[Afghan News] May 19, 2012

[یاسمینه]

For Afghanistan's Karzai, funding tops NATO summit agenda
The Afghan president, who hasn't been shy about criticizing the West, is turning on the charm as the mission winds down and long-term aid is in question.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times May 19, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai, perhaps best known in the West for periodic well-aimed jabs at his NATO allies, is embarking on a determined charm offensive as he faces the prospect of seeing troops and, perhaps even more crucially, dollars slip away from his country.
The Afghan government has long regarded the NATO alliance and its partners as a seemingly bottomless source of funding. But aides to Karzai say the president is heading to a landmark NATO summit in Chicago this weekend with a keen awareness of the financial pinch being felt from London to Tokyo.
As he prepared to leave for the United States, via Germany, this week, Karzai made a point of thanking countries that have pledged specific amounts toward the estimated $4.1-billion annual cost of funding the Afghan police and army after NATO troops leave, a central summit aim.
U.S. officials have indicated they expect to meet their target, but it has been an exercise in arm-twisting. So far, the only major allies to make public pledges have been Britain, which is promising to provide $110 million a year; Germany, which has offered more than $200 million; and Australia, $100 million.
Chicago represents a balancing act for Karzai. Even as he appeals to a war-weary West to make long-term commitments to aiding Afghanistan, he is mindful of intense national pride among his audience at home. The end of the NATO combat role at the end of 2014, he has been telling compatriots, will mark a crucial boost toAfghanistan'ssovereignty, without imperiling its people.
"The withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan will not have an impact on the overall security of Afghanistan, provided that the assistance — financial — to the Afghan economy and the training and equipping of Afghan security forces continues, and the engagement of the international community in Afghanistan continues," Karzai said in an interview this month with Russian news outlets.
The Afghan leader andAfghanistan'sdefense establishment have had few reservations about complaining loudly that the West is shortchanging the Afghan military when it comes to manpower and sophisticated weaponry.
But Karzai is expected to keep in check any strident criticism of a NATO plan to scale back the Afghan police and army to a long-term total of about 230,000, a substantial decrease from the 350,000 it will number at its peak.
The months leading up to the summit have been punctuated by a series of highly fraught incidents involving American troops: the emergence, in January, of video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters; the accidental burning of Korans at a U.S. base in February, which touched off a week of deadly riots; and a March shooting rampage in Kandahar province, allegedly by aU.S. Army sergeant, that left 17 people dead, more than half of them children.
Relations might have hit a nadir when Karzai, after the Kandahar massacre, railed against the "twin demons" plaguing the country: the Taliban and foreign forces.
In Chicago, by contrast, Karzai and the Obama administration are likely to be reading from the same script Sunday and Monday, asserting thatAfghanistan'spolice and army can succeed.
Both Karzai and U.S. officials may point to Afghan forces' lead role in combating a tightly coordinated insurgent attack on targets that included Western embassies in the Afghan capital last month.
Discomfiting trends involving the Afghan security forces are likely to be played down, including the notorious trend of "insider" shootings of Western trainers by Afghan police and soldiers. Such attacks have killed at least 23 NATO troops this year, and have touched virtually every major Western army in recent months: the Americans, the British, the French, the Germans, the Australians.
Both Karzai and Western backers are putting a high gloss as well on the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces. Karzai's office this week announced a third batch of areas across Afghanistan to be safeguarded by Afghans, with the latest additions putting about three-quarters of the population under Afghan protection.
But even if members of the Karzai government repeat the NATO mantra that the Afghan forces are nearly ready to step into the lead role, local officials in volatile areas have been far more vocal in their misgivings.
Kapisa province, the French area of operations, was on the latest list of security transfers, but officials there say the insurgents hold sway in at least two districts. After an insider attack that killed four French troops this year, the French have largely stopped conducting offensive operations, or even interacting with Afghan troops, locals say.
"Insurgent activities are increasing in almost every district, and insecurity is increasing day by day," said Tahira Mojadedi, a lawmaker from Kapisa. "French forces did much more before the incident that left four soldiers dead. Since then, they are reluctant, not taking an active part in operations."
In Chicago, Karzai will have the chance to play to what was for many years a personal strength: the ability to forge a warm rapport with Western interlocutors. Amid his outbursts of public pique, the affable persona that led the Americans to tap him as the country's leader a decade ago often goes forgotten.
In recent months, there has been a tacit agreement to avoid points of past discord. The Obama administration, which had drawn an incendiary reaction from Karzai when it scolded him publicly for corruption in his government, has drastically scaled back such overt criticism, even though the Afghans have made almost no visible progress in tackling graft, bribery and cronyism.
Despite a conciliatory veneer as the Chicago summit nears, Karzai is not letting the West off the hook completely. He hasn't been shy about offering frequent reminders that Afghanistan must make long-term accommodations with neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan and China, all of whose interests may diverge sharply from those of the United States and its NATO partners.
In Chicago, a running theme will be that the foreign military presence might ultimately matter less than long-term support to prevent Afghanistan from descending into chaos and becoming a haven for militant groups.
For that, there is history's grim lesson: Afghanistan's Soviet-backed government, led by President Najibullah, did not collapse when Russian troops withdrew in 1989; it collapsed several years later, when the Soviet Union had disintegrated and the flow of aid dried up.
And Karzai needs no reminder of how that saga ended, with Najibullah tortured, beaten and shot by the Taliban, his battered corpse strung up for all to see, not far from the presidential palace.
laura.king@latimes.com

Afghanistan security for less? How low can NATO go?
As NATO leaders convene for the weekend summit in Chicago, one pressing issue is whether, and how much, the post-NATO-withdrawal Afghan security forces can be pared down to save money.
By Howard LaFranchi | Christian Science Monitor
Can Afghanistan administer an ethnically diverse and geographically challenging country, hold off an insurgency, and prevent Al Qaeda from taking up residence again, all with fewer than a quarter million security personnel?
That is one of the key questions that NATO leaders will take up at their two-day summit in Chicago beginning Sunday. After spending billions of dollars and providing years of training to create a national security force of army and police that numbers about 350,000, NATO and partner countries will mull a proposal to whittle that down to about 230,000 by 2015, when NATO’s combat role will have officially ceased.
Driving the proposal to reduce Afghan security forces by about a third is economic reality, not necessarily conditions on the ground. The 230,000 number is only one of several options proposed by NATO commanders in Afghanistan based on different security scenarios, but it is the one that seems to be winning growing favor in NATO capitals.
The United States, which is likely to chip in for around half of the annual cost of keeping the security forces going, is tired enough of paying out, judging by attitudes in Congress and recent public opinion polls. European countries seem even less inclined to keep the funding going.
“You trade off risks [in cutting back on forces] against cost,” says James Dobbins, a former US envoy to Afghanistan who now directs security studies at the RAND Corp. The annual cost of keeping a force of 350,000 going was pegged at $6.5 billion, while the cost of maintaining the smaller 230,000-strong force is estimated at $4.1 billion – a $2 billion-plus annual savings.
Those numbers assume that Afghanistan on its own could only afford to field about 30,000 security personnel – clearly a woefully inadequate number.
Ambassador Dobbins cautions that the lower figure being contemplated for Afghan security forces would most likely not be reached right off in 2015, but would be achieved gradually over subsequent years – when no one knows what the security conditions in Afghanistan will be.
Dobbins adds that much of the reduction is likely to be realized through natural attrition – desertion rates have come down but remain relatively high – and not by suddenly dismissing tens of thousands of soldiers and police.
With continuing training by NATO and partner countries, he adds, a smaller but more efficient and better-trained security force should be able to make up for some of the reduction in size.
But other defense experts say that, even considering the qualitative progress the army and police have made already, the 230,000 figure could be cutting things dangerously close to the bone.
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense policy analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, notes that Iraq, a country with roughly the same population as Afghanistan, maintains army and police forces of about 670,000. And Afghanistan today actually has more than 400,000 security personnel on the ground, between Afghan and NATO forces, he adds.
The proposal for considerably smaller Afghan army and police forces assumes that the insurgency threat will have been further reduced by the time NATO combat forces leave. But, O’Hanlon asks, what if that’s not the case?
That question is what leads some Afghanistan experts to say that the US and NATO must focus on reaching a political settlement – among Afghanistan’s warring elements and with the support of neighboring countries – to reduce the need for the larger number of security forces.
“Whether or not this lower figure [for Afghan security forces] is adequate depends a lot on the drivers of the conflict, and that’s the political side,” says Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “In my view, the 230,000 is a number arrived at by assuming the political challenges are addressed.”
Those challenges include revitalizing political reforms, addressing corruption convincingly in the eyes of average Afghan citizens, and pursuing reconciliation with the Taliban, Mr. Katulis says.
Where reconciliation may stand two years from now when NATO withdraws its last combat troops, no one can say. But as NATO leaders gather to discuss Afghanistan’s long-term security needs, the reality is that nascent US-Taliban talks are suspended and showing scant sign of reviving any time soon.

Why ordinary Afghans worry about NATO summit
CNN By Rina Amiri and Omar Samad, Special to CNN May 18, 2012
Editor's note: Rina Amiri is a former senior adviser to the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Omar Samad, a former Afghan ambassador to Canada and France, is senior Afghan expert at the United States Institute of Peace.
Afghanistan's recent signings of strategic partnerships with the United States and other countries have provided a measure of reassurance to Afghans about the international community's sustained engagement in the country beyond 2014, when the drawdown of NATO combat forces will be complete. But these documents are short on specifics and do not fully tackle the political, economic and regional challenges that need to be addressed so the Afghan army and police can take responsibility for the security of the country.
To give this transition a real chance of succeeding, Afghanistan and its partners need to concentrate on the risks and challenges in the critical next two years. At the NATO summit in Chicago beginning Sunday, the withdrawal timetable of international forces from Afghanistan and future commitments to support the Afghan government and army after the drawdown will be key areas of discussion.
The U.S. political strategy in Afghanistan remains largely focused on talks with the Taliban, and a chorus of voices inside and outside the government is optimistically making the case that the Taliban have reformed and can be "reconciled."
While there is general consensus among Afghans that a broad-based and inclusive reconciliation is necessary to end the conflict, key questions remain about the political order that may emerge from such a process.
This lack of discussion has amplified fears among the Afghan population of a grand bargain either between the United States and Pakistan or between the Afghan government and a resurgent Taliban -- tacitly endorsed by NATO countries seeking a face-saving exit -- that could undo the social gains and ethnic pluralism in current Afghan politics. These concerns are already creating fractures in the fragile political balance among Afghanistan's various ethnic powers and exacerbating fears of a civil war once the international troops exit.
Afghans also remain concerned about the 2014 presidential elections, when President Hamid Karzai is due to step down. The absence of an "inevitable" candidate and political trust are likely to lead to an enormously challenging electoral environment, rife with legitimate worries about voter fraud.
To instill confidence in the process, the international community needs to assist Afghan efforts to ensure credible elections through technical and diplomatic support. All Afghan political actors need to be on board for changes planned in the electoral process. This will also be an opportunity to offer any reconcilable Taliban a chance to be part of the election process.
The most critical element to securing peace in Afghanistan will be convincing Pakistan to close down Taliban sanctuaries. While Pakistan and Afghanistan have set up joint mechanisms aimed at establishing more firm control over Taliban contacts, Afghans continue to believe that Islamabad's policy gurus will continue to use its control over the Taliban as bargaining chips in order to retain maximum leverage on reconciliation and the post-2014 political order in Afghanistan.
A jittery Iran, incensed by the U.S.-Afghan partnership, also has the potential to foment instability. China, the central Asian republics, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are other key regional players that are anxious about the form the post-2014 political order will take. If more is not done to address their concerns, these regional actors may revert to supporting competing factional elements in Afghanistan and feed the conflict as they did during its 1990s civil war.
Afghans are trying to soften the blow to the economy that will follow the NATO drawdown and to move toward sustainability through regional economic cooperation, agricultural development, mining and associated infrastructure improvement. While this strategy is necessary for the long-term, Afghans want to see clear signs that steps are being taken to avoid repeating the lawlessness and violence that followed when Moscow cut billions of dollars of aid to the Najibullah regime in 1991.
To bolster confidence in the economy's sustainability, the international community will need to pace the reduction of aid, work with the Afghan government to create an enabling environment for foreign investment and support economic projects in the areas of mining, infrastructure and trade. It will also have to ensure that the tools for allocating and managing aid money are improved to minimize the possibility that these vital resources will be squandered through corruption and wasteful spending.
Afghanistan -- located in the heart of the most dangerous neighborhood in the world -- still matters, and the security concerns of the United States and the international community will continue to be affected by instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The task ahead, in Chicago and later this summer at a conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo, is to focus concretely on how best to restructure and reprioritize international efforts to strengthen the prospects for a successful political, economic and military transition to a sovereign and stable Afghanistan. That will be the real test facing a fatigued international community and concerned Afghans.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rina Amiri and Omar Samad.

Suicide blast kills 13 in eastern Afghanistan
May 19, 2012 Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police checkpoint Saturday in a volatile area of eastern Afghanistan, killing 13 people, police said.
The bomber walked up to a checkpoint in Ali Sher district along the Pakistan border in Khost province and detonated his explosives-rigged vest, said provincial police chief Gen. Sardar Mohammad Zazia. The policemen were searching motorists' vehicles at the time of the explosion, he said.
"The aim of the attacker was to attack both police and civilians," he said. "Unfortunately, the majority of the victims are civilian."
In a statement, the governor's office in Khost province said 13 people died in the blast — 10 civilians, two Afghan policemen and one Afghan border police officer. Six other people were wounded, including two border policemen, the governor's office said.
Heads of state were gathering for a NATO summit in Chicago to discuss the security needs of Afghanistan after most foreign troops leave or move to support roles by the end of 2014.
In the past two years, tens of thousands of U.S.-led coalition troops have flooded Taliban strongholds in the south, and have largely succeeded in boosting security there. But the Taliban have proven resilient, opening up new fronts in the north and west and stepping up attacks in the east.
The Afghan government and U.S. have had informal discussions with members of the Taliban interested in talking peace, but none of the discussions have reached the stage of formal peace talks. The last substantive discussions between U.S. officials and Taliban representatives were in January.
Earlier this month, militants assassinated Arsala Rahmani, a top member of the Afghan government-appointed peace council, dealing another setback to the fragile peace effort. The Taliban denied responsibility for the killing.
In September, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the peace council, was killed at his home in Kabul by a suicide bomber who claimed to be peace emissary from the Taliban.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was asked Saturday in Chicago ahead of the NATO summit whether he still had hope that his government could reconcile with the Taliban.
"Those Taliban who are not against Afghans, we welcome them," he told German television stations ZDF and RTL, according to a statement released by his office in Kabul. "Those Taliban who are committing crimes — like burning our schools, setting bombs, killing children and innocent people — they should stand in front of the Afghan people and ask for forgiveness and then join with the peace and reconciliation process."

Roadside bomb kills Afghan child, wounds 3
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, May 19 (Xinhua) -- A child was killed and three others sustained injuries as a roadside bomb struck a police motorbike in Kunduz province 250 km north of capital Kabul on Saturday, a local official said.
"A mine planted by Taliban insurgents on a road in Dasht-e- Archi district struck a police motorbike this afternoon as a result a 12-years old child was martyred and three others including two police constables and a child sustained injuries," district governor Shikh Sadudin told Xinhua.
The victim was a student of primary school and the injured child is also a student, he said, adding both the injured police are in stable condition.
Taliban militants, who have been fighting against the Afghan government, announced early this month that it would launch its spring offensive dubbed "Al-Farooq" from May 3, saying security personnel including police, army, NATO-led forces service members, parliamentarians and government officials are legitimate targets.

Afghan forces kill 11 militants
SHARAN, Afghanistan, May 19 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces in conjunction with the NATO-led troops eliminated 11 Taliban militants in Pakitka province 155 km south of capital Kabul on Friday night, spokesman for provincial administration Mukhlis Afghan said on Saturday.
"Security forces backed by NATO-led forces' aircrafts raided Taliban hideouts in Sarawza district Friday night killing 11 rebels," Afghan told Xinhua.
With the elimination of insurgents, the security situation will be further improved in the province, he further said.
Taliban militants fighting the government and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.

Afghan Senate Chairman Confirms Threatening Messages
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 19, 2012
The chairman of Afghanistan's Senate, Fazal Hadi Muslimyar, has confirmed that senators received threats regarding a strategic agreement with United States.
But Muslimyar told RFE/RL on May 19 that the threats would "not affect the approval or disapproval of the document."
A number of parliament members have recently said they have received messages on their mobile phones saying they would be "targeted" if they approved the strategic partnership agreement.
They said the messages had been sent by the previously unknown "Mullah Dadullah Front."
Mullah Dadullah was a senior Taliban commander who has killed in a U.S.-led attack in 2007.
The strategic partnership agreement signed by the Afghan and U.S. presidents earlier this month covers relations between the two countries when NATO forces pull out in 2014.

U.S. Activists Use NATO Summit To Make Their Case
By Heather Maher May 19, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
CHICAGO -- Thousands of Americans have traveled to the Midwestern U.S. city of Chicago to take part in protests surrounding this weekend's NATO leaders' summit meeting.
From schoolteachers to nurses, antipoverty demonstrators to peace protesters, activists for a range of causes are vying for the attention of the international press corps, which has arrived to chronicle the military alliance meeting.
On May 18, some 2,500 people protested peacefully against economic inequality in what city police say was the largest demonstration so far in a week of daily protests against everything from immigration policy to military spending.
The city of Chicago, the nation's third-largest, has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the protests don't devolve into violence or disrupt the summit. It has spent nearly $1 million to buy new riot gear and brought in thousands of additional reinforcement officers from nearby cities.
Memories of looting and smashed shop windows during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, and serious street violence at the 2009 NATO summit in Strasbourg, France, has prompted stiff security measures that Chicago officials say will inconvenience city dwellers and commuters during the two-day summit but ensure a high standard of safety for visiting foreign delegations.
For their part, protest organizers have promised to demonstrate peacefully, but acts of civil disobedience are expected -- including an attempt to shut down the offices of aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing on May 21. A handful of protesters who tried to enter the headquarters of U.S. President Barack Obama's reelection campaign were arrested earlier in the week.
Some of the demonstrators who turned out this week in Chicago spoke to RFE/RL.
Jill McLaughlin,44, of The World Can't Wait: "We're primarily focused on saying to our government, 'What you're doing in Afghanistan is wrong, it's immoral, it's illegal.' Almost every week there are civilians killed by these drone bombings in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indefinite detention and torture, Bagram detention center is holding over 2,000 [people], mostly men, most of them rounded up on the most erroneous evidence, and they have no way of answering to their charges, they're not represented, there's no voice for them.
"And so we here in this country, we have to speak out against the crimes of our government under U.S., NATO domination. We want the people of Afghanistan, the people of Pakistan, the people of Yemen, to know that there are people in this country who are not going along with the crimes of this government."
Barbara Lyons, 75, also of The World Can't Wait: "Our particular focus in the parade is going to be on the drones. We have these banners with every language. We have the same banner with Urdu, and Farsi and eight different languages. And then we're going to have people dressed in shrouds and we're going to have people in orange jumpsuits.
"The drones are not protecting us and it's like killing from afar. So Americans, we can be nice and safe. And yet they found that the soldiers that man these stations that send the drones out, they have as much stress, post-traumatic stress, as soldiers in the field."
Bryan Pfiefer, 38, of Bail Out the People Not the Banks: "The banks have caused a crisis worldwide. They are responsible for looting nations around the world through war. What's going to happen, as we see here in Chicago, is the people are going to take over and run the world in their own interest, where people have the right to health care, where people have the right to housing, and people have the right to union jobs.
"This entire week we're here to say that we want a different world. We want a world where the money is spent on housing and health care and people's needs, and where people aren't slaughtered in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world just to make banks and just to make corporations rich. We're here to say we want a different world."
Chris McKay, 44, of Occupy San Diego: "The country's really messed up, we really have to do something and it's the responsibility of everybody right now, everybody. I don't care who you are -- get out on the streets, man, cause the government is really messing you up.
"Your children and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren, their future is bad. I know already my life will never be as good as my father's, economically. And if that happens for me, what happens for the next generation and the next generation? I mean, minimum wage? You can't live on minimum wage."

A glimpse of life after Nato in Afghanistan's wild east
BBC News 18 May 2012
As the Nato summit in Chicago finalises the arrangements for handing back control of Afghanistan, the BBC's Andrew North in the east of the country examines where this leaves the people of Nangarhar and Jalalabad.
Farmer Haji Zerak greets his visitor in the usual way of Afghanistan's eastern Pashtuns.
A light touch with his right hand on the other man's left shoulder, then a warm handshake - symbolising in Islamic teaching both men's sins being washed away.
But this is not supposed to be a social call.
His visitor, the local district governor, has arrived in Achin with a posse of heavily-armed policemen and a team of labourers wielding long sticks.
They have come to his isolated mountain hamlet in Nangarhar province to cut down Haji Zerak's fields of poppy.
The opium they produce is the source of most of Europe's heroin demand - and illegal.
But things are rarely as they seem in Afghanistan. Deal done
For a man who says he has "no choice" but to grow poppy, Haji Zerak looks relaxed as the labourers lay into the green bulb-heads nodding in the wind.
It is the eradication workers who look worried.
Glancing up at the hills they urge each other to hurry.
The police have placed spotters on the ridgelines. This is Taliban country. Taxes on the drugs trade help fill their coffers.
Several eradication workers have been shot and killed in recent weeks on these slopes abutting the Pakistani border.
With a foreign television crew filming this time, their nerves are understandable.
But after a few small fields are whacked flat, they stop and leave.
A cow ambles past another terraced field of poppy below - with more beyond.
Many of the plants the workers chopped down had already flowered or been harvested. Tell-tale score-lines mark the bulb-heads, oozing dark brown opium resin.
A deal has been done.
The local authorities eradicate a few fields - but the farmer keeps most of his crop.
The Afghan authorities have neither the resources nor the will to do more - especially with such lucrative drug profits at stake. Abandoned outposts
When I last came to these starkly beautiful hills - the "opium basket" of Nangarhar province- seven years ago, drug production was starting to fall.
Bad weather and crop disease created better alternatives.
But this year, the UN drugs control agency predicts a rise in opium growing in Nangarhar.
We don't stay long. The hilltop lookouts radio down that local mosques are calling on villagers to look out for foreigners.
The Afghan police drive away fast in large pick-up trucks, paid for by Western taxpayers.
But although the police are up here, it is not clear that they are in charge.
We pass abandoned US outposts on the road back to nearby Jalalabad, sand spilling from ruptured blast barriers.
In the distance are the wooded peaks of the Tora Bora range, where Osama Bin Laden made his last stand against US bombers in 2001, before vanishing into neighbouring Pakistan.
There is an end-of-an-era feeling here, as the latest empire to invade these hills pulls back.
The Americans handed over security control in Nangahar to the Afghan police and army in January.
This weekend's Nato summit in Chicago is supposed to cement the handover process and work out how to pay the future bill of supporting Afghanistan. Cricket match
Things are better in Jalalabad, a compact city on the fertile plain of the Kabul river and famous for its fruits.
The streets are full of life.
But this is still a place on edge, not sure how much will last.
At the city's sole film studio, the Shaiq Network, better security has allowed them to make more movies.
But there is still no cinema to show them as it was closed during the civil war in the 1990s
All their films are distributed on DVD.
And they can only work behind high walls and machine-gun watchtowers.
Large cracks in their office windows tell of past Taliban bomb attacks.
When they need to cast female roles, they often have to bring actresses from Pakistan because conservative attitudes to women appearing on screen run deep.
Taliban warning letters often arrive and director Rahimullah Sapi says he's "100 per cent concerned" about the future as Nato retreats.
The Americans are still here, but cut off behind barricades of concrete and razor wire.
Their main base at the airfield - the launch pad for the operation that killed Bin Laden - was attacked again last month.
It is also now a key base for the attack drones the Americans send over Pakistan's tribal areas.
Just off the main road, a cricket match is underway - between the Nangahar Cheetahs and the Afghan Superstars.
As a bowler does his run up, a US drone flies in low over the pitch, coming in to land at the airfield up the road.
Hardly anyone in the crowd looks up.
The Americans and their allies are moving on.
And in Nangahar, people fear they are being left to bat again on their own.

Defense budget debate touches on Afghanistan, NASCAR
By David Alexander | Reuters – Thu, May 17, 2012WASHINGTON (Reuters) - War-weary lawmakers nudged President Barack Obama to speed the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan on Thursday but Republicans blocked a big debate on the issue ahead of a NATO summit to chart the way forward in the decade-long conflict.
The clash over Afghanistan came as lawmakers in the House of Representatives debated an annual policy bill that would authorize $642.5 billion in defense spending for the 2013 fiscal year beginning in October, including $88.5 billion for the Afghan war and other overseas operations.
The National Defense Authorization Act has drawn a veto threat from the White House because it would overturn many cuts sought by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in order to achieve congressional budget targets set last year with the goal of cutting $478 billion in projected military spending in the next decade.
While the authorization act sets spending limits, it does not actually appropriate funds for defense. The panel that controls the purse strings passed a bill on Thursday that added about $3 billion to the Pentagon's spending request and also provided funds for programs the Defense Department tried to cut.
The House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate one high-profile expenditure, however. It cut Pentagon sponsorship of motor sports, fishing and wrestling events.
The department spent about $96 million last year to sponsor sporting events, including $20 million on a single NASCAR race, as part of its marketing effort to recruit volunteers, one official said.
"Twenty million for one NASCAR race? Have we lost our minds?" said Representative Jack Kingston, a leader in the effort to cut the funds.
LEAVING AFGHANISTAN
The pressure for an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan came as lawmakers began working their way through more than 140 proposed amendments to the authorization act.
NATO leaders are expected to discuss the final transition to Afghan security control and the withdrawal of international forces by the end of 2014 at a summit in Chicago this weekend.
Democratic lawmakers tried to add language to the bill urging Obama to complete an accelerated handover of security to Afghan forces by the end of 2013 and to remove U.S. troops by the end of 2014 - aims consistent with administration planning.
But Republican leaders, who last year only narrowly defeated an effort to force Obama to begin planning for withdrawal from Afghanistan, blocked discussion of the Democratic amendment. Instead they allowed debate on one that called for immediate withdrawal and had little chance of passing.
"They denied us the right to debate that amendment and vote on it, (the) single most important issue facing our armed forces right now," said Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
"I understand why. Close to 70 percent of the country wants us out of Afghanistan quicker," he said. "Our position is clearly where the country is. The majority didn't want to have to vote on that, didn't want to have to have that debate. So they froze out our amendment."
Republican Rob Bishop said he was "somewhat perplexed" by the Democratic complaints, adding they would have an opportunity to raise their concerns about the Afghanistan war during debate on the amendment seeking an immediate withdrawal.
Representative Barbara Lee, the Democrat who sponsored that measure, said in debate it was critical for the United States to "stop pouring billions on a counterproductive military presence in Afghanistan."
"The American people have made it clear that the war is no longer worth fighting, not for another year, not for another two years," she said, citing polls showing some 70 percent of the U.S. public oppose the war.
But Republican Representative Mac Thornberry criticized the measure.
"Essentially this amendment says get out now. Leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences," he said. "You cannot just abandon Afghanistan and ... stick your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to have consequences."
PRESIDENTIAL DETENTION POWERS
A bipartisan coalition that included Tea Party conservatives and liberal Democrats lined up behind an effort to revoke broad powers of detention granted to the president in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Critics say they would enable the U.S. leader to lock up terror suspects detained in the United States indefinitely or transfer them to military control. Supporters say foreign terror suspects should not be allowed access to the U.S. court system.
"One of the key problems that many of us have with the ... amendment is that it would bestow upon illegal aliens who come to this country to carry out terrorist attacks ... full constitutional rights," said Thornberry, noting the measure would give them the right to remain silent and have an attorney hired for them.
Smith said those rights already were guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, which does not make a distinction between how foreigners and U.S. citizens are to be treated when arrested.
"Let's stop the ridiculous argument about rewarding terrorists and have some respect for the Constitution and due process," he said.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Bill Trott)

On joint U.S.-Afghan mission, balancing suspicion and ambition
The Washington Post By Kevin Sieff May 18, 2012
SPINA, Afghanistan - When night came, after long hours in the desert, the Afghan troops poured into a one-story schoolhouse and sprawled out on the floor. Outside, the Americans were crammed in mine-resistant vehicles, gauging the risks of sleeping next to their partners.
“All it takes is one bad guy. That’s all I’m saying,” said one soldier during the mission last month in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province. “I’m not crazy enough to sleep in there.”
Two weeks earlier, Staff Sgt. William “Billy” Wilson III had been shot and killed by a rogue Afghan police officer. That incident prompted some men in his battalion to question whether the U.S.-Afghan partnership in their corner of the country might soon give out. Some of Wilson’s friends secretly hoped it would.
But U.S. commanders went out of their way to assure American and Afghan soldiers that the partnership would not — could not — waiver, despite 20 incidents of fratricide this year. They mourned Wilson. They lectured their men on the Taliban’s efforts to weaken the alliance. And they planned a joint mission to Spina that would affirm their commitment and trust in the wake of tragedy.
“We tell them, ‘This is how the enemy tries to drive a wedge between us,’ ” said Capt. Jim Perkins, Wilson’s former commander. “We can’t let them succeed.”
The “shock absorbency” of the U.S.-Afghan relationship, some American officials say, has also kept Afghan soldiers from abandoning the partnership after NATO personnel burned dozens of Korans on a military base, and after Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged with murdering 17 civilians in Kandahar province. The relationship in the field appears to have reached a stasis in which isolated betrayals don’t threaten to undermine broader progress, they say.
That relationship has in Paktika become a transactional one, with Afghan forces dealing directly with Afghan villagers and Americans handling the operational logistics and much of the intelligence gathering.
Spina is considered one of the most significant Taliban strongholds in the region — a common stopover for insurgents on their way to and from Pakistan. There is no regular U.S. or Afghan security presence in the village. It’s so unstable that even the district sub-governor — Spina’s ostensible conduit to the capital, Kabul — hasn’t visited in five years. He lives nearly 10 miles away.
A ground mission would force Afghan and American soldiers closer together — on the same patrols and into the same makeshift bases. Col. Curtis Taylor announced the mission days before Wilson was buried, before writing a eulogy that included a line reflecting the blow endured by the 172nd Brigade: “His death hit this task force like a hurricane.”
Taylor was adamant that the storm not consume his battalion’s primary goal of extending the reach of the Afghan security forces. He said the mission would be “Afghan-led” — a term that U.S. military officials use to suggest the long-term sustainability of the decade-long war effort, which will soon be inherited by this country’s soldiers and policemen.
But to some of the U.S. battalion’s soldiers, that meant putting their lives in the hands of men whom they couldn’t trust. Wilson’s death was fresh when they packed in their armored vehicles last month and followed the Afghan army through the winding mountain passes that give way to Spina.
“You have to trust the Afghans, but you also have to protect your men,” Perkins said. “There is a residual concern to watch your back after these incidents.”
There was also some confusion about what “Afghan-led” really meant.
“How many of my men do you need?” asked Col. Safai Mirwais, head of the Afghan battalion partnered with Taylor’s.
“It’s your mission,” Taylor responded. “You tell me how many of my men you need.”
Taylor looks the part of the quintessential American soldier: broad-shouldered and impeccably uniformed. Mirwais traipses up the mountains of Paktika with a round belly and tattered black dress shoes.
When the military vehicles rumbled into Spina, Afghans and Americans were synchronized but separate. The Americans handed over intelligence reports to Afghan soldiers, who searched the homes of suspected insurgents. The Americans kept watch from hilltops as Afghans interrogated their suspects. The Americans listened to Taliban radio communications as the Afghans rushed toward buildings where the targets might be hiding. All the while, an American helicopter hovered overhead.
U.S. soldiers were unaccustomed to their role in the mission, which, at times, seemed peripheral.
“It’s sort of boring. The Afghans are doing what we normally do,” Staff Sgt. Joshua LeBel said.
Bored American soldiers watching Afghans carry out the critical duties of a mission is, in many ways, a sign of progress. But it remains far from the end goal: an autonomous Afghan force and a near-complete U.S. withdrawal. Afghans struggle with basic logistics and intelligence gathering. Those tasks will require more training and, above all, a continued Western presence. But in obscure villages such as Spina, those resources are unlikely to exist for long.
In the past, the United States might man an outpost or base for years before handing it to the Afghans. Now there’s no time for extended transitions; the plan is to build a checkpoint in Spina that will be immediately and exclusively manned by Afghans.
During the mission, when Americans received information about a Taliban fighter fleeing Spina on a motorcycle, Afghan and American troops gave chase — the Americans in mine-resistant vehicles and the Afghans in Humvees and pickups. When the mountain roads became too narrow, the soldiers continued the pursuit on foot, with the Afghans sprinting in one direction and the Americans in another.
The Americans settled into a position near a hilltop overwatch, where they intercepted a Taliban radio exchange: “They’re in our sights, and we are ready to shoot,” one insurgent said.
The American solders got down on their chests, waiting to be fired upon. The Afghans continued searching the dozen or so mud-baked huts that compose the village. It was unclear from the radio chatter which soldiers were being targeted; soldiers from both forces were warned.
“We’re about to get shot at,” one American said.
But a half-hour passed with no gunshots. Both forces started the walk back to the makeshift base. Some soldiers were disappointed that the mission had ended without direct exchange of fire with the Taliban. They knew that when the troops left the following day, insurgents would be back. Without a permanent presence in Spina, there was no way to root out insurgents.
That presence might be only months away. But it will require another joint operation — the first trip to Spina was crafted as strictly a scouting mission.
“Where you lead,” Taylor told Mirwais toward the end of the mission, “I’ll follow.”

In Afghanistan, a Boom in Red Bull
Afghanistan has long been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. But over the past few years, many have developed a thirst for energy drinks—even some among the Taliban.
by Mujib Mashal Newsweek.com May 18, 2012 10:25 PM EDT
On a sweltering afternoon in Kandahar last week, a small convoy of armored vehicles stopped along the main highway that cuts through this southern city. The convoy belonged to the Afghan army, and after the vehicles had stopped in front of a small shop, four soldiers popped out—all sporting dark sunglasses. One soldier guided traffic, while the other three walked into the store. Minutes later, they emerged, not with bottles of water, but with dozens of cans of Red Bull—the original and less expensive Thai version, which is sold in yellow cans for 90 cents apiece.
A day later, in a grand ballroom across town, government officials held a ceremony to honor their security forces. Cans of Red Bull were gleaming on the tables, far outnumbering the occasional bottles of water. These were the expensive Austrian variant: the sleek silver-and-blue cans that cost roughly $1.50 each. Soon dozens of soldiers had cracked open the cans and guzzled them down, as the sounds of patriotic songs like “O Soldier, My Beloved” filtered through large black speakers. The water bottles remained practically untouched.
For hundreds of years, Afghanistan has largely been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. Few here drink coffee, and yet over the past few years, many have developed a thirst for energy drinks. Today, Afghans consume these sugar-saturated beverages everywhere and at all hours of the day: during the morning ride to work; in wedding halls; and in private dinners, along with servings of Qabuli Palow, a rice dish topped with carrots, raisins, and pistachios.
It isn’t just Red Bull. In visits to two small Kandahar grocery stores, I found an assortment of brands, unknown to many in the West: Tiger Force, Big Bear, Number 1, Chilly Willy, Jaguar, Carabao, and XXL Energy. A poster for Tiger Force read, in the local Pashto language: “It gives you power, stamina, and calm.” Surely, all you need.
This past winter, Big Bear was one of the major sponsors of Afghanistan’s most popular reality television show, The Afghan Star, the country’s version of American Idol. Big Bear commercials ran throughout the program, which also took advantage of product placement: the judges, host, and participants all frequently displayed the drink’s blue-colored cans.
Moby Group, which owns Tolo TV, the station on which the program airs, would not disclose details of the sponsorship deal. But the energy drink provided the winner of the show with a brand new Toyota Corolla worth roughly $20,000.
“In Afghanistan, there seems to be a lot of competition amongst these brands for the attention of the young generation,” says Zaid Mohseni, chief operating officer of Moby Group.
Energy drinks are big business the Middle East and Central Asia. The United Arab Emirates, for example, reportedly consumed (http://www.thenational.ae/business/r...-energy-drinks) about 4 million gallons of energy drinks in 2009, and that number is expected to rise to roughly 10 million gallons in 2014. In Afghanistan, where drinks such as Red Bull and Carabao have existed for only a few years, it is unclear just how big the market has become. What’s clear, however, is that it’s growing rapidly, and that a large number of new brands are now vying for customers.
Yet not everyone is pleased by the country’s thirst for energy drinks. President Hamid Karzai is well-known for his traditional tastes. On one occasion, when he inaugurated a government building in a remote northern province, he called on the governor, in a teasing manner, to treat him for lunch with an authentic northern-style lamb soup. Yet when the president arrived at the governor’s house, one of Karzai’s aides says, he was infuriated that Red Bull was the drink of choice.
“I have asked a doctor about Red Bull,” the Taliban commander said after he had finished the can. “He told me it was halal.”
It is unclear exactly how the Taliban feel about the energy-drink boom. The drinks are not readily available in areas where the insurgency is strong. In 2009, in a widely reported stunt (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/afghanista...ectid=10595324) , a group of soldiers from New Zealand posed next to a bomb with a sticker for Demon energy drink on it. The soldiers had also adorned the bomb with a message: “Dear Taliban, enjoy this!”
And yet some among the Taliban seem to enjoy these energy drinks as much as their enemies. Several years ago, at a local shop in a village in Helmand Province's Nawa District, a Taliban commander purchased three bottles of Pepsi for his gunman. For a reporter embedded with the group, however, and for himself, the commander bought two cans of Red Bull.
“I have asked a doctor about Red Bull,” the Taliban commander said after he had finished the can. “He told me it was halal.”
Most energy drink customers appear to be young men, and the commercials that air on several local television channels strive to appeal to this demographic. In one commercial, several thugs are stalking a pretty girl when suddenly a young man appears. After chugging a can of Carabao, he chases the thugs away and wins her heart.
Elsewhere, in Kabul, large billboards of Black Toro, a German energy drink, more explicitly define the target audience. At the bottom of the image of the prominently displayed red-and-black can it says in large yellow letters: “For Men Only.”
Red Bull—especially the Austrian version—along with Carabao appear to be the most widely recognizable brands. The Austrian variant of Red Bull is the priciest energy drink in the county and is largely consumed by young people with steady incomes who work for the Afghan government or sectors of the economy linked to the American military or various NGOs. Carabao, which costs about half as much—and tastes far sweeter—is the energy drink of choice for the average Afghan.
Despite the boom, signs of over-competition are already emerging. Six months ago, the New Kakar Company, based in Kandahar, imported one container—about 72,000 cans—of Jaguar energy drink from Germany.
“The quality of the drinks in the market, imported from Thailand and China, were not so good, so we decided to step in,” said Asef Jan Yousufi, head of New Kakar Company.
In lofty terms, Yousufi said his product was second only to Red Bull, the Austrian version, in quality.
But when asked about future shipments he used more cautious language.
“There are way too many energy drinks here now,” he said. “We want to wait and see who wins the market.”
With Sami Yousafzai
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.

Lessons Learned in Afghan School Closures
A Mysterious Warning to Teachers Sheds Light on the Challenges of Dealing With a Loosely Organized Taliban Insurgency
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL May 18, 2012
KABUL - Parents and teachers in southeastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province last month received a torrent of anonymous warnings: Don't go to school.
Dozens of schools shut down overnight as panicked parents chose to keep their children at home.
Yet for officials in the provincial capital and Kabul, exactly who was making the threats seemed a mystery: The leadership of the Taliban, the primary suspects, denied involvement. Afghanistan's education minister told a Kabul news conference he didn't think the Taliban were involved.
But this week, a local Taliban commander said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the insurgents were in fact behind the threat—not because they oppose government education, but as a bargaining chip in a broader struggle with the Afghan authorities.
By threatening schools, the militants in Ghazni were reacting to a local problem: They tried to force the provincial government to rescind a recent ban on unlicensed motorcycles, a crucial mode of transportation for Taliban fighters as well as and local farmers.
The confusion illustrates the difficulty Kabul and its U.S.-led allies face in dealing with a multifaceted, loosely coordinated insurgency that sometimes has local support—even if its heavy-handed methods can also enrage the population.
There is no clear indication the Taliban leadership authorized the local insurgents' behavior, though the local commander said he consulted with his superiors. "To me, it looks like a local political move, not a nationwide phenomenon," says Fabrizio Foschini of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
A spokesman for the Taliban leadership denied involvement. "The mujahedeen weren't aware of these threats, and aren't involved in them," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. "While we have many reservations about the government school system, we are in a war situation and can't offer any alternatives."
The Taliban shut down girls schools after seizing Kabul in 1996, and systematically burned down government schools in the years after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Since 2009, however, their more lenient stance on education, including for girls, has allowed the government to reopen some 5,500 schools across the country, according to Education Minister Farooq Wardak. This includes 26 schools reopened in the past two months.
The recent warning in Ghazni affected nearly 100 schools. "The teachers were told to close our school to protest the ban on motorbikes and not to open it unless the government removes the ban," said Farid Khan, a 12th-grader in one of the affected schools. "Everybody was so scared." A tribal elder backed up the account.
So far, the militants' campaign hasn't been a winning strategy. Most schools in Ghazni have since reopened. The insurgents' gambit, meanwhile, has stirred local hostility, setting off several deadly clashes with villagers who want their children to learn how to read and write.
Straddling the strategic highway between Kabul and Kandahar, Ghazni is a key battleground in this year's fighting season. Sher Khan, the governor of Andar district, an insurgent hotbed in Ghazni, says authorities imposed the motorbike ban following demands from local villagers.
"The Taliban would use the motorbikes for assassinations and ambushes," he said. "As a result, the ordinary people were in huge trouble: the Taliban on motorbikes would attack military convoys, and then the convoys would respond by shooting at the villages."
It wasn't just the Taliban, however, that were affected by the prohibition. The motorcycles also are indispensable to ordinary Afghans living in villages that lack proper roads. Most such vehicles are unregistered in rural districts that often have no functioning government services.
"The ban has created huge problems for the local people, as they can't afford using cars," said Qari Abdul-Rehman, a Taliban commander in Andar.
He says the ban on education was also imposed by popular demand. "The people came to us and asked us to help out with this problem," he said.
Mr. Abdul-Rehman says the local Taliban ordered teachers in the areas under their control to stay away from schools after consulting with their superiors—though there are multiple command layers between the local Taliban and their top leadership.
Mr. Abdul-Rehman said his fighters sent the warning messages to the provincial capital. "We aren't against education," the commander says. "The reason is that schools, especially girls schools, are the only tool that attracts swift government attention."
The government has held its ground, and the ban on unregistered motorcycles remains in place. Villagers—and Mr. Abdul-Rehman—say the Taliban over the past week were attacked by local militias angered by the school closures, including those claiming allegiance to the second-largest insurgent group, Hezb-e-Islami of warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
"The local communities, alongside Islamic scholars, tribal elders and teachers tried to reopen the schools, and they are still pursuing those efforts," says Irfanullah Nashir, the provincial education director.
While several schools in remote Ghazni villages still remain closed, those in the provincial capital and more accessible towns have reopened in recent days, with attendance gradually rising. So far, local residents say, there hasn't been any Taliban retribution.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Afghanistan's Squandered Foreign Aid Has Young Businessmen Worried About Future
The Huffington Post By Joshua Hersh 18/05/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - About three years ago, Abdul Fattah grew tired of seeing his cousins driving fancy cars, impressing girls and earning the respect of strangers, and decided it was his turn to get rich.
It seemed like an opportune moment. With the surge in foreign troops, Afghanistan was experiencing a renewed sense of stability and promise; meanwhile, international development assistance was pouring into the country at an incredible rate: $7 million per day, according to one count.
Fattah, who is now 23 years old, comes from an educated, relatively prominent family in the north. From what he could tell, there was still only one sure way to make it big: win a piece of that development assistance with a service contract from an international aid organization.
He and a friend formed a company -- Babakarkhail Jalali Logistics -- and started submitting bids to procure and ship supplies for international agencies like the U.N. Development Program and International Relief & Development.
And then: nothing.
"It's frustrating, that's obvious," Fattah said recently as he sat smoking a cigarette in his tiny, bare-walled storefront office in a commercial district of central Kabul.
On the table before him, Fattah had spread out the paperwork from a half-dozen failed bids, and a glossy brochure he and his partner had once put together, filled with ambition and clip-art of shipping containers and office furniture. Inside, a mission statement boasted a "staff of 100."
" Obviously it is not possible for a new company to have all that," he said, with a sheepish shrug. "We had hoped to get all these things."
Now, Fattah says he feels like time is running out for his dreams.
"It's clear that we have less time now -- until 2014," he said. "When the foreigners leave, with those people working at NGOs, there will be a lot less work, and a lot less money."
For some time, the 2014 deadline -- the year that most foreign forces will leave Afghanistan -- has inspired concerns in Kabul and across the country about whether the security gains of the past few years can be maintained by Afghan military forces.
But among Kabul's entrepreneurial youth, the deadline has also brought tremendous anxiety about the state of the economy without the constant infusion of foreign funds, and has given rise to a dubious mantra: "Get rich by 2014."
"There are a lot of people who do say they have only two years to get rich, so get rich fast," said Khaleeq Ahmad, a young business owner in Kabul. "But what will they do after 2014?"
FUNDS THAT NEVER MADE IT
President Barack Obama has repeatedly promised that the United States would not turn its back on Afghanistan, militarily or economically. The recent 10-year strategic partnership agreement signed between the two nations included a pledge to "help strengthen Afghanistan’s economic foundation and support sustainable development and self-sufficiency."
This weekend, coalition partners from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will meet in Chicago to discuss long-term pledges of security and development aid for Afghanistan. There is little doubt, however, that those international contributions will amount to far less than they have been over the past decade: some $60 billion dollars in total foreign assistance, according to estimates.
But for the young businessmen of Afghanistan, whose aspirations are closely linked, and finely attuned, to the vagaries of the market, it may not matter how far the spending cuts go, or even what happens to the security situation after 2014.
Instead, a growing chorus of them say, it is already too late: The billions of dollars that has flowed through the country for the past decade may have made some people rich, but has failed to create the kind of environment that would allow businesses to sustain themselves after the international community withdraws, or the kind of businesses that might choose to stick around.
"Paving roads, building schools with donor money is not investment," said one young Afghan business owner, now a government official working on economic matters. "Of course they don't invest in the country, they just come here to bid for projects and then move to Dubai or elsewhere."
The official estimated that the vast majority -- up to 90 percent, he said -- of companies formed in Afghanistan in the past decade were in the construction business, and exist solely to reap the benefits of foreign contracts.
"The Afghan private sector investments have been really fake for the past 10 years," he said.
Indeed, in 2008 a handful of studies painted a dire picture of how little the billions of dollars in international aid had done for Afghanistan's economy.
"Despite a few meaningful private initiatives which have been taken by the military and the civil society, impact of aid on the local economy remains low," one report, by the consulting group Altai, concluded.
Part of the problem has to do with a fundamental flaw in how development assistance is spent, which results in much of it going to inflated salaries and corporate profits for the companies that implement the aid. Another 2008 study, by international aid group Oxfam, estimated that "a staggering 40%" of international development aid was spent in the donor's home country -- which, in the American case, often means companies based in suburban Virginia.
Add to that endemic Afghan corruption and a system of subcontracting that funnels off huge portions of aid before it can be spent -- experts say that many basic infrastructure projects in Afghanistan can have as many as seven or eight subcontractors -- and the final amount of money that hits the local streets is often a small fraction of what was appropriated.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan recently suggested that these inefficiencies may end up having a positive side effect, by inadvertently reducing the economic impact when western funding draws down.
"Ironically, the fact that vast sums of money have been expatriated may lessen the impact on the overall economy of the true drawdown, because the money, in many cases, never made it into the Afghan economy," he told NPR. "I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it may significantly lessen the blow when we get to the end of 2014."
But for Afghans struggling with businesses, that wastefulness can border on the insulting, and it regularly comes up in casual conversation, accompanied by the latest rumors of some pointless western NGO project.
The gulf between the money said to be spent and the evident payoff has also contributed to what some Afghans call an unhealthy "expectations gap" among the population.
"It gets billed to you, the taxpayer, but it also gets billed to us," said Haseeb Humayoon, the young owner of an Afghan public relations business. "We are told that we were given all this money, this huge number, but we don't see it."
LOOKING FOR HOPE
The Western aid that has reached Afghanistan has not been insignificant: It has paved highways, improved electricity and brought 3G wireless to major cities.
"The changes you see here since 2001, they are incredible, it was like magic," said Sami Sadat, the 27-year-old owner of Blue Sea Logistics in Kabul. Sadat recalled that before 2001, Afghans had to travel to Pakistan in order to make international phone calls, and now most people have cellphones.
"We are grateful for what the international community has done for us," he said. "But now we have a completely aid-dependent culture here in Afghanistan. The U.S. didn't do it intentionally, but that's what happened."
The unpleasant prospect of economic life without its international assistance lifeblood is starting to take shape.
"How can I continue this business?" Azizullah Gulzada, the young owner of Zuhaak Tours, a taxi company popular with foreign aid workers and journalists in Kabul, asked during an interview in his office. Gulzada pointed out that if foreign non-governmental organizations leave town, he will not only lose their business, but that of their Afghan employees who would no longer have the disposable income to spend on his services.
Hamayoon, the public relations business owner, describes this as "the market slowly becoming more real."
"The time of get in and get rich fast is gone," he said. "Now it's more of a 'survival of the fittest' situation -- the game of whose model is viable and whose is not is playing itself out."
But it remains to be seen how much hope there is in the long game as well. Some, like Arian Sharifi, think it's worth trying. A few years ago, Sharifi, who is 32, partnered with a friend who had started a financial firm on the western edge of Kabul, called Afghanistan Financial Services. Their plan was to begin with basic services -- accounting, tax preparation -- before eventually moving on to more glamorous work like financial planning and investment banking.
Sharifi of course worries about the end of the international presence in Afghanistan: Given the nature of his business, if other companies working in the country leave or go under, so will he.
But he refuses to submit to living in dread.
"Everyone has that mindset -- there are only two more years left, so we've got to get the money or we're stuck," Sharifi said. "But not us. This is what we're trying to do here [at A.F.S.]. We're not only thinking about quick money. A lot of people say we are stupid -- maybe we are. I don't know yet."


www.afghanistannewscenter.com