[Afghan News] May 17, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Taliban Stage Deadly Strike on Afghan Governor’s Office
By ROD NORDLAND The New York Times May 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 11 people died on Thursday after Taliban insurgents attacked a provincial governor’s office, but were beaten back by security forces, Afghan officials said.
The 10 a.m. attack was apparently an attempt to assassinate the governor of western Farah Province, Mohammad Akram Khapalwak, who was in his office at the time, and the insurgents once again resorted to the ruse of disguising themselves as Afghan police officers, according to the police security chief for the province, Mohammad Ghaus Malyaar.
Mr. Malyaar said the four attackers wore lightweight explosive vests and carried rocket-propelled grenade launchers and small arms. “The target was clearly the governor and his staff,” he said. “Six police officers have been martyred, and an employee of the governor’s house was also killed.”
All four of the attackers were shot to death by police officers defending the compound, Mr. Malyaar said, and none was apparently able to detonate an explosive vest.
Three policemen and nine civilian employees were also wounded as a result of what the police official said was a 45-minute gun battle.
The attack came less than three weeks after a similar attempt to assassinate the governor of Kandahar Province.
Last summer, similar raids were launched on the governors’ compounds in Parwan Province in the north, and Oruzgan Province in the south.
Thursday’s attack in remote Farah Province, which until recent months has been relatively quiet compared to other parts of Afghanistan, began when the attackers shot to death two guards at the entrance to the governor’s compound in Farah town, and raced inside, initially confusing defenders who thought they were policemen.
“The attackers tried to enter the governor’s house, but our brave policemen stopped their approach,” said Naqibullah Farahi, the spokesman for the governor. He put the number of attackers at five and said one of them did manage to detonate his explosive vest. None actually managed to enter the governor’s quarters before being killed, Mr. Farahi said.
Mr. Farahi as well as a witness said the firefight with the attackers lasted for two hours.
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan mulls Islamic bonds, fearing Western cash cutback
By Jack Kimball and Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan, which has only a semblance of a capital market, intends to sell Islamic bonds as it braces for a possible sharp fall in Western financial support as the war against the Taliban winds down, a senior central bank official said this week.
The official said the sale of short-term Islamic bonds, also known as sukuk, is still in the planning stage, but could be a new way of raising money for the government.
"The purpose is so that the ministry of finance can have tools for their financing to cover their expenses," Khan Afzal Hadawal, first deputy governor at the Afghan central bank, told Reuters in an interview.
"We have to develop the financial markets of Afghanistan. We have to offer those instruments not only for the banks, (but) so that the government has an alternative to finance their projects and the central bank can control money growth."
Billions of dollars in Western aid have propped up the economy since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001. Now Afghanistan faces the prospect of Western cash evaporating after most foreign combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
One of the world's most unstable, corrupt countries hopes financial creativity based on Islamic sharia law will help soften the blow, and ultimately deepen its nascent financial markets.
The sukuk are expected initially to be issued in the Afghani currency and offered to local banks within the next year. They may gradually be expanded to medium- and long-term bonds.
A draft law on the bonds must be approved by the justice ministry, and possibly parliament, and should be completed by the end of September, Hadawal said.
Afghanistan may need around $7.8 billion a year in foreign funding to help pay its security and other bills after most U.S.-led NATO combat troops leave, according to the World Bank. It is likely to receive about $4.1 billion in aid for its security forces per year after 2014, but that number could fall.
In the runup to a NATO summit this weekend, the U.S. government has been pressing reluctant European allies to offer around one third of the estimated $4 billion annual cost of financing Afghan forces after 2014.
If international backers slash funds severely, Afghanistan's government may be forced to reduce spending on security and development, making it even more unpopular, and its control of the country even more fragile.
The reputation of Afghan financial institutions was badly damaged in 2010 by a scandal involving Kabulbank, which gave hundreds of millions of dollars in unsecured and undocumented loans to the country's elite, including sitting ministers.
SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING SECURE
The government hopes the Islamic bonds will give Afghans a sense of stability, and expand financial activities beyond the primary and secondary markets for central bank paper.
"(Sukuk) are something new and people have access to financing, something compliant with sharia ... and the most important thing is, something very secure, guaranteed and people are not worried that they will lose it," Hadawal said.
Islamic bonds will gradually replace capital notes that used to manage liquidity and have weekly auctions of around $40-$80 million depending on market conditions, central bank officials said. Total investment in capital notes stands at around $714 million with yields of about 2.13 percent for 28-day paper.
Unlike mainstream bonds, sukuk do not involve interest payments, which are forbidden in Islamic finance. Instead, holders receive returns from underlying assets.
Details of the assets, amount, maturities and issuance time-frame would be determined after Afghanistan gets technical assistance from the International Monetary Fund, Hadawal said.
"We do not have the people ... who are familiar with the products, with the terms and then with the maturities," he said.
The Afghan finance ministry declined to comment.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with annual per capita income of just $528. Its fast-growing population means that to provide jobs, the economy must expand far more rapidly than in other countries.
The central bank forecasts economic growth of 7.3 percent this year versus 3.7 percent in 2011, driven by agriculture and agri-business, but future expansion is likely to depend on major mining projects coming online.
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Daniel Magnowski)

How to Keep Afghanistan Secure
Zalmay Khalilzad The National Interest May 17, 2012
One historic weakness of U.S. foreign policy has been the excessive confidence of policy makers who believe they can foresee the future. As a result, they lock themselves into policies and fail to adjust in time, even when their underlying assumptions prove unfounded. This has been the case repeatedly over the past thirty years in Afghanistan. President Obama’s call for a reduction of the future force structure of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) poses the risk of repeating this tragic cycle.
During the 1980s, U.S. policy makers assumed that the Soviets would ultimately prevail and the Afghan resistance could only impose costs on Soviet occupation forces. It might have been a reasonable belief, but it proved wrong. And it was a costly mistake. On the assumption the Soviets were there to stay, the United States paid too little attention to the political orientation of insurgent groups fighting the Soviets. Too much support went to fundamentalist groups, too little to moderates and nationalists not hostile to the West. The United States did not take into account the implications of empowering fundamentalists in post-Soviet Afghanistan because it assumed there would not be a post-Soviet Afghanistan. Washington is still paying for this mistake.
During the 1990s, the United States assumed the negative externalities from the post-Soviet chaos in Afghanistan, such as terrorism and drug trafficking, were not critical threats to American interests. In disengaging after the Soviet withdrawal, U.S. policy makers subcontracted Afghan policy to Pakistan and calculated that regional powers would handle the costs of Afghan instability. The September 11 attacks proved otherwise.
After toppling the Taliban, the Bush administration assumed the Taliban and associated insurgent groups had been vanquished and the security environment for the new Afghan government would be relatively benign. They decided to build a modest ANSF force structure, including an army of not more than seventy thousand. When the Taliban reemerged in 2005 and 2006, the ANSF program had not built up a strong enough force to maintain security. Presidents Bush and Obama, as well as our NATO partners, were therefore forced to send more international forces to blunt the challenge from a resurgent Taliban.
The Obama administration deserves credit for expanding the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. The president appeared to understand that the formula for long-term success was enabling Afghans to defend Afghanistan, with financial and other support from the United States and other friendly powers. However, in announcing the U.S.-Afghanistan strategic partnership agreement, President Obama also declared plans to reduce sharply the size of the ANSF starting in 2015, from 352,000 army and police to 230,000 by 2017. The Obama administration did not condition this reduction on positive changes in the security environment. If Washington pursues this goal irrespective of conditions on the ground, it risks repeating the mistakes of the past.
No one can know what the threat level will be between 2015 and 2017, when the reductions in Afghan forces are to take place. The United States and NATO should not make the decision about future ANSF reductions now. Instead, Washington should wait until the threat picture becomes clearer. If reconciliation negotiations succeed and/or the insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan are eliminated, thereby diminishing the violence, the size of the ANSF can be reduced more safely. But the reconciliation negotiations have stalled, and there are no serious indications Pakistan is moving decisively against insurgent sanctuaries on its territory.
Especially in light of the fact that the threat from Afghanistan could remain at current levels, or even increase, it would be risky to reduce the coalition presence as planned for 2014 or cut the size of Afghan forces between 2015 and 2017. Doing so will create a security gap that the Taliban and other insurgents and terrorists, operating out of sanctuaries in Pakistan, could readily exploit. This policy would jeopardize all the gains we have accomplished to date.
Announcing Afghan forces will be reduced significantly in size further undermines the president’s goal of getting the Taliban to reconcile on acceptable terms. Part of the U.S. rationale behind signing a long-term strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan, which commits the United States to Afghanistan’s security, was to bring the Taliban, as well as their Pakistani sponsors, to the table. By conveying that U.S. forces will remain in the region, Washington hopes the Taliban and their Pakistani allies will conclude the only sensible course of action is political reconciliation. But accompanying the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO combat forces with the downsizing of the ANSF negates this message—and instead will encourage Afghanistan’s enemies, who believe time is on their side, to wait for favorable conditions.
In a letter to President Obama, Senators Levin, McCain, Lieberman and Graham expressed concern about the administration’s plans. As they wrote,
The United States needs to ensure that decisions on the future size and funding for the ANSF will be based on security conditions in Afghanistan at that time, and not set spending levels that could not only jeopardize the progress of the past decade or weaken the security of Afghanistan when they take effect down the road but could also send the wrong message in the interim.
Some argue the United States cannot afford to support the costs of a larger Afghan force. Yet, as the president has stated, the United States has important interests at stake that can only be secured by a stable Afghanistan cooperating with Washington in the long-term struggle against terrorism. The marginal cost of a larger ANSF is small compared to the risk of under-resourcing the strategy. Such an approach would be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
The extent to which the planned reductions would be modified based on conditions on the ground is not clear. Administration officials have offered mixed signals. President Obama should state unambiguously that future ANSF reductions will take place only if they will not imperil U.S. national-security interests. The upcoming NATO summit in Chicago is the perfect forum for such clarification.
Zalmay Khalilzad is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2007 to 2009, he served as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. He has also previously served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as well as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and also as special presidential envoy to Afghanistan. He is a member of The National Interest's advisory council.

War-torn Kabul museum presents cultural relics to visitors
by Jawid Omid, Yangtze Yan
KABUL, May 17 (Xinhua) -- A few hundred meters from Dar-ul-Aman Palace, a destroyed historic citadel, the two-story Kabul museum showcases the cultural relics of Afghanistan, a crossroad of the ancient world, to the war-weary Afghans and foreign visitors.
"Afghanistan itself is similar to a museum," said Fawzia Hamraz who is in charge of the ethnographic department of the Afghan National Museum (Kabul Museum), referring to the numerous archeological sites across the militancy-hit country.
After Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and collapse of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government in 1992, fierce fighting occurred particularly in western and southern Kabul and also during the Taliban regime (1996-2001) when most of the treasures in the museum were looted and some were deliberately destroyed, she said.
Now in ruins, the Dar-ul-Aman Palace is a European-style palace located about 16 kilometers southwest of the center of Afghan capital Kabul. The palace was built in the early 1920s as a part of the plan by King Amandullah Khan.
Hamraz was one of the staff members who rushed to the museum as soon as she heard that Taliban were driven out of the city in late 2001.
"The moment when I came to museum after Taliban pulled out the city, the scene around the museum building was disastrous and the building was ruinous," said Hamraz who has been working for 28 years at the museum excluding a six-year gap when Taliban who confined women to house were in power.
"All these wooden sculptures from eastern Nuristan province were like a mound of wood after I came back to museum and I began to renovate them in early 2002 before an expert arrived in Kabul to help me from Austria," she said.
The 50-year-old museum protector recalled that the Soviet- backed President Najibullah, whose government fell in 1992, also played a role to preserve several dozens of items by moving them to a safer place inside the presidential palace in central Kabul.
"Everything that we remember is that the decision was made by a committee and President Najibullah ordered the objects to be moved to the presidential palace in fears of being looted in upcoming fighting," she said.
"Most of our visitors are university students and school children who frequently get transportation provided by government and private education institutions, but we also have foreign tourists," she said.
The International Museum Day falls on May 18 every year but there has been no official gathering or meeting to mark the event in Afghanistan. In an effort to attract visitors, the admission is free on Fridays, an official holiday in Afghanistan.
"The Kabul museum is open seven days a week, and it is aimed at arousing viewers' interest in cultural relics, heritage and ancient objects as well as raising public awareness about protecting the historic articles and artifacts," Hamraz said.
According to the director, the Kabul museum was first founded in 1919 when Afghanistan declared its independence and King Amaullah Khan begun to modernize the country.
"Initially the items displayed at this museum included embroider clothes, elaborated silky clothes, military uniform and equipment, but later on all historic articles were collected from across the country and put here for display," she said.
Hamraz hoped that the Afghan government and the international community enhance the support to their efforts on museums and cultural heritage sites.
Earlier this year, Germany has given back an ancient pre- Islamic sculpture looted during the civil war, giving confidence to every Afghan that one day the rest of the stolen items would return home and would be in display in Kabul museum again.
A cemented plaque in front of the Kabul museum states that "A NATION STAYS ALIVE WHEN ITS CULTURE STAYS ALIVE".

Who Wants To Fund Afghan Security?
By Charles Recknagel May 17, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Asking for funding in tough economic times is never easy.
But Washington faces just that hurdle as it hosts the NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21.
The summit, to assess Afghanistan's security needs after foreign forces withdraw in 2014, is not a donors conference. But it is likely to be dominated by the question of who will pay the $4 billion a year U.S. and Afghan officials estimate is needed to support Afghan security forces.
The problem: Washington's European NATO allies have little money to spare. With the eurozone in crisis, they are staying quiet about helping underwrite the Afghan army and police.
The United States is expected to cover about two-thirds of the cost, but U.S. officials last month urged their NATO partners to contribute a total of $1.3 billion a year after 2014. The only countries, however, that have pledged so far are Germany at $193 million a year, Britain at $110 million a year, and non-NATO member Australia at $100 million a year.
"When you look at [Anders Fogh] Rasmussen, the secretary-general of NATO, and his report for 2011, his annual report, he really talks a lot about how many of the allies are not meeting commitments to have 2 percent of their GDP spent on the military and defense, and many are under 1 percent even, so it is very clear Europe is broke," Graeme Herd, of the Geneva Center for Security Policy in Switzerland, says. "There is no money."
Herd says European NATO members will not say "no" outright to U.S. pressure. But he expects them to attach strong conditions to any contributions in an effort to lessen their burden.
Test Of Nerves
One reason many European governments cannot simply refuse is public opinion.
Countries with troops or training missions in Afghanistan could risk belittling their own sacrifices if they turn away now.
"There is quite some political willingness to carry part of that burden among the European states," Henning Riecke, of the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, says. "It is obvious that the continuing support of the Afghan security and police forces is the price for an honorable withdrawal of the combat force from Afghanistan."
But even if the Europeans do eventually pledge, their lack of enthusiasm suggests the days of the West shouldering Afghanistan's security costs are ending.
Gareth Price of London's Chatham House says Western capitals want Afghanistan's regional neighbors to help carry the burden.
He predicts tough poker playing in Chicago as some NATO states keep silent to force other countries to come forward.
"People would play their cards close to the chest in the hopes of getting other countries -- maybe from the Gulf, maybe China, from other parts of the world with less economic problems -- to step in and start funding the security side of things," Price says.
Welcome To Join
One key player is India. Price says prospects that country might contribute have grown since New Delhi and Kabul signed a security and trade pact in October.
"There is a recognition that India is popular in Afghanistan, it is doing lots of development work; but it's also benefiting from the security umbrella," Price says. "And the same logic would apply for China with a lot of its investments in mining and so forth."
India and China have not said whether they will help fund Afghan security. Nor has Japan or any of the Gulf states, which Western diplomats are reportedly approaching.
One other potential contributor is Russia. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in April Moscow was worried the drug trade and terrorism could grow in Afghanistan after the pullout of foreign forces.
NATO chief Rasmussen responded positively by saying that "we would welcome financial contributions from Russia, China, and other countries to ensure a strong sustainable Afghan security force beyond 2014." But so far there are no signs the conversation has gone further.

U.S. path out of Afghanistan faces risks
By Missy Ryan | Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where the United States has already trimmed its forces ahead of the coming NATO withdrawal, a modest number of al Qaeda fighters have re-established operations, U.S. officials say, a worrying sign of the risks that could jeopardize Western hopes of a smooth exit.
Current and former U.S. officials say the fighters, believed to be mostly Arabs and Pakistanis who number less than 100, have crept back across the porous border with Pakistan to Kunar and Nuristan provinces. That is where a consolidation of NATO bases has left a force of just 4,200 Western soldiers - and a limited ability to conduct on-the-ground intelligence and security operations.
The reappearance, small as it may be, is emblematic of the challenges the Obama administration and its NATO allies will face as they seek to extricate themselves from a long and costly war without surrendering an unstable, still-violent Afghanistan back to militants intent on attacking the West.
"We're aware of attempts by al Qaeda to try and establish a presence in eastern Afghanistan, but ensuring they do not remains a focus of the campaign," a U.S. defense official said.
President Barack Obama, who drew a sharp contrast with Iraq when he called Afghanistan a 'war of necessity' for U.S. security, has defined the U.S. mission there largely as one of dismantling al Qaeda even as his soldiers continue to die at the hands of the Taliban.
That focus - rejecting a boundless campaign to defeat the Taliban or transform Afghanistan - has allowed Obama to project a measure of success there a year after he dispatched Navy SEALS to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and as he proceeds with plans to pull out most U.S. troops by the end of 2014.
But as Obama prepares to host NATO leaders for a May 20-21 Chicago summit, and his campaign to win a second term in November intensifies, success by other measures is far from assured.
While Obama's surge of 33,000 troops has weakened the Taliban in much of its southern heartland, the group remains able to recharge in Pakistan's tribal areas. Militants from the Haqqani network have embraced sophisticated attacks on Kabul.
Despite a Herculean aid effort that has cost the West billions of dollars, Afghanistan's ineffective institutions and widespread corruption make governance a weak link.
While U.S. officials see President Hamid Karzai as a questionable ally, it is even less clear what will follow after the 2014 elections in a country where former warlords still wield outsized power and political parties barely exist.
Obama is likely to use the Chicago summit to tout a new deal outlining a long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan, which he signed in a middle-of-the-night visit to Kabul in early May.
But Washington has appeared to struggle in its effort to secure $1.3 billion a year from its allies to fund Afghan security forces, fueling doubts about how much support cash-strapped Western nations will be able to muster in the future.
The stakes could not be higher.
"No matter what happens in the coming years, it is pretty clear that the United States will remain prepared to act against any potential terrorist threats to U.S. homeland security that emerge in Afghanistan," said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. As in operations in Yemen, reliance on drones and special forces is expected.
"No matter who wins the election in November in the United States, future presidents will not risk a return to the situation the world saw in Afghanistan in the 1990s," he said.
IN TOGETHER, OUT TOGETHER?
The summit's U.S. hosts are sure to stress the NATO pledge of 'in together, out together,' a motto hearkening back to the early days of the war, when a Western coalition appalled by the September 11, 2001, attacks had not yet been strained by a Taliban military revival and by fiscal crisis and fatigue at home.
U.S. General John Allen, who commands U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, will complete the removal of all Obama's surge troops this fall, leaving a U.S. force of about 68,000.
Allen is due to make recommendations for further troop reductions after the summer combat season, which should reveal how well Afghan forces can fight - and how well NATO fares with a force smaller than the one that claimed swathes of the Afghan South in a troop-heavy, counter-insurgency campaign in 2010.
But the victory of Socialist Francois Hollande in France, who has promised to pull French troops this year, raises questions. European nations are already anxiously watching for signs the Obama administration will accelerate its plans.
And there are fears, among Republicans and even some within the Pentagon, that the pace of remaining troop reductions will be determined by politics rather than conditions on the ground.
"To the extent we've had success it has involved large numbers of troops," a Republican congressional aide said.
NATO's strategy now hinges on success of its push to build up the inexperienced local army and police, an effort that has been a focus of U.S. investment since 2009, to mixed results.
Afghan forces number far more than they did, and their fighting skills are vastly improved. But their reliance on outside help for key tasks, such as intelligence and air support, will continue for years to come.
No one knows when Afghanistan will be able to pay for more than a small share of those security costs.
The good news, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who chaired Obama's 2009 review of Afghan strategy, is Afghan forces need to be only skilled enough to keep the Taliban at bay.
"An Afghan stalemate with the Taliban is not the best outcome, but it is good enough since it keeps the Taliban out of Kabul and lets us use Afghan bases to carry out counter terror missions," in the region, Riedel said.
DANGEROUS REAL ESTATE
As the Pentagon seeks to stretch a shrinking force, military officials' frustration with Pakistan is palpable. Many U.S. officials see the ostensible ally, which they suspect of turning a blind eye to insurgents, as the chief threat to achieving their goals in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies such charges.
"There are things that are out of our control from a military perspective," one senior U.S. defense official said. "The safe haven element is huge."
As time goes on, the United States will focus its Afghan effort less on population security - the core of the counter-insurgency model credited with salvaging the war in Iraq - and more on targeted raids on militants and strikes from the air.
That is already the case in Kunar and Nuristan, where local officials warn that dozens to a few hundred non-Afghan militants have appeared, perhaps due to pressure on militants across the border in Pakistan. There is also a robust Taliban presence there.
Over the weekend, NATO aircraft struck targets in Kunar's Watapur district, killing four men suspected to be al Qaeda militants, U.S. officials said.
After U.S. forces shut a number of smaller bases in 2009-10 after taking heavy losses, the Taliban made advances in places like Nuristan's Wanat district. Given the small NATO presence, it will be largely up to some 23,000 Afghan police and army in the two provinces to face off against militants, including the Taliban, whose proximity to the border has allowed it to launch some of the largest assaults around Afghanistan.
"I'm disturbed by what I perceive as a real lack of understanding about what is possible in Afghanistan," said Robert Grenier, a former senior U.S. intelligence official who was CIA station chief in Pakistan until 2002.
"If we focus exclusively on counter-terrorism goals without maintaining a fairly robust counter-insurgency effort, we could see large parts of Afghanistan slip effectively into Taliban control. That makes me very concerned about the potential for long-term safe-havens," he said.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman in Kabul and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)

Afghanistan Top Agenda Item at NATO Chicago Summit
VOA News May 16, 2012 Andre deNesnera
Afghanistan will be at the top of the agenda when heads of state and government from the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meet in Chicago Sunday and Monday.
NATO has been operating in Afghanistan since 2003, leading a 130,000 member United Nations-mandated contingent known as the “International Security Assistance Force,” or ISAF. ISAF’s main goal has been to help Afghan authorities provide security and stability in order to create conditions for the country’s reconstruction and development.
2014 deadline
Analysts say the Chicago summit will reaffirm NATO’s decision to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014 while remaining committed to a long-term partnership with the Afghan people.
Sean Kay is a NATO expert at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.
“If you look at the domestic politics inside the NATO countries, be it France or here in the United States where public support for this war has just cascaded, it’s pretty clear where the direction is,” says Kay.
“And so the question for NATO now is really one of how to manage a gradual and responsible exit from the country that at least gives the Afghan people a fighting chance to stand up on their own, with continued assistance, but really with Afghans in the lead.”
Kay says that keeping the 2014 exit date is crucial, adding that, “You really need that timeline to send a message to the Karzai government and other people in Afghanistan that they can’t just be dependent on America forever there.
“They do have to take responsibility for their own country,” he says. “And so to the extent that we would be engaged in the future, it is going to have to be in a significantly scaled back and largely supportive role, while maintaining the counterterrorism capability as needed.”
NATO’s general rule in Afghanistan has been “in together, out together,” but analysts say that is becoming a problem.
Kay says NATO officials at the summit will have to persuade the newly elected president of France, Francois Hollande, not to withdraw the 3,300 French troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year as he pledged during the presidential campaign.
“If the allies are starting to bail, then that creates a problem for America’s commitment to the war - because absent allies, then the United States is left holding the bag alone and that will not be sustainable with the United States public,” Kay says.
Charles Kupchan, a NATO expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, says even if the French withdraw on their own, it would not mean the end to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan.
“Would the NATO mission come apart at the seams if French troops left? No,” concludes Kupchan. “Would it send the wrong signal, that is to say suggest that the coalition is unraveling prematurely? Yes. That’s why I think Hollande will be under pressure to moderate his position.”
Possible way out
But Kupchan says there may be a way out, possibly with Hollande getting only some of the French troops out, or at least out of combat, early on.
“Hollande might reduce the mission definition for the French contingent so that they are not engaged in high-intensity combat in the same way that they have been before,” Kupchan says. “But at the same time, he will agree to continue to have some kind of French mission in the country through the end of 2014.”
Kupchan and others say NATO alone cannot stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. He and other analysts say the international community must also provide the necessary economic and financial help to aid the government of President Hamid Karzai.
But these experts also say this may be difficult because resources are scarce given the economic situation in many industrialized countries these days.

Pakistani president to attend NATO summit on Afghanistan
By the CNN Wire Staff May 17, 2012
(CNN) -- President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan will attend the NATO summit meeting about Afghanistan in Chicago this weekend, his office said in a statement Thursday.
NATO had invited Zardari to the conference on Tuesday, just days after the organization's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had suggested that the neighbor of Afghanistan would not be included because of the continued closure of Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to war supplies.
The decision to attend the meeting was made in consultation with Pakistan's top military and civilian leaders, the statement from Zardari's office said.
Tensions between Pakistan and Western forces operating in Afghanistan have been high since NATO airstrikes killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers in November.
The closure of the border with Afghanistan to NATO supply routes was one of the measures Islamabad employed to show its displeasure over the airstrikes.
Talks to reopen the border have intensified ahead of the Chicago meetings. U.S. negotiators have been in Pakistan since late April, and this past weekend, Gen. John Allen, who oversees all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and his Afghan counterpart were in Pakistan for discussions that included talks about the border situation.
Analysts have described the NATO summit invitation as an incentive for Zardari to reopen the routes.
But Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Zardari, said Tuesday that the invitation to the meeting was unconditional and was not linked to the opening of ground lines of communication for NATO or to any other issue.
Senior Pakistani military and civilian officials met in Islamabad Tuesday evening but did not come up with a recommendation on lifting the blockade on the two NATO supply routes through Pakistan.
The summit meeting will include Afghan President Hamid Karzai, along with NATO allies and International Security Assistance Force contributors. There also will be representatives from Russia, Japan and key international organizations including the United Nations and European Union.
Zardari will make a speech in Chicago and also meet with various international leaders on the margins of the summit, his office said Thursday.
A senior official with the Obama administration had stressed earlier in the week that the invitation to Pakistan was from NATO and that it was not clear if President Obama would meet with Zardari.
"It doesn't necessarily impact what we do with the Pakistanis" at the summit, the official said.
Obama met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in March during a nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea.

Afghanistan to pump oil in five months: official
By Sardar Ahmad | AFP – Wed, May 16, 2012
Afghanistan will start pumping oil for the first time within five months, an official said Wednesday, as part of the nation's efforts to tap underground treasures estimated to be worth billions.
China's National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and its Afghan partner the Watan Group will initially produce 5,000 barrels a day, mining ministry spokesman Jawad Omar told AFP.
This would be the first extraction of oil in Afghanistan, a mineral-rich country that is still one of the poorest in the world after three decades of war.
"The maximum production at the beginning will be 5,000 barrels a day but this will increase to 45,000 barrels a day," Omar said, without giving a timetable for the increase.
The extraction will start in the "Afghan-Tajik Zone", one of the major oil deposits along the Amu Darya river border in relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan, the spokesman said.
Under a deal signed last December, the oil will be processed in refineries already being built within Afghanistan, with Kabul taking 70 percent of the net profits on top of a 15 percent corporation tax.
The Afghan-Tajik deposit is estimated to contain about 87 million barrels of oil, relatively small globally but significant for a poverty-stricken country heavily dependent on Western aid.
Afghanistan currently imports all its oil and most of its gas, mostly from Central Asian countries and Iran, which on Monday signed a deal to supply its neighbour with a million tonnes of fuel oil, petrol and aviation fuel a year.
According to official data, six oil deposits have been discovered in Afghanistan, widely spread from the north to Herat in the west, Helmand in the south and Paktia in the southeast.
The country also has deposits of copper, iron ore, gold and lapis lazuli.
Citing aerial studies, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that the war-scarred country sits on more than $1 trillion worth of minerals.
But exploitation of these resources faces massive hurdles due to a 10-year insurgency waged by hardline Taliban Islamists, woeful infrastructure and endemic corruption.
China, flush with foreign exchange reserves and undeterred by the hazards of frontier capitalism, bought the first tendered oil and copper concessions, leading the list of Afghanistan's neighbours bidding for mining rights.
The huge Aynak mine south of Kabul, to which China won extraction rights in 2007, could yield over 11 million tonnes of copper, according to Soviet-era data and a newer study by the USGS.
According to mining ministry documents seen by AFP, Afghanistan is planning to sell extraction rights for up to five mines every year before most of the 130,000-strong US-led NATO force deployed to fight the Taliban leave in 2014.

Asking a Skeptical Europe to Open Its Wallet for Afghanistan
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN Diplomatic Memo May 16, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - There are few certainties for Afghanistan as the NATO troop withdrawal moves into high gear, but one of them is this: the Continental Europeans have a grimmer prognosis for what can be accomplished than do their American and British counterparts.
As they assess Afghanistan, the Europeans see an economic depression looming as Western aid and military spending evaporate; corruption, already endemic, is escalating dangerously as Afghan power brokers milk the war economy for every last penny before it dries up; security remains elusive — not only because of the Taliban, but also because ethnically based militias are reactivating across large parts of the country.
The American and British, however, emphasize potential: the Afghan security forces are improving; President Hamid Karzai has pledged not to run again, making it possible that there will be a credible election; and the Taliban appear open to peace talks, just not right now.
These disparate outlooks, laid out in interviews with foreign officials here over the past week, are more than a matter of semantics. They are fundamental differences in the allies’ conclusions about how much has been achieved and how much more should be spent on Afghanistan.
That question will be front and center at the NATO summit meeting in Chicago that starts this weekend and is focused on getting commitments from NATO member countries and others to finance the Afghan security forces for 10 years after the NATO mission ends in 2014.
“We have a lot of European countries that are in economic crisis, that are facing elections and whose citizens are fatigued with the war after 11 years. So for us coming up with substantial money for the Afghan National Security Forces, it is not so clear a priority for us,” said one European diplomat here. Like others interviewed for this article, the diplomat spoke about the aid discussions on the condition of anonymity.
Everyone believes that at the end of the day — in fact by the end of the conference — the aid pledges will be there to fill out a goal of $4.1 billion a year, over the next 10 years, to help Afghanistan maintain its security forces. The Americans plan to provide roughly two-thirds of that.
Still, for many European countries, the money is being given reluctantly, most of all because they would prefer to spend on health clinics and schools rather than armies. And even as they are agreeing to commit the money for security help at the Chicago conference, they worry that doing so will make their parliaments reluctant to give more at a Tokyo conference in July that will focus on future Afghanistan reconstruction projects. And in more candid moments, some wish aloud that the money could stay available for countries with more chance for success than Afghanistan.
“What dominates the agenda of Karzai and the United States is security — the military strategy, the night raids, detention and the rest,” another European diplomat said. “So no matter how much we are going to push the Afghans to address issues of governance and corruption, it’s not going to happen. But these are things we care about and the capitals care about.”
Though the Americans and British insist that they do not want to end up slighting development spending, their clear priority in Chicago is to ensure there is enough money for the security forces to avoid a repeat of what happened in 1991 when the Soviet Union withdrew financial support for the military under Najibullah, the Communist ruler they had left in Kabul after they withdrew in 1989. When the money stopped, his government collapsed in a matter of months.
“Everybody has economic problems but this is serious business,” said a senior American official. “Security forces cannot be under-resourced without grave danger to the state.”
Yet for all that the Americans wanted a broad Western coalition, they did themselves no favors in the prelude to Chicago by sending around a list in January with the amount they expected every country to give. Canada was assessed for $125 million; Finland for $20 million; France, $200 million; Sweden, $40 million — among others. Only Greece, whose government is in default, was given an exemption.
The list made other countries feel they were trapped in a carpet bazaar in which the store owner sets the price above what he knows he will get. (The list was even called “Target Asks.”)
“It was a bit blunt as an approach, and we thought, ‘Right, why weren’t we involved in the exercise to come up with the numbers?’ ” one European diplomat said.
Another country’s diplomat looked at the list and wondered why his country was asked to pay more than another country of similar size. “We were told, ‘You punch above your weight,’ and we said, ‘Yes, but we don’t want to pay more than our share.’ ”
So far the result is that countries are offering about 60 percent of the amount the Americans asked them for. Britain has already announced it will spend $110 million — barely more than half the $200 million it was asked for. France was asked for $200 million, but with the election last week of a staunchly antiwar Socialist president, François Hollande, no one is expecting they will give that much. Several diplomats said they doubted that Mr. Hollande would come to the Chicago meeting empty-handed.
A senior United States official said that the Americans recognized the European reluctance, but that as a practical matter what was most important was that the United States remain out front in helping Afghanistan — in part because of a sense of responsibility that the past 11 years of war cannot be allowed to come to nothing, but also because it encourages other countries to contribute.
“What it really takes is us,” said the official, referring to the United States.
The strategic partnership agreement signed on May 1 by President Obama and Mr. Karzai in Kabul committed the United States to support Afghanistan for the next 10 years in economic development, rule of law and security, among other things.
The European reluctance to spend on security is not born of a lack of interest in Afghanistan. Many European countries have had development and humanitarian efforts here going back more than 25 years. But after years of development programs that have fallen far short of the West’s hopes, they are wary of the prospect of pumping more money into defending an Afghan state that many Europeans have dwindling faith in.
They are put off by a troubling record of corruption and human rights abuses, and daunted by the prospect of a collapse into civil war after NATO pulls out. They say the Americans base their projections on best-case plans.
“The major goal now is to avoid a cross-country conflict that moves into a regional conflict,” a European diplomat said. He added, “We have low expectations for 2014.”
Another European diplomat, who has spent years in the country, described how Afghanistan has fallen out of his country’s consciousness.
“Our media is not even mentioning Afghanistan now,” the diplomat said. “We are Europeans at the end of the day; we have to care about North Africa — it is closer; we can explain why it matters. We have to care about Belarus, it is nearly a neighbor. But Afghanistan is very far away.”
Graham Bowley contributed reporting.

Assassination + more NATO killings = Death for peace talks?
By Ashley Fantz, CNN May 16, 2012
(CNN) -- When it comes to negotiating with the Taliban, it's always one step forward, two steps back.
Despite several serious rounds of violence this week, including the assassination of a top peace negotiator, the United States will continue to try to negotiate with the Taliban, experts say. Afghanistan has been violent for a long time, they argue. This week just brought more of the same.
"[The United States] has been fighting for nearly 11 years, and we've already said we're not leaving until 2014," said C. Christine Fair, a Georgetown University Center for Peace and Security Studies professor who has worked in and studied the region for years.
"Talking is not only our best option, it's our only option," she said. "We should expect that it will be accompanied by violence."
The peace process has come in fits and bursts over the past year. When former Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last June that the U.S. was in preliminary talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the idea was controversial. Many observers were skeptical that the Taliban would ever deal.
Since then, the concept of negotiations has become more and more the norm. President Barack Obama touted it in his recent surprise visit to Afghanistan on the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Yet months into the talks, it's murky as to who is involved and what, exactly, each party wants.
In March, the Taliban said it would not be setting up a diplomatic office in Qatar to negotiate with Americans, blaming their decision on the United States' "alternating and ever-changing position" on Afghanistan. At the time, preliminary talks with what the Taliban called "the occupying enemy" had already begun over the exchange of prisoners, the group said.
Assassinated on the way to work
Observers remind that the peace process is still relatively new considering the protracted war, and all new and difficult enterprises have bumps in the road. In Afghanistan, that cliche is relative.
There "weren't great hopes right now for peace talks at the moment in any case," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who specializes in defense and foreign policy.
On Sunday, Taliban interlocutor Moulavi Arsala Rahmani was killed when a gunman drove up to his car while Rahmani was stuck in traffic on his way to work in Kabul.
He was a member of the High Peace Council, which was created by President Hamid Karzai and heartily endorsed by the Pentagon. The HPC is tasked with reaching out to insurgents and ex-Taliban who live in Kabul under government protection. Rahmani was considered a moderate Taliban, someone who could bring other Taliban members to the negotiating table.
The Taliban announced recently that peace council members would be targets of its spring offensive, but a Taliban spokesman said Sunday that the group did not kill Rahmani.
Regardless, his death marked the second such high-level negotiator to be killed since last fall when HPC Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president, was killed in a suicide bombing.
The biggest danger Rahmani's assassination might have, O'Hanlon said, would be to scare future Taliban defectors from talking with the West and allies, he said.
Riaz Mohammad Khan, the former foreign secretary of Pakistan, agrees.
"These things are unfortunate but can be expected," he said.
"On the more positive side, I don't think recent violence suggests a strength in the Taliban forces. I think we'll come understand what is happening in Afghanistan as reflective of their weakness. It gives the Afghan people a chance also to show that they won't be beaten down. It gives them a chance to stick with peace talks."
More "green on blue" killings
Violence this week went beyond Rahmani's death. A blast at a crowded market in northern Afghanistan killed nine civilians on Monday.
Two more NATO troops were also killed over the weekend, bringing the total NATO death toll to eight in just a few days time. The two troops killed Sunday are believed to be victims of so-called "green on blue" attacks in which Afghan security forces turn on their fellow soldiers.
Distrust between allied soldiers and Afghan soldiers appears to be at an all-time high. This year's string of scandals -- the Quran burnings at Bagram Air Base, photos of U.S. soldiers posing with body parts of alleged insurgents and crimes such as the Kandahar massacre -- has seriously frayed relations among the soldiers who must work side-by-side.
An experienced Pakistani ambassador to China, the European Union, Belgium and other countries, Khan suspects the recent violence could actually help rally the Afghan army.
"If the U.S. chooses to hold back and continue giving control to Afghan soldiers, as it appears to be doing, I see this [positively]. If they pull back and act on suspicion and fear, then it won't turn out well for anyone," he said.
At least 23 individuals wearing an Afghan army or police uniform have shot and killed a NATO-affiliated soldier this year, according to the Department of Defense.
It's unclear whether some who have attacked NATO soldiers are actually Afghan soldiers or just in disguise.
Handing over more territory
Meanwhile, the Taliban has demonstrated that it has plenty of fight. The earlier allied surge in the country, especially southern Afghanistan, appeared to force the Taliban to adopt new tactics such as relying on roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past year, insurgent attacks overall have decreased some 22%, and in some parts of southern Afghanistan by much more, according to coalition figures. Civilian casualties rose to their highest level last year since 2001, CNN reported.
By the middle of this week, officials announced that another large swathe of Afghanistan territory would be handed over to local authorities, giving them control of about 75% of the country.
Among the most striking areas that would fall under Afghan control is the city of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold, and several mountainous areas of Afghanistan, which make for excellent hiding places for insurgents.
2014 is an election year for Afghanistan. Results could drastically change the atmosphere for peace talks, Fair said.
On Sunday, Obama and other world leaders gather at the NATO summit in Chicago, where the future of Afghanistan will be the No. 1 topic. The meeting will include Karzai, NATO allies and International Security Assistance Force contributors, among others.
The Afghan constitution prohibits Karzai from running another term. There haven't been any candidates who've emerged as viable to take his place so far, much less any that have appeared to align their platforms with Western goals.

Ready or not, Afghan security transfer accelerating
CNN By Nick Paton-Walsh May 16, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - NATO forces are here until 2014, but each day the demands on them lessen as Afghan forces take on more responsibility.
Earlier this week, the latest tranche of the security transfer process was announced. A third swathe of Afghanistan will see Afghan national forces take the lead on security, with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) scaled back into to a supporting role only.
Most taxpayers funding the decade of war in Afghanistan won't have heard of many of the regions affected, but this tranche is particularly significant because three quarters of the country will now be under the control of Afghan security forces.
On Sunday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said once the move is implemented, "transition will have begun in every one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, including every provincial capital."
But some of the areas involved in this latest handover are surprising.
The most striking is Kandahar City, the former Taliban stronghold that has embodied the brutal struggle of the Afghan conflict for ISAF forces, as progress has been neither universal nor permanent.
There are other small surprises: Half the districts in Nurestan -- a huge mountainous region that straddles the border with Pakistan and has become as close to an insurgent safe haven as Afghanistan has -- were handed over, as were a third of the districts in Paktika, another border enclave for insurgents.
Uruzgan, a volatile region in the center of the country where Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said progress has been so pronounced her soldiers can start to come home early, was also handed over.
Afghan officials are in favor of an early transition while there are enough ISAF troops around to step in if the insurgency proves a match for the Afghan military. It's probable they will, as the Taliban have given the NATO-led military machine a run for its money.
Meanwhile, the fight for localized power may overcome any sentiments of nationalism that would enable Afghan soldiers to be comparatively welcome in villages and towns across the country. The risk here is front-loaded, which is as much a reflection of the pressing ISAF timetable as it is of progress in security.
Within a few months -- when this third tranche has passed -- only a quarter of Afghans will have security provided by ISAF. The timetable for withdrawal, although pinned to the distant marker of the end of 2014, is speeding up as the calls for an end to this costly and unpopular war get louder, from Canberra to Washington.
The key fact for the months ahead, and for the NATO summit in Chicago later this month, is that the United States predicts its forces will be in a non-combat role by mid-2013. That means they'll be off the battlefield about 18 months earlier than the end of the NATO mission.
This is a big deal for one simple reason: ISAF anticipates at the end of this year having about 68,000 American troops to play with, and thousands more allies. Next year the numbers will come down further -- at a "steady pace" for the Americans, as President Obama promised. But being in a non-combat role is, you might argue, something you don't need 68,000-plus soldiers for. There are units out there now who already believe much of their job involves packing up and handing over, that their fight is pretty much over already.
The real question still to be answered though is how much does -- or can -- the Taliban want to push ISAF and the Afghan forces this summer? Do they have the unified command or muscle, or have talks about peace talks shattered their unity of purpose? For now we just don't know.
However, the weekend assassination of a senior Afghan official involved in setting up peace talks with the Taliban, as well as the deaths of two ISAF troops in an IED attack, suggests the security situation remains far from stable.
United Nations figures on security incidents judged 2011 the most violent year on record, and ISAF's own count of violence -- attacks against them or their partners -- showed that while incidents dropped nationwide, they rose to record levels in the key areas of the south and east.
It remains unclear whether this summer will be as violent, or, if the Taliban continues its campaign of roadside bombs, assassinations and high-profile attacks on NATO targets in Kabul, whether Afghans will feel safer regardless of what the numbers say.
There have also been some curious casualty figures among international forces in the first three months of this year. According to the U.S. Army and ISAF, insurgents did not cause almost two thirds of American deaths from January to March. They were a result of accidents such as helicopter crashes, natural causes, or the new scourge of the campaign: "Green on blue shootings," when men in Afghan uniform shoot ISAF personnel.

US Lawmakers Calling for Faster Withdrawal From Afghanistan
VOA News May 16, 2012 Cindy Saine
CAPITOL HILL, Washington, D.C.- A bipartisan group of 86 members of the U.S. House of Representatives has written a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to bring the war in Afghanistan to an accelerated end.
Democratic Representative Barbara Lee of California is the only one of the 435 members of the House who voted against authorizing the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2001.
Now, Lee is spearheading efforts to bring U.S. troops home faster than the planned withdrawal of NATO combat troops in 2014.
"Today we are announcing that 86 members of Congress, a bipartisan group of members, are joining us in requesting that President Obama expedite our troops' return and speed up the transition to having Afghans in charge of Afghanistan," she said.
Several of the lawmakers who signed the letter gathered to talk to reporters, saying extending the war is only going to mean more young American men and women in uniform will die or lose their limbs in Afghanistan.
Republican Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina said there are pressing needs at home that require taxpayer money.
"When we have schools in America that need to be rebuilt, when we have roads that need to be rebuilt, bridges, infrastructure, and we are sending $10 billion a month to Afghanistan for the Afghans to build roads and then blow them up, and have our young men and women to walk the roads in Afghanistan to be shot and killed, it is time to bring them home, Mr. President," said Jones.
Democratic Representative Peter Welch of Vermont pointed out that the president has already set a date for U.S. combat troops to come home.
"The war in Afghanistan is over, it just has not ended yet," said Welch. "The president has made it clear that we are bringing our troops home in 2014. Many of our allies are accelerating their departure. So everyone who is engaged in this knows that it is ending. And the question that we are asking is 'Why not sooner rather than later?"
In their letter to the president, the 86 members say while they would prefer an immediate full withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is broad consensus in Congress that it is time to accelerate the transition to full Afghan control. They asked President Obama to announce an accelerated transition of security responsibility at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.
Several lawmakers said the American people appear to be ahead of their elected representatives in calling for U.S. troops to come home.
"The American people are against what is going on, it seems like we are such slow learners in Washington." said Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas.
Recent opinion surveys show that American public support for the war in Afghanistan is down to 27 percent, and only 37 percent of Republicans support the ongoing war effort. But some Republican lawmakers have criticized the president for moving too quickly to draw down American troops from Afghanistan, jeopardizing hard won gains.

Stone carvers defy Taliban to return to the Bamiyan valley
Afghan students learn the centuries-old skills that carved out the giant buddhas blown up by extremists
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Wednesday 16 May 2012
Bamiyan - Under perfectly carved niches that once held dozens of small buddha statues, the purposeful tap of chisel on stone echoed over the Bamiyan valley for the first time in centuries.
Twelve young Afghans had gathered to take the first tentative steps back towards a stone-working tradition that once made their home famous, at a workshop in a cave gouged out as a monastery assembly hall more than 1,000 years ago.
The cave-hall was part of a complex built around two giant buddhas that loomed serenely over Bamiyan for about 15 centuries – until the Taliban government condemned them as un-Islamic in early 2001 and blew them up.
"I was interested in this course because I want to restore our culture," said Ismael Wahidi, a 22-year-old student of archeology at Bamiyan University, who set aside more conventional studies for a week to learn how to turn a lump of stone into a sculpture. "If you want to destroy a people, you first destroy their heritage and history."
The workshop, held just a few metres from where the larger buddha's face was once carved from the cliff face, aimed to reintroduce stone-carving to the valley by showing that creating basic pieces is easy, even if mastery takes years.
Under the guidance of Afghan, American and German artists, the group picked the stone they would shape from some of the rich seams of marble, quartzite and travertine [a form of limestone] that thread through the local mountains, foothills of the Himalayas. Then they set to work, with chisels forged by local blacksmiths from the suspension springs of old cars. "We wanted to give young people the idea that it is possible to do stone carving with what you have here," said Bert Praxenthaler, a sculptor and conservationist who has been working on the valley's monuments for several years, including stabilising the niches that once held the buddhas.
The Bamiyan valley is pockmarked with hundreds of caves that were once part of sumptuous monasteries, packed with statues and lavishly painted with frescoes. This rich artistic heritage was funded by centuries of taxes on caravans passing through what is now an isolated backwater, but was once a wealthy and important stop on the silk road.
"There must have been at least 2,000 years of sculptural tradition," said Praxenthaler. "Even excavating the caves is a kind of architectural sculpture. It was not just hacking holes into the cliff but also shaping the rooms, and they are quite extraordinary."
That tradition was probably killed off around 1,000 years ago, Praxenthaler said, when the valley was conquered by Mahmoud of Ghazni, a leader whose epithet suggested little interest in figurative art. "Anyone who calls themselves the 'destroyer of idols' probably wouldn't support further stone carving," Praxenthaler said.
Sculpture has remained largely off limits in Afghanistan because of strict Islamic prohibitions on idolatry. Depictions of any human or animal are strongly discouraged in art, and calligraphy, floral and geometric patterns dominate the country's more recent cultural heritage, from the majestic minaret of Jam, to mosques and monuments in cities such as Kabul and Kandahar.
"As you know, extremists often make propaganda about idols. But this is our heritage, not something religious," said 20-year-old Abdur Rahman Rosta, one of the student sculptors. He added that that in Bamiyan itself the sculptors were feted. The valley's people suffered badly under the Taliban, and have little sympathy for their hardline views, and Bamiyan has remained one of the most peaceful places in Afghanistan as insurgent violence spreads elsewhere.
The provincial governor came to a small ceremony unveiling the sculptures, and picked up a chisel herself as musicians played in a niche that once held the cave's largest statue – and might perhaps one day hold another.
"During this course we realised we had much more ability for working with stone than we could have imagined, and we understood we can do so much more," said Jawed Mohammadi, a 20-year-old history student at the university, who used the week to chisel out a human face. "The buddhas were destroyed, but maybe we can build them again."

Czech Cabinet Announces Afghan Exit Plan
May 16, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Czech government plans to start withdrawing its troops from the NATO mission in Afghanistan, bringing the number down from the current 590 to 170 by the end of 2014.
Czech Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra made the announcement on May 16 in Prague.
The withdrawal plan must now be approved by both houses of parliament.
Most Czech troops work in reconstruction and are deployed in the eastern province of Logar.
The Czech Republic has lost five soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan.
Afghan troops are gradually taking over control of security in the country.
Most of the 130,000 foreign troops are to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Based on reporting by AP and CTK

Bonded labour ensnares entire families
KABUL, 16 May 2012 (IRIN) - Bonded labour in Afghanistan’s brick kilns is one of the most common forms of hazardous labour in the country. More than half of the brick kiln workers surveyed in a recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) were children, with most under 14. Few are getting any education to allow them to develop skills needed to break out of work in the kilns.
Most children began working at the age of seven or eight, and almost 80 percent are under 10. According to the ILO, the kilns rely on debt bondage: Workers and their families are tied to a kiln by the need to pay off loans taken out for basic necessities, medical expenses, weddings and funerals.
The ILO report found that basic subsistence needs force families to repeatedly take out loans, often paying for a winter’s food with a loan which they pay back over an entire season. Of the families surveyed, 64 percent had worked in the kilns for 11 years or more, and 35 percent had done so for more than 20 years.
The exact number of kilns in Afghanistan is unknown, but reports suggest that in Nangarhar Province’s Surkhroad District alone there are about 90, with 150-200 children working in each one. ILO estimates that Kabul Province’s Deh Sabz District has 800 kilns.
“It is out of necessity and extreme poverty that households enlist their children from an early age to work in the kilns,” said Sarah Cramer, lead author of the ILO report. “There are four cycles prevalent in the situation of bonded labour in Afghanistan - the cycle of debt, cycle of vulnerability, cycle of dependence and the cycle of poverty.”

Some Lawmakers Have More Than Legal Limit of Bodyguards
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Some Afghan parliamentarians have up to 40 bodyguards, according to government documents revealed Wednesday, despite legally only being allowed to have four.
Members of Parliament (MPs) objected to some representatives, mainly those with close ties to the Ministry of Interior (MOI), receiving permits to have more bodyguards, saying that it goes against the internal rules and regulations of the House.
"Those who have connections within the Ministry of Interior have been given permission to have up to even 30 bodyguards," Kabul MP Allah Gul Mujahid told TOLOnews.
Kabul MP Shukria Barekzai named Wakil Sahebi as having as many as 50 bodyguards.
MOI spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said that the Ministry will implement a plan in which any illegally armed people will be disarmed, and bodyguards for the MPs will be assigned based on existing laws.
"In the law pertaining to bodyguards, we have [government-]assigned bodyguards for the Afghan parliament members," Sediq Sediqi told TOLOnews Wednesday.
"Our concern is having illegally armed people."
The document revealed to journalists Wednesday lists the MPs and the number of bodyguards assigned to them. The list includes the following:
1- Kabul MP Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf - 39 bodyguards
2- Kochis MP Mullah Tarakhil - 30 bodyguards
3- Kabul MP Mohammad Younus Qanoni - 29 bodyguards
4- Kabul MP Mullah Ezatullah Atef - 23 bodyguards
5- Parwan MP Haji Almas - 20 bodyguards

www.afghanistannewscenter.com