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Poisoned water sickens Afghan boys at school
From Masoud Popalzai, CNN May 15, 2012
(CNN) -- Nearly 400 boys at a school in Afghanistan's Khost province fell ill after drinking water from a well that may have been poisoned, a health official said Tuesday.
Eighty of the 389 boys treated for illness Tuesday morning remained hospitalized, two of them in critical condition, said Amir Padshah Mangal, director of the provincial health department.
"I don't exactly know who has done it yet, but it is definitely an inhumane action against the children of this country and against education in this country," Mangal said.
A water sample has been sent to Kabul for testing, he said.
The incident happened at a school in the Ismail Khan Mandokhil district of southeastern Khost province. The area is 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the provincial capital, Khost.
Similiar poisonings have been reported since at least 2010, when more than 100 female students and teachers were sickened in a series of similar poisonings.
Last month, more than 170 women and girls were hospitalized after drinking apparently poisoned well water at a school in the northeastern province of Takhar.
Gen. Allen to leave Afghanistan post
By Greg Jaffe, Tuesday, May 15, 4:37 AM The Washington Post
Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, is expected to leave his post early next year and take over the U.S. European Command, officials said.
Allen has spent much of his tumultuous year in Afghanistan helping to negotiate a long-term security agreement with the Afghan government and overseeing the initial drawdown of U.S. forces from the country.
He has shifted American troops from a counterinsurgency strategy, with a focus on governance and reconstruction, to a more limited mission of training the Afghan army and fighting the Taliban.
The planned promotion to head the U.S. European Command will allow Allen to remain deeply involved in Afghanistan policy and work with NATO allies who have maintained a presence in the country despite the war’s growing unpopularity in Europe.
Defense officials cautioned that the plan could change if conditions in Afghanistan shift.
“No final decisions have been made regarding a follow-on assignment for Gen. Allen or the future of European Command,” said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
If the White House nominates Allen, the general will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
Allen, who had been expected to spend two years in Afghanistan, would leave his post early to take the job as the supreme allied commander in Europe, Defense officials said. Senior Pentagon and White House officials do not want to pull out the top commander in Afghanistan in the middle of the country’s fighting season, which runs from spring through the fall.
Replacing Allen in the winter would give his successor a few months before the start of heavier fighting to learn the territory.
Adm. James G. Stavridis, head of the U.S. European Command, has been asked to stay a few months beyond the end of his four-year term so that Allen will have time to return from Afghanistan and prepare for his new command.
Allen’s major task over the coming months will be to reduce the American force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of September, down from about 100,000 last year.
At the same time, he will have to rely increasingly on Afghan forces, bolstered by American training teams, to hold ground taken from the Taliban.
No decision has been made on who will replace Allen in Afghanistan. One possibility is Army Gen. David Rodriguez, who as the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan oversaw the buildup of American forces in 2009 and 2010.
Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, a Navy SEAL who oversaw detention operations in Afghanistan, also is a likely candidate.
Afghan Peace Negotiator Blames Assassination On Foreigners
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15, 2012
KABUL -- The head of the Afghan High Peace Council has said the assassination plot that killed an influential peace negotiator was planned outside Afghanistan.
Salahuddin Rabbani, who recently took up his post, made the comments while addressing the Afghan Senate.
His remarks came after Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban official who became a negotiator and key member of the High Peace Council, was shot dead on May 13 in the capital, Kabul.
Rabbani said "foreign enemies" of the country would not succeed in derailing the peace process and that their interference in the country was a "mistake."
The assassination of Rahmani is seen as yet another setback to the Afghan government's effort to negotiate a political solution to the ongoing battle against Taliban militants.
President Karzai leaves for Germany
KABUL, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai left Kabul for Germany as head of a high ranking delegation on Tuesday, a statement released by his office here said.
During his stay to Germany, the Afghan President would ink the long-term partnership with German Chancellor Angela Markel between the two nations on Wednesday, the statement added.
From Germany, President Karzai would straight go for the United States to attend the coming NATO summit scheduled for May 20-21 in Chicago where Afghanistan would top its agenda.
Afghan President and his U.S.-counterpart Barack Obama inked strategic partnership between their countries early this month.
The United States and its allied nations are going to pledge 4. 1 billion U.S. dollars at the summit annually to support Afghan security forces for another decade after 2014 when the NATO-led 130,000-strong troops with some 90,000 of them Americans vacate the militancy-plagued central Asian state.
Pakistan poised to resume NATO supply lines to Afghanistan
Pakistan is poised to end a nearly six-month blockade of NATO ground supply routes into Afghanistan, a key demand of the West ahead of a summit in Chicago next week. Pakistan's is keen to attend the Chicago summit to minimize its international isolation and alos boost the country's leverage over the future of Afghanistan.
Tuesday, May 15th 2012 New York Daily News
Pakistan on Tuesday looked poised to end a nearly six-month blockade of NATO ground supply routes into Afghanistan, succumbing to a key demand of the West ahead of a summit in Chicago next week.
Islamabad shut its Afghan border crossings to NATO supplies after US air strikes killed 24 soldiers last November, provoking a new crisis in ties on top of the outcry from the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May that year.
On Tuesday, civilian and military leaders are to discuss reopening the supply route at a meeting of the defense committee of cabinet, which will be followed by a meeting of army chiefs and the regular cabinet on Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the discussions told AFP the government had already effectively taken the decision to reopen the lines, probably by the beginning of next week, and hoped to be invited to the May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago.
Pakistani and US officials had reached a "broad agreement" on fees and logistics for the fuel and other non-military supplies that would go overland through Pakistan to Afghanistan, one source said.
"The meetings will indicate that the decision has the backing of all the stakeholders," the source told AFP. "This should minimize the prospect for Islamist groups to exploit the situation in the hope that they'll get the backing of the military establishment."
Pakistan has called in vain for an end to US drone strikes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on its soil, and a formal apology for the November air strikes.
Analysts say Pakistan has no choice but to reopen the border. Its relationship with the United States is key to maintaining ties with multilateral lending agencies needed to help boost its state coffers, at a time when major NATO discussions are under way affecting its own strategic future.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said on Monday that it was time to "move on", in the strongest public sign yet that Pakistan will end the blockade.
"It was important to make a point, Pakistan has made a point and we now need to move on and go into a positive zone and try to conduct our relations," Khar told a news conference. "We are trying to put this relationship, you know, in a positive zone and I am quite sure that we will be successful in doing so."
The Pakistani cabinet's defense committee, which includes the prime minister, army chief of staff and intelligence chief, will convene from 1430 GMT.
Pakistan's involvement in the Chicago summit could minimize its international isolation and boost the country's leverage over the future of Afghanistan, as NATO countries pull out their combat forces by 2014.
The US State Department said both countries had made "considerable progress" on ending the blockade, which has held up lengthy convoys of fuel and supply trucks all the way to the port city of Karachi in the south.
"They are not yet finished with the Pakistanis," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. "But we're having a full review with the government of Pakistan on how this transit system works and all of the issues are on the table in that context."
The Pakistan supply routes constitute as little as 25 percent of what NATO needs to sustain itself in Afghanistan as the United States has made increasing use of more expensive routes into northern Afghanistan.
Mir Mohammad Yousuf Shahwani, chairman of the All Pakistan Oil Tanker Owners Association told AFP he had been informed by a senior official in the petroleum ministry that Pakistan would reopen the supply line within days.
"The petroleum official told me that they are finalizing the details," he told AFP from Karachi. Islamabad reiterated Monday that it would still like an apology for the November air strikes, with the foreign minister saying it was "on the table".
The United States has expressed regret for the deaths, which an American and NATO investigation said stemmed from mistakes made on both sides during fighting on the Afghan border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan, UN Security Council seat on New Zealand FM's U.S. agenda
WELLINGTON, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Two New Zealand ministers will travel to the United States Wednesday to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan with U.S. and NATO leaders.
Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully will lead a New Zealand delegation, including Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman, to the 25th NATO Summit in Chicago.
The summit, to be hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, will bring together NATO members and contributors to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan.
McCully will also travel to Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"The Wellington Declaration, signed in November 2010, proposed regular meetings at Foreign Minister-Secretary of State level to ensure we maintain momentum in the relationship," McCully said in a statement.
The Wellington Declaration, signed by Clinton and McCully, outlines fields of cooperation between the two nations, including climate change, renewable energy, trade, security and economic development.
Alongside representatives from Pacific Island states, McCully will attend a number of Pacific Day events in Washington and deliver a keynote address at the Pacific Day seminar.
McCully would then travel to New York to meet with UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon to discuss a range of international issues, including New Zealand's campaign for a seat in the UN Security Council in 2015-2016.
Canada cutting Afghanistan presence by more than 100 soldiers
By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News canada.com May 15, 2012 12:14 PM
Canada is to cut its military footprint in Afghanistan by more than 100 soldiers beginning in July, with further reductions likely over the next year.
"We'll have less than we have there now. We will have less than 800," said Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin, the head of the army, which provides most of the troops for the training mission that began in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat last year while thousands of Canadian combat forces left Kandahar.
Those returning home from South Asia beginning this summer are part of a group of more than 900 trainers mostly drawn from a New-Brunswick-based battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, which only arrived in Afghanistan two months ago.
Devlin returned to Canada last week after visiting the training group in Afghanistan.
Canadian Maj.-Gen. Mike Day, who runs NATO's training mission in Afghanistan, indicated when he spoke with Postmedia News in Kabul in February that he was preparing recommendations to cut the number of alliance trainers because the training program would soon be larger than what was needed for the Afghan army. The force has expanded rapidly to more than 300,000 soldiers and is now taking in fewer new soldiers.
"The numbers may go down," Defence Minister Peter MacKay acknowledged. "(The Afghans) are going to run out of recruits to train over the next 18 months. We don't want our soldiers to be there if they are only sitting on their rucksacks."
When announcing Canada's contribution to National Training Mission — Afghanistan late in 2010, the Harper government imposed a ceiling of 950 soldiers and announced the trainers' mandate would end in the spring of 2014.
"We remain committed until 2014," MacKay said. "What we are doing is working on the numbers in co-ordination with NATO and the Afghans."
One of the reasons that fewer Canadians were going to be needed was that the Afghans had been consolidating its military training centres, the minister said. For example, the regional centre in Herat, near the Iranian border, no longer requires as many NATO trainers because it is under complete Afghan control. The last Canadian instructors left there about three weeks ago.
As for what security assistance Afghanistan may require post- 2014, "We'll know soon enough," MacKay said. The shape of NATO's future force in Afghanistan is one of the key issues to be discussed at this weekend's leaders' summit in Chicago.
Canada is considering a request from NATO and Washington to contribute a small number of Special Forces soldiers to whatever military mission the alliance intends to keep in Afghanistan after the bulk of its troops leave over the next two years.
With most of Canada's combat troops home from Afghanistan since last summer, the army has recuperated enough that it is "on target" to soon have a full operational brigade ready to deploy overseas again for the first time since 2003, Devlin said. Such brigades usually consist of between 3,000 and 4,000 combat and support troops.
"On Nov. 1, 2012 we will be ready to do anything the government of Canada asks us to do. And we will get better over time," the "three-leaf" general said. "All the high readiness bits of (Quebec-based) 5 Brigade — the troops, the task force HQ, the enablers, etc. — they will be operationally ready then.
"It is not perfect. There will be some shortfall of vehicles because of upgrades to the LAV III fleet. But that is a good reason because they are getting an upgrade in Edmonton."
The training mission in Afghanistan that began last year was built around soldiers from the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The next group to serve there will largely come from the Valcartier, Que.-based Royal 22nd Regiment.
Some enlisted soldiers have groused privately about their Afghan training deployments being cut short. One of their beefs has been financial. Those returning home early will not get the full tax-free benefits and other allowances that they would have received if they had served what was originally slated to be an eight-month tour.
"Soldiers are keen to deploy. They are keen to represent Canada. I am not surprised that there is some concern," Devlin said.
"We work hard to manage expectations," he said, adding that "we spoke to them up front. We told them nobody will come back before serving four months over there."
Regarding the financial aspect, which could cost some soldiers as much as $10,000 in additional income, Devlin said: "They make plans to spend the money. We'd be kidding ourselves to think that they didn't. But they are mature enough and wise enough to not write cheques until the funds are there."
The Van Doos, who are to begin arriving in Afghanistan late this year, have been advised "to be flexible," like the current group of trainers were, because the needs of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan might "move to the left" again, Devlin said.
"It sounds kind of hokey but this (the troop drawdown) is a positive," said the general, who commanded a NATO brigade in Afghanistan early in the war. "Canada's mission has been successful in producing Afghan soldiers and we should take pride in that fact.
"Canada was there from the get-go for NATO's first out-of-area operation. We spilt blood. We spent millions of dollars. We have had a significant role in where Afghanistan is today compared to where it was a decade ago."
matthewrfisher@hotmail.com
Afghanistan handover a test of security
The Australian By Amanda Hodge, South Asia Correspondent May 15, 2012
AUSTRALIAN soldiers face one of the most difficult transitions yet seen in Afghanistan as they prepare to hand over security to local forces, with Oruzgan likely to be the canary in the coalmine of the troubled south.
Other districts in the Taliban's southern heartland have already begun the transition, but Oruzgan will be the first southern province in its entirety to make the switch.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced on Sunday night that three provinces, Oruzgan, Kapisa on the northeast border with Pakistan and quieter Parwan, would be included in the third tranche.
The decision is a win for the Australian government, which has lobbied hard for the province of Oruzgan, where the bulk of Australia's 1550 troops are based, to be handed over in one stage.
That is despite the misgivings of some Afghan officials who argued the more remote areas of the province remain too insecure and have not yet benefited from government services.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday the announcement "accords with Australia's analysis that we are on track to transition in Oruzgan province by 2014 if not earlier".
But Susanne Schmeidl from the Oruzgan-based Liaison Office organisation said the decision was likely to have been heavily influenced by Australia's determination to accelerate its troop withdrawal rather than the province's readiness to take over security responsibility.
"The Afghans I have spoken to here think it's a political decision. Right now 50 per cent of Oruzgan is still not controlled by the government," said Dr Schmeidl, who co-authored a recent report for AusAID that also expressed doubts about Oruzgan's transition readiness.
Mr Karzai's announcement also addressed a concern for NATO and the Afghan government: new French President Francois Hollande's promise to withdraw all French troops from Afghanistan by next year.
That will be among the issues discussed in Chicago this week at the NATO-International Security Assistance Force leaders' summit, where key decisions must
be made on Western support for Afghanistan beyond 2014.
Security has deteriorated in the more remote valleys of French-held Kapisa in recent years. The French are also responsible for neighbouring Parwan. The inclusion of Oruzgan and Kapisa, as well as all Afghan provincial capitals, confirms what Afghanistan's head of security transition Ashraf Ghani has been warning for weeks now: that the easy part is over.
Other analysts warned yesterday that Afghan and coalition troops in Oruzgan faced additional complications because of the province's proximity to Helmand and Kandahar and its history of internecine tribal warfare.
Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghan Analysts Network said it was too early to tell if there would be a power struggle between newly appointed Oruzgan governor Mullah Amir Mohammad Akhundzada and the Australian-backed police chief Matiullah Khan -- two local strongmen -- once the drawdown of Australian and US troops began.
"From the point of view of governance, we can say that the present people in the local institutions are not the best democratic options around," Mr Foschini said.
That could pose serious problems in a province traditionally viewed as backward -- even by other Afghans.
Pentagon defends Afghan local police program
By Dan De Luce | AFP
The Pentagon defended a program Monday that recruits local police forces in Afghan villages despite a US-funded report that raises questions about the militia's performance and alleged abuses.
Top officers, including the former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, have portrayed the Afghan Local Police initiative as a crucial tool in rolling back the Taliban in rural areas.
But the unpublished study commissioned by the Defense Department and prepared by the RAND Corporation think tank offers a less optimistic analysis, according to the Los Angeles Times, which obtained a copy of the report.
The study found that one in five US special operations teams advising the local police units said the Afghan militia had committed violence or abused civilians, and there were recent allegations of bribe taking, rape and drug trafficking, the newspaper said.
The RAND Corporation, which prepared the study, acknowledged quoted details from its report as accurate, but took issue with how the newspaper interpreted its assessment of security in villages where the local police operated.
The report said violence usually increased after US special forces entered an area to clear civilians, and then once the Americans withdrew with local police in place, the violence usually dropped back to the level seen before US forces arrived.
James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, called that trend an encouraging sign, because he said it meant villages in the restive east and south were approaching a lower level of violence in line with the country as a whole.
"For violence in the east and south of the country to drop to the national norm would in fact represent progress.
"It is therefore not a sign of failure that this seems to have been achieved over time in those areas where Afghan Local Police elements have been established but, quite the contrary, a sign of some success," Dobbins said in a statement.
Previous coalition programs to establish local police were scrapped before this latest attempt.
Designed to extend the reach of the Afghan army to rural areas, the local police are supposed to guard checkpoints, turn over suspected insurgents to regular troops and provide some intelligence on the Taliban.
The effectiveness of Afghan security forces, including the local police, holds the key to NATO's planned withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014.
US officials argue the Afghan forces are steadily improving, but it remains unclear how the army and police will perform once the bulk of the NATO force departs.
Afghan officials quoted by the Los Angeles Times said the local police were often under the grip of political power brokers and were tainted by criminal activity.
US defense officials said NATO-led forces were aware of cases of corruption or abuse, which they said were not unique to the local police, and that actions had been taken to remedy the problem in particular units.
But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the overall effect of the local police was positive.
Pentagon spokesman George Little insisted the Afghan Local Police (ALP) program has proven effective and that Afghan security forces overall have made "tremendous progress" that he said has often been overlooked.
"We remain very committed to the ALP program," he told reporters.
"We realize they will continue to face challenges. They're on track, their capabilities are growing and we will continue to support them," he said.
Petraeus, the former chief of NATO-led forces who now leads the Central Intelligence Agency, has described the ALP as a "night watch with AK-47s".
As commander, he often cited the program as a success.
"In some cases, they have ‘flipped' communities who once even actively supported the Taliban," Petraeus said in a 2010 article published by the Defense Department's official press service.
Francois Hollande forced to backtrack on Afghanistan pullout pledge
By Edward Cody, The Washington Post Tuesday, May 15, 6:53 PM
PARIS — Sworn in Tuesday as president of France, Francois Hollande has already been forced by the unforgiving calculus of military logistics to backtrack on his campaign promise to pull all French forces out of Afghanistan by the end of this year.
The pledge was one of the few foreign policy proposals put forth in Hollande’s campaign to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy, which centered mostly on economic and other French internal affairs. It marked a one-year acceleration of Sarkozy’s schedule, which was already a year ahead of NATO’s carefully negotiated timetable calling for a staged pullout through 2014.
As such, Hollande’s promise represented a clear-cut difference with the Obama administration. Given the Afghanistan war’s unpopularity in Europe, specialists warned, it also carried the danger of encouraging other nations to follow suit at a NATO summit conference May 20-21 in Chicago.
A number of governments in the 40-nation Afghan coalition, faced with growing opposition to a war that does not seem to have a clear end in sight, already have signaled that they want to speed up withdrawals, according to Francois Heisbourg, a veteran military specialist at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. The schedule was decided in November 2010 at a NATO summit in Lisbon.
The new French timetable is likely to be a subject of discussion when Hollande meets President Obama for the first time at breakfast Friday morning at the White House, Hollande’s aides have said. The two leaders — and others in the coalition who are looking for an exit — also will have an opportunity to exchange views on Afghanistan and other issues at the Group of Eight summit at Camp David on Friday and Saturday and then at the NATO gathering Sunday and Monday.
Hollande, who has little foreign policy experience, initially pledged to withdraw by year’s end all the 3,400 French military personnel deployed in Afghanistan and nearby countries in support of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. But he refined that later to say he would pull out only combatants.
The definition and number of combatants still have to be worked out by the new president and his advisers, said the Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard. Soldiers acting as trainers or carrying out other duties can be assigned to combat at any time, he explained, making the category hard to define with precision .
In any case, the pullout of combatants would leave in place hundreds of military trainers. They, along with 150 French paramilitary gendarmes, are assigned to prepare the Afghan military to take over security responsibilities.
The French trainers have trimmed their mission since Afghan trainees started shooting their mentors, but they are still a key part of NATO’s training program. It was the assassination of four French trainers by an Afghan recruit on Jan. 20 that led Sarkozy to decide on an early pullout.
Sarkozy said then he would also propose that NATO consider accelerating the timetable for everybody. Although he consulted the Obama administration before his announcement, the suggestion was regarded in Washington as an unwelcome complication of an already delicate problem.
Since Hollande’s initial campaign promise, military specialists have pointed out that it would be next to impossible to transport all combat troops and their equipment back to France by the end of the year. Leaving behind the equipment to be guarded by U.S. or other NATO forces also would be an undesirable solution, they said.
The deployment, according to the Defense Ministry, includes up to 900 vehicles, more than half of them tanks and armored personnel carriers. Fourteen helicopters, based at the Kabul airport, have been deployed to transport and protect French soldiers. Several Mirage 2000 warplanes also have been dispatched to provide air reconnaissance, along with a K-135 refueling plane that is based in the Persian Gulf.
The French military could bring back the troops but would have trouble hauling back all their equipment because it is short on heavy-lift aircraft. Burkhard said the French military usually has to rent C-5A Galaxy, C-141 Starlifter or C-17A Globemaster transport planes from the United States for a trip to or from a Persian Gulf airport, from where the equipment moves by sea.
Leaving the equipment in Afghanistan, particularly armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery, is an unpalatable solution because much of it is top-of-the-line, new or recently retrofitted with modern electronics, and is needed to keep the French military well equipped, Heisbourg pointed out.
“If it’s just a question of getting the boys out, that’s no problem,” he said. “Hollande can say with a straight face that he carried out his pledge. But we also want to bring back their stuff, and it’s going to take a long time.”
With Pakistan closing off its territory to NATO’s military convoys, bringing back the equipment implies a long land journey through Central Asia or the costly leasing of the giant transport planes from other countries. In addition, other countries are likely to be withdrawing at the same time, clogging air and rail transport and extending the time necessary to keep French troops on scene to guard equipment.
Taliban Leader Planning To Attack Red Cross Center In Afghanistan Arrested
5/15/2012 9:27 AM ET
(RTTNews) - An Afghan-coalition security force detained a Taliban leader who was planning an upcoming attack against a Red Cross Center in the eastern Afghan province of Logar.
He was taken into custody during an operation in Pul-e 'Alam district on Tuesday, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Command said in a press release. The Taliban leader directed roadside bombings, suicide attacks and other operations against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the district. He also coordinated for weapons, ammunition, explosives, and suicide-bombers for those attacks, the release said.
Security forces detained two additional insurgents in this operation.
Multiple suspected Taliban insurgents were detained during an operation in Aliabad district of Kunduz province. A Haqqani leader was captured during a joint operation in Sarobi district, Paktika province. He conducted attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Sarobi, Gomal, and Omnah districts. He also provided weapons, ammunition and equipment to the insurgents under his control. Security forces detained two additional insurgents during this operation.
Two Taliban insurgents, who attempted to shoot at the Afghan and coalition troops as they approached a Taliban leader's suspected location in Khugyani district of Nangarhar province, were killed when the forces returned fire. In subsequent search, the forces detained three more insurgents and recovered an AK-47, another rifle, a pistol, ammunition and two hand grenades.
A Taliban leader, who was responsible for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Shinkai district in the southern province of Zabul, died as a motorcycle he was riding crashed while attempting to flee approaching forces on Saturday.
Another militant leader, who was a pillion-rider on the motorcycle, was detained. He was identified as one who attempted to enforce Taliban law on civilians in the area.
The Provincial Response Company, supported by coalition forces, discovered four anti-personnel mines, two rifles, small arms ammunition, one radio, one tactical vest and various improvised explosive device components from the motorcycle.
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com
Foreign Military Presence in Afghanistan not Mentioned in US-Afghan Deal: Atmar
TOLOnews.com Monday, 14 May 2012
Member of the Rights and Justice Party, Mohammad Hanif Atmar said today that future presence of foreign military forces is not clearly mentioned in the Afghan-US pact.
In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Mr Atmar said that signing the long-term strategic pact with the US has raised hope for the Afghan people but it still lacks some important issues.
"A major ambiguity in this pact is that the presence of foreign forces beyond 2014 is not clearly mentioned, it's not clear whether there will be a foreign military presence or not beyond that," Atmar said.
He also said that instability in Afghanistan is not in the interest of the regional nations and all the neighbours should help in stabilising Afghanistan and never provide hideouts for terrorists.
"Terrorist hideouts are not in our country, they are based outside.
So, if a country provides hideouts for terrorists and in return asks its neighbour to expel foreign forces, who are defending your country, is injustice and ignorance," Member of the Rights and Justice Party, Hanif Atmar said.
He also accused the government for failing to fight corruption and bring necessary reforms in the electoral system.
He also added that if a wrong policy is followed and Afghanistan loses all its international supporters, the country will go towards a proxy war.
"If we follow a wrong policy and lose our international partners and never be honest in bringing peace in the country, the country will face a proxy war," he told TOLOnews.
Captive of the Taliban: In the Hometown of an American Prisoner of War
By Nate Rawlings / Hailey, IdahoTuesday, May 15, 2012 time.com
Afghanistan and America merge where Hailey, Idaho, begins to disappear into the woods, two blocks off Main Street, where Zaney's River Street Coffee House sits behind a yard of bright yellow flowers. The one-story red wooden building is the heart of the Support Bowe Bergdahl movement. Bergdahl, 26, is a native son, having grown up by a dirt road that winds through a narrow river valley a few miles outside of town. He is one of the proud contributions of Hailey (pop. 8,000) to the U.S. military. The soldier has also been a captive of the Taliban in Afghanistan since late June 2009. He is America's only current prisoner of war. He is the emotional vacuum in the heart of Hailey, with Zaney's as ground zero for meetings, rallies and yellow ribbons for Bergdahl. Says Lee Ann Ferris, a local interior decorator: "The whole town has been affected. He's like our kid too." She says she imagines what must be going through his mind in faraway Afghanistan. "Every day he must be thinking about this little canyon, dreaming about it ... probably what keeps him going," she says.
Bergdahl's father Bob has driven the local UPS route, which includes the ski resort of Sun Valley, for 28 years. "Long enough to know everyone," says Sue Martin, the family friend who owns Zaney's. A lean, athletic man in his early 50s, he has piercing blue eyes staring out of a head of sandy brown hair and the beard that he has been growing since he got news of his son's capture. He could pass for a Taliban — in more ways than meet the eye. He says he is trying to learn Pashto and Urdu, the predominant languages along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.
Bob Bergdahl was on his route on July 1, 2009, when he received word over UPS radio that he needed to return immediately to local headquarters. He arrived about 7 p.m. to see his wife Jani and uniformed Army officers standing in the company's gravel lot. That's when he received the devastating news. Jani Bergdahl would later tell her friend Sue Martin that it was going to take a lot of strength to get through the ordeal. As for Bob, says Martin, it was clear that "he was not going to succumb to the emotions of it as much as he's going to participate in the resolution."
It has been a three-year roller coaster of news, hope and disappointment. There would be video evidence of Bowe's captivity and news of his abortive escape attempts. Bob would scour open-source websites and chat rooms looking for any information, trying to understand the culture of his captors. Tantalizing messages would reportedly creep out of the Taliban by way of the Internet, and then, suddenly, the family's expectations would be dashed. All the while, Bob was kept updated on what was known of Bowe's situation by some of the highest-ranking Army generals in Washington. Pious Presbyterians, the Bergdahls kept faith in what the government told them. And then, according to later press reports, a breakthrough seemed to be taking place: unprecedented direct negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban, allegedly about a swap of insurgent prisoners for Bowe. It was all hush-hush, but in retrospect, Martin says, "There must have been some good news. I saw Bob, and it seemed like he could smile." She adds, "There was a sense of optimism that 'We've done this. It's going to happen.' "
It did not. The supposed negotiations fell through in March 2012. The U.S. government refuses to discuss the issue. There were reports that the Bergdahls were frustrated and were going to publicize their son's plight — a move supposedly counseled against by the Pentagon. And indeed, Bob has broken his silence, but not in an angry way. "We do not want the American people to think we are dissatisfied with the way our government has proceeded," he tells TIME. "This isn't just about our son. This is about national policy."
Bob explains that the situation "is extremely complex. It involves different parties — state actors and nonstate actors. This is going to be difficult to reconcile, which is why we believe diplomacy for the hostages — and Bowe's not the only one, there are other hostages ... are the window of opportunity here." However, he says, "if we wait too long, if we politicize this too long in Washington, the opportunity for diplomacy — that window — will close and Afghanistan will be engulfed in civil war again." A slight hint of frustration does emerge. "The endgame and the end state is negotiations. And yet negotiations seem to be politically incorrect and not allowed." The window of opportunity, he reiterates, "is not going to await a national election to come to an end. I don't think we can count on the dynamics on the ground in Afghanistan to be the same as they necessarily are now. This is war, and war doesn't wait on politics."
He talks about what it meant for his son to enlist in the Army. "He saw Afghanistan as a humanitarian mission," Bob says. "I'm very proud of him, and I'm very proud of every single soldier, sailor, airman, Marine. We are so proud of these people, and we want Afghanistan to count for something." At the same time, he says he knows what Afghans and Pakistanis are going through. "We're extremely compassionate to the people of Afghanistan, and people need to know that the people of Pakistan have suffered tremendously because of the war in Afghanistan."
He thinks his son, who is a sergeant, is holding up well. "His faith seems to be intact," Bob says. "In his videos, he's mentioned his faith in God, and that means a lot to us. He's holding strong, and he has a strong foundation there. We think the Taliban and these Pashtu people can identify with that. And I hope they can respect him for that." Another thing, Bob says, may give Bowe strength. "Idaho is so much like Afghanistan," he says, which is why the state has been able to provide the military with so many young people who do well in mountainous and desert environments. "I think that's helping him survive and resist. The similarities will help him. We hope that will be what sustains him."
Indeed, the mountains of eastern Afghanistan bear a striking resemblance to those of southern Idaho. And Bowe was at home in the mountains of his home state. As a teenager, he zoomed across the heights on a motorcycle outfitted with a strong suspension to deflect the uneven, rocky trails. That is perhaps why Sue Martin has shared so much of what she owns with the Bergdahls. She lost her son Zane, a Hailey fireman, to a motorcycle accident. Amid all the "Standing with Bowe" and "Get Bowe Back" signs in her shop is a framed photograph of the restaurant's namesake, Zane Martin, careening down a racetrack. Nearby is a photo of Bowe as a teenager on a motorcycle trip.
"He worked for me not long before he went into the Army," Martin says. "He was everybody's favorite person. He had a quiet chivalry. He'd shovel a path in the snow, clear the snow off my car. He'd just go the extra mile." As others in Hailey have said, Bowe Bergdahl is like everyone's son.
Afghanistan: Home to 'world's most extreme golf'
By Lawrence Bartlett | AFP
"Welcome to the most extreme golf in the world," says the European Union ambassador to Afghanistan, as half-a-dozen heavily armed bodyguards fan out around him and scan the Kabul Golf Club course.
But Vygaudas Usackas is not talking about security threats facing golfers in a war zone -- he's talking about the course.
It is one big hazard, with unfair fairways of rock and thistles, sand-and-oil "greens" and the chance of falling into a ditch making even the most wicked of traditional sand traps and water hazards seem benign.
But in a country where guns far outnumber golf clubs and diplomats live in compounds set deep behind blast walls and razor wire, Usackas revels in the chance to "get out and get some fresh air".
The air at Afghanistan's only golf course -- a half-hour drive out of Kabul -- is certainly easier to breathe than the dust and pollution of the chaotic capital, but golfers accustomed to the eye-soothing sight of immaculate lawns would be in for a shock.
And they can leave the fancy two-tone spiked shoes behind, being well-advised to don army style boots to cope with the terrain.
As for clubs, forget about the state-of-the-art Titanium driver that cost a few hundred dollars and choose, like anybody else, from a dusty collection of bags containing ancient woods and irons in the spartan, single-room "clubhouse".
Then, equipped with two caddies, one to carry the bag, the other to stake out the likely landing area of your -- perfect -- shot so that he can maybe see the ball ricochet off a rock into a pile of rubble, you are ready to play.
The fore-caddy will also warn picnickers and cricketers and the riders of passing donkeys that balls may soon be coming their way.
They tend to be most accommodating, shifting temporarily from the direct line of fire and applauding any good shot in this bizarre game, in which Usackas and his party of one reporter and Afghanistan's only golf pro were the sole players one recent Friday.
The pro, Mohammad Afzal Abdul, 52, has been the manager and coach at the Club for 35 years -- apart from war-forced closures and a couple of stints in jail under Soviet invaders and hardline Taliban Islamists "for associating with foreigners".
A photograph of him with Tiger Woods in Dubai recently takes pride of place on the walls of the club's office.
"I invited Tiger to visit Kabul. He said okay, but no plans have been made," says Afzal. "I like him, I like all golfers -- he's a good man."
Also on the wall is a large poster of the rules of the course.
"Tip #1: Play aggressively. There are no gimmes (a shot that players agree can count automatically). Don't even ask for the stroke index because this is Afghanistan and they're all tough."
The tee boxes seem invisible in the scruffy terrain, except to Afzal, who has a scratch handicap and plays the course like the pro that he is.
The fairways can barely be distinguished from the rough and are scarred by ditches every 20 yards or so in preparation for a sprinkler system and dreams of covering the course in grass -- but it has been like that for a year.
The greens are grey, made from sand and waste oil in an effort to provide a smooth surface. And the holes are, as Usackas says, "like everything here -- relative". Some have cups, others are just scratched depressions in the sand.
The course was built some 60 years ago during the rule of the then-king, Zahir Shah, but has been destroyed by 30 years of war: a line of rusting Soviet tanks from the 1980s can still be seen on a nearby hill.
The Russians were followed by civil war and rule by the hardline Islamist Taliban, who were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
When the Western-backed President Hamid Karzai came to power, Afzal returned to his beloved course. "I didn't even recognise it," he says now.
Deminers cleared the course, but as an extra precaution Afzal set several thousand sheep roaming over it for five days -- they set off no mines and all survived.
But war still plagues Afghanistan, with the Taliban waging a 10-year insurgency against Karzai's government and 130,000 US-led NATO troops.
On the golf course, if you're playing with the ambassador, that means the age-old instruction for playing a shot -- "Don't lift your head" -- takes on a new meaning.
If you do, you are likely to spot a man with an automatic rifle kneeling a few yards away -- which could put you off your stroke.
Beyond the Sandbags and Steel, 12 Lanes to Another Afghanistan
By ROD NORDLAND The New York Times May 14, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Behind the black door in downtown Kabul is a place unlike any other in this city, even in the whole country.
It is an entertainment setting without alcohol — guards inside the half-ton fortified steel door turn away anyone with a trace of it on their breath. Patrons have to surrender even their cigarettes, which are put for safekeeping in lockers, along with the usual array of weaponry carried by some Afghan visitors.
From outside, it is marked only by a simple sign over the door that reads “Strikers.” Beyond the gate, a covered, sandbagged driveway leads well away from the public road — a precaution against bombers.
Inside, though, it is another world. A capacious and fastidiously clean restaurant space greets you. Walking past a wall of cubbyholes with crisp new bowling shoes in assorted sizes, you reach the main hall, with 12 lanes fitted with Brunswick pinsetters and multihued Day-Glo balls clacking out of the return races. A brightly colored sign above the pins shouts “Advertise Here.”
Welcome to Afghanistan’s first bowling alley.
The tale of how Strikers made Afghanistan the 91st country with a modern 10-pin bowling alley seems to be that rarest of things, an Afghan good news story. So far it has remained one, save for a spoilsport or two.
Though Strikers’ opening last fall was the country’s introduction to bowling, most of the bowlers now are Afghans, not expatriates. Strikers was started by an Afghan, not a foreigner. It was built with Afghan money, not funneled-off international aid. And the founder and owner is a 28-year-old woman, Meena Rahmani, who has managed to keep her mostly male staff of 25 working well despite Afghan society’s deep bias against women.
“I knew how hard it would be,” she said. “I’d be in a difficult condition with the labor, but it’s my right, and if they get offended, I can’t help that. I’m the boss.”
Starting out, a few workers did not take well to the situation, and she fired them. “I made them respect me,” she said.
Ms. Rahmani grew up as a refugee in Pakistan and later in Canada. She married a young Afghan man, and they lived in Toronto until they decided to return to Kabul last year.
The long Canadian winters indirectly provided the inspiration — besides skiing, there was nothing much to do but bowling, she said. When they arrived in Kabul, the first thing she noticed was how little opportunity there was to have fun. “I really found nothing in the entertainment sector, a place where everybody, children, even women could get affordable time out,” she said.
So she persuaded her parents to let her sell some family land in Kabul (her father is a doctor, her mother a university lecturer), and she put up $1 million to bring in the equipment from China, as well as three technicians from Brunswick to train her staff.
People took to it quickly, and soon Thursday and Friday nights, the big weekend nights here, were mobbed with bowlers. Even on a recent workday afternoon, a group of 40 Asia Foundation staff members, mostly Afghans, filled the lanes.
Ms. Rahmani said that what really amazed her, though, was to stumble onto an unsuspected bowling aptitude among Afghans, with several relative neophytes rolling respectable scores, even in the 200s.
One of those naturals was Karim Yusufi, a 26-year-old sales executive at the cellphone company Roshan. A friend invited him to bowl and taught him the basics, Mr. Yusufi said. “Then he said: ‘We have to bet on it. If you have the low score, you pay,’ ” he said.
The lane fees — $35 an hour — are not cheap by Afghan standards, though a lane accommodates six bowlers. Mr. Yusufi rolled 120 that first night, far higher than his gutter-hugging teacher, and the rest is Strikers history.
Mr. Yusufi went on to become a regular, but in the past six months he has yet to pay the lane fees himself, since he always wins the wager, he said. Lest anyone think he is a ringer, he still cheerfully says, “Let’s play bowling!”
As Strikers’ top scorer, with a 214 game, Mr. Yusufi has his picture posted both on the bowling alley’s wall and on its Facebook page. A travel agent has offered a free week in Dubai to the first person to best his score.
It has not all been smooth going. Ms. Rahmani was shocked by the rampant corruption as she dealt with local officials for permits and permissions. “After Canada, this was odd to me,” she said. “Every step I went, they were asking for money. Every day, knocking on the door and asking for money.”
Her guards caught two men who were detaching parts from customers’ cars (the car parts bazaar here often helpfully sells victims their own mirrors and wipers back). The guards turned the thieves over to the police, and a block away they saw the officers take money to release them, Ms. Rahmani said.
Inside, Ms. Rahmani soon realized she needed a whip hand with a few of the customers, and she put up a warning sign: “Do not show your ugly side to our peacekeeping security staff.” That staff included a couple of plainclothes officers in the bowling hall and a vigilant door crew that made sure young men were there only for bowling — if they brought women, they had to prove they were related.
“I’m very aware of our culture, and I value whatever is included in our culture,” Ms. Rahmani said. There are precious few activities in Kabul that involve both sexes, even in family settings, and the last thing she would want to see is a fatwa against bowling.
It is obvious even to new visitors that people are having fun on the lanes, even if the records they are merrily breaking are on the low side. (According to the computerized scoring equipment, 14 is the lowest score so far — perhaps as difficult an achievement, in its way, as Mr. Yusufi’s 214.) And the noise of the lanes is sometimes punctuated by the mortarlike thud of balls that fly nearly as far as they roll.
“It’s cool,” said Ali Sadaqat, who brushed aside suggestions of using Strikers’ free coach. He was leading his foursome, all first-timers, with 16 after the third frame. “This is the first time Afghans are playing a game in Afghanistan, other than cricket,” he said.
Although bowling is not an Olympic sport, Ms. Rahmani approached the Afghan Olympic Committee to register with the organization — she said she thought it would be an honor. She ran into trouble, though: an official there promptly asked her to turn over a share of her company in return for her registration, she said. She refused.
“Are they crazy? This is my company,” she said. “We don’t need that honor.”
An official at the committee denied Ms. Rahmani’s account. But he warned that the bowling alley, like all sports clubs in Afghanistan, was required to register with the committee and could be declared an illegal operation if it did not.
“The bowling game is not officially recognized as a sport by the Afghan Olympic Committee yet,” said the official, Ghulam Jelani Ghrob. All new sports need to be evaluated by the committee, he said, to see what their social consequences may be.
“God forbid, we should avoid these kinds of sport clubs’ being used as a place for moral deviation,” Mr. Ghrob said.
Ms. Rahmani said she was aware that she had opened the bowling alley at a difficult time, and not just because of red tape and corruption. As the international presence in the country begins to retract, more businesses are closing down than opening up.
“The war in Afghanistan has been going on since before I was born. We have no idea if it’s going to end someday,” she said. “We just have to carry on.”
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
From Masoud Popalzai, CNN May 15, 2012
(CNN) -- Nearly 400 boys at a school in Afghanistan's Khost province fell ill after drinking water from a well that may have been poisoned, a health official said Tuesday.
Eighty of the 389 boys treated for illness Tuesday morning remained hospitalized, two of them in critical condition, said Amir Padshah Mangal, director of the provincial health department.
"I don't exactly know who has done it yet, but it is definitely an inhumane action against the children of this country and against education in this country," Mangal said.
A water sample has been sent to Kabul for testing, he said.
The incident happened at a school in the Ismail Khan Mandokhil district of southeastern Khost province. The area is 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the provincial capital, Khost.
Similiar poisonings have been reported since at least 2010, when more than 100 female students and teachers were sickened in a series of similar poisonings.
Last month, more than 170 women and girls were hospitalized after drinking apparently poisoned well water at a school in the northeastern province of Takhar.
Gen. Allen to leave Afghanistan post
By Greg Jaffe, Tuesday, May 15, 4:37 AM The Washington Post
Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, is expected to leave his post early next year and take over the U.S. European Command, officials said.
Allen has spent much of his tumultuous year in Afghanistan helping to negotiate a long-term security agreement with the Afghan government and overseeing the initial drawdown of U.S. forces from the country.
He has shifted American troops from a counterinsurgency strategy, with a focus on governance and reconstruction, to a more limited mission of training the Afghan army and fighting the Taliban.
The planned promotion to head the U.S. European Command will allow Allen to remain deeply involved in Afghanistan policy and work with NATO allies who have maintained a presence in the country despite the war’s growing unpopularity in Europe.
Defense officials cautioned that the plan could change if conditions in Afghanistan shift.
“No final decisions have been made regarding a follow-on assignment for Gen. Allen or the future of European Command,” said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
If the White House nominates Allen, the general will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
Allen, who had been expected to spend two years in Afghanistan, would leave his post early to take the job as the supreme allied commander in Europe, Defense officials said. Senior Pentagon and White House officials do not want to pull out the top commander in Afghanistan in the middle of the country’s fighting season, which runs from spring through the fall.
Replacing Allen in the winter would give his successor a few months before the start of heavier fighting to learn the territory.
Adm. James G. Stavridis, head of the U.S. European Command, has been asked to stay a few months beyond the end of his four-year term so that Allen will have time to return from Afghanistan and prepare for his new command.
Allen’s major task over the coming months will be to reduce the American force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of September, down from about 100,000 last year.
At the same time, he will have to rely increasingly on Afghan forces, bolstered by American training teams, to hold ground taken from the Taliban.
No decision has been made on who will replace Allen in Afghanistan. One possibility is Army Gen. David Rodriguez, who as the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan oversaw the buildup of American forces in 2009 and 2010.
Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, a Navy SEAL who oversaw detention operations in Afghanistan, also is a likely candidate.
Afghan Peace Negotiator Blames Assassination On Foreigners
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15, 2012
KABUL -- The head of the Afghan High Peace Council has said the assassination plot that killed an influential peace negotiator was planned outside Afghanistan.
Salahuddin Rabbani, who recently took up his post, made the comments while addressing the Afghan Senate.
His remarks came after Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban official who became a negotiator and key member of the High Peace Council, was shot dead on May 13 in the capital, Kabul.
Rabbani said "foreign enemies" of the country would not succeed in derailing the peace process and that their interference in the country was a "mistake."
The assassination of Rahmani is seen as yet another setback to the Afghan government's effort to negotiate a political solution to the ongoing battle against Taliban militants.
President Karzai leaves for Germany
KABUL, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai left Kabul for Germany as head of a high ranking delegation on Tuesday, a statement released by his office here said.
During his stay to Germany, the Afghan President would ink the long-term partnership with German Chancellor Angela Markel between the two nations on Wednesday, the statement added.
From Germany, President Karzai would straight go for the United States to attend the coming NATO summit scheduled for May 20-21 in Chicago where Afghanistan would top its agenda.
Afghan President and his U.S.-counterpart Barack Obama inked strategic partnership between their countries early this month.
The United States and its allied nations are going to pledge 4. 1 billion U.S. dollars at the summit annually to support Afghan security forces for another decade after 2014 when the NATO-led 130,000-strong troops with some 90,000 of them Americans vacate the militancy-plagued central Asian state.
Pakistan poised to resume NATO supply lines to Afghanistan
Pakistan is poised to end a nearly six-month blockade of NATO ground supply routes into Afghanistan, a key demand of the West ahead of a summit in Chicago next week. Pakistan's is keen to attend the Chicago summit to minimize its international isolation and alos boost the country's leverage over the future of Afghanistan.
Tuesday, May 15th 2012 New York Daily News
Pakistan on Tuesday looked poised to end a nearly six-month blockade of NATO ground supply routes into Afghanistan, succumbing to a key demand of the West ahead of a summit in Chicago next week.
Islamabad shut its Afghan border crossings to NATO supplies after US air strikes killed 24 soldiers last November, provoking a new crisis in ties on top of the outcry from the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May that year.
On Tuesday, civilian and military leaders are to discuss reopening the supply route at a meeting of the defense committee of cabinet, which will be followed by a meeting of army chiefs and the regular cabinet on Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the discussions told AFP the government had already effectively taken the decision to reopen the lines, probably by the beginning of next week, and hoped to be invited to the May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago.
Pakistani and US officials had reached a "broad agreement" on fees and logistics for the fuel and other non-military supplies that would go overland through Pakistan to Afghanistan, one source said.
"The meetings will indicate that the decision has the backing of all the stakeholders," the source told AFP. "This should minimize the prospect for Islamist groups to exploit the situation in the hope that they'll get the backing of the military establishment."
Pakistan has called in vain for an end to US drone strikes targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on its soil, and a formal apology for the November air strikes.
Analysts say Pakistan has no choice but to reopen the border. Its relationship with the United States is key to maintaining ties with multilateral lending agencies needed to help boost its state coffers, at a time when major NATO discussions are under way affecting its own strategic future.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said on Monday that it was time to "move on", in the strongest public sign yet that Pakistan will end the blockade.
"It was important to make a point, Pakistan has made a point and we now need to move on and go into a positive zone and try to conduct our relations," Khar told a news conference. "We are trying to put this relationship, you know, in a positive zone and I am quite sure that we will be successful in doing so."
The Pakistani cabinet's defense committee, which includes the prime minister, army chief of staff and intelligence chief, will convene from 1430 GMT.
Pakistan's involvement in the Chicago summit could minimize its international isolation and boost the country's leverage over the future of Afghanistan, as NATO countries pull out their combat forces by 2014.
The US State Department said both countries had made "considerable progress" on ending the blockade, which has held up lengthy convoys of fuel and supply trucks all the way to the port city of Karachi in the south.
"They are not yet finished with the Pakistanis," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. "But we're having a full review with the government of Pakistan on how this transit system works and all of the issues are on the table in that context."
The Pakistan supply routes constitute as little as 25 percent of what NATO needs to sustain itself in Afghanistan as the United States has made increasing use of more expensive routes into northern Afghanistan.
Mir Mohammad Yousuf Shahwani, chairman of the All Pakistan Oil Tanker Owners Association told AFP he had been informed by a senior official in the petroleum ministry that Pakistan would reopen the supply line within days.
"The petroleum official told me that they are finalizing the details," he told AFP from Karachi. Islamabad reiterated Monday that it would still like an apology for the November air strikes, with the foreign minister saying it was "on the table".
The United States has expressed regret for the deaths, which an American and NATO investigation said stemmed from mistakes made on both sides during fighting on the Afghan border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan, UN Security Council seat on New Zealand FM's U.S. agenda
WELLINGTON, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Two New Zealand ministers will travel to the United States Wednesday to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan with U.S. and NATO leaders.
Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully will lead a New Zealand delegation, including Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman, to the 25th NATO Summit in Chicago.
The summit, to be hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, will bring together NATO members and contributors to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan.
McCully will also travel to Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"The Wellington Declaration, signed in November 2010, proposed regular meetings at Foreign Minister-Secretary of State level to ensure we maintain momentum in the relationship," McCully said in a statement.
The Wellington Declaration, signed by Clinton and McCully, outlines fields of cooperation between the two nations, including climate change, renewable energy, trade, security and economic development.
Alongside representatives from Pacific Island states, McCully will attend a number of Pacific Day events in Washington and deliver a keynote address at the Pacific Day seminar.
McCully would then travel to New York to meet with UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon to discuss a range of international issues, including New Zealand's campaign for a seat in the UN Security Council in 2015-2016.
Canada cutting Afghanistan presence by more than 100 soldiers
By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News canada.com May 15, 2012 12:14 PM
Canada is to cut its military footprint in Afghanistan by more than 100 soldiers beginning in July, with further reductions likely over the next year.
"We'll have less than we have there now. We will have less than 800," said Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin, the head of the army, which provides most of the troops for the training mission that began in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat last year while thousands of Canadian combat forces left Kandahar.
Those returning home from South Asia beginning this summer are part of a group of more than 900 trainers mostly drawn from a New-Brunswick-based battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, which only arrived in Afghanistan two months ago.
Devlin returned to Canada last week after visiting the training group in Afghanistan.
Canadian Maj.-Gen. Mike Day, who runs NATO's training mission in Afghanistan, indicated when he spoke with Postmedia News in Kabul in February that he was preparing recommendations to cut the number of alliance trainers because the training program would soon be larger than what was needed for the Afghan army. The force has expanded rapidly to more than 300,000 soldiers and is now taking in fewer new soldiers.
"The numbers may go down," Defence Minister Peter MacKay acknowledged. "(The Afghans) are going to run out of recruits to train over the next 18 months. We don't want our soldiers to be there if they are only sitting on their rucksacks."
When announcing Canada's contribution to National Training Mission — Afghanistan late in 2010, the Harper government imposed a ceiling of 950 soldiers and announced the trainers' mandate would end in the spring of 2014.
"We remain committed until 2014," MacKay said. "What we are doing is working on the numbers in co-ordination with NATO and the Afghans."
One of the reasons that fewer Canadians were going to be needed was that the Afghans had been consolidating its military training centres, the minister said. For example, the regional centre in Herat, near the Iranian border, no longer requires as many NATO trainers because it is under complete Afghan control. The last Canadian instructors left there about three weeks ago.
As for what security assistance Afghanistan may require post- 2014, "We'll know soon enough," MacKay said. The shape of NATO's future force in Afghanistan is one of the key issues to be discussed at this weekend's leaders' summit in Chicago.
Canada is considering a request from NATO and Washington to contribute a small number of Special Forces soldiers to whatever military mission the alliance intends to keep in Afghanistan after the bulk of its troops leave over the next two years.
With most of Canada's combat troops home from Afghanistan since last summer, the army has recuperated enough that it is "on target" to soon have a full operational brigade ready to deploy overseas again for the first time since 2003, Devlin said. Such brigades usually consist of between 3,000 and 4,000 combat and support troops.
"On Nov. 1, 2012 we will be ready to do anything the government of Canada asks us to do. And we will get better over time," the "three-leaf" general said. "All the high readiness bits of (Quebec-based) 5 Brigade — the troops, the task force HQ, the enablers, etc. — they will be operationally ready then.
"It is not perfect. There will be some shortfall of vehicles because of upgrades to the LAV III fleet. But that is a good reason because they are getting an upgrade in Edmonton."
The training mission in Afghanistan that began last year was built around soldiers from the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The next group to serve there will largely come from the Valcartier, Que.-based Royal 22nd Regiment.
Some enlisted soldiers have groused privately about their Afghan training deployments being cut short. One of their beefs has been financial. Those returning home early will not get the full tax-free benefits and other allowances that they would have received if they had served what was originally slated to be an eight-month tour.
"Soldiers are keen to deploy. They are keen to represent Canada. I am not surprised that there is some concern," Devlin said.
"We work hard to manage expectations," he said, adding that "we spoke to them up front. We told them nobody will come back before serving four months over there."
Regarding the financial aspect, which could cost some soldiers as much as $10,000 in additional income, Devlin said: "They make plans to spend the money. We'd be kidding ourselves to think that they didn't. But they are mature enough and wise enough to not write cheques until the funds are there."
The Van Doos, who are to begin arriving in Afghanistan late this year, have been advised "to be flexible," like the current group of trainers were, because the needs of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan might "move to the left" again, Devlin said.
"It sounds kind of hokey but this (the troop drawdown) is a positive," said the general, who commanded a NATO brigade in Afghanistan early in the war. "Canada's mission has been successful in producing Afghan soldiers and we should take pride in that fact.
"Canada was there from the get-go for NATO's first out-of-area operation. We spilt blood. We spent millions of dollars. We have had a significant role in where Afghanistan is today compared to where it was a decade ago."
matthewrfisher@hotmail.com
Afghanistan handover a test of security
The Australian By Amanda Hodge, South Asia Correspondent May 15, 2012
AUSTRALIAN soldiers face one of the most difficult transitions yet seen in Afghanistan as they prepare to hand over security to local forces, with Oruzgan likely to be the canary in the coalmine of the troubled south.
Other districts in the Taliban's southern heartland have already begun the transition, but Oruzgan will be the first southern province in its entirety to make the switch.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced on Sunday night that three provinces, Oruzgan, Kapisa on the northeast border with Pakistan and quieter Parwan, would be included in the third tranche.
The decision is a win for the Australian government, which has lobbied hard for the province of Oruzgan, where the bulk of Australia's 1550 troops are based, to be handed over in one stage.
That is despite the misgivings of some Afghan officials who argued the more remote areas of the province remain too insecure and have not yet benefited from government services.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday the announcement "accords with Australia's analysis that we are on track to transition in Oruzgan province by 2014 if not earlier".
But Susanne Schmeidl from the Oruzgan-based Liaison Office organisation said the decision was likely to have been heavily influenced by Australia's determination to accelerate its troop withdrawal rather than the province's readiness to take over security responsibility.
"The Afghans I have spoken to here think it's a political decision. Right now 50 per cent of Oruzgan is still not controlled by the government," said Dr Schmeidl, who co-authored a recent report for AusAID that also expressed doubts about Oruzgan's transition readiness.
Mr Karzai's announcement also addressed a concern for NATO and the Afghan government: new French President Francois Hollande's promise to withdraw all French troops from Afghanistan by next year.
That will be among the issues discussed in Chicago this week at the NATO-International Security Assistance Force leaders' summit, where key decisions must
be made on Western support for Afghanistan beyond 2014.
Security has deteriorated in the more remote valleys of French-held Kapisa in recent years. The French are also responsible for neighbouring Parwan. The inclusion of Oruzgan and Kapisa, as well as all Afghan provincial capitals, confirms what Afghanistan's head of security transition Ashraf Ghani has been warning for weeks now: that the easy part is over.
Other analysts warned yesterday that Afghan and coalition troops in Oruzgan faced additional complications because of the province's proximity to Helmand and Kandahar and its history of internecine tribal warfare.
Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghan Analysts Network said it was too early to tell if there would be a power struggle between newly appointed Oruzgan governor Mullah Amir Mohammad Akhundzada and the Australian-backed police chief Matiullah Khan -- two local strongmen -- once the drawdown of Australian and US troops began.
"From the point of view of governance, we can say that the present people in the local institutions are not the best democratic options around," Mr Foschini said.
That could pose serious problems in a province traditionally viewed as backward -- even by other Afghans.
Pentagon defends Afghan local police program
By Dan De Luce | AFP
The Pentagon defended a program Monday that recruits local police forces in Afghan villages despite a US-funded report that raises questions about the militia's performance and alleged abuses.
Top officers, including the former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, have portrayed the Afghan Local Police initiative as a crucial tool in rolling back the Taliban in rural areas.
But the unpublished study commissioned by the Defense Department and prepared by the RAND Corporation think tank offers a less optimistic analysis, according to the Los Angeles Times, which obtained a copy of the report.
The study found that one in five US special operations teams advising the local police units said the Afghan militia had committed violence or abused civilians, and there were recent allegations of bribe taking, rape and drug trafficking, the newspaper said.
The RAND Corporation, which prepared the study, acknowledged quoted details from its report as accurate, but took issue with how the newspaper interpreted its assessment of security in villages where the local police operated.
The report said violence usually increased after US special forces entered an area to clear civilians, and then once the Americans withdrew with local police in place, the violence usually dropped back to the level seen before US forces arrived.
James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, called that trend an encouraging sign, because he said it meant villages in the restive east and south were approaching a lower level of violence in line with the country as a whole.
"For violence in the east and south of the country to drop to the national norm would in fact represent progress.
"It is therefore not a sign of failure that this seems to have been achieved over time in those areas where Afghan Local Police elements have been established but, quite the contrary, a sign of some success," Dobbins said in a statement.
Previous coalition programs to establish local police were scrapped before this latest attempt.
Designed to extend the reach of the Afghan army to rural areas, the local police are supposed to guard checkpoints, turn over suspected insurgents to regular troops and provide some intelligence on the Taliban.
The effectiveness of Afghan security forces, including the local police, holds the key to NATO's planned withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014.
US officials argue the Afghan forces are steadily improving, but it remains unclear how the army and police will perform once the bulk of the NATO force departs.
Afghan officials quoted by the Los Angeles Times said the local police were often under the grip of political power brokers and were tainted by criminal activity.
US defense officials said NATO-led forces were aware of cases of corruption or abuse, which they said were not unique to the local police, and that actions had been taken to remedy the problem in particular units.
But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the overall effect of the local police was positive.
Pentagon spokesman George Little insisted the Afghan Local Police (ALP) program has proven effective and that Afghan security forces overall have made "tremendous progress" that he said has often been overlooked.
"We remain very committed to the ALP program," he told reporters.
"We realize they will continue to face challenges. They're on track, their capabilities are growing and we will continue to support them," he said.
Petraeus, the former chief of NATO-led forces who now leads the Central Intelligence Agency, has described the ALP as a "night watch with AK-47s".
As commander, he often cited the program as a success.
"In some cases, they have ‘flipped' communities who once even actively supported the Taliban," Petraeus said in a 2010 article published by the Defense Department's official press service.
Francois Hollande forced to backtrack on Afghanistan pullout pledge
By Edward Cody, The Washington Post Tuesday, May 15, 6:53 PM
PARIS — Sworn in Tuesday as president of France, Francois Hollande has already been forced by the unforgiving calculus of military logistics to backtrack on his campaign promise to pull all French forces out of Afghanistan by the end of this year.
The pledge was one of the few foreign policy proposals put forth in Hollande’s campaign to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy, which centered mostly on economic and other French internal affairs. It marked a one-year acceleration of Sarkozy’s schedule, which was already a year ahead of NATO’s carefully negotiated timetable calling for a staged pullout through 2014.
As such, Hollande’s promise represented a clear-cut difference with the Obama administration. Given the Afghanistan war’s unpopularity in Europe, specialists warned, it also carried the danger of encouraging other nations to follow suit at a NATO summit conference May 20-21 in Chicago.
A number of governments in the 40-nation Afghan coalition, faced with growing opposition to a war that does not seem to have a clear end in sight, already have signaled that they want to speed up withdrawals, according to Francois Heisbourg, a veteran military specialist at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. The schedule was decided in November 2010 at a NATO summit in Lisbon.
The new French timetable is likely to be a subject of discussion when Hollande meets President Obama for the first time at breakfast Friday morning at the White House, Hollande’s aides have said. The two leaders — and others in the coalition who are looking for an exit — also will have an opportunity to exchange views on Afghanistan and other issues at the Group of Eight summit at Camp David on Friday and Saturday and then at the NATO gathering Sunday and Monday.
Hollande, who has little foreign policy experience, initially pledged to withdraw by year’s end all the 3,400 French military personnel deployed in Afghanistan and nearby countries in support of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. But he refined that later to say he would pull out only combatants.
The definition and number of combatants still have to be worked out by the new president and his advisers, said the Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard. Soldiers acting as trainers or carrying out other duties can be assigned to combat at any time, he explained, making the category hard to define with precision .
In any case, the pullout of combatants would leave in place hundreds of military trainers. They, along with 150 French paramilitary gendarmes, are assigned to prepare the Afghan military to take over security responsibilities.
The French trainers have trimmed their mission since Afghan trainees started shooting their mentors, but they are still a key part of NATO’s training program. It was the assassination of four French trainers by an Afghan recruit on Jan. 20 that led Sarkozy to decide on an early pullout.
Sarkozy said then he would also propose that NATO consider accelerating the timetable for everybody. Although he consulted the Obama administration before his announcement, the suggestion was regarded in Washington as an unwelcome complication of an already delicate problem.
Since Hollande’s initial campaign promise, military specialists have pointed out that it would be next to impossible to transport all combat troops and their equipment back to France by the end of the year. Leaving behind the equipment to be guarded by U.S. or other NATO forces also would be an undesirable solution, they said.
The deployment, according to the Defense Ministry, includes up to 900 vehicles, more than half of them tanks and armored personnel carriers. Fourteen helicopters, based at the Kabul airport, have been deployed to transport and protect French soldiers. Several Mirage 2000 warplanes also have been dispatched to provide air reconnaissance, along with a K-135 refueling plane that is based in the Persian Gulf.
The French military could bring back the troops but would have trouble hauling back all their equipment because it is short on heavy-lift aircraft. Burkhard said the French military usually has to rent C-5A Galaxy, C-141 Starlifter or C-17A Globemaster transport planes from the United States for a trip to or from a Persian Gulf airport, from where the equipment moves by sea.
Leaving the equipment in Afghanistan, particularly armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery, is an unpalatable solution because much of it is top-of-the-line, new or recently retrofitted with modern electronics, and is needed to keep the French military well equipped, Heisbourg pointed out.
“If it’s just a question of getting the boys out, that’s no problem,” he said. “Hollande can say with a straight face that he carried out his pledge. But we also want to bring back their stuff, and it’s going to take a long time.”
With Pakistan closing off its territory to NATO’s military convoys, bringing back the equipment implies a long land journey through Central Asia or the costly leasing of the giant transport planes from other countries. In addition, other countries are likely to be withdrawing at the same time, clogging air and rail transport and extending the time necessary to keep French troops on scene to guard equipment.
Taliban Leader Planning To Attack Red Cross Center In Afghanistan Arrested
5/15/2012 9:27 AM ET
(RTTNews) - An Afghan-coalition security force detained a Taliban leader who was planning an upcoming attack against a Red Cross Center in the eastern Afghan province of Logar.
He was taken into custody during an operation in Pul-e 'Alam district on Tuesday, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Command said in a press release. The Taliban leader directed roadside bombings, suicide attacks and other operations against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the district. He also coordinated for weapons, ammunition, explosives, and suicide-bombers for those attacks, the release said.
Security forces detained two additional insurgents in this operation.
Multiple suspected Taliban insurgents were detained during an operation in Aliabad district of Kunduz province. A Haqqani leader was captured during a joint operation in Sarobi district, Paktika province. He conducted attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Sarobi, Gomal, and Omnah districts. He also provided weapons, ammunition and equipment to the insurgents under his control. Security forces detained two additional insurgents during this operation.
Two Taliban insurgents, who attempted to shoot at the Afghan and coalition troops as they approached a Taliban leader's suspected location in Khugyani district of Nangarhar province, were killed when the forces returned fire. In subsequent search, the forces detained three more insurgents and recovered an AK-47, another rifle, a pistol, ammunition and two hand grenades.
A Taliban leader, who was responsible for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Shinkai district in the southern province of Zabul, died as a motorcycle he was riding crashed while attempting to flee approaching forces on Saturday.
Another militant leader, who was a pillion-rider on the motorcycle, was detained. He was identified as one who attempted to enforce Taliban law on civilians in the area.
The Provincial Response Company, supported by coalition forces, discovered four anti-personnel mines, two rifles, small arms ammunition, one radio, one tactical vest and various improvised explosive device components from the motorcycle.
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com
Foreign Military Presence in Afghanistan not Mentioned in US-Afghan Deal: Atmar
TOLOnews.com Monday, 14 May 2012
Member of the Rights and Justice Party, Mohammad Hanif Atmar said today that future presence of foreign military forces is not clearly mentioned in the Afghan-US pact.
In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Mr Atmar said that signing the long-term strategic pact with the US has raised hope for the Afghan people but it still lacks some important issues.
"A major ambiguity in this pact is that the presence of foreign forces beyond 2014 is not clearly mentioned, it's not clear whether there will be a foreign military presence or not beyond that," Atmar said.
He also said that instability in Afghanistan is not in the interest of the regional nations and all the neighbours should help in stabilising Afghanistan and never provide hideouts for terrorists.
"Terrorist hideouts are not in our country, they are based outside.
So, if a country provides hideouts for terrorists and in return asks its neighbour to expel foreign forces, who are defending your country, is injustice and ignorance," Member of the Rights and Justice Party, Hanif Atmar said.
He also accused the government for failing to fight corruption and bring necessary reforms in the electoral system.
He also added that if a wrong policy is followed and Afghanistan loses all its international supporters, the country will go towards a proxy war.
"If we follow a wrong policy and lose our international partners and never be honest in bringing peace in the country, the country will face a proxy war," he told TOLOnews.
Captive of the Taliban: In the Hometown of an American Prisoner of War
By Nate Rawlings / Hailey, IdahoTuesday, May 15, 2012 time.com
Afghanistan and America merge where Hailey, Idaho, begins to disappear into the woods, two blocks off Main Street, where Zaney's River Street Coffee House sits behind a yard of bright yellow flowers. The one-story red wooden building is the heart of the Support Bowe Bergdahl movement. Bergdahl, 26, is a native son, having grown up by a dirt road that winds through a narrow river valley a few miles outside of town. He is one of the proud contributions of Hailey (pop. 8,000) to the U.S. military. The soldier has also been a captive of the Taliban in Afghanistan since late June 2009. He is America's only current prisoner of war. He is the emotional vacuum in the heart of Hailey, with Zaney's as ground zero for meetings, rallies and yellow ribbons for Bergdahl. Says Lee Ann Ferris, a local interior decorator: "The whole town has been affected. He's like our kid too." She says she imagines what must be going through his mind in faraway Afghanistan. "Every day he must be thinking about this little canyon, dreaming about it ... probably what keeps him going," she says.
Bergdahl's father Bob has driven the local UPS route, which includes the ski resort of Sun Valley, for 28 years. "Long enough to know everyone," says Sue Martin, the family friend who owns Zaney's. A lean, athletic man in his early 50s, he has piercing blue eyes staring out of a head of sandy brown hair and the beard that he has been growing since he got news of his son's capture. He could pass for a Taliban — in more ways than meet the eye. He says he is trying to learn Pashto and Urdu, the predominant languages along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.
Bob Bergdahl was on his route on July 1, 2009, when he received word over UPS radio that he needed to return immediately to local headquarters. He arrived about 7 p.m. to see his wife Jani and uniformed Army officers standing in the company's gravel lot. That's when he received the devastating news. Jani Bergdahl would later tell her friend Sue Martin that it was going to take a lot of strength to get through the ordeal. As for Bob, says Martin, it was clear that "he was not going to succumb to the emotions of it as much as he's going to participate in the resolution."
It has been a three-year roller coaster of news, hope and disappointment. There would be video evidence of Bowe's captivity and news of his abortive escape attempts. Bob would scour open-source websites and chat rooms looking for any information, trying to understand the culture of his captors. Tantalizing messages would reportedly creep out of the Taliban by way of the Internet, and then, suddenly, the family's expectations would be dashed. All the while, Bob was kept updated on what was known of Bowe's situation by some of the highest-ranking Army generals in Washington. Pious Presbyterians, the Bergdahls kept faith in what the government told them. And then, according to later press reports, a breakthrough seemed to be taking place: unprecedented direct negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban, allegedly about a swap of insurgent prisoners for Bowe. It was all hush-hush, but in retrospect, Martin says, "There must have been some good news. I saw Bob, and it seemed like he could smile." She adds, "There was a sense of optimism that 'We've done this. It's going to happen.' "
It did not. The supposed negotiations fell through in March 2012. The U.S. government refuses to discuss the issue. There were reports that the Bergdahls were frustrated and were going to publicize their son's plight — a move supposedly counseled against by the Pentagon. And indeed, Bob has broken his silence, but not in an angry way. "We do not want the American people to think we are dissatisfied with the way our government has proceeded," he tells TIME. "This isn't just about our son. This is about national policy."
Bob explains that the situation "is extremely complex. It involves different parties — state actors and nonstate actors. This is going to be difficult to reconcile, which is why we believe diplomacy for the hostages — and Bowe's not the only one, there are other hostages ... are the window of opportunity here." However, he says, "if we wait too long, if we politicize this too long in Washington, the opportunity for diplomacy — that window — will close and Afghanistan will be engulfed in civil war again." A slight hint of frustration does emerge. "The endgame and the end state is negotiations. And yet negotiations seem to be politically incorrect and not allowed." The window of opportunity, he reiterates, "is not going to await a national election to come to an end. I don't think we can count on the dynamics on the ground in Afghanistan to be the same as they necessarily are now. This is war, and war doesn't wait on politics."
He talks about what it meant for his son to enlist in the Army. "He saw Afghanistan as a humanitarian mission," Bob says. "I'm very proud of him, and I'm very proud of every single soldier, sailor, airman, Marine. We are so proud of these people, and we want Afghanistan to count for something." At the same time, he says he knows what Afghans and Pakistanis are going through. "We're extremely compassionate to the people of Afghanistan, and people need to know that the people of Pakistan have suffered tremendously because of the war in Afghanistan."
He thinks his son, who is a sergeant, is holding up well. "His faith seems to be intact," Bob says. "In his videos, he's mentioned his faith in God, and that means a lot to us. He's holding strong, and he has a strong foundation there. We think the Taliban and these Pashtu people can identify with that. And I hope they can respect him for that." Another thing, Bob says, may give Bowe strength. "Idaho is so much like Afghanistan," he says, which is why the state has been able to provide the military with so many young people who do well in mountainous and desert environments. "I think that's helping him survive and resist. The similarities will help him. We hope that will be what sustains him."
Indeed, the mountains of eastern Afghanistan bear a striking resemblance to those of southern Idaho. And Bowe was at home in the mountains of his home state. As a teenager, he zoomed across the heights on a motorcycle outfitted with a strong suspension to deflect the uneven, rocky trails. That is perhaps why Sue Martin has shared so much of what she owns with the Bergdahls. She lost her son Zane, a Hailey fireman, to a motorcycle accident. Amid all the "Standing with Bowe" and "Get Bowe Back" signs in her shop is a framed photograph of the restaurant's namesake, Zane Martin, careening down a racetrack. Nearby is a photo of Bowe as a teenager on a motorcycle trip.
"He worked for me not long before he went into the Army," Martin says. "He was everybody's favorite person. He had a quiet chivalry. He'd shovel a path in the snow, clear the snow off my car. He'd just go the extra mile." As others in Hailey have said, Bowe Bergdahl is like everyone's son.
Afghanistan: Home to 'world's most extreme golf'
By Lawrence Bartlett | AFP
"Welcome to the most extreme golf in the world," says the European Union ambassador to Afghanistan, as half-a-dozen heavily armed bodyguards fan out around him and scan the Kabul Golf Club course.
But Vygaudas Usackas is not talking about security threats facing golfers in a war zone -- he's talking about the course.
It is one big hazard, with unfair fairways of rock and thistles, sand-and-oil "greens" and the chance of falling into a ditch making even the most wicked of traditional sand traps and water hazards seem benign.
But in a country where guns far outnumber golf clubs and diplomats live in compounds set deep behind blast walls and razor wire, Usackas revels in the chance to "get out and get some fresh air".
The air at Afghanistan's only golf course -- a half-hour drive out of Kabul -- is certainly easier to breathe than the dust and pollution of the chaotic capital, but golfers accustomed to the eye-soothing sight of immaculate lawns would be in for a shock.
And they can leave the fancy two-tone spiked shoes behind, being well-advised to don army style boots to cope with the terrain.
As for clubs, forget about the state-of-the-art Titanium driver that cost a few hundred dollars and choose, like anybody else, from a dusty collection of bags containing ancient woods and irons in the spartan, single-room "clubhouse".
Then, equipped with two caddies, one to carry the bag, the other to stake out the likely landing area of your -- perfect -- shot so that he can maybe see the ball ricochet off a rock into a pile of rubble, you are ready to play.
The fore-caddy will also warn picnickers and cricketers and the riders of passing donkeys that balls may soon be coming their way.
They tend to be most accommodating, shifting temporarily from the direct line of fire and applauding any good shot in this bizarre game, in which Usackas and his party of one reporter and Afghanistan's only golf pro were the sole players one recent Friday.
The pro, Mohammad Afzal Abdul, 52, has been the manager and coach at the Club for 35 years -- apart from war-forced closures and a couple of stints in jail under Soviet invaders and hardline Taliban Islamists "for associating with foreigners".
A photograph of him with Tiger Woods in Dubai recently takes pride of place on the walls of the club's office.
"I invited Tiger to visit Kabul. He said okay, but no plans have been made," says Afzal. "I like him, I like all golfers -- he's a good man."
Also on the wall is a large poster of the rules of the course.
"Tip #1: Play aggressively. There are no gimmes (a shot that players agree can count automatically). Don't even ask for the stroke index because this is Afghanistan and they're all tough."
The tee boxes seem invisible in the scruffy terrain, except to Afzal, who has a scratch handicap and plays the course like the pro that he is.
The fairways can barely be distinguished from the rough and are scarred by ditches every 20 yards or so in preparation for a sprinkler system and dreams of covering the course in grass -- but it has been like that for a year.
The greens are grey, made from sand and waste oil in an effort to provide a smooth surface. And the holes are, as Usackas says, "like everything here -- relative". Some have cups, others are just scratched depressions in the sand.
The course was built some 60 years ago during the rule of the then-king, Zahir Shah, but has been destroyed by 30 years of war: a line of rusting Soviet tanks from the 1980s can still be seen on a nearby hill.
The Russians were followed by civil war and rule by the hardline Islamist Taliban, who were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
When the Western-backed President Hamid Karzai came to power, Afzal returned to his beloved course. "I didn't even recognise it," he says now.
Deminers cleared the course, but as an extra precaution Afzal set several thousand sheep roaming over it for five days -- they set off no mines and all survived.
But war still plagues Afghanistan, with the Taliban waging a 10-year insurgency against Karzai's government and 130,000 US-led NATO troops.
On the golf course, if you're playing with the ambassador, that means the age-old instruction for playing a shot -- "Don't lift your head" -- takes on a new meaning.
If you do, you are likely to spot a man with an automatic rifle kneeling a few yards away -- which could put you off your stroke.
Beyond the Sandbags and Steel, 12 Lanes to Another Afghanistan
By ROD NORDLAND The New York Times May 14, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Behind the black door in downtown Kabul is a place unlike any other in this city, even in the whole country.
It is an entertainment setting without alcohol — guards inside the half-ton fortified steel door turn away anyone with a trace of it on their breath. Patrons have to surrender even their cigarettes, which are put for safekeeping in lockers, along with the usual array of weaponry carried by some Afghan visitors.
From outside, it is marked only by a simple sign over the door that reads “Strikers.” Beyond the gate, a covered, sandbagged driveway leads well away from the public road — a precaution against bombers.
Inside, though, it is another world. A capacious and fastidiously clean restaurant space greets you. Walking past a wall of cubbyholes with crisp new bowling shoes in assorted sizes, you reach the main hall, with 12 lanes fitted with Brunswick pinsetters and multihued Day-Glo balls clacking out of the return races. A brightly colored sign above the pins shouts “Advertise Here.”
Welcome to Afghanistan’s first bowling alley.
The tale of how Strikers made Afghanistan the 91st country with a modern 10-pin bowling alley seems to be that rarest of things, an Afghan good news story. So far it has remained one, save for a spoilsport or two.
Though Strikers’ opening last fall was the country’s introduction to bowling, most of the bowlers now are Afghans, not expatriates. Strikers was started by an Afghan, not a foreigner. It was built with Afghan money, not funneled-off international aid. And the founder and owner is a 28-year-old woman, Meena Rahmani, who has managed to keep her mostly male staff of 25 working well despite Afghan society’s deep bias against women.
“I knew how hard it would be,” she said. “I’d be in a difficult condition with the labor, but it’s my right, and if they get offended, I can’t help that. I’m the boss.”
Starting out, a few workers did not take well to the situation, and she fired them. “I made them respect me,” she said.
Ms. Rahmani grew up as a refugee in Pakistan and later in Canada. She married a young Afghan man, and they lived in Toronto until they decided to return to Kabul last year.
The long Canadian winters indirectly provided the inspiration — besides skiing, there was nothing much to do but bowling, she said. When they arrived in Kabul, the first thing she noticed was how little opportunity there was to have fun. “I really found nothing in the entertainment sector, a place where everybody, children, even women could get affordable time out,” she said.
So she persuaded her parents to let her sell some family land in Kabul (her father is a doctor, her mother a university lecturer), and she put up $1 million to bring in the equipment from China, as well as three technicians from Brunswick to train her staff.
People took to it quickly, and soon Thursday and Friday nights, the big weekend nights here, were mobbed with bowlers. Even on a recent workday afternoon, a group of 40 Asia Foundation staff members, mostly Afghans, filled the lanes.
Ms. Rahmani said that what really amazed her, though, was to stumble onto an unsuspected bowling aptitude among Afghans, with several relative neophytes rolling respectable scores, even in the 200s.
One of those naturals was Karim Yusufi, a 26-year-old sales executive at the cellphone company Roshan. A friend invited him to bowl and taught him the basics, Mr. Yusufi said. “Then he said: ‘We have to bet on it. If you have the low score, you pay,’ ” he said.
The lane fees — $35 an hour — are not cheap by Afghan standards, though a lane accommodates six bowlers. Mr. Yusufi rolled 120 that first night, far higher than his gutter-hugging teacher, and the rest is Strikers history.
Mr. Yusufi went on to become a regular, but in the past six months he has yet to pay the lane fees himself, since he always wins the wager, he said. Lest anyone think he is a ringer, he still cheerfully says, “Let’s play bowling!”
As Strikers’ top scorer, with a 214 game, Mr. Yusufi has his picture posted both on the bowling alley’s wall and on its Facebook page. A travel agent has offered a free week in Dubai to the first person to best his score.
It has not all been smooth going. Ms. Rahmani was shocked by the rampant corruption as she dealt with local officials for permits and permissions. “After Canada, this was odd to me,” she said. “Every step I went, they were asking for money. Every day, knocking on the door and asking for money.”
Her guards caught two men who were detaching parts from customers’ cars (the car parts bazaar here often helpfully sells victims their own mirrors and wipers back). The guards turned the thieves over to the police, and a block away they saw the officers take money to release them, Ms. Rahmani said.
Inside, Ms. Rahmani soon realized she needed a whip hand with a few of the customers, and she put up a warning sign: “Do not show your ugly side to our peacekeeping security staff.” That staff included a couple of plainclothes officers in the bowling hall and a vigilant door crew that made sure young men were there only for bowling — if they brought women, they had to prove they were related.
“I’m very aware of our culture, and I value whatever is included in our culture,” Ms. Rahmani said. There are precious few activities in Kabul that involve both sexes, even in family settings, and the last thing she would want to see is a fatwa against bowling.
It is obvious even to new visitors that people are having fun on the lanes, even if the records they are merrily breaking are on the low side. (According to the computerized scoring equipment, 14 is the lowest score so far — perhaps as difficult an achievement, in its way, as Mr. Yusufi’s 214.) And the noise of the lanes is sometimes punctuated by the mortarlike thud of balls that fly nearly as far as they roll.
“It’s cool,” said Ali Sadaqat, who brushed aside suggestions of using Strikers’ free coach. He was leading his foursome, all first-timers, with 16 after the third frame. “This is the first time Afghans are playing a game in Afghanistan, other than cricket,” he said.
Although bowling is not an Olympic sport, Ms. Rahmani approached the Afghan Olympic Committee to register with the organization — she said she thought it would be an honor. She ran into trouble, though: an official there promptly asked her to turn over a share of her company in return for her registration, she said. She refused.
“Are they crazy? This is my company,” she said. “We don’t need that honor.”
An official at the committee denied Ms. Rahmani’s account. But he warned that the bowling alley, like all sports clubs in Afghanistan, was required to register with the committee and could be declared an illegal operation if it did not.
“The bowling game is not officially recognized as a sport by the Afghan Olympic Committee yet,” said the official, Ghulam Jelani Ghrob. All new sports need to be evaluated by the committee, he said, to see what their social consequences may be.
“God forbid, we should avoid these kinds of sport clubs’ being used as a place for moral deviation,” Mr. Ghrob said.
Ms. Rahmani said she was aware that she had opened the bowling alley at a difficult time, and not just because of red tape and corruption. As the international presence in the country begins to retract, more businesses are closing down than opening up.
“The war in Afghanistan has been going on since before I was born. We have no idea if it’s going to end someday,” she said. “We just have to carry on.”
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