's important for them to stand for [their] values around the world. But I think the last three incidents were definitely deliberate acts that tarnish the values the U.S. stands for."
U.S. efforts to forge a lasting relationship with the Afghan government has been complicated by the eclectic makeup of Karzai's inner circle and the often haphazard nature of its decision making process.
"We make foreign policy decisions on the run on the steps of a ministry," laments Saikal, a former ambassador to Indonesia and Australia. The disarray, he says, makes it easier for those in power "to twist the law in their own personal taste."
That taste is only growing more anti-American. With popular anger at the U.S. military hitting an all-time high, Karzai has increasingly been forced to stand up to the United States to prove that he is not in the pocket of the foreign occupiers. He has renewed his demand that U.S. Special Forces end nighttime raids, and looks set to win a concession that would subject the raids to review by Afghan judges. But even with that victory, Karzai's advisors are increasingly debating whether cooperation with the Americans has brought more trouble than it's worth.
"Karzai's inner circle is split between a group that's very Afghan nationalist and suspicious of the West the other that has the technocrats and more Westernized elements that are pro-West," says a former senior U.S. military officer who commanded in Afghanistan.
Recent American missteps have rocked Afghan officials' faith in the coalition's ability to help govern the country's tenuous political situation. "The Afghans have to be wondering how incompetent we are," adds a former civilian advisor to ISAF in Afghanistan. "[Afghan parliamentarians] have to be very, very frustrated because we've undercut their ability to work with us. How do you now go about selling working with the Americans to people on the street?"
There is a pervasive fear on the streets of Kabul that, once coalition forces leave, the traditional hard-line nationalists -- known, during the Taliban's era in power, for gruesome torture and punishment -- will reemerge in full force.
"We see no sign to prove that the mentality of using violence for political [gain] has changed," Saikal says. "Whatever we've done [to counter it], the mentality is still strong. If that doesn't change, I'm afraid the future looks bleak."
The Afghan government's disarray means personal interests and opinions can become official policy without a thorough debate.
"No doubt, there are some left [close to Karzai] who do have some wisdom and do see the relationship between Afghanistan and the U.S. as in the interest of both countries," Saikal says. "But those would be their personal views because the government simply doesn't have policies."
Omar Samad, an advisor to Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and formerly the country's ambassador to France and Canada, has seen his country's political dysfunction up close.
"Contradictions [between the politicians' competing views] have existed for a while," Samad says. "And it's reflected in the upper echelons of the Afghan government and the inner circle around the president. It seems that each incident restricts the space that exists for those who believe that a long term strategic relationship with the U.S. is important."
But the debate among Afghan officials is not only based on ideology -- many high-rollers have profited immensely from the influx of American riches, overriding any personal antagonism that might have been stirred in the wake of Bales's rampage. Wartime corruption has been rampant in Afghanistan: According to a 2010 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Karzai and his attorney general "refused to allow any action to be taken against corrupt leaders," and likely blocked cases against dozens of top officials from going forward.
"This situation is highly unlikely to change in the middle of a war where Karzai needs all of the internal support he can get, and the rest of the Afghan political and legal system either is too weak to pose a challenge or would like a share of the money," the report reads.
It's not only the upper echelons that are reaching into the government's coffers -- the massive influx of funds that the United States and its partners have poured into the country has created a whole class that is dependent on foreign money.
"A lot of people have been benefitting enormously from the U.S. presence in terms of patronage, grabbing a slice of aid money, being in positions of authority where they could take money from the Afghan state," says Stuart Gordon, an Afghanistan researcher at the London think tank Chatham House.
Not all of that money has stayed in Afghanistan, much less gone to improve the life of its citizens. In March, a senior Afghan official told Reuters that his wealthy countrymen were smuggling $8 billion in cash out of Afghanistan each year. According to a 2009 State Department cable published by Wikileaks, former Vice President Zia Masoud was caught bringing $52 million in cash through the Dubai airport and was released without question.
Indeed, while popular anger against the United States is undoubtedly rising across Afghanistan, it may not be a decisive factor for the Afghan elite. Those Afghan officials have an incentive to keep their eye on the bottom line: the flow of U.S. dollars into the country.
"I'm not sure that the power brokers in the Afghan government have a particular hatred for the Americans," says Samad. "The hatred of the Americans tends to be more amongst the conservative rural Afghans, who have a more shortsighted view, but have also suffered at the hands of the police and government brutality. The upper echelons of the Afghan government are probably more calculating. They think the gravy train is leaving."
On a gusty day in Kabul, one of Karzai's former ministers wedges a chair into a doorknob of her drafty home to keep the door from slamming over and over.
She expresses concern that the country is backsliding into its conservative, Taliban-era ways. Some female officials, she claims, had been told to wear traditional scarves only over half of their heads, to appease Western officials. After the Americans leave, she says, they will be told to cover the entire head.
The minister echoes the views of many of the president's past and present allies, who say the latest incidents are the straw that broke the camel's back -- cherries on a sundae of broken promises to a female population that remains largely marginalized, and a dysfunctional government that is a democracy in little more than name only.
"The U.S.'s beliefs failed here, and that was their enemies' intention from the beginning," she says. "Afghanistan is a world of extremism. The world should be helping that Afghan people get rid of terrorism and give us a civil government with men and women participating equally."
In the past five months, cracks in the foundation of the U.S.-Afghan relationship have been exposed. The question is whether Karzai's men want to put the alliance back together again -- or whether America's indiscretions in their country are too much to overcome.
"I have talked to [members of] the Taliban," Saikal says, the thick security walls around his house a reminder of the precarious situation on the streets. "The Taliban called me a fool. They said, ‘You're working with a political process that is a waste of time."
Nato chief rejects Taliban theory for killings
Financial Times By Peter Spiegel April 3, 2012
Brussels - The recent spate of killings of Nato and Afghan soldiers by Afghan security forces is the result of isolated disputes rather than a co-ordinated infiltration by Taliban and other insurgents, according to the alliance’s secretary-general.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s top civilian, said in an interview that alliance and Afghan forces had introduced heightened screening procedures to ensure Afghan recruits were not working for Islamist groups since the incidents began at the start of the year. Nato officials said that included a nationwide effort to revalidate every soldier in Afghan army and police units.
Despite the intensified security, Mr Rasmussen said there was no intelligence showing that the killings were part of a new Taliban strategy to disrupt Nato’s plan to hand over security to Afghan forces. He insisted they would not alter plans for complete Afghan control by the end of 2014.
“Of course, I would not exclude the possibility that the Taliban tries to infiltrate the Afghan security forces. Obviously, that is a risk,” Mr Rasmussen said. “But we don’t see an overall pattern. Each and every incident has its own particular background.”
At least 16 Nato troops have been killed at the hands of Afghan soldiers since the start of the year, while a number of Afghan troops have been killed by members of their own units.
The killings, which Nato officials attributed to “individual grievances” even though the Taliban has claimed credit for them, have come amid a string of setbacks, including the shooting of 17 Afghan civilians by a US army sergeant and the burning of Korans by American forces.
The Koran burnings at Bagram air base prompted widespread riots in Afghanistan. Senior US military officials have attributed some of the “green-on-blue” shootings to retribution for the incident, which the US insisted was unintentional.
While the events led to a breakdown in co-operation, Mr Rasmussen said he believed such difficulties would be short-lived.
“In the short term, obviously, they were damaging and served to undermine trust and confidence,” Mr Rasmussen said. “But when we are speaking about a more permanent impact and a longer-term perspective, I don’t think they will have a lasting effect.”
In the wake of the incidents, Hamid Karzai, Afghan president, called on Nato troops to be confined to bases by next year, ahead of the 2014 deadline for complete handover to Afghan forces.
Mr Rasmussen insisted Mr Karzai’s demands were not a change in the handover blueprint, noting that in order for a transition to be completed by the end of 2014, Nato forces would have to begin standing down next year.
“I don’t see any tension. On the contrary, it was President Karzai himself who outlined the 2014 roadmap,” Mr Rasmussen said. “What President Karzai has stated is fully within the overall roadmap.”
The Obama administration has come under attack by some Republicans, particularly Arizona senator John McCain, the top Republican on the armed services committee, for the speed of the withdrawal. Mr McCain has argued the pace gave the Taliban an incentive to wait out allied forces and encouraged Pakistani intelligence to maintain links with militants based in the country’s lawless western tribal regions.
Mr Rasmussen defended the policy, saying it had forced Afghan authorities to ready their own forces more quickly and given them more incentive to act decisively. “Everybody knows it’s of crucial importance to ensure the Afghan security forces have the right capacity by the end of 2014,” he said. “The fixed timeline is also a driving force.”
The Logistical Nightmare of Leaving Afghanistan
SPIEGEL ONLINE By Christian Neef 03/04/2012
NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the withdrawal poses a massive logistical challenge. The US and its allies are dependent on air hubs in Russia and authoritarian Central Asian republics to transport its troops and equipment home -- and getting those countries to play along is not always easy.
The best way to get to Ulyanovsk is via riverboat. The Russian provincial city, formerly known as Simbirsk and established by the czar more than 360 years ago as a border fort, lies on a steep bank of the mighty Volga, at a spot where the river is at least 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) wide.
A writer once dubbed Ulyanovsk the Bethlehem of the 20th century, because it was the home of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who was born in the city in 1870 and went down in history under the name Lenin. He had hardly died before the communist faithful from around the world embarked on pilgrimages to the city on the Volga, which owes its current name to its famous son. Above the river is the enormous Lenin Square, with its oversized Lenin Monument. The small wooden house where the revolutionary leader grew up is still standing on Lenin Street.
Now the city, once a magnet for communist idealists, is about to become a gathering place for Western troops. When the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops from Afghanistan begins, a portion of the NATO contingent will pass through Ulyanovsk -- or, more precisely, Ulyanovsk Vostochny Airport. The airport will act as a hub for one of the most costly and complex troop withdrawals in modern military history. Some 130,000 soldiers must leave Afghanistan within two years, together with at least 70,000 vehicles and 120,000 containers.
Ulyanovsk Vostochny used to be the airfield for the local aircraft plant, which produced the An-124, once the world's largest transport aircraft. It has a runway that is more than 5 kilometers long and was conceived as an alternate landing site for the Soviet Union's Buran space shuttle.
Eager to Leave
The first NATO officers arrived in Ulyanovsk in the fall, and city officials have been in high spirits ever since. Governor Sergey Morozov, 52, a former police officer, is already dreaming of "a few thousand jobs." Once the withdrawal is underway, says Morozov, "several dozen planes" will land in Ulyanovsk every day, and 60 trains a month will depart from the city toward the Baltic countries, headed for Baltic Sea ports like Klaipeda in Lithuania, where the freight will be shipped to Western Europe.
NATO's Ulyanovsk operation could bring in annual revenues of $1 billion (745 million) to local air cargo companies and $250 million to the railroad. It would give the city a massive economic boost.
But what is even more massive is the challenge NATO faces. After being in Afghanistan for over a decade, it can hardly wait to leave the region. Despite all claims to the contrary, its mission has been a failure, and its only concern now is to get its personnel and equipment out of the country without suffering further losses.
It would be an understatement to call the undertaking precarious. Military withdrawals from Afghanistan have ended in disaster several times in the past. When the British left Kabul in 1842 after their first campaign, because they could no longer control the insurgents there, only a few fortunate members of an expedition force of 17,000 escaped with their lives. The rest were massacred en route.
The Soviets lost 15,000 men during their Afghanistan adventure, and their 1989 withdrawal also ended in chaos, as their convoys struggled through the snow-covered mountains at Salang Pass while under fire from the mujahideen. Another 60 men died in the final one-and-a-half months, after being shot or suffocating in avalanches.
Politically Explosive
Both the British and the Soviets left a country that they had been unable to pacify. The same holds true for NATO today. Afghan insurgents will presumably do everything possible to inflict pinprick attacks on NATO troops as they withdraw. And there will be plenty of opportunities, because NATO brought a great deal more weapons and military equipment to Afghanistan to hunt al-Qaida and the Taliban than the British or the Soviets did in their time. Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, will be bringing back more than 1,700 vehicles, howitzers and tanks.
This withdrawal will be militarily precarious, politically explosive and logistically complex. It will take place primarily through Afghanistan's neighbors to the north, because the southern route through Pakistan is not seen as reliable. Besides, after Pakistan soldiers were killed in NATO air strikes, Islamabad closed that route and only now plans to reopen the road.
As a result, says General William Fraser, the commander of the US Transportation Command, the routes through the countries of former Soviet Central Asia will have top priority for the withdrawal. But this too is a difficult region, where countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are run by autocrats with poor records on human rights, which is why the Americans wanted little to do with them in the past.
Western emissaries have been on the road in Central Asia for months, bargaining, making deals and promising everything under the sun to convince the region's potentates to cooperate. There are problems everywhere, such as in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, where the United States has maintained its most important air base north of Afghanistan until now. Now the Kyrgyz leadership is threatening not to renew its lease with Washington, meaning that the current lease would end in July 2014, just as the withdrawal from Afghanistan is in full swing. During a visit in March, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made it clear to the Kyrgyz government that the airport there is "extremely important" for the American withdrawal.
Sudden Affection
Washington is courting neighboring Uzbekistan even more assiduously. The only functioning railroad line from Afghanistan ends at the border bridge across the Amu Darya River in southern Uzbekistan. The line begins 70 kilometers away in Mazar-e-Sharif and leads to the river port at Hairatan. This railroad route can be used to bring weapons and equipment to Uzbekistan and on to Russia, although the cargo will have to be unloaded and reloaded several times en route.
But the president of Tashkent, Islam Karimov, has ruled the country with an iron fist for more than 20 years. The United States had an air base in Uzbekistan until 2005. When Karimov's security forces brutally suppressed an uprising in the city of Andijan, Washington froze its relations with Tashkent and Karimov ordered the air base closed.
Apparently all of this is now forgotten, as the Americans suddenly discover their affection for Uzbekistan. Envoys have been visiting Karimov on an almost weekly basis. US President Barack Obama has had several conversations with the Central Asian leader, and both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghanistan envoy Marc Grossman have been to Tashkent. Clinton promised Karimov that Washington would eliminate trade barriers and, after the meeting, announced that Uzbekistan had made progress on human rights issues.
'Worst of the Worst'
This sort of statement is difficult to reconcile with the truth. The situation remains dramatic, says the American human rights organization Freedom House. It rates Uzbekistan among the "worst of the worst countries" when it comes to the political freedoms of its 28 million citizens, and it argues that the regime there is hardly any better than the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the 2001 US intervention.
Nevertheless, the US Senate hurried to approve new funds for arms purchases by the Uzbeks. The Americans could end up handing over some of their military equipment to Karimov during their withdrawal from Afghanistan, including armored vehicles, small arms, mine detectors, navigation equipment and perhaps even drones.
This makes Russia uneasy. Moscow views Uzbekistan as a particularly loose cannon -- and so does Beijing, as a senior military official in Moscow learned during conversations with his Chinese counterparts. Both countries fear that the situation in Central Asia will deteriorate after the withdrawal of Western troops, and that religious fanatics from Afghanistan and Pakistan will increasingly penetrate into countries like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Although the Americans will circumvent dictator Karimov's realm with their airlift from Afghanistan to Ulyanov, they will still have to ship some of their equipment through Uzbekistan. Flights are expensive and can only carry a limited amount of cargo. For example, Germany's Bundeswehr pays 420,000 for each flight on Antonov transport aircraft from the eastern German city of Leipzig, where they are stationed, to Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan.
Shipping Toilet Paper
And in regard to Ulyanovsk, the Americans still have many details to iron out with Moscow. The Kremlin is determined to avoid giving the public the impression that it is opening the door to the Americans and NATO by letting them use the base.
When the plans for the Ulyanovsk hub became known, graffiti began appearing in the streets of the city, warning: "No NATO base in Ulyanovsk!" The Communist Party leadership is characterizing the plans as an "occupation," and criticism has also been voiced on the Internet. The Russian defense minister has been maligned as a "Number One Traitor," because he allegedly agreed to allow NATO to operate deep within the country.
After having fueled the hysteria against NATO for years, the Kremlin is now trying to dampen the uproar. The NATO base in Ulyanovsk is "in the interest of Russia's military security," Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov insisted. And Deputy Premier Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the defense industry, completely downplayed the problem, saying: "I don't think that the transit of NATO toilet paper through Russia can be considered the betrayal of the fatherland."
The Russians are now trying to give the NATO airlift a commercial veneer. The Transportation Ministry -- not the Defense Ministry -- will be formally in charge of the Ulyanovsk operation. But this transit route isn't optimal for the Americans, either. "In an ideal world, I would like to be less dependent on Russia," said Andrew Kuchins of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in a recent interview with the New York Times. "But what are our options with getting things into or out of Afghanistan?"
Taking the Weapons Home
So far, only the Bundeswehr seems unmoved by the controversy. It signed its own transit agreement with the Russians early on, and it's working "extremely well," says Brigadier General Reiner Schwalb, the German defense attaché in Moscow. The Germans completed about 270 flights through Russia last year. Troops are flown on Airbus aircraft to Termez in Uzbekistan, while two German transport squadrons bring military equipment to Mazar-e-Sharif on Transall aircraft, with a stop in the Russian city of Krasnodar.
The Germans are even permitted to transport weapons to Russia, which is something the Americans have not been allowed to do yet, not even through Ulyanovsk. But even the Russians don't want to see weapons left behind in Afghanistan or other parts of Central Asia.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Berlin exhibition showcases Afghanistan's other faces
DW 03/04/2012
In 1953, Yvonne von Schweinitz set off from Switzerland for Afghanistan. She took hundreds of pictures that show how rich and multi-faceted the country is. They are currently on show for the first time in Berlin.
People stand, calmly observing, as if frozen in time. Even the children are calm as they stare at a foreigner, a blonde woman in a summer dress, who has made her way into their midst to photograph the square in front of the superb fortress in Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.
Surprised faces, a self-confident little boy, a donkey standing behind a man and a bicycle in the background - all caught on a photograph taken by Yvonne von Schweinitz over 50 years ago.
The young woman started her journey in Zurich in a comfortable station wagon accompanied by the Swiss photographer Hans v. Meiss-Teufen and a Rolleiflex, a Leica M3 and a Polaroid.
They spent seven months travelling through Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Iran and finally Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On show for the first time
Yvonne von Schweinitz's photos were never exhibited before. Upon her return, they were stored in the archive of photographer Willy Prager with whom she had worked during her studies in Freiburg/Breisgau.
After his death, they became part of his photo collection at the state archives of Baden-Württemberg.
And then fate came into play. One of von Schweinitz's cousins told journalist and curator Claus Friede about the photos. His curiosity was aroused and he managed to get access to the archive where he found hundreds of photos and negatives, which had been carefully cataloged by country and stored in thick brown envelopes.
Friede and his colleague Mathias von Marcard were impressed with von Schweinitz's pictures. It showed a different Afghanistan - not one that was not dominated by war, troops and attacks, but a peaceful one with a vast richness and variety in culture.
At the time of Schweinitz's trip, it was easier to access remote regions - travelling on dirt roads and camping out in the open air was safe. The people she came across were open and curious. She communicated with them in smatterings of the local language, improvising with sign language. And she photographed them.
Depicting richness and variety
Her pictures capture proud nomads, men selling water in the streets of Kabul, scribes, veiled women, swordsmen, markets, people drinking tea, cemeteries, areas for washing horses and carts, ruins, the desert, vineyards and giant statues carved into a cliff - the Buddhas of Bamiyan - that would be destroyed by the Taliban almost 50 years later.
They show how multi-faceted Afghanistan is with its different peoples, traditions, customs, monuments, cities and villages.
They also capture the scars left on the country throughout its turbulent history - traces of wars, conquerors and earthquakes - and relics left behind by various occupiers and traders passing through such as Indian musical instruments, a Russian samovar and a Singer sewing machine.
There are pictures too of the Kajaki Dam - an early example of development aid - that helps provide water to a large stretch of desert.
In the end, the viewer gets an impression of how rich and varied Afghanistan is - a distant cry from the images that have now dominated the news for years.
The Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus is presenting some 120 photos in their "Yvonne von Schweinitz: Faces of Afghanistan" exhibition that is on in Berlin until the end of May.
Author: Silke Bartlick / act Editor: Sarah Berning
Four Afghan Police Poisoned and Shot Dead
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Four Afghan Police and two civilians were shot dead inside a police checkpoint in southern Helmand province after being poisoned by their colleagues, local officials said.
A group of the Taliban insurgents attacked the checkpoint and killed the six men in Nahr-e Siraj district, said a police official.
At least two other policemen who were wounded are in critical condition.
Three policemen, who are suspected to behind the poisoning and the plot, went missing.
Local officials have launched an investigation into the incident, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, Daud Ahmadi.
It's the second incident in a week that Afghan police personnel are turning their guns against their colleagues or plotting to kill them.
Nine policemen were killed by their colleague in eastern Paktika province earlier this week.
A day earlier, Nato said 16 international troops have been killed in attacks by their Afghan counterparts since January.
Afghan Senators Accuse Ahmadinejad of Interference
Iranian president uses regional summit to demand immediate NATO withdrawal.
IWPR By Mina Habib 3 Apr 12
Afghanistan - Afghan senators have accused Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of interfering in their country’s affairs, after he called on NATO to withdraw troops immediately and fund economic reconstruction instead.
Ahmadinejad made the remarks on March 26 during a regional conference on economic cooperation with Afghanistan, held in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe.
“The times of imperialism have long since passed,” he said, according to AFP news agency, warning that “those who do not learn from the mistakes of history will be punished”.
Ahmadinejad said NATO must end its “occupation” and instead allocate 25 per cent of its annual budget – or five per cent of member states’ annual defence spending – on rebuilding Afghanistan’s economy over the next decade.
For its part, he said, Iran would offer technical and economic assistance to Kabul, including investment, healthcare and infrastructure projects, Reuters news agency reported.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai, his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari and Imomali Rahmon of Tajikistan also attended the conference, as did a United States delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, who walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech.
The Iranian leader’s outspoken comments received a frosty reception at theMeshrano Jirga, or upper house of parliament, inKabul.
The senate’s 40-member Reform and Justice Group said the remarks were dangerous and irresponsible.
“Iran wants to fuel war in this country once again and reduce it to ruins,” the senators said in a statement.
They now plan to issue a formal request to Iranian officials to refrain from commenting on Afghanistan’s domestic affairs.
Amin Farjad, a counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Kabul, said Ahmadinejad’s comments should not be viewed as foreign meddling, and that he was entitled to air his opinions.
“It is true that on matters like the US and NATO presence, the main decision makers are the people of Afghanistan and their representatives. However, others have a right to comment,” Farjad told IWPR.
The international troop presence is a worry to Iran and the rest of the region, he said, adding, “We cannot remain indifferent to this presence because it poses security threats.”
As evidence, Farjad cited a US surveillance drone captured by the Iranian military in December 2011.
Tehransaid at the time that it hijacked the unmanned plane’s electronics and steered it to the ground after it flew over 200 kilometres into Iranian airspace, according to the BBC.
USofficials said the drone was monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme, and crashed after a malfunction.
Afghan political analyst Wahid Mozhda told IWPR that Ahmadinejad’s speech was probably intended for domestic consumption, to demonstrate to hardliners that he was taking a strong line.
The president “attacks the US at every opportunity, thereby attempting to maintain his popularity among Iranians, particularly the clergy,” Mozhda said.
Ahmadinejad has denounced the occupation and called for the withdrawal of US troops on several occasions.
For their part, NATO officials have accused Iran of providing weapons to the Taleban, an allegation Tehran denies.
Officials at Karzai’s office declined to discuss Ahmadinejad’s latest speech.
Mozhda believes Karzai may be reserving comment because he is wary of provoking Iran into open support for resistance to his government in western Afghanistan, where the two countries share a border nearly 1,000 km long.
US officials may share this concern, Mozhda added.
“The Americans, too, agree with Hamid Karzai’s soft policy on Iran because they do not want tensions to expand,” he said.
Some Afghan analysts believe Iran is already heavily involved in a proxy struggle against the US in Afghanistan. Iranian-US ties have remained severed since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and tensions are rising over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria claimed Iran was providing significant support to the Taleban and allied groups and had spies at high levels of government and parliament.
“This front has been established and is effectively in operation,” he added.
Oria said that despite Ahmadinejad’s comments, Iran may be happy to see NATO troops bogged down in Afghanistan where they continue to be worn down by insurgents.
On the streets of Kabul, some accused Ahmadinejad of undermining Afghan sovereignty, while others shared his concern about foreign troops.
University student Nurullah said the Iranian leader had no right to weigh in on Afghan affairs.
“We are an independent country with our own president. We can tell the Americans and NATO whatever we want to on our own,” he said.
Nurullah said Karzai was unable to stand up to Ahmadinejad because he had accepted Iranian funding.
The Afghan president admitted in October 2010 that his chief of staff collected “bags of money” containing hundreds of thousands of euros from the Iranian government each year, according to The Guardian. Karzai told a press conference that the money was used to pay his office expenses, and that he was grateful for the support.
Hussein Ali, a construction worker, told IWPR that if Iran really cared about Afghanistan, it should treat the Afghan refugees it hosts better, and stop blocking fuel supplies during the winter.
Others, however, believe Iran’s criticism of the NATO presence is valid.
Masuma, a schoolteacher, said US troops had killed large numbers of Afghan civilians over the past decade, including the 17 shot dead by an American soldier in Kandahar province on March 11.
“Iranians, Americans and Pakistanis are all the same to us,” she said. “None of them has ever refrained from oppressing the Afghans.”
Mina Habib is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Enayat Najafizada | AFP – Wed, Apr 4, 2012
A suicide bomber attacked foreign military forces in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people including three international troops, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on foreign troops filming interviews in a park in Maymana, the capital of Faryab province, as NATO's fatalities in the decade-long conflict passed the 100 mark for 2012.
NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said only that three service members died after an explosion in northern Afghanistan, without giving nationalities. Western sources said that it was the same incident.
Video footage from the scene showed a number of foreign troops lying immobile on the ground in the aftermath of the blast, while blood-soaked civilian and military victims writhed in pain from savage wounds including severed limbs.
"A suicide bomber targeted a group of foreign friends," Faryab governor Abdul Haq Shafaq told AFP. "They were military. There are casualties, dead and wounded."
Faryab, which borders Turkmenistan, is far from centres of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan's south and east, but it suffers sporadic attacks.
There were conflicting reports about the exact death toll and the identity of the victims after the suicide bomber, who police said was riding an explosives-packed motorcycle, blew himself up.
Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, described the blast as "powerful" and put the death toll at 10. He said six civilians and four policemen were killed, with 20 people wounded, including four police.
"A suicide bomber with a suicide vest full of explosives and on a explosive-laden motorcycle targeted some foreign forces near a UN compound in Maymana," he said.
Most foreign troops in Faryab are Norwegian and Lieutenant Colonel John Espen Lien, a spokesman for Norway's armed forces, told AFP there were "at least 12 killed, but this number is not definitive".
No Norwegian ISAF personnel were nearby at the time, he added.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the group's website, saying "at least 16 invaders and 12 puppets (Afghan government forces)" were killed. The Taliban routinely exaggerate their claims.
NATO has 130,000 soldiers helping Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government fight the Taliban, but is scheduled to hand responsibility for security across the country to Afghans and withdraw most of its troops by the end of 2014.
But relations between the allies have been strained this year by a series of killings of Western troops by Afghan security personnel, a massacre of 17 civilians blamed on a US soldier and the burning of Korans at a US base.
Night raids by special forces against insurgent hideouts have also triggered popular anger and long been a source of friction with Karzai, who has denounced the NATO operations as reckless.
But US officials said Tuesday Washington and Kabul were close to an agreement giving Afghans more authority over the raids, with Afghan judges issuing warrants for the operations and Afghans in the lead on the ground.
Such a deal could remove the last obstacle to final negotiations on a long-term security agreement, which US officials hope to ink in time for a NATO summit in May in Chicago.
The Faryab attack came as the number of NATO troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year passed 100, according to an AFP count based on the independent icasualties.org website.
The war has cost the West hundreds of billions of dollars and almost 3,000 lives so far. The United States has suffered the most deaths at 1,924, according to icasualties, with Britain next on 407.
ISAF declined to confirm the total figure for 2012 so far, but according to icasualties it is slightly lower than in 2011, when 109 troops had been killed by the end of March.
ISAF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings said that across Afghanistan, insurgent attacks fell by nine percent in 2011 and in January and February they were down 22 percent.
"Every month since May 2011, there have been fewer enemy-initiated attacks than in the same period the year before," he said. "This is the longest sustained downward trend recorded by ISAF."
In February, the United Nations said civilian deaths from the Afghan conflict reached a record high in 2011, when 3,021 civilians died -- mostly at the hands of insurgents -- up eight percent from 2,790 in 2010.
Leading Afghans cast doubt on election schedule
Talk in Kabul that presidential vote due in 2014 could be delayed or brought forward by a year, threatening constitutional crisis
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone in Islamabad and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul Tuesday 3 April 2012
Influential Afghans have questioned whether the country's next presidential election can go ahead on schedule in 2014, raising doubts about a vote the west is counting on to lay the foundations of a stable government after foreign combat troops leave.
There has been talk in Kabul of either delaying the vote or bringing it forward by a year, even though both options would strain or break conditions laid out in the constitution.
The independent election commission has said it will not move the date, and no one else has the authority to do so. The last presidential election was delayed for several months in 2009 due to issues with the weather, logistics and security.
The questioning of a schedule fixed by the constitution is a reminder of how vulnerable the framework of Afghanistan's fledgling democracy remains, despite a decade of western military and political support and millions of dollars of aid.
There is growing anxiety among many Afghans about the changes 2014 will bring, even as powerbrokers start manoeuvring to take advantage. The last foreign combat troops are due to return home that year, leaving Afghan police and soldiers to fight the Taliban, and there will be huge pressure for a smooth transition.
But violence is spreading in much of the country. Omar Daudzai, a former presidential chief of staff and one of Hamid Karzai's confidants, said security problems could render a poll impossible unless efforts to bring the Taliban into peace talks bear fruit soon.
"We have no choice but to make progress on the peace effort," said Daudzai, now ambassador to Islamabad and a key player in the Afghan government's efforts to pursue negotiations. "Under the current circumstances, or even under a worse situation if the Taliban's presence becomes more dominant, they will intimidate people from coming out to vote. If a significant proportion of the population can't come out to vote, you can't have an election. No election commission will take the risk."
Daudzai said it was possible some Taliban fighters might participate in the elections as candidates for the presidency or for provincial councils. "If we make progress on the peace front quite a sizeable number of them will stand for election," he said. "If we manage to bring some Taliban leaders into electioneering, that will mean that instead of preventing people to vote they will actually encourage them."
The Taliban often denounce Karzai's government as illegitimate and recently halted preliminary talks with the US government. The outlook for speedy progress on a political process is gloomy.
Some Afghan politicians have proposed bringing the vote forward, arguing that an election in 2014 could bring too much turmoil in an already turbulent year. An earlier date could mean more western security support.
William Patey, the outgoing British ambassador to Kabul, said: "I've heard people talk about that, we wouldn't have any objections to it all we want is a free and fair election."
He said an election in 2013 was "doable" but had not been formally discussed by western diplomats. "There are perfectly good arguments why 2013 would be a good time [but] by holding it in 2013 you risk an argument that foreigners brought it forward so they can control it," he said.
It is hard to see what Karzai would gain from cutting short his mandate, when the constitution forbids him from running again. He has repeatedly said he will not seek another term in office, but both Afghan rivals and western diplomats in Kabul are concerned he may use worries about security and stability to extend his rule. According to an influential member of the Kabul establishment, Karzai believes that if elections cannot take place in 2014, "he will hang in there for a couple more years".
A failure to hold elections could create a constitutional crisis and perhaps spur unrest among powerful leaders who for much of the last decade have respected at least the broad outlines of Afghanistan's post-Taliban democracy.
"A new president will allow us to press the reset button, domestically and vis-a-vis the international community," the source said. "Another two years of Karzai could literally drown the country and our international relationships."
Karzai's spokesman said suggestions he wanted to stay in power after 2014 were baseless. "We strongly reject allegations that the president wants to delay the elections. The Afghan government will try its best to make sure the elections happen on time according to the constitution," the spokesman said.
Even if the poll is held on time, the government will struggle with concerns about its legitimacy, after accusations of widespread fraud marred the 2009 presidential poll and the 2010 parliamentary elections.
The election commission is drafting a list of changes to the polling system, including a more transparent arbitration system and improvements to voter registration, which will eventually be presented to parliament as the basis of a new electoral law. There are concerns it is already too late to sort voter lists in time for the presidential election, given the challenges of widespread illiteracy, a huge population without formal identity documents, and worsening security problems.
Abdullah Ahmadzai, the chief electoral officer , said the commission was focused on creating a sustainable solution to the voter registration problems. "Some improvements will be implemented by the 2014 election," he said.
Civil society activists warn that the election commission itself needs reforms to the systems for appointing its members, if the credibility of polls is to improve. Currently Karzai appoints its members directly. Members of parliament are discussing a draft law governing the duties and structure of the commission that would give other groups a say in its makeup.
Jandad Spinghar, executive director of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said: "The first stage is independence of the electoral administration. We have plenty of time to amend the electoral law."
The presidential poll is just one part of Afghanistan's election headaches. A system of staggered elections should see the country hold polls for provincial councils in 2013, the presidency in 2014 and parliament in 2015.
In a country where votes are expensive and hugely disruptive, there will be a temptation to defy the constitution and reschedule at least one of those. If the provincial council elections are held on schedule, it could add weight to any attempt to delay the presidential election to 2015 to coincide with the parliamentary vote.
U.S., Afghanistan Near Agreement On Night Raids
April 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The United States and Afghanistan are reportedly close to an agreement to change the way night raids are carried out in Afghanistan.
According to U.S. officials, Afghan security forces would be given the lead role and judicial oversight would be put in place.
The officials said a deal could be done as early as this week.
But The Associated Press says there is still disagreement over how long individuals detained in such raids can be held.
The overnight raids are scorned by Afghans, but seen as effective by U.S. forces.
The deal is expected to help clear the way for a broader strategic partnership agreement that will govern the U.S. presence in Afghanistan once Afghan forces take full responsibility for security by the end of 2014.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
Deal Close on Night Raids, U.S. and Afghan Officials Say
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG April 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - After years of insisting that American forces end covert nighttime raids on Afghan homes, President Hamid Karzai’s government was close to completing a deal that would give the Afghan authorities legal oversight of the raids, while allowing American forces to retain a guiding role in conducting them, officials from both countries said Tuesday.
The night raids’ deep unpopularity with the Afghan public has long put Mr. Karzai at odds with his American backers, who say the operations are among the most effective tools they have to combat the Taliban.
An agreement on the raids, after months of sometimes contentious negotiations, would allow Kabul and Washington to move toward completion of a broader pact that lays out the strategic relationship between the two countries after the official end of the NATO combat mission here in 2014. Afghan and American officials hope to have that broader agreement concluded in time for a NATO summit meeting planned for May in Chicago.
The deal that is nearing completion would give Afghan military forces a lead role in all the raids — officials say they already take part in most of them — and would also bring the operations under Afghan legal jurisdiction by requiring a court warrant within 48 hours of a raid in order to continue detention of any suspects, according to American and Afghan officials close to the negotiations.
Most of the officials commented on the condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been concluded.
At the same time, it would include a series of face-saving compromises to allow American forces to retain the freedom of action that commanders believe is necessary for the operations to remain effective. The raids would still rely heavily on American intelligence, and most would include American or allied forces for the foreseeable future, the officials said.
“We are very close to signing” an agreement on the raids, said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai. He said an agreement could come before the end of the week, and that it would “make sure that all nighttime raids are conducted fully in accordance with the laws of Afghanistan.”
As late as Tuesday afternoon, the two sides thought they had reached agreement, and Afghan and American officials were making preparations for a signing ceremony on Wednesday.
But the plans were put on hold on Tuesday evening after a last-minute dispute over whether the Afghans or Americans would hold people detained in the raids after a warrant was granted, the officials said.
American officials have pushed to retain custody of the detainees for a limited time so they could be interrogated, the officials said. The interrogations are an important source of intelligence that American officials said they were not yet ready to give up.
Neither Afghan nor American officials would say how long the Americans wanted to keep the detainees. It also was not clear where American forces would hold them, since the United States agreed last month to hand over its main prison here to Afghan authorities within six months.
An agreement on night raids, coming on the heels of the prison deal, would go a long way toward restoring trust that has broken down between the two governments after a string of recent crises, including the killing of Afghan civilians by an American soldier on March 16.
That rampage prompted Mr. Karzai to renew his longstanding calls for an end to night raids, which he has argued violate Afghan culture and values. While American officials have insisted that the killings were part of an isolated criminal act under cover of darkness, not a night raid, the distinction is not shared by most Afghans, including Mr. Karzai.
He has portrayed it as the latest in a long string of episodes where coalition forces have killed innocent Afghans. But Afghan and American officials said Tuesday that Mr. Karzai understood the importance of preserving the ability of Afghan and American forces to conduct the raids.
Coalition forces have come to increasingly rely on them in recent years, as they seek to kill or capture midlevel insurgents and, in the process, separate foot soldiers from the Taliban’s top leadership.
Finding a way to continue the raids is also considered essential for the post-2014 plan that is shaping up. The plan, in essence, envisions the United States’ leaving behind a small force that would focus on counterterrorism. For that kind of mission to work, the force would probably need to be able to carry out night raids.
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Washington.
Afghanistan Needs Leeway on Iran Sanctions, Minister Says
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Apr 4, 2012
Afghanistan’s commerce minister said his country hopes the U.S. will give it leeway from economic sanctions intended to curb imports of oil from Iran.
“We hope that our special situation should be taken into consideration,” Anwar-Ul-Haq Ahady, the Afghan minister of commerce and industries, said yesterday in an interview in Washington. “We don’t have much of an alternative.”
The request exposes a conflict between the Obama administration’s efforts to curb Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its campaign to bolster Afghanistan’s economy and government so the NATO-led international coalition is able to withdraw most of its forces by the end of 2014.
Afghanistan is struggling to shore up its finances, and one of Ahady’s deputy ministers, Mutasil Komaki, said in an interview in Kabul last month that Iran provides about 50 percent of the country’s oil imports. The next-biggest sources are Russia and then Turkmenistan, which supplies mainly natural gas, Ahady said, and now the war-torn nation is looking to those countries and others to reduce its dependence on Iran.
“The conflict between Iran and the United States is, to some extent, played out in Afghanistan, especially as Iran tries to counter U.S. influence in that country,” Alireza Nader, a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, Virginia, said in an e-mail. “The effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program may at the same time hurt other U.S. policy objectives -- for example, maintaining a secure and stable Afghanistan.” Projected Growth
The more favorable scenarios for Afghanistan project economic growth of 4.5 percent to 6.2 percent a year through 2018, down from an average 9.1 percent in the past seven years with the influx of foreign aid, according to statistics from the World Bank and the Afghan Ministry of Finance.
President Barack Obama cleared the way last week for sanctions on banks in countries that import Iranian oil. Under a law he signed Dec. 31, banks that settle petroleum-related transactions through Iran’s central bank in any country that has failed to show a “significant reduction” in Iranian oil imports would be cut off from the U.S. banking system.
The law requires reductions by June 28 and countries can avoid the sanctions if they take steps by then. The law doesn’t define the steps needed to qualify for an exemption.
U.S. State Department officials have said they’re working with countries who would be affected by the sanctions to implement the requirements.
“In all our consultations, we have made clear the importance of reducing reliance on Iranian oil and unwinding business dealings with the Central Bank of Iran,” said Laura Lucas, a State Department spokeswoman. “No commitments have been made to any country regarding prospective exceptions to U.S. law.” Trade With Iran
Afghanistan’s trade with Iran has grown to more than $1 billion annually, placing Iran second after Pakistan’s $3 billion when transit trade via the Pakistani port of Karachi is included. The next-largest trade partners are China and India, Ahady said.
“Iran is becoming a very large trade partner,” Ahady said during a briefing yesterday for reporters in Washington. The estimated $1 billion in commerce with Iran is dominated by oil and fuel, as well as some consumer and industrial goods, he said.
Trade with Pakistan continues to be hampered by border delays and regulatory disagreements that too often require high- level intervention and cost Afghan business owners in the meantime, Ahady said. Foreign Investment
Violence and uncertainty over how Afghanistan will fare politically and in terms of security after 2014 are dogging efforts to attract foreign investment. Some of those doing business in the country probably are hedging their bets with alternative plans, Ahady said.
“It’s only natural when there is a level of uncertainty,” he said. “Businesspeople, they tend to be conservative in committing their resources. There is some degree of uncertainty in Afghanistan.”
Private investment in Afghanistan is described as low by the World Bank, at 8.5 percent of gross domestic product, while exports make up 2.5 percent. It has increased slightly in the past two years, Ahady said, without providing figures. Agriculture’s Role
Agriculture accounts for about 35 percent of Afghanistan’s economy, down from as much as 70 percent as foreign projects and other development boost industries such as construction. Agriculture has “considerable” room for growth as new farming technology stimulates production, Ahady said. The country also is counting on untapped mining resources such as copper and iron ore to fill some of the revenue gaps in the future.
The World Bank estimates Afghanistan’s operating expenses will reach almost twice the level of domestic revenue by 2021, and that the projected financing gap will be $7.2 billion in today’s prices. The country of 30.6 million people, 75 percent of whom are illiterate, had gross domestic product equal to $528 per person in the fiscal year that ended in 2011.
Afghanistan will need $4.1 billion a year to cover its security expenses after 2014, including about $500 million from its own coffers, and an additional $5 billion in economic and development assistance, Ahady said.
While the country probably can get by with slightly less in contributions, a failure by foreign donors to come through would prompt an economic crisis, he said.
“There would be serious contraction to the point of depression and a situation where you would have 20 or 25 percent contraction in the economy,” he said. “I don’t think the donors are going to leave us alone there.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Probe underway into death of New Zealand soldier in Afghanistan
WELLINGTON, April 4 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Army chiefs have launched an investigation into the death of a soldier in Afghanistan after confirming Thursday that the man had not died in combat.
The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) said Corporal Douglas Hughes, aged 26, died just days before returning home at the end of his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Chief of Defense Force Lieutenant General Rhys Jones confirmed an investigation had begun into the death, which occurred Wednesday.
Hughes, a rifleman from the 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, had been deployed with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan province in September 2011.
"He was coming towards the end of a six-month deployment to Afghanistan serving with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan Province. The contingent is due back in New Zealand later this month," said Jones in a statement.
"An incident occurred at Forward Patrol Base Romero at approximately 1040 hours New Zealand time yesterday."
Hughes had been flown by air to Bagram Air Base, accompanied by his patrol commander, but was pronounced dead.
"He remains in Bagram Air Base while arrangements are made for his repatriation. The Defense Force intends to return Corporal Hughes to his family as quickly and expeditiously as possible, while supporting his family in this process," said Jones.
"This is a sad day and, on behalf of the entire New Zealand Defense Force, I extend my deepest sympathies to the family, colleagues and friends of Corporal Hughes."
The NZDF was working with the New Zealand Police and Coroner's Office on the matter.
"While there has been some speculation in the media around the nature of Corporal Hughes' death, we will be unable to confirm this until a full investigation has been completed."
Hughes was the fifth New Zealand soldier to die in Afghanistan in less than two years. Three were killed in action and another man died in a vehicle accident.
Qatar To Open Kabul Embassy In Bid To Reinvigorate Peace Process
April 3, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry says Qatar will open an embassy in Kabul to deepen relations and play a greater role in Afghanistan's peace process.
The development comes after Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool met on April 3 in Doha with senior Qatari officials.
Khalid Muhammad al-Attiyah, Qatar's minister for international cooperation, confirmed plans to talk to all Afghan parties -- including the Kabul government and the Taliban -- to help reinvigorate the peace process.
Qatar is allowing Afghanistan's Taliban to open a political office on its soil. But the Taliban in March suspended confidence building talks with U.S. officials in Doha after the killing of 16 Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier.
Those talks included the issue of potentially transferring Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
With reporting by Reuters
Afghanistan Falls Apart
A string of disasters has left the Kabul elite wondering whether it's possible to pick up the pieces of their shattered alliance with the United States.
Foreign Policy BY KAREN LEIGH APRIL 3, 2012
KABUL - Near a busy intersection where burqa-clad women beg for spare change at car windows, Mahmoud Saikal, Afghanistan's former deputy foreign minister, sat under a photo of this capital city's crowded hillside neighborhoods in the stately living room of his compound.
"If you are from Kabul," he says, "you can find your place of birth in this photo."
It's the only landscape not changing in Afghanistan.
A series of American blunders in the past few months has raised questions about whether the decade-long U.S. mission in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. In February, reports that copies of the Quran had been burnt at a NATO base sparked protests across the country that left dozens dead. And last month, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales murdered 17 Afghan civilians in cold blood -- returning to his base in Kandahar province mid-massacre before going out to kill again. Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces are increasingly turning on their trainers: Three NATO soldiers were killed by Afghan police and military members on March 26 -- the latest of more than 80 coalition troops who have lost their lives in this way since 2007.
The escalating string of disasters has led to an increasingly contentious debate within President Hamid Karzai's inner circle between officials who say Afghanistan is better off without the United States and those who see the American presence as necessary for security. But even among America's erstwhile allies, there is a profound disappointment at the gap between the grandiose U.S. pledges and the dismal reality on the ground in Afghanistan.
"The U.S. could have been a more responsible superpower, a caring superpower," Saikal says. "It's important for them to stand for [their] values around the world. But I think the last three incidents were definitely deliberate acts that tarnish the values the U.S. stands for."
U.S. efforts to forge a lasting relationship with the Afghan government has been complicated by the eclectic makeup of Karzai's inner circle and the often haphazard nature of its decision making process.
"We make foreign policy decisions on the run on the steps of a ministry," laments Saikal, a former ambassador to Indonesia and Australia. The disarray, he says, makes it easier for those in power "to twist the law in their own personal taste."
That taste is only growing more anti-American. With popular anger at the U.S. military hitting an all-time high, Karzai has increasingly been forced to stand up to the United States to prove that he is not in the pocket of the foreign occupiers. He has renewed his demand that U.S. Special Forces end nighttime raids, and looks set to win a concession that would subject the raids to review by Afghan judges. But even with that victory, Karzai's advisors are increasingly debating whether cooperation with the Americans has brought more trouble than it's worth.
"Karzai's inner circle is split between a group that's very Afghan nationalist and suspicious of the West the other that has the technocrats and more Westernized elements that are pro-West," says a former senior U.S. military officer who commanded in Afghanistan.
Recent American missteps have rocked Afghan officials' faith in the coalition's ability to help govern the country's tenuous political situation. "The Afghans have to be wondering how incompetent we are," adds a former civilian advisor to ISAF in Afghanistan. "[Afghan parliamentarians] have to be very, very frustrated because we've undercut their ability to work with us. How do you now go about selling working with the Americans to people on the street?"
There is a pervasive fear on the streets of Kabul that, once coalition forces leave, the traditional hard-line nationalists -- known, during the Taliban's era in power, for gruesome torture and punishment -- will reemerge in full force.
"We see no sign to prove that the mentality of using violence for political [gain] has changed," Saikal says. "Whatever we've done [to counter it], the mentality is still strong. If that doesn't change, I'm afraid the future looks bleak."
The Afghan government's disarray means personal interests and opinions can become official policy without a thorough debate.
"No doubt, there are some left [close to Karzai] who do have some wisdom and do see the relationship between Afghanistan and the U.S. as in the interest of both countries," Saikal says. "But those would be their personal views because the government simply doesn't have policies."
Omar Samad, an advisor to Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and formerly the country's ambassador to France and Canada, has seen his country's political dysfunction up close.
"Contradictions [between the politicians' competing views] have existed for a while," Samad says. "And it's reflected in the upper echelons of the Afghan government and the inner circle around the president. It seems that each incident restricts the space that exists for those who believe that a long term strategic relationship with the U.S. is important."
But the debate among Afghan officials is not only based on ideology -- many high-rollers have profited immensely from the influx of American riches, overriding any personal antagonism that might have been stirred in the wake of Bales's rampage. Wartime corruption has been rampant in Afghanistan: According to a 2010 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Karzai and his attorney general "refused to allow any action to be taken against corrupt leaders," and likely blocked cases against dozens of top officials from going forward.
"This situation is highly unlikely to change in the middle of a war where Karzai needs all of the internal support he can get, and the rest of the Afghan political and legal system either is too weak to pose a challenge or would like a share of the money," the report reads.
It's not only the upper echelons that are reaching into the government's coffers -- the massive influx of funds that the United States and its partners have poured into the country has created a whole class that is dependent on foreign money.
"A lot of people have been benefitting enormously from the U.S. presence in terms of patronage, grabbing a slice of aid money, being in positions of authority where they could take money from the Afghan state," says Stuart Gordon, an Afghanistan researcher at the London think tank Chatham House.
Not all of that money has stayed in Afghanistan, much less gone to improve the life of its citizens. In March, a senior Afghan official told Reuters that his wealthy countrymen were smuggling $8 billion in cash out of Afghanistan each year. According to a 2009 State Department cable published by Wikileaks, former Vice President Zia Masoud was caught bringing $52 million in cash through the Dubai airport and was released without question.
Indeed, while popular anger against the United States is undoubtedly rising across Afghanistan, it may not be a decisive factor for the Afghan elite. Those Afghan officials have an incentive to keep their eye on the bottom line: the flow of U.S. dollars into the country.
"I'm not sure that the power brokers in the Afghan government have a particular hatred for the Americans," says Samad. "The hatred of the Americans tends to be more amongst the conservative rural Afghans, who have a more shortsighted view, but have also suffered at the hands of the police and government brutality. The upper echelons of the Afghan government are probably more calculating. They think the gravy train is leaving."
On a gusty day in Kabul, one of Karzai's former ministers wedges a chair into a doorknob of her drafty home to keep the door from slamming over and over.
She expresses concern that the country is backsliding into its conservative, Taliban-era ways. Some female officials, she claims, had been told to wear traditional scarves only over half of their heads, to appease Western officials. After the Americans leave, she says, they will be told to cover the entire head.
The minister echoes the views of many of the president's past and present allies, who say the latest incidents are the straw that broke the camel's back -- cherries on a sundae of broken promises to a female population that remains largely marginalized, and a dysfunctional government that is a democracy in little more than name only.
"The U.S.'s beliefs failed here, and that was their enemies' intention from the beginning," she says. "Afghanistan is a world of extremism. The world should be helping that Afghan people get rid of terrorism and give us a civil government with men and women participating equally."
In the past five months, cracks in the foundation of the U.S.-Afghan relationship have been exposed. The question is whether Karzai's men want to put the alliance back together again -- or whether America's indiscretions in their country are too much to overcome.
"I have talked to [members of] the Taliban," Saikal says, the thick security walls around his house a reminder of the precarious situation on the streets. "The Taliban called me a fool. They said, ‘You're working with a political process that is a waste of time."
Nato chief rejects Taliban theory for killings
Financial Times By Peter Spiegel April 3, 2012
Brussels - The recent spate of killings of Nato and Afghan soldiers by Afghan security forces is the result of isolated disputes rather than a co-ordinated infiltration by Taliban and other insurgents, according to the alliance’s secretary-general.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s top civilian, said in an interview that alliance and Afghan forces had introduced heightened screening procedures to ensure Afghan recruits were not working for Islamist groups since the incidents began at the start of the year. Nato officials said that included a nationwide effort to revalidate every soldier in Afghan army and police units.
Despite the intensified security, Mr Rasmussen said there was no intelligence showing that the killings were part of a new Taliban strategy to disrupt Nato’s plan to hand over security to Afghan forces. He insisted they would not alter plans for complete Afghan control by the end of 2014.
“Of course, I would not exclude the possibility that the Taliban tries to infiltrate the Afghan security forces. Obviously, that is a risk,” Mr Rasmussen said. “But we don’t see an overall pattern. Each and every incident has its own particular background.”
At least 16 Nato troops have been killed at the hands of Afghan soldiers since the start of the year, while a number of Afghan troops have been killed by members of their own units.
The killings, which Nato officials attributed to “individual grievances” even though the Taliban has claimed credit for them, have come amid a string of setbacks, including the shooting of 17 Afghan civilians by a US army sergeant and the burning of Korans by American forces.
The Koran burnings at Bagram air base prompted widespread riots in Afghanistan. Senior US military officials have attributed some of the “green-on-blue” shootings to retribution for the incident, which the US insisted was unintentional.
While the events led to a breakdown in co-operation, Mr Rasmussen said he believed such difficulties would be short-lived.
“In the short term, obviously, they were damaging and served to undermine trust and confidence,” Mr Rasmussen said. “But when we are speaking about a more permanent impact and a longer-term perspective, I don’t think they will have a lasting effect.”
In the wake of the incidents, Hamid Karzai, Afghan president, called on Nato troops to be confined to bases by next year, ahead of the 2014 deadline for complete handover to Afghan forces.
Mr Rasmussen insisted Mr Karzai’s demands were not a change in the handover blueprint, noting that in order for a transition to be completed by the end of 2014, Nato forces would have to begin standing down next year.
“I don’t see any tension. On the contrary, it was President Karzai himself who outlined the 2014 roadmap,” Mr Rasmussen said. “What President Karzai has stated is fully within the overall roadmap.”
The Obama administration has come under attack by some Republicans, particularly Arizona senator John McCain, the top Republican on the armed services committee, for the speed of the withdrawal. Mr McCain has argued the pace gave the Taliban an incentive to wait out allied forces and encouraged Pakistani intelligence to maintain links with militants based in the country’s lawless western tribal regions.
Mr Rasmussen defended the policy, saying it had forced Afghan authorities to ready their own forces more quickly and given them more incentive to act decisively. “Everybody knows it’s of crucial importance to ensure the Afghan security forces have the right capacity by the end of 2014,” he said. “The fixed timeline is also a driving force.”
The Logistical Nightmare of Leaving Afghanistan
SPIEGEL ONLINE By Christian Neef 03/04/2012
NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the withdrawal poses a massive logistical challenge. The US and its allies are dependent on air hubs in Russia and authoritarian Central Asian republics to transport its troops and equipment home -- and getting those countries to play along is not always easy.
The best way to get to Ulyanovsk is via riverboat. The Russian provincial city, formerly known as Simbirsk and established by the czar more than 360 years ago as a border fort, lies on a steep bank of the mighty Volga, at a spot where the river is at least 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) wide.
A writer once dubbed Ulyanovsk the Bethlehem of the 20th century, because it was the home of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who was born in the city in 1870 and went down in history under the name Lenin. He had hardly died before the communist faithful from around the world embarked on pilgrimages to the city on the Volga, which owes its current name to its famous son. Above the river is the enormous Lenin Square, with its oversized Lenin Monument. The small wooden house where the revolutionary leader grew up is still standing on Lenin Street.
Now the city, once a magnet for communist idealists, is about to become a gathering place for Western troops. When the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops from Afghanistan begins, a portion of the NATO contingent will pass through Ulyanovsk -- or, more precisely, Ulyanovsk Vostochny Airport. The airport will act as a hub for one of the most costly and complex troop withdrawals in modern military history. Some 130,000 soldiers must leave Afghanistan within two years, together with at least 70,000 vehicles and 120,000 containers.
Ulyanovsk Vostochny used to be the airfield for the local aircraft plant, which produced the An-124, once the world's largest transport aircraft. It has a runway that is more than 5 kilometers long and was conceived as an alternate landing site for the Soviet Union's Buran space shuttle.
Eager to Leave
The first NATO officers arrived in Ulyanovsk in the fall, and city officials have been in high spirits ever since. Governor Sergey Morozov, 52, a former police officer, is already dreaming of "a few thousand jobs." Once the withdrawal is underway, says Morozov, "several dozen planes" will land in Ulyanovsk every day, and 60 trains a month will depart from the city toward the Baltic countries, headed for Baltic Sea ports like Klaipeda in Lithuania, where the freight will be shipped to Western Europe.
NATO's Ulyanovsk operation could bring in annual revenues of $1 billion (745 million) to local air cargo companies and $250 million to the railroad. It would give the city a massive economic boost.
But what is even more massive is the challenge NATO faces. After being in Afghanistan for over a decade, it can hardly wait to leave the region. Despite all claims to the contrary, its mission has been a failure, and its only concern now is to get its personnel and equipment out of the country without suffering further losses.
It would be an understatement to call the undertaking precarious. Military withdrawals from Afghanistan have ended in disaster several times in the past. When the British left Kabul in 1842 after their first campaign, because they could no longer control the insurgents there, only a few fortunate members of an expedition force of 17,000 escaped with their lives. The rest were massacred en route.
The Soviets lost 15,000 men during their Afghanistan adventure, and their 1989 withdrawal also ended in chaos, as their convoys struggled through the snow-covered mountains at Salang Pass while under fire from the mujahideen. Another 60 men died in the final one-and-a-half months, after being shot or suffocating in avalanches.
Politically Explosive
Both the British and the Soviets left a country that they had been unable to pacify. The same holds true for NATO today. Afghan insurgents will presumably do everything possible to inflict pinprick attacks on NATO troops as they withdraw. And there will be plenty of opportunities, because NATO brought a great deal more weapons and military equipment to Afghanistan to hunt al-Qaida and the Taliban than the British or the Soviets did in their time. Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, will be bringing back more than 1,700 vehicles, howitzers and tanks.
This withdrawal will be militarily precarious, politically explosive and logistically complex. It will take place primarily through Afghanistan's neighbors to the north, because the southern route through Pakistan is not seen as reliable. Besides, after Pakistan soldiers were killed in NATO air strikes, Islamabad closed that route and only now plans to reopen the road.
As a result, says General William Fraser, the commander of the US Transportation Command, the routes through the countries of former Soviet Central Asia will have top priority for the withdrawal. But this too is a difficult region, where countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan are run by autocrats with poor records on human rights, which is why the Americans wanted little to do with them in the past.
Western emissaries have been on the road in Central Asia for months, bargaining, making deals and promising everything under the sun to convince the region's potentates to cooperate. There are problems everywhere, such as in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, where the United States has maintained its most important air base north of Afghanistan until now. Now the Kyrgyz leadership is threatening not to renew its lease with Washington, meaning that the current lease would end in July 2014, just as the withdrawal from Afghanistan is in full swing. During a visit in March, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made it clear to the Kyrgyz government that the airport there is "extremely important" for the American withdrawal.
Sudden Affection
Washington is courting neighboring Uzbekistan even more assiduously. The only functioning railroad line from Afghanistan ends at the border bridge across the Amu Darya River in southern Uzbekistan. The line begins 70 kilometers away in Mazar-e-Sharif and leads to the river port at Hairatan. This railroad route can be used to bring weapons and equipment to Uzbekistan and on to Russia, although the cargo will have to be unloaded and reloaded several times en route.
But the president of Tashkent, Islam Karimov, has ruled the country with an iron fist for more than 20 years. The United States had an air base in Uzbekistan until 2005. When Karimov's security forces brutally suppressed an uprising in the city of Andijan, Washington froze its relations with Tashkent and Karimov ordered the air base closed.
Apparently all of this is now forgotten, as the Americans suddenly discover their affection for Uzbekistan. Envoys have been visiting Karimov on an almost weekly basis. US President Barack Obama has had several conversations with the Central Asian leader, and both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghanistan envoy Marc Grossman have been to Tashkent. Clinton promised Karimov that Washington would eliminate trade barriers and, after the meeting, announced that Uzbekistan had made progress on human rights issues.
'Worst of the Worst'
This sort of statement is difficult to reconcile with the truth. The situation remains dramatic, says the American human rights organization Freedom House. It rates Uzbekistan among the "worst of the worst countries" when it comes to the political freedoms of its 28 million citizens, and it argues that the regime there is hardly any better than the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the 2001 US intervention.
Nevertheless, the US Senate hurried to approve new funds for arms purchases by the Uzbeks. The Americans could end up handing over some of their military equipment to Karimov during their withdrawal from Afghanistan, including armored vehicles, small arms, mine detectors, navigation equipment and perhaps even drones.
This makes Russia uneasy. Moscow views Uzbekistan as a particularly loose cannon -- and so does Beijing, as a senior military official in Moscow learned during conversations with his Chinese counterparts. Both countries fear that the situation in Central Asia will deteriorate after the withdrawal of Western troops, and that religious fanatics from Afghanistan and Pakistan will increasingly penetrate into countries like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Although the Americans will circumvent dictator Karimov's realm with their airlift from Afghanistan to Ulyanov, they will still have to ship some of their equipment through Uzbekistan. Flights are expensive and can only carry a limited amount of cargo. For example, Germany's Bundeswehr pays 420,000 for each flight on Antonov transport aircraft from the eastern German city of Leipzig, where they are stationed, to Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan.
Shipping Toilet Paper
And in regard to Ulyanovsk, the Americans still have many details to iron out with Moscow. The Kremlin is determined to avoid giving the public the impression that it is opening the door to the Americans and NATO by letting them use the base.
When the plans for the Ulyanovsk hub became known, graffiti began appearing in the streets of the city, warning: "No NATO base in Ulyanovsk!" The Communist Party leadership is characterizing the plans as an "occupation," and criticism has also been voiced on the Internet. The Russian defense minister has been maligned as a "Number One Traitor," because he allegedly agreed to allow NATO to operate deep within the country.
After having fueled the hysteria against NATO for years, the Kremlin is now trying to dampen the uproar. The NATO base in Ulyanovsk is "in the interest of Russia's military security," Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov insisted. And Deputy Premier Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of the defense industry, completely downplayed the problem, saying: "I don't think that the transit of NATO toilet paper through Russia can be considered the betrayal of the fatherland."
The Russians are now trying to give the NATO airlift a commercial veneer. The Transportation Ministry -- not the Defense Ministry -- will be formally in charge of the Ulyanovsk operation. But this transit route isn't optimal for the Americans, either. "In an ideal world, I would like to be less dependent on Russia," said Andrew Kuchins of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in a recent interview with the New York Times. "But what are our options with getting things into or out of Afghanistan?"
Taking the Weapons Home
So far, only the Bundeswehr seems unmoved by the controversy. It signed its own transit agreement with the Russians early on, and it's working "extremely well," says Brigadier General Reiner Schwalb, the German defense attaché in Moscow. The Germans completed about 270 flights through Russia last year. Troops are flown on Airbus aircraft to Termez in Uzbekistan, while two German transport squadrons bring military equipment to Mazar-e-Sharif on Transall aircraft, with a stop in the Russian city of Krasnodar.
The Germans are even permitted to transport weapons to Russia, which is something the Americans have not been allowed to do yet, not even through Ulyanovsk. But even the Russians don't want to see weapons left behind in Afghanistan or other parts of Central Asia.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Berlin exhibition showcases Afghanistan's other faces
DW 03/04/2012
In 1953, Yvonne von Schweinitz set off from Switzerland for Afghanistan. She took hundreds of pictures that show how rich and multi-faceted the country is. They are currently on show for the first time in Berlin.
People stand, calmly observing, as if frozen in time. Even the children are calm as they stare at a foreigner, a blonde woman in a summer dress, who has made her way into their midst to photograph the square in front of the superb fortress in Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.
Surprised faces, a self-confident little boy, a donkey standing behind a man and a bicycle in the background - all caught on a photograph taken by Yvonne von Schweinitz over 50 years ago.
The young woman started her journey in Zurich in a comfortable station wagon accompanied by the Swiss photographer Hans v. Meiss-Teufen and a Rolleiflex, a Leica M3 and a Polaroid.
They spent seven months travelling through Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Iran and finally Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On show for the first time
Yvonne von Schweinitz's photos were never exhibited before. Upon her return, they were stored in the archive of photographer Willy Prager with whom she had worked during her studies in Freiburg/Breisgau.
After his death, they became part of his photo collection at the state archives of Baden-Württemberg.
And then fate came into play. One of von Schweinitz's cousins told journalist and curator Claus Friede about the photos. His curiosity was aroused and he managed to get access to the archive where he found hundreds of photos and negatives, which had been carefully cataloged by country and stored in thick brown envelopes.
Friede and his colleague Mathias von Marcard were impressed with von Schweinitz's pictures. It showed a different Afghanistan - not one that was not dominated by war, troops and attacks, but a peaceful one with a vast richness and variety in culture.
At the time of Schweinitz's trip, it was easier to access remote regions - travelling on dirt roads and camping out in the open air was safe. The people she came across were open and curious. She communicated with them in smatterings of the local language, improvising with sign language. And she photographed them.
Depicting richness and variety
Her pictures capture proud nomads, men selling water in the streets of Kabul, scribes, veiled women, swordsmen, markets, people drinking tea, cemeteries, areas for washing horses and carts, ruins, the desert, vineyards and giant statues carved into a cliff - the Buddhas of Bamiyan - that would be destroyed by the Taliban almost 50 years later.
They show how multi-faceted Afghanistan is with its different peoples, traditions, customs, monuments, cities and villages.
They also capture the scars left on the country throughout its turbulent history - traces of wars, conquerors and earthquakes - and relics left behind by various occupiers and traders passing through such as Indian musical instruments, a Russian samovar and a Singer sewing machine.
There are pictures too of the Kajaki Dam - an early example of development aid - that helps provide water to a large stretch of desert.
In the end, the viewer gets an impression of how rich and varied Afghanistan is - a distant cry from the images that have now dominated the news for years.
The Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus is presenting some 120 photos in their "Yvonne von Schweinitz: Faces of Afghanistan" exhibition that is on in Berlin until the end of May.
Author: Silke Bartlick / act Editor: Sarah Berning
Four Afghan Police Poisoned and Shot Dead
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Four Afghan Police and two civilians were shot dead inside a police checkpoint in southern Helmand province after being poisoned by their colleagues, local officials said.
A group of the Taliban insurgents attacked the checkpoint and killed the six men in Nahr-e Siraj district, said a police official.
At least two other policemen who were wounded are in critical condition.
Three policemen, who are suspected to behind the poisoning and the plot, went missing.
Local officials have launched an investigation into the incident, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, Daud Ahmadi.
It's the second incident in a week that Afghan police personnel are turning their guns against their colleagues or plotting to kill them.
Nine policemen were killed by their colleague in eastern Paktika province earlier this week.
A day earlier, Nato said 16 international troops have been killed in attacks by their Afghan counterparts since January.
Afghan Senators Accuse Ahmadinejad of Interference
Iranian president uses regional summit to demand immediate NATO withdrawal.
IWPR By Mina Habib 3 Apr 12
Afghanistan - Afghan senators have accused Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of interfering in their country’s affairs, after he called on NATO to withdraw troops immediately and fund economic reconstruction instead.
Ahmadinejad made the remarks on March 26 during a regional conference on economic cooperation with Afghanistan, held in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe.
“The times of imperialism have long since passed,” he said, according to AFP news agency, warning that “those who do not learn from the mistakes of history will be punished”.
Ahmadinejad said NATO must end its “occupation” and instead allocate 25 per cent of its annual budget – or five per cent of member states’ annual defence spending – on rebuilding Afghanistan’s economy over the next decade.
For its part, he said, Iran would offer technical and economic assistance to Kabul, including investment, healthcare and infrastructure projects, Reuters news agency reported.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai, his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari and Imomali Rahmon of Tajikistan also attended the conference, as did a United States delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, who walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech.
The Iranian leader’s outspoken comments received a frosty reception at theMeshrano Jirga, or upper house of parliament, inKabul.
The senate’s 40-member Reform and Justice Group said the remarks were dangerous and irresponsible.
“Iran wants to fuel war in this country once again and reduce it to ruins,” the senators said in a statement.
They now plan to issue a formal request to Iranian officials to refrain from commenting on Afghanistan’s domestic affairs.
Amin Farjad, a counsellor at the Iranian embassy in Kabul, said Ahmadinejad’s comments should not be viewed as foreign meddling, and that he was entitled to air his opinions.
“It is true that on matters like the US and NATO presence, the main decision makers are the people of Afghanistan and their representatives. However, others have a right to comment,” Farjad told IWPR.
The international troop presence is a worry to Iran and the rest of the region, he said, adding, “We cannot remain indifferent to this presence because it poses security threats.”
As evidence, Farjad cited a US surveillance drone captured by the Iranian military in December 2011.
Tehransaid at the time that it hijacked the unmanned plane’s electronics and steered it to the ground after it flew over 200 kilometres into Iranian airspace, according to the BBC.
USofficials said the drone was monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme, and crashed after a malfunction.
Afghan political analyst Wahid Mozhda told IWPR that Ahmadinejad’s speech was probably intended for domestic consumption, to demonstrate to hardliners that he was taking a strong line.
The president “attacks the US at every opportunity, thereby attempting to maintain his popularity among Iranians, particularly the clergy,” Mozhda said.
Ahmadinejad has denounced the occupation and called for the withdrawal of US troops on several occasions.
For their part, NATO officials have accused Iran of providing weapons to the Taleban, an allegation Tehran denies.
Officials at Karzai’s office declined to discuss Ahmadinejad’s latest speech.
Mozhda believes Karzai may be reserving comment because he is wary of provoking Iran into open support for resistance to his government in western Afghanistan, where the two countries share a border nearly 1,000 km long.
US officials may share this concern, Mozhda added.
“The Americans, too, agree with Hamid Karzai’s soft policy on Iran because they do not want tensions to expand,” he said.
Some Afghan analysts believe Iran is already heavily involved in a proxy struggle against the US in Afghanistan. Iranian-US ties have remained severed since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and tensions are rising over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria claimed Iran was providing significant support to the Taleban and allied groups and had spies at high levels of government and parliament.
“This front has been established and is effectively in operation,” he added.
Oria said that despite Ahmadinejad’s comments, Iran may be happy to see NATO troops bogged down in Afghanistan where they continue to be worn down by insurgents.
On the streets of Kabul, some accused Ahmadinejad of undermining Afghan sovereignty, while others shared his concern about foreign troops.
University student Nurullah said the Iranian leader had no right to weigh in on Afghan affairs.
“We are an independent country with our own president. We can tell the Americans and NATO whatever we want to on our own,” he said.
Nurullah said Karzai was unable to stand up to Ahmadinejad because he had accepted Iranian funding.
The Afghan president admitted in October 2010 that his chief of staff collected “bags of money” containing hundreds of thousands of euros from the Iranian government each year, according to The Guardian. Karzai told a press conference that the money was used to pay his office expenses, and that he was grateful for the support.
Hussein Ali, a construction worker, told IWPR that if Iran really cared about Afghanistan, it should treat the Afghan refugees it hosts better, and stop blocking fuel supplies during the winter.
Others, however, believe Iran’s criticism of the NATO presence is valid.
Masuma, a schoolteacher, said US troops had killed large numbers of Afghan civilians over the past decade, including the 17 shot dead by an American soldier in Kandahar province on March 11.
“Iranians, Americans and Pakistanis are all the same to us,” she said. “None of them has ever refrained from oppressing the Afghans.”
Mina Habib is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com