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Influential Afghan Peace Council Member Slain
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 13, 2012
A former Taliban official who became a negotiator and key member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council has been shot dead in the capital, Kabul.
The assassination is seen as a setback to the Afghan government's effort to negotiate a political solution to the ongoing battle against Taliban militants.
Police say Arsala Rahmani was in his vehicle when he was killed by an unknown gunman in the western part of the city.
Kabul Deputy Police Chief Daud Amin told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan the attack took place "right in front of his house while his bodyguards were with him. He was killed. We have the information and now our investigating team has been sent there.”
The Taliban denied responsibility, although its militants had indicated earlier that they would target peace negotiators.
"Others are involved in this," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The Taliban said his death would not alter peace talks.
Part Of Talks
Rahmani was on his way to a meeting with lawmakers and other officials in a government-run media center in the heavily barricaded diplomatic center of Kabul when he was killed.
Wahid Mujda, a prominent analyst in Afghanistan on Taliban affairs, told Radio Free Afghanistan that Rahmani had a significant role in ongoing negotiations.
"Rahmani was the head of the prisoners’ commission on the Afghan High Peace Council, and he was working on the issue of who should be release from prison," Mujda said.
He said Rahmani had proposed the release of five detainees at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, "and the High Peace Council also had raised the issue several times."
"So Rahmani was one of the important and influential figures on the High Peace Council," Mujda said.
The United States condemned what is described as an "assassination by the enemies of stability and security."
A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul praised the High Peace Council's work "for a durable, long-term peace in Afghanistan." It said the United States will "continue to stand alongside the Afghan government and people against terrorism and to work with them on behalf of a secure and prosperous Afghanistan."
Rocky Road
No one has been arrested in connection with the shooting.
The 70-or-so-member High Peace Council appears to have made little progress in negotiating with the Taliban to end the war, now in its 11th year.
The son of former Afghan leader Burhanuddin Rabbani was recently named to replace his father atop the peace jirga, after the elder Rabbani was assassinated in September by a suspected Taliban suicide bomber.
Rahmani served as a deputy minister of higher education in the Taliban regime that was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001.
He reconciled with Karzai's government after the Taliban's fall from power and subsequently served in parliament.
With additional reporting by Reuters
Afghan Parliament Will Approve Afghan-US Pact: Committee
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 12 May 2012
Afghanistan's House of Representatives will approve the Afghan-US long-term agreement signed on May 2 by the nations' presidents, saying it was in the national interest for the deal to be enforced.
According to the Parliament's foreign relations committee, the agreement was satisfactory both politically and economically.
"After a complete review of the agreement, both politically and economically, we have decided to approve it," Herat lawmaker Nahid Farid said, adding that the Afghan parliament would approve anything which is in the interests of Afghanistan.
Paktika MP Sayed Ishaaq Gilani said that after hearing all the opinions on the agreement, the parliament decided there were no major problems in pact.
However, he conceded that the agreement is not perfect.
"There are some deficiencies which we expect it to be tackled in the next Afghan-US agreement within a year," he told TOLOnews.
His comment reiterates the probability that another Afghan-US agreement, expected to focus on security issues, will be thrashed out by mid 2013.
The committee's statement comes as tensions flared in the past week over comments from Iranian officials attempting to dissuade the Afghan lawmakers from approving the agreement.
Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan Abul Fazl Zuhrawand on Monday asked the head of the Afghanistan's Senate not to approve the pact already signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US president Barack Obama, but which still required Parliament approval.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson was also reported as saying the pact would destabilise the region.
Members of the Afghan Clerics Council or Ulema weighed in on the furor, condemning the Iranian statements as interference in Afghanistan's internal issues.
"No one has the right to interfere in Afghanistan. Just as we don't accept the rule of US government, in the same way we don't accept any other's intervention," Afghan Clerics Council member Mawlawi Shahzada Shahid told TOLOnews Saturday.
Afghans to begin 3rd phase of security transition from NATO-led force
KABUL, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The government of Afghanistan would soon begin the third phase of security transition from NATO-led troops to the national security forces, spokesman for Presidential Palace Aimal Faizi said on Sunday.
"With the third phase of transferring security from the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will take full control of Uruzgan, Kapisa and Parwan provinces," Faizi told a joint press conference here.
After the completion of the third phase of the security transition, approved by the National Security Council chaired by President Hamid Karzai earlier Sunday, ANSF will take full control of all provincial capitals of the country's 34 provinces, Faizi said, adding "The security responsibilities of 122 administration districts throughout the country will also be handed over to Afghan soldiers and police during the third phase of the process."
Transition of security responsibilities from NATO forces to Afghan army and police began in July last year and lasts till 2014 when Afghanistan is due to take over the its full security duties from U.S. and NATO forces.
U.S. and NATO forces have already handed over the security responsibilities of eight provinces, 11 provincial capitals and 40 districts to ANSF since the process began.
The NATO-led ISAF welcomed the announcement.
"President (Hamid) Karzai's announcement of the third group of areas to enter transition is a testament to the capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Force who will now be responsible for the security of more than 75 percent of the Afghan population." Gen. John R. Allen, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in an ISAF press release issued here Sunday.
"The people of Afghanistan continue to make great strides in securing a peaceful nation for themselves," said NATO's Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan Simon Gass in the release.
"As we move closer to the Afghan government taking complete control of their national security, ISAF's role will shift from combat to support and its commitment to a peaceful Afghanistan will continue beyond 2014," he added.
According to U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, 10, 000 U.S. troops already pulled out from Afghanistan last year and another 23,000 will return home by September this year.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said at the same press conference that the Afghan army and police are capable enough and equipped to take control of those areas from U. S. and NATO forces.
The triage commander: Gen. John Allen hastily transforming U.S. mission in Afghanistan
The Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Sunday, May 13, 2012
GELAN, Afghanistan - Standing in a plywood-walled command post before Gen. John R. Allen, the supreme allied commander in Afghanistan, the nervous-but-earnest young lieutenant cast his platoon’s task for the day in the grand terms of counterinsurgency strategy — the American military’s wartime playbook for the past several years. The goal of the platoon’s walk through a bazaar and meetings with village leaders, the lieutenant said, was for the Afghan government to be “seen as an effective governing body that gains legitimacy with the local population.”
Such ambition used to elicit enthusiastic praise from visiting generals. Not anymore.
“How are you going to create that as an end state?” Allen asked, making no effort to mask his deep skepticism.
Faced with an order from President Obama to withdraw 23,000 troops by the end of the summer, and the prospect of further reductions next year, Allen is hastily transforming the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. Instead of trying to continue large U.S. counterinsurgency operations for as long as he can, he is accelerating a handover of responsibility to Afghan security forces. He plans to order American and NATO troops to push Afghans into the lead across much of the country this summer, even in insurgent-ridden places that had not been candidates for an early transfer.
“My instruction to my commanders is to get the [Afghans] into the fight,” Allen said in an interview. “The sooner I can get them there, while I still have the time and the combat power, the more I can catch them if they fall.”
Here in Ghazni province, where American forces will mount the last major offensive of the decade-long war over the next few months, he is narrowing long-held U.S. goals. Instead of trying to reform the Afghan government, protect the civilian population and conduct security operations until Afghan forces are ready to take over — all of which Americans sought to do as recently as last year — a newly arrived brigade from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division plans to spend the summer attacking Taliban redoubts before departing in mid-September, regardless of whether Afghan soldiers are capable of holding their own.
Six other American generals have taken turns commanding the war since 2002, and each sought to strike a decisive blow against the Taliban. Stanley McChrystal used a 30,000-troop surge to conduct intensive counterinsurgency operations across the south. David Petraeus, who succeeded him, increased the frequency of nighttime operations against Taliban commanders. But it is the silver-haired Allen, widely regarded in the military as one of the sharpest strategic thinkers in a four-star uniform, who may have the greatest impact on Afghanistan’s future — and America’s legacy in the strife-torn nation.
Unlike his predecessors, who had the luxury of troops and money, he has been forced to triage. He has narrowed targets for the development of local government, the pursuit of graft and the development of the country’s economy. His pragmatic focus is on the one prerequisite for America to head to the exits, as defined by the White House: Afghan security forces that are strong enough to keep the Taliban, which continues to enjoy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, from toppling the Kabul government. Although much of the Afghan army remains raggedy, with weak leadership and persistent supply shortages, he is betting that shifting responsibility sooner will increase the odds that Afghans will be able to stand their ground once the U.S. presence shrinks.
Allen’s approach has disquieted some on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon, but the general’s plan has found favor among Obama and many of his top advisers, in part because the aggressive shift of responsibility to the Afghans could make it easier for the president to withdraw additional U.S. troops next year. For the first time since Obama became president, White House aides have ceased complaining about the military command in Kabul.
Obama has offered a degree of praise for Allen that never was accorded to his predecessors. When Obama and Allen walked out of a lunch in the White House earlier this year, the president put his arm around the general, according to administration and military officials. “John Allen is my man,” Obama said to staffers waiting in an anteroom.
But the improved relationship hasn’t made Allen’s job any easier. His to-do list over the next several months is more complex than any previous commander in Kabul: He has to remove 23,000 troops — shuttering bases and reallocating supplies — during the peak summertime fighting season, while also accelerating the training of Afghan forces, deploying new teams of U.S. advisers to assist Afghan troops, and negotiating the terms of an enduring U.S. military presence with President Hamid Karzai’s government.
“John Allen faces an unprecedented challenge,” said retired lieutenant general David Barno, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. “He’s fighting a full-up insurgency at the same time he’s withdrawing forces and changing the mission. It’s an immense task.”
Allen’s predicament has no equivalent in modern American warfare.
In Iraq, U.S. troops departed in a far less violent environment. In Vietnam, Creighton Abrams, the general who presided over America’s withdrawal, had more troops at his disposal and more time to transfer responsibility to local forces.
By the early 1970s, according to historian Lewis Sorley, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu’s government was more effective, and the country’s army was more competent, than Karzai’s administration and the Afghan security forces are today. Allen “has a much more difficult job,” said Sorley, the author of “A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam.”
Allen, 58, is an avid reader of military histories and sees the Vietnam analogies — the insurgent safe havens across a national border, the plummeting public support back home — but he is studying a different withdrawal: that of the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989.
“We’re fighting on the same ground,” he noted.
Afghanistan’s Communist government remained in power through the pullout, falling only three years later, after the Soviet Union collapsed and its economic aid to Kabul ended. To Allen, that fact argues for sustained American assistance to Afghanistan, particularly to pay for its army and police, which will grow to a combined strength of 352,000 this year.
The annual price tag will be about $4 billion, a staggering cost, but far cheaper than the $100 billion annual tab to keep 100,000 American troops on Afghan soil. He and Obama plan to make the case for NATO to help foot the bill, and provide other long-term support to Afghanistan, during the alliance’s annual summit in Chicago next weekend.
Allen blazed an unconventional path to the wood-paneled commander’s office in Kabul. A native of Warrenton, Va., he attended the Flint Hill School in Oakton. He decided to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy after hearing his father, a Navy radio man who served aboard a destroyer that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941, share tales of naval heroism.
Although Allen would go on to lead a Marine infantry company and a battalion, he never had sole command of a division-sized unit — a standard prerequisite to become a four-star wartime commander. Instead, his career has been filled with unusual accomplishments: He won a coveted leadership award given to only one Marine captain each year, and he became the first Marine to serve as the commandant of midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
He spent two years in Iraq’s Anbar province, but his focus was not on day-to-day operations; he spearheaded an effort to reach out to Sunni tribal sheiks and persuade them to stand against al-Qaeda militants — a shift that helped turn the course of the war in western Iraq.
He eventually became the deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, where his portfolio focused largely on Iran. The job afforded him the opportunity to brief Obama, who grew impressed by the general’s analyses. When Obama appointed the previous commander in Kabul, Petraeus, to head the CIA, Allen was said to be a shoo-in for the post. To end America’s longest war, administration officials said, the president wanted someone with fresh ideas in Kabul.
Put aside the uniform and the 6-foot-tall Allen is more professor and Southern gentleman than hard-bitten Marine general. He is unfailingly polite and prone to measured locution. He devours tomes of military history while others are in bed — he sleeps only about four hours a night — and he sets aside several hours each week “to think about big ideas.”
When he was a brigadier general, he told Naval Academy students in a letter that he had been profoundly affected by reading classic military historians, among them Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan and Barbara Tuchman. “If my house were on fire and we were all running for our lives,” he wrote, “I would first save my family, and then all my volumes by these writers.”
He has not yet informed Obama, who has indicated that he wants to keep withdrawing forces next year, how many troops he believes should stay in Afghanistan through 2013, but he is not digging in his boots to maintain all of the 68,000 troops that will remain after the current drawdown phase is completed at the end of September.
By the end of the year, he predicted, “we could find that the operational environment for ’13 could be pretty significantly different,” although he said he will still need Special Operations forces, trainers for the Afghan troops and some conventional units to operate in areas not yet ready for transfer to Afghan control.
It is a very different method from that taken by Petraeus, who sought to push Obama, during war cabinet discussions in 2011, to delay the drawdown until the end of this year so that U.S. forces could continue large-scale counterinsurgency missions. Petraeus failed. But Allen did manage to persuade Obama, in private discussions, not to announce any additional troop cuts until he provides a range of options to the White House in late fall.
To those in the two-story yellow building that houses the NATO headquarters in Kabul, Allen’s approach to the troop reductions reflects his leadership style.
Under Petraeus, “it was much more of a one-man show. There was much less oxygen for debate,” said a senior NATO official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the two generals. “John Allen listens a lot more carefully to what people are saying to him.”
When Allen arrived in Kabul last July, the U.S. and NATO war plan called for a gradual transition of territory to Afghan control by the end of 2014, the point at which NATO’s combat mission will end. Based on the assumption that the United States would maintain substantial combat power in the country until then, the strategy envisaged the most violent, Taliban-saturated places to be handed over last, allowing U.S. troops maximum time to conduct counterinsurgency operations.
To Allen, that plan didn’t reflect the new reality in Afghanistan — or Washington. Afghan military leaders wanted to assume more responsibility, and it seemed unlikely Obama would be willing to forestall additional drawdowns until 2014. As Allen chewed through his options, he concluded that he needed to upend the strategy: Instead of waiting until the very end to transition the toughest places, he would “front-load risk” and allow Afghans to take charge of those areas sooner.
The next set of districts and provinces to be transitioned to Afghan control will be announced in the coming weeks and it will contain several areas — including districts around the city of Kandahar—that remain insurgent battlegrounds. By handing off violent areas sooner, Allen said, it will thrust Afghans into a lead role while the U.S. military still has enough forces to come to their rescue, if needed. And it means that the final two rounds of transition will be far less challenging.
“I seek as much as I can to mitigate risk,” he said.
The accelerated transition comes with a cost. The original plan involved waiting until not just security had improved but local governments had been established and economic development had commenced. The new approach essentially jettisons governance and development goals. “The time scale for their delivery is not the same scale we’re working on for the security transition,” the senior NATO official said.
The 82nd Airborne’s upcoming Ghazni operation also reflects the new American way of war in Afghanistan. Soon after Obama took office in 2009, U.S. commanders vowed they wouldn’t transition areas to Afghan control until coalition forces had cleared those places of insurgents, held that ground and then built a functioning government and economy. But the newly arrived brigade will spend only five months on the ground; its soldiers must leave Afghanistan before the Sept. 30 drawdown deadline.
“We’re going straight from clear to transition,” one of Allen’s subordinate generals said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This is the last real glass-breaker where we exert our will. But then it’ll be up to the Afghans.”
Allen doesn’t intend to let the Afghan army fend for itself. Each battalion will have a small team of U.S. or NATO advisers who can summon air and artillery strikes, provide intelligence from drones, defuse roadside bombs and request medical evacuations. But U.S. military officials believe the Afghan army still has a long way to go before it can operate at top form, even with mentors. Only 18 of the country’s 293 battalions have been deemed by the Americans to be capable of independent operations with coalition advisers.
Some battalions have been plagued by poor leadership and weak morale. Others have been hindered by basic logistical challenges. When Allen visited the forward operating base in Qara Bagh, he asked about the status of the Afghan army battalion in the area. He was told that it had 100 percent of its assigned personnel, but the unit had only six working Humvees of the 28 it had been assigned. The problem was maddeningly simple: Nobody in the battalion had requisitioned the necessary spare parts from the supply depot.
The fast handover to Afghan forces is but one reminder of America’s diminished ambition. His other principal challenge is figuring out how to remove 23,000 troops by September. About 10,000 of them will be Marines from Helmand province, where violence has dropped significantly since the United States commenced large counterinsurgency operations in mid-2009; the rest will have to come from other parts of the country that are far less secure. For Allen and his top deputies, it is a process of trade-offs, of least-worst options. There are no good answers, even with their plan to hand off more responsibility to the Afghans.
“Petraeus had all the fun of building it up,” said Simon Gass, a British diplomat who serves as NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan. “John Allen has all the challenges of tearing it down.”
Late in the evening of April 25, Allen received a nightly summary of casualties across the country. The tally from southern Afghanistan was unusually high: two killed in action and 16 more wounded, several of them seriously, over the previous 24 hours. Allen decided to cancel his meetings the next morning and head to Kandahar.
He would spend just 30 minutes there, all of it at the base hospital, walking from bed to bed in the intensive care unit, bending over the wounded and putting his hand on their head or shoulder, and whispering words of encouragement.
Thank you for all you have done.
Take care of yourself.
You’re one tough guy.
Then he pressed a gold-rimmed commemorative coin in their palms.
“Every one of these counts in a big way to me,” Allen said a few days later. “On that morning, that was where I needed to be.”
Allen is painfully aware that two-thirds of Americans no longer believe the Afghan war is worth fighting. He had hoped that his testimony before the House and Senate armed services committees in early April would help change minds, but “it didn’t penetrate.”
He recognizes that his war has far more modest goals than some of his predecessors envisioned. But it is not a hasty run to the exits. It is, he hopes, withdrawal and transition with honor — a decent ending to a long, grueling conflict that has claimed almost 2,000 American lives and left thousands more with severe, permanent injuries.
“I can’t spend a lot of time worrying about the numbers at home,” he said. “I’ve got to focus on the mission.”
Allen is convinced that his campaign ultimately will be successful, even if it may not appear to be a clear-cut victory. But, he cautioned, “it’s going to be hard as hell.”
Allen assumed his days would be consumed with the Afghan handover and the drawdown, not to mention all of the other chores has predecessors faced — the meetings with congressional delegations and defense ministers from 50 coalition nations, the regular sessions with Karzai and his security ministers, and the vexing problem of insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan.
What he didn’t count on were what his staff calls “meteor strikes”: the release of a video showing Marines urinating on Taliban corpses; the burning of Korans at a giant U.S. base outside Kabul; and an Army sergeant’s allegedly murderous rampage near Kandahar. Each has thrown Allen and his staff for a loop, consuming hundreds of hours of time that could have been devoted to other tasks. And they have complicated his relationship with Karzai, increasing Afghan leverage in negotiations over restrictions on nighttime raids and a transfer of prisoners to Afghan control.
Those who have attended meetings between Allen and Karzai said the general has sought to strike a polite but firm tone in the face of the president’s anger, navigating a middle ground between McChrystal’s deference to the Afghan leader and Petraeus’s forcefulness. “Allen has exercised an approach of astonishing patience under provocation,” a senior Western diplomat in Kabul said.
After Karzai complained about “twin demons” in his country, referring to the Taliban and international forces, Allen wanted to fire back. But he forced himself to seethe quietly in the presidential palace. Then, when he returned to Washington, he made clear how he felt: “I reject the equivalence of our forces with the Taliban,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I’ll take it to a point,” he said over dinner in Kabul, “but I won’t take it to a fault.”
When Allen traveled to Ghazni, he had lunch with a dozen junior officers from the 82nd Airborne’s 1st Brigade. Instead of exhorting them to make the most of the last major U.S. operation of the war — telling them that the next several months would be America’s final chance to flush the Taliban from the province’s 7,000-foot plains — the general launched into a lecture about small-unit leadership.
“I need for our standards to be inviolate. We all know what’s right,” he said as the lieutenants and captains ate roast beef and noodles from Styrofoam containers. “This war can be lost without the Taliban winning. We have to win this morally as well as tactically and operationally.
“We want them to miss us because we were special to them. We don’t want them wiping their brows and saying, ‘Thank God they’re gone.’”
Iran says U.S. presence in Afghanistan increases regional insecurity: lawmaker
TEHRAN, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A senior Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that presence of the U.S. and certain European states in Afghanistan has increased security threats against regional countries, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Chairman of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iranian Majlis (parliament) Alaeddin Boroujerdi stressed that presence of foreign forces in the region is the root cause of all regional instability.
"Occupation of Afghanistan which took place under the pretext of fighting against terrorism, has only resulted in the increase of narcotics production," Boroujerdi was quoted as saying.
Tehran pursues strengthening of regional peace and stability that will be ensured only through regional cooperation, he added.
On May 8, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast expressed his country's concerns over the security pact recently signed between the United States and Afghanistan.
Peace, stability and security in Afghanistan was highly important for Iran, and Afghanistan's security was intertwined with the security of the whole region and Iran. Any instability or insecurity could 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.
On May 1, U.S. President Barack Obama paid a surprise visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. During his tour, Obama inked the strategic pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and visited main U.S. military facilities in Bagram.
Karzai has 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 on May 3, one day after inking the pact with Obama.
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.
U.S. Military Mission: Pushing Afghans To Take Lead
By Tom Bowman May 12, 2012 NPR
The American military has two main jobs now in Afghanistan: sweeping the remaining Taliban from safe havens and getting Afghan security forces to take charge in the fight.
On a recent day, the Afghan National Army, or ANA, is to be out front on a joint Afghan-U.S. patrol in the countryside outside Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. It may seem like a small thing, but it's actually a big deal.
Sgt. Matthew McMurray lets his platoon know.
"ANA is going to lead, too. If they don't want to lead, just stop and make them walk ahead of you," he says.
McMurray and his soldiers are based at a combat outpost in the village of Zangabad, outside Kandahar. Its nickname is "Zangaboom" because of the roadside bombs around an open stretch of grape orchards and mud-walled compounds.
The mission this day is to probe just to the south of a Taliban-controlled village. The soldiers squeeze into their armored vehicles — called Strykers — and roll down the region's one paved highway to meet up with their Afghan counterparts.
Pfc. Dylan Reece, like the other Americans, has been in the area for only a month. He already has a mixed view of the Afghan troops.
"They know that they're going to be here forever. So they'll sit around and be like, 'No, we're not going to clear over there today; we'll do it tomorrow.' You can't do that, you got to go," he says with a laugh. "But then when you start taking rounds, their head's back in the game. Then they're warriors again."
There are some tough Afghan units. They fight hard but have trouble planning and supplying themselves in the field. Other Afghan units are reluctant even to go on patrol, the Americans say, and are led by timid officers.
'Still Working On Fundamentals'
The soldiers say the day's patrol is one more test. The convoy continues to roll down the one paved road. Suddenly, word squawks over the radio: There might not be any Afghan troops going on patrol with the Americans this day.
A collective sigh, but no one is surprised — until the Afghans do show up, driving old Humvees and troop carriers, topped by tattered Afghan flags.
At last, the Americans and Afghans have teamed up. The armored vehicles head down the road, kicking up dust — until one of the American Strykers gets stuck in the mud. And all the troops pile out.
The American soldiers flop on their stomachs against a dirt berm on the side of the road, pointing their weapons toward a village on the horizon. The men scan for any threat.
The Afghan troops are not as concerned. They take off their helmets and stand around in clusters, smoking cigarettes and pulling out their cellphones.
Capt. Chris Longto of Schenectady, N.Y., is leading the mission. He stands on the road watching the Afghans, and smiles.
"We're still working on the fundamentals of pulling security," he says. "We're still working through a lot of that with them."
The Afghan platoon sergeant, Hyatulla Hakimi, stands with his soldiers. When asked why his soldiers seem so relaxed, he says there's no danger in this area — the security is good on this stretch of road — but it's a bit more dangerous ahead.
On Foot, Still Following Orders
The next time the Americans and Afghans stop, it's time to go on patrol — on foot.
The Americans prod the Afghans to go out front. With an Afghan minesweeper in the lead, a long, snaking line of soldiers crosses a stream. They head toward an encampment of nomadic herders, which Taliban fighters often infiltrate.
The homes are a collection of huts with no doors. Reed mats and blankets cover the floors. Sheep, chickens and small children dart across the dirt. An American fighter plane keeps watch high overhead.
Longto sends the Afghan soldiers to search the camp.
"We don't go into people's homes. So the Afghans will go into the homes by themselves," he says.
The Afghan soldiers search the huts and help the Americans question a tall, bearded man. He is the only military-aged man there, so the Americans wipe his hand with a swab. The man tests positive for nitrates, a key ingredient in roadside bombs.
It's supposed to be an Afghan patrol, but Longto is giving the orders.
"The ANA should do a slightly more thorough search. See if they can find something," he commands.
Soon the Afghans emerge from the hut with something more interesting, a plastic bag full of a black, tarlike substance: heroin.
It's quickly confiscated, and the patrol moves on.
The pattern repeats itself all afternoon: The patrol arrives at a mud compound. The Afghans lead the search. And the Americans tell them they didn't do it right.
Will They Be Ready?
Finally, the sun is starting to set. The patrol is over.
McMurray, the platoon leader, has been in the area for a little over a month; he says that he is already frustrated. Training the Afghan troops, he says, will take a long time.
"We have to keep pushing them," McMurray says.
And when will the Afghan troops be ready?
"The ANA is a new army," says Afghan Brig. Gen. Ahmed Habbibi, who commands the Afghan army in this area. He adds that they need training and equipment.
But he never answers whether his troops will be ready when the American combat mission ends in 2014.
When the same question is posed to Lt. Col. Wilson Rutherford, the American commander at Zangabad, he has this reply: "The answer for that is they'll have every opportunity to be successful."
Rutherford is pushing that process along. He was able to get Habbibi to fire two Afghan army commanders for incompetence.
"They understand they have to win," Rutherford says. "They have to get it right."
The Afghans have two more years to make that happen.
U.K. Says Afghan Police Shot Dead Two British Soldiers
May 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Britain says two of its soldiers were shot dead by local police in southern Afghanistan on May 12, the latest lethal case of local security forces turning their guns on international troops.
The soldiers were said to be from the Welsh Guards and from the Royal Air Force.
Britain's Defense Ministry said the two were "shot and killed by members of the Afghan police force" in the Lashkar Gah district of Helmand Province.
It said the two were part of an advisory team and were providing security for a meeting with local officials when they were attacked.
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan on May 12 described the attackers as two insurgents dressed as police.
But a senior Afghan security official in Helmand said later they had been members of the Afghan police force for about a year.
Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and RFE/RL
Spy Balloons Become Part of the Afghanistan Landscape, Stirring Unease
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY May 12, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The traders crouched beneath the walls of an old fort, hunkered down with the sheep and goats as they talked, eyes nervously flitting up from time to time at the blimp that has become their constant overseer.
“It is there every day except the days when it is windy and rainy,” said Suleman, 45, who goes by only one name.
“It watches us day and night,” said another trader, Mir Akbar, 18, his eyes following the balloon as its nose swiveled with the wind from east to west.
“I notice it all the time,” said Rahmat Shah, 28, a secondhand car seller, who was standing slightly aside from the other men. “I know there is a camera in it.”
The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every military base in the country, have become constant features of the skies over Kabul and Kandahar, and anywhere else American troops are concentrated or interested in.
Shimmering more than 1,500 feet up in the daytime haze, or each visible as a single light blinking at night, the balloons, with infrared and color video cameras, are central players in the American military’s shift toward using technology for surveillance and intelligence.
In recent years, they have become part of a widening network of devices — drones, camera towers at military bases and a newer network of street-level closed-circuit cameras monitoring Kabul’s roads — that have allowed American and Afghan commanders to keep more eyes on more places where Americans are fighting.
The dirigibles are now such a common feature in daily Afghan life that some people here shrug and say they hardly notice them. Other parts of the network have become lasting parts of the urban landscape as well, particularly in Kabul, where long-necked closed-circuit cameras overlook locations susceptible to attacks, like the Supreme Court building, traffic circles and main highways past the military camps.
But other Afghans describe a growing sense of oppression, the feeling that even as the Americans are starting to pack up to leave, the foreigners’ eyes will always be on them.
It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and, “It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car bombs.”
For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they see as immoral.
“We cannot sleep on our rooftops anymore,” said Mohammadullah, who goes by one name, a resident of Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province, where families regularly sleep on their roofs during the summer’s sweltering heat, and who was voicing a common concern. “Whenever our female family members walk in the yard during the day, or whenever we want to say ‘hi’ to our wife when we sleep on rooftops, we feel someone is watching us.”
First used in Iraq in 2004, the helium balloons were introduced to Afghanistan in 2007, and the military has been shipping them here ever since.
American commanders love them, for giving them a perpetual full-color view of important thoroughfares and helping to catch insurgents planting roadside bombs. They cost less than the multimillion-dollar drones that get headlines.
“It has been a game changer,” said Ray Gutierrez, who trains the civilian crews, all Americans, who operate the cameras, and the military units who use them. One recent afternoon, he stood in the small control room beneath the old fort where two men with joysticks scanned close-up views of the hillsides several miles away, practically as if they could reach out and touch them. “It lets us see the battlefield as we have never been able to see it before.”
For the Taliban, the blimps have become things to fear.
In Kandahar Province — where there are at least eight in the city of Kandahar alone and more in the districts — residents say the insurgents call them “frogs” because their big eyes are ever watchful, or “shameless” because there is nothing they will not peer into. (The residents in Helmand have their own name for them: “milk fish” because of their fins and milky color.)
The insurgents avoid the areas under the balloons and have taken to disguising themselves as farmers to avoid detection — and a deadly follow-up airstrike, residents say.
In the Zhare district of Kandahar Province, a focus of the Obama administration’s troop increase in 2010, at least one aerostat can be seen from almost every village. While bigger ones float over cities like Kabul, smaller balloons, about 75 feet, tend to be used in outlying areas.
Beyond just seeing the Taliban, the aerostats deter them, too, making ambushes rarer along routes in their view, the Americans say.
“We can’t be fighting for these roads every day,” said Col. Brian Mennes, the commander of Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is responsible for Zhare and neighboring Maiwand district.
The street cameras in Kabul have had a similarly positive effect, officials say.
Inside the police headquarters in downtown Kabul one recent morning, Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, the chief of police, was flicking through images of the city piped onto a screen beside his desk.
General Salangi said the cameras played an important role in handling the riots in February when the burning of Korans by American military personnel touched off angry protests. The police were praised for swiftly bringing the crowds under control, especially in the east of Kabul, and keeping violence to a minimum.
“Seventy percent of that was down to the cameras,” he said. “We were watching, and the cameras helped us to find out where we had to have antiriot units.”
It was also the cameras, he said, that spied a car packed with explosives in the ground floor of a building that was under construction, from which heavily armed insurgents were attacking the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in September. “What I did, I told my strike force to stand by and we sent our emergency team in to defuse it,” he said.
Though the balloons may not stay after the last American combat troops are gone — that is still being negotiated — they will have an even more important role amid the withdrawal of military forces, as planners hope the technology will help a dwindling force stay effective. And the military is building a bigger, 300-foot, untethered airship with more powerful surveillance capabilities intended for use here.
In the meantime, the Americans have mounted a publicity campaign devised to reassure Afghans that the cameras are not spying on women or children, and cannot peer through walls. But while some resent the intrusion, still others complain that the main problem is the cameras are not doing enough.
Sayed Agha, a resident of Asadabad, said he was in court recently where three Afghan fuel contractors were on trial for unloading American fuel tankers to private vendors in the local market. When the contractors denied the allegations, the Americans showed video images captured from a balloon.
“It was really bright and clear, as if someone followed them and filmed them while they were selling the fuel in the market,” he said. “But it raises one question, that how come they could see the fuel contractors selling fuel in the market but not the armed opposition?”
The program is clearly not infallible, nor is it invulnerable. From time to time, Afghanistan’s summer winds and storms snap the balloons’ tethers. And then there is the target practice.
Often when crews bring the balloons down, for maintenance or to protect them from storms, says Eddy Hogan, who manages the aerostats, they find bullet holes all over, attesting to the balloons’ role as an object of resentment.
The balloons’ size, and the fact that helium is not explosive, means they can stay aloft even with lots of small holes in them.
“You can tell when, you bring it down and see hundreds of bullet holes in it, that they don’t like it,” he said. But, he added, “It takes hundreds and hundreds of rounds to bring them down.”
Matthew Rosenberg and Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Afghan employees of The New York Times from Kunar, Nangarhar, Kunduz and Helmand Provinces.
500-Bed Hospital Opens In Mazar
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 12 May 2012
A 500-bed civilian hospital officially opened in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital city of northern Balkh province, Saturday.
The hospital was constructed with financial aid from Germany and Sweden and will provide health services for the people of northern zone, according to by Afghanistan's Minister of Public Health Suraya Dalil.
A further $400 million was spent to equip the hospital to international standards through aid from the Japanese government.
"We want this hospital to be a model for others with high standards in the region," Suraya Dalil said in her inaugural speech.
"We have a human and professional responsibility to fulfill." German Ambassador to Afghanistan Rüdiger König, who attended the opening ceremony, said that his country will help in the capacity-building of the hospital staff as well. "This is very important, we will help in professional capacity building of the hospital personnel," König said.
"Hospital management, patient count, and provision of the needs for the annual budget are the activities we will engage in to improve the quality of the hospital."
Balkh provincial governor Attah Mohammad Noor praised the aid from German government, and urged it to form a long-term agreement with Afghanistan after 2014.
"Another thing we want from our German friends is a long-term commitment for Afghanistan after 2014," he said at the ceremony.
Germany is the third-highest contributor of the Nato-led forces after US and Britain.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 13, 2012
A former Taliban official who became a negotiator and key member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council has been shot dead in the capital, Kabul.
The assassination is seen as a setback to the Afghan government's effort to negotiate a political solution to the ongoing battle against Taliban militants.
Police say Arsala Rahmani was in his vehicle when he was killed by an unknown gunman in the western part of the city.
Kabul Deputy Police Chief Daud Amin told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan the attack took place "right in front of his house while his bodyguards were with him. He was killed. We have the information and now our investigating team has been sent there.”
The Taliban denied responsibility, although its militants had indicated earlier that they would target peace negotiators.
"Others are involved in this," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The Taliban said his death would not alter peace talks.
Part Of Talks
Rahmani was on his way to a meeting with lawmakers and other officials in a government-run media center in the heavily barricaded diplomatic center of Kabul when he was killed.
Wahid Mujda, a prominent analyst in Afghanistan on Taliban affairs, told Radio Free Afghanistan that Rahmani had a significant role in ongoing negotiations.
"Rahmani was the head of the prisoners’ commission on the Afghan High Peace Council, and he was working on the issue of who should be release from prison," Mujda said.
He said Rahmani had proposed the release of five detainees at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, "and the High Peace Council also had raised the issue several times."
"So Rahmani was one of the important and influential figures on the High Peace Council," Mujda said.
The United States condemned what is described as an "assassination by the enemies of stability and security."
A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul praised the High Peace Council's work "for a durable, long-term peace in Afghanistan." It said the United States will "continue to stand alongside the Afghan government and people against terrorism and to work with them on behalf of a secure and prosperous Afghanistan."
Rocky Road
No one has been arrested in connection with the shooting.
The 70-or-so-member High Peace Council appears to have made little progress in negotiating with the Taliban to end the war, now in its 11th year.
The son of former Afghan leader Burhanuddin Rabbani was recently named to replace his father atop the peace jirga, after the elder Rabbani was assassinated in September by a suspected Taliban suicide bomber.
Rahmani served as a deputy minister of higher education in the Taliban regime that was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001.
He reconciled with Karzai's government after the Taliban's fall from power and subsequently served in parliament.
With additional reporting by Reuters
Afghan Parliament Will Approve Afghan-US Pact: Committee
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 12 May 2012
Afghanistan's House of Representatives will approve the Afghan-US long-term agreement signed on May 2 by the nations' presidents, saying it was in the national interest for the deal to be enforced.
According to the Parliament's foreign relations committee, the agreement was satisfactory both politically and economically.
"After a complete review of the agreement, both politically and economically, we have decided to approve it," Herat lawmaker Nahid Farid said, adding that the Afghan parliament would approve anything which is in the interests of Afghanistan.
Paktika MP Sayed Ishaaq Gilani said that after hearing all the opinions on the agreement, the parliament decided there were no major problems in pact.
However, he conceded that the agreement is not perfect.
"There are some deficiencies which we expect it to be tackled in the next Afghan-US agreement within a year," he told TOLOnews.
His comment reiterates the probability that another Afghan-US agreement, expected to focus on security issues, will be thrashed out by mid 2013.
The committee's statement comes as tensions flared in the past week over comments from Iranian officials attempting to dissuade the Afghan lawmakers from approving the agreement.
Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan Abul Fazl Zuhrawand on Monday asked the head of the Afghanistan's Senate not to approve the pact already signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US president Barack Obama, but which still required Parliament approval.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson was also reported as saying the pact would destabilise the region.
Members of the Afghan Clerics Council or Ulema weighed in on the furor, condemning the Iranian statements as interference in Afghanistan's internal issues.
"No one has the right to interfere in Afghanistan. Just as we don't accept the rule of US government, in the same way we don't accept any other's intervention," Afghan Clerics Council member Mawlawi Shahzada Shahid told TOLOnews Saturday.
Afghans to begin 3rd phase of security transition from NATO-led force
KABUL, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The government of Afghanistan would soon begin the third phase of security transition from NATO-led troops to the national security forces, spokesman for Presidential Palace Aimal Faizi said on Sunday.
"With the third phase of transferring security from the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will take full control of Uruzgan, Kapisa and Parwan provinces," Faizi told a joint press conference here.
After the completion of the third phase of the security transition, approved by the National Security Council chaired by President Hamid Karzai earlier Sunday, ANSF will take full control of all provincial capitals of the country's 34 provinces, Faizi said, adding "The security responsibilities of 122 administration districts throughout the country will also be handed over to Afghan soldiers and police during the third phase of the process."
Transition of security responsibilities from NATO forces to Afghan army and police began in July last year and lasts till 2014 when Afghanistan is due to take over the its full security duties from U.S. and NATO forces.
U.S. and NATO forces have already handed over the security responsibilities of eight provinces, 11 provincial capitals and 40 districts to ANSF since the process began.
The NATO-led ISAF welcomed the announcement.
"President (Hamid) Karzai's announcement of the third group of areas to enter transition is a testament to the capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Force who will now be responsible for the security of more than 75 percent of the Afghan population." Gen. John R. Allen, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in an ISAF press release issued here Sunday.
"The people of Afghanistan continue to make great strides in securing a peaceful nation for themselves," said NATO's Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan Simon Gass in the release.
"As we move closer to the Afghan government taking complete control of their national security, ISAF's role will shift from combat to support and its commitment to a peaceful Afghanistan will continue beyond 2014," he added.
According to U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, 10, 000 U.S. troops already pulled out from Afghanistan last year and another 23,000 will return home by September this year.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said at the same press conference that the Afghan army and police are capable enough and equipped to take control of those areas from U. S. and NATO forces.
The triage commander: Gen. John Allen hastily transforming U.S. mission in Afghanistan
The Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Sunday, May 13, 2012
GELAN, Afghanistan - Standing in a plywood-walled command post before Gen. John R. Allen, the supreme allied commander in Afghanistan, the nervous-but-earnest young lieutenant cast his platoon’s task for the day in the grand terms of counterinsurgency strategy — the American military’s wartime playbook for the past several years. The goal of the platoon’s walk through a bazaar and meetings with village leaders, the lieutenant said, was for the Afghan government to be “seen as an effective governing body that gains legitimacy with the local population.”
Such ambition used to elicit enthusiastic praise from visiting generals. Not anymore.
“How are you going to create that as an end state?” Allen asked, making no effort to mask his deep skepticism.
Faced with an order from President Obama to withdraw 23,000 troops by the end of the summer, and the prospect of further reductions next year, Allen is hastily transforming the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. Instead of trying to continue large U.S. counterinsurgency operations for as long as he can, he is accelerating a handover of responsibility to Afghan security forces. He plans to order American and NATO troops to push Afghans into the lead across much of the country this summer, even in insurgent-ridden places that had not been candidates for an early transfer.
“My instruction to my commanders is to get the [Afghans] into the fight,” Allen said in an interview. “The sooner I can get them there, while I still have the time and the combat power, the more I can catch them if they fall.”
Here in Ghazni province, where American forces will mount the last major offensive of the decade-long war over the next few months, he is narrowing long-held U.S. goals. Instead of trying to reform the Afghan government, protect the civilian population and conduct security operations until Afghan forces are ready to take over — all of which Americans sought to do as recently as last year — a newly arrived brigade from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division plans to spend the summer attacking Taliban redoubts before departing in mid-September, regardless of whether Afghan soldiers are capable of holding their own.
Six other American generals have taken turns commanding the war since 2002, and each sought to strike a decisive blow against the Taliban. Stanley McChrystal used a 30,000-troop surge to conduct intensive counterinsurgency operations across the south. David Petraeus, who succeeded him, increased the frequency of nighttime operations against Taliban commanders. But it is the silver-haired Allen, widely regarded in the military as one of the sharpest strategic thinkers in a four-star uniform, who may have the greatest impact on Afghanistan’s future — and America’s legacy in the strife-torn nation.
Unlike his predecessors, who had the luxury of troops and money, he has been forced to triage. He has narrowed targets for the development of local government, the pursuit of graft and the development of the country’s economy. His pragmatic focus is on the one prerequisite for America to head to the exits, as defined by the White House: Afghan security forces that are strong enough to keep the Taliban, which continues to enjoy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, from toppling the Kabul government. Although much of the Afghan army remains raggedy, with weak leadership and persistent supply shortages, he is betting that shifting responsibility sooner will increase the odds that Afghans will be able to stand their ground once the U.S. presence shrinks.
Allen’s approach has disquieted some on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon, but the general’s plan has found favor among Obama and many of his top advisers, in part because the aggressive shift of responsibility to the Afghans could make it easier for the president to withdraw additional U.S. troops next year. For the first time since Obama became president, White House aides have ceased complaining about the military command in Kabul.
Obama has offered a degree of praise for Allen that never was accorded to his predecessors. When Obama and Allen walked out of a lunch in the White House earlier this year, the president put his arm around the general, according to administration and military officials. “John Allen is my man,” Obama said to staffers waiting in an anteroom.
But the improved relationship hasn’t made Allen’s job any easier. His to-do list over the next several months is more complex than any previous commander in Kabul: He has to remove 23,000 troops — shuttering bases and reallocating supplies — during the peak summertime fighting season, while also accelerating the training of Afghan forces, deploying new teams of U.S. advisers to assist Afghan troops, and negotiating the terms of an enduring U.S. military presence with President Hamid Karzai’s government.
“John Allen faces an unprecedented challenge,” said retired lieutenant general David Barno, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. “He’s fighting a full-up insurgency at the same time he’s withdrawing forces and changing the mission. It’s an immense task.”
Allen’s predicament has no equivalent in modern American warfare.
In Iraq, U.S. troops departed in a far less violent environment. In Vietnam, Creighton Abrams, the general who presided over America’s withdrawal, had more troops at his disposal and more time to transfer responsibility to local forces.
By the early 1970s, according to historian Lewis Sorley, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu’s government was more effective, and the country’s army was more competent, than Karzai’s administration and the Afghan security forces are today. Allen “has a much more difficult job,” said Sorley, the author of “A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam.”
Allen, 58, is an avid reader of military histories and sees the Vietnam analogies — the insurgent safe havens across a national border, the plummeting public support back home — but he is studying a different withdrawal: that of the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989.
“We’re fighting on the same ground,” he noted.
Afghanistan’s Communist government remained in power through the pullout, falling only three years later, after the Soviet Union collapsed and its economic aid to Kabul ended. To Allen, that fact argues for sustained American assistance to Afghanistan, particularly to pay for its army and police, which will grow to a combined strength of 352,000 this year.
The annual price tag will be about $4 billion, a staggering cost, but far cheaper than the $100 billion annual tab to keep 100,000 American troops on Afghan soil. He and Obama plan to make the case for NATO to help foot the bill, and provide other long-term support to Afghanistan, during the alliance’s annual summit in Chicago next weekend.
Allen blazed an unconventional path to the wood-paneled commander’s office in Kabul. A native of Warrenton, Va., he attended the Flint Hill School in Oakton. He decided to apply to the U.S. Naval Academy after hearing his father, a Navy radio man who served aboard a destroyer that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941, share tales of naval heroism.
Although Allen would go on to lead a Marine infantry company and a battalion, he never had sole command of a division-sized unit — a standard prerequisite to become a four-star wartime commander. Instead, his career has been filled with unusual accomplishments: He won a coveted leadership award given to only one Marine captain each year, and he became the first Marine to serve as the commandant of midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
He spent two years in Iraq’s Anbar province, but his focus was not on day-to-day operations; he spearheaded an effort to reach out to Sunni tribal sheiks and persuade them to stand against al-Qaeda militants — a shift that helped turn the course of the war in western Iraq.
He eventually became the deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, where his portfolio focused largely on Iran. The job afforded him the opportunity to brief Obama, who grew impressed by the general’s analyses. When Obama appointed the previous commander in Kabul, Petraeus, to head the CIA, Allen was said to be a shoo-in for the post. To end America’s longest war, administration officials said, the president wanted someone with fresh ideas in Kabul.
Put aside the uniform and the 6-foot-tall Allen is more professor and Southern gentleman than hard-bitten Marine general. He is unfailingly polite and prone to measured locution. He devours tomes of military history while others are in bed — he sleeps only about four hours a night — and he sets aside several hours each week “to think about big ideas.”
When he was a brigadier general, he told Naval Academy students in a letter that he had been profoundly affected by reading classic military historians, among them Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan and Barbara Tuchman. “If my house were on fire and we were all running for our lives,” he wrote, “I would first save my family, and then all my volumes by these writers.”
He has not yet informed Obama, who has indicated that he wants to keep withdrawing forces next year, how many troops he believes should stay in Afghanistan through 2013, but he is not digging in his boots to maintain all of the 68,000 troops that will remain after the current drawdown phase is completed at the end of September.
By the end of the year, he predicted, “we could find that the operational environment for ’13 could be pretty significantly different,” although he said he will still need Special Operations forces, trainers for the Afghan troops and some conventional units to operate in areas not yet ready for transfer to Afghan control.
It is a very different method from that taken by Petraeus, who sought to push Obama, during war cabinet discussions in 2011, to delay the drawdown until the end of this year so that U.S. forces could continue large-scale counterinsurgency missions. Petraeus failed. But Allen did manage to persuade Obama, in private discussions, not to announce any additional troop cuts until he provides a range of options to the White House in late fall.
To those in the two-story yellow building that houses the NATO headquarters in Kabul, Allen’s approach to the troop reductions reflects his leadership style.
Under Petraeus, “it was much more of a one-man show. There was much less oxygen for debate,” said a senior NATO official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the two generals. “John Allen listens a lot more carefully to what people are saying to him.”
When Allen arrived in Kabul last July, the U.S. and NATO war plan called for a gradual transition of territory to Afghan control by the end of 2014, the point at which NATO’s combat mission will end. Based on the assumption that the United States would maintain substantial combat power in the country until then, the strategy envisaged the most violent, Taliban-saturated places to be handed over last, allowing U.S. troops maximum time to conduct counterinsurgency operations.
To Allen, that plan didn’t reflect the new reality in Afghanistan — or Washington. Afghan military leaders wanted to assume more responsibility, and it seemed unlikely Obama would be willing to forestall additional drawdowns until 2014. As Allen chewed through his options, he concluded that he needed to upend the strategy: Instead of waiting until the very end to transition the toughest places, he would “front-load risk” and allow Afghans to take charge of those areas sooner.
The next set of districts and provinces to be transitioned to Afghan control will be announced in the coming weeks and it will contain several areas — including districts around the city of Kandahar—that remain insurgent battlegrounds. By handing off violent areas sooner, Allen said, it will thrust Afghans into a lead role while the U.S. military still has enough forces to come to their rescue, if needed. And it means that the final two rounds of transition will be far less challenging.
“I seek as much as I can to mitigate risk,” he said.
The accelerated transition comes with a cost. The original plan involved waiting until not just security had improved but local governments had been established and economic development had commenced. The new approach essentially jettisons governance and development goals. “The time scale for their delivery is not the same scale we’re working on for the security transition,” the senior NATO official said.
The 82nd Airborne’s upcoming Ghazni operation also reflects the new American way of war in Afghanistan. Soon after Obama took office in 2009, U.S. commanders vowed they wouldn’t transition areas to Afghan control until coalition forces had cleared those places of insurgents, held that ground and then built a functioning government and economy. But the newly arrived brigade will spend only five months on the ground; its soldiers must leave Afghanistan before the Sept. 30 drawdown deadline.
“We’re going straight from clear to transition,” one of Allen’s subordinate generals said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This is the last real glass-breaker where we exert our will. But then it’ll be up to the Afghans.”
Allen doesn’t intend to let the Afghan army fend for itself. Each battalion will have a small team of U.S. or NATO advisers who can summon air and artillery strikes, provide intelligence from drones, defuse roadside bombs and request medical evacuations. But U.S. military officials believe the Afghan army still has a long way to go before it can operate at top form, even with mentors. Only 18 of the country’s 293 battalions have been deemed by the Americans to be capable of independent operations with coalition advisers.
Some battalions have been plagued by poor leadership and weak morale. Others have been hindered by basic logistical challenges. When Allen visited the forward operating base in Qara Bagh, he asked about the status of the Afghan army battalion in the area. He was told that it had 100 percent of its assigned personnel, but the unit had only six working Humvees of the 28 it had been assigned. The problem was maddeningly simple: Nobody in the battalion had requisitioned the necessary spare parts from the supply depot.
The fast handover to Afghan forces is but one reminder of America’s diminished ambition. His other principal challenge is figuring out how to remove 23,000 troops by September. About 10,000 of them will be Marines from Helmand province, where violence has dropped significantly since the United States commenced large counterinsurgency operations in mid-2009; the rest will have to come from other parts of the country that are far less secure. For Allen and his top deputies, it is a process of trade-offs, of least-worst options. There are no good answers, even with their plan to hand off more responsibility to the Afghans.
“Petraeus had all the fun of building it up,” said Simon Gass, a British diplomat who serves as NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan. “John Allen has all the challenges of tearing it down.”
Late in the evening of April 25, Allen received a nightly summary of casualties across the country. The tally from southern Afghanistan was unusually high: two killed in action and 16 more wounded, several of them seriously, over the previous 24 hours. Allen decided to cancel his meetings the next morning and head to Kandahar.
He would spend just 30 minutes there, all of it at the base hospital, walking from bed to bed in the intensive care unit, bending over the wounded and putting his hand on their head or shoulder, and whispering words of encouragement.
Thank you for all you have done.
Take care of yourself.
You’re one tough guy.
Then he pressed a gold-rimmed commemorative coin in their palms.
“Every one of these counts in a big way to me,” Allen said a few days later. “On that morning, that was where I needed to be.”
Allen is painfully aware that two-thirds of Americans no longer believe the Afghan war is worth fighting. He had hoped that his testimony before the House and Senate armed services committees in early April would help change minds, but “it didn’t penetrate.”
He recognizes that his war has far more modest goals than some of his predecessors envisioned. But it is not a hasty run to the exits. It is, he hopes, withdrawal and transition with honor — a decent ending to a long, grueling conflict that has claimed almost 2,000 American lives and left thousands more with severe, permanent injuries.
“I can’t spend a lot of time worrying about the numbers at home,” he said. “I’ve got to focus on the mission.”
Allen is convinced that his campaign ultimately will be successful, even if it may not appear to be a clear-cut victory. But, he cautioned, “it’s going to be hard as hell.”
Allen assumed his days would be consumed with the Afghan handover and the drawdown, not to mention all of the other chores has predecessors faced — the meetings with congressional delegations and defense ministers from 50 coalition nations, the regular sessions with Karzai and his security ministers, and the vexing problem of insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan.
What he didn’t count on were what his staff calls “meteor strikes”: the release of a video showing Marines urinating on Taliban corpses; the burning of Korans at a giant U.S. base outside Kabul; and an Army sergeant’s allegedly murderous rampage near Kandahar. Each has thrown Allen and his staff for a loop, consuming hundreds of hours of time that could have been devoted to other tasks. And they have complicated his relationship with Karzai, increasing Afghan leverage in negotiations over restrictions on nighttime raids and a transfer of prisoners to Afghan control.
Those who have attended meetings between Allen and Karzai said the general has sought to strike a polite but firm tone in the face of the president’s anger, navigating a middle ground between McChrystal’s deference to the Afghan leader and Petraeus’s forcefulness. “Allen has exercised an approach of astonishing patience under provocation,” a senior Western diplomat in Kabul said.
After Karzai complained about “twin demons” in his country, referring to the Taliban and international forces, Allen wanted to fire back. But he forced himself to seethe quietly in the presidential palace. Then, when he returned to Washington, he made clear how he felt: “I reject the equivalence of our forces with the Taliban,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I’ll take it to a point,” he said over dinner in Kabul, “but I won’t take it to a fault.”
When Allen traveled to Ghazni, he had lunch with a dozen junior officers from the 82nd Airborne’s 1st Brigade. Instead of exhorting them to make the most of the last major U.S. operation of the war — telling them that the next several months would be America’s final chance to flush the Taliban from the province’s 7,000-foot plains — the general launched into a lecture about small-unit leadership.
“I need for our standards to be inviolate. We all know what’s right,” he said as the lieutenants and captains ate roast beef and noodles from Styrofoam containers. “This war can be lost without the Taliban winning. We have to win this morally as well as tactically and operationally.
“We want them to miss us because we were special to them. We don’t want them wiping their brows and saying, ‘Thank God they’re gone.’”
Iran says U.S. presence in Afghanistan increases regional insecurity: lawmaker
TEHRAN, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A senior Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that presence of the U.S. and certain European states in Afghanistan has increased security threats against regional countries, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Chairman of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iranian Majlis (parliament) Alaeddin Boroujerdi stressed that presence of foreign forces in the region is the root cause of all regional instability.
"Occupation of Afghanistan which took place under the pretext of fighting against terrorism, has only resulted in the increase of narcotics production," Boroujerdi was quoted as saying.
Tehran pursues strengthening of regional peace and stability that will be ensured only through regional cooperation, he added.
On May 8, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast expressed his country's concerns over the security pact recently signed between the United States and Afghanistan.
Peace, stability and security in Afghanistan was highly important for Iran, and Afghanistan's security was intertwined with the security of the whole region and Iran. Any instability or insecurity could 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.
On May 1, U.S. President Barack Obama paid a surprise visit to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. During his tour, Obama inked the strategic pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and visited main U.S. military facilities in Bagram.
Karzai has 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 on May 3, one day after inking the pact with Obama.
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.
U.S. Military Mission: Pushing Afghans To Take Lead
By Tom Bowman May 12, 2012 NPR
The American military has two main jobs now in Afghanistan: sweeping the remaining Taliban from safe havens and getting Afghan security forces to take charge in the fight.
On a recent day, the Afghan National Army, or ANA, is to be out front on a joint Afghan-U.S. patrol in the countryside outside Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. It may seem like a small thing, but it's actually a big deal.
Sgt. Matthew McMurray lets his platoon know.
"ANA is going to lead, too. If they don't want to lead, just stop and make them walk ahead of you," he says.
McMurray and his soldiers are based at a combat outpost in the village of Zangabad, outside Kandahar. Its nickname is "Zangaboom" because of the roadside bombs around an open stretch of grape orchards and mud-walled compounds.
The mission this day is to probe just to the south of a Taliban-controlled village. The soldiers squeeze into their armored vehicles — called Strykers — and roll down the region's one paved highway to meet up with their Afghan counterparts.
Pfc. Dylan Reece, like the other Americans, has been in the area for only a month. He already has a mixed view of the Afghan troops.
"They know that they're going to be here forever. So they'll sit around and be like, 'No, we're not going to clear over there today; we'll do it tomorrow.' You can't do that, you got to go," he says with a laugh. "But then when you start taking rounds, their head's back in the game. Then they're warriors again."
There are some tough Afghan units. They fight hard but have trouble planning and supplying themselves in the field. Other Afghan units are reluctant even to go on patrol, the Americans say, and are led by timid officers.
'Still Working On Fundamentals'
The soldiers say the day's patrol is one more test. The convoy continues to roll down the one paved road. Suddenly, word squawks over the radio: There might not be any Afghan troops going on patrol with the Americans this day.
A collective sigh, but no one is surprised — until the Afghans do show up, driving old Humvees and troop carriers, topped by tattered Afghan flags.
At last, the Americans and Afghans have teamed up. The armored vehicles head down the road, kicking up dust — until one of the American Strykers gets stuck in the mud. And all the troops pile out.
The American soldiers flop on their stomachs against a dirt berm on the side of the road, pointing their weapons toward a village on the horizon. The men scan for any threat.
The Afghan troops are not as concerned. They take off their helmets and stand around in clusters, smoking cigarettes and pulling out their cellphones.
Capt. Chris Longto of Schenectady, N.Y., is leading the mission. He stands on the road watching the Afghans, and smiles.
"We're still working on the fundamentals of pulling security," he says. "We're still working through a lot of that with them."
The Afghan platoon sergeant, Hyatulla Hakimi, stands with his soldiers. When asked why his soldiers seem so relaxed, he says there's no danger in this area — the security is good on this stretch of road — but it's a bit more dangerous ahead.
On Foot, Still Following Orders
The next time the Americans and Afghans stop, it's time to go on patrol — on foot.
The Americans prod the Afghans to go out front. With an Afghan minesweeper in the lead, a long, snaking line of soldiers crosses a stream. They head toward an encampment of nomadic herders, which Taliban fighters often infiltrate.
The homes are a collection of huts with no doors. Reed mats and blankets cover the floors. Sheep, chickens and small children dart across the dirt. An American fighter plane keeps watch high overhead.
Longto sends the Afghan soldiers to search the camp.
"We don't go into people's homes. So the Afghans will go into the homes by themselves," he says.
The Afghan soldiers search the huts and help the Americans question a tall, bearded man. He is the only military-aged man there, so the Americans wipe his hand with a swab. The man tests positive for nitrates, a key ingredient in roadside bombs.
It's supposed to be an Afghan patrol, but Longto is giving the orders.
"The ANA should do a slightly more thorough search. See if they can find something," he commands.
Soon the Afghans emerge from the hut with something more interesting, a plastic bag full of a black, tarlike substance: heroin.
It's quickly confiscated, and the patrol moves on.
The pattern repeats itself all afternoon: The patrol arrives at a mud compound. The Afghans lead the search. And the Americans tell them they didn't do it right.
Will They Be Ready?
Finally, the sun is starting to set. The patrol is over.
McMurray, the platoon leader, has been in the area for a little over a month; he says that he is already frustrated. Training the Afghan troops, he says, will take a long time.
"We have to keep pushing them," McMurray says.
And when will the Afghan troops be ready?
"The ANA is a new army," says Afghan Brig. Gen. Ahmed Habbibi, who commands the Afghan army in this area. He adds that they need training and equipment.
But he never answers whether his troops will be ready when the American combat mission ends in 2014.
When the same question is posed to Lt. Col. Wilson Rutherford, the American commander at Zangabad, he has this reply: "The answer for that is they'll have every opportunity to be successful."
Rutherford is pushing that process along. He was able to get Habbibi to fire two Afghan army commanders for incompetence.
"They understand they have to win," Rutherford says. "They have to get it right."
The Afghans have two more years to make that happen.
U.K. Says Afghan Police Shot Dead Two British Soldiers
May 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Britain says two of its soldiers were shot dead by local police in southern Afghanistan on May 12, the latest lethal case of local security forces turning their guns on international troops.
The soldiers were said to be from the Welsh Guards and from the Royal Air Force.
Britain's Defense Ministry said the two were "shot and killed by members of the Afghan police force" in the Lashkar Gah district of Helmand Province.
It said the two were part of an advisory team and were providing security for a meeting with local officials when they were attacked.
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan on May 12 described the attackers as two insurgents dressed as police.
But a senior Afghan security official in Helmand said later they had been members of the Afghan police force for about a year.
Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and RFE/RL
Spy Balloons Become Part of the Afghanistan Landscape, Stirring Unease
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY May 12, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The traders crouched beneath the walls of an old fort, hunkered down with the sheep and goats as they talked, eyes nervously flitting up from time to time at the blimp that has become their constant overseer.
“It is there every day except the days when it is windy and rainy,” said Suleman, 45, who goes by only one name.
“It watches us day and night,” said another trader, Mir Akbar, 18, his eyes following the balloon as its nose swiveled with the wind from east to west.
“I notice it all the time,” said Rahmat Shah, 28, a secondhand car seller, who was standing slightly aside from the other men. “I know there is a camera in it.”
The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every military base in the country, have become constant features of the skies over Kabul and Kandahar, and anywhere else American troops are concentrated or interested in.
Shimmering more than 1,500 feet up in the daytime haze, or each visible as a single light blinking at night, the balloons, with infrared and color video cameras, are central players in the American military’s shift toward using technology for surveillance and intelligence.
In recent years, they have become part of a widening network of devices — drones, camera towers at military bases and a newer network of street-level closed-circuit cameras monitoring Kabul’s roads — that have allowed American and Afghan commanders to keep more eyes on more places where Americans are fighting.
The dirigibles are now such a common feature in daily Afghan life that some people here shrug and say they hardly notice them. Other parts of the network have become lasting parts of the urban landscape as well, particularly in Kabul, where long-necked closed-circuit cameras overlook locations susceptible to attacks, like the Supreme Court building, traffic circles and main highways past the military camps.
But other Afghans describe a growing sense of oppression, the feeling that even as the Americans are starting to pack up to leave, the foreigners’ eyes will always be on them.
It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and, “It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car bombs.”
For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they see as immoral.
“We cannot sleep on our rooftops anymore,” said Mohammadullah, who goes by one name, a resident of Asadabad, the capital of Kunar Province, where families regularly sleep on their roofs during the summer’s sweltering heat, and who was voicing a common concern. “Whenever our female family members walk in the yard during the day, or whenever we want to say ‘hi’ to our wife when we sleep on rooftops, we feel someone is watching us.”
First used in Iraq in 2004, the helium balloons were introduced to Afghanistan in 2007, and the military has been shipping them here ever since.
American commanders love them, for giving them a perpetual full-color view of important thoroughfares and helping to catch insurgents planting roadside bombs. They cost less than the multimillion-dollar drones that get headlines.
“It has been a game changer,” said Ray Gutierrez, who trains the civilian crews, all Americans, who operate the cameras, and the military units who use them. One recent afternoon, he stood in the small control room beneath the old fort where two men with joysticks scanned close-up views of the hillsides several miles away, practically as if they could reach out and touch them. “It lets us see the battlefield as we have never been able to see it before.”
For the Taliban, the blimps have become things to fear.
In Kandahar Province — where there are at least eight in the city of Kandahar alone and more in the districts — residents say the insurgents call them “frogs” because their big eyes are ever watchful, or “shameless” because there is nothing they will not peer into. (The residents in Helmand have their own name for them: “milk fish” because of their fins and milky color.)
The insurgents avoid the areas under the balloons and have taken to disguising themselves as farmers to avoid detection — and a deadly follow-up airstrike, residents say.
In the Zhare district of Kandahar Province, a focus of the Obama administration’s troop increase in 2010, at least one aerostat can be seen from almost every village. While bigger ones float over cities like Kabul, smaller balloons, about 75 feet, tend to be used in outlying areas.
Beyond just seeing the Taliban, the aerostats deter them, too, making ambushes rarer along routes in their view, the Americans say.
“We can’t be fighting for these roads every day,” said Col. Brian Mennes, the commander of Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is responsible for Zhare and neighboring Maiwand district.
The street cameras in Kabul have had a similarly positive effect, officials say.
Inside the police headquarters in downtown Kabul one recent morning, Gen. Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, the chief of police, was flicking through images of the city piped onto a screen beside his desk.
General Salangi said the cameras played an important role in handling the riots in February when the burning of Korans by American military personnel touched off angry protests. The police were praised for swiftly bringing the crowds under control, especially in the east of Kabul, and keeping violence to a minimum.
“Seventy percent of that was down to the cameras,” he said. “We were watching, and the cameras helped us to find out where we had to have antiriot units.”
It was also the cameras, he said, that spied a car packed with explosives in the ground floor of a building that was under construction, from which heavily armed insurgents were attacking the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in September. “What I did, I told my strike force to stand by and we sent our emergency team in to defuse it,” he said.
Though the balloons may not stay after the last American combat troops are gone — that is still being negotiated — they will have an even more important role amid the withdrawal of military forces, as planners hope the technology will help a dwindling force stay effective. And the military is building a bigger, 300-foot, untethered airship with more powerful surveillance capabilities intended for use here.
In the meantime, the Americans have mounted a publicity campaign devised to reassure Afghans that the cameras are not spying on women or children, and cannot peer through walls. But while some resent the intrusion, still others complain that the main problem is the cameras are not doing enough.
Sayed Agha, a resident of Asadabad, said he was in court recently where three Afghan fuel contractors were on trial for unloading American fuel tankers to private vendors in the local market. When the contractors denied the allegations, the Americans showed video images captured from a balloon.
“It was really bright and clear, as if someone followed them and filmed them while they were selling the fuel in the market,” he said. “But it raises one question, that how come they could see the fuel contractors selling fuel in the market but not the armed opposition?”
The program is clearly not infallible, nor is it invulnerable. From time to time, Afghanistan’s summer winds and storms snap the balloons’ tethers. And then there is the target practice.
Often when crews bring the balloons down, for maintenance or to protect them from storms, says Eddy Hogan, who manages the aerostats, they find bullet holes all over, attesting to the balloons’ role as an object of resentment.
The balloons’ size, and the fact that helium is not explosive, means they can stay aloft even with lots of small holes in them.
“You can tell when, you bring it down and see hundreds of bullet holes in it, that they don’t like it,” he said. But, he added, “It takes hundreds and hundreds of rounds to bring them down.”
Matthew Rosenberg and Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Afghan employees of The New York Times from Kunar, Nangarhar, Kunduz and Helmand Provinces.
500-Bed Hospital Opens In Mazar
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 12 May 2012
A 500-bed civilian hospital officially opened in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital city of northern Balkh province, Saturday.
The hospital was constructed with financial aid from Germany and Sweden and will provide health services for the people of northern zone, according to by Afghanistan's Minister of Public Health Suraya Dalil.
A further $400 million was spent to equip the hospital to international standards through aid from the Japanese government.
"We want this hospital to be a model for others with high standards in the region," Suraya Dalil said in her inaugural speech.
"We have a human and professional responsibility to fulfill." German Ambassador to Afghanistan Rüdiger König, who attended the opening ceremony, said that his country will help in the capacity-building of the hospital staff as well. "This is very important, we will help in professional capacity building of the hospital personnel," König said.
"Hospital management, patient count, and provision of the needs for the annual budget are the activities we will engage in to improve the quality of the hospital."
Balkh provincial governor Attah Mohammad Noor praised the aid from German government, and urged it to form a long-term agreement with Afghanistan after 2014.
"Another thing we want from our German friends is a long-term commitment for Afghanistan after 2014," he said at the ceremony.
Germany is the third-highest contributor of the Nato-led forces after US and Britain.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com