Tweet
Afghanistan no longer worst place for mothers: report
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - Better healthcare and more girls attending school have knocked Afghanistan from its position as the worst place on earth to be a mother, Save the Children said in a major report on Tuesday, but stressed the precarious nature of any gains.
"More mothers are surviving and fewer children are dying and this is something we need to be celebrating," said Rachel Maranto, Advocacy and Mobilisation senior Manager at Save the Children in Kabul.
Afghanistan switched places with Niger in western Africa in Save the Children's 'Mothers' Index', which fell back to bottom place, a spot Afghanistan occupied for the past two years.
This was partly achieved by the number of births attended by trained professionals in Afghanistan rising from 14 percent to 24 percent between 2003 and 2008, and girls in formal education, which has gone from zero in 2001 to 2.5 million today.
Afghan women have won back hard-fought rights in education, voting and work since the five-year austere rule of the Taliban was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001.
But their plight remains severe and Maranto warned that such gains are "fragile".
LOT MORE TO DO
Foreign aid accounts for more than 80 percent of Afghanistan's annual state budget of roughly $5 billion, and that is set to dramatically fall as foreign combat troops prepare to leave by the end of 2014.
Rick Manning, medical director at Cure International's hospital in Kabul, said there were "encouraging signs" that life for mothers and children was improving, but warned: "It's more complicated than just spending money. It's getting the right people here to make sure the money is used correctly."
In a neonatal intensive care unit run by the non-profit Cure -- one of only five in the country -- Manning surveyed the row of incubators where tiny babies born prematurely were sleeping.
"About every infant who comes in here would have died if they were not admitted here. So a lot more of these care units need to be made, staffed, housed. A lot more needs to be done."
During the rule of the Taliban, women were denied access to general hospitals from 1998 and not allowed out of their homes without a male relative or their husband, meaning their health deteriorated and the child mortality rate shot up.
For Halima, whose 18-month-old son Hamid is recovering from a free of charge cleft lip operation at Cure, one of almost 3,000 it has performed since opening in 2005, life has definitely improved.
"This simply would have not been possible during the time of the Taliban," said the illiterate mother from a village in central Bamiyan province.
Maranto said Afghanistan is haunted by the huge divide between urban centers, where women have more access to healthcare and education, and the rural areas, where life carries on much as it did during the time of the Taliban.
As a result, Afghanistan suffers from widespread malnutrition, which leads to 60 percent of Afghan children being affected by stunting, and 275 children die every day in the country of 30 million, Save the Children said in its report.
"There are many women and many mothers who may never be able to see a doctor or a nurse or any kind of trained health worker in their lifetime," said Maranto.
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
NATO air strikes kill 14 Afghan civilians: Officials
HEART, Afghanistan, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Fourteen civilians were killed and six others injured as warplanes of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) raided the suspected Taliban hideouts in Badghis province 555 km northwest of capital Kabul on Monday, local officials said Tuesday.
"The aircraft of NATO-led forces raided the suspected hideouts of Taliban militants in Balamirghab district in the wee hours of Monday but it mistakenly struck residential houses as a result 14 civilians including women and children were martyred and six others sustained injuries," spokesman for provincial administration Sharif Majidi told Xinhua.
He also noted that the affected area has been regarded as Taliban hotbed as the militants often ambush security forces convoys and organize roadside bombings.
Police spokesman in the region Abdul Rauf Ahmadi also confirmed the incident, saying 14 civilians had been killed.
Meantime, President Hamid Karzai in a statement released by his office Monday night asked the concerned authorities to initiate investigation into the reported killing of civilians by the NATO- led forces during operations in Badghis, Logar, Kapisa and Helmand provinces over the past few days.
U.S. military apologizes for killing six in Afghanistan family
05/08/2012 01:00:00 AM MDTBy Rod Nordland The New York Times via denverpost.com
KABUL — The U.S. military claimed responsibility and expressed regret for an airstrike that mistakenly killed six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan and U.S. military officials confirmed Monday.
The attack, which took place Friday night, was first revealed by the governor of Helmand province, Muhammad Gulab Mangal, on Monday. His spokesman, Dawoud Ahmadi, said that after an investigation they had determined that a family home in the Sangin district had been attacked by mistake in the U.S. airstrike, which was called in to respond to a Taliban attack.
Mangal summoned the U.S. regional commander, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus of the Marines, to complain, and Gurganus apologized, Ahmadi said.
A spokesman for the U.S. military in Helmand, Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, said, "We don't have any issues with the governor's statement."
He said U.S. officials had been aware of the deaths and had immediately started an investigation.
"We expressed regret over the incident, and we're investigating to determine how this happened," he said.
"We are deeply saddened by any civilian death and particularly regret an incident where civilians are killed," especially because of action by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Upton said.
He added that Gurganus "will be formally apologizing in the next couple of days to the family."
The victims were a woman and five of her children, three girls and two boys, according to Afghan officials.
In northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding, according to the governor of Sar-e-Pul province, Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, who went to the scene in the Dara Bala district. The bride and groom survived, he said.
The flooding in the mountainous northern province claimed at least five other lives, with four people still missing, he said.
Afghanistan had particularly heavy snowfall over the past winter, with numerous avalanches, and as spring melts begin, more flooding is feared.
Three members of the NATO coalition were killed Monday in an improvised bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, according to a statement from the ISAF, which did not give their nationalities pending notification of next of kin.
In southeastern Paktika province, Afghan authorities said four suicide bombers attacked government buildings in the capital, Sharana, on Sunday night, but were subdued after an eight-hour firefight, which ended Monday in the deaths of the attackers. There were no government casualties and one civilian was lightly wounded, according to the province's police chief, Gen. Dulat Khan Zadran, who said Afghan forces handled the attack without ISAF support.
Afghan President Says Civilian Deaths Hinder U.S. Pact
May 7, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has summoned NATO's commander and the U.S. ambassador to warn that civilian deaths in military operations threatened a strategic pact he has signed with the United States.
A statement from Karzai's office on May 7 said dozens of civilians had been killed in NATO air strikes in the eastern provinces of Kapisa and Logar, northwestern Badghis, and southern Helmand since May 5.
Karzai warned that, if Afghans did not feel safe, the Strategic Partnership Agreement he signed with U.S. President Barack Obama last week "would lose its meaning."
The pact covers relations between the two countries when NATO forces pull out in 2014.
A NATO spokesman said John Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan has pledged to "fully investigate" the incidents and "report back" to Karzai."
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Majority of Americans reject new US-Afghan security pact: poll
A large majority of Americans disapprove of a new strategic partnership with Afghanistan that will keep US troops on Afghan soil beyond 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll.
By Ben Arnoldy May 8, 2012 at 8:48 am EDT The Christian Science Monitor
A large majority of Americans do not favor the new strategic partnership with Afghanistan signed during a surprise visit to Kabul last week by President Obama.
By a margin of 63 percent disapproval to 33 percent approval, respondents rejected a description of the deal that will include a US troop presence and billions of dollars in monetary support for Afghan forces in the decade after 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll conducted April 27 to May 4.
Unusually for a key issue facing Americans in an election year, the lack of support was bipartisan, showing only small differences across the ideological spectrum. However, with few national politicians dissenting on the broad outlines of the Afghanistan policy, the popular unhappiness has few immediately discernable political consequences.
Some of the polling was done before Mr. Obama had a chance to outline his case for the deal in a national televised address on May 1, the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
In that address, Obama presented the partnership as enabling a withdrawal of most US forces by 2014 while still safeguarding Afghanistan in the long-term from a return of Al Qaeda.
“The agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the Afghan people: As you stand up, you will not stand alone,” said Obama. “Within this framework, we will work with the Afghans to determine what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions beyond 2014: counterterrorism and continued training.”
Under the 10-year agreement, US forces would have access to Afghan bases beyond 2014 for training Afghans and hunting Al Qaeda. The US commits to ask Congress annually to help pay for Afghanistan’s security forces, whose cost outstrips the country’s budget.
The agreement does not spell out US troop numbers or dollar figures. However, estimates for the yearly cost of sustaining the Afghan forces envisioned after 2014 are upwards of $4 billion. US and Afghan officials have suggested the US will pay several billion dollars a year annually, with the rest coming from the Afghans and from NATO partners.
In his address, Obama conceded Americans were tired of the war. “Others will ask why we don’t leave immediately. That answer is also clear: we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize. Otherwise our gains could be lost, and Al Qaeda could establish itself once more.”
Since the summer of 2010, however, tracking polls from the Pew Research Center show a majority of Americans want US troops to come home from Afghanistan “as soon as possible” rather than stay “until the situation is stabilized.” Pew’s most recent poll in mid-April found a 60 to 32 split for leaving now. That split resembles closely the new Monitor/TIPP poll on the strategic partnership deal.
Respondents in the TIPP poll were asked: “The US plans to remove most American forces from Afghanistan by 2014. To help Afghanistan after 2014, the US will sign a 10-year deal that keeps some US troops there and the US will also spend several billion dollars a year on the Afghan military. Do you approve or disapprove of such US involvement in Afghanistan beyond 2014?”
Among Democrats, 13 percent strongly approved, 17 percent somewhat approved, 19 percent somewhat disapproved, and 46 percent strongly disapproved. Among Republicans, the percentages skewed only slightly more positive, 15, 22, 20, and 38, respectively. For independents, the percentages were 12, 21, 15, and 49.
The margin of error was plus/minus 3.3 percentage points.
Few discernible trends were noted between races, genders, or types of hometown. Older Americans were substantially more likely to strongly disapprove of the deal. Cohorts under age 45 registered strong disapproval in the 30 percent range, while more than 50 percent of those over 45 strongly disapproved.
Such broad dissent raises questions about whether the president has a democratic mandate to commit the US to a long-term deal. But the most contentious issues – troop numbers and dollar figures – will involve consulting Congress.
Despite its unpopularity, America’s longest war has not stirred the intensity of passions that surrounded the Iraq war. Only small numbers have taken protests into the streets, with expressions of dissent mostly limited to social media efforts from groups like Rethink Afghanistan.
War protesters and members of the Occupy movement are planning to converge on Chicago ahead of a NATO summit on Afghanistan scheduled for May 20. At that summit, the US will ask its NATO partners to commit to covering some of the costs of Afghan security forces post-2014.
Iran reiterates concerns over U.S.-Afghan security pact
TEHRAN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast reiterated on Tuesday his country's concerns over the security pact recently signed between the United States and Afghanistan.
The Islamic republic has informed the Afghani officials about its concerns over the agreement, said Mehmanparast in his weekly press briefing.
Peace, stability and security in Afghanistan is highly important for Iran, and Afghanistan's security is intertwined with the security of the whole region and Iran. Any instability or insecurity can leave its impact on the Islamic republic, said the Iranian spokesman.
"We believe the presence of foreign forces, including the U.S. forces and its allies is the root cause of insecurity and instability in the regional countries and especially in Afghanistan," said Mehmanparast.
He stressed that the regional countries can assist the establishment of security in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, Mehmanparast said that the unclear roles defined for U.S. forces and their military bases, in the strategic partnership agreement between the United States and Afghanistan, are major sources of concerns for Iran and other regional countries.
The pact cannot resolve Afghanistan's security problems; instead, it will further destabilize the country and increase insecurity, Mehmanparast said.
Iran believes a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and closure of their military bases is the only way to solve Afghanistan's problems and to bring peace and security to the country, he added.
Afghanistani President Hamid Karzai last Thursday assured the country's neighbors that signing strategic partnership with the United States does not pose any threat to them. "There is no threat from Afghanistan soil to our neighbors," Karzai told journalists at a press conference one day after inking the pact with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama.
Obama paid a surprise visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, last Tuesday night. During his tour, Obama inked the strategic pact with Karzai and visited main U.S. military facilities in Bagram.
Karzai said that under the pact, the United States needs to support Afghanistan in all fields including economy and security.
According to Karzai, Afghanistan wants to further enhance relations with both Pakistan and Iran. He added that the U. S.-led coalition forces should pursue terrorists hiding in sanctuaries outside the Afghan borders, instead of fighting them in Afghan villages.
Spanta Warns the US Will Help Defend Any Attacks On Afghanistan
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 19:36 Written by TOLOnews.com
Afghanistan's National Security Advisor and key protagonist in negotiations behind the long-term agreement United States said Tuesday that the pact was signed to put off any country from military or political interference in Afghanistan.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta warned in his address at Herat University that any country which attempted a military attack on Afghanistan would face a US military reaction.
His comments come as political tensions with Iran escalated over Iranian officials requesting Afghan lawmakers not to approve the strategic pact with the US because it threatened regional stability.
"Iranian officials told Afghan senators not to approve the pact or Afghanistan will face problems. We reply to them that it is for this very reason we signed the agreement," Spanta said.
The head of Afghanistan's Senate Fazel Hadi Muslimyar said Monday that Abul Fazl Zuhrawand had met him and asked him not to approve the Afghan-US agreement as it is a threat against regional countries.
Zuhrawand allegedly said that if the agreement was approved, Afghan nationals would be expelled from Iran.
Previously, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast had said the agreement was a cause of concern for Iran and that, if approved, it would lead to more instability in the region.
Spanta dismissed these concerns.
"What I see in Iran is nationalism and radicalism which tries to influence the region from a religious point of view. [Iran's] politics have never been recognised globally," he added.
He used the university platform to urge Afghans to ensure their children get an education in order to build the country and strengthen peace.
"Afghans should guarantee their children's future with peace and only think about their national interest," he said.
Spanta's comments came on the same day that Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) summoned Zuhrawand to answer questions about the discussion he had with Muslimyar on not approving the pact.
The strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the US was signed last week by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US President Barack Obama. It requires Parliamentary approval to be formally enacted.
MOFA has not responded to TOLOnews as to whether this meeting has taken place.
22 Taliban militants killed in eastern Afghanistan
SHARAN, Afghanistan, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Afghan soldiers and NATO - led coalition troops eliminated 22 Taliban militants in an operation in the country's eastern Paktika province Monday night, an Afghan army spokesman said Tuesday.
"Afghan National Army (ANA) backed by coalition forces raided a Taliban hiding place in Nike district Monday night, killing 22 armed militants,"army spokesman Ajmal Zhwak told Xinhua.
He said no security force member was injured in the operation in the province, 155 km south of capital Kabul.
Meantime, the NATO-led coalition forces also confirmed in a statement released Tuesday that"Afghan National Army soldiers and coalition forces killed 21 insurgents and wounded one in Nike district after positively identifying the individuals carrying AK- 47s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar systems,"
The restive Paktika and neighboring Khost province have been regarded as Taliban hotbed in the eastern part of the insurgency- hit country.
Taliban militants have yet to make comments.
The militant group, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, launched a spring rebel offensive dubbed " Al-Farooq" on May 3 across the country, saying their targets are foreign and Afghan troops as well as legislators and government functionaries.
8 insurgents killed in operations in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by army and NATO- led coalition troops, have eliminated eight armed insurgents and detained five others, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
"Eight armed insurgents have been killed and five other suspects detained during four joint military operations launched by police, army and coalition forces in Kabul, Paktia and Zabul provinces within the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.
The joint forces also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
In another development, a joint security force detained a senior Taliban leader in northern Faryab province earlier Tuesday.
"An Afghan-led and coalition supported security force detained a senior Taliban leader during an operation in Almar district, Faryab province, today," the coalition forces said in a separate statement.
"The leader organized roadside bombings, suicide attacks and other operations against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the province. Additionally, he coordinated with Taliban leaders to provide funding and operational guidance," the coalition statement said but did not disclosing the name of the captured Taliban leader.
The Taliban insurgent group, who announced to launch a spring rebel offensive from May 3 against Afghan forces and NATO troops, has not to make comments yet.
More than 650 insurgents have been killed and over 1,300 others detained in the country since the beginning this year, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry.
Clinton Urges More Pakistani Action Against Terrorism
VOA News May 8, 2012
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Pakistan should do more to combat terrorism, and that the United States is committed to going after Pakistan-based terror groups that threaten the U.S., Afghanistan and other allies.
After talks Tuesday in New Delhi with her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, Clinton told reporters the United States and India “know the tragedies” of terrorism on their soil. She also said terrorists in Pakistan have killed 30,000 Pakistanis.
“We look to the government of Pakistan to do more. It needs to make sure that its territory is not used as launching pads for terrorist attacks anywhere — including inside of Pakistan.”
In comments Monday in Kolkata, Clinton said Pakistan has not acted on U.S. and Indian calls to capture or try suspected Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is accused of playing a major role in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people.
On Tuesday, Clinton said the United States and India need to deepen their security cooperation, and that both countries share the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. She also commended India for steps its refineries have taken in reducing their oil imports from Iran, as part of a continued campaign to pressure Tehran over its controversial nuclear program.
“We don't believe Iran would be back at the negotiating table unless there had been the unrelenting pressure of international sanctions, and this pressure must stay on if we want to see progress toward a peaceful resolution.”
Western powers suspect Iran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian energy program, a charge Tehran denies. Krishna said Iran has rights as a participant in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but that it must abide by its obligations under the pact.
Clinton and Krishna also discussed economic issues, including progress on a civil nuclear cooperation deal, as the two sides prepare for a U.S.-India strategic forum in Washington next month.
The top U.S. diplomat said trade between the two countries is expected to top $100 billion this year, and that they should be working toward having one of the world's largest trading relationships.
Clinton met Monday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the leader of the ruling coalition, Sonia Gandhi.
Pakistan army says US scapegoating
Pakistan's top army commander Lt. Gen. Khalid Rabbani has accused the U.S. of seeking to make his country a scapegoat for the American failure to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan. In an interview he also added that American efforts to talk peace with insurgents in Afghanistan mean Washington can no longer expect Pakistan to attack all the militant factions on its side of the border.
Tuesday, May 8th 2012, 06:42 AM The Associated Press
American efforts to talk peace with insurgents in Afghanistan mean Washington can no longer expect Pakistan to attack all the militant factions on its side of the border, some of whom Islamabad is also reaching out to, the commander of Pakistan's forces along the frontier told The Associated Press.
In a sign of the bad blood between Washington and Islamabad, Lt. Gen. Khalid Rabbani also accused the U.S. of seeking to make Pakistan a scapegoat for its failure to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO officials say Pakistani tolerance of — or support for — Afghan factions operating on its soil is hobbling efforts to end the resistance to the foreign military presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. wants Pakistan to launch an offensive or otherwise disrupt militant groups in North Waziristan, the stronghold for multiple insurgent networks on the border.
"Why do they to raise their fingers toward Pakistan? It is shifting the blame to others," Rabbani said in his offices in a highly secure section of the main northwestern city of Peshawar. "Is Afghanistan free of Taliban? It has hundreds of thousands of them."
Rabbani was speaking a day after militants in North Waziristan beheaded 13 Pakistani soldiers, including four that it captured when Pakistani troops raided a militant hideout. The killings highlighted the dilemma facing the military in dealing with an area used by both the country's fiercest enemies, the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida, and Afghan and Pakistani militants who are battling U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan but who the army believes don't pose a direct threat to Islamabad.
One powerful faction in North Waziristan is led by a commander called Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is believed to have signed a nonaggression pact with the government but still funnels fighters into Afghanistan. Rabbani defended the government's dealings with Bahadur, saying "at the moment he seems to be trying to keep himself out of the trouble."
Washington has urged Pakistan to attack all the militants along the border, which it believes are equally dangerous. Rabbani said U.S. and NATO were in contact with insurgents in Afghanistan to try and "co-opt them into the peace process."
"Similar things are true on this side of the border as well," he said. "Is it forbidden for us to do the same?"
The Pakistani army has launched anti-militant operations in six of the seven tribal regions along the Afghan border since 2004, retaking parts of the mountainous area and losing hundreds of soldiers in bloody fighting. But just as U.S.-led forces have experienced across the border, the force has had trouble holding retaken territory and attacks continue to roil the region.
Privately, some U.S. officials agree with Pakistan's stated reason that its lacks the soldiers to move into North Waziristan and defeat the some 8,000 militants there. But others in Congress and the army accuse the force of seeking to keep the insurgents as proxies to influence events in Afghanistan, especially the so-called Haqqani network, whose leadership is said to be based in North Waziristan.
Repeating assurances by other top army officers, Rabbani said several times that the army would launch operations in North Waziristan. But he didn't say when this would happen, nor whether it would target all factions there.
"Something has to be done, and it's in the offing," said Rabbani, who commands over 150,000 soldiers and paramilitary forces in the rugged northwest. "North Waziristan is the only region we haven't cleared. It should be done as early as possible."
U.S. officials have been hoping to see the army move into North Waziristan since 2010, but now believe it is unlikely before 2014, when Washington is committed to bringing most of its soldiers home.
The unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year badly hurt the relationship between the two countries. U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border in November effectively ended cooperation between the two forces. Islamabad ordered the closure of U.S. and NATO supply lines.
Washington wants to rebuild ties with the country, but has had little success so far.
Anti-Corruption Efforts Are Not Enough: Finance Minister
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 19:23 Written by TOLOnews.com
Efforts to eradicate corruption in Afghanistan have been token measures aimed at satisfying financial donors, but not addressing the root causes, Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said Tuesday.
"Up until now, anti-corruption efforts have been made only to satisfy donors; it's not enough," Zakhilwal said in a press conference in Kabul.
He said that the Afghan government's fight against corruption is only a show for donors, but nothing fundamental has been done to eradicate it from its base.
He also laid some blame on international donors for requesting financial models that follow their own preferences, but which were not coherent with Afghanistan's conditions.
"The problem with the international community is they want us to implement their own financial models which are not in conformity with the economic situation in Afghanistan," he said.
In this regard, Zakhilwal said the Finance Ministry has prepared 22 "very important" programmes which address the shortcoming of donor models, to present at the Tokyo conference on development in July.
The programmes aim to attract donor aid up until 2025, he said.
Zakhilwal said he is optimistic about the future financial development of Afghanistan, saying the programmes to be presented at Tokyo could make Afghanistan financially independent by 2030.
"We expect to have a stable economic situation by 2025 to 2030," he said.
"We will even be able to finance our security forces after that time, but the Afghan government should do more to reach this."
Afghan security forces have been estimated to need a total of $4.1 billion annually for at least the first five years after 2014, when Nato combat forces will withdraw from Afghanistan.
What the French elections could mean for Afghan security
Newly elected French President François Hollande pledged to withdraw French troops by end of 2012. This will increase the burden on other NATO allies as Taliban fighting season begins.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer May 7, 2012
In France, voters have ushered out one of America’s closest strategic allies and voted in a new president, François Hollande, who promised during the campaign to pull out France’s remaining 3,500 soldiers from the NATO mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
Afghan officials in Kabul put on a brave face at this news, saying that Afghanistan was ready to take on its own security arrangements. In any case, officials pointed out that there are many other NATO member nations in Afghanistan, and NATO isn't leaving anytime soon.
"For us, a NATO stance is more important than individual decisions by individual nations," Afghan Defense Ministry Spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi told Agence France-Presse. "And Afghanistan is well prepared to take over all security responsibilities in 2013."
Y et as the fighting season begins in Afghanistan, and as Afghans fret about their country’s future once NATO forces pull out after 2014, the election of a French president who favors withdrawal is likely to be a troubling sign. And it is likely to give fellow NATO members such as the United States – which signed its own separate security compact with Afghanistan last week – a few new complications to sort out.
France is one of the largest countries in Europe, but its contribution to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan – the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – is relatively small: just 3,300 troops compared with the United States’ 90,000 soldiers, or Britain’s 9,500 soldiers. But there is a vast difference between the effect of an orderly withdrawal and a hasty one. An orderly withdrawal is one in which duties and responsibilities are handed off to either the host country or to another foreign peacekeeping force. A disorderly departure inspires panic, and images of helicopters on the roof of an embassy.
The very fact that France had troops in Afghanistan is due largely to the efforts of France’s departing President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the most America-friendly presidents since World War II. Mr. Sarkozy chose in 2009 to reintegrate French troops into NATO after a decades-long absence, and promptly urged their use both in Afghanistan and also during the NATO air campaign against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces in Libya last year.
Sarkozy also signaled a rupture with France’s past policy of interventionism among its former colonies in Africa, although that promise lasted about as long as a day-old croissant. French troops intervened in Ivory Coast in early 2011 to help capture incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo after he refused to step down from power after losing the Nov. 2010 elections to Alessane Ouattara.
While the French public never did particularly warm to the notion of French troops in Afghanistan, the Monitor’s Robert Marquand reported in April 2011 that French public opinion seemed to be in support of operations in Libya and Ivory Coast, two countries France has typically kept within its sphere of influence.
The election of Hollande, by all accounts, has more to do with public discontent over Sarkozy’s handling of the sluggish economy than it does with French foreign policy. But withdrawal from Afghanistan is popular. Even Sarkozy himself, during a January 2012 visit to Kabul, suggested that France would push NATO to hand over combat operations to Afghan control in 2013.
“We have decided in a common accord with President Karzai to ask NATO to consider a total handing of NATO combat missions to the Afghan Army over the course of 2013,” Sarkozy said, adding that France itself would withdraw its troops by the end of 2013.
There may not seem to be a great deal of distance between Sarkozy’s end-of-2013 withdrawal and Hollande’s campaign promise of withdrawal within the next seven months. But French elections may be an indication of a more general disengagement from joint military operations, increasing the burden on the remaining NATO allies there.
Afghan opium price hike to stir violence: minister
By Jack Kimball Tue May 8, 2012 1:07pm EDT
KABUL - (Reuters) - The price of opium cultivated in Afghanistan is set to rise as the security forces step up their eradication efforts and a fungus ravages the poppies that yield it, squeezing supply and stirring violence, the country's drug chief said on Tuesday.
Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani, the Minister of Counter Narcotics, said the expected price rise coupled with increasing demand from regional nations would make poppy cultivation more attractive to cash-strapped farmers, forcing the government to intensify its fight against the trade.
"The price hike will definitely pressure us a lot," Osmani told Reuters through an official translator inside his heavily-barricaded ministry, the walls of which were decorated with posters of eradication efforts across the country.
"The tendency towards cultivation will grow, it will create resistance, law and order issues, and it will raise the casualty rate (for the Afghan security forces)," he said.
Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world's opium, from which heroin is made, and its poppy-driven economy helps fuel the decade-long war, lining insurgents' pockets with more than $100 million annually and earning traffickers billions more.
Eradication efforts - favored by top opium consumer Russia but condemned by the United States - and a fungus that leaves the poppy bulb without the liquid form of raw opium are now threatening to give insurgents even more cash by cutting output and driving up the price, Osmani said.
The fungus is hitting the poppy crop in the top producing provinces of Farah, Helmand and Kandahar, he added.
RISING VALUE
Osmani said low seizure rates of opium abroad posed a major problem to controlling production, with drug barons and insurgents in land-locked Afghanistan shipping tonnes of drugs annually through Iran, Pakistan and former Soviet central Asia.
The seizure rate in central Asia is only 4 percent while it is 3.5 percent in Pakistan and 9 percent in Iran, he said.
There is a foreign-funded push to wean farmers off poppy, a hardy crop that needs relatively little water, by offering incentives - such as subsidized seed and fertilizer - to grow legal crops, though the lure of poppy is proving hard to break.
In 2011, the farm-gate value of opium production more than doubled from the previous year to $1.4 billion and now accounts for 15 percent of the economy, the United Nations said.
With foreign combat forces leaving by the end of 2014, and with much of their cash and air power expected to go with them, the Afghan government will need more help fighting poppy cultivation, experts say.
According to the United Nations, opium is emerging as a new gold standard in Afghanistan, where traders and farmers are hoarding the drug as a source of ready cash to hedge against the risk of a power vacuum when foreign troops leave.
(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Andrew Osborn)
Meet Afghanistan’s Greatest Hope: 'The Re-Integree'
By Michael Hirsh | National Journal
No, “re-integree” is not really a word in English, but among the U.S. and NATO officials who are trying to wrench Afghanistan into something like a manageable shape before they leave, it’s become a critical one. A relatively new program to reintegrate Afghan Taliban and other insurgents into society may, in fact, be one of the most hopeful routes to a successful--or at least less than disastrous--U.S. withdrawal in 2014.
Despite all the headlines about getting high-level Taliban to the peace table in Qatar (where the Taliban have gingerly set up an office but are balking at serious negotiations), a much better prospect for neutralizing the insurgents may lie with village-level efforts at inducing low-ranking fighters and commanders to surrender arms and rejoin their communities.
The strategy, in other words, is to hollow out the Taliban army even as its top commanders enjoy relative security across the border in the tribal regions of Pakistan. Given the recalcitrance of the Pakistanis in rolling up what they consider their Islamist allies, that may be the only way, senior U.S. and NATO officials suggest.
“We’re leveraging it,” Gen. John Allen, commander of all international security forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview with visiting reporters on Monday at his southern regional command in Uruzgan. Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, also likes this approach. “If we have a [Taliban] command that no longer has an army to command, that works for me,” he said in a separate interview.
Hence ISAF’s tongue-tying neologism: the “re-integree.” According to a senior U.S. adviser to Mohammad Stanekzai, head of the “Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Program (APRP),” one measure of success of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is that, since the first “re-integree” came over in October 2010, some 4,200 to 4,300 insurgents have returned to their villages and towns in the last year and a half. (Another 600 are now being “vetted,” the adviser says.) Under the APRP, these former fighters give up their “heavy arms,” sign an oath renouncing violence and abiding by the Afghan constitution, get three months of $120 payments, and are consigned to the wrath of their village elders if they relapse. An added inducement is that communities can only qualify for small grants from the national government if they show they have some re-integrees.
And yet, admitted the adviser, “we’re not at the point where 4,000 is statistically significant.” That’s because most of the fighters who surrender arms are in the areas with the least diehard jihadists in the non-Pashtun North and West, like Badghis and Herat. (Badghis, in Regional Command West, has by far the largest proportion of re-integrees, some 12-to-1,300 or one third of the total.)
“The problem with the south and east is you’re much closer to the heart of the insurgency, they’re much more hard-core, and there are more concerns about retribution,” the adviser said. As yet, no more than a thousand have come out of the south and east.
Gen. Allen and Amb. Crocker say they place a lot of hope in anecdotal evidence that, slowly, even some of the more zealous, Pakistan-supported Taliban in the south and east are realizing that, in fact, the U.S. and NATO are never going to depart entirely. They say the 10-year strategic partnership that President Obama announced just last week will have a tremendous psychological impact, as will similar commitments expected at the NATO summit in Chicago in two weeks.
“There’s going to be an international military presence here in Afghanistan for a long time, a long time after 2014,” Allen said. “While the Taliban for the purposes of recruiting and to maintain the coherence in their units may well desire to say that we’ll just wait you out, I think the reality is that every day they wait is a day they’re at greater disadvantage, frankly,” he added.
Crocker indicated that, based on what he’s heard, the “informal” reintegration of Taliban in the south is also picking up. “Taliban fighters just want out of this,” said Crocker. “In Helmand the governor thinks there’ s quite a bit of that going on. They make contact with their home village … and just schlep on home at night.”
Returning Taliban sometimes cite the newly-empowered Afghan security forces, saying they signed up to fight foreigners, not other Afghans, both NATO and Afghan officials say.
Still, one of the more disturbing revelations here is that ISAF officials don’t seem to have a good feel for the total number of insurgents out there—it could be “as low as 20,000 to as high as 45,000,” one of Allen’s staffers said.
Allen himself, in the interview, dismissed the higher number but added: “Nobody knows for sure.... I think most estimates would put it between thirty and thirty-five [thousand]. Some large number of them are in Pakistan. And the term ‘enemy’ has many different meanings here. A significant number of what might be considered enemy are in a support role, they’re not fighters necessarily. And frankly some of what masquerades as enemy are really criminal networks.... So it’s never been more than an estimate.”
On such estimates may ride the success or failure of the decade-long U.S. effort in Afghanistan.
Herat Pharma Factories Call for End to Foreign Medicine Imports
TOLOnews.com Monday, 07 May 2012
Pharmaceutical manufacturers in Herat province called for the Afghan government to do more to prevent medicines arriving in Afghanistan which are similar to those already produced in the country.
Herat-based Awisan Pharma Company official Abdul Karim Sherzad said Monday the government should not import medicines already produced in Afghanistan as it damaged local pharma businesses and lowered quality standards.
"We want the government to avoid importing similar medicines to what we produce," he said.
"We can guarantee the quality and price of the medicine. The government should supervise the price and quality, and we do not restrict this."
Company officials said that although the Afghan president had ordered for foreign medicines to be controlled, still many medicines is coming into Afghanistan and diminishing business for the local manufacturers.
Sherzad said the Afghan companies would be capable of meeting the demand for medicine in the country if the government stopped similar medicines coming into the market.
The statement comes as a pharmaceutical factory recently opened in the industrial town of western Heart province, producing seven types of medicine.
Sherzad said that the pharma companies also have problems with their raw materials sometimes getting spoiled after sitting for days in Customs.
"Our raw material remained for twenty days in customs, so this affected our production and was economically damaging for us," he said.
Customs director in Herat Ehsanullah Kamawal said it was the responsibility of the government health officials and not Customs to monitor the materials needed for the pharma companies.
"We assure that the material remains only stay [in Customs] for one day," he said. "If they remain more than a day, it is the problem of Public Health ministry."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - Better healthcare and more girls attending school have knocked Afghanistan from its position as the worst place on earth to be a mother, Save the Children said in a major report on Tuesday, but stressed the precarious nature of any gains.
"More mothers are surviving and fewer children are dying and this is something we need to be celebrating," said Rachel Maranto, Advocacy and Mobilisation senior Manager at Save the Children in Kabul.
Afghanistan switched places with Niger in western Africa in Save the Children's 'Mothers' Index', which fell back to bottom place, a spot Afghanistan occupied for the past two years.
This was partly achieved by the number of births attended by trained professionals in Afghanistan rising from 14 percent to 24 percent between 2003 and 2008, and girls in formal education, which has gone from zero in 2001 to 2.5 million today.
Afghan women have won back hard-fought rights in education, voting and work since the five-year austere rule of the Taliban was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001.
But their plight remains severe and Maranto warned that such gains are "fragile".
LOT MORE TO DO
Foreign aid accounts for more than 80 percent of Afghanistan's annual state budget of roughly $5 billion, and that is set to dramatically fall as foreign combat troops prepare to leave by the end of 2014.
Rick Manning, medical director at Cure International's hospital in Kabul, said there were "encouraging signs" that life for mothers and children was improving, but warned: "It's more complicated than just spending money. It's getting the right people here to make sure the money is used correctly."
In a neonatal intensive care unit run by the non-profit Cure -- one of only five in the country -- Manning surveyed the row of incubators where tiny babies born prematurely were sleeping.
"About every infant who comes in here would have died if they were not admitted here. So a lot more of these care units need to be made, staffed, housed. A lot more needs to be done."
During the rule of the Taliban, women were denied access to general hospitals from 1998 and not allowed out of their homes without a male relative or their husband, meaning their health deteriorated and the child mortality rate shot up.
For Halima, whose 18-month-old son Hamid is recovering from a free of charge cleft lip operation at Cure, one of almost 3,000 it has performed since opening in 2005, life has definitely improved.
"This simply would have not been possible during the time of the Taliban," said the illiterate mother from a village in central Bamiyan province.
Maranto said Afghanistan is haunted by the huge divide between urban centers, where women have more access to healthcare and education, and the rural areas, where life carries on much as it did during the time of the Taliban.
As a result, Afghanistan suffers from widespread malnutrition, which leads to 60 percent of Afghan children being affected by stunting, and 275 children die every day in the country of 30 million, Save the Children said in its report.
"There are many women and many mothers who may never be able to see a doctor or a nurse or any kind of trained health worker in their lifetime," said Maranto.
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
NATO air strikes kill 14 Afghan civilians: Officials
HEART, Afghanistan, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Fourteen civilians were killed and six others injured as warplanes of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) raided the suspected Taliban hideouts in Badghis province 555 km northwest of capital Kabul on Monday, local officials said Tuesday.
"The aircraft of NATO-led forces raided the suspected hideouts of Taliban militants in Balamirghab district in the wee hours of Monday but it mistakenly struck residential houses as a result 14 civilians including women and children were martyred and six others sustained injuries," spokesman for provincial administration Sharif Majidi told Xinhua.
He also noted that the affected area has been regarded as Taliban hotbed as the militants often ambush security forces convoys and organize roadside bombings.
Police spokesman in the region Abdul Rauf Ahmadi also confirmed the incident, saying 14 civilians had been killed.
Meantime, President Hamid Karzai in a statement released by his office Monday night asked the concerned authorities to initiate investigation into the reported killing of civilians by the NATO- led forces during operations in Badghis, Logar, Kapisa and Helmand provinces over the past few days.
U.S. military apologizes for killing six in Afghanistan family
05/08/2012 01:00:00 AM MDTBy Rod Nordland The New York Times via denverpost.com
KABUL — The U.S. military claimed responsibility and expressed regret for an airstrike that mistakenly killed six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan and U.S. military officials confirmed Monday.
The attack, which took place Friday night, was first revealed by the governor of Helmand province, Muhammad Gulab Mangal, on Monday. His spokesman, Dawoud Ahmadi, said that after an investigation they had determined that a family home in the Sangin district had been attacked by mistake in the U.S. airstrike, which was called in to respond to a Taliban attack.
Mangal summoned the U.S. regional commander, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus of the Marines, to complain, and Gurganus apologized, Ahmadi said.
A spokesman for the U.S. military in Helmand, Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, said, "We don't have any issues with the governor's statement."
He said U.S. officials had been aware of the deaths and had immediately started an investigation.
"We expressed regret over the incident, and we're investigating to determine how this happened," he said.
"We are deeply saddened by any civilian death and particularly regret an incident where civilians are killed," especially because of action by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Upton said.
He added that Gurganus "will be formally apologizing in the next couple of days to the family."
The victims were a woman and five of her children, three girls and two boys, according to Afghan officials.
In northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding, according to the governor of Sar-e-Pul province, Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, who went to the scene in the Dara Bala district. The bride and groom survived, he said.
The flooding in the mountainous northern province claimed at least five other lives, with four people still missing, he said.
Afghanistan had particularly heavy snowfall over the past winter, with numerous avalanches, and as spring melts begin, more flooding is feared.
Three members of the NATO coalition were killed Monday in an improvised bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, according to a statement from the ISAF, which did not give their nationalities pending notification of next of kin.
In southeastern Paktika province, Afghan authorities said four suicide bombers attacked government buildings in the capital, Sharana, on Sunday night, but were subdued after an eight-hour firefight, which ended Monday in the deaths of the attackers. There were no government casualties and one civilian was lightly wounded, according to the province's police chief, Gen. Dulat Khan Zadran, who said Afghan forces handled the attack without ISAF support.
Afghan President Says Civilian Deaths Hinder U.S. Pact
May 7, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has summoned NATO's commander and the U.S. ambassador to warn that civilian deaths in military operations threatened a strategic pact he has signed with the United States.
A statement from Karzai's office on May 7 said dozens of civilians had been killed in NATO air strikes in the eastern provinces of Kapisa and Logar, northwestern Badghis, and southern Helmand since May 5.
Karzai warned that, if Afghans did not feel safe, the Strategic Partnership Agreement he signed with U.S. President Barack Obama last week "would lose its meaning."
The pact covers relations between the two countries when NATO forces pull out in 2014.
A NATO spokesman said John Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan has pledged to "fully investigate" the incidents and "report back" to Karzai."
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Majority of Americans reject new US-Afghan security pact: poll
A large majority of Americans disapprove of a new strategic partnership with Afghanistan that will keep US troops on Afghan soil beyond 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll.
By Ben Arnoldy May 8, 2012 at 8:48 am EDT The Christian Science Monitor
A large majority of Americans do not favor the new strategic partnership with Afghanistan signed during a surprise visit to Kabul last week by President Obama.
By a margin of 63 percent disapproval to 33 percent approval, respondents rejected a description of the deal that will include a US troop presence and billions of dollars in monetary support for Afghan forces in the decade after 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll conducted April 27 to May 4.
Unusually for a key issue facing Americans in an election year, the lack of support was bipartisan, showing only small differences across the ideological spectrum. However, with few national politicians dissenting on the broad outlines of the Afghanistan policy, the popular unhappiness has few immediately discernable political consequences.
Some of the polling was done before Mr. Obama had a chance to outline his case for the deal in a national televised address on May 1, the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
In that address, Obama presented the partnership as enabling a withdrawal of most US forces by 2014 while still safeguarding Afghanistan in the long-term from a return of Al Qaeda.
“The agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the Afghan people: As you stand up, you will not stand alone,” said Obama. “Within this framework, we will work with the Afghans to determine what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions beyond 2014: counterterrorism and continued training.”
Under the 10-year agreement, US forces would have access to Afghan bases beyond 2014 for training Afghans and hunting Al Qaeda. The US commits to ask Congress annually to help pay for Afghanistan’s security forces, whose cost outstrips the country’s budget.
The agreement does not spell out US troop numbers or dollar figures. However, estimates for the yearly cost of sustaining the Afghan forces envisioned after 2014 are upwards of $4 billion. US and Afghan officials have suggested the US will pay several billion dollars a year annually, with the rest coming from the Afghans and from NATO partners.
In his address, Obama conceded Americans were tired of the war. “Others will ask why we don’t leave immediately. That answer is also clear: we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize. Otherwise our gains could be lost, and Al Qaeda could establish itself once more.”
Since the summer of 2010, however, tracking polls from the Pew Research Center show a majority of Americans want US troops to come home from Afghanistan “as soon as possible” rather than stay “until the situation is stabilized.” Pew’s most recent poll in mid-April found a 60 to 32 split for leaving now. That split resembles closely the new Monitor/TIPP poll on the strategic partnership deal.
Respondents in the TIPP poll were asked: “The US plans to remove most American forces from Afghanistan by 2014. To help Afghanistan after 2014, the US will sign a 10-year deal that keeps some US troops there and the US will also spend several billion dollars a year on the Afghan military. Do you approve or disapprove of such US involvement in Afghanistan beyond 2014?”
Among Democrats, 13 percent strongly approved, 17 percent somewhat approved, 19 percent somewhat disapproved, and 46 percent strongly disapproved. Among Republicans, the percentages skewed only slightly more positive, 15, 22, 20, and 38, respectively. For independents, the percentages were 12, 21, 15, and 49.
The margin of error was plus/minus 3.3 percentage points.
Few discernible trends were noted between races, genders, or types of hometown. Older Americans were substantially more likely to strongly disapprove of the deal. Cohorts under age 45 registered strong disapproval in the 30 percent range, while more than 50 percent of those over 45 strongly disapproved.
Such broad dissent raises questions about whether the president has a democratic mandate to commit the US to a long-term deal. But the most contentious issues – troop numbers and dollar figures – will involve consulting Congress.
Despite its unpopularity, America’s longest war has not stirred the intensity of passions that surrounded the Iraq war. Only small numbers have taken protests into the streets, with expressions of dissent mostly limited to social media efforts from groups like Rethink Afghanistan.
War protesters and members of the Occupy movement are planning to converge on Chicago ahead of a NATO summit on Afghanistan scheduled for May 20. At that summit, the US will ask its NATO partners to commit to covering some of the costs of Afghan security forces post-2014.
Iran reiterates concerns over U.S.-Afghan security pact
TEHRAN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast reiterated on Tuesday his country's concerns over the security pact recently signed between the United States and Afghanistan.
The Islamic republic has informed the Afghani officials about its concerns over the agreement, said Mehmanparast in his weekly press briefing.
Peace, stability and security in Afghanistan is highly important for Iran, and Afghanistan's security is intertwined with the security of the whole region and Iran. Any instability or insecurity can leave its impact on the Islamic republic, said the Iranian spokesman.
"We believe the presence of foreign forces, including the U.S. forces and its allies is the root cause of insecurity and instability in the regional countries and especially in Afghanistan," said Mehmanparast.
He stressed that the regional countries can assist the establishment of security in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, Mehmanparast said that the unclear roles defined for U.S. forces and their military bases, in the strategic partnership agreement between the United States and Afghanistan, are major sources of concerns for Iran and other regional countries.
The pact cannot resolve Afghanistan's security problems; instead, it will further destabilize the country and increase insecurity, Mehmanparast said.
Iran believes a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and closure of their military bases is the only way to solve Afghanistan's problems and to bring peace and security to the country, he added.
Afghanistani President Hamid Karzai last Thursday assured the country's neighbors that signing strategic partnership with the United States does not pose any threat to them. "There is no threat from Afghanistan soil to our neighbors," Karzai told journalists at a press conference one day after inking the pact with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama.
Obama paid a surprise visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, last Tuesday night. During his tour, Obama inked the strategic pact with Karzai and visited main U.S. military facilities in Bagram.
Karzai said that under the pact, the United States needs to support Afghanistan in all fields including economy and security.
According to Karzai, Afghanistan wants to further enhance relations with both Pakistan and Iran. He added that the U. S.-led coalition forces should pursue terrorists hiding in sanctuaries outside the Afghan borders, instead of fighting them in Afghan villages.
Spanta Warns the US Will Help Defend Any Attacks On Afghanistan
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 19:36 Written by TOLOnews.com
Afghanistan's National Security Advisor and key protagonist in negotiations behind the long-term agreement United States said Tuesday that the pact was signed to put off any country from military or political interference in Afghanistan.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta warned in his address at Herat University that any country which attempted a military attack on Afghanistan would face a US military reaction.
His comments come as political tensions with Iran escalated over Iranian officials requesting Afghan lawmakers not to approve the strategic pact with the US because it threatened regional stability.
"Iranian officials told Afghan senators not to approve the pact or Afghanistan will face problems. We reply to them that it is for this very reason we signed the agreement," Spanta said.
The head of Afghanistan's Senate Fazel Hadi Muslimyar said Monday that Abul Fazl Zuhrawand had met him and asked him not to approve the Afghan-US agreement as it is a threat against regional countries.
Zuhrawand allegedly said that if the agreement was approved, Afghan nationals would be expelled from Iran.
Previously, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast had said the agreement was a cause of concern for Iran and that, if approved, it would lead to more instability in the region.
Spanta dismissed these concerns.
"What I see in Iran is nationalism and radicalism which tries to influence the region from a religious point of view. [Iran's] politics have never been recognised globally," he added.
He used the university platform to urge Afghans to ensure their children get an education in order to build the country and strengthen peace.
"Afghans should guarantee their children's future with peace and only think about their national interest," he said.
Spanta's comments came on the same day that Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) summoned Zuhrawand to answer questions about the discussion he had with Muslimyar on not approving the pact.
The strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the US was signed last week by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US President Barack Obama. It requires Parliamentary approval to be formally enacted.
MOFA has not responded to TOLOnews as to whether this meeting has taken place.
22 Taliban militants killed in eastern Afghanistan
SHARAN, Afghanistan, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Afghan soldiers and NATO - led coalition troops eliminated 22 Taliban militants in an operation in the country's eastern Paktika province Monday night, an Afghan army spokesman said Tuesday.
"Afghan National Army (ANA) backed by coalition forces raided a Taliban hiding place in Nike district Monday night, killing 22 armed militants,"army spokesman Ajmal Zhwak told Xinhua.
He said no security force member was injured in the operation in the province, 155 km south of capital Kabul.
Meantime, the NATO-led coalition forces also confirmed in a statement released Tuesday that"Afghan National Army soldiers and coalition forces killed 21 insurgents and wounded one in Nike district after positively identifying the individuals carrying AK- 47s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar systems,"
The restive Paktika and neighboring Khost province have been regarded as Taliban hotbed in the eastern part of the insurgency- hit country.
Taliban militants have yet to make comments.
The militant group, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led incursion in late 2001, launched a spring rebel offensive dubbed " Al-Farooq" on May 3 across the country, saying their targets are foreign and Afghan troops as well as legislators and government functionaries.
8 insurgents killed in operations in Afghanistan: gov't
KABUL, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by army and NATO- led coalition troops, have eliminated eight armed insurgents and detained five others, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
"Eight armed insurgents have been killed and five other suspects detained during four joint military operations launched by police, army and coalition forces in Kabul, Paktia and Zabul provinces within the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.
The joint forces also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
In another development, a joint security force detained a senior Taliban leader in northern Faryab province earlier Tuesday.
"An Afghan-led and coalition supported security force detained a senior Taliban leader during an operation in Almar district, Faryab province, today," the coalition forces said in a separate statement.
"The leader organized roadside bombings, suicide attacks and other operations against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the province. Additionally, he coordinated with Taliban leaders to provide funding and operational guidance," the coalition statement said but did not disclosing the name of the captured Taliban leader.
The Taliban insurgent group, who announced to launch a spring rebel offensive from May 3 against Afghan forces and NATO troops, has not to make comments yet.
More than 650 insurgents have been killed and over 1,300 others detained in the country since the beginning this year, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry.
Clinton Urges More Pakistani Action Against Terrorism
VOA News May 8, 2012
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Pakistan should do more to combat terrorism, and that the United States is committed to going after Pakistan-based terror groups that threaten the U.S., Afghanistan and other allies.
After talks Tuesday in New Delhi with her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, Clinton told reporters the United States and India “know the tragedies” of terrorism on their soil. She also said terrorists in Pakistan have killed 30,000 Pakistanis.
“We look to the government of Pakistan to do more. It needs to make sure that its territory is not used as launching pads for terrorist attacks anywhere — including inside of Pakistan.”
In comments Monday in Kolkata, Clinton said Pakistan has not acted on U.S. and Indian calls to capture or try suspected Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is accused of playing a major role in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people.
On Tuesday, Clinton said the United States and India need to deepen their security cooperation, and that both countries share the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. She also commended India for steps its refineries have taken in reducing their oil imports from Iran, as part of a continued campaign to pressure Tehran over its controversial nuclear program.
“We don't believe Iran would be back at the negotiating table unless there had been the unrelenting pressure of international sanctions, and this pressure must stay on if we want to see progress toward a peaceful resolution.”
Western powers suspect Iran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian energy program, a charge Tehran denies. Krishna said Iran has rights as a participant in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but that it must abide by its obligations under the pact.
Clinton and Krishna also discussed economic issues, including progress on a civil nuclear cooperation deal, as the two sides prepare for a U.S.-India strategic forum in Washington next month.
The top U.S. diplomat said trade between the two countries is expected to top $100 billion this year, and that they should be working toward having one of the world's largest trading relationships.
Clinton met Monday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the leader of the ruling coalition, Sonia Gandhi.
Pakistan army says US scapegoating
Pakistan's top army commander Lt. Gen. Khalid Rabbani has accused the U.S. of seeking to make his country a scapegoat for the American failure to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan. In an interview he also added that American efforts to talk peace with insurgents in Afghanistan mean Washington can no longer expect Pakistan to attack all the militant factions on its side of the border.
Tuesday, May 8th 2012, 06:42 AM The Associated Press
American efforts to talk peace with insurgents in Afghanistan mean Washington can no longer expect Pakistan to attack all the militant factions on its side of the border, some of whom Islamabad is also reaching out to, the commander of Pakistan's forces along the frontier told The Associated Press.
In a sign of the bad blood between Washington and Islamabad, Lt. Gen. Khalid Rabbani also accused the U.S. of seeking to make Pakistan a scapegoat for its failure to beat the insurgency in Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO officials say Pakistani tolerance of — or support for — Afghan factions operating on its soil is hobbling efforts to end the resistance to the foreign military presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. wants Pakistan to launch an offensive or otherwise disrupt militant groups in North Waziristan, the stronghold for multiple insurgent networks on the border.
"Why do they to raise their fingers toward Pakistan? It is shifting the blame to others," Rabbani said in his offices in a highly secure section of the main northwestern city of Peshawar. "Is Afghanistan free of Taliban? It has hundreds of thousands of them."
Rabbani was speaking a day after militants in North Waziristan beheaded 13 Pakistani soldiers, including four that it captured when Pakistani troops raided a militant hideout. The killings highlighted the dilemma facing the military in dealing with an area used by both the country's fiercest enemies, the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida, and Afghan and Pakistani militants who are battling U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan but who the army believes don't pose a direct threat to Islamabad.
One powerful faction in North Waziristan is led by a commander called Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is believed to have signed a nonaggression pact with the government but still funnels fighters into Afghanistan. Rabbani defended the government's dealings with Bahadur, saying "at the moment he seems to be trying to keep himself out of the trouble."
Washington has urged Pakistan to attack all the militants along the border, which it believes are equally dangerous. Rabbani said U.S. and NATO were in contact with insurgents in Afghanistan to try and "co-opt them into the peace process."
"Similar things are true on this side of the border as well," he said. "Is it forbidden for us to do the same?"
The Pakistani army has launched anti-militant operations in six of the seven tribal regions along the Afghan border since 2004, retaking parts of the mountainous area and losing hundreds of soldiers in bloody fighting. But just as U.S.-led forces have experienced across the border, the force has had trouble holding retaken territory and attacks continue to roil the region.
Privately, some U.S. officials agree with Pakistan's stated reason that its lacks the soldiers to move into North Waziristan and defeat the some 8,000 militants there. But others in Congress and the army accuse the force of seeking to keep the insurgents as proxies to influence events in Afghanistan, especially the so-called Haqqani network, whose leadership is said to be based in North Waziristan.
Repeating assurances by other top army officers, Rabbani said several times that the army would launch operations in North Waziristan. But he didn't say when this would happen, nor whether it would target all factions there.
"Something has to be done, and it's in the offing," said Rabbani, who commands over 150,000 soldiers and paramilitary forces in the rugged northwest. "North Waziristan is the only region we haven't cleared. It should be done as early as possible."
U.S. officials have been hoping to see the army move into North Waziristan since 2010, but now believe it is unlikely before 2014, when Washington is committed to bringing most of its soldiers home.
The unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year badly hurt the relationship between the two countries. U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border in November effectively ended cooperation between the two forces. Islamabad ordered the closure of U.S. and NATO supply lines.
Washington wants to rebuild ties with the country, but has had little success so far.
Anti-Corruption Efforts Are Not Enough: Finance Minister
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 19:23 Written by TOLOnews.com
Efforts to eradicate corruption in Afghanistan have been token measures aimed at satisfying financial donors, but not addressing the root causes, Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said Tuesday.
"Up until now, anti-corruption efforts have been made only to satisfy donors; it's not enough," Zakhilwal said in a press conference in Kabul.
He said that the Afghan government's fight against corruption is only a show for donors, but nothing fundamental has been done to eradicate it from its base.
He also laid some blame on international donors for requesting financial models that follow their own preferences, but which were not coherent with Afghanistan's conditions.
"The problem with the international community is they want us to implement their own financial models which are not in conformity with the economic situation in Afghanistan," he said.
In this regard, Zakhilwal said the Finance Ministry has prepared 22 "very important" programmes which address the shortcoming of donor models, to present at the Tokyo conference on development in July.
The programmes aim to attract donor aid up until 2025, he said.
Zakhilwal said he is optimistic about the future financial development of Afghanistan, saying the programmes to be presented at Tokyo could make Afghanistan financially independent by 2030.
"We expect to have a stable economic situation by 2025 to 2030," he said.
"We will even be able to finance our security forces after that time, but the Afghan government should do more to reach this."
Afghan security forces have been estimated to need a total of $4.1 billion annually for at least the first five years after 2014, when Nato combat forces will withdraw from Afghanistan.
What the French elections could mean for Afghan security
Newly elected French President François Hollande pledged to withdraw French troops by end of 2012. This will increase the burden on other NATO allies as Taliban fighting season begins.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer May 7, 2012
In France, voters have ushered out one of America’s closest strategic allies and voted in a new president, François Hollande, who promised during the campaign to pull out France’s remaining 3,500 soldiers from the NATO mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
Afghan officials in Kabul put on a brave face at this news, saying that Afghanistan was ready to take on its own security arrangements. In any case, officials pointed out that there are many other NATO member nations in Afghanistan, and NATO isn't leaving anytime soon.
"For us, a NATO stance is more important than individual decisions by individual nations," Afghan Defense Ministry Spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi told Agence France-Presse. "And Afghanistan is well prepared to take over all security responsibilities in 2013."
Y et as the fighting season begins in Afghanistan, and as Afghans fret about their country’s future once NATO forces pull out after 2014, the election of a French president who favors withdrawal is likely to be a troubling sign. And it is likely to give fellow NATO members such as the United States – which signed its own separate security compact with Afghanistan last week – a few new complications to sort out.
France is one of the largest countries in Europe, but its contribution to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan – the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – is relatively small: just 3,300 troops compared with the United States’ 90,000 soldiers, or Britain’s 9,500 soldiers. But there is a vast difference between the effect of an orderly withdrawal and a hasty one. An orderly withdrawal is one in which duties and responsibilities are handed off to either the host country or to another foreign peacekeeping force. A disorderly departure inspires panic, and images of helicopters on the roof of an embassy.
The very fact that France had troops in Afghanistan is due largely to the efforts of France’s departing President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the most America-friendly presidents since World War II. Mr. Sarkozy chose in 2009 to reintegrate French troops into NATO after a decades-long absence, and promptly urged their use both in Afghanistan and also during the NATO air campaign against Muammar Qaddafi’s forces in Libya last year.
Sarkozy also signaled a rupture with France’s past policy of interventionism among its former colonies in Africa, although that promise lasted about as long as a day-old croissant. French troops intervened in Ivory Coast in early 2011 to help capture incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo after he refused to step down from power after losing the Nov. 2010 elections to Alessane Ouattara.
While the French public never did particularly warm to the notion of French troops in Afghanistan, the Monitor’s Robert Marquand reported in April 2011 that French public opinion seemed to be in support of operations in Libya and Ivory Coast, two countries France has typically kept within its sphere of influence.
The election of Hollande, by all accounts, has more to do with public discontent over Sarkozy’s handling of the sluggish economy than it does with French foreign policy. But withdrawal from Afghanistan is popular. Even Sarkozy himself, during a January 2012 visit to Kabul, suggested that France would push NATO to hand over combat operations to Afghan control in 2013.
“We have decided in a common accord with President Karzai to ask NATO to consider a total handing of NATO combat missions to the Afghan Army over the course of 2013,” Sarkozy said, adding that France itself would withdraw its troops by the end of 2013.
There may not seem to be a great deal of distance between Sarkozy’s end-of-2013 withdrawal and Hollande’s campaign promise of withdrawal within the next seven months. But French elections may be an indication of a more general disengagement from joint military operations, increasing the burden on the remaining NATO allies there.
Afghan opium price hike to stir violence: minister
By Jack Kimball Tue May 8, 2012 1:07pm EDT
KABUL - (Reuters) - The price of opium cultivated in Afghanistan is set to rise as the security forces step up their eradication efforts and a fungus ravages the poppies that yield it, squeezing supply and stirring violence, the country's drug chief said on Tuesday.
Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani, the Minister of Counter Narcotics, said the expected price rise coupled with increasing demand from regional nations would make poppy cultivation more attractive to cash-strapped farmers, forcing the government to intensify its fight against the trade.
"The price hike will definitely pressure us a lot," Osmani told Reuters through an official translator inside his heavily-barricaded ministry, the walls of which were decorated with posters of eradication efforts across the country.
"The tendency towards cultivation will grow, it will create resistance, law and order issues, and it will raise the casualty rate (for the Afghan security forces)," he said.
Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world's opium, from which heroin is made, and its poppy-driven economy helps fuel the decade-long war, lining insurgents' pockets with more than $100 million annually and earning traffickers billions more.
Eradication efforts - favored by top opium consumer Russia but condemned by the United States - and a fungus that leaves the poppy bulb without the liquid form of raw opium are now threatening to give insurgents even more cash by cutting output and driving up the price, Osmani said.
The fungus is hitting the poppy crop in the top producing provinces of Farah, Helmand and Kandahar, he added.
RISING VALUE
Osmani said low seizure rates of opium abroad posed a major problem to controlling production, with drug barons and insurgents in land-locked Afghanistan shipping tonnes of drugs annually through Iran, Pakistan and former Soviet central Asia.
The seizure rate in central Asia is only 4 percent while it is 3.5 percent in Pakistan and 9 percent in Iran, he said.
There is a foreign-funded push to wean farmers off poppy, a hardy crop that needs relatively little water, by offering incentives - such as subsidized seed and fertilizer - to grow legal crops, though the lure of poppy is proving hard to break.
In 2011, the farm-gate value of opium production more than doubled from the previous year to $1.4 billion and now accounts for 15 percent of the economy, the United Nations said.
With foreign combat forces leaving by the end of 2014, and with much of their cash and air power expected to go with them, the Afghan government will need more help fighting poppy cultivation, experts say.
According to the United Nations, opium is emerging as a new gold standard in Afghanistan, where traders and farmers are hoarding the drug as a source of ready cash to hedge against the risk of a power vacuum when foreign troops leave.
(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Andrew Osborn)
Meet Afghanistan’s Greatest Hope: 'The Re-Integree'
By Michael Hirsh | National Journal
No, “re-integree” is not really a word in English, but among the U.S. and NATO officials who are trying to wrench Afghanistan into something like a manageable shape before they leave, it’s become a critical one. A relatively new program to reintegrate Afghan Taliban and other insurgents into society may, in fact, be one of the most hopeful routes to a successful--or at least less than disastrous--U.S. withdrawal in 2014.
Despite all the headlines about getting high-level Taliban to the peace table in Qatar (where the Taliban have gingerly set up an office but are balking at serious negotiations), a much better prospect for neutralizing the insurgents may lie with village-level efforts at inducing low-ranking fighters and commanders to surrender arms and rejoin their communities.
The strategy, in other words, is to hollow out the Taliban army even as its top commanders enjoy relative security across the border in the tribal regions of Pakistan. Given the recalcitrance of the Pakistanis in rolling up what they consider their Islamist allies, that may be the only way, senior U.S. and NATO officials suggest.
“We’re leveraging it,” Gen. John Allen, commander of all international security forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview with visiting reporters on Monday at his southern regional command in Uruzgan. Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, also likes this approach. “If we have a [Taliban] command that no longer has an army to command, that works for me,” he said in a separate interview.
Hence ISAF’s tongue-tying neologism: the “re-integree.” According to a senior U.S. adviser to Mohammad Stanekzai, head of the “Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Program (APRP),” one measure of success of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is that, since the first “re-integree” came over in October 2010, some 4,200 to 4,300 insurgents have returned to their villages and towns in the last year and a half. (Another 600 are now being “vetted,” the adviser says.) Under the APRP, these former fighters give up their “heavy arms,” sign an oath renouncing violence and abiding by the Afghan constitution, get three months of $120 payments, and are consigned to the wrath of their village elders if they relapse. An added inducement is that communities can only qualify for small grants from the national government if they show they have some re-integrees.
And yet, admitted the adviser, “we’re not at the point where 4,000 is statistically significant.” That’s because most of the fighters who surrender arms are in the areas with the least diehard jihadists in the non-Pashtun North and West, like Badghis and Herat. (Badghis, in Regional Command West, has by far the largest proportion of re-integrees, some 12-to-1,300 or one third of the total.)
“The problem with the south and east is you’re much closer to the heart of the insurgency, they’re much more hard-core, and there are more concerns about retribution,” the adviser said. As yet, no more than a thousand have come out of the south and east.
Gen. Allen and Amb. Crocker say they place a lot of hope in anecdotal evidence that, slowly, even some of the more zealous, Pakistan-supported Taliban in the south and east are realizing that, in fact, the U.S. and NATO are never going to depart entirely. They say the 10-year strategic partnership that President Obama announced just last week will have a tremendous psychological impact, as will similar commitments expected at the NATO summit in Chicago in two weeks.
“There’s going to be an international military presence here in Afghanistan for a long time, a long time after 2014,” Allen said. “While the Taliban for the purposes of recruiting and to maintain the coherence in their units may well desire to say that we’ll just wait you out, I think the reality is that every day they wait is a day they’re at greater disadvantage, frankly,” he added.
Crocker indicated that, based on what he’s heard, the “informal” reintegration of Taliban in the south is also picking up. “Taliban fighters just want out of this,” said Crocker. “In Helmand the governor thinks there’ s quite a bit of that going on. They make contact with their home village … and just schlep on home at night.”
Returning Taliban sometimes cite the newly-empowered Afghan security forces, saying they signed up to fight foreigners, not other Afghans, both NATO and Afghan officials say.
Still, one of the more disturbing revelations here is that ISAF officials don’t seem to have a good feel for the total number of insurgents out there—it could be “as low as 20,000 to as high as 45,000,” one of Allen’s staffers said.
Allen himself, in the interview, dismissed the higher number but added: “Nobody knows for sure.... I think most estimates would put it between thirty and thirty-five [thousand]. Some large number of them are in Pakistan. And the term ‘enemy’ has many different meanings here. A significant number of what might be considered enemy are in a support role, they’re not fighters necessarily. And frankly some of what masquerades as enemy are really criminal networks.... So it’s never been more than an estimate.”
On such estimates may ride the success or failure of the decade-long U.S. effort in Afghanistan.
Herat Pharma Factories Call for End to Foreign Medicine Imports
TOLOnews.com Monday, 07 May 2012
Pharmaceutical manufacturers in Herat province called for the Afghan government to do more to prevent medicines arriving in Afghanistan which are similar to those already produced in the country.
Herat-based Awisan Pharma Company official Abdul Karim Sherzad said Monday the government should not import medicines already produced in Afghanistan as it damaged local pharma businesses and lowered quality standards.
"We want the government to avoid importing similar medicines to what we produce," he said.
"We can guarantee the quality and price of the medicine. The government should supervise the price and quality, and we do not restrict this."
Company officials said that although the Afghan president had ordered for foreign medicines to be controlled, still many medicines is coming into Afghanistan and diminishing business for the local manufacturers.
Sherzad said the Afghan companies would be capable of meeting the demand for medicine in the country if the government stopped similar medicines coming into the market.
The statement comes as a pharmaceutical factory recently opened in the industrial town of western Heart province, producing seven types of medicine.
Sherzad said that the pharma companies also have problems with their raw materials sometimes getting spoiled after sitting for days in Customs.
"Our raw material remained for twenty days in customs, so this affected our production and was economically damaging for us," he said.
Customs director in Herat Ehsanullah Kamawal said it was the responsibility of the government health officials and not Customs to monitor the materials needed for the pharma companies.
"We assure that the material remains only stay [in Customs] for one day," he said. "If they remain more than a day, it is the problem of Public Health ministry."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com