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The 5 al-Qaida leaders most wanted by US
By The Associated Press
On May 2, 2011, Navy SEALs shot and killed al-Qaida leader and Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was a raid made especially daring by the fact that there was only a 50-50 chance the terrorist leader was there. After his death, these are five of the top al-Qaida leaders who pose a clear and continuing threat of an attack within the U.S., according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorist officials.
Ayman al-Zawahri — Egyptian cleric Ayman al-Zawahri took over the organization, after Osama bin Laden's killing last year by Navy SEALs. Presumed hiding in Pakistan, Zawahri has released a near-record number of propaganda videos since the bin Laden raid, exhorting followers to violence.
Abu Yahia al-Libi — The Libyan militant, as his name implies, is now the group's de facto No. 2 moving up a notch in al-Qaida hierarchy after the bin Laden raid. A key al-Qaida propagandist whose video appearances outnumber leader Zawahri, he escaped a high-security U.S. prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2005.
Mullah Mohammed Omar — Leader of the Taliban, Afghan Mullah Omar has sheltered al-Qaida during the Taliban rule and since. Thought to be hiding in Quetta, Pakistan, Omar continues to command the militant forces who work together with al-Qaida, responsible for killing some 1,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2001.
Nasser al-Wahishi — Once Osama bin Laden's aide-de-camp, Wahishi commands Yemeni affiliate al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the group U.S. counterterrorist officials warn is most capable of launching an attack on U.S. soil. AQAP has established a de facto safe haven in southern Yemen, beating back Yemeni forces that have been consumed with fighting a tribal and political revolt in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri — Chief bombmaker for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, responsible for building the underwear bomb used to try to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas 2009 and the printer-cartridge bombs intercepted in U.S.-bound cargo planes a year later. U.S. intelligence officials say he has resurfaced recently in Yemen, after months in hiding following the death by drone strike of American-born firebrand AQAP cleric Anwar al-Awlaki last fall.
Bin Laden files show al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in close contact
Blow to Afghan peace hopes as documents reveal Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Omar discussed joint operations against Nato
Guardian.co.uk By Jason Burke Sunday 29 April 2012
Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.
The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.
They indicate a "very considerable degree of ideological convergence", a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.
The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.
One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.
Western intelligence officials estimate that there are less than 100 al-Qaida-linked fighters in Afghanistan, and last year the United Nations split its sanctions list to separate the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Both David Cameron and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton have said that some kind of political settlement involving the Taliban is key to the stability of Afghanistan once most western troops have withdrawn by 2014.
Some communications in the documents date back several years but others are said to be from only weeks before the raid on 2 May last year in which Bin Laden died.
"Questions and issues come up. They don't see eye to eye on everything but it's clear they understand they have an interest in co-operating [on attacks against Nato, Afghan government and Pakistani targets]," the source said. "Of those engaged in the conversation, two [Zawahiri and Omar] are still alive today and there is no reason to believe that either has substantially changed his views in the last year."
Zawahiri became leader of al-Qaida following Bin Laden's death.
The range of the al-Qaida senior leadership's interlocutors revealed by the documents has also surprised investigators, the source said.
Bin Laden appears to have been in direct or indirect communication with Nigerian-based militant group Boko Haram as well as many other militant outfits. As with the Taliban, the question of whether Boko Haram, which has been responsible for a series of suicide attacks and bombings in the last year, is in touch with al-Qaida or one of its affiliates has been hotly debated by analysts.
But documents in the cache show that leaders of the Nigerian group had been in contact with top levels of al-Qaida in the past 18 months – confirming claims made to the Guardian in January by a senior Boko Haram figure.
Other papers in the haul are now likely to be declassified. They include memos apparently dictated by Bin Laden urging followers to avoid indiscriminate attacks which kill Muslims and pondering a rebranding of al-Qaida under a new name.
The documents include memos stating broad strategic aims but little "hands-on" planning, according to sources.
Despite the correspondence with Omar and other groups, Bin Laden still appears to have been largely out of touch with the day to day working of his organisation. His communications were written on a computer in the compound in Abbottabad where he lived, loaded on to memory sticks and then sent from distant internet cafes by a courier. It was this courier who eventually led the CIA to the al-Qaida chief.
A reliable account of Bin Laden's life on the run can now be established, pieced together from the testimony, viewed by the Guardian, of one of Bin Laden's wives, the recollections of the ISI officers who interviewed her compiled by retired Pakistani army brigadier Shaukat Qadir, statements of militants detained by the US published by WikiLeaks and interviews with former US officials.
Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in November 2001, Bin Laden's wives and children fled Afghanistan , travelling first to Karachi, the vast Pakistani port city, where they spent several months. Bin Laden himself headed north into the remote Afghan province of Kunar after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. According to ISI officials quoted by Qadir, a senior militant detained by the ISI in 2006 told interrogators that Bin Laden had met Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan insurgent leader, in Kunar at this time. ISI officials also maintain that Khaled Sheikh Mohamed told them that the al-Qaida chief was there.
Former American officials this weekend told the Guardian that there was considerable intelligence indicating that Bin Laden was in eastern Afghanistan and making occasional journeys across the border into Pakistan at this time.
By the summer of 2004, Bin Laden appears to have moved into Pakistan permanently. According to the testimony of his youngest, Yemeni-born wife, she and her two children were reunited with her husband in a house in a remote district of the rugged Swat valley, in northwest Pakistan, in March 2004, before moving to another safe house in a small town called Haripur, 20 miles from Abbottabad, that autumn. In early summer 2005 the family then moved into the newly constructed compound where they would spend the next six years. They were joined there by Bin Laden's second wife and her three children.
According to ISI officers interviewed by Qadir, the location had been scouted a year previously by senior militant Abu Farraj al-Libbi who then travelled to Swat to get Bin Laden's approval for the move. The al-Qaida chief insisted that the land for the house be bought, not rented, and sketched out a design for the construction – currently in the possession of the ISI.
The al-Qaida leader himself evaded detection while on the move by pretending to be an ailing Pashtun former militant, still on Pakistan's wanted list, who hoped to return home to die, Qadir has written.
Western security officials believe Bin Laden's oldest wife joined him in Abbottabad after being released in deal between Iranian authorities and a Pakistani militant group holding an Iranian diplomat.
By November 2010, the crucial courier had been identified and located. He then led the hunters to the Abbottabad house.
Osama Bin Laden, One Year Later: The Man and the Movement
By NEWS ANALYSIS RICHARD CLARKE | ABC News
President Barack Obama took to a White House podium a year ago Tuesday to tell the world that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid. A year later, former White House counter-terrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke looks at what role bin Laden really played and how the world has changed since his death.
Appearing on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan reaffirmed the Obama Administration's intent to destroy al Qaeda. It was at once a muscular declaration of an aggressive policy and simultaneously an admission that al Qaeda is not dead yet. Asked by George Stephanopoulos if the death of Osama bin Laden seemed as important now one year after his death as it had at the time, Brennan quickly said that the al Qaeda leader's demise was very significant, but he then used the word "symbolic" to describe the importance.
What then are we to think about al Qaeda and its late leader on the one year anniversary of his demise?
Historians once debated the relative importance of the "great man" theory of events compared to the "inevitable forces" or trends as the shapers of history. With bin Laden and al Qaeda we see the importance of both.
Prior to the unlikely founder of al Qaeda, no man had ever been able to unite Muslims from so many regions into a revolutionary movement that combined ideology, organization, funding, military training, and direct action. He did so without being a government official and without the overt assistance of any government (except the Taliban regime which ran much of Afghanistan). Bin Laden facilitated groups as far flung as Indonesia and the Philippines in the Pacific and Morocco and Libya in North Africa. Far more than just a symbol, he was an administrator, intent on insuring that the nuts and bolts of terrorism were provided to widely dispersed and semi-autonomous franchises.
By the time of his death, bin Laden may have had little control over the far flung affiliates of al Qaeda.
We can think of him in his last few years as a CEO of a multinational organization, trying to operate without the Internet or telephones, watching as members of his team of executives were picked off one after another. His organization, which had pioneered the use of the Internet and mobile communications to operate a terror network, now knew that if its leaders used that modern technology, it could result in death from the buzzing, flying killer robots from America.
Bin Laden had been reduced to a man unable to leave his house, pulling on organizational levers that appear to have been connected to little or nothing. Documents recovered from his house reveal his frustration at America's success in killing the leaders of his core organization, the team that U.S. counter-terrorism experts called Al Qaeda Central.
One man, however, is not responsible for the millions of people who supported the violent Sunni Islamist extremists that spread across dozens of nations. They were the outgrowth of bad government, of regimes unwilling to share power with their people, or incapable of solving grinding socio-economic problems. Violent Islamist extremists offered the only readily available alternative, a dream of a theocracy in which the application of a strict version of Sunni Islam would somehow solve the problems created by globalism, over-population, and under-education. With or without bin Laden and his al Qaeda, many frustrated Muslims would have turned to the so-called religious men with bombs and guns.
What bin Ladin added to the mix, in addition to his organizational skills, was the psychological ploy of projection.
He encouraged his followers to project their anger about their condition on to an external force, America. Calling America "the Far Enemy," he reasoned that the oppressive, local regimes could not be defeated until the Far Enemy was driven from the region. When his terrorist attack teams inflicted pain on America, their actions not only proved that America was weaker than had been thought, but the attacks also galvanized supporters into thinking that they too could attack the governments they feared.
In the process of such attacks, al Qaeda went from being a pseudo-religious organization meant to advance theocracies to a killing machine. Most of the people its cells killed were Muslims. Most Muslims eventually turned away in disgust or horror. Later, many in the Muslim world turned their attention on the "Near Enemy," their own sclerotic governments, toppling four regimes and extracting concessions from many more in the wave of uprisings we call The Arab Spring. Al Qaeda had almost no role in the "Arab Spring," leaving its isolated leadership to wonder how they could remain relevant.
That narrative, however, is incomplete. The al Qaeda franchises are still a major factor. Groups calling themselves al Qaeda or claiming affiliation with that movement have large, armed formations in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, and in the Magreb and the Sahel regions of Africa. They are conducting military-styled attacks in some countries and waves of bombings in others. They are participating in the "Arab Spring" fighting in Libya and Syria.
For them, bin Laden is still a motivating hero. What is not yet clear is how many of them are motivated by bin Laden's call to attack the Far Enemy. Some of them still are.
In Bin Laden's Wake, The Hunt for Al Qaeda Mastermind
A year after the Abbottabad raid, al Qaeda's mastermind is still loose. Bin Laden's death has only made the hunt harder.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Daniel Klaidman Apr 30, 2012
A year after the death of Osama bin Laden, American special operators are training their sights on his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former Egyptian Army surgeon widely regarded as the mastermind of major attacks against Americans and other targets. And forces loyal to Zawahiri, who affectionately call him “Glasses” because of his trademark oversize spectacles, are determined to guard their leader.
Zawahiri’s safety was the main subject of conversation when several senior al Qaeda operatives and a handful of other militants sat down for a dinner meeting in North Waziristan six months ago, according to a well-placed Taliban source. The host of the dinner, from a prominent Taliban family, had a sheep slaughtered in honor of his Arab guests. Over a meal of mutton kebabs and pilau, the men expressed concerns about Zawahiri’s security in light of bin Laden’s bloody end. They said Zawahiri’s handlers and tribal hosts had strongly advised him “to move to a new place,” to stop using electronic devices, to limit his exposure by issuing fewer audio and video propaganda tapes, and to exercise extreme caution in dealing with couriers.
“We are hoping he can avoid being captured by the U.S. for at least 10 more years,” the source says. One of the al Qaeda operatives at the dinner, which took place outside the town of Miran Shah, asked if the Afghan Taliban would consider harboring Zawahiri if he decided to hide in Afghanistan. According to the Taliban source, the Afghan was noncommittal.
Taliban and al Qaeda operatives who have met Zawahiri say he is highly respected in militant circles, both as a thinker and a doer. He’s not nearly as charismatic as bin Laden, but in some ways, he’s more important. Bin Laden was the face of terror, but Zawahiri is the mind: an important ideologue as well as an operational commander.
He’s under increasing pressure now to carry out a fresh act of headline-grabbing mayhem. “Zawahiri needs to terrorize in order to really cement his position as bin Laden’s long-term successor,” says Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who has advised the Obama administration on counterterror policy. Yet the new al Qaeda chief faces a dilemma: the more involved he gets in planning and propaganda, the more exposed he becomes. And he can’t conduct terror operations if he’s dead, much less serve as a symbol of al Qaeda resilience.
American intelligence on him is sketchy; the last time U.S. agents are known to have had actionable intelligence on his whereabouts was in January 2006, when they learned that he had been invited to an Islamic holiday dinner in a mud-walled compound on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. A Predator drone fired a salvo of Hellfire missiles at the compound, killing some 18 people, including several al Qaeda militants. But Zawahiri was not among them.
“There are indicators that some elements of the Pakistani government may be protecting Zawahiri,” says a U.S. intel official who did not want to be named discussing sensitive information. “We have reports that he’s been hanging out in Karachi for brief periods, and we just don’t think he’s going to be doing that without a lot of people knowing about it.”
At the moment, it would be politically fraught, however, for American special operators and CIA agents to carry out an attack even in the remote tribal areas, much less in a city. Pakistan’s political and military leaders, humiliated and furious that Washington kept them in the dark about the bin Laden raid and other missions, have forbidden the United States from conducting drone strikes in their territory. American forces are respecting Pakistani wishes—for now—in an effort to “lower the temperature,” says one senior administration official. But that forbearance won’t last long. Eventually, American officials tell Newsweek, offensive drone operations will restart, with or without Pakistan’s approval.
The militants who gathered for dinner near Miran Shah were still mourning bin Laden’s death at the time. They recalled the care he had taken to protect himself. Bin Laden’s trusted aide and courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, had devised ingenious ways to move his leader from one safe house to another in Pakistan. He had hidden bin Laden inside a large box that was fitted at the bottom of Pakistan’s brightly colored transport trucks. The box would be stuffed under cargoes of cement, wheat flour and rice sacks, or even under a noisy collection of goats, sheep, or chickens.
The men blamed the courier, a Pakistani Pashtun from the tribal areas who had lived in Kuwait for a time, for bin Laden’s death. “A Qaeda investigation showed that al-Kuwaiti’s carelessness provided the clues for our enemies to discover the sheik’s house,” says the Taliban operative. “He was not a traitor, but his mistakes led to the great sheik’s death.” The blunders included driving the same car every time he went to the compound inside the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad and using a cellphone that could be monitored.
The militants at the dinner didn’t want Zawahiri to make similar mistakes. They lamented the heavy casualties that armed drones had inflicted on al Qaeda’s hierarchy. All of them had heard that bin Laden had become increasingly depressed and detached as the death toll of his lieutenants mounted. “The sheik’s last days were painful, as he was hearing bad news all the time about the loss of the remaining Qaeda leaders,” the source says. “The sheik’s last year was not a good one.”
Zawahiri is more connected to day-to-day operations. He was involved, for instance, in the 2005 bombing of the London Underground and in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. It seems he also played a role in deploying a Jordanian double agent to bomb a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009. The CIA operatives who were killed believed they were about to receive key intelligence on Zawahiri’s whereabouts. “That attack gave a big boost to Zawahiri’s credentials as a terror planner,” says Riedel.
Zawahiri can take heart from the fact that as pressure has grown on al Qaeda’s central command, affiliated groups have sprung up around the globe: in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa, among other places. But like bin Laden before him, Zawahiri is now an important symbol—of either the success or failure of the global jihad.
It’ll be much easier to mount an effective operation against Zawahiri and his close circle of aides if the United States has the support—explicit or otherwise—of Pakistan. Though several top al Qaeda figures have been killed or captured in Pakistani cities, Zawahiri may still be living in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. Drones can learn a lot from the sky, but the region is large, and human intelligence is vital. The Pakistanis could help get that, but cooperation requires trust—on both sides.
There is none. “This time it’s the lowest it has ever gone,” says retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former ambassador to Washington. He blames both sides. “We have failed at convincing America that we are with you, that we want to get rid of these militants,” says Durrani. Yet Pakistan believes the United States does not respect the country’s sovereignty and treats it like a vassal state.
The distrust only got worse after the bin Laden raid. President Obama, fearing a leak, ordered that Pakistan be kept in the dark. The United States, in fact, expected that the Navy SEALs would bring back evidence that Pakistani intelligence was cooperating with al Qaeda. Newsweek has learned that shortly after the SEALs stormed bin Laden’s hideout, federal prosecutors were laying the groundwork to issue sealed indictments against members of the Pakistani government or anyone else they believed had aided bin Laden. The charge, according to two law-enforcement sources, would have been “harboring a fugitive terrorist.”
The SEALs carted away boxes of computers, hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, and thousands of documents. It was the greatest intel haul on al Qaeda’s operations and habits since 9/11: 3.4 terabytes of information, according to an intelligence source, including a personal journal by bin Laden, outlines for aspirational plots, cellphone numbers, and other contact information for al Qaeda allies. No smoking gun on Pakistani complicity was found, however, and no indictments were returned.
It’s not just the bin Laden raid that exacerbated ties. In January 2011 CIA contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two alleged Pakistani robbers on a Lahore street. Then in November, U.S. warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in an airstrike along the Afghan border. A U.S. investigation concluded that mistakes by both sides contributed to the deaths. The Pakistani military angrily rejected that conclusion, saying the attack was unprovoked and deliberate.
Pakistan retaliated by closing down the vital supply line for NATO cargo moving to Afghanistan. It also expelled American personnel and drone aircraft from a Pakistani airbase. Most Pakistanis see the drone operations as a violation of sovereignty, and they decry the civilian casualties that sometimes result. Not just ordinary Pakistanis but also intelligence and counterterror agents often view the United States as an enemy. “Even right now we are collecting data on each American and each Pakistani working with the U.S. embassy and everyone they are in touch with,” says a Pakistani counterterror officer who declined to be quoted by name.
Last week talks began between the United States and Pakistan to try to “reset” the relationship. The drone issue is the toughest challenge. Even the U.S. government is divided over what the American position should be. Some would like to appease Pakistan by restricting the circle of possible targets for the drones and to give the Pakistanis a greater sense of involvement and control over what happens in their territory. Others say no way: too often in the past, Pakistan’s ISI spy service had tipped off targets before any missiles were fired. During one period in 2007, there were seven consecutive drone attacks in which the targets managed to slip away, according to a former Obama administration official who was briefed on the matter by the CIA.
U.S. officials have repeatedly confronted their Pakistani counterparts with evidence of ISI double-dealing, but that has made little difference. On one occasion the U.S. provided surveillance imagery of Pakistani soldiers waving arms shipments for the Haqqani faction of the Taliban across the border into Afghanistan. In the weeks after the raid on bin Laden, the U.S. military twice provided Pakistan with intelligence on bomb-making factories in its territory. Both times, the militants escaped before the weapons facilities could be attacked. “The reality is that Pakistan remains a permissive environment for terrorism—even though al Qaeda has killed thousands of Pakistanis,” says a U.S. official.
If the U.S. gets Zawahiri in its sights, it won’t want to risk compromising an operation to take him out. The al Qaeda leader’s safest bet might be to hide as deep inside Pakistani territory as he can get. Riedel believes he’s probably already there. “I think the CIA would be looking for something that looks an awful lot like Abbottabad,” he says. “A safe house in an urban area near a military base. That’s been the signature of almost all of the senior Qaeda operatives who have been killed or captured.”
The problem for Zawahiri, however, is that “the CIA has demonstrated that it can break the code,” says Riedel. “Bin Laden actually practiced pretty good operational security, but Zawahiri has to take it up a notch. If I were him, I would be worried. I think we’ll find him, and I don’t think it will take 10 years.” Once again, Pakistan may learn about it only after the fact.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and has been covering the region for the magazine the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Klaidman, a former NEWSWEEK managing editor, is writing a book on President Obama and terrorism to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
16 Taliban fighters surrender in eastern Afghan province
ASSADABAD, Afghanistan, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen Taliban militants surrendered to the government and joined the government- backed peace process in Nuristan province 180 km east of Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, spokesman for provincial administration Mohammad Zarin said Monday.
"Sixteen Taliban insurgents under Qari Abdul Matin laid down arms and resumed normal life in Nuristan province on Sunday," Zarin told Xinhua.
The surrender of Matin, a key Taliban commander, and his joining the peace process will help improve security in the mountainous Nuristan province where Taliban insurgents are active, government sources said.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
More than 3,500 Taliban militants have laid down arms and joined the government-backed national reconciliation and peace process over the past year, government officials said. But Taliban outfit dismissed the statement as groundless.
SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption
04/30/2012 12:58 pm The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- Afghan reconstruction efforts remain severely hampered even after nearly $100 billion in spending over the last 10 years, according to a new watchdog report. The most immediate challenge stems from the insistence by Afghanistan's government that the private army of hired guns providing security for ongoing projects be replaced with Afghan locals, who do not appear to be up to the job, the report noted.
The latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (or SIGAR) released on Monday also chronicles how corruption in the country shows no signs of having let up.
The report's most urgent warning concerns the "imminent transition" from private security contractors (PSC) to the state-owned Afghan Public Protection Force.
Steven J. Trent, the acting special inspector general, expressed concerns that as many as 29 major USAID projects costing nearly $1.5 billion are at risk of full or partial termination "if the APPF cannot provide the needed security." About half that amount has already been spent.
And whether it can is very much an open question, Trent wrote. The U.S. embassy, the Afghan government and the U.S.-led military forces agreed a year ago to check the progress of the Afghan Public Protection Force at the 6-, 9-, and 12-month marks.
"The 6-month assessment, completed in September 2011, found that the APPF was not ready to assume any of the essential PSC responsibilities to meet contract requirements -- such as training, equipping, and deploying guard forces," the report pointed out. "[T]he December assessment, which would have been at the 9-month mark, has not yet been made public" and "the deadline for the 12-month assessment has passed."
The SIGAR report also cited a litany of failed anti-corruption efforts, including the following:
•"The Afghan Attorney General’s Office (AGO) continued to avoid prosecuting significant corruption cases this quarter: it did not prosecute any high-level officials at the national or provincial levels."
•The High Office of Oversight for Anti-Corruption's "core functions of combating corruption remained mostly ineffective this quarter, and some have deteriorated."
•The U.S. Department of Justice continued its suspension of training of the Afghan government's Anti-Corruption Unit, with the Department of State, noting that training will resume only if its work "is taken seriously."
•The Afghan government's Major Crimes Task Force "made no progress" in getting the Afghan Attorney General's office to prosecute the public corruption cases it had developed.
•The National Assembly’s legislative committee rejected a draft law to strengthen government audits.
•"A policy aimed at implementing a merit-based hiring system of provincial and deputy-provincial governors has remained stalled since May 2011, when the policy was suspended."
•"The Afghan government’s progress in implementing asset verification for government officials continued to fall short of U.S. expectations."
•"Customs collections are very susceptible to fraud and corruption at all major entry points, and the Afghan government continued to make little progress counteracting the problem."
•And the Afghan government's passport agency "is beset by corruption" with staffers illegally selling passports on the street outside the department.
How to help Afghanistan after the withdrawal
ABC Online By Amin Saikal 30 April 2012
Australia is set to conclude what amounts to a strategic agreement with Afghanistan to define its role in the aftermath of the withdrawal of most its troops by mid-2013 - a year earlier than had originally been planned.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has informed the nation about the early troop withdrawal, but at the same time has promised Australia's long-term supporting role to enable Afghanistan to stand on its own feet.
However, what the Prime Minister has not done is explain what the nature of the strategic agreement will be and how much it will cost. More importantly, how will it be managed and targeted in order to help the Afghan people?
Australia has so far invested much in blood and money in Afghanistan, but by all well-informed accounts its achievements have been limited, as has been the case with the US and its other allies.
Even in relation to Oruzgan province, Australia will ultimately leave its security in the hands of an illiterate, notorious warlord, Matiullah Khan, whom president Hamid Karzai appointed last year as the chief of police of the province and who charges a hefty amount to maintain his position as part of Australia's exit strategy.
On the higher level, the profound weaknesses of the Karzai government is well-documented and the inadequacy of the Afghan security forces to keep the Taliban at bay without Western combat support is widely highlighted by many credible US and European military analysts.
Despite all the upbeat talk on the part of the Australian Government, Afghanistan remains in a dire state.
The Karzai government continues to be feeble, with a great deal of foreign aid ending up in the pockets or bank accounts of individuals and dummy organisations.
Meanwhile, the Taliban and their supporters, including Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI), have increasingly grown confident of final victory in one form or another. In this situation, Australia cannot afford to be too sanguine about signing a strategic agreement with the Karzai government.
This is not to say that Australia should not continue to help the Afghan people to rebuild their lives and country. But it must make sure that its post-2014 role is well pitched and tied to a number of clear goals that can be beneficial to the Afghan people rather than to the industry that Afghanistan has become.
The Afghanistan industry is today a 'milking cow' for a range of interests inside and outside of the country. It has grown to serve the interests of not only the military-industrial complex, but also of many governmental and non-governmental organisations outside this complex, including even some academics and higher educational outlets, who have drawn on the Afghan conflict for self-promotion and glorification without the least concern about the future of the Afghan people.
Australia's future role could prove useful if it is linked to focusing on those areas where it has the capability to make a difference.
The first is to tell the Karzai leadership that there will be no assistance unless it implements serious political and electoral reforms for a clean and credible presidential election which is due at the latest in 2014, without Karzai seeking to prolong his ineffective rule beyond the two constitutional terms that he would have served by then.
The second is to assist with enhancing the processes of judicial reform and fight against corruption, led by Australian-advised but independent Afghan commissions.
The third is to invest heavily in the education sector, with an emphasis on educating the younger Afghan generation. The future of Afghanistan will depend on the management skills and diverse contributions of this generation, which has the potential to be far less amenable to the corruption, nepotism and patronage that has marred the current generation in power.
Provision of a larger number of scholarships to deserving Afghan students to receive education in various fields in Australia would be an important step in the process, provided that the students are bonded to work in Afghanistan for a period of at least four years upon the completion of their study.
The fourth is to help with improving health services. Australia could build dozens of clinics, run at first by Australian specialists and subsequently by Australian-trained Afghans, in relatively safe areas. Many of these clinics should focus on combating trachoma from which many Afghans suffer, especially in Western Afghanistan.
An Australian role short of focusing on these areas will do little to serve the interests of either Afghanistan or Australia. It could be as unproductive as Australia's efforts so far in enabling Afghanistan to transform into a stable and democratic state, which the US and its allies had originally promised.
Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National university. A new edition of his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival is due to be published in June 2012. View his full profile here.
District Mayor of Paktia Killed
TOLOnews.com Monday, 30 April 2012
The mayor of Samkany district in Paktia province was killed on Sunday night after a group of insurgents attacked him on the road, a local official said Monday.
Mayor Haji Mohammad Wazir had left the Zurmat district of Paktia and was travelling to the provincial capital Gardez when the attack happened, provincial spokesman Rohullah Samoon said.
Two of Wazir's bodyguards were wounded in the attack, he said.
Wazir had worked for more than a year as mayor of Samkany, according to Samoon.
No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By The Associated Press
On May 2, 2011, Navy SEALs shot and killed al-Qaida leader and Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was a raid made especially daring by the fact that there was only a 50-50 chance the terrorist leader was there. After his death, these are five of the top al-Qaida leaders who pose a clear and continuing threat of an attack within the U.S., according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorist officials.
Ayman al-Zawahri — Egyptian cleric Ayman al-Zawahri took over the organization, after Osama bin Laden's killing last year by Navy SEALs. Presumed hiding in Pakistan, Zawahri has released a near-record number of propaganda videos since the bin Laden raid, exhorting followers to violence.
Abu Yahia al-Libi — The Libyan militant, as his name implies, is now the group's de facto No. 2 moving up a notch in al-Qaida hierarchy after the bin Laden raid. A key al-Qaida propagandist whose video appearances outnumber leader Zawahri, he escaped a high-security U.S. prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, in 2005.
Mullah Mohammed Omar — Leader of the Taliban, Afghan Mullah Omar has sheltered al-Qaida during the Taliban rule and since. Thought to be hiding in Quetta, Pakistan, Omar continues to command the militant forces who work together with al-Qaida, responsible for killing some 1,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2001.
Nasser al-Wahishi — Once Osama bin Laden's aide-de-camp, Wahishi commands Yemeni affiliate al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the group U.S. counterterrorist officials warn is most capable of launching an attack on U.S. soil. AQAP has established a de facto safe haven in southern Yemen, beating back Yemeni forces that have been consumed with fighting a tribal and political revolt in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri — Chief bombmaker for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, responsible for building the underwear bomb used to try to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner on Christmas 2009 and the printer-cartridge bombs intercepted in U.S.-bound cargo planes a year later. U.S. intelligence officials say he has resurfaced recently in Yemen, after months in hiding following the death by drone strike of American-born firebrand AQAP cleric Anwar al-Awlaki last fall.
Bin Laden files show al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in close contact
Blow to Afghan peace hopes as documents reveal Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Omar discussed joint operations against Nato
Guardian.co.uk By Jason Burke Sunday 29 April 2012
Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.
The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.
They indicate a "very considerable degree of ideological convergence", a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.
The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban – seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda – might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.
One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.
Western intelligence officials estimate that there are less than 100 al-Qaida-linked fighters in Afghanistan, and last year the United Nations split its sanctions list to separate the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Both David Cameron and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton have said that some kind of political settlement involving the Taliban is key to the stability of Afghanistan once most western troops have withdrawn by 2014.
Some communications in the documents date back several years but others are said to be from only weeks before the raid on 2 May last year in which Bin Laden died.
"Questions and issues come up. They don't see eye to eye on everything but it's clear they understand they have an interest in co-operating [on attacks against Nato, Afghan government and Pakistani targets]," the source said. "Of those engaged in the conversation, two [Zawahiri and Omar] are still alive today and there is no reason to believe that either has substantially changed his views in the last year."
Zawahiri became leader of al-Qaida following Bin Laden's death.
The range of the al-Qaida senior leadership's interlocutors revealed by the documents has also surprised investigators, the source said.
Bin Laden appears to have been in direct or indirect communication with Nigerian-based militant group Boko Haram as well as many other militant outfits. As with the Taliban, the question of whether Boko Haram, which has been responsible for a series of suicide attacks and bombings in the last year, is in touch with al-Qaida or one of its affiliates has been hotly debated by analysts.
But documents in the cache show that leaders of the Nigerian group had been in contact with top levels of al-Qaida in the past 18 months – confirming claims made to the Guardian in January by a senior Boko Haram figure.
Other papers in the haul are now likely to be declassified. They include memos apparently dictated by Bin Laden urging followers to avoid indiscriminate attacks which kill Muslims and pondering a rebranding of al-Qaida under a new name.
The documents include memos stating broad strategic aims but little "hands-on" planning, according to sources.
Despite the correspondence with Omar and other groups, Bin Laden still appears to have been largely out of touch with the day to day working of his organisation. His communications were written on a computer in the compound in Abbottabad where he lived, loaded on to memory sticks and then sent from distant internet cafes by a courier. It was this courier who eventually led the CIA to the al-Qaida chief.
A reliable account of Bin Laden's life on the run can now be established, pieced together from the testimony, viewed by the Guardian, of one of Bin Laden's wives, the recollections of the ISI officers who interviewed her compiled by retired Pakistani army brigadier Shaukat Qadir, statements of militants detained by the US published by WikiLeaks and interviews with former US officials.
Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in November 2001, Bin Laden's wives and children fled Afghanistan , travelling first to Karachi, the vast Pakistani port city, where they spent several months. Bin Laden himself headed north into the remote Afghan province of Kunar after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. According to ISI officials quoted by Qadir, a senior militant detained by the ISI in 2006 told interrogators that Bin Laden had met Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan insurgent leader, in Kunar at this time. ISI officials also maintain that Khaled Sheikh Mohamed told them that the al-Qaida chief was there.
Former American officials this weekend told the Guardian that there was considerable intelligence indicating that Bin Laden was in eastern Afghanistan and making occasional journeys across the border into Pakistan at this time.
By the summer of 2004, Bin Laden appears to have moved into Pakistan permanently. According to the testimony of his youngest, Yemeni-born wife, she and her two children were reunited with her husband in a house in a remote district of the rugged Swat valley, in northwest Pakistan, in March 2004, before moving to another safe house in a small town called Haripur, 20 miles from Abbottabad, that autumn. In early summer 2005 the family then moved into the newly constructed compound where they would spend the next six years. They were joined there by Bin Laden's second wife and her three children.
According to ISI officers interviewed by Qadir, the location had been scouted a year previously by senior militant Abu Farraj al-Libbi who then travelled to Swat to get Bin Laden's approval for the move. The al-Qaida chief insisted that the land for the house be bought, not rented, and sketched out a design for the construction – currently in the possession of the ISI.
The al-Qaida leader himself evaded detection while on the move by pretending to be an ailing Pashtun former militant, still on Pakistan's wanted list, who hoped to return home to die, Qadir has written.
Western security officials believe Bin Laden's oldest wife joined him in Abbottabad after being released in deal between Iranian authorities and a Pakistani militant group holding an Iranian diplomat.
By November 2010, the crucial courier had been identified and located. He then led the hunters to the Abbottabad house.
Osama Bin Laden, One Year Later: The Man and the Movement
By NEWS ANALYSIS RICHARD CLARKE | ABC News
President Barack Obama took to a White House podium a year ago Tuesday to tell the world that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in a U.S. Navy SEAL raid. A year later, former White House counter-terrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke looks at what role bin Laden really played and how the world has changed since his death.
Appearing on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan reaffirmed the Obama Administration's intent to destroy al Qaeda. It was at once a muscular declaration of an aggressive policy and simultaneously an admission that al Qaeda is not dead yet. Asked by George Stephanopoulos if the death of Osama bin Laden seemed as important now one year after his death as it had at the time, Brennan quickly said that the al Qaeda leader's demise was very significant, but he then used the word "symbolic" to describe the importance.
What then are we to think about al Qaeda and its late leader on the one year anniversary of his demise?
Historians once debated the relative importance of the "great man" theory of events compared to the "inevitable forces" or trends as the shapers of history. With bin Laden and al Qaeda we see the importance of both.
Prior to the unlikely founder of al Qaeda, no man had ever been able to unite Muslims from so many regions into a revolutionary movement that combined ideology, organization, funding, military training, and direct action. He did so without being a government official and without the overt assistance of any government (except the Taliban regime which ran much of Afghanistan). Bin Laden facilitated groups as far flung as Indonesia and the Philippines in the Pacific and Morocco and Libya in North Africa. Far more than just a symbol, he was an administrator, intent on insuring that the nuts and bolts of terrorism were provided to widely dispersed and semi-autonomous franchises.
By the time of his death, bin Laden may have had little control over the far flung affiliates of al Qaeda.
We can think of him in his last few years as a CEO of a multinational organization, trying to operate without the Internet or telephones, watching as members of his team of executives were picked off one after another. His organization, which had pioneered the use of the Internet and mobile communications to operate a terror network, now knew that if its leaders used that modern technology, it could result in death from the buzzing, flying killer robots from America.
Bin Laden had been reduced to a man unable to leave his house, pulling on organizational levers that appear to have been connected to little or nothing. Documents recovered from his house reveal his frustration at America's success in killing the leaders of his core organization, the team that U.S. counter-terrorism experts called Al Qaeda Central.
One man, however, is not responsible for the millions of people who supported the violent Sunni Islamist extremists that spread across dozens of nations. They were the outgrowth of bad government, of regimes unwilling to share power with their people, or incapable of solving grinding socio-economic problems. Violent Islamist extremists offered the only readily available alternative, a dream of a theocracy in which the application of a strict version of Sunni Islam would somehow solve the problems created by globalism, over-population, and under-education. With or without bin Laden and his al Qaeda, many frustrated Muslims would have turned to the so-called religious men with bombs and guns.
What bin Ladin added to the mix, in addition to his organizational skills, was the psychological ploy of projection.
He encouraged his followers to project their anger about their condition on to an external force, America. Calling America "the Far Enemy," he reasoned that the oppressive, local regimes could not be defeated until the Far Enemy was driven from the region. When his terrorist attack teams inflicted pain on America, their actions not only proved that America was weaker than had been thought, but the attacks also galvanized supporters into thinking that they too could attack the governments they feared.
In the process of such attacks, al Qaeda went from being a pseudo-religious organization meant to advance theocracies to a killing machine. Most of the people its cells killed were Muslims. Most Muslims eventually turned away in disgust or horror. Later, many in the Muslim world turned their attention on the "Near Enemy," their own sclerotic governments, toppling four regimes and extracting concessions from many more in the wave of uprisings we call The Arab Spring. Al Qaeda had almost no role in the "Arab Spring," leaving its isolated leadership to wonder how they could remain relevant.
That narrative, however, is incomplete. The al Qaeda franchises are still a major factor. Groups calling themselves al Qaeda or claiming affiliation with that movement have large, armed formations in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, and in the Magreb and the Sahel regions of Africa. They are conducting military-styled attacks in some countries and waves of bombings in others. They are participating in the "Arab Spring" fighting in Libya and Syria.
For them, bin Laden is still a motivating hero. What is not yet clear is how many of them are motivated by bin Laden's call to attack the Far Enemy. Some of them still are.
In Bin Laden's Wake, The Hunt for Al Qaeda Mastermind
A year after the Abbottabad raid, al Qaeda's mastermind is still loose. Bin Laden's death has only made the hunt harder.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Daniel Klaidman Apr 30, 2012
A year after the death of Osama bin Laden, American special operators are training their sights on his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former Egyptian Army surgeon widely regarded as the mastermind of major attacks against Americans and other targets. And forces loyal to Zawahiri, who affectionately call him “Glasses” because of his trademark oversize spectacles, are determined to guard their leader.
Zawahiri’s safety was the main subject of conversation when several senior al Qaeda operatives and a handful of other militants sat down for a dinner meeting in North Waziristan six months ago, according to a well-placed Taliban source. The host of the dinner, from a prominent Taliban family, had a sheep slaughtered in honor of his Arab guests. Over a meal of mutton kebabs and pilau, the men expressed concerns about Zawahiri’s security in light of bin Laden’s bloody end. They said Zawahiri’s handlers and tribal hosts had strongly advised him “to move to a new place,” to stop using electronic devices, to limit his exposure by issuing fewer audio and video propaganda tapes, and to exercise extreme caution in dealing with couriers.
“We are hoping he can avoid being captured by the U.S. for at least 10 more years,” the source says. One of the al Qaeda operatives at the dinner, which took place outside the town of Miran Shah, asked if the Afghan Taliban would consider harboring Zawahiri if he decided to hide in Afghanistan. According to the Taliban source, the Afghan was noncommittal.
Taliban and al Qaeda operatives who have met Zawahiri say he is highly respected in militant circles, both as a thinker and a doer. He’s not nearly as charismatic as bin Laden, but in some ways, he’s more important. Bin Laden was the face of terror, but Zawahiri is the mind: an important ideologue as well as an operational commander.
He’s under increasing pressure now to carry out a fresh act of headline-grabbing mayhem. “Zawahiri needs to terrorize in order to really cement his position as bin Laden’s long-term successor,” says Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who has advised the Obama administration on counterterror policy. Yet the new al Qaeda chief faces a dilemma: the more involved he gets in planning and propaganda, the more exposed he becomes. And he can’t conduct terror operations if he’s dead, much less serve as a symbol of al Qaeda resilience.
American intelligence on him is sketchy; the last time U.S. agents are known to have had actionable intelligence on his whereabouts was in January 2006, when they learned that he had been invited to an Islamic holiday dinner in a mud-walled compound on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. A Predator drone fired a salvo of Hellfire missiles at the compound, killing some 18 people, including several al Qaeda militants. But Zawahiri was not among them.
“There are indicators that some elements of the Pakistani government may be protecting Zawahiri,” says a U.S. intel official who did not want to be named discussing sensitive information. “We have reports that he’s been hanging out in Karachi for brief periods, and we just don’t think he’s going to be doing that without a lot of people knowing about it.”
At the moment, it would be politically fraught, however, for American special operators and CIA agents to carry out an attack even in the remote tribal areas, much less in a city. Pakistan’s political and military leaders, humiliated and furious that Washington kept them in the dark about the bin Laden raid and other missions, have forbidden the United States from conducting drone strikes in their territory. American forces are respecting Pakistani wishes—for now—in an effort to “lower the temperature,” says one senior administration official. But that forbearance won’t last long. Eventually, American officials tell Newsweek, offensive drone operations will restart, with or without Pakistan’s approval.
The militants who gathered for dinner near Miran Shah were still mourning bin Laden’s death at the time. They recalled the care he had taken to protect himself. Bin Laden’s trusted aide and courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, had devised ingenious ways to move his leader from one safe house to another in Pakistan. He had hidden bin Laden inside a large box that was fitted at the bottom of Pakistan’s brightly colored transport trucks. The box would be stuffed under cargoes of cement, wheat flour and rice sacks, or even under a noisy collection of goats, sheep, or chickens.
The men blamed the courier, a Pakistani Pashtun from the tribal areas who had lived in Kuwait for a time, for bin Laden’s death. “A Qaeda investigation showed that al-Kuwaiti’s carelessness provided the clues for our enemies to discover the sheik’s house,” says the Taliban operative. “He was not a traitor, but his mistakes led to the great sheik’s death.” The blunders included driving the same car every time he went to the compound inside the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad and using a cellphone that could be monitored.
The militants at the dinner didn’t want Zawahiri to make similar mistakes. They lamented the heavy casualties that armed drones had inflicted on al Qaeda’s hierarchy. All of them had heard that bin Laden had become increasingly depressed and detached as the death toll of his lieutenants mounted. “The sheik’s last days were painful, as he was hearing bad news all the time about the loss of the remaining Qaeda leaders,” the source says. “The sheik’s last year was not a good one.”
Zawahiri is more connected to day-to-day operations. He was involved, for instance, in the 2005 bombing of the London Underground and in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. It seems he also played a role in deploying a Jordanian double agent to bomb a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009. The CIA operatives who were killed believed they were about to receive key intelligence on Zawahiri’s whereabouts. “That attack gave a big boost to Zawahiri’s credentials as a terror planner,” says Riedel.
Zawahiri can take heart from the fact that as pressure has grown on al Qaeda’s central command, affiliated groups have sprung up around the globe: in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa, among other places. But like bin Laden before him, Zawahiri is now an important symbol—of either the success or failure of the global jihad.
It’ll be much easier to mount an effective operation against Zawahiri and his close circle of aides if the United States has the support—explicit or otherwise—of Pakistan. Though several top al Qaeda figures have been killed or captured in Pakistani cities, Zawahiri may still be living in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. Drones can learn a lot from the sky, but the region is large, and human intelligence is vital. The Pakistanis could help get that, but cooperation requires trust—on both sides.
There is none. “This time it’s the lowest it has ever gone,” says retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former ambassador to Washington. He blames both sides. “We have failed at convincing America that we are with you, that we want to get rid of these militants,” says Durrani. Yet Pakistan believes the United States does not respect the country’s sovereignty and treats it like a vassal state.
The distrust only got worse after the bin Laden raid. President Obama, fearing a leak, ordered that Pakistan be kept in the dark. The United States, in fact, expected that the Navy SEALs would bring back evidence that Pakistani intelligence was cooperating with al Qaeda. Newsweek has learned that shortly after the SEALs stormed bin Laden’s hideout, federal prosecutors were laying the groundwork to issue sealed indictments against members of the Pakistani government or anyone else they believed had aided bin Laden. The charge, according to two law-enforcement sources, would have been “harboring a fugitive terrorist.”
The SEALs carted away boxes of computers, hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, and thousands of documents. It was the greatest intel haul on al Qaeda’s operations and habits since 9/11: 3.4 terabytes of information, according to an intelligence source, including a personal journal by bin Laden, outlines for aspirational plots, cellphone numbers, and other contact information for al Qaeda allies. No smoking gun on Pakistani complicity was found, however, and no indictments were returned.
It’s not just the bin Laden raid that exacerbated ties. In January 2011 CIA contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two alleged Pakistani robbers on a Lahore street. Then in November, U.S. warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in an airstrike along the Afghan border. A U.S. investigation concluded that mistakes by both sides contributed to the deaths. The Pakistani military angrily rejected that conclusion, saying the attack was unprovoked and deliberate.
Pakistan retaliated by closing down the vital supply line for NATO cargo moving to Afghanistan. It also expelled American personnel and drone aircraft from a Pakistani airbase. Most Pakistanis see the drone operations as a violation of sovereignty, and they decry the civilian casualties that sometimes result. Not just ordinary Pakistanis but also intelligence and counterterror agents often view the United States as an enemy. “Even right now we are collecting data on each American and each Pakistani working with the U.S. embassy and everyone they are in touch with,” says a Pakistani counterterror officer who declined to be quoted by name.
Last week talks began between the United States and Pakistan to try to “reset” the relationship. The drone issue is the toughest challenge. Even the U.S. government is divided over what the American position should be. Some would like to appease Pakistan by restricting the circle of possible targets for the drones and to give the Pakistanis a greater sense of involvement and control over what happens in their territory. Others say no way: too often in the past, Pakistan’s ISI spy service had tipped off targets before any missiles were fired. During one period in 2007, there were seven consecutive drone attacks in which the targets managed to slip away, according to a former Obama administration official who was briefed on the matter by the CIA.
U.S. officials have repeatedly confronted their Pakistani counterparts with evidence of ISI double-dealing, but that has made little difference. On one occasion the U.S. provided surveillance imagery of Pakistani soldiers waving arms shipments for the Haqqani faction of the Taliban across the border into Afghanistan. In the weeks after the raid on bin Laden, the U.S. military twice provided Pakistan with intelligence on bomb-making factories in its territory. Both times, the militants escaped before the weapons facilities could be attacked. “The reality is that Pakistan remains a permissive environment for terrorism—even though al Qaeda has killed thousands of Pakistanis,” says a U.S. official.
If the U.S. gets Zawahiri in its sights, it won’t want to risk compromising an operation to take him out. The al Qaeda leader’s safest bet might be to hide as deep inside Pakistani territory as he can get. Riedel believes he’s probably already there. “I think the CIA would be looking for something that looks an awful lot like Abbottabad,” he says. “A safe house in an urban area near a military base. That’s been the signature of almost all of the senior Qaeda operatives who have been killed or captured.”
The problem for Zawahiri, however, is that “the CIA has demonstrated that it can break the code,” says Riedel. “Bin Laden actually practiced pretty good operational security, but Zawahiri has to take it up a notch. If I were him, I would be worried. I think we’ll find him, and I don’t think it will take 10 years.” Once again, Pakistan may learn about it only after the fact.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and has been covering the region for the magazine the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Klaidman, a former NEWSWEEK managing editor, is writing a book on President Obama and terrorism to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
16 Taliban fighters surrender in eastern Afghan province
ASSADABAD, Afghanistan, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen Taliban militants surrendered to the government and joined the government- backed peace process in Nuristan province 180 km east of Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, spokesman for provincial administration Mohammad Zarin said Monday.
"Sixteen Taliban insurgents under Qari Abdul Matin laid down arms and resumed normal life in Nuristan province on Sunday," Zarin told Xinhua.
The surrender of Matin, a key Taliban commander, and his joining the peace process will help improve security in the mountainous Nuristan province where Taliban insurgents are active, government sources said.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.
More than 3,500 Taliban militants have laid down arms and joined the government-backed national reconciliation and peace process over the past year, government officials said. But Taliban outfit dismissed the statement as groundless.
SIGAR Report Finds Afghanistan Reconstruction Compromised By Security, Corruption
04/30/2012 12:58 pm The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- Afghan reconstruction efforts remain severely hampered even after nearly $100 billion in spending over the last 10 years, according to a new watchdog report. The most immediate challenge stems from the insistence by Afghanistan's government that the private army of hired guns providing security for ongoing projects be replaced with Afghan locals, who do not appear to be up to the job, the report noted.
The latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (or SIGAR) released on Monday also chronicles how corruption in the country shows no signs of having let up.
The report's most urgent warning concerns the "imminent transition" from private security contractors (PSC) to the state-owned Afghan Public Protection Force.
Steven J. Trent, the acting special inspector general, expressed concerns that as many as 29 major USAID projects costing nearly $1.5 billion are at risk of full or partial termination "if the APPF cannot provide the needed security." About half that amount has already been spent.
And whether it can is very much an open question, Trent wrote. The U.S. embassy, the Afghan government and the U.S.-led military forces agreed a year ago to check the progress of the Afghan Public Protection Force at the 6-, 9-, and 12-month marks.
"The 6-month assessment, completed in September 2011, found that the APPF was not ready to assume any of the essential PSC responsibilities to meet contract requirements -- such as training, equipping, and deploying guard forces," the report pointed out. "[T]he December assessment, which would have been at the 9-month mark, has not yet been made public" and "the deadline for the 12-month assessment has passed."
The SIGAR report also cited a litany of failed anti-corruption efforts, including the following:
•"The Afghan Attorney General’s Office (AGO) continued to avoid prosecuting significant corruption cases this quarter: it did not prosecute any high-level officials at the national or provincial levels."
•The High Office of Oversight for Anti-Corruption's "core functions of combating corruption remained mostly ineffective this quarter, and some have deteriorated."
•The U.S. Department of Justice continued its suspension of training of the Afghan government's Anti-Corruption Unit, with the Department of State, noting that training will resume only if its work "is taken seriously."
•The Afghan government's Major Crimes Task Force "made no progress" in getting the Afghan Attorney General's office to prosecute the public corruption cases it had developed.
•The National Assembly’s legislative committee rejected a draft law to strengthen government audits.
•"A policy aimed at implementing a merit-based hiring system of provincial and deputy-provincial governors has remained stalled since May 2011, when the policy was suspended."
•"The Afghan government’s progress in implementing asset verification for government officials continued to fall short of U.S. expectations."
•"Customs collections are very susceptible to fraud and corruption at all major entry points, and the Afghan government continued to make little progress counteracting the problem."
•And the Afghan government's passport agency "is beset by corruption" with staffers illegally selling passports on the street outside the department.
How to help Afghanistan after the withdrawal
ABC Online By Amin Saikal 30 April 2012
Australia is set to conclude what amounts to a strategic agreement with Afghanistan to define its role in the aftermath of the withdrawal of most its troops by mid-2013 - a year earlier than had originally been planned.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has informed the nation about the early troop withdrawal, but at the same time has promised Australia's long-term supporting role to enable Afghanistan to stand on its own feet.
However, what the Prime Minister has not done is explain what the nature of the strategic agreement will be and how much it will cost. More importantly, how will it be managed and targeted in order to help the Afghan people?
Australia has so far invested much in blood and money in Afghanistan, but by all well-informed accounts its achievements have been limited, as has been the case with the US and its other allies.
Even in relation to Oruzgan province, Australia will ultimately leave its security in the hands of an illiterate, notorious warlord, Matiullah Khan, whom president Hamid Karzai appointed last year as the chief of police of the province and who charges a hefty amount to maintain his position as part of Australia's exit strategy.
On the higher level, the profound weaknesses of the Karzai government is well-documented and the inadequacy of the Afghan security forces to keep the Taliban at bay without Western combat support is widely highlighted by many credible US and European military analysts.
Despite all the upbeat talk on the part of the Australian Government, Afghanistan remains in a dire state.
The Karzai government continues to be feeble, with a great deal of foreign aid ending up in the pockets or bank accounts of individuals and dummy organisations.
Meanwhile, the Taliban and their supporters, including Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI), have increasingly grown confident of final victory in one form or another. In this situation, Australia cannot afford to be too sanguine about signing a strategic agreement with the Karzai government.
This is not to say that Australia should not continue to help the Afghan people to rebuild their lives and country. But it must make sure that its post-2014 role is well pitched and tied to a number of clear goals that can be beneficial to the Afghan people rather than to the industry that Afghanistan has become.
The Afghanistan industry is today a 'milking cow' for a range of interests inside and outside of the country. It has grown to serve the interests of not only the military-industrial complex, but also of many governmental and non-governmental organisations outside this complex, including even some academics and higher educational outlets, who have drawn on the Afghan conflict for self-promotion and glorification without the least concern about the future of the Afghan people.
Australia's future role could prove useful if it is linked to focusing on those areas where it has the capability to make a difference.
The first is to tell the Karzai leadership that there will be no assistance unless it implements serious political and electoral reforms for a clean and credible presidential election which is due at the latest in 2014, without Karzai seeking to prolong his ineffective rule beyond the two constitutional terms that he would have served by then.
The second is to assist with enhancing the processes of judicial reform and fight against corruption, led by Australian-advised but independent Afghan commissions.
The third is to invest heavily in the education sector, with an emphasis on educating the younger Afghan generation. The future of Afghanistan will depend on the management skills and diverse contributions of this generation, which has the potential to be far less amenable to the corruption, nepotism and patronage that has marred the current generation in power.
Provision of a larger number of scholarships to deserving Afghan students to receive education in various fields in Australia would be an important step in the process, provided that the students are bonded to work in Afghanistan for a period of at least four years upon the completion of their study.
The fourth is to help with improving health services. Australia could build dozens of clinics, run at first by Australian specialists and subsequently by Australian-trained Afghans, in relatively safe areas. Many of these clinics should focus on combating trachoma from which many Afghans suffer, especially in Western Afghanistan.
An Australian role short of focusing on these areas will do little to serve the interests of either Afghanistan or Australia. It could be as unproductive as Australia's efforts so far in enabling Afghanistan to transform into a stable and democratic state, which the US and its allies had originally promised.
Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National university. A new edition of his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival is due to be published in June 2012. View his full profile here.
District Mayor of Paktia Killed
TOLOnews.com Monday, 30 April 2012
The mayor of Samkany district in Paktia province was killed on Sunday night after a group of insurgents attacked him on the road, a local official said Monday.
Mayor Haji Mohammad Wazir had left the Zurmat district of Paktia and was travelling to the provincial capital Gardez when the attack happened, provincial spokesman Rohullah Samoon said.
Two of Wazir's bodyguards were wounded in the attack, he said.
Wazir had worked for more than a year as mayor of Samkany, according to Samoon.
No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com