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Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Falling in 2012, U.N. Says
By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times May 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilian casualties in Afghanistan dropped significantly in the first four months of 2012, and a smaller proportion of the deaths was attributed to coalition and Afghan forces compared with a year ago, the United Nations director in the country said on Wednesday.
At a news conference, Jan Kubis, the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, said 579 civilian deaths and 1,216 civilian injuries had been recorded in the first four months of 2012. The combined figures represent a 21 percent reduction from the same period last year.
The United Nations said 9 percent of the casualties were attributed to pro-government forces, which includes both international troops and the Afghan security forces, and 79 percent to antigovernment forces including the Taliban. Twelve percent of the casualties were unattributed. Last year, the international troops and Afghan forces were responsible for 14 percent of the casualties. The percentage caused by the Taliban remained almost unchanged.
“Regrettably, unfortunately the antigovernment forces, they don’t show any improvement in protection for civilians,” Mr. Kubis said. “They issue statements about protecting civilians, but in practice they use such indiscriminate destructive weapons,” he said, referring to the use of land mines, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.
The figures released Wednesday represent the first period showing a reduction in civilian casualties since 2007, when the United Nations began tracking the statistics. However, human rights officials were cautious about the sustainability of reduced casualties since it was a particularly harsh winter, especially compared with 2011, which was a relatively mild winter, said James Rodehaver, the acting head of the United Nations’s human rights office here.
“The downturn in the number of armed clashes and the impact of the harsh weather is much more likely to have impact on Taliban operations than on government or ISAF operations,” said Mr. Rodehaver, referring to the International Security Assistance Force.
He noted that in absolute numbers, the casualties were lower for the Taliban and antigovernment forces as well as for international and Afghan forces, but that the Taliban still were responsible for a preponderance of the deaths and injuries.
The midyear report, which is due in July and will reflect the fighting in May and part of June, will give a better sense of the reasons for the reduction and whether it is mostly a reflection of the harsher winter weather and delayed fighting season.
“The seasonal impact is unclear, and that’s why we are carefully looking at the last few months as well as May to get a better impression of what is attributable to greater caution and what is attributable to harsh weather conditions,” he said.
Eight Afghan Police Killed In Taliban Attack
May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Reports from northeastern Afghanistan say eight Afghan police were killed overnight during a four-hour battle against Taliban militants who attacked their hilltop post.
Abdul Maroof Rasekh, a spokesman for Badakhshan's provincial governor, says militants stormed the post in the province's Warduj district late on May 29.
He said two Taliban were killed in the fighting, while one police officer remains missing.
In a separate incident, three Afghan government employees were reported killed by a roadside bomb on May 30 while traveling to work in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
In another incident, NATO says a soldier serving with the international coalition was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan.
Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa
Afghan forces kill 25 Taliban fighters
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan national army have killed 25 Taliban fighters during a cleanup operation in the southern Helmand province since Tuesday, army spokesman in the province Mohammad Rasoul Zazai said Wednesday.
"The operation was launched in Sangin district on Tuesday and so far 25 Taliban rebels have been killed and five others injured," Zazai told Xinhua.
He added that it was an independent operation conducted by Afghan soldiers and would continue until the area is swept off from the insurgents.
Spokesman for provincial administration Daud Ahmadi said that Afghan soldiers have killed 25 insurgents in Sangin district over the past two days.
Former Kyrgyz ambassador proposes gradual expansion of SCO
BISHKEK, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become a prominent force in the world and should take a gradual approach to expansion, says a former Kyrgyz ambassador to China.
After more than 10 years of development, the SCO has achieved significant recognition not only in the region but throughout the world, Erlan Abdyldayev told Xinhua ahead of an SCO summit scheduled for early June in Beijing.
The SCO has signed a significant number of documents that define the interaction and cooperation in many areas and now serves as a platform to discuss the most important and vital issues of Central Asia, he said.
Expansion of the organization is necessary, he said, adding that "SCO member countries should take the right decision by going slowly, step by step, to the adoption of new members."
"I argue for the expansion of the organization, but you need to expand not for the sake of expansion, but for the efficiency of the organization: its weight and influence in regional and international affairs," he said.
As previously announced, one of the major themes of the Beijing summit is the issue of granting observer status to Afghanistan and the status of dialogue partner to Turkey.
These are long-awaited issues, Abdyldayev said.
On the issue of Afghanistan, its active participation in the SCO framework will help ensure stability and security in the region given its current situation and the planned withdrawal of international forces from the country by 2014, he said.
"All the SCO member countries should do everything to ensure Afghanistan is not posing any threat to the region," Abdyldayev said.
Founded in 2001, the SCO groups China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
For Pakistani truckers, NATO route row is all about the money
Reuters By Imtiaz Shah Wed May 30, 2012
KARACHI - Pakistani truck drivers who deliver supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan seethe whenever they recall a cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year.
Despite their anger, financial survival outweighs nationalist sentiment and the shame of helping what many see as the enemy. Peer-to-Peer Lending Peer-to-Peer Lending Looking for an alternative to the high street banks? Find out more
The drivers hope that talks between the United States and Pakistan on reopening the routes, which were closed six months ago in protest over the raid, will soon produce a breakthrough.
They are eager to get back on the road, even though they will again risk running into attacks by Taliban militants who violently oppose the movement of goods to NATO through Pakistan.
Malik Abdul Raoof, 23, recalled how militants in dark clothes clutching AK-47 assault rifles often stopped and threatened him near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"They asked 'why do you take supplies to the infidel Americans?'. They said 'you are an American informer'," he told Reuters at a massive makeshift truckers' parking lot that stretches for miles (km) along the coast in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi.
"They made me recite Koranic verses, quizzed me on how Muslims pray. When they let me go they told me to grow a beard. I am scared and I don't like it but I have to earn (money)."
The al Qaeda-linked Taliban routinely open fire on trucks. Casualties are limited, but the attacks are dramatic. Bullets puncture fuel tanks, igniting huge fires.
Militants also set off homemade bombs to destroy container trucks packed with food, clothes and other items for NATO.
Over 1,000 vehicles have been destroyed by militants or criminal gangs in the last decade, according to the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association.
Still, thousands of drivers are itching to get back to work to fetch 20,000-25,000 rupees ($215-269) per round trip.
To break the monotony, they play cards on cloth sheets spread on the dusty ground, listen to music and repair and paint their run-down vehicles. Some just sleep the time away in the shade of their trucks.
"DESPICABLE, FORBIDDEN" INCOME
The November NATO attack and Pakistan's closure of the routes - which account for just under one-third of all cargo that NATO moves into Afghanistan - plunged ties between Islamabad and Washington to their lowest point in years.
The supply lines are considered vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014.
U.S. and Pakistani negotiators are deadlocked on transit fees for container and fuel trucks. Pakistani officials have denied reports Islamabad is demanding unreasonable amounts.
Idle drivers care little about Pakistan's stance, or efforts to repair ties with the United States, the source of billions of dollars in aid. It all comes down to their own bottom line.
"The United States is responsible for killing our soldiers. The culprits should be shot dead," said Mohammed Nawaz, 24, looking across a sea of trucks. "I consider the money made from driving NATO trucks despicable, forbidden. But I'm desperate."
NATO, for its part, has been diversifying its supply lines into Afghanistan.
After a string of disruptions, the alliance and the U.S. military decided to reduce their reliance on Pakistan, turning instead to routes that pass through either Russia or the Caucasus across central Asia into northern Afghanistan.
That could spell bad news for those drivers who have become shady entrepreneurs of danger along the two routes through Pakistan - one across the Khyber Pass to Kabul, and another crossing the Baluchistan province to Kandahar.
Senior officials at the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association said some destroy their own trucks and claim it was a Taliban attack to collect insurance money.
"The fight is all about money, at every level. The governments, the Americans, the workers (truck drivers)," said Shafiq Kakar, a senior member of the association.
Some truckers stage explosions and pretend NATO goods are lost in attacks, then sell part of the consignment to traders, said association officials.
"I am praying that NATO supplies are resumed soon so that my business can take off again," said one trader in the northwestern city of Peshawar who does business with corrupt truckers and contractors.
"A lot of the material stolen from containers, especially uniforms and boots, is (even) bought by the Taliban's people."
(1 U.S. dollar = 92.8 Pakistani rupees)
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by John Chalmers and Daniel Magnowski)
'I don't think we have been defeated'
Bruce Riedel, one of the architects of the US-Afghanistan strategy, is optimistic about the success of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. He talks to DW and explains that the real problem is Pakistan.
DW 29/05/2012
Bruce Riedel is Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, a former CIA Analyst, a counter-terrorism expert, and the author of "Pakistan: A Hard Country; Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad."
DW: Is Afghanistan NATO's Vietnam?
Bruce Riedel: No. NATO is leaving an Afghanistan that will be able to meet NATO's key strategic objectives - prevent al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base for further terrorist attacks in North America and Europe and prevent the Taliban from being able to control the country. I think that the formula that has been agreed to in Chicago provides us with both a responsible exit for our troops and a long-term strategic commitment to Afghanistan, and an Afghan army that will prevent al Qaeda and the Taliban from again being able to take over Afghanistan.
Many observers have their doubts about that. The army has extremely high attrition rates and very few units capable of operating without international support.
I think the situation is a bit different from the bleak picture you paint. The Afghan security forces, which were neglected by NATO for eight years, have, in the last three years, grown to about 350,000 in strength. The NATO commander in the field, General [John] Allen, believes that the army's progress - both qualitatively and quantitatively - has been better than anticipated. No one knows how well they will do after 2014. That's the future and inherently unknowable, but there is no reason to believe that they can't provide sufficient security to keep the major cities and urban areas, as well as much of the north and centre of the country, free from Taliban control. The Taliban are not 10 feet tall. They are basically an illiterate Pashtun army that survives primarily because of Pakistani support.
Trends suggest the opposite: Civilian casualties have been rising for years, as have US casualties with the exception of 2011. And the International Crisis Group reports that the Taliban have expanded the area under their control.
The data NATO has put out is quite different. Civilian casualties are a problem, but today more parts of Afghanistan - Kandahar, Helmand and other provinces - are regarded by NATO as being reasonably secure than three years ago. President Obama in Chicago said that the momentum of the Taliban has been reversed in the last three years and that makes possible the withdrawal of combat forces from the United States and other NATO countries. I guess at the end of the day I am more willing to put my confidence behind the president than the ICG.
Admitting defeat would not have been an alternative in an election year.
I don't think we have been defeated. The NATO alliance is on the path to achieve its minimal security interest, which is to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be a base for terrorist operations in the future. In addition to that, the agreement that we have signed with the Afghans will allow the United States to continue to have access to Afghan military bases for the next decade in order to carry out counterterrorist missions in the region. That's an important accomplishment as well. It provides for a long-term strategic agreement between Washington and Kabul that allows us to be certain that we can carry out missions, like the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and drone attacks from Afghan bases until 2025.
Has Afghanistan become a base for attacks on Pakistan?
Well, Pakistan continues to harbor the leadership of the Taliban. A NATO study based on the interrogation of 4,000 Taliban prisoners concluded that the ISI (Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence) knows the whereabouts of every Taliban leader and meets regularly with them, including Mullah Omar. But Afghanistan has become a base for counterterrorist missions inside Pakistan because it has become clear that the Pakistani government will not take firm action against terrorists on its own. Three of the top five most wanted terrorists of the world are in Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed, the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, even appears on Pakistani television every week and holds mass rallies.
Obama has stepped up the use of drone attacks in Pakistan. Moral and legal questions apart: Don't these killings destabilize Pakistan?
I think we have a stark choice. In the absence of Pakistan being willing to control the terrorist Frankenstein it has helped create on its territory, we are going to have to take measures to disrupt and dismantle that. We don't have the luxury of just hoping that the terrorists will be nice boys and not carry out attacks against the United States or Europe. The drone attacks have had a devastating effect upon al Qaeda's operational capabilities. Al Qaeda is a much diminished force in Pakistan today compared to what it was when the president came into office in 2009. That is almost entirely due to unilateral American counterterrorist missions. We've gotten virtually no support from the government of Pakistan. Pakistan has been more of an obstacle than a friend and assistant in the fight against Al Qaeda in the last decade.
You played a significant role in shaping current US policy by chairing Obama's review of the Afghan strategy in 2009. What were the main changes you suggested?
There were two fundamental changes. One was to recognize that Pakistan is the more serious problem and that Pakistan's tolerance, if not complicity, in supporting terrorism is a major threat not only to the United States but to the NATO alliance and to other countries as well. And we stepped up efforts to try to deal with that terrorist problem. Secondly, the recognition that the effort to build up an Afghan army had been under-resourced and underfinanced until 2008 and as a consequence the Taliban had found a vacuum. We were in a position in 2001 and 2002 to stabilize Afghanistan with a relatively small number of foreign troops and with significant economic assistance programs. Instead, we completely failed to do that. The Bush administration was obsessed with its Iraq mission and the problem the Obama administration had when it came into office in 2009 was that it did not have a time machine - it could not go back and fix the mistakes of the past. Our solution was to focus on building up an Afghan army stro
ng and capable enough to deal with the Taliban without foreign combat troops but with continued financial and other support from outside. This is not a perfect solution to the problem of Afghanistan. The civil war between the Taliban and the legitimately elected, internationally recognized government is likely to go on afterwards.
What will Afghanistan look like 10 years from now?
The worst case would be that the civil war continues to grind along and that the Taliban control parts of the south and east of the country. That would be a tragedy because it would mean that the horror of the war Afghanistan has lived through for 30 years would go on for another decade. The best outcome would be if the Taliban would agree to enter into a political process and you could have a ceasefire and a process of political reconciliation. And outside interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs would come to an end, as we let the Afghan's settle their problems through political process and not through violence.
Interview: Dennis Stute Editor: Anne Thomas
Their task is to clear Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold and a key prize because it straddles the major roads to Kabul and the insurgent supply routes into Pakistan.
But the American troops are challenged by a stubborn enemy and a short time to finish the job.
The first casualty happened before the mission even started: An Afghan army soldier, Burhan Muddin, was standing watch at his combat outpost when a Taliban gunman slipped out of a crowd and opened fire.
A single bullet pierced the Afghan soldier's chest.
Three Afghan soldiers rushed him to a nearby American base, then struggled to carry him into a medical station. Doctors and nurses worked furiously but couldn't save him.
Muddin was just 25. His body was carefully wrapped in a white sheet and placed in an ambulance. His fellow soldiers embraced the Americans and wept.
Hours later, in the dead of night, some of the same soldiers were ready for the mission: an assault — along with American troops — on a village in Ghazni province. A Taliban stronghold, Bagi Kheyl is just 10 minutes away from their post by helicopter.
A long line of soldiers from the Afghan National Army, or ANA, bobs along in the pitch black. The occasional flashlight illuminates their dark eyes and bearded faces.
They're eager to avenge their friend.
"If I get any bad guy over there, I will kill him. Because they killed one of our guys," says one.
Key To Taliban Supply Routes
But it's about more than revenge: The Taliban hold sway in Ghazni province. They've killed dozens of Afghan troops. The Taliban lob mortars and rockets into the small American outposts. They intimidate the people in villages like Bagi Kheyl.
Just before getting on his helicopter for the night mission, Capt. Jared Larpenteur, Delta Company commander, stood in front of a map and described the challenge posed by the Taliban.
"They're coming from Pakistan and [Afghanistan's] Paktika province with their men, weapons and equipment across the pass. And there's a lot of safe havens in here that they're using to stage and move their logistical supplies north and south," he explains.
Highway 1, the country's only main road, travels north to Kabul and south to Kandahar. Ghazni is crucial because it straddles the Taliban's supply lines.
But when the Americans sent thousands more troops to Afghanistan, they didn't come to the area — until now.
Before the Americans arrived just a couple of months ago, a Polish brigade handled security there. But the Poles, says Larpenteur, only served as something of a highway patrol.
"The Polish mostly when they were here stayed on Highway 1 and never really got off Highway 1 into the villages at all. The villages haven't seen any type of ANA or U.S. forces in over five years," he says. "We went to one village out here, and they thought we were Russians."
It's in these villages that the Taliban stockpile their weapons and bomb-making materials. Each time Larpenteur and his men head out, they are met with gunfire or come across roadside bombs.
Seven soldiers from his brigade already have been killed. Many others have been wounded. And on a recent night — they're expecting to go up against the Taliban again.
Taliban Infiltration Of Village
Massive helicopters lift off in the darkness, stuffed with Delta Company's soldiers and their Afghan partners.
Minutes later they land in a field and pour out into the swirling dust.
The soldiers regroup, and for the next hour move quietly toward the village of Bagi Kheyl, arriving just as the eastern sky begins to glow.
The soldiers walk through the mud-walled village, single-file on each side of the dirt road. Village men — most of them over 50 — emerge from their compounds. They watch the intruders, standing and staring.
The soldiers question some of the men. One of them talks about how the Taliban infiltrate the village. They slip in on motorcycles or come in at night in small groups, he says. They ask for food, a place to stay. They take over the mosque and broadcast a warning.
"Whenever the Taliban come in here, in this village, they are calling on the loudspeakers of the mosque. If anybody talks to the ANA guys or American guys, I can cut your head," the villager says.
The mission continues. The soldiers fan out. The Americans instruct the Afghan soldiers to search a mosque, which only Afghans are permitted to enter.
The search turns up rocket-propelled grenades hidden in a wall, along with bomb-making components inside a coffin. The soldiers also find rifles and radios.
The equipment is gathered in a pile and destroyed with American explosives. Another cache is found, piled up and destroyed.
Success Difficult To Measure
Fourteen hours later, the mission is over. There were no Taliban. Still, Enayat Halakeyar, an Afghan sergeant, is pleased.
"That was so good; we found a lot of things and blew up two, three IEDs, that was so good. We are so happy," he says.
It's been one more day in the war in Afghanistan. One village searched — out of a countless number spread across Ghazni province and the country.
The Afghan and American soldiers head back to base under a blazing sun. There are no helicopters now. They'll trudge the five miles through fields and villages. They worry the Taliban are watching. Most patrols come under fire when they leave a village.
But they make it back safely to their base, which is rimmed with razor wire, sandbagged walls and guard towers.
These soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., will spend another four months in the same routine. But they don't have much time to clear this Taliban stronghold.
The officer in charge of the mission is Col. Mark Stock. He sits in his office in a long, plywood building at a base called Warrior.
"At the end of the day, it's not going to be our success, it's going to be the Afghans' success," Stock says.
When he leaves in September, a smaller American combat unit will replace his soldiers, along with training teams to help the struggling Afghan forces.
"What keeps me up at night is how we transition this, and part of that transition is us backing off and enabling our partners to do it without us and still be successful," he says.
Across a dirt road from the colonel's headquarters sit the remains of an old British fort, its 20-foot walls worn like a sandcastle at the beach. The fortress dates back to the mid-19th century — another time when other English-speaking soldiers tried to make a difference in Afghanistan.
Afghan deal must come with strings attached
The Age By Amin Saikal Opinion May 30, 2012
On the sidelines of the Chicago meeting on Afghanistan, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, signed a strategic partnership agreement to define Australia's role in the war-torn country beyond 2014.
It is a historic development. No one could possibly have envisaged, until recently, that one day Afghanistan and Australia would become strategic partners.
But what does the agreement mean?
Under the agreement, Australia has pledged to assist Afghanistan to the tune of $100 million each year over the next three years and committed itself to increase the amount to $250 million a year by 2015-16. The bulk of this assistance is designed to help the country in the area of security and social and infrastructural development, as part of an exit strategy that will still enable Australia to remain focused on fighting terrorism and stemming the tide of people smugglers and drug traffickers.
Gillard has joined other Western leaders in praising the significant gains that have been made in Afghanistan and more specifically in Uruzgan province, from where Australian forces will start withdrawing from midway through next year.
However, whatever the assessments of our political leaders, which are often driven by the need to provide justification, Afghanistan remains in dire straits.
The Karzai government remains feeble and corrupt, with a great deal of foreign aid ending up in the pockets or bank accounts of individuals and dummy organisations - $4.6 billion found its way from Kabul to Dubai last year alone.
Meanwhile, as the Taliban and their supporters, including Pakistan's military intelligence, have increasingly grown confident of a final victory in one form or another, they have shown little or no interest in a political settlement.
In this situation, Australia cannot afford to be too sanguine about its strategic partnership with Afghanistan.
This is not to say that Australia should not continue to help the Afghan people rebuild their lives and country. But it must make sure that its post-2014 role is well pitched and tied to a number of clear goals that can be beneficial to the Afghan people rather than to the industry that Afghanistan has become.
The Afghanistan industry is today a ''milking cow'' for a range of interests inside and outside the country, encompassing not only military-related industries, but also many governmental and non-governmental organisations outside this complex.
Australia's future role could prove useful if it focuses on those areas where it can make a difference. The first is to link its assistance to specific policy actions on the part of the Karzai leadership to implement serious political and electoral reforms for a clean and credible presidential election before the end of 2014, without Karzai seeking to prolong his ineffective rule beyond the two constitutional terms that he would have served by then.
The second is to assist with enhancing the processes of judicial reform and the fight against corruption, led by Australian-advised but independent Afghan commissions.
The third is to invest heavily in education, with an emphasis on the younger Afghan generation. The future of Afghanistan will depend on the management skills and diverse contributions of this generation, which has the potential to be far less amenable to the corruption, nepotism and patronage that has marred the present generation in power.
The fourth is to help with improving health services. Australia could build dozens of clinics, run at first by Australian specialists and subsequently by Australian-trained Afghans, in relatively safe areas. Many of these clinics should focus on combating trachoma from which many Afghans suffer, especially in western Afghanistan.
An Australian role focusing on these areas will serve the interests of Afghanistan and Australia. Otherwise, the danger is that Australia's future aid could prove to be as unproductive as its past efforts in enabling Afghanistan to transform into a stable and democratic state, which the US and its allies had originally promised.
Amin Saikal is a professor of political science and director of the centre for Arab and Islamic studies at the Australian National university, and author of a new edition of Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival to be published next month.
Afghan Militia Wins Uneasy Peace
A Local Force Drives Out the Taliban; Kabul Is Wary of 'Creating Warlords'
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV May 29, 2012
QALA-E-ZAL, Afghanistan - Tribal elders competed in offering praises to militia chieftain Nabi Gechi as they gathered last week in his remote Afghan village that, until a year ago, teemed with the Taliban.
"We are so confident of our security that I no longer even lock my door at night," said gray-bearded Ghulam Sarwar.
"If Commander Nabi were to leave, the Taliban would be back here in no time," echoed Hajji Walid Mohammed.
As U.S.-led coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan and transition to an advisory mission next year, they hold up the successes of Mr. Gechi's militia and others like it in the northern Kunduz province as a model to secure the country.
"So far, this works pretty well," says German Army Lt. Col. Heiko Bohnsack, commander of the coalition's Task Force Kunduz, which helps oversee the militias. "If you look into Afghanistan's past, there have always been armed men providing security—and seldom have the Afghans accepted the central power to provide this."
This is what worries the government of President Hamid Karzai. Wary of how warlord militias plunged Afghanistan into a civil war after the Soviet-backed regime collapsed in 1992, Mr. Karzai has ordered the dissolution of independent village militias that, though funded by the U.S., operate outside Kabul's control.
A 50-year-old former owner of a fish and kebab restaurant, Mr. Gechi has emerged as the only real authority in Qala-e-Zal, a district of rolling wheat fields and orchards nestled along the Tajikistan border. "Whenever any Taliban are sighted here," he said as he held court last week, "the people and the elders come right away to inform me, and we take care of them."
Mr. Gechi's militia counts 240 armed men—some of them former insurgents—in a district with fewer than 20 regular policemen. Dozens of commanders have raised militias elsewhere in Kunduz since late 2010, chasing the Taliban away from much of this strategic province, which straddles the coalition's main supply routes.
Some irregulars in Kunduz belong to the Afghan Local Police, a village-self defense program established by U.S. Special Forces, whose men receive three weeks of training and are paid through the Afghan government. Mr. Karzai reluctantly acquiesced to the ALP initiative in 2010, after receiving guarantees of government control.
Others—such as Mr. Gechi's force—operate under the Critical Infrastructure Protection program, or CIP, that was pioneered by the German-run coalition command in northern Afghanistan jointly with the U.S. Mr. Karzai, who said he was unaware of CIP's existence until being told by a German reporter in December, ordered it disbanded at the time.
Mr. Gechi's men and other CIP militias, however, continue to receive U.S. funding at $150 per gunman a month. The CIP contract in Kunduz, where they operate in the Qala-e-Zal and Aliabad districts, was recently extended until the fall. Coalition officials say they plan to implement Mr. Karzai's ban by rolling the CIP forces into the Local Police program, as has been done in another Kunduz district.
This proliferation of anti-Taliban irregulars, some under loose Afghan government control and others a law unto themselves, has also led to killings, robberies and rapes by the fighters, according to human-rights groups.
CIP "is another example of the existing parallel structures which have created a gap between the Afghan people and government institutions, and which instill fear and insecurity," said Mr. Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi.
Afghan officials say they intend to prosecute those charged with abuses, something that has rarely happened so far.
Kunduz Gov. Mohammed Anwar Jekdalek, Mr. Karzai's appointee, says Mr. Gechi is considered one of the province's better-behaved militia leaders.
"But even if we see him as a hero, problems are inevitable because his people can't read and write," Gov. Jekdalek says. "On one hand we say we are against warlordism, and on the other hand we are creating warlords."
The ideal solution, he suggests, would be to replace these militias with regular police. That is unlikely, however, as the Afghan National Police already is near its manpower ceiling—and is slated to start cutting its numbers once international funding shrinks after 2014.
So, despite his reservations, Gov. Jekdalek says CIP must continue for now. "If it's dissolved, some of these men will become criminals, and the Taliban will return and attempt to control the area once again," he says. "If we ourselves cannot pay their salaries and the foreigners stop, there will be big trouble."
Mr. Gechi, who returned here in 2009 to take up arms against the Taliban, says he would love to go back to his riverside restaurant on the Uzbek border.
Mr. Gechi's fighters, however, aren't as keen to lay down arms. "If we are no longer paid, there will be problems," says 38-year-old Said Mohammad. "There won't be any security."
A member of the ethnic Turkmen community that dominates Qala-e-Zal, Mr. Gechi fought the Taliban in the mountains near Kunduz before the 2001 U.S. invasion.
As he returned to the area on the request of villagers three years ago, the district was under such Taliban sway that he had to hike for seven hours during the night to sneak into his own village.
There, with the help of tribal elders, he began the resistance against the Taliban with two motorbikes and five foot soldiers. As his militia grew, Mr. Gechi received a police pickup truck and some heavy weapons from Afghanistan's intelligence service, he says.
Then, last spring, the German military, using American-provided funds, drove here to formally invite Mr. Gechi into the newly created Critical Infrastructure Protection program—though the only critical infrastructure in his area consists of an unpaved road.
While the Taliban no longer dominate Qala-e-Zal, occasional attacks still occur, including a roadside bomb this month that blew out the windshield of the militia's only pickup truck.
Many of the area's Taliban, however, have chosen to break with the insurgency, joining Mr. Gechi's militia once they realized its strength.
"We have the full support of the people against the Taliban," says Qari Muhib, an ethnic Pashtun former senior Taliban commander in the area who now serves under Mr. Gechi in the CIP. "This is the reason for our success."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times May 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilian casualties in Afghanistan dropped significantly in the first four months of 2012, and a smaller proportion of the deaths was attributed to coalition and Afghan forces compared with a year ago, the United Nations director in the country said on Wednesday.
At a news conference, Jan Kubis, the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, said 579 civilian deaths and 1,216 civilian injuries had been recorded in the first four months of 2012. The combined figures represent a 21 percent reduction from the same period last year.
The United Nations said 9 percent of the casualties were attributed to pro-government forces, which includes both international troops and the Afghan security forces, and 79 percent to antigovernment forces including the Taliban. Twelve percent of the casualties were unattributed. Last year, the international troops and Afghan forces were responsible for 14 percent of the casualties. The percentage caused by the Taliban remained almost unchanged.
“Regrettably, unfortunately the antigovernment forces, they don’t show any improvement in protection for civilians,” Mr. Kubis said. “They issue statements about protecting civilians, but in practice they use such indiscriminate destructive weapons,” he said, referring to the use of land mines, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.
The figures released Wednesday represent the first period showing a reduction in civilian casualties since 2007, when the United Nations began tracking the statistics. However, human rights officials were cautious about the sustainability of reduced casualties since it was a particularly harsh winter, especially compared with 2011, which was a relatively mild winter, said James Rodehaver, the acting head of the United Nations’s human rights office here.
“The downturn in the number of armed clashes and the impact of the harsh weather is much more likely to have impact on Taliban operations than on government or ISAF operations,” said Mr. Rodehaver, referring to the International Security Assistance Force.
He noted that in absolute numbers, the casualties were lower for the Taliban and antigovernment forces as well as for international and Afghan forces, but that the Taliban still were responsible for a preponderance of the deaths and injuries.
The midyear report, which is due in July and will reflect the fighting in May and part of June, will give a better sense of the reasons for the reduction and whether it is mostly a reflection of the harsher winter weather and delayed fighting season.
“The seasonal impact is unclear, and that’s why we are carefully looking at the last few months as well as May to get a better impression of what is attributable to greater caution and what is attributable to harsh weather conditions,” he said.
Eight Afghan Police Killed In Taliban Attack
May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Reports from northeastern Afghanistan say eight Afghan police were killed overnight during a four-hour battle against Taliban militants who attacked their hilltop post.
Abdul Maroof Rasekh, a spokesman for Badakhshan's provincial governor, says militants stormed the post in the province's Warduj district late on May 29.
He said two Taliban were killed in the fighting, while one police officer remains missing.
In a separate incident, three Afghan government employees were reported killed by a roadside bomb on May 30 while traveling to work in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
In another incident, NATO says a soldier serving with the international coalition was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan.
Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa
Afghan forces kill 25 Taliban fighters
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan national army have killed 25 Taliban fighters during a cleanup operation in the southern Helmand province since Tuesday, army spokesman in the province Mohammad Rasoul Zazai said Wednesday.
"The operation was launched in Sangin district on Tuesday and so far 25 Taliban rebels have been killed and five others injured," Zazai told Xinhua.
He added that it was an independent operation conducted by Afghan soldiers and would continue until the area is swept off from the insurgents.
Spokesman for provincial administration Daud Ahmadi said that Afghan soldiers have killed 25 insurgents in Sangin district over the past two days.
Former Kyrgyz ambassador proposes gradual expansion of SCO
BISHKEK, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become a prominent force in the world and should take a gradual approach to expansion, says a former Kyrgyz ambassador to China.
After more than 10 years of development, the SCO has achieved significant recognition not only in the region but throughout the world, Erlan Abdyldayev told Xinhua ahead of an SCO summit scheduled for early June in Beijing.
The SCO has signed a significant number of documents that define the interaction and cooperation in many areas and now serves as a platform to discuss the most important and vital issues of Central Asia, he said.
Expansion of the organization is necessary, he said, adding that "SCO member countries should take the right decision by going slowly, step by step, to the adoption of new members."
"I argue for the expansion of the organization, but you need to expand not for the sake of expansion, but for the efficiency of the organization: its weight and influence in regional and international affairs," he said.
As previously announced, one of the major themes of the Beijing summit is the issue of granting observer status to Afghanistan and the status of dialogue partner to Turkey.
These are long-awaited issues, Abdyldayev said.
On the issue of Afghanistan, its active participation in the SCO framework will help ensure stability and security in the region given its current situation and the planned withdrawal of international forces from the country by 2014, he said.
"All the SCO member countries should do everything to ensure Afghanistan is not posing any threat to the region," Abdyldayev said.
Founded in 2001, the SCO groups China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
For Pakistani truckers, NATO route row is all about the money
Reuters By Imtiaz Shah Wed May 30, 2012
KARACHI - Pakistani truck drivers who deliver supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan seethe whenever they recall a cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year.
Despite their anger, financial survival outweighs nationalist sentiment and the shame of helping what many see as the enemy. Peer-to-Peer Lending Peer-to-Peer Lending Looking for an alternative to the high street banks? Find out more
The drivers hope that talks between the United States and Pakistan on reopening the routes, which were closed six months ago in protest over the raid, will soon produce a breakthrough.
They are eager to get back on the road, even though they will again risk running into attacks by Taliban militants who violently oppose the movement of goods to NATO through Pakistan.
Malik Abdul Raoof, 23, recalled how militants in dark clothes clutching AK-47 assault rifles often stopped and threatened him near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"They asked 'why do you take supplies to the infidel Americans?'. They said 'you are an American informer'," he told Reuters at a massive makeshift truckers' parking lot that stretches for miles (km) along the coast in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi.
"They made me recite Koranic verses, quizzed me on how Muslims pray. When they let me go they told me to grow a beard. I am scared and I don't like it but I have to earn (money)."
The al Qaeda-linked Taliban routinely open fire on trucks. Casualties are limited, but the attacks are dramatic. Bullets puncture fuel tanks, igniting huge fires.
Militants also set off homemade bombs to destroy container trucks packed with food, clothes and other items for NATO.
Over 1,000 vehicles have been destroyed by militants or criminal gangs in the last decade, according to the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association.
Still, thousands of drivers are itching to get back to work to fetch 20,000-25,000 rupees ($215-269) per round trip.
To break the monotony, they play cards on cloth sheets spread on the dusty ground, listen to music and repair and paint their run-down vehicles. Some just sleep the time away in the shade of their trucks.
"DESPICABLE, FORBIDDEN" INCOME
The November NATO attack and Pakistan's closure of the routes - which account for just under one-third of all cargo that NATO moves into Afghanistan - plunged ties between Islamabad and Washington to their lowest point in years.
The supply lines are considered vital to the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan before the end of 2014.
U.S. and Pakistani negotiators are deadlocked on transit fees for container and fuel trucks. Pakistani officials have denied reports Islamabad is demanding unreasonable amounts.
Idle drivers care little about Pakistan's stance, or efforts to repair ties with the United States, the source of billions of dollars in aid. It all comes down to their own bottom line.
"The United States is responsible for killing our soldiers. The culprits should be shot dead," said Mohammed Nawaz, 24, looking across a sea of trucks. "I consider the money made from driving NATO trucks despicable, forbidden. But I'm desperate."
NATO, for its part, has been diversifying its supply lines into Afghanistan.
After a string of disruptions, the alliance and the U.S. military decided to reduce their reliance on Pakistan, turning instead to routes that pass through either Russia or the Caucasus across central Asia into northern Afghanistan.
That could spell bad news for those drivers who have become shady entrepreneurs of danger along the two routes through Pakistan - one across the Khyber Pass to Kabul, and another crossing the Baluchistan province to Kandahar.
Senior officials at the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association said some destroy their own trucks and claim it was a Taliban attack to collect insurance money.
"The fight is all about money, at every level. The governments, the Americans, the workers (truck drivers)," said Shafiq Kakar, a senior member of the association.
Some truckers stage explosions and pretend NATO goods are lost in attacks, then sell part of the consignment to traders, said association officials.
"I am praying that NATO supplies are resumed soon so that my business can take off again," said one trader in the northwestern city of Peshawar who does business with corrupt truckers and contractors.
"A lot of the material stolen from containers, especially uniforms and boots, is (even) bought by the Taliban's people."
(1 U.S. dollar = 92.8 Pakistani rupees)
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by John Chalmers and Daniel Magnowski)
'I don't think we have been defeated'
Bruce Riedel, one of the architects of the US-Afghanistan strategy, is optimistic about the success of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. He talks to DW and explains that the real problem is Pakistan.
DW 29/05/2012
Bruce Riedel is Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, a former CIA Analyst, a counter-terrorism expert, and the author of "Pakistan: A Hard Country; Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad."
DW: Is Afghanistan NATO's Vietnam?
Bruce Riedel: No. NATO is leaving an Afghanistan that will be able to meet NATO's key strategic objectives - prevent al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base for further terrorist attacks in North America and Europe and prevent the Taliban from being able to control the country. I think that the formula that has been agreed to in Chicago provides us with both a responsible exit for our troops and a long-term strategic commitment to Afghanistan, and an Afghan army that will prevent al Qaeda and the Taliban from again being able to take over Afghanistan.
Many observers have their doubts about that. The army has extremely high attrition rates and very few units capable of operating without international support.
I think the situation is a bit different from the bleak picture you paint. The Afghan security forces, which were neglected by NATO for eight years, have, in the last three years, grown to about 350,000 in strength. The NATO commander in the field, General [John] Allen, believes that the army's progress - both qualitatively and quantitatively - has been better than anticipated. No one knows how well they will do after 2014. That's the future and inherently unknowable, but there is no reason to believe that they can't provide sufficient security to keep the major cities and urban areas, as well as much of the north and centre of the country, free from Taliban control. The Taliban are not 10 feet tall. They are basically an illiterate Pashtun army that survives primarily because of Pakistani support.
Trends suggest the opposite: Civilian casualties have been rising for years, as have US casualties with the exception of 2011. And the International Crisis Group reports that the Taliban have expanded the area under their control.
The data NATO has put out is quite different. Civilian casualties are a problem, but today more parts of Afghanistan - Kandahar, Helmand and other provinces - are regarded by NATO as being reasonably secure than three years ago. President Obama in Chicago said that the momentum of the Taliban has been reversed in the last three years and that makes possible the withdrawal of combat forces from the United States and other NATO countries. I guess at the end of the day I am more willing to put my confidence behind the president than the ICG.
Admitting defeat would not have been an alternative in an election year.
I don't think we have been defeated. The NATO alliance is on the path to achieve its minimal security interest, which is to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be a base for terrorist operations in the future. In addition to that, the agreement that we have signed with the Afghans will allow the United States to continue to have access to Afghan military bases for the next decade in order to carry out counterterrorist missions in the region. That's an important accomplishment as well. It provides for a long-term strategic agreement between Washington and Kabul that allows us to be certain that we can carry out missions, like the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and drone attacks from Afghan bases until 2025.
Has Afghanistan become a base for attacks on Pakistan?
Well, Pakistan continues to harbor the leadership of the Taliban. A NATO study based on the interrogation of 4,000 Taliban prisoners concluded that the ISI (Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence) knows the whereabouts of every Taliban leader and meets regularly with them, including Mullah Omar. But Afghanistan has become a base for counterterrorist missions inside Pakistan because it has become clear that the Pakistani government will not take firm action against terrorists on its own. Three of the top five most wanted terrorists of the world are in Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed, the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, even appears on Pakistani television every week and holds mass rallies.
Obama has stepped up the use of drone attacks in Pakistan. Moral and legal questions apart: Don't these killings destabilize Pakistan?
I think we have a stark choice. In the absence of Pakistan being willing to control the terrorist Frankenstein it has helped create on its territory, we are going to have to take measures to disrupt and dismantle that. We don't have the luxury of just hoping that the terrorists will be nice boys and not carry out attacks against the United States or Europe. The drone attacks have had a devastating effect upon al Qaeda's operational capabilities. Al Qaeda is a much diminished force in Pakistan today compared to what it was when the president came into office in 2009. That is almost entirely due to unilateral American counterterrorist missions. We've gotten virtually no support from the government of Pakistan. Pakistan has been more of an obstacle than a friend and assistant in the fight against Al Qaeda in the last decade.
You played a significant role in shaping current US policy by chairing Obama's review of the Afghan strategy in 2009. What were the main changes you suggested?
There were two fundamental changes. One was to recognize that Pakistan is the more serious problem and that Pakistan's tolerance, if not complicity, in supporting terrorism is a major threat not only to the United States but to the NATO alliance and to other countries as well. And we stepped up efforts to try to deal with that terrorist problem. Secondly, the recognition that the effort to build up an Afghan army had been under-resourced and underfinanced until 2008 and as a consequence the Taliban had found a vacuum. We were in a position in 2001 and 2002 to stabilize Afghanistan with a relatively small number of foreign troops and with significant economic assistance programs. Instead, we completely failed to do that. The Bush administration was obsessed with its Iraq mission and the problem the Obama administration had when it came into office in 2009 was that it did not have a time machine - it could not go back and fix the mistakes of the past. Our solution was to focus on building up an Afghan army stro
ng and capable enough to deal with the Taliban without foreign combat troops but with continued financial and other support from outside. This is not a perfect solution to the problem of Afghanistan. The civil war between the Taliban and the legitimately elected, internationally recognized government is likely to go on afterwards.
What will Afghanistan look like 10 years from now?
The worst case would be that the civil war continues to grind along and that the Taliban control parts of the south and east of the country. That would be a tragedy because it would mean that the horror of the war Afghanistan has lived through for 30 years would go on for another decade. The best outcome would be if the Taliban would agree to enter into a political process and you could have a ceasefire and a process of political reconciliation. And outside interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs would come to an end, as we let the Afghan's settle their problems through political process and not through violence.
Interview: Dennis Stute Editor: Anne Thomas
Their task is to clear Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold and a key prize because it straddles the major roads to Kabul and the insurgent supply routes into Pakistan.
But the American troops are challenged by a stubborn enemy and a short time to finish the job.
The first casualty happened before the mission even started: An Afghan army soldier, Burhan Muddin, was standing watch at his combat outpost when a Taliban gunman slipped out of a crowd and opened fire.
A single bullet pierced the Afghan soldier's chest.
Three Afghan soldiers rushed him to a nearby American base, then struggled to carry him into a medical station. Doctors and nurses worked furiously but couldn't save him.
Muddin was just 25. His body was carefully wrapped in a white sheet and placed in an ambulance. His fellow soldiers embraced the Americans and wept.
Hours later, in the dead of night, some of the same soldiers were ready for the mission: an assault — along with American troops — on a village in Ghazni province. A Taliban stronghold, Bagi Kheyl is just 10 minutes away from their post by helicopter.
A long line of soldiers from the Afghan National Army, or ANA, bobs along in the pitch black. The occasional flashlight illuminates their dark eyes and bearded faces.
They're eager to avenge their friend.
"If I get any bad guy over there, I will kill him. Because they killed one of our guys," says one.
Key To Taliban Supply Routes
But it's about more than revenge: The Taliban hold sway in Ghazni province. They've killed dozens of Afghan troops. The Taliban lob mortars and rockets into the small American outposts. They intimidate the people in villages like Bagi Kheyl.
Just before getting on his helicopter for the night mission, Capt. Jared Larpenteur, Delta Company commander, stood in front of a map and described the challenge posed by the Taliban.
"They're coming from Pakistan and [Afghanistan's] Paktika province with their men, weapons and equipment across the pass. And there's a lot of safe havens in here that they're using to stage and move their logistical supplies north and south," he explains.
Highway 1, the country's only main road, travels north to Kabul and south to Kandahar. Ghazni is crucial because it straddles the Taliban's supply lines.
But when the Americans sent thousands more troops to Afghanistan, they didn't come to the area — until now.
Before the Americans arrived just a couple of months ago, a Polish brigade handled security there. But the Poles, says Larpenteur, only served as something of a highway patrol.
"The Polish mostly when they were here stayed on Highway 1 and never really got off Highway 1 into the villages at all. The villages haven't seen any type of ANA or U.S. forces in over five years," he says. "We went to one village out here, and they thought we were Russians."
It's in these villages that the Taliban stockpile their weapons and bomb-making materials. Each time Larpenteur and his men head out, they are met with gunfire or come across roadside bombs.
Seven soldiers from his brigade already have been killed. Many others have been wounded. And on a recent night — they're expecting to go up against the Taliban again.
Taliban Infiltration Of Village
Massive helicopters lift off in the darkness, stuffed with Delta Company's soldiers and their Afghan partners.
Minutes later they land in a field and pour out into the swirling dust.
The soldiers regroup, and for the next hour move quietly toward the village of Bagi Kheyl, arriving just as the eastern sky begins to glow.
The soldiers walk through the mud-walled village, single-file on each side of the dirt road. Village men — most of them over 50 — emerge from their compounds. They watch the intruders, standing and staring.
The soldiers question some of the men. One of them talks about how the Taliban infiltrate the village. They slip in on motorcycles or come in at night in small groups, he says. They ask for food, a place to stay. They take over the mosque and broadcast a warning.
"Whenever the Taliban come in here, in this village, they are calling on the loudspeakers of the mosque. If anybody talks to the ANA guys or American guys, I can cut your head," the villager says.
The mission continues. The soldiers fan out. The Americans instruct the Afghan soldiers to search a mosque, which only Afghans are permitted to enter.
The search turns up rocket-propelled grenades hidden in a wall, along with bomb-making components inside a coffin. The soldiers also find rifles and radios.
The equipment is gathered in a pile and destroyed with American explosives. Another cache is found, piled up and destroyed.
Success Difficult To Measure
Fourteen hours later, the mission is over. There were no Taliban. Still, Enayat Halakeyar, an Afghan sergeant, is pleased.
"That was so good; we found a lot of things and blew up two, three IEDs, that was so good. We are so happy," he says.
It's been one more day in the war in Afghanistan. One village searched — out of a countless number spread across Ghazni province and the country.
The Afghan and American soldiers head back to base under a blazing sun. There are no helicopters now. They'll trudge the five miles through fields and villages. They worry the Taliban are watching. Most patrols come under fire when they leave a village.
But they make it back safely to their base, which is rimmed with razor wire, sandbagged walls and guard towers.
These soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., will spend another four months in the same routine. But they don't have much time to clear this Taliban stronghold.
The officer in charge of the mission is Col. Mark Stock. He sits in his office in a long, plywood building at a base called Warrior.
"At the end of the day, it's not going to be our success, it's going to be the Afghans' success," Stock says.
When he leaves in September, a smaller American combat unit will replace his soldiers, along with training teams to help the struggling Afghan forces.
"What keeps me up at night is how we transition this, and part of that transition is us backing off and enabling our partners to do it without us and still be successful," he says.
Across a dirt road from the colonel's headquarters sit the remains of an old British fort, its 20-foot walls worn like a sandcastle at the beach. The fortress dates back to the mid-19th century — another time when other English-speaking soldiers tried to make a difference in Afghanistan.
Afghan deal must come with strings attached
The Age By Amin Saikal Opinion May 30, 2012
On the sidelines of the Chicago meeting on Afghanistan, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, signed a strategic partnership agreement to define Australia's role in the war-torn country beyond 2014.
It is a historic development. No one could possibly have envisaged, until recently, that one day Afghanistan and Australia would become strategic partners.
But what does the agreement mean?
Under the agreement, Australia has pledged to assist Afghanistan to the tune of $100 million each year over the next three years and committed itself to increase the amount to $250 million a year by 2015-16. The bulk of this assistance is designed to help the country in the area of security and social and infrastructural development, as part of an exit strategy that will still enable Australia to remain focused on fighting terrorism and stemming the tide of people smugglers and drug traffickers.
Gillard has joined other Western leaders in praising the significant gains that have been made in Afghanistan and more specifically in Uruzgan province, from where Australian forces will start withdrawing from midway through next year.
However, whatever the assessments of our political leaders, which are often driven by the need to provide justification, Afghanistan remains in dire straits.
The Karzai government remains feeble and corrupt, with a great deal of foreign aid ending up in the pockets or bank accounts of individuals and dummy organisations - $4.6 billion found its way from Kabul to Dubai last year alone.
Meanwhile, as the Taliban and their supporters, including Pakistan's military intelligence, have increasingly grown confident of a final victory in one form or another, they have shown little or no interest in a political settlement.
In this situation, Australia cannot afford to be too sanguine about its strategic partnership with Afghanistan.
This is not to say that Australia should not continue to help the Afghan people rebuild their lives and country. But it must make sure that its post-2014 role is well pitched and tied to a number of clear goals that can be beneficial to the Afghan people rather than to the industry that Afghanistan has become.
The Afghanistan industry is today a ''milking cow'' for a range of interests inside and outside the country, encompassing not only military-related industries, but also many governmental and non-governmental organisations outside this complex.
Australia's future role could prove useful if it focuses on those areas where it can make a difference. The first is to link its assistance to specific policy actions on the part of the Karzai leadership to implement serious political and electoral reforms for a clean and credible presidential election before the end of 2014, without Karzai seeking to prolong his ineffective rule beyond the two constitutional terms that he would have served by then.
The second is to assist with enhancing the processes of judicial reform and the fight against corruption, led by Australian-advised but independent Afghan commissions.
The third is to invest heavily in education, with an emphasis on the younger Afghan generation. The future of Afghanistan will depend on the management skills and diverse contributions of this generation, which has the potential to be far less amenable to the corruption, nepotism and patronage that has marred the present generation in power.
The fourth is to help with improving health services. Australia could build dozens of clinics, run at first by Australian specialists and subsequently by Australian-trained Afghans, in relatively safe areas. Many of these clinics should focus on combating trachoma from which many Afghans suffer, especially in western Afghanistan.
An Australian role focusing on these areas will serve the interests of Afghanistan and Australia. Otherwise, the danger is that Australia's future aid could prove to be as unproductive as its past efforts in enabling Afghanistan to transform into a stable and democratic state, which the US and its allies had originally promised.
Amin Saikal is a professor of political science and director of the centre for Arab and Islamic studies at the Australian National university, and author of a new edition of Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival to be published next month.
Afghan Militia Wins Uneasy Peace
A Local Force Drives Out the Taliban; Kabul Is Wary of 'Creating Warlords'
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV May 29, 2012
QALA-E-ZAL, Afghanistan - Tribal elders competed in offering praises to militia chieftain Nabi Gechi as they gathered last week in his remote Afghan village that, until a year ago, teemed with the Taliban.
"We are so confident of our security that I no longer even lock my door at night," said gray-bearded Ghulam Sarwar.
"If Commander Nabi were to leave, the Taliban would be back here in no time," echoed Hajji Walid Mohammed.
As U.S.-led coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan and transition to an advisory mission next year, they hold up the successes of Mr. Gechi's militia and others like it in the northern Kunduz province as a model to secure the country.
"So far, this works pretty well," says German Army Lt. Col. Heiko Bohnsack, commander of the coalition's Task Force Kunduz, which helps oversee the militias. "If you look into Afghanistan's past, there have always been armed men providing security—and seldom have the Afghans accepted the central power to provide this."
This is what worries the government of President Hamid Karzai. Wary of how warlord militias plunged Afghanistan into a civil war after the Soviet-backed regime collapsed in 1992, Mr. Karzai has ordered the dissolution of independent village militias that, though funded by the U.S., operate outside Kabul's control.
A 50-year-old former owner of a fish and kebab restaurant, Mr. Gechi has emerged as the only real authority in Qala-e-Zal, a district of rolling wheat fields and orchards nestled along the Tajikistan border. "Whenever any Taliban are sighted here," he said as he held court last week, "the people and the elders come right away to inform me, and we take care of them."
Mr. Gechi's militia counts 240 armed men—some of them former insurgents—in a district with fewer than 20 regular policemen. Dozens of commanders have raised militias elsewhere in Kunduz since late 2010, chasing the Taliban away from much of this strategic province, which straddles the coalition's main supply routes.
Some irregulars in Kunduz belong to the Afghan Local Police, a village-self defense program established by U.S. Special Forces, whose men receive three weeks of training and are paid through the Afghan government. Mr. Karzai reluctantly acquiesced to the ALP initiative in 2010, after receiving guarantees of government control.
Others—such as Mr. Gechi's force—operate under the Critical Infrastructure Protection program, or CIP, that was pioneered by the German-run coalition command in northern Afghanistan jointly with the U.S. Mr. Karzai, who said he was unaware of CIP's existence until being told by a German reporter in December, ordered it disbanded at the time.
Mr. Gechi's men and other CIP militias, however, continue to receive U.S. funding at $150 per gunman a month. The CIP contract in Kunduz, where they operate in the Qala-e-Zal and Aliabad districts, was recently extended until the fall. Coalition officials say they plan to implement Mr. Karzai's ban by rolling the CIP forces into the Local Police program, as has been done in another Kunduz district.
This proliferation of anti-Taliban irregulars, some under loose Afghan government control and others a law unto themselves, has also led to killings, robberies and rapes by the fighters, according to human-rights groups.
CIP "is another example of the existing parallel structures which have created a gap between the Afghan people and government institutions, and which instill fear and insecurity," said Mr. Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi.
Afghan officials say they intend to prosecute those charged with abuses, something that has rarely happened so far.
Kunduz Gov. Mohammed Anwar Jekdalek, Mr. Karzai's appointee, says Mr. Gechi is considered one of the province's better-behaved militia leaders.
"But even if we see him as a hero, problems are inevitable because his people can't read and write," Gov. Jekdalek says. "On one hand we say we are against warlordism, and on the other hand we are creating warlords."
The ideal solution, he suggests, would be to replace these militias with regular police. That is unlikely, however, as the Afghan National Police already is near its manpower ceiling—and is slated to start cutting its numbers once international funding shrinks after 2014.
So, despite his reservations, Gov. Jekdalek says CIP must continue for now. "If it's dissolved, some of these men will become criminals, and the Taliban will return and attempt to control the area once again," he says. "If we ourselves cannot pay their salaries and the foreigners stop, there will be big trouble."
Mr. Gechi, who returned here in 2009 to take up arms against the Taliban, says he would love to go back to his riverside restaurant on the Uzbek border.
Mr. Gechi's fighters, however, aren't as keen to lay down arms. "If we are no longer paid, there will be problems," says 38-year-old Said Mohammad. "There won't be any security."
A member of the ethnic Turkmen community that dominates Qala-e-Zal, Mr. Gechi fought the Taliban in the mountains near Kunduz before the 2001 U.S. invasion.
As he returned to the area on the request of villagers three years ago, the district was under such Taliban sway that he had to hike for seven hours during the night to sneak into his own village.
There, with the help of tribal elders, he began the resistance against the Taliban with two motorbikes and five foot soldiers. As his militia grew, Mr. Gechi received a police pickup truck and some heavy weapons from Afghanistan's intelligence service, he says.
Then, last spring, the German military, using American-provided funds, drove here to formally invite Mr. Gechi into the newly created Critical Infrastructure Protection program—though the only critical infrastructure in his area consists of an unpaved road.
While the Taliban no longer dominate Qala-e-Zal, occasional attacks still occur, including a roadside bomb this month that blew out the windshield of the militia's only pickup truck.
Many of the area's Taliban, however, have chosen to break with the insurgency, joining Mr. Gechi's militia once they realized its strength.
"We have the full support of the people against the Taliban," says Qari Muhib, an ethnic Pashtun former senior Taliban commander in the area who now serves under Mr. Gechi in the CIP. "This is the reason for our success."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
www.afghanistannewscenter.com