[Afghan News] May 21, 2012

[یاسمینه]

NATO takes up Obama timetable to end war in Afghanistan by 2014
From Elise Labbott and Mike Mount, CNN May 21, 2012
Chicago (CNN) -- President Barack Obama called Monday for NATO countries to sign off on his exit strategy from Afghanistan that calls for an end to combat operations next year and the withdrawal of the U.S.-led international military force by the end of 2014.

Against a backdrop of demonstrations that saw violent clashes between protesters and police, NATO and world leaders opened the second day of their Chicago summit with a focus on the unpopular war and how to pay for shoring up Afghanistan's security forces.

Obama told the dozens of heads of state in attendance, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, that NATO can agree on both the timetable for withdrawing foreign forces from Afghanistan and a long-term plan for the strategic alliance to support the central Asian country's security forces.

The goal is to "responsibly bring this war to an end" in the next 19 months, Obama said in welcoming remarks Monday. He cited a recent strategic partnership agreement he signed with Karzai as a step toward ensuring that "as Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone."

Obama made clear Sunday as the summit opened that he expects the NATO nations and their strategic partners to agree to the withdrawal plan, while assuring Karzai that the 28-nation NATO would not abandon the country.

"Just as we have sacrificed together for our common security, we will stand together united in our determination to complete this mission," Obama said at the start of the summit .

Obama and Karzai, who met a day ahead of Monday's NATO talks on Afghanistan, both agreed that the end of the war was close.

Following their meeting, Obama said the transition of the NATO-led International Assistance Security Force from a combat role to one of support of Afghan forces paints "a vision post-2014 in which we have ended our combat role, the Afghan war as we understand it is over."

Karzai reiterated his commitment to the timetable, "so that Afghanistan is no longer a burden on the shoulder of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and our other allies.

"Afghanistan, indeed, Mr. President, as you very rightly put it, is looking forward to an end to this war, and a transformational decade," he said.

Under Obama's plan, reminiscent of the Iraq withdrawal, security for Afghanistan would transition to Afghan forces by the middle of next year. NATO troops would then remain in training and advisory role to help beef up Afghan forces until their withdrawal at the end of 2014.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen pledged "there will be no rush for the exits" from Afghanistan.

"Once the Afghans have full responsibility by the end of 2014, our combat mission will come to an end. But we will not walk away," Rasmussen added later in the day.

A small contingent of British forces could remain after NATO forces leave in 2014, a senior British official said. A senior U.S. official said the United Kingdom may keep some troops in Afghanistan post-2014 for counterterrorism purposes. Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

"I don't want to understate the challenge that we have ahead of us. The Taliban is a resilient and capable opponent," Marine Gen. John Allen, commander of ISAF troops, said Sunday.

"We fully expect that combat is going to continue" as troops are gradually withdrawn over the next 2 ½ years."

One of the key issues to be considered Monday by NATO leaders is who will pay for the buildup of Afghan forces as ISAF draws down its troops. Afghan security forces are expected to total 350,000 by 2015.

Karzai can only afford to cover a fraction of the cost of building up his country's forces. The cost of building up forces is expected to total roughly $4 billion annually by 2014.

Rasmussen said Sunday that he was optimistic that other countries will contribute.

As expected, France's new president, Francois Hollande, announced the withdrawal of French combat troops from Afghanistan by year's end. As part of ISAF, French trainers will remain.

A Taliban spokesman called on NATO nations to follow France's lead.

"We call upon all the other NATO member countries to avoid working for the political interests of American officials and answer the call of your own people by immediately removing all your troops from Afghanistan," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement.

Also at issue at the NATO summit is Islamabad's continued blockade of much-needed NATO supplies shipped over Pakistani roads to Afghanistan.

Pakistan closed the ground routes after a NATO airstrike in November killed two dozen of its soldiers. NATO insists the incident was an accident. Obama offered his condolences but refused to apologize.

The United States and Pakistan have not come to an agreement on the price of opening the supply lines, according to senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Without a deal, the officials said Obama would not meet with President Asif Ali Zardari at the summit. The two were scheduled to hold trilateral talks with Karzai on political reconciliation in Afghanistan. Pakistan's support in reaching a deal with the Taliban is seen as critical in ending the war in Afghanistan.

CNN's Chelsea J. Carter and Tom Cohen contributed to this report.

NATO releases sweeping Chicago Summit Declaration
CHICAGO, May 21 (Xinhua) -- NATO on early Monday morning released a sweeping summit declaration adopted by heads of state and government as they gathered for the security bloc's summit in Chicago.

The Chicago Summit Declaration, adopted on Sunday, reaffirmed member countries' commitment to the transatlantic alliance, charted the way forward in military operations in Afghanistan, and took steps to ensure the alliance has the capabilities to deal with the full range of threats. It also made commitment to strengthen the organization's partnerships.

According to the declaration, NATO seeks to use smart defense as an approach to deal with complex security challenges amid financial difficulties, saying "it is more important than ever to make the best use of our resources and to continue to adapt our forces and structures."

On Afghanistan, NATO said its "irreversible transition" of full security responsibility from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is on track for completion by the end of 2014. It pledges to provide "strong and long-term political and practical support through our Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan" after the withdrawal.

NATO said it is "ready to work towards establishing, at the request of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a new post-2014 mission of a different nature in Afghanistan, to train, advise and assist the ANSF, including the Afghan Special Operations Forces."

In relations with Russia, the declaration said "NATO-Russia cooperation is of strategic importance as it contributes to creating a common space of peace, stability and security."

It said the bloc remains determined to build a lasting and inclusive peace with Russia in the Euro-Atlantic area.

It noted the contributions of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), admitting NATO and Russia "differ on specific issues and there is a need to improve trust, reciprocal transparency, and predictability in order to realise the full potential of the NRC." It said NATO intends to raise with Russia allied concerns about Russia's "stated intentions regarding military deployments close to Alliance borders."

The declaration also discussed the situation in the Middle East, reaffirming NATO's planned expansion and its partnership with countries around the world.

NATO is having its 25th summit in Chicago, and leaders focused their discussions on alliance capabilities in the age of austerity during the first day of their meetings.

They are to focus on future commitments to Afghanistan on Monday.

NATO sets 'irreversible transition' in Afghanistan
By JULIE PACE | Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) — President Barack Obama and fellow NATO leaders solidified plans Monday for an "irreversible transition" in Afghanistan, affirming their commitment to ending the deeply unpopular war in 2014 and voicing confidence in the ability of Afghan forces to take the lead for securing their country even sooner.

The alliance leaders, meeting for a second day of talks in Obama's hometown, declared in a summit communique that while NATO will maintain a significant presence in Afghanistan after 2014, "this will not be a combat mission."

NATO and its partner nations formally agreed that Afghan security forces would take control of any combat next summer with NATO sliding into a support role. Obama called the transition "the next milestone" in bringing the nearly 11-year long war to a close.

"This will be another step toward Afghans taking full lead for their security as agreed to by 2014," Obama said as he opened a meeting of NATO leaders and other countries that have participated in the war.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Afghans were already leading security operations in half the country and were on pace to meet next year's targets.

"Transition means the people of Afghanistan increasingly see their own army and police in their towns and villages providing their security," Rasmussen said. "This is an important sign of progress toward our shared goal: an Afghanistan governed and secured by Afghans for Afghans."

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai was participating in Monday's meeting, as was Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose country will have a critical role in ensuring Afghanistan's stability after NATO troops leave.

Zardari's presence has cast a shadow over the summit. The U.S. and Pakistan remain at odds over Pakistan's closure of key routes used to send supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the supply lines in November following a U.S. airstrike that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. While both sides have indicated the issue will be resolved, no deal is expected during the NATO meetings.

Obama thanked other nations in Central Asia and Russia for their roles in providing "critical transit" for supplies but pointedly made no mention of Pakistan.
As NATO leaders herald the Afghan war's end, they face the grim reality of two more years of fighting and more of their troops dying in combat.

Some NATO countries, most recently France, have sought to end their combat commitments early. The Taliban and its allies have warned that they are waiting to fill the void in Afghanistan after NATO leaves.

Obama is eager to show election-year leadership on the world stage during the Chicago meetings.

Following a meeting with Karzai Sunday, Obama said NATO's drawdown plans mean that by 2014, "the Afghan war as we understand it is over."

But he acknowledged enormous progress must be made for that to become a reality.

"We still have a lot of work to do, and there will be great challenges ahead," Obama said after his lengthy talks with Karzai. "The loss of life continues in Afghanistan."

Obama's words were echoed by other U.S. officials, who sternly warned that American forces and their allies should still expect to be engaged in battle even after Afghans take the lead.

"After this milestone in 2013 there still will be combat capability, combat authority and an expectation there will be combat," said retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the top White House national security council official in connection with the war.

Many alliance leaders, Obama chief among them, have a political incentive for trumpeting that drawdown plan, given the growing public frustration.

Sixty six percent of Americans oppose the war, while only 27 percent support the effort, according to an AP-GfK poll released this month.

In France, voters elected President Francois Hollande in part because of a campaign pledge to pull his country's 3,300 troops out of Afghanistan ahead of schedule. Since taking office, Hollande has said he plans to make good on his promise to bring combat troops home by the end of this year but will maintain French support for Afghanistan in other ways.

The U.S. and NATO will also maintain a sizeable and lengthy commitment to Afghanistan after combat troops come home at the end of 2014.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a member of the Armed Services Committee who visits Afghanistan often, said that by 2014 Afghan forces, with the backing of international trainers and logistical support, "will be able to provide stability."

Speaking Monday on CBS' "This Morning," Reed said that Afghan leaders and the international community need to seek a political settlement "but the security forces will provide the foundation for the stability that is absolutely necessary as our troops withdraw."

Obama, in a trip to Afghanistan this month, signed a deal with Karzai detailing much of the U.S. commitment, including annual financing from Congress and support for development, health and education projects. The U.S. may also leave a residual troop presence in Afghanistan, though any such step would require approval from the Afghans.

At the NATO conference, leaders were also discussing how the international community would finance Afghan security forces after 2014. With none of the NATO countries having the stomach to pursue the war much longer, the only viable option is to support an Afghan army and police force capable of defending the country against the Taliban and its allies.

NATO estimates it will cost about $4.1 billion a year to finance the forces. The Afghan government will pay about $500 million of that, and the rest will come from donor countries, many of which are struggling with deficits and the specter of recession.

In a statement issued early Monday, NATO directed a review of the need for continued military support after ground forces depart. The alliance said it would "continue to provide strong and long-term political and practical support" to the government of Afghanistan and would "train, advise and assist" the Afghan military.

"This will not be a combat mission," NATO said.

While the Chicago meeting was not billed as a pledging summit, leaders were discussing where the rest of the contributions would come from. About $1.3 billion is expected to come from NATO members other than the United States. About $1 billion of that has already been pledged, a senior Western official said Sunday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to disclose the figures.

The U.S. and some nations outside the military coalition are expected to make up the $2.3 billion.

The challenge facing Obama and other world leaders will be to convince their own voters that Afghanistan is worth the investment. The war has already claimed the lives of at least 3,000 NATO service members — more than 1,840 of them American — and thousands of Afghans.

"I think it speaks to the level of commitment that even in these tough financial times these leaders are willing to make the political commitment to fund the Afghan security forces," Lute said.
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Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Afghanistan’s Karzai thanks Obama for ‘your taxpayers’ money’
White House Correspondent By Olivier Knox Yahoo! News - Sun May 20, 3:42 pm ET
Looking to a day when "the Afghan war as we understand it is over," President Barack Obama met Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss NATO's withdrawal from that strife-torn country by the end of 2014.

Obama, who has put the draw-down of combat troops at the heart of his foreign policy, declared that "the world is behind the strategy" of giving Afghans control over their own security, but stressed that "now it's our task to implement if effectively."

Karzai, who aims to secure billions of dollars in long-term aid for his country's military and economy, said he looked forward to a day when "Afghanistan is no longer a burden on the shoulders of of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and our other allies."

"I'm bringing to you and to the people of the United States the gratitude of the Afghan people for the support that your taxpayers' money has provided Afghanistan over the past decade and for the difference that it has made to the well-being of the Afghan people," Karzai told Obama.

The two leaders met on the sidelines of a high-stakes NATO summit consumed by the question of the alliance's withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and its role beyond that date. Obama has made it known he wants leaders gathered here to sign off on a plan to hand over combat duties to Afghan forces in 2013.

"There will be no rush for the exits," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters as the summit opened, saying the alliance's plan was sound and vowing to "see it through to a successful end."

Beyond the tight security cordon around the summit, in the streets of Obama's adoptive hometown, protestors denounced the gathering for a second straight day."I would expect that such demonstrations would take place in a peaceful manner," said Rasmussen.

Obama also wanted NATO leaders to flesh out their own commitments to Afghanistan — both in terms of troops and money — until 2014 and beyond. Specific dollar amounts are not expected in Chicago, but a July donors conference in Tokyo should spell those out. The price tag for Afghan forces after 2014 is estimated to be $4.1 billion per year. Afghanistan is expected to pay $500 million of that. Karzai has said his country will need at least $10 billion per year in overall aid through 2025.

Obama looked ahead to a future "in which we have ended our combat role, the Afghan war as we understand it is over, but our commitment to friendship and partnership with Afghanistan continues" and evoked "a shared vision that we have in which Afghanistan is able to transition from decades of war to a transformational decade of peace and stability and development."

Obama underlined "the enormous sacrifices that have been made by the American people, most profoundly by American troops, as well as the troops of our other coalition partners" and said Americans "recognize the hardship that the Afghan people have been through."

"The loss of life continues in Afghanistan. There will be hard days ahead. But we're confident that we're on the right track," he said.

"Afghanistan is fully aware of the task ahead and of what Afghanistan needs to do to reach the objectives that we all have, of a stable, peaceful and self-reliant Afghanistan. In the meantime, until then, thank you for your support," Karzai said.

(Karzai had given a somewhat different assessment of Kabul's relationship with Washington at a December 2008 joint press conference with then-President George W. Bush.

"Afghanistan will not allow the international community leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy, and before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollars -- no way that they can let you go," Karzai said, to nervous laughter from the audience.)

Among the challenges Obama's strategy faces: French President François Hollande isn't budging from his campaign pledge to withdraw his country's roughly 3,600 combat troops by the end of 2012 — one year sooner than his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy had planned. Hollande suggested after talks with Obama at the White House on Friday that French forces could stay on to help train Afghan military and policy, but reiterated that an end to their combat role was "not negotiable."

Obama faces dual pressures at home: The war-weary American public wants out of Afghanistan, the country's longest war, but Republicans have blasted the president for setting a departure date, saying this will only embolden Islamist fighters and lead friendly Afghans to hedge their bets.

Mitt Romney, in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, accused Obama of failing to show leadership inside NATO and of putting America "on a path to a hollow military" and said he would reverse both trends. He did not detail his own Afghanistan policy.

The United States is on track to reduce its presence to 68,000 troops by late September. More than 3,000 Americans have been killed in the decade-long conflict launched to catch or kill Osama bin Laden, whom Navy SEALS shot dead in a dramatic May 2011 raid inside Pakistan.

That country closed supply lines for NATO forces after a November strike inside its territory killed 24 Pakistan soldiers. Negotiations to reopen them have yet to bear fruit. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is attending the summit, but Obama has not plans to meet with him one-on-one.

"The president will certainly have a chance to see him and speak to him," Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One late Saturday.

"On the supply lines, we believe that this is going to be resolved," Rhodes said. "We expect that to take some time. So there is still work to be done through those negotiations."

NATO leaders are also expected to take up the issue of Iran's suspect nuclear program, as well as how the alliance should respond to the bloody crackdown in Syria.

Obama: World is Behind Strategy for Afghanistan
VOA News May 20, 2012 Dan Robinson
CHICAGO - U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai met on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday, reaffirming a shared vision of creating a secure and stable Afghanistan.

Obama referred to what he called the "broad consensus" of the International Security Assistance Force on a complete transition to Afghan-led security, and the need for continuing international support. "Also painting a vision post-2014 in which we have ended our combat role, the Afghan war as we understand it is over, but commitment to friendship and partnership with Afghanistan continues," he said.

Obama said the Strategic Partnership Agreement he and Karzai signed earlier this month is part of a shared vision for Afghanistan transitioning from decades of war to "a transformational decade of peace, stability and development."

President Karzai said he reaffirmed his government's commitment to completing a transition to Afghan-led security by 2013, on the way to the complete withdrawal of foreign forces in 2014, so Afghanistan is "no longer a burden" on the international community.

But the Afghan president said his country requires ongoing support. "In the meantime, the world community, in particular the United States, and our allies in NATO and ISAF will be with us to make sure that we take steady and strong steps, and are backed while we are making those steps toward 2024, when Afghanistan will be largely defending itself and providing for itself," he said.

President Obama said President Karzai recognized "the enormous sacrifices" made by the American people and U.S. forces in Afghanistan and by troops of other coalition partners.

Although Obama said more lives will be lost in Afghanistan, he and Karzai are confident that NATO and Afghanistan are on the right track. "There will be hard days ahead, but we're confident that we are on the right track and what this NATO summit reflects that the world is behind the strategy that we have laid out," he said.

Earlier, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is committed to helping Afghanistan sustain security, including training for the Afghan military as the International Security Assistance Force withdraws.

"There will be no rush for the exits, we will stay committed to our operation in Afghanistan and see it through to a successful end. Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged," he said.

Rasmussen noted that although France's President Francois Hollande has reaffirmed his plan to withdraw French troops by the end of this year, he added that Hollande says France will support Afghanistan in other ways.

No Meeting With Obama for Pakistan's President
VOA News May 20, 2012 Ayesha Tanzeem
CHICAGO - Hopes for a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit bringing together the U.S., Afghan and Pakistani presidents appear to have dimmed, and analysts say this is due to the lack of a full agreement with Pakistan on reopening NATO supply lines into Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama met on Sunday in Chicago with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but his schedule includes no one-on-one interaction with Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, and White House staff say the schedule is not expected to change.

Both U.S. and Pakistani officials were pushing for a trilateral meeting, with the main roadblock to such talks being the drawn-out dispute that has curtailed NATO's ability to supply coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan.

Pakistan shut down the transit corridors that NATO used for supply convoys last November, after U.S. airstrikes that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops stationed near the Afghan border. The cross-border attack and its aftermath brought U.S.-Pakistan relations to a new low.

Pakistan’s prime minister indicated last week that progress had been made in negotiations with U.S. officials about reopening the supply routes, and he predicted an agreement would be complete “very soon.” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen then called President Zardari to invite him to the Chicago summit.

Some South Asia experts suggest that while NATO's invitation to the president of Pakistan was unconditional, any interaction with the U.S. president might not have been so.

President Zardari did meet with President Karzai and with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chicago, about Pakistan’s role in regional peace and the end stages of NATO's involvement in Afghanistan.

The meeting between Mr. Zardari and Clinton lasted for over an hour. Others present included Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Sherry Rehman, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, and the U.S. government's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman.

Grossman told VOA the meeting included “a complete review of all of our bilateral partnerships.” He added that the purpose was to focus on “how to move forward in this relationship.”

The senior U.S. envoy said the talks on Sunday will help with the ongoing negotiations over the NATO supply routes, and he played down the significance of the Obama-Karzai-Zardari meeting that did not take place, saying it would be "better" for Afghanistan and Pakistan to hold direct bilateral talks.

Meanwhile, the meeting between Presidents Zardari and Karzai resulted in a decision to extend the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement to countries in Central Asia.

Commentary: Time for NATO to curb preoccupation with military prowess
CHICAGO, May 20 (Xinhua) -- As NATO leaders are gathering for an annual summit Sunday to discuss issues such as the war in Afghanistan and ways to maintain the alliance's military might amid tightening budgets, they see a crowd assembled earlier not to salute but to protest.

In the run-up to the summit, demonstrators have staged various rallies in the city to resound the horn that military interventions in recent years by the U.S.-led alliance were actually meant to seek its egoistic interests under dignified disguises.

Those who pursue selfish interests may not be blamed as far as they do not violate the rights of others. For NATO, which has realized some of its strategic goals in recent years at the price of other countries, the lasting protests against NATO should serve as an alarm bell for the bloc to curb its preoccupation with armed might.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an unrivaled NATO started to police the world while seeking a new role.

In the past two decades, NATO has been actively involved in wars or military conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and most recently in Libya.

These wars have inflicted a heavy toll on both the economies and human lives. According to a report issued recently by a New York-based organization, the eight rounds of NATO bombing on Libya last year has directly caused the deaths of 72 civilians, including 20 women and 24 children.

Aside from causing losses for various countries, the NATO warmongering has also changed the global geopolitical security structure, which has triggered many disputes in the international community and even within the alliance itself.

As a matter of fact, NATO members are still divided on the role of the alliance in the 21st century. Many European members have been cutting down their defense budgets for years as they believed the security of the continent is no longer a source of major concern. Their willingness to pour resources into defense will probably continue to be weak given all the hazards posed by the European debt crisis.

Analysts noted that the chronic Afghan war has eroded the passion of the NATO members and their allies. Some NATO members like Germany chose to stay out of the Libyan conflict last year.

At this Chicago summit, whether French President Francois Hollande will announce his country's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of the year as he had pledged at his election campaign has become a hot topic.

Back in 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal, NATO initiated a new strategic concept named "Active Engagement, Modern Defense" at that summit. The leaders agreed to gradually hand over security responsibility to Afghan security forces with the aim of completing the transition by the end of 2014.

It showed that NATO had come to realize that military intervention on its own could not solve problems and, on the contrary, might even create more.

Global political, economic and security situation is changing rapidly, but peace and development remain the main theme of the times.

NATO, which possesses vast political and military resources, should refrain from pursuing its egoistic interests at the expense of others.

Obama’s Afghanistan Problem: Neither Karzai Nor the Taliban Like the ‘Reconciliation’ Script
By Tony Karon | @tonykaron | May 21, 2012 | TIME.com
President Barack Obama huddled with President Hamid Karzai in Chicago on Sunday, urging Afghanistan’s leader to accelerate negotiations with the Taliban over a political solution to the longest war in America’s history. But the prospect for Karzai negotiating successfully with the insurgents is clouded by a question raised by Josef Stalin, on the eve of World War II, in response to the suggestion that he offer concessions to the Pope: “How many divisions does he have?” The Taliban now ask the same question about Karzai. And should the Afghan leader also ask himself the question, he might reach a similarly dispiriting conclusion. Karzai’s independent power base is minimal, as is his ability to influence the outcome of his country’s civil war absent direct U.S. involvement. And that gives neither Karzai nor the Taliban much incentive to cut a deal with the other.

While acknowledging “hard days ahead,” Obama was painting a picture of the “Afghan war as we understand it (being) over” after the U.S. combat role ends in 2014 and Afghanistan entering a “transformational decade of peace and stability and development.” But his commander on the ground offered a more chilling assessment on Sunday. ”I don’t want to, again, understate the challenge that we have ahead of us,” Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO’s ISAF mission in Afghanistan, told a media briefing on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday. “The Taliban is still a resilient and capable opponent in the battle space. There’s no end of combat before the end of 2014. And, in fact, the Taliban will oppose the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) after 2014.”

In other words, the war won’t end with NATO withdrawal. It’s the realization that the Taliban will remain very much alive and kicking after NATO leaves that has prompted Obama to press upon Karzai the need to engage with greater urgency in reconciliation talks with the Taliban — and also to implement electoral reforms to diminish corruption and make elections more transparent. But Karzai is a survivor by instinct, and neither electoral reform nor serious talks with the Taliban do much to enhance his prospects of political survival.

The only thing keeping him in power over the past decade has been the presence of tens of thousands of Western troops. Even if the Afghan security forces NATO is frantically training to take over — and suffering almost weekly “green on blue” fatalities as Afghan security men turn their guns on their Western mentors — were up to par, it requires a vast leap of faith to imagine they’ll be loyal to Karzai. The President has a minimal political base; he was propelled into power as the preferred option of the U.S.-led invasion force, a candidate who had strong clan roots in the Pashtun heartland but was able to win the consent of the Northern Alliance — the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara warlords who had been the greatest beneficiaries of the NATO intervention and comprised its key allies among Afghan fighting forces.

Since then, he has kept power by fancy footwork at the nexus of forces more powerful than himself, painting himself as the least-worst option, with the corruption and cronyism that Western leaders complain about being a symptom of that power equation, and of longstanding traditions. After all, when the CIA had first sent its operatives into Afghanistan to initiate the toppling of the Taliban, they were armed not with stirring calls to freedom and democracy, but with suitcases containing millions of dollars in hard cash. Karzai knows the limits of the loyalty of those presently aligned with the status quo, and the traditional fluidity of Afghan warlord politics. He holds his present position only because there’s no obvious alternative to play the role he’s been playing.

Neither Karzai’s rule nor the Afghan national security forces are based on a genuine national political consensus; Afghanistan remains riddled with the same deep ethnic political fissures that plagued it before the Americans arrived, and it’s highly unlikely that the Afghan security forces will somehow set themselves apart from that conflict. On the contrary, it may be no more than wishful thinking to cast the security forces as loyal to an idea of Afghanistan independent of the civil war taking place in the country. A highly plausible scenario would see those security forces break down along the ethnic fissures that correspond to the battle lines of the civil war (although there may be plenty of political infighting among Pashtuns, too), rather than one in which they remain loyal to Karzai or whomever is elected to replace him in 2014.

The Pansjiri Tajiks of the Northern Alliance, which has long provided a key part of the ranks and officer corps of the Afghan security forces, are reportedly opposed to any power-sharing deal with the Taliban, and are widely rumored to be arming themselves for a post-NATO showdown. That creates significant pressure on Karzai to put the brakes on any negotiations with the insurgents. So, as much as NATO needs Karzai to be talking to the Taliban to ease the departure of Western troops, his best interests may lie in keeping Western troops involved in propping him up for as long as possible, even if the domestic political reality facing his Western backers obliges him to embrace the 2014 strategy. (Polls find that more than two-thirds of Americans now oppose U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.)

The Taliban, for its part, also sees the limits of Karzai’s power, and brands him a “puppet” of the West. The purpose of Obama’s Afghan “surge” that began in the summer of 2009 was to double down the U.S. military commitment in order to pummel the Taliban into suing for peace and delivering it to the table sufficiently bloodied as to be ready to accept U.S. terms — including a recognition of the constitutional order put in place after the NATO invasion, and by extension the authority and legitimacy of President Karzai. But that, quite simply, has not happened, as Allen pointed out.

Feeling the wind at its back, and sensing that the tide of Afghan public opinion has turned more sharply against the presence of Western troops and that the Western powers have lost their appetite for an expeditionary war in which they’ve essentially been spinning their wheels for the past five years, the Taliban broke off secret negotiations earlier this year. The movement is reportedly split over whether to seek a compromise solution when NATO is already moving towards the exit, and hard-liners may have gained the upper hand. Pakistan retains considerable influence over a movement that was once its protege, and it is determined to see that its interests — which include having a friendly government in Kabul (Karzai is viewed by Pakistan’s security establishment as tightly aligned with India) — are accommodated in any settlement. The Obama Administration failed to even get Pakistan to agree to a deal ahead of the Chicago summit to reopen supply lines to NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistani territory;
the supply lines have been closed since a border incident in which Western warplanes killed Pakistani troops. An accord on the future of Afghanistan clearly remains some way off.

Then there are the more militant Taliban elements that retain ties with al-Qaeda, as well as some of the movement’s younger, more embittered mid-level commanders, none of whom see any good coming out of negotiating a compromise when their primary enemy, the U.S. and its NATO partners, has made clear it intends to withdraw by the end of 2014. It’s hard to argue, in the Taliban’s internal debate, that time is not on the insurgents’ side.

And resistance to negotiation and compromise on each side of the Karzai-Taliban equation simply reinforces the same on the opposing side. So, while Obama and other NATO leaders would like to see Afghanistan’s power players adopt a narrative that allows Western forces to withdraw with a sense of having put the country on the road to peace and stability, the Afghan players seem to have other ideas. They’re not going to make this easy.

U.S. Iraq, Afghanistan veterans kick off historic action against NATO in Chicago
CHICAGO, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan and Iraq veterans from across the United States converged in Chicago on Sunday for a historic day of action against NATO, which is expected to culminate with at least 40 Global War on Terror veterans returning their war medals to NATO generals.

The action followed a press conference which began at 9 a.m. local time, marking the first national gathering of veterans protesting NATO, which will open the two-day summit on Sunday afternoon.

"We will march to NATO's front door to return our medals, hand in hand with our Afghan brothers and sisters, to tell the world's military leaders and NATO's generals that our solidarity is stronger than their wars," Aaron Hughes, organizer of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), said at a press conference held in the Grant Park in downtown Chicago. "We will make our message of justice, healing, and solidarity heard around the world."

Dozens of Veterans, who were in their uniforms or IVAW T- shirts, marched in military formation with banners and placards into the park before the beginning of the press conference.

The NATO summit, which is scheduled for May 20-21 in Chicago, will be the first NATO summit on American soil in 13 years and the first ever outside of Washington.

Also speaking at the press conference to support the action against NATO, Samira Sayed-Rahman, an Afghan Canadian from Canada' s Toronto, said, "Too many Afghans have died in the hands of Americans and Canadians and soldiers of all the other NATO countries, and we never hear from them."

"The Afghan people have only one message: they want peace, they want a sustainable peace, they want development, they want education, they want a free and safe life with no war and no occupation," she said.

"(The) Afghan people want NATO out of their country. Too many people have died," she said. "As an Afghan Canadian, I do not want to pay for the war to kill my family back home. Enough is enough!"

Her speech drew applause from veterans and their supporters on the scene.

Printed on the home-made placards held high by the protesting veterans included "The War Is A Lie!" "Stop NATO Bombs!" "NATO, please redefine your role!"

Afghanistan is high on the agenda of the NATO summit in Chicago. NATO plans to hand over lead responsibility for the war against the Taliban to the Afghan army and police by the middle of next year, and to withdraw its troops by the end of 2014.

One of the veterans, who were among former U.S. marines and sailors protesting the Afghan war, said that he thinks that 2014 is too late for ending the war in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led ISAF, a coalition forces whose numbers reached a peak of more than 140,000 troops last year, have already started a draw down. The vast majority are scheduled to leave by the end of 2014, when the Afghan troops are expected to take over all security responsibilities.

The United States, which had about 100,000 service members in Afghanistan, expects to have a third of its troops out of the country by September. Nearly 3,000 NATO troops have perished in the decade-long Afghan conflict, about two-thirds of them Americans.

Brock Mckingtouch, an Afghan veteran who was deployed in Afghanistan for one year, began his speech at the press conference by criticizing NATO for killing too many innocent Afghan people on the ground of fight against terrorism, asking "How many more civilians need to die in Afghanistan to make up for the civilians who died in New York City?"

Mckingtouch was referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, in which terrorists associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

"Three thousand people died in New York City, 33,000 people died in Afghanistan, there are no monuments to them," he said. " We are exhausting ourselves economically, we are exhausting our lives."

At the end of the press conference, the veterans led the march in formation, donning military uniforms and Global War on Terror medals, and chanted anti-war military cadences. The protest is scheduled to end at 2 p.m. local time on Sunday.

The veterans' protest, which came just hours before the opening of the NATO summit in Chicago, is part of the demonstrations against NATO which began here on Friday. A far larger "anti-NATO" march is expected on Sunday afternoon.

Canada Will Offer Afghanistan Cash After 2014, But No Troops In Latest NATO Summit Snafu
By Oliver Tree Monday, May 21, 2012 11:15 AM EDT The International Business Times
Canada will pledge money to support Afghanistan's security forces post-2014, but will not extend the stay of its troops, officials said Monday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to announce he will not be extending the mission of Canada's 950 military trainers currently in Afghanistan after international forces leave the country in 2014.

The expected Canadian announcement comes as NATO leaders met for a second day in Chicago to firm up an Afghanistan exit strategy, with U.S. President Barack Obama desperate to secure ongoing funding from alliance members for the war-torn country beyond 2014.

There had been hopes Canada would maintain its small presence in the country as other countries wound down their forces, in a bid to demonstrate to the outside world that the West was not abandoning Afghanistan outright.

As a token gesture, Harper is expected to offer monetary assistance for Afghanistan for three years after 2014, although Canadian officials would not say how much.

Obama has asked previously Canada to offer $125 million per year, while countries such as Britain, Germany and Australia have pledged between $100 and $200-million a year.

The money is needed to plug Kabul's $4-billion-plus security budget shortfall.

The announcement will be another blow to the allies as the war-weary public across Europe and the U.S. demand an accelerated plan to leave Afghanistan after more than 10 years of war and mounting casualties on both sides.

Elsewhere, on Monday, a row between the United States and Pakistan over the opening of supply routes to Afghanistan continues to overshadow the Chicago summit.

The two sides have so far failed to agree on a strategy to re-open the vital supply routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have been closed since a U.S. air-strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

President Obama, allegedly growing tired with the Islamabad's heel-dragging over the issue, refused to meet with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari.

The Pakistanis have demanded the U.S. issue a public apology, change its policy on drone strikes in Pakistani territory and pay a $5,000 transit fee for vehicles using the corridor -- up from the current tariff of $250.

Supply Lines Cast Shadow at NATO Meeting on Afghan War
New York Times By HELENE COOPER and MATTHEW ROSENBERG May 20, 2012
CHICAGO - President Obama was struggling to balance the United States’ relationship with two crucial but difficult allies on Sunday, after a deal to reopen supply lines through Pakistan to Afghanistan fell apart just as Mr. Obama began talks on ending the NATO alliance’s combat role in the Afghan war.

As a two-day NATO summit meeting opened in Chicago, Mr. Obama remained at loggerheads with President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, refusing even to meet with him without an agreement on the supply routes, which officials in both countries acknowledged would not be coming soon.

Mr. Zardari, who flew to Chicago with hopes of lifting his stature with a meeting with Mr. Obama, was preparing to leave empty-handed as the two countries continued to feel the repercussions of a fatal American airstrike last November, for which Mr. Obama has offered condolences but no apology. Mr. Zardari did, however, meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to discuss the supply routes.

Pakistan closed the routes into Afghanistan after the strike, heightening tensions with Pakistani officials who say that the United States has repeatedly infringed on their sovereignty with drone strikes and other activities.

“This whole breakdown in the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has come down to a fixation of this apology issue,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser on Pakistan. The combination of no apology and no meeting, Mr. Nasr said, “will send a powerfully humiliating message back to Pakistan.”

American officials hope the summit of the 28-member alliance will set in motion an orderly conclusion of the decade-long war in Afghanistan, a huge undertaking. NATO aims to give Afghan forces the lead in combat operations next year to pave the way for the departure of NATO troops by the end of 2014. The NATO summit will also focus on financing Afghan forces for the next several years.

In a sign of the tensions surrounding Afghanistan, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chicago on Sunday in opposition to the war and to NATO. The police clashed with some demonstrators who refused to disperse after a march down Michigan Avenue to McCormick Place, where world leaders were meeting.

Mr. Obama and his other tenuous ally in the region, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, huddled together Sunday morning to grapple with stalled reconciliation talks with the Taliban.

It was a measure of just how bad things have gotten between the United States and Pakistan that, by contrast, Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Karzai — which has been rocky ever since Mr. Obama came into office vowing to end what he viewed as former President George W. Bush’s coddling of the mercurial Afghan leader — looked calm and stable on Sunday.

The two men, fresh off Mr. Obama’s unannounced trip to Kabul this month to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Mr. Karzai that set the terms for relations after the departure of American troops in 2014, presented a united front before reporters after a one-hour meeting on the outskirts of the NATO summit. It was a sharp contrast with the past, when Mr. Karzai berated American troops, threatened to join the Taliban and chastised the American-led NATO mission.

There was none of that on Sunday. During their session, the two men joked about limits in both of their countries that would prevent them from serving more than two terms; Mr. Obama trotted out his familiar “look at all the gray hair I have now” line that he likes using to describe how tough his term has been.

“I want to express my appreciation for the hard work that President Karzai has done,” Mr. Obama said after the meeting, standing next to Mr. Karzai. “He recognizes the enormous sacrifices American troops have made.”

Mr. Obama quickly added: “We recognize the hardships that Afghans have been through during these many many years of war.”

Mr. Karzai, for his part, said he would work to make sure that Afghanistan is not a “burden on the shoulders of our friends” in the international community.

“For all the twists and turns in this relationship, we now very much want to get to very much the same place,” one Obama administration official said. He credited the strategic partnership agreement, which he says has given Mr. Karzai a level of reassurance that the United States and NATO will not abandon Afghanistan once combat troops leave the country. “The discussion today was very much about what do we have to do over the next two years to close out our piece of the war.”

On the Pakistani front, however, things seem to deteriorate.

American and Pakistani officials expressed optimism last week that an agreement on re-establishing supply routes was imminent. Negotiators were narrowing their differences after three weeks of intense deliberations, they said, and it was hoped that an invitation for Pakistan to attend the summit would engender the good will needed to close the gap between the two sides.

The invitation was accepted, and Mr. Zardari arrived in Chicago on Saturday. But a deal on the supply lines remained elusive, and Mr. Obama would not meet with Mr. Zardari without it, American officials said.

The supply lines, through which about 40 percent of NATO’s nonlethal supplies had passed, were closed in late November after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in American airstrikes along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The deaths capped a year of crises between the United States and Pakistan that put immense strain on the two countries’ already fragile relationship.

The failure to strike a deal on the supply routes ahead of the summit injects new tension into the relationship. “When NATO extended the invitation, we thought it would move the Pakistanis off the dime,” a senior American official said. Without the deal, “it’s going to be really uncomfortable” for Mr. Zardari at the summit, which runs through Monday, said the official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the talks.

American officials said the main sticking point was the amount NATO would pay for each truck carrying supplies from Karachi, on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, to the Afghan border. Before the closing, the payment per truck was about $250. Pakistan is now asking for “upward of $5,000” for each truck, another American official said.

Mr. Obama called off a planned visit to Pakistan last year after the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden. That Bin Laden had been living there confirmed what American officials had long suspected: Despite Pakistani protests to the contrary, the man behind the Sept. 11 attacks had been hiding in the country for years.

Mr. Obama did telephone Mr. Zardari a few hours after the raid to inform him that Navy Seals had done an incursion into Pakistani territory to kill Bin Laden, and during that conversation Mr. Zardari “spoke with emotion about the fact that these people were associated with the killing of his wife,” Benazir Bhutto, the senior official said.

The NATO summit formally opened on Sunday, with leaders listening to taps to honor the soldiers killed in the Afghan conflict.

In remarks at the opening session, Mr. Obama said the end of the war was in sight. Officials hope to announce on Monday that by the middle of 2013, American soldiers will no longer be in the lead in any combat operations around the country, and Afghanistan’s own national security forces will assume control.

It remains unclear just how smooth that transition will go, as Afghan forces have not demonstrated a lasting ability to secure the country. But after more than a decade of war, there is combat fatigue in the NATO countries.

Mr. Obama, who has pushed to bring troops home, has been at odds with his own military commanders over the pace of the American withdrawal. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Gen. John Allen, the top United States military commander in Afghanistan, said that American troops will still be involved in combat next year even after the United States shifts to a support role.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

U.S.-Pakistan Rift Clouds NATO Summit
Obama Seeks Allied Support For Long-Term Afghan Strategy; Deal With Islamabad Over Supply Routes Remains Elusive
Wall Street Journal By CAROL E. LEE and ADAM ENTOUS May 21, 2012
CHICAGO - U.S. tensions with Pakistan complicated the opening day of a NATO summit, hosted by President Barack Obama in his hometown, where allies gathered to solidify a strategy for ending the war in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration has so far been unable to reach an agreement with Pakistan to reopen key supply routes into Afghanistan that were closed after a Nov. 26 U.S. strike on two border posts that killed two dozen Pakistani troops.

Officials from the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization intend to use the summit to intensify pressure on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to agree to reopen supply routes, though hopes for an immediate breakthrough have faded.

Mr. Zardari was invited to attend the two-day summit at the last minute in hopes that would lead to a deal, but the two sides remain at odds over how much the U.S. and its allies should pay Pakistan per container.

The impasse quickly became an undercurrent of the summit, which already was confronting Mr. Obama with an election-year balancing act: rallying NATO leaders around a plan to remain engaged in Afghanistan through 2024 and spotlighting his commitment to withdraw U.S. troops from a war that has grown deeply unpopular at home.

On the streets of Chicago, a largely peaceful antiwar march turned violent at the end when a group of anarchist protesters charged a line of riot police blocking the road. Dozens of police in riot gear pushed back against the swarm of protesters and journalists, eventually swinging batons on demonstrators dressed in black leading the charge. Several protesters retreated with injuries, including at least four with bloodied heads.

Mr. Obama stressed Sunday that under the U.S. and NATO allies' plan, within the next 2.5 years "the Afghan war, as we understand it, is over." At the same time, speaking after meeting with President Hamid Karzi, Mr. Obama said summit attendees are "also painting a vision" for Afghanistan over the long term, one in which the U.S. will have a central role.

Mr. Karzai, in turn, said Afghanistan is looking forward to the time when it "is no longer a burden" to the international community and thanked the U.S. for the "support of your taxpayers' money" since the war began in the fall of 2001.

The NATO plan calls for giving Afghans the lead in combat operations around the middle of next year, part of a shift to a train-and-assist mission before most U.S. and other foreign troops leave by the end of 2014.

Douglas Lute, a senior White House adviser on Afghanistan, said the next six to 12 months in the transition process will be "telling" because the Afghans will take the lead in areas where the Taliban are the strongest, including areas along Pakistan.

Senior White House officials said Sunday they remained confident Afghan forces will be strong enough to take the lead by mid-2013 and for the U.S. to wrap up the combat mission by the end of 2014. But the officials also made clear the U.S. is drawing down in 2014 whether Afghans are ready to take the lead or not.

"The plan is set and the date is set. The end of 2014 is when this combat mission concludes," Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said.

When asked if the U.S. would still stick to the drawdown plan even if Afghan forces are not fully ready, Mr. Rhodes said "absolutely," adding that the White House is confident the plan in place will prepare Afghans to take over in that time frame.

Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, played down the impact of the closure of Pakistan's border crossings on the day-to-day military campaign. He said the U.S. doesn't know when a deal might be reached, but "sooner is better than later."

According to U.S. officials, Pakistan has proposed raising transit fees per container by as much as 3,000%, or 30-fold, a demand that Washington and its allies have rejected as excessive.

Reflecting Washington's frustration with Pakistan's position, U.S. officials have ruled out a one-on-one meeting between Messrs. Obama and Zardari on the sidelines of the summit. Instead, Mr. Zardari met Sunday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

A senior U.S. official said the pressure was meant to make Mr. Zardari "feel uncomfortable."

Pakistan's closure of the supply routes has forced the U.S. to expand an alternative northern distribution network, which winds its way from Baltic and Caspian ports through Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Transporting a container to Afghanistan through the northern network costs more than 21 times as much as it would to bring the same container through Pakistan before the supply routes were closed.

Underscoring the Pentagon's push for alternatives to Pakistan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta plans to meet Monday on the sidelines of the summit with leaders from the countries that form the backbone of the northern distribution network, including Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, senior defense officials said.

U.S. defense officials have sought to play down the immediate impact of Pakistan's border closure on military operations in Afghanistan. The U.S.'s NATO partners, however, are even more concerned about Pakistan's border closure because they don't have access to the northern distribution network.
"We could wait it out," a senior U.S. official said. "But our partners are feeling the pinch from the closure more than we are."

U.S. officials also say land routes through Pakistan are the most efficient and cost effective way to pull out heavy equipment. That makes opening the border with Pakistan will become increasingly important as the troop drawdown accelerates later this year, U.S. military officials say.

Mr. Obama has directed the military to draw down to 68,000 troops by September, although he has put off decisions about the next steps in the withdrawal until after the November presidential election.

Messrs. Obama and Karzai last met in Kabul just a few weeks ago when Mr. Obama made a surprise trip there to sign a strategic agreement outlining U.S. plans for engagement in Afghanistan through 2024, including support for Afghan security forces.

NATO allies want to gradually reduce the size of Afghan forces starting in 2015, when U.S. officials say they expect mainly special forces to remain in place to advise and assist the Afghans and to conduct high-priority hunt-and-kill missions in 2015 and beyond.

NATO members are coalescing around a plan to fund the Afghan security forces at about $4.1 billion a year, which would allow a force of about 228,000 people after 2015, down more than 120,000 from its peak.

Officials said the deal called for the Afghans to contribute $500 million, for NATO partners to pay $1.3 billion and for the U.S. and other countries to make up the rest.

The U.S. has struggled to firm up commitments, particularly from NATO members, on the $1.3 billion. But Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said, "We are far along on the path to achieving that objective." —Jack Nicas contributed to this article.

Write to Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com and Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com

At NATO summit on Afghanistan, few women's voices heard
Afghan women and international rights advocates are growing increasingly concerned that a decade-long focus on expanding Afghan women’s rights will go when US and NATO forces leave.
By Howard LaFranchi | Christian Science Monitor
With the US and NATO planning the departure of their forces from Afghanistan by December 2014, some Afghan women and international rights advocates are growing increasingly concerned that a decade-long focus on expanding Afghan women’s rights will go with them.

As NATO leaders – mostly men, it’s fair to say – assembled in Chicago to plan the transition to a fully Afghan-led security effort next year, another gathering – this one of Afghan and American women – focused on the need to protect Afghan women’s educational, social, and political gains over the last decade.

“We have to ensure that our commitment to Afghan women does not end as our troops come home,” said US Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D) of Illinois, at a conference Sunday that laid out an eight-point plan for safeguarding and strengthening Afghan women’s rights.

Amnesty International, which sponsored Sunday’s conference, called it a “shadow summit” in part because women, and Afghan women in particular, are largely absent from the NATO gathering taking place at the same time.

The Afghan delegation to the NATO summit led by President Hamid Karzai originally included no women, according to Frank Januzzi, director of Amnesty International’s Washington office. But at least two women were added, including one female member of the Afghan Parliament, when prominent Afghan women protested the absence.

“We were told the Chicago [NATO] summit has nothing to do with us women,” said Mahbouba Seraj, an Afghan women’s and children’s advocate, describing the explanation the Afghan presidential palace originally offered when asked about the all-male Chicago delegation. But she said she and other members of the Afghan Women’s Network considered it crucial that “we bring the voices of the voiceless women of Afghanistan.”

The eight steps called for by Amnesty International and endorsed in an open letter sent to President Obama and Mr. Karzai include significant participation by women in peace talks with the Taliban, institutionalized guarantees of women’s rights in any reconciliation agreements with the Taliban, creation of a fund targeted at sustaining and enhancing women’s rights, and specific training of security forces to protect women against violence, including domestic violence.

Concerns about the status and future of Afghan women come after a decade of considerable progress, yet as threats to that progress intensify – sometimes in shocking fashion.

About 3 million Afghan girls are in school – more than one-third of the school population – a decade after Taliban rule that kept girls home. But at the same time, the Taliban continue to ban girls from school in the areas they control, and they burn schools for girls and threaten and kill girls’ teachers in disputed areas. Earlier this year insurgents sickened the girls at one school by poisoning the water supply.

Women won more seats in the 2010 parliamentary elections than the law mandated, and a few women are judges and prosecutors.

Earlier this year, at a meeting of the US-Afghan Women’s Council, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called protecting Afghan women’s rights a “red line” for the US. But she acknowledged that forces are arrayed to weaken the progress already made.

“There are always going to be those, not only in Afghanistan, who want to roll back progress for women and impose second-class citizenship on women,” she said. But she insisted the US “will not waver on this point,” adding that “any peace that is attempted to be made by excluding more than half the population is no peace at all.”

Afghan women concur that warnings are multiplying of a backsliding on rights as the Western presence wanes. One example: a statement issued earlier this year by the country’s religious leaders, or Ulema Council, advocating segregation of the sexes in Afghan society, including in schools, a ban on women traveling unaccompanied by a male relative, and respect for polygamy. It was not refuted by Karzai.

“President Karzai is in a position where he has to appease the Taliban and also work with the international community,” said Manizha Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women.

“What we heard back from the palace was that this [Ulema statement] was only a consultation,” added Hasina Safi, executive director of the Afghan Women’s Education Center in Kabul. “There have been gains” for women, she added, but this example demonstrated how “they need to be more specific” and institutionalized.

Representative Schakowsky said such examples underscore exactly why women can’t simply be seen as the beneficiaries of rights granted by someone else, but must be a part of the discussions that deliberate on those rights – including at forums like the NATO Summit.

“It’s not just about women’s rights, it’s about women being part of the process that creates an enduring peace” in Afghanistan, she said. Citing a favorite saying, she added, “If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu. So women need to be there.”

Afghan Flash Floods Kill At Least 19 People
May 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan officials say flash floods triggered by torrential rains in northern Afghanistan have killed at least 19 people and left thousands homeless.

Local police said some 50 people were still missing after the flood hit on May 19 in the Sayyad and Shar-e Naw districts of the northern Sar-e Pol Province.

They added that thousands of people had taken shelter in mosques and schools.

Afghanistan's harshest winter in some 15 years saw unusually heavy snowfalls, with experts predicting that rivers overflowing by melting snow were likely to flood in the mountainous north during spring.

According to IMMAP, a data-analysis and mapping company, 15 percent of Afghanistan's population is at high risk of being affected.

In March, the UN humanitarian office for Afghanistan said at least 145 people were missing and "presumed dead" after an avalanche hit a remote village in northeastern Badakhshan province.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP

9 injured in suicide bombing in S Afghanistan
TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan, May 20 (Xinhua) -- At least nine people were killed Sunday when a suicide bombing rocked Tirin Kot city, the provincial capital of southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, a police source said.

"Six children were injured when a terrorist blew his explosive- laden vest up near the gate of the first police sub-district department in Tirin Kot city when a group of U.S. soldiers with the NATO-led troops were leaving the compound," a provincial police spokesman Farid Ayal told Xinhua.

Meantime, General Salim Ehsas, commander of 404 Maiwand Police Zone in southern Afghanistan, told Xinhua that three U.S. soldiers with the NATO-led troops were injured in the attack which occurred at around 11:30 a.m. local time.

The injured children were transferred to a hospital in provincial capital, spokesman Ayal said, adding the blast also damaged a number of shops and houses around the explosion site.

He blamed Taliban for the attack.

The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging a decade- long insurgency, announced on May 2 that they would launched a spring offensive starting from May 3 to target Afghan forces as well as U.S. and NATO troops across the country.

They asked the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants, while warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.

Taliban also carried out a suicide attack against a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province, killing 10 civilians and three Afghan policemen and injuring six others on Saturday afternoon.

Afghan Security Ministers Blame Iran, ISI For Unrest
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 20 May 2012
Iran is working with Pakistan's intelligence agency to stoke violence in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Interior's Deputy Minister of Security Abdul Rahman Rahman said Sunday.

Afghanistan's Senate summoned Rahman and Deputy Head of Operations at the National Directorate of Security Mohammad Yasin Zia to answer questions on the assassination of former senator and top peace envoy Arsala Rahmani, who was shot dead by unknown gunmen last week in Kabul.

Rahman said that insurgents, with the full support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have launched operation ‘Al-Farooq' which called for the targeting of high-ranking government officials, namely the members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council.

He claimed Iran was also involved following its pressure on the country's lawmakers to not approve the long-term agreement Afghanistan had made with the US.

"Iran is clearly interfering in Afghanistan and it tries to see violence escalate in Afghanistan in close collaboration with the ISI through supporting and equipping the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan insurgents," Rahman told the Senate.

Zia said that members of the Mullah Dadullah Front insurgent group members were newly-trained in both of the neighboring countries and were involved in propaganda against the Afghan government.

He said Afghan government officials had been sent phone messages threatening them to not approve the Afghan-US strategic agreement signed on May 2.
He also said that insurgents are trying to destabilize the country because of the Nato summit and Afghan-US deal.

"Both of the neighboring countries are trying to cause unrest among Afghan people by launching propaganda against the national interests of Afghanistan," Zia said.

He also accused Pakistan's ISI for being involved in the assassination of Rahmani, saying that ISI had asked Rahmani several times to leave Afghanistan and live in Pakistan.

"ISI had repeatedly requested Arsala Rahmani not to work with this government and leave Afghanistan and live in Pakistan," Zia told the MPs Sunday.

This comes as the NDS said Saturday that three members of the Mullah Dadullah group were arrested in Kabul yesterday in possession of suicide vest and rifles.

The Mullah Dadullah Front claimed the responsibility of Rahmani's assassination, according to Pakistani newspaper Express-Tribune.

Afghanistan-Australia enduring partnership;a commitment to our shared security
The Australian By Nasir Andisha May 21, 2012
On 17th April 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a policy speech outlining Australia’s engagement in Afghanistan through and beyond the transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces. This process will be completed by the end of 2014.

She touched on the background of the mission in Afghanistan and reminded Australians that it was and is in this country’s national security interests to be part of the mission along with the United States and other NATO allies.

The Prime Minister pointed tothe historic successes we’ve achieved togetherin the past decade, including the removal of Osama Bin Laden, and the training and equipping of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) who are today in a better position to look after the security of their own people independently.

While some rushed to frame the speech as an announcement of early withdrawal of the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) from Afghanistan, the speech was in fact a reaffirmation of Australia’s continuous commitment and support to Afghanistan’s long-term security and development. The PM was clear in Australia’s pledge to contribute funding to the long-term sustainment of the ANSF beyond 2014, an enduring commitment that the Afghan government is vying to receive from other allies for the period of 2015-2025, by which time Afghanistan will hopefully be able to fully fund our security forces from domestic revenues.

After 10 years of the international community’s presence in Afghanistan of which only past three years had meaningful policy and funding focus, we Afghans are determined to take full ownership and leadership of our own affairs. In doing so, we are in the process of taking over the security responsibilities; continuing our efforts in the framework of an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process and actively advancing bilateral and multilateral cooperation at the regional and international levels.

Building on the achievements of the past ten years, the Afghan people are determined to overcome the current challenges, secure peace and provide a better future for our children.

As we proceed, enduring and concrete international support will remain vital to our success. The international community’s firm commitment to Afghanistan for the decade beyond 2014 will assure the Afghan people that they will not be abandoned once again. Any repeat of the international community’s mistake of the 1990s when Afghanistan was left to international terrorists and their supporters in the region will undoubtedly result in the repeat of 9/11 in the U.S., 7/7 in London and Bali in Indonesia. A firm commitment to the country beyond 2014, on the other hand, will send the right message to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their supporters that, contrary to their calculations, time is not on their side.

Cognizant of this fact, Afghanistan and Australia negotiated a “Comprehensive Long-term Partnership” which has been signed by President Karzai and Prime Minister Gillard in Chicago yesterday the 20th of May 2012.

This partnership document creates a framework for bilateral cooperation in the political, security, development, trade and investment, immigration and humanitarian affairs and cultural and people to people contacts for a period of ten years.

This partnership builds on our historical relationship, shared interests in peace and security and common values such as respect for the sovereignty and independence, cooperation in international and regional forums, respecting and advancing democracy, human rights and promoting and protecting the rights of Afghan women and girls.

It will guide and further strengthen a young but resilient bilateral relationship between Australia and Afghanistan over the next decade.

Majority of the Australian troopers will be home by the end of 2014, but they will have left Afghanistan a transformed country: a young democracy that is a long-term strategic ally in a key region of the world.

The Afghanistan-Australia enduring long-term partnership ensures ongoing support to such an Afghanistan and further strengthens the solid foundation of friendship and cooperation between our two countries.

Nasir Andisha is the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Canberra. nasirandisha@gmail.com

India Consortium Step Closer To Iron Ore Mining In Afghanistan
May 21, 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
NEW DELHI – A consortium of seven Indian companies has received a letter of intent from the Afghanistan government, bringing it a step closer to mining iron ore in the country's Hajigak province, Indian Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma said Monday.

The group won the right to mine three iron-ore blocks in Afghanistan in November.

The letter of intent is an initial agreement to be followed by a formal joint venture pact.

"We hope to sign a joint venture agreement [with the Afghan government] soon," said C. S. Verma, chairman of the Steel Authority of India Ltd. (500103.BY), which leads the consortium.

The Indian group also includes state-run NMDC Ltd. (526371.BY) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd., and private sector firms JSW Steel Ltd. (500228.BY), Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. (532286.BY), JSW Ispat Steel Ltd. (500305.BY) and Monnet Ispat & Energy Ltd. (513446.BY).

Verma said SAIL is also in the final stages of discussions about building a steel plant in Afghanistan.

Indian steel companies are desperate to secure iron ore and coking coal as the cost of imported fuel continues to rise. Access to new reserves in India often involves extensive litigation and delays in receiving environmental and other regulatory clearance.

Hajigak's iron ore mines have estimated reserves of 1.8 billion metric tons.

Separately, SAIL hopes to complete a INR720 billion ($13.21 billion) expansion of capacity at its plants across the country by June 2013 that would raise its annual steel production capacity to 23 million metric tons from 14 million tons, Verma said.

He said the company had made progress in talks with South Korea's POSCO (005490.SE) about forming a joint venture in eastern India with a production capacity of 3 million tons a year.

Verma didn't disclose the likely stakes in the joint venture.

The joint venture with POSCO would give SAIL access to technology that would help it access vast reserves of low-grade iron ore at its Jharkhand mines.

The venture would give POSCO a foothold in eastern India, where it has sought to set up a steel plant for the past six years.

Separately, Verma said a consortium of state-run companies formed to acquire coal assets overseas would have to be recast if Coal India Ltd. (533278.BY)--which enjoys a near monopoly on the coal business in India--proceeded with plans to leave the consortium.

A Coal India executive last week said the company planned to leave the consortium. While SAIL wants to acquire coking coal needed to make steel, Coal India wants thermal coal needed to produce power, a coal ministry official said.

Afghan Poppy Blight Adds Uncertainty to Course of War
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV May 20, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's poppy crop—the source of most of the world's illicit opiates—appears to have suffered a devastating failure this year, U.S. and Afghan officials say, in a development that is likely to affect the course of the war as U.S.-led forces withdraw.

U.S. commanders and Afghan officials, who ascribe the poor harvest to blight, expect the Taliban to reel as opium revenues dry up in coming months. "It's a blow to the insurgency," says Kandahar provincial Gov. Tooryalai Wesa. The provincial government of Helmand—which accounts for half of the country's opium cultivation—has hailed the blight as a "divine decree" by Allah himself.

The small crop, however, is also certain to bankrupt thousands of ordinary farmers, possibly pushing them to join the insurgency. Already, three farmers have committed suicide in Helmand because of the failed poppy harvest, local officials say.

Opium prices, meanwhile, have soared. A kilogram of dry opium now sells at the farm gate for more than $300, up from some $200 in March, and just $80 or so in 2009, according to United Nations surveys. Such a high price is "scary," as it's likely to lead to increased opium cultivation next year, while also bringing a windfall to large-scale dealers who hoarded last year's stocks, cautions Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Afghanistan representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

"This is definitely not good news at all Those who already are hedging will definitely gain," Mr. Lemahieu says. "Who will lose out on this? The poor farmers, who often have engaged in expensive loans against the opium to be harvested. If you think security and stability, you can see the frustration and the anger building up."

Whether a blessing or a disaster, the poppy blight injects another complication to the U.S.-led coalition's plans to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces and withdraw most of their own troops by 2014, a transition discussed Sunday at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Chicago. Afghanistan suffered another, apparently less virulent, poppy blight in 2010—the year that turned out to be the deadliest for U.S.-led coalition troops since America's longest foreign war began.

Afghanistan was virtually poppy-free in 2001, the year when the country's Taliban rulers eradicated opium cultivation in a failed bid to win international recognition, and the U.N. disputes American assertions that the Taliban are the main beneficiaries of the Afghan narcotics trade. "The narrative of the Taliban as the major player is something I do not take," says Mr. Lemahieu. "The drug traffickers are not on the side of the Taliban, they are in collusion with the Taliban."

These days, Afghanistan produces some 90% of the world's opium-based narcotics, and Mr. Lemahieu's office estimates that the area under poppy cultivation increased in 2012 once again, from 131,000 hectares last year. Nine-tenths of this cultivation is concentrated in just four southern and southwestern provinces where the harvesting season ended this month: Helmand, Kandahar, Farah and Uruzgan.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Huggins, the commander of the coalition's Regional Command-South that includes Kandahar and Uruzgan, said in an interview that the opium yield in his region this year is estimated as low as one-sixth of last year's levels.

In Helmand, the yields are off by 75% or more in certain areas, according to U.S. Marine Col. Tim Oliver, head of intelligence for the coalition's Regional Command-Southwest, which includes that province.

"Illegal taxation is a principal financial driver for the insurgency," Col. Oliver said. "Less opium has meant less revenue, more competition between insurgent groups for resources, and less cooperation from a population hard-pressed economically from the failure of what for many farmers is their principal cash crop."

The blight, military commanders say, also explains this fighting season's pickup in Taliban activity in the traditional poppy-growing districts of southern and southwestern Afghanistan that were the focus of President Obama's troop surge. "They are suffering from a relatively poor poppy harvest, so they are protecting what they can," Gen. Huggins says.

In addition to the blight, the poppy farms were affected this year by an unusually cold winter and unseasonal rains. In Helmand, improved government presence also pushed the cultivation to less fertile areas on the periphery of the main farming belt, zones where poppies needed artificial irrigation and heavy use of pesticides.

Just as during the previous blight, this year's poor crop has sparked conspiracy theories about the U.S.'s allegedly secretly spraying the fields with unknown poisons that are destroying the crops. The U.N. checked similar claims in 2010, but found that the poppy, apricot and apple crops that year had been infected by unrelated diseases, Mr. Lemahieu says.

Still, many villagers already are blaming the Americans, says Abdul Baqi, a 26-year-old from the Panjway district of Kandahar, one of the province's main poppy-growing areas. "People are worried and angry," he says. "They have borrowed the money, and they can't repay the debts."

Helmand's provincial government said earlier this month that a farmer in the Now Zad district hanged himself because of such debts after his poppy crop failed. A mother and a son in the same district also committed suicide because the bad poppy harvest meant they couldn't raise money for his wedding payment to the bride's family. —Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

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