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Congressional Intel Chairs Say Taliban Is 'Stronger'
By Michael Ono | ABC OTUS News via Yahoo News
As 10,000 U.S. troops prepare to leave the Afghanistan over the next six months, two top lawmakers, just back from a trip to the region, on the House and Senate Intelligence Committee said they are concerned that the Taliban is growing stronger.
"I think we both say that what we found is the Taliban is stronger," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed with her assessment.
The Taliban, an extremist Islamic group that was removed from power in Afghanistan after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because they had provided safe haven to al Qaeda. But the Taliban was never completely defeated, and after U.S. military attention shifted to Iraq, they have continued to fight.
Critics of President Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops say that the extremists could retake power in Afghanistan once our military is gone.
Despite a Pentagon report just released that found that the Taliban is holding steady in Pakistan but slowly degrading in Afghanistan, both lawmakers said they are concerned that radicals trained in Pakistan could re-emerge as a new generation of fighters even if the current Afghan insurgency were to burn itself out.
"Are we willing to leave and have a safe haven re-form in Afghanistan?" Rogers said.
Members of the group are reportedly negotiating with the U.S government over a possible peace agreement. Obama's position is that it is worth negotiating with at least some of the Taliban.
"Many members of the Taliban - from foot soldiers to leaders - have indicated an interest in reconciliation," Obama said in a national address from Afghanistan this past week.
But Feinstein and Rogers said they are still concerned about the Taliban's treatment of women.
"The Taliban threw acid on them to prevent them [girls] from going to school," Feinstein said, referring to an incident that happened in 2009. "The Taliban, while we were there, tried to close schools."
"We abandon those girls if we don't get this right," Rogers said.
All U.S. combat troops are scheduled to exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. abandons consulate site in Afghanistan, citing security risks
The Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño Sunday, May 6, 2012
After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous.
Eager to raise an American flag and open a consulate in a bustling downtown district of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, officials in 2009 sought waivers to stringent State Department building rules and overlooked significant security problems at the site, documents show. The problems included relying on local building techniques that made the compound vulnerable to a car bombing, according to an assessment by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that was obtained by The Washington Post.
The decision to give up on the site is the clearest sign to date that, as the U.S.-led military coalition starts to draw down troops amid mounting security concerns, American diplomats are being forced to reassess how to safely keep a viable presence in Afghanistan. The plan for the Mazar-e Sharif consulate, as laid out in a previously undisclosed diplomatic memorandum, is a cautionary tale of wishful thinking, poor planning and the type of stark choices the U.S. government will have to make in coming years as it tries to wind down its role in the war.
In March 2009, Richard C. Holbrooke, who had recently been appointed President Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, lobbied for the establishment of a consulate in Mazar-e Sharif within 60 days, according to the memo. The city was deemed relatively safe at the time, far removed from Taliban strongholds of the south. A consulate just a short walk from Mazar-e Sharif’s Blue Mosque, one of the country’s most sacred religious sites, was seen as a way to reassure members of the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek minorities that dominate the north that the United States was committed to Afghanistan for the long haul.
“At the time, [Holbrooke] pushed hard to identify property and stand up an interim consulate, on a very tight timeline, to signal our commitment to the Afghan people,” according to the January memo by Martin Kelly, the acting management counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Holbrooke died in 2010 of complications from heart surgery.
An embassy spokesman declined to respond to questions about the assessment of the Mazar-e Sharif compound, saying that as a policy matter officials do not discuss leaked documents.
Trouble from the start
Had the Mazar-e Sharif consulate opened this year as planned, it would have been the second of four the U.S. government intends to set up. The United States has a consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat and is assessing options for the three other cities where it intends to keep a permanent diplomatic presence: Kandahar in the south, Jalalabad in the east and Mazar-e Sharif.
The embassy memo says the facility was far from ideal from the start. The compound, which housed a hotel when the Americans took it on, shared a wall with local shopkeepers. The space between the outer perimeter wall and buildings inside — a distance known as “setback” in war zone construction — was not up to U.S. diplomatic standards set by the State Department’s Overseas Security Policy Board. The complex was surrounded by several tall buildings from which an attack could easily be launched.
“The Department nonetheless granted exceptions to standards to move forward quickly, establish an interim presence and raise the flag,” Kelly wrote.
Among the corners cut in the interest of expediency, the memo says, was failing to assess how well the facility could withstand a car bombing, a task normally carried out by the department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. After Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrived in Kabul in July, officials asked the bureau to conduct a blast assessment.
“We believe the survey will show that a [car bomb] would cause catastrophic failure of the building in light of the local construction techniques and materials,” Kelly wrote.
The structure’s outer perimeter wall is composed of sun-dried bricks made from mud, straw and manure, and the contractor used untreated timber for the roof, the memo says.
A chain of security incidents has prevented U.S. officials from moving into the facility, which was scheduled to be ready for occupancy last month. Most notable was the April 2011 attack on the United Nations compound, which is close to the would-be U.S. consulate. A mob enraged by the burning of Korans by a fringe American pastor stormed into the compound after Friday prayers and killed three European U.N. workers and four of their Nepalese guards.
Susceptible to attack
There were other reasons for concern. In August, according to the memo, Afghan security forces uncovered a “sophisticated surveillance operation against the consulate, including information about plans to breach the consulate site.” In December, four people were killed in a bombing at the Blue Mosque, less than an eighth of a mile from the prospective consulate.
The attacks and threats, Kelly wrote, “are symptomatic of a real, measurable uptick in the threat stream.” The hours-long attack in September on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from a nearby building under construction renewed concerns about the vulnerabilities of the Mazar-e Sharif site.
“The entire compound is surrounded by buildings with overwatch and there is almost no space on the compound that cannot be watched, or fired upon, from an elevated position outside the compound,” Kelly wrote.
Responding effectively to an emergency at the consulate would be next to impossible, Kelly noted, because the facility does not have space for a Black Hawk helicopter to land. It would take a military emergency response team 11 / 2 to 2 hours to reach the site “under good conditions,” he said.
In December, embassy officials began exploring alternative short-term sites for their diplomatic staff in northern Afghanistan. A Western diplomat familiar with the situation said the United States has sought, so far in vain, to persuade the German and Swedish governments to sublet it. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said European diplomats have found the prospect laughable.
Why are we still in 'Vietghanistan?'
CNN By Scott Camil, Special to CNN May 5, 2012
Editor's note: Scott Camil is president of the Gainesville, Florida, chapter of Veterans for Peace, a veterans' organization that aims to raise awareness about the costs of war. He is a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps and served four years in Vietnam; his decorations include two Purple Hearts, a Combat Action Ribbon, two Presidential Unit Citations and Good Conduct Medal.
As a veteran of combat in Vietnam, I am often asked about current wars. Recently I have been asked about soldiers posing with corpses or urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. The "patriotic" media wants us to understand what it is like to be a soldier in war, not to condone the conduct but to ask "who are we to judge?" They want to know about rules of war: "Are there rules about taking pictures with dead bodies?"
When I see these pictures, I am not shocked. I have similar pictures from Vietnam. And I'm in them. Such pictures are part of our warrior culture. Not everyone takes them, but they are not in any way unusual.
Look at the famous photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The U.S. soldiers aren't looking over their shoulders. None of them appears worried about being caught doing something wrong. They all look comfortable, often smiling for the camera. This tells me that the behavior captured in the photographs was S.O.P. (standard operating procedure).
What I find most disconcerting is all this attention to what is done to these dead bodies and absolutely no question or curiosity about why they are dead in the first place. No questions about why U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan at all.
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The idea of having "rules of war" assumes that there is a proper and civilized way to conduct warfare. I find the idea ludicrous. We teach our children to solve their problems without fighting, not by fighting according to rules. For the most part we practice what we preach.
The county I live in sued a city that wanted to build a cement plant. The county didn't want the pollution. A court ruled in favor of the city, and the county lived by the ruling. The county didn't send the sheriff's department in to kill some city residents.
Florida is suing Georgia for diverting too much water to Atlanta. Neither state is likely to call out the National Guard if it loses the case.
So why is it that when nations have disputes, we must accept that they will murder and maim each other's citizens? The conduct of soldiers in war is made up of violent behavior that is criminal behavior outside of war. War is when we allow our loved ones to murder and destroy and then wonder that they are so traumatized.
Misconduct hurts morale, Panetta warns troops
In Vietnam, I lost my first friend at a place known as Alpha North. It was my third week; it changed who I was forever. I realized then and there that my life and the lives of my friends were really at risk. We were in a place where it was the job of the people who lived there to kill us. There was no second chance, no time out. This was for real.
As was typical of our troops, I lost all empathy for the Vietnamese. They all looked the same, and I couldn't tell the ones who liked us from the ones that wanted us dead. As is also typical in such situations, I chose to err on the side of safety. "F*** the Vietnamese!" was my attitude. We all knew (or thought we knew) that the life of one Marine was worth more than the lives of all of the Vietnamese put together.
If we are going to talk about rules of war, it doesn't make sense to start with the soldiers and Marines who have been put into that situation. They will all tell you that the first rule is to stay alive. Most people, when asked to choose between obeying the rules, if they believe that harm or death will come to them and their loved ones, or breaking the rules, if they believe it will keep them and their loved ones safe, choose to break the rules. The question is hypothetical to most people, but not to a soldier in combat.
Instead, if we're going to talk about rules of war, we have to start with the powerful people who chose to put those soldiers there. The No.1 war crime is starting a war, because all other war crimes emanate from that first crime.
I have not been to Afghanistan, but there are some evident similarities between the war there and the war in Vietnam. Call it Vietghanistan. Both are wars of occupation. The people of both countries looked different from us, resulting in racial profiling. They are all suspects, a word that carries a suggestion of guilt.
Neither war has had an actual plan for winning.
When people ask me if we could have won the war in Vietnam, I say that I was taught that the duty of a Marine is to destroy the will of the enemy to resist the authority of the United States of America. The way a Marine performs that duty is to make the price of that resistance more than the enemy can afford.
In Vietnam "Body Count" was the measure of success. I was told that if we killed 10 Vietnamese for every American, we would win. We more than met that goal without, of course, winning. But our rule was "might makes right" -- a philosophy that my father had taught me the United States had defeated in World War II. It seems to be alive and well.
In Afghanistan, the United States supposedly invaded to arrest one man. Last year we were told he'd been executed in Pakistan. What is the mission now?
My mental wounds are more painful than my physical wounds. The cream of my generation was wasted in the rice paddies of Vietnam. All of the sacrifices we made bought nothing but a black marble wall in Washington. It pains me greatly that my country did not learn from Vietnam that it should never again to waste its children on wars of choice, but instead use civilized nonviolent methods of conflict resolution.
Today my country perpetrates the same crimes against my children's generation. This is unbelievably hard for me to take.
Do we really believe that having rules on how we can murder each other in war makes the murdering clean, acceptable, and civilized behavior? If we developed rules for rape or slavery, would they be acceptable too? Should we bring back dueling and regulate individual murder? Why is murder on a large scale treated so differently from other outrages?
I am told that killing people in war isn't murder, because it is sanctioned by the government. This reminds me of former president Richard Nixon saying "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." In warfare, the overwhelming majority of those who suffer and are killed are civilians? Does calling them collateral damage really mitigate those losses and make them acceptable? Not to me.
What about the laws on our books that forbid war? The Kellogg-Briand Pact bans all war. The United Nations Charter legalizes two types of wars, neither of which matches most of our current wars. Our wars are neither defensive nor authorized by the U.N. Security Council. And the U.S. Constitution forbids wars not declared by Congress, which has not declared a war since 1941.
As long as we are willing to accept war as a legitimate means of conflict resolution, we must be willing to accept the facts that go with war. Mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents and children will die and be maimed both physically and mentally. Some of them will be in uniform, but the majority of them will just be "collateral damage." Our family members will come home with physical, psychological, and behavioral problems.
We will continue to have military and VA hospitals with waiting lines.
Preparing for these wars means continuing to train our children to hurt and kill other humans. This involves a process of dehumanization that is in conflict with the training required to produce good citizens in a democratic society.
In my training at Parris Island, the citizen was taken out of me and I was rebuilt as a Marine. We had a prayer that we recited every night when we hit the rack:
"Another day in the Corps, Sir, for every day is a holiday and every meal is a feast. Pray for war. Pray for war. God bless the Marine Corps. Pray for war. God bless the Commandant. Pray for war. God bless the drill instructors of 353. Pray for war."
Are we really willing to continue to accept all of this?
My organization, Veterans For Peace, believes that our stories are our strength. We believe that by educating the public by relating our personal experiences, we can reveal the hard, ugly truth about war. Our collective experience has taught us that war is futile and immoral. We believe that it is abhorrent to think of human beings as "collateral damage," and we refuse to be silent as our government continues to pursue illegal, immoral wars of aggression. We believe that if the public really saw and understood the truth of war as we do -- they would end it.
As long as we continue to accept war as an acceptable means of conflict resolution, things will remain the same.
Work for peace.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Scott Camil.
Wife Skyping with soldier saw bullet hole in wall
By TERRY WALLACE | Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) — An Army nurse showed no alarm or discomfort before suddenly collapsing during a Skype video chat with his wife, who saw a bullet hole in a closet behind him, his family said Sunday.
Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark's family released a statement describing what his wife saw in the video feed recording her husband's death in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. It's not clear how the bullet hole got in the closet.
"Clark was suddenly knocked forward," the statement from the soldier's family said. "The closet behind him had a bullet hole in it. The other individuals, including a member of the military, who rushed to the home of CPT Clark's wife also saw the hole and agreed it was a bullet hole."
The statement says the Skype link remained open for two hours on April 30 as family and friends in the U.S. and Afghanistan tried to get Clark help.
"After two hours and many frantic phone calls by Mrs. Clark, two military personnel arrived in the room and appeared to check his pulse, but provided no details about his condition to his wife," the statement said.
In the statement, Susan Orellana-Clark said she was providing details of what she saw "to honor my husband and dispel the inaccurate information and supposition promulgated by other parties."
U.S. officials in Afghanistan referred questions to the Pentagon, which previously referred questions to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, where Clark was assigned.
The Pentagon said previously that Clark's death remains under investigation.
Clarence Davis, spokesman for William Beaumont Army Medical Center, declined to comment on Clark's family's statement.
Clark, 43, grew up in Michigan and previously lived in Spencerport, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, his wife's hometown. He joined the Army in 2006 and was stationed in Hawaii before he was assigned to the medical center in El Paso. He deployed to Afghanistan in March.
Clark's body was returned Thursday to Dover Air Force Base.
He is survived by his wife and two daughters, aged 3 and 9.
Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan
NPR By Quil Lawrence April 4, 2012
Afghanistan faces the daunting prospect of a drastic reduction in foreign aid, which currently makes up about 90 percent of the country's revenue. Some have seen an economic life raft in geological surveys that indicate huge deposits of copper, iron, uranium and lithium in various parts of the country. But multinational mining firms have been slow to invest in Afghanistan — not least because of questions about stability after American troops draw down.
Mullah Mira Jan, the tribal leader of Ainak village, says he was promised a job mining copper on this hillside in eastern Afghanistan — but that was about 40 years ago. Mira Jan takes out a faded ID card with a picture stapled in and points to the line for occupation.
"That was my picture when I was 14 years old," he says. "I'm listed as a day laborer." That's how long the villagers here in Ainak have been waiting for the hilltop next to their village to start producing jobs and wealth. Mira Jan now wears a long white beard and a turban. He gestures to the copper tinted hillside behind him, which he said used to be covered with trees. That was under president Daud Khan, in the mid-1970s.
"Daud was the only president we trusted, and then he was assassinated," Mira Jan says. "The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and they kicked us out of our village, but war prevented them from ever exploiting the mine."
Now a Chinese state company, MCC, has won the copper concession here. The Afghan government has relocated residents from Ainak to make way for the development of the mine. And once again there is the promise of jobs.
But five years after MCC won the contract, there is no sign of the railroad the company pledged to build to get the copper out.
"It will obviously be built before 2014, because they have to start commercial production somewhere in 2014," says Tamim Asey, director of public affairs for the Afghan Ministry of Mines. He says that by 2014 the Chinese company will have built not one, but two railway lines, as guaranteed in the contract. But the fact is the Chinese contract has not been made public. A secret U.S. Embassy cable published by WikiLeaks quotes Chinese officials as calling the promise to build railways "flexible." Mining experts in Afghanistan are wondering what else in the contract might be flexible, says Haseeb Humayoon, a partner at QARA Consulting in Kabul.
"We're looking at at least a 10- to 15-year window," Humayoon says. "The point here is when will they actually be able to extract and turn them into revenue sources both for this country as well as for companies that invest in there."
Humayoon says the Afghan government has already auctioned off two megamines: the copper in Ainak, and a massive iron mine in central Bamiyan province. In both cases the government looked only for the highest payer of royalties, which gave an advantage to state-run consortia. The Indian and Chinese state companies that won those contracts can afford to bid well over market value, because they are securing the minerals for national strategic reasons. But Afghanistan also has a strategy, says Humayoon.
"By bringing in investors from the region such as India and China and others, you could create buy-in into the stability of this country," Humayoon says.
Having big players like India and China back the Afghan mining industry is comforting, but it's not clear that the Afghan government can enforce promises made by such big players — such as the two railroads. The Chinese Embassy in Kabul declined to comment for this story.
There is work going on. In the valley below, a huge land mine removal team is starting its work after a long winter hiatus. Nearly 700 police have moved into the tiny valley to protect the operation from the Taliban and other armed groups in the province.
Mira Jan says he's hoping the mine will be developed this time. As for saving Afghanistan's economy, he's got his doubts. Corruption, he says, is the problem — billions of dollars have come to this country, he says, and it's all disappeared.
Afghan end game sees Pakistan 'paralysed' by US rift
BBC News 4 May 2012
Since US forces killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan a year ago, relations between the two countries have never recovered. Writer Ahmed Rashid looks at a relationship in crisis as US troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.
The continuing breakdown in co-operation between the US and Pakistan is having a hugely detrimental effect on US and Nato resolve to withdraw from Afghanistan while trying to remain committed to the region's stability.
Although the US has much to answer for in terms of mistakes made, the refusal of the Pakistani leadership - both military and civilian - to take responsibility and ownership for desperately needed decisions, is leading the country into a terrible sense of drift and despair.
The recent visit to Islamabad by a high-level US delegation, consisting of officials from the defence and state departments, the CIA, the White House, and led by US special envoy Marc Grossman failed to elicit any major breakthrough in resolving any of the major outstanding issues which could lead to improving relations. Drone attacks
Pakistan insists on a US apology for the killing of 24 of its soldiers last November by US helicopters on the Afghan border - yet when a US apology was on the cards a few months ago, Pakistani officials declined to meet their US counterparts.
Pakistan also insists on an end to drone strikes which the US refuses to agree to.
Both sides have tried to explore different scenarios for co-operation so that drone attacks can continue.
If a co-operation mechanism can be found, the US wants Pakistan to be more transparent about drone attacks because Pakistani interests are also served when drones kill leading members of the Pakistani Taliban.
US officials say their own lack of transparency over drones was dictated by former President Pervez Musharraf who insisted that they never be admitted to, even though drones took off from Pakistani bases until last year.
Also stuck is the reopening of the road that is used to take supplies from the port of Karachi to Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The road should have reopened nearly a month ago after approval from Pakistan's parliament, but threats by Islamic extremist groups to burn trucks and convoys of goods have played a part in the delay.
The US has already indicated that it is willing to pay generously for use of the road.
The talks were made more complicated by the Obama administration now refusing to issue an apology and US charges that Pakistan allowed the Haqqani group to launch the multiple suicide attacks on Kabul and other Afghan cities on 15 April. 'Window on the West'
There is enormous frustration in Washington regarding Pakistan which is now seen by many in the US Congress and the military as an enemy rather than a friend.
Many leading Americans consider that Pakistan should cease being important for the US, or should no longer be considered an ally when the US gets over the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Pakistan is doing little to stop this drift in negative opinion growing in the US.
Gone are the early days of the Obama administration when major efforts were made to woo Pakistan.
Now what Pakistan may lose as a US ally in the region, India will gain - something that should be worrying for the Pakistani ruling elite.
The failure of Pakistan to rebuild ties with the US is rooted in actual incidents, anger and real disputes.
But it is also down to the inability of the government or the military to make decisions that need to be taken collectively to preserve the state of relations with a powerful country which has acted in the past as Pakistan's window to the West - especially in terms of loans, aid and business and exports. Internal conflict
There has been an unprecedented growth in violence from north to south involving sectarian, ethnic, militant Islamic, criminal and other heavily armed groups which the government appears helpless to stop.
Even those areas once considered the most peaceful, such as the Northern Areas, are wracked by mayhem.
Equally, religious minorities can no longer rely on the state to protect them and are being targeted at will.
Many, such as the Christians, are fleeing the country if they can.
Equally vital is the desperate need for tough decisions on economic reforms, austerity, greater income generation and a resolution to the power crisis through tackling the circular debt that plagues the electricity industry and is now estimated to be at US $6bn. Afghanistan
Afghanistan remains the key foreign policy issue for the military which dominates all foreign policy decision making, yet the military itself seems paralysed by its inability to heal its rift with the Americans so that it can address talks with the Taliban and other issues.
Pakistan wants to see the end of the US occupation of its neighbour while the military has always been determined to play a major role in determining the end game in Afghanistan.
The end game is now upon us and yet everything Pakistan is not doing appears to be distancing itself further from any relevance to the future of Afghanistan and the region post-2014 when the Americans do leave.
This is precisely the moment when the country should be at its most united and pragmatic so that it can deal with the enormous issues that surround the US departure.
Instead the country is at its most disunited and unable to take even the simplest decisions while Islamic extremist groups have been allowed to take over the streets with their demands for a never ending confrontation with the US, the West and India.
Pakistan's decision makers need to be more decisive on issues of law and order, the economy and foreign policy to give people hope that a democratic form of government will prevail.
Ahmed Rashid, has just published his fifth book, 'Pakistan on the Brink; The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan.'
NATO Soldier Killed by Attacker in Afghan Army Uniform
VOA News May 6, 2012
NATO says a man dressed in an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on coalition soldiers, leaving one dead.
The NATO statement says coalition forces returned fire killing the shooter Sunday in southern Afghanistan.
The shooting is the latest in a series of deadly attacks on international troops by gunmen wearing Afghan uniforms.
In other violence, NATO says one of its service members died in a bomb explosion in eastern Afghanistan Sunday. No details on the attack were released.
Elsewhere in the country, two Taliban commanders and three insurgents were killed in fighting Friday with security forces. A NATO statement says one of the men was a senior Taliban commander who planned and organized roadside bombings and other attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Faryab province.
The other, a subordinate commander, was a Taliban judge who attempted to impose Taliban law and punishment on civilians in the area.
4 Taliban militants killed in western Afghanistan clash
FARAH, Afghanistan, May 6 (Xinhua) -- At least four Taliban militants were killed Sunday in a clash in the western Afghan province of Farah, authorities said.
"A group of armed militants launched an attack in the wee hour of Sunday morning on Afghan National Police (ANP) check posts along a main roadway in Bakwa district and the ANP repelled the attack killing four armed Taliban militants," deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Ghaus Malyar told Xinhua.
He said several rebels fled the area following the retaliation attack and that no members of ANP were injured in the incident.
The Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities as the insurgents group announced to launch a spring rebel offensive dubbed "Al-Farooq" from May 3 across the country, saying their targets are foreign and Afghan troops as well as legislators and government functionaries.
Two people including a 12-year-old child were killed and two others including a tribal elder were injured when two separate roadside bombings went off in the country's southern province of Zabul on Saturday, the Afghan Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement on Sunday.
FNA Correspondent Arrested in Kabul
Fars News Agency May 6, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- Afghan security forces arrested Fars News Agency (FNA)'s correspondent in Kabul Abdulvahed Hakimi and took him to an unknown place, his wife said on Sunday.
"Abdulvahed informed his family in a very short and controlled call that he had been arrested by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS)," his wife said.
She said her husband had left home Saturday morning for a report on the Kabul museum but didn't return.
Hakimi is also in charge of FNA's office in Kabul.
The NDS refrained from commenting on the case.
The FNA office is one of the most active press in Afghanistan with its official office in Kabul.
Sources privy to the case said the detention of FNA's correspondent in Kabul might be the result of a misunderstanding among Afghan security bodies and their lack of knowledge about FNA's licensed operation in Afghanistan.
11 Finance Ministry Personnel Detained Over Corruption Charges
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Eleven employees of Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance were detained Saturday after being accused of embezzling 25 million Afghanis (US$520,000).
The embezzled money was related to district development projects, the Afghan Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office chief Abu Baker Rafiee said.
"11 people were arrested in connection with the embezzlement of 25 million Afghanis - four others are still under investigation," Rafiee said.
"Some high ranking government personnel and a woman were among those arrested."
He declined to name the personnel.
The money was being embezzled through district-level development projects in 11 districts. The provinces were not named.
This comes as Head of the High Office of Oversight and Anti Corruption Azizullah Lodin accused Afghan Minister of Energy and Water of land grabbing.
Kabul Traffic Accident Kills Karzai's Policy Adviser
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Sebghatullah Sanjar, chief of Karzai's Policy Department, died in a traffic accident in Kabul Saturday afternoon.
The accident happened at around 5:00 pm local time when an Afghan National Army bus lost control and hit two other vehicles, including Sanjar's.
Sanjar, his driver and his daughter were killed in the accident and his wife was badly injured, spokesman for the presidential Palace Hamed Helmi told TOLOnews.
"Sanjer was killed along with his 14-year-old daughter today in a traffic accident in Kabul. His wife is badly injured," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his sorrow over the incident saying Sanjar's death was a major loss to Afghanistan's politics.
Kabul's traffic chief Asadullah Hamdard confirmed the accident saying that an ANA bus was travelling from Kabul Airport square towards Massoud's Avenue when it lost control while trying to overtake another car.
Hamdard said the bus hit two vehicles, a Parado and Corolla, in the lane of traffic going in the other direction.
"The incident occurred today was as a result of the carelessness of the bus driver travelling from Airport Square to Massoud's avenue," Hamdard said.
"It lost control when the bus was trying to pass another vehicle and at a high speed."
Witnesses said that an ANA bus which was travelling at a high speed "jumped" into the opposite road and hit several other vehicles.
"An ANA vehicle jumped from that road and hit three or four cars," one witness told TOLOnews.
Sanjar played a vital role in the interim government Loya Jirga and led a political party in the country.
The Republican Party of Afghanistan was established in 1999 and declared the UN Human Rights Declaration as the programme of the party.
Most recently, he worked as policy advisor for President Karzai.
Concerns Over Lack of Food Safety in Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Afghanistan is facing a serious problem with the lack of food and nutrition to a large part of the population, especially threatening to children under five years of age, a report released Saturday said.
The World Bank and Afghanistan's Ministry of Economy released a report Saturday over the lack of food security in the country, identifying reasons for the problem and statistics of those affected by it.
Afghanistan is one of the highest ranked countries in the world when it comes to problems with food security, children being the most affected by this.
At least 54 percent of Afghan children face serious challenges in getting adequate food and nutrition, the report said.
At least 29 percent of the country's population does not receive sufficient calories, and 20 percent have a poor diet, it said.
The lack of food security is seen primarily among the poor people and mostly among mountain dwellers. The problems also tend to worsen with the winter months, it said.
The report added that high food prices are the prime reason for the problem.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Michael Ono | ABC OTUS News via Yahoo News
As 10,000 U.S. troops prepare to leave the Afghanistan over the next six months, two top lawmakers, just back from a trip to the region, on the House and Senate Intelligence Committee said they are concerned that the Taliban is growing stronger.
"I think we both say that what we found is the Taliban is stronger," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, agreed with her assessment.
The Taliban, an extremist Islamic group that was removed from power in Afghanistan after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because they had provided safe haven to al Qaeda. But the Taliban was never completely defeated, and after U.S. military attention shifted to Iraq, they have continued to fight.
Critics of President Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops say that the extremists could retake power in Afghanistan once our military is gone.
Despite a Pentagon report just released that found that the Taliban is holding steady in Pakistan but slowly degrading in Afghanistan, both lawmakers said they are concerned that radicals trained in Pakistan could re-emerge as a new generation of fighters even if the current Afghan insurgency were to burn itself out.
"Are we willing to leave and have a safe haven re-form in Afghanistan?" Rogers said.
Members of the group are reportedly negotiating with the U.S government over a possible peace agreement. Obama's position is that it is worth negotiating with at least some of the Taliban.
"Many members of the Taliban - from foot soldiers to leaders - have indicated an interest in reconciliation," Obama said in a national address from Afghanistan this past week.
But Feinstein and Rogers said they are still concerned about the Taliban's treatment of women.
"The Taliban threw acid on them to prevent them [girls] from going to school," Feinstein said, referring to an incident that happened in 2009. "The Taliban, while we were there, tried to close schools."
"We abandon those girls if we don't get this right," Rogers said.
All U.S. combat troops are scheduled to exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. abandons consulate site in Afghanistan, citing security risks
The Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño Sunday, May 6, 2012
After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous.
Eager to raise an American flag and open a consulate in a bustling downtown district of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, officials in 2009 sought waivers to stringent State Department building rules and overlooked significant security problems at the site, documents show. The problems included relying on local building techniques that made the compound vulnerable to a car bombing, according to an assessment by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that was obtained by The Washington Post.
The decision to give up on the site is the clearest sign to date that, as the U.S.-led military coalition starts to draw down troops amid mounting security concerns, American diplomats are being forced to reassess how to safely keep a viable presence in Afghanistan. The plan for the Mazar-e Sharif consulate, as laid out in a previously undisclosed diplomatic memorandum, is a cautionary tale of wishful thinking, poor planning and the type of stark choices the U.S. government will have to make in coming years as it tries to wind down its role in the war.
In March 2009, Richard C. Holbrooke, who had recently been appointed President Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, lobbied for the establishment of a consulate in Mazar-e Sharif within 60 days, according to the memo. The city was deemed relatively safe at the time, far removed from Taliban strongholds of the south. A consulate just a short walk from Mazar-e Sharif’s Blue Mosque, one of the country’s most sacred religious sites, was seen as a way to reassure members of the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek minorities that dominate the north that the United States was committed to Afghanistan for the long haul.
“At the time, [Holbrooke] pushed hard to identify property and stand up an interim consulate, on a very tight timeline, to signal our commitment to the Afghan people,” according to the January memo by Martin Kelly, the acting management counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Holbrooke died in 2010 of complications from heart surgery.
An embassy spokesman declined to respond to questions about the assessment of the Mazar-e Sharif compound, saying that as a policy matter officials do not discuss leaked documents.
Trouble from the start
Had the Mazar-e Sharif consulate opened this year as planned, it would have been the second of four the U.S. government intends to set up. The United States has a consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat and is assessing options for the three other cities where it intends to keep a permanent diplomatic presence: Kandahar in the south, Jalalabad in the east and Mazar-e Sharif.
The embassy memo says the facility was far from ideal from the start. The compound, which housed a hotel when the Americans took it on, shared a wall with local shopkeepers. The space between the outer perimeter wall and buildings inside — a distance known as “setback” in war zone construction — was not up to U.S. diplomatic standards set by the State Department’s Overseas Security Policy Board. The complex was surrounded by several tall buildings from which an attack could easily be launched.
“The Department nonetheless granted exceptions to standards to move forward quickly, establish an interim presence and raise the flag,” Kelly wrote.
Among the corners cut in the interest of expediency, the memo says, was failing to assess how well the facility could withstand a car bombing, a task normally carried out by the department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. After Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrived in Kabul in July, officials asked the bureau to conduct a blast assessment.
“We believe the survey will show that a [car bomb] would cause catastrophic failure of the building in light of the local construction techniques and materials,” Kelly wrote.
The structure’s outer perimeter wall is composed of sun-dried bricks made from mud, straw and manure, and the contractor used untreated timber for the roof, the memo says.
A chain of security incidents has prevented U.S. officials from moving into the facility, which was scheduled to be ready for occupancy last month. Most notable was the April 2011 attack on the United Nations compound, which is close to the would-be U.S. consulate. A mob enraged by the burning of Korans by a fringe American pastor stormed into the compound after Friday prayers and killed three European U.N. workers and four of their Nepalese guards.
Susceptible to attack
There were other reasons for concern. In August, according to the memo, Afghan security forces uncovered a “sophisticated surveillance operation against the consulate, including information about plans to breach the consulate site.” In December, four people were killed in a bombing at the Blue Mosque, less than an eighth of a mile from the prospective consulate.
The attacks and threats, Kelly wrote, “are symptomatic of a real, measurable uptick in the threat stream.” The hours-long attack in September on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from a nearby building under construction renewed concerns about the vulnerabilities of the Mazar-e Sharif site.
“The entire compound is surrounded by buildings with overwatch and there is almost no space on the compound that cannot be watched, or fired upon, from an elevated position outside the compound,” Kelly wrote.
Responding effectively to an emergency at the consulate would be next to impossible, Kelly noted, because the facility does not have space for a Black Hawk helicopter to land. It would take a military emergency response team 11 / 2 to 2 hours to reach the site “under good conditions,” he said.
In December, embassy officials began exploring alternative short-term sites for their diplomatic staff in northern Afghanistan. A Western diplomat familiar with the situation said the United States has sought, so far in vain, to persuade the German and Swedish governments to sublet it. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said European diplomats have found the prospect laughable.
Why are we still in 'Vietghanistan?'
CNN By Scott Camil, Special to CNN May 5, 2012
Editor's note: Scott Camil is president of the Gainesville, Florida, chapter of Veterans for Peace, a veterans' organization that aims to raise awareness about the costs of war. He is a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps and served four years in Vietnam; his decorations include two Purple Hearts, a Combat Action Ribbon, two Presidential Unit Citations and Good Conduct Medal.
As a veteran of combat in Vietnam, I am often asked about current wars. Recently I have been asked about soldiers posing with corpses or urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. The "patriotic" media wants us to understand what it is like to be a soldier in war, not to condone the conduct but to ask "who are we to judge?" They want to know about rules of war: "Are there rules about taking pictures with dead bodies?"
When I see these pictures, I am not shocked. I have similar pictures from Vietnam. And I'm in them. Such pictures are part of our warrior culture. Not everyone takes them, but they are not in any way unusual.
Look at the famous photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The U.S. soldiers aren't looking over their shoulders. None of them appears worried about being caught doing something wrong. They all look comfortable, often smiling for the camera. This tells me that the behavior captured in the photographs was S.O.P. (standard operating procedure).
What I find most disconcerting is all this attention to what is done to these dead bodies and absolutely no question or curiosity about why they are dead in the first place. No questions about why U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan at all.
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The idea of having "rules of war" assumes that there is a proper and civilized way to conduct warfare. I find the idea ludicrous. We teach our children to solve their problems without fighting, not by fighting according to rules. For the most part we practice what we preach.
The county I live in sued a city that wanted to build a cement plant. The county didn't want the pollution. A court ruled in favor of the city, and the county lived by the ruling. The county didn't send the sheriff's department in to kill some city residents.
Florida is suing Georgia for diverting too much water to Atlanta. Neither state is likely to call out the National Guard if it loses the case.
So why is it that when nations have disputes, we must accept that they will murder and maim each other's citizens? The conduct of soldiers in war is made up of violent behavior that is criminal behavior outside of war. War is when we allow our loved ones to murder and destroy and then wonder that they are so traumatized.
Misconduct hurts morale, Panetta warns troops
In Vietnam, I lost my first friend at a place known as Alpha North. It was my third week; it changed who I was forever. I realized then and there that my life and the lives of my friends were really at risk. We were in a place where it was the job of the people who lived there to kill us. There was no second chance, no time out. This was for real.
As was typical of our troops, I lost all empathy for the Vietnamese. They all looked the same, and I couldn't tell the ones who liked us from the ones that wanted us dead. As is also typical in such situations, I chose to err on the side of safety. "F*** the Vietnamese!" was my attitude. We all knew (or thought we knew) that the life of one Marine was worth more than the lives of all of the Vietnamese put together.
If we are going to talk about rules of war, it doesn't make sense to start with the soldiers and Marines who have been put into that situation. They will all tell you that the first rule is to stay alive. Most people, when asked to choose between obeying the rules, if they believe that harm or death will come to them and their loved ones, or breaking the rules, if they believe it will keep them and their loved ones safe, choose to break the rules. The question is hypothetical to most people, but not to a soldier in combat.
Instead, if we're going to talk about rules of war, we have to start with the powerful people who chose to put those soldiers there. The No.1 war crime is starting a war, because all other war crimes emanate from that first crime.
I have not been to Afghanistan, but there are some evident similarities between the war there and the war in Vietnam. Call it Vietghanistan. Both are wars of occupation. The people of both countries looked different from us, resulting in racial profiling. They are all suspects, a word that carries a suggestion of guilt.
Neither war has had an actual plan for winning.
When people ask me if we could have won the war in Vietnam, I say that I was taught that the duty of a Marine is to destroy the will of the enemy to resist the authority of the United States of America. The way a Marine performs that duty is to make the price of that resistance more than the enemy can afford.
In Vietnam "Body Count" was the measure of success. I was told that if we killed 10 Vietnamese for every American, we would win. We more than met that goal without, of course, winning. But our rule was "might makes right" -- a philosophy that my father had taught me the United States had defeated in World War II. It seems to be alive and well.
In Afghanistan, the United States supposedly invaded to arrest one man. Last year we were told he'd been executed in Pakistan. What is the mission now?
My mental wounds are more painful than my physical wounds. The cream of my generation was wasted in the rice paddies of Vietnam. All of the sacrifices we made bought nothing but a black marble wall in Washington. It pains me greatly that my country did not learn from Vietnam that it should never again to waste its children on wars of choice, but instead use civilized nonviolent methods of conflict resolution.
Today my country perpetrates the same crimes against my children's generation. This is unbelievably hard for me to take.
Do we really believe that having rules on how we can murder each other in war makes the murdering clean, acceptable, and civilized behavior? If we developed rules for rape or slavery, would they be acceptable too? Should we bring back dueling and regulate individual murder? Why is murder on a large scale treated so differently from other outrages?
I am told that killing people in war isn't murder, because it is sanctioned by the government. This reminds me of former president Richard Nixon saying "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." In warfare, the overwhelming majority of those who suffer and are killed are civilians? Does calling them collateral damage really mitigate those losses and make them acceptable? Not to me.
What about the laws on our books that forbid war? The Kellogg-Briand Pact bans all war. The United Nations Charter legalizes two types of wars, neither of which matches most of our current wars. Our wars are neither defensive nor authorized by the U.N. Security Council. And the U.S. Constitution forbids wars not declared by Congress, which has not declared a war since 1941.
As long as we are willing to accept war as a legitimate means of conflict resolution, we must be willing to accept the facts that go with war. Mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents and children will die and be maimed both physically and mentally. Some of them will be in uniform, but the majority of them will just be "collateral damage." Our family members will come home with physical, psychological, and behavioral problems.
We will continue to have military and VA hospitals with waiting lines.
Preparing for these wars means continuing to train our children to hurt and kill other humans. This involves a process of dehumanization that is in conflict with the training required to produce good citizens in a democratic society.
In my training at Parris Island, the citizen was taken out of me and I was rebuilt as a Marine. We had a prayer that we recited every night when we hit the rack:
"Another day in the Corps, Sir, for every day is a holiday and every meal is a feast. Pray for war. Pray for war. God bless the Marine Corps. Pray for war. God bless the Commandant. Pray for war. God bless the drill instructors of 353. Pray for war."
Are we really willing to continue to accept all of this?
My organization, Veterans For Peace, believes that our stories are our strength. We believe that by educating the public by relating our personal experiences, we can reveal the hard, ugly truth about war. Our collective experience has taught us that war is futile and immoral. We believe that it is abhorrent to think of human beings as "collateral damage," and we refuse to be silent as our government continues to pursue illegal, immoral wars of aggression. We believe that if the public really saw and understood the truth of war as we do -- they would end it.
As long as we continue to accept war as an acceptable means of conflict resolution, things will remain the same.
Work for peace.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Scott Camil.
Wife Skyping with soldier saw bullet hole in wall
By TERRY WALLACE | Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) — An Army nurse showed no alarm or discomfort before suddenly collapsing during a Skype video chat with his wife, who saw a bullet hole in a closet behind him, his family said Sunday.
Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark's family released a statement describing what his wife saw in the video feed recording her husband's death in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. It's not clear how the bullet hole got in the closet.
"Clark was suddenly knocked forward," the statement from the soldier's family said. "The closet behind him had a bullet hole in it. The other individuals, including a member of the military, who rushed to the home of CPT Clark's wife also saw the hole and agreed it was a bullet hole."
The statement says the Skype link remained open for two hours on April 30 as family and friends in the U.S. and Afghanistan tried to get Clark help.
"After two hours and many frantic phone calls by Mrs. Clark, two military personnel arrived in the room and appeared to check his pulse, but provided no details about his condition to his wife," the statement said.
In the statement, Susan Orellana-Clark said she was providing details of what she saw "to honor my husband and dispel the inaccurate information and supposition promulgated by other parties."
U.S. officials in Afghanistan referred questions to the Pentagon, which previously referred questions to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, where Clark was assigned.
The Pentagon said previously that Clark's death remains under investigation.
Clarence Davis, spokesman for William Beaumont Army Medical Center, declined to comment on Clark's family's statement.
Clark, 43, grew up in Michigan and previously lived in Spencerport, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, his wife's hometown. He joined the Army in 2006 and was stationed in Hawaii before he was assigned to the medical center in El Paso. He deployed to Afghanistan in March.
Clark's body was returned Thursday to Dover Air Force Base.
He is survived by his wife and two daughters, aged 3 and 9.
Dreams Of A Mining Future On Hold In Afghanistan
NPR By Quil Lawrence April 4, 2012
Afghanistan faces the daunting prospect of a drastic reduction in foreign aid, which currently makes up about 90 percent of the country's revenue. Some have seen an economic life raft in geological surveys that indicate huge deposits of copper, iron, uranium and lithium in various parts of the country. But multinational mining firms have been slow to invest in Afghanistan — not least because of questions about stability after American troops draw down.
Mullah Mira Jan, the tribal leader of Ainak village, says he was promised a job mining copper on this hillside in eastern Afghanistan — but that was about 40 years ago. Mira Jan takes out a faded ID card with a picture stapled in and points to the line for occupation.
"That was my picture when I was 14 years old," he says. "I'm listed as a day laborer." That's how long the villagers here in Ainak have been waiting for the hilltop next to their village to start producing jobs and wealth. Mira Jan now wears a long white beard and a turban. He gestures to the copper tinted hillside behind him, which he said used to be covered with trees. That was under president Daud Khan, in the mid-1970s.
"Daud was the only president we trusted, and then he was assassinated," Mira Jan says. "The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and they kicked us out of our village, but war prevented them from ever exploiting the mine."
Now a Chinese state company, MCC, has won the copper concession here. The Afghan government has relocated residents from Ainak to make way for the development of the mine. And once again there is the promise of jobs.
But five years after MCC won the contract, there is no sign of the railroad the company pledged to build to get the copper out.
"It will obviously be built before 2014, because they have to start commercial production somewhere in 2014," says Tamim Asey, director of public affairs for the Afghan Ministry of Mines. He says that by 2014 the Chinese company will have built not one, but two railway lines, as guaranteed in the contract. But the fact is the Chinese contract has not been made public. A secret U.S. Embassy cable published by WikiLeaks quotes Chinese officials as calling the promise to build railways "flexible." Mining experts in Afghanistan are wondering what else in the contract might be flexible, says Haseeb Humayoon, a partner at QARA Consulting in Kabul.
"We're looking at at least a 10- to 15-year window," Humayoon says. "The point here is when will they actually be able to extract and turn them into revenue sources both for this country as well as for companies that invest in there."
Humayoon says the Afghan government has already auctioned off two megamines: the copper in Ainak, and a massive iron mine in central Bamiyan province. In both cases the government looked only for the highest payer of royalties, which gave an advantage to state-run consortia. The Indian and Chinese state companies that won those contracts can afford to bid well over market value, because they are securing the minerals for national strategic reasons. But Afghanistan also has a strategy, says Humayoon.
"By bringing in investors from the region such as India and China and others, you could create buy-in into the stability of this country," Humayoon says.
Having big players like India and China back the Afghan mining industry is comforting, but it's not clear that the Afghan government can enforce promises made by such big players — such as the two railroads. The Chinese Embassy in Kabul declined to comment for this story.
There is work going on. In the valley below, a huge land mine removal team is starting its work after a long winter hiatus. Nearly 700 police have moved into the tiny valley to protect the operation from the Taliban and other armed groups in the province.
Mira Jan says he's hoping the mine will be developed this time. As for saving Afghanistan's economy, he's got his doubts. Corruption, he says, is the problem — billions of dollars have come to this country, he says, and it's all disappeared.
Afghan end game sees Pakistan 'paralysed' by US rift
BBC News 4 May 2012
Since US forces killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan a year ago, relations between the two countries have never recovered. Writer Ahmed Rashid looks at a relationship in crisis as US troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.
The continuing breakdown in co-operation between the US and Pakistan is having a hugely detrimental effect on US and Nato resolve to withdraw from Afghanistan while trying to remain committed to the region's stability.
Although the US has much to answer for in terms of mistakes made, the refusal of the Pakistani leadership - both military and civilian - to take responsibility and ownership for desperately needed decisions, is leading the country into a terrible sense of drift and despair.
The recent visit to Islamabad by a high-level US delegation, consisting of officials from the defence and state departments, the CIA, the White House, and led by US special envoy Marc Grossman failed to elicit any major breakthrough in resolving any of the major outstanding issues which could lead to improving relations. Drone attacks
Pakistan insists on a US apology for the killing of 24 of its soldiers last November by US helicopters on the Afghan border - yet when a US apology was on the cards a few months ago, Pakistani officials declined to meet their US counterparts.
Pakistan also insists on an end to drone strikes which the US refuses to agree to.
Both sides have tried to explore different scenarios for co-operation so that drone attacks can continue.
If a co-operation mechanism can be found, the US wants Pakistan to be more transparent about drone attacks because Pakistani interests are also served when drones kill leading members of the Pakistani Taliban.
US officials say their own lack of transparency over drones was dictated by former President Pervez Musharraf who insisted that they never be admitted to, even though drones took off from Pakistani bases until last year.
Also stuck is the reopening of the road that is used to take supplies from the port of Karachi to Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The road should have reopened nearly a month ago after approval from Pakistan's parliament, but threats by Islamic extremist groups to burn trucks and convoys of goods have played a part in the delay.
The US has already indicated that it is willing to pay generously for use of the road.
The talks were made more complicated by the Obama administration now refusing to issue an apology and US charges that Pakistan allowed the Haqqani group to launch the multiple suicide attacks on Kabul and other Afghan cities on 15 April. 'Window on the West'
There is enormous frustration in Washington regarding Pakistan which is now seen by many in the US Congress and the military as an enemy rather than a friend.
Many leading Americans consider that Pakistan should cease being important for the US, or should no longer be considered an ally when the US gets over the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Pakistan is doing little to stop this drift in negative opinion growing in the US.
Gone are the early days of the Obama administration when major efforts were made to woo Pakistan.
Now what Pakistan may lose as a US ally in the region, India will gain - something that should be worrying for the Pakistani ruling elite.
The failure of Pakistan to rebuild ties with the US is rooted in actual incidents, anger and real disputes.
But it is also down to the inability of the government or the military to make decisions that need to be taken collectively to preserve the state of relations with a powerful country which has acted in the past as Pakistan's window to the West - especially in terms of loans, aid and business and exports. Internal conflict
There has been an unprecedented growth in violence from north to south involving sectarian, ethnic, militant Islamic, criminal and other heavily armed groups which the government appears helpless to stop.
Even those areas once considered the most peaceful, such as the Northern Areas, are wracked by mayhem.
Equally, religious minorities can no longer rely on the state to protect them and are being targeted at will.
Many, such as the Christians, are fleeing the country if they can.
Equally vital is the desperate need for tough decisions on economic reforms, austerity, greater income generation and a resolution to the power crisis through tackling the circular debt that plagues the electricity industry and is now estimated to be at US $6bn. Afghanistan
Afghanistan remains the key foreign policy issue for the military which dominates all foreign policy decision making, yet the military itself seems paralysed by its inability to heal its rift with the Americans so that it can address talks with the Taliban and other issues.
Pakistan wants to see the end of the US occupation of its neighbour while the military has always been determined to play a major role in determining the end game in Afghanistan.
The end game is now upon us and yet everything Pakistan is not doing appears to be distancing itself further from any relevance to the future of Afghanistan and the region post-2014 when the Americans do leave.
This is precisely the moment when the country should be at its most united and pragmatic so that it can deal with the enormous issues that surround the US departure.
Instead the country is at its most disunited and unable to take even the simplest decisions while Islamic extremist groups have been allowed to take over the streets with their demands for a never ending confrontation with the US, the West and India.
Pakistan's decision makers need to be more decisive on issues of law and order, the economy and foreign policy to give people hope that a democratic form of government will prevail.
Ahmed Rashid, has just published his fifth book, 'Pakistan on the Brink; The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan.'
NATO Soldier Killed by Attacker in Afghan Army Uniform
VOA News May 6, 2012
NATO says a man dressed in an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire on coalition soldiers, leaving one dead.
The NATO statement says coalition forces returned fire killing the shooter Sunday in southern Afghanistan.
The shooting is the latest in a series of deadly attacks on international troops by gunmen wearing Afghan uniforms.
In other violence, NATO says one of its service members died in a bomb explosion in eastern Afghanistan Sunday. No details on the attack were released.
Elsewhere in the country, two Taliban commanders and three insurgents were killed in fighting Friday with security forces. A NATO statement says one of the men was a senior Taliban commander who planned and organized roadside bombings and other attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Faryab province.
The other, a subordinate commander, was a Taliban judge who attempted to impose Taliban law and punishment on civilians in the area.
4 Taliban militants killed in western Afghanistan clash
FARAH, Afghanistan, May 6 (Xinhua) -- At least four Taliban militants were killed Sunday in a clash in the western Afghan province of Farah, authorities said.
"A group of armed militants launched an attack in the wee hour of Sunday morning on Afghan National Police (ANP) check posts along a main roadway in Bakwa district and the ANP repelled the attack killing four armed Taliban militants," deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Ghaus Malyar told Xinhua.
He said several rebels fled the area following the retaliation attack and that no members of ANP were injured in the incident.
The Taliban insurgents, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, have intensified activities as the insurgents group announced to launch a spring rebel offensive dubbed "Al-Farooq" from May 3 across the country, saying their targets are foreign and Afghan troops as well as legislators and government functionaries.
Two people including a 12-year-old child were killed and two others including a tribal elder were injured when two separate roadside bombings went off in the country's southern province of Zabul on Saturday, the Afghan Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement on Sunday.
FNA Correspondent Arrested in Kabul
Fars News Agency May 6, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- Afghan security forces arrested Fars News Agency (FNA)'s correspondent in Kabul Abdulvahed Hakimi and took him to an unknown place, his wife said on Sunday.
"Abdulvahed informed his family in a very short and controlled call that he had been arrested by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS)," his wife said.
She said her husband had left home Saturday morning for a report on the Kabul museum but didn't return.
Hakimi is also in charge of FNA's office in Kabul.
The NDS refrained from commenting on the case.
The FNA office is one of the most active press in Afghanistan with its official office in Kabul.
Sources privy to the case said the detention of FNA's correspondent in Kabul might be the result of a misunderstanding among Afghan security bodies and their lack of knowledge about FNA's licensed operation in Afghanistan.
11 Finance Ministry Personnel Detained Over Corruption Charges
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Eleven employees of Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance were detained Saturday after being accused of embezzling 25 million Afghanis (US$520,000).
The embezzled money was related to district development projects, the Afghan Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office chief Abu Baker Rafiee said.
"11 people were arrested in connection with the embezzlement of 25 million Afghanis - four others are still under investigation," Rafiee said.
"Some high ranking government personnel and a woman were among those arrested."
He declined to name the personnel.
The money was being embezzled through district-level development projects in 11 districts. The provinces were not named.
This comes as Head of the High Office of Oversight and Anti Corruption Azizullah Lodin accused Afghan Minister of Energy and Water of land grabbing.
Kabul Traffic Accident Kills Karzai's Policy Adviser
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Sebghatullah Sanjar, chief of Karzai's Policy Department, died in a traffic accident in Kabul Saturday afternoon.
The accident happened at around 5:00 pm local time when an Afghan National Army bus lost control and hit two other vehicles, including Sanjar's.
Sanjar, his driver and his daughter were killed in the accident and his wife was badly injured, spokesman for the presidential Palace Hamed Helmi told TOLOnews.
"Sanjer was killed along with his 14-year-old daughter today in a traffic accident in Kabul. His wife is badly injured," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his sorrow over the incident saying Sanjar's death was a major loss to Afghanistan's politics.
Kabul's traffic chief Asadullah Hamdard confirmed the accident saying that an ANA bus was travelling from Kabul Airport square towards Massoud's Avenue when it lost control while trying to overtake another car.
Hamdard said the bus hit two vehicles, a Parado and Corolla, in the lane of traffic going in the other direction.
"The incident occurred today was as a result of the carelessness of the bus driver travelling from Airport Square to Massoud's avenue," Hamdard said.
"It lost control when the bus was trying to pass another vehicle and at a high speed."
Witnesses said that an ANA bus which was travelling at a high speed "jumped" into the opposite road and hit several other vehicles.
"An ANA vehicle jumped from that road and hit three or four cars," one witness told TOLOnews.
Sanjar played a vital role in the interim government Loya Jirga and led a political party in the country.
The Republican Party of Afghanistan was established in 1999 and declared the UN Human Rights Declaration as the programme of the party.
Most recently, he worked as policy advisor for President Karzai.
Concerns Over Lack of Food Safety in Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 05 May 2012
Afghanistan is facing a serious problem with the lack of food and nutrition to a large part of the population, especially threatening to children under five years of age, a report released Saturday said.
The World Bank and Afghanistan's Ministry of Economy released a report Saturday over the lack of food security in the country, identifying reasons for the problem and statistics of those affected by it.
Afghanistan is one of the highest ranked countries in the world when it comes to problems with food security, children being the most affected by this.
At least 54 percent of Afghan children face serious challenges in getting adequate food and nutrition, the report said.
At least 29 percent of the country's population does not receive sufficient calories, and 20 percent have a poor diet, it said.
The lack of food security is seen primarily among the poor people and mostly among mountain dwellers. The problems also tend to worsen with the winter months, it said.
The report added that high food prices are the prime reason for the problem.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com