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U.S., Pakistan beginning to look more like enemies
Diplomacy » Long plagued by distrust, the relationship hits low point since bin Laden raid.
The Associated Press By SEBASTIAN ABBOT and REBECCA SANTANA June 9th 2012
Islamabad - You know a friendship has gone sour when you start making mean jokes about your friend in front of his most bitter nemesis.
So it was a bad sign this week when the U.S. defense secretary joshed in front of an audience of Indians about how Washington kept Pakistan in the dark about the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a year ago.
"They didn’t know about our operation. That was the whole idea," Leon Panetta said with a chuckle at a Q&A session after a speech in New Delhi, raising laughs from the audience. The Bin Laden raid by U.S. commandos in a Pakistani town infuriated Islamabad because it had no advance notice, and it was seen by Pakistan’s powerful military as a humiliation.
The U.S. and Pakistan are starting to look more like enemies than allies, threatening the U.S. fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants based in the country and efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan before American troops withdraw.
Long plagued by frustration and mistrust, the relationship has plunged to its lowest level since the 9/11 attacks forced the countries into a tight but awkward embrace over a decade ago. The U.S. has lost its patience with Pakistan and taken the gloves off to make its anger clear.
"It has taken on attributes and characteristics now of a near adversarial relationship, even though neither side wants it to be that way," said Maleeha Lodhi, who was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and was key in hurriedly putting together the two countries’ alliance.
The latest irritant is Pakistan’s refusal to end its six-month blockade of NATO troop supplies meant for Afghanistan. Even if that issue is resolved, however, the relationship may be on an irreversible downward slide. The main source of U.S. anger is Pakistan’s unwillingness to go after militants using its territory to launch attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
On the Pakistani side, officials are fed up with Washington’s constant demands for more without addressing Islamabad’s concerns or sufficiently appreciating the country’s sacrifice. Pakistan has lost thousands of troops fighting a domestic Taliban insurgency fueled partly by resentment of the alliance with the U.S.
Panetta’s comments about the bin Laden raid may have been unscripted, but others he made while in India and Afghanistan seemed calculated to step up pressure on Pakistan. He stressed Washington’s strong relationship with India — which Islamabad considers its main, historic enemy — and defended unpopular American drone attacks in Pakistan.
He also said in unusually sharp terms that the U.S. was running out of patience with Islamabad’s failure to go after the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, considered the most dangerous militant group fighting in Afghanistan.
Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target the Haqqanis and other Afghan militants based on its soil because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, especially in countering the influence of India.
Pakistan lashed out at Panetta on Saturday and denied the country was providing safe havens for militants.
Panetta "is oversimplifying some of the very complex issues we are dealing with in our efforts against extremism and terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said. "We strongly believe that such statements are misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region."
A senior U.S. official described the relationship as "the worst it has ever been."
"This is from Washington’s point of view and from Pakistan’s point of view, and even among the real well-wishers on both sides who are appalled and befuddled that we can’t get past all of this and move beyond," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
After years of frosty relations caused by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Washington and Islamabad were thrust together on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida attacked New York and Washington. The U.S. demanded Pakistan support the war against bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan and sought to convince Islamabad it was not simply interested in a "transactional" relationship based on counterterrorism cooperation, but wanted a long-term strategic partnership.
U.S. officials have largely abandoned that argument over the past 18 months as the relationship has suffered repeated crises.
"Because of the toxic atmosphere on both sides, the two countries cannot even work in a transactional way," said Lodhi, the former Pakistani ambassador.
In January 2011, a CIA contractor sparked outrage when he shot to death two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore who he claimed were trying to rob him. Anger over the incident was still simmering when the U.S. killed bin Laden in May.
In November, American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at two Afghan border posts. The U.S. has said it was an accident, but the Pakistani army claims it was deliberate.
Pakistan retaliated by kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones and closing its border to NATO supplies meant for troops in Afghanistan. Negotiations to reopen the route have been hampered by Islamabad’s demand for much higher transit fees and Washington’s refusal to apologize for the deaths of the Pakistani troops.
The U.S. has attempted to bridge the difference over money by offering to repave highways used by the supply trucks, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
But Pakistani officials have made clear the route will not reopen without some kind of apology. The U.S. has expressed its regret over the incident but has refused to apologize for fear it could open the Obama administration up to criticism by Republicans upset with Pakistan.
A senior U.S. defense official, Peter Lavoy, arrived in Pakistan on Friday to participate in the negotiations. But Panetta’s comments could complicate matters.
Such statements do "water down the willingness to cooperate with the United States," said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
President Barack Obama showed U.S. anger over the supply issue at a NATO summit last month in Chicago by refusing a one-on-one meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
However, the U.S. and Pakistan both have reasons to walk the relationship back from the brink.
The U.S. continues to receive some intelligence cooperation from Pakistan on militants and has been able to continue drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal region despite public protests, likely because of tacit agreement by Pakistani military leaders. Both could be threatened if the relationship heads farther south.
Just as important is Pakistan’s support on the Afghan war. Pakistan is seen as key to striking a peace deal with the Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan that will allow the U.S. to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014 without the country descending into further chaos.
Pakistan is keen on freeing up over a billion dollars in frozen U.S. aid, which will only be released if it reopens the supply line. Also, Pakistan can ill afford to become a true enemy of the U.S. at a time when it is struggling to contain its own Taliban insurgency and right its stuttering economy.
But politics on both sides make breaking the impasse difficult, particularly with U.S. elections this fall and Pakistani elections due early next year — possibly even sooner.
Historically, Pakistan’s army has steered the relationship with the U.S. But fearing public backlash in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant, the generals have tossed the NATO supply line issue to Pakistan’s weak and unpopular civilian government. The politicians are reluctant to do anything that could hurt their election prospects.
"The longer Islamabad delays and dithers, the opinion in Washington is hardening," said Lodhi. "Time is the enemy of a reset in relations."
Karzai: U.S. failed to consult Afghans on airstrike
AP By Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez Sunday, June 10, 2012
KABUL - Afghanistan’s president said Saturday that the United States failed to consult Afghan forces when it called in an airstrike that killed 18 civilians, and he warned that his government will consider such actions in the future to be in violation of the country’s pact with Washington.
In the east, meanwhile, a Taliban suicide bomber disguised as a woman wearing a burqa killed four French soldiers when he blew himself up in a market.
Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said President Hamid Karzai met with investigators earlier in the day and concluded that U.S. troops called in Wednesday’s strike without coordinating with Afghan units.
The incident occurred during a nighttime raid on militants taking cover in a house in a village in Logar province. Karzai has long objected to such raids, saying they put civilians at risk of injury or death. Military officials say they are key to capturing and killing Taliban leaders.
The United States and Afghanistan signed an agreement in April that put the Afghan government in charge of most such “special operations,” a move designed to resolve some of the long-standing tensions.
Faizi said investigators told Karzai that Afghan forces surrounded the house in question but that the U.S. troops decided not to wait for them to try to flush out the militants, calling in aircraft instead. They discovered later that there had also been women, children and elderly men inside.
“This airstrike was a one-sided decision,” Faizi said, adding that Karzai and his advisers decided after hearing the report that they would consider such actions in the future as a breach of the special-operations pact.
According to a separate statement issued by the president’s office, Karzai met with the top U.S. military commander in the country and the U.S. ambassador and told them that there had been multiple incidents since the signing of the broad long-term partnership last month in which international airstrikes had killed or injured civilians.
The U.S. commander in Afghanistan apologized Friday for the civilian deaths in Logar, and a NATO investigation ruled that the coalition forces were responsible for the unintended deaths of civilians.
A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan declined to comment on the Afghan findings but said the country’s forces had approved the larger Logar operation.
“This was an Afghan/coalition operation,” Col. Gary Kolb said. Kolb and U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on whether the special-operations pact had been violated in the Logar incident.
The attack on the French forces took place as they were responding to a report of a bomb planted under a bridge in the main market area of Kapisa province’s Nijrab district, said Qais Qadri, a spokesman for the provincial government. The bomber walked up to the soldiers and detonated his explosives, Qadri said. In addition to the four soldiers killed, five French troops and four Afghan civilians were reportedly wounded.
The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack in an e-mail.
— Associated Press
The 'Great Game' of influence in Afghanistan continues but with different players
FoxNews.com By David Piper June 09, 2012
In the 19th Century Afghanistan was seen as a major prize for the superpowers of that time, Britain and Russia.
It was known as ‘The Great Game’ and involved the two nations attempting to gain influence over Afghanistan and surrounding Central Asian countries by bribes, intimidation or military conquest.
The heart of that 19th Century ‘Cold War’ was the desire to gain access to sell their wares in the lucrative markets of the region and also the prize of India, which Britain then ruled and feared Russia coveted.
Afghanistan has been fought over so many times that it has become well known as a graveyard for invading armies.
The British found that out to their cost in the 19th Century and the USSR discovered that bitter truth in the 20th Century.
Now the U.S. led coalition is counting down the days until all its combat troops have left the country by the end of 2014.
The Alliance has vowed, though, to keep supporting the Afghan government as it battles the Taliban and other groups for control of the country.
Afghanistan is, of course, too important to allow it to become a safe haven again for terrorists to launch further attacks on the West.
But while the soldiers of the Alliance get ready to pack up and head home other countries are now preparing for a new struggle to gain influence in this troubled country.
China, Russia and four Central Asian countries have now vowed to play a larger role in Afghanistan.
At a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) this week in Beijing Afghanistan was also granted observer status of the group that was created as a counterbalance to US and NATO influence in Central Asia.
Chinese President Hu Jintao was quoted in the People’s Daily newspaper:
"We will... play a greater role in the peaceful reconstruction process in AfghanistanThe SCO supports Afghanistan becoming an independent, peaceful, prosperous, neighborly country, free from terrorism and drugs," he said.
James Brazier from HIS Global Insight believes fears over the spread of terrorism across the region once the US led alliance pulls out is uppermost in the minds of those countries:
“The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has reason to fear an unstable Afghanistan. Its main role is to prevent insurgency and narcotics smuggling throughout Central Asia.
If Afghanistan again becomes Disneyworld for jihadists, then there’s a risk of contagion into the brittle post-Soviet states in Central Asia the SCO is designed to protect.”
The SCO is also committed to closer security ties including adopting an anti-terrorism plan and, what it describes as, establishing a swift response mechanism.
That mechanism would allow SCO members to request help of other members during domestic emergencies.
Such a policy could, though. mean Russian and Chinese forces getting involved in dealing with terrorists in the region, including Afghanistan if it becomes a full member.
Neither China or Russia at the moment seem to have the stomach for an Afghan adventure but even the possibility of the country coming within their orbit will concern the United States and its allies.
The major counterbalances to that in the region have historically been India and Pakistan.
But China has already got strong military ties with Pakistan while Russia has for decades been on good relations with India.
The Obama administration, though, is clearly hoping that India will be the answer with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calling for deeper military ties with the country during his visit this week to Delhi.
"I think close partnership with America will be key to meeting India's own stated aims of a modern and effective defense force," he said.
The US is also looking to India to have more influence in Afghanistan, despite its history of non-alignment.
India has, though, already signed a wide-ranging agreement with Kabul to strengthen ties between the two countries, including the training of Afghan officers in India.
James Brazier of HIS Global Insight doesn’t believe India is the answer to US concerns about creeping Chinese and Russian influence:
“India’s regional influence in Central Asia is constricted because its tucked under the Himalayas and Pakistan acts as its “gatekeeper” to the west. So if the US wants a someone to help project influence in Central Asia, I doubt that India’s it.”
He instead believes the US and Pakistan should try to resolve their current differences and work together in the future as they did in the past when they helped push Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
Beyond concerns about spreading terrorism and spheres of influence there is a growing factor that seems to be concentrating the minds of all the major powers, and that is the potential riches to be unearthed in Afghanistan and as a route for pipelines and trade.
The US has, what it describes as a “New Silk Road” strategy that involves attempting to improve trade ties between the countries of central Asia and the Indian sub-continent.
The aim of it is to bring economic prosperity to the region and hopefully that will undermine the extremists.
The US is also promoting the benefits of the TAPI pipeline project that would bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to markets in Pakistan and India.
Rival powers are already, though, arguing over who will build the pipeline with India objecting to Chinese engineers being involved in the project despite their experience, as some suggest it would bring Beijing more influence in the region and a player in the longstanding disputes between India and Pakistan.
The race for the Afghanistan’s natural resources has already begun and China and India are the frontrunners.
A Pentagon report back in 2010 said that surveys showed that Afghanistan has untapped mineral deposits of nearly a $1 trillion.
Despite the potential bonanza US companies have shied away from investing here because of security concerns, but Chinese and Indian companies have dived in despite the risks.
A consortium of Indian companies has won extraction rights to part of a massive 1.8 billion tones iron ore deposit less than a hundred miles from Kabul.
The Indian government has promised to support the development of the mining sector in Afghanistan and its thought one of the reasons behind the investment was the fear that China and Pakistan was trying to dominate the sector.
Chinese companies are currently developing a huge copper mine just 20 miles from Kabul in the province of Logar.
They expect to begin production by 2015 despite the discovery of an ancient Buddhist site in the area that slowed its development.
The challenge will be to get the natural resources to markets.
India is looking at improving rail links from Afghanistan to ports in Iran, while China is looking to develop the railway north through Uzbekistan despite the security problems of going that way.
The new “Great Game” seems to have started already in trying to gain influence over Afghanistan and exploit its natural resources.
But it’s unlikely to involve foreign armies, instead Chinese and Indian companies are pouring into the country in search of riches.
Afghanistan war coming home to U.S.
Mizgon Zahir Darby Sunday, June 10, 2012 San Francisco Chronicle
President Obama and President Hamid Karzai signed the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on May 2. The document repeated promises made by the United States in previous years, solidified a transition strategy and reaffirmed a U.S. commitment to the facade of democracy in Afghanistan.
Although the agreement looks pretty on paper, it does not address the concerns of Afghans living inside and outside Afghanistan. Chief among them is the concern that the war has been outsourced and that Afghans employed by the subcontractors will not receive adequate compensation for injury or trauma and will end up being financial burdens to the United States.
The war in Afghanistan is coming home - to the United States. Thousands of Afghan military and paramilitary members and war refugees have moved to the United States, where few social services are available to meet their needs. Once it was the language barrier that created difficulties for the social service agencies trying to help them. Today, the lack of programs for those who served with the U.S. military through defense subcontractors presents a whole new host of problems.
The exact number of injured and traumatized Afghans who have immigrated is unknown. It is known that, last year, 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan.
Of those, 386 were working for the Defense Department, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Federal law requires American defense contractors to carry insurance to provide employees with medical care and compensation, but there is no verifiable data as to how many employees who are Afghan nationals receive compensation after injury.
The federal government needs to provide veteran services for those who became refugees as a consequence of serving with the U.S. military. Better yet, the contractors need to provide more protection and compensation for these individuals in Afghanistan to keep them from becoming refugees.
Our tax money went to fund the war, and now it funds social services to help these people once they become refugees. Ultimately, the taxpayer pays double.
To many, the presidents' new partnership agreement is nothing more than a commitment to arm more Afghans who have little loyalty to the Afghan government and to supply more funding that will never reach the Afghan people. Instead, the money will go to defense contractors who will leave unfinished projects and injured people once the money runs out.
Meanwhile, education, health and women's rights issues are left on the back burner.
Whatever withdrawal policy Obama ultimately adopts, he must consider the impact it will have in the United States. This one will not do the job.
Afghans living in Northern California
An estimated 60,000 Afghans - the largest population outside of Afghanistan - live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many settled here because of the availability of social services for the refugees, people granted asylum and immigrants. The influx is notable: Last year, 410 Afghan refugees resettled in the United States. Of those, 103 elected to call California home.
Source: Office of Refugee Resettlement
Mizgon Zahir Darby, an Afghan American journalist, is the program manager of the Afghan Mental Health Project, a program of the Afghan Coalition, a nonprofit social service provider in Fremont.
This article appeared on page Z - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Afghanistan tunnel carries risks for NATO
By John Bentley June 9, 2012 CBS News
SALANG, Afghanistan - Since Pakistan closed the Khyber Pass border-crossing late last year, NATO has had to supply its forces through the Salang Tunnel, a 1.6-mile long Soviet-era relic with unforgiving dimensions and a deadly history.
With only inches to spare, a huge tanker squeezed past a bus and through the Salang Tunnel.
The badly rutted road can jam trucks against the rocks or tip them over. Drivers can wait for more than a week to get through this dangerous mountain pass.
Despite the risks, coalition troops rely on the tunnel for 85 percent of their fuel. This is the best route available since Pakistan closed its borders to NATO trucks seven months ago.
Since then, a tunnel built for 1,000 vehicles a day has 10 times that traffic.
Afghan Gen. Mohammad Rajab is in charge of maintenance on the pass. "It's just one accident away from disaster," he said. "And unless something is done soon, it will be impossible for the tunnel to function."
The tunnel has no lights. And the ventilation system doesn't work. The air is choked with such high levels of carbon monoxide that some passengers get sick.
While there are other routes through the Hindu Kush mountains, the Salang Tunnel is the only one that is protected. So drivers have to make a choice: take your chances on this road, or risk being attacked by insurgents.
Like many here, this driver hauls fuel for U.S. troops. "I have been stuck for days on this road," he said. "It's very dangerous."
The Salang Tunnel was built by the Soviets in 1964, but never completely finished. Almost 1,000 Soviet troops died of asphyxiation in 1982 when an explosion trapped them in the tunnel. Since then, hundreds of travelers have died in accidents and avalanches.
Coalition forces wouldn't comment on the tunnel, but Gen. Rajab told CBS News NATO should pay for the repairs the added traffic has caused.
"Their convoys destroyed the road," he said, "and they have a responsibility to help us rebuild it."
So far, there are no plans to rebuild. The Salang Tunnel remains a critical artery for coalition supplies.
Sar-e Pul Security Chiefs Sacked over Jail Break
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 09 June 2012
Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior sacked the Sar-e-Pul police chief and the prison director after the jailbreak on Friday in which as many as 30 Taliban insurgents escaped, the ministry said in a statement Saturday.
The pair, Sar-e-Pul police chief Abdul Yaqoob Zabuli and prison director Colonel Mohammad Aslam, were also summoned to Kabul for questioning, according to the statement.
Nearly 30 inmates managed to break out of the jail in Afghanistan's northern Sar-e-Pul province after a bomb near the wall of the prison was detonated on Friday. Although the guards began to shoot at the escapees and those assisting them, many still managed to flee.
Deputy provincial governor Akhtar Mohammad Khairzada told the Associated Press on Friday that 14 were re-captured but 16 others are still under police pursuit.
He also added that three inmates were killed in the gunfire following the explosion and 28 others were wounded during the clash between the security forces and the attackers.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said more than 170 inmates managed to escape the prison.
"As a result of the attack, 170 prisoners escaped from the prison. The mujahideen took them to a safer place. The escaped detainees include Taliban's district chiefs and other commanders," Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban said.
Last April more than 470 inmates at a prison in the southern Kandahar province escaped through a underground tunnel hundreds of metres long and dug from outside the jail.
A member of Sar-e-Pul provincial council Abdul Ghani told AP that he fears the jail-break will mean a deterioration in security in the province.
Earlier this year Afghanistan and the US reached a deal to transfer any US-run prisons in the country to Afghan control.
War May Be Ending, but Fight Isn’t Over for Soldiers in Remote Afghanistan
By GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times June 9, 2012
COMBAT OUTPOST RAHMAN KHEL, Afghanistan - Lt. Col. Shawn Daniel, standing in the middle of this dusty little outpost beneath the Afghan mountains, reassured the 70 soldiers gathered close around him that they would be going home soon.
In 2014, “we are getting out of this,” he told the circle of expectant, upturned faces he had beckoned near.
The United States is withdrawing all of its combat troops by 2014, but the soldiers at this base are scheduled to leave before the end of the year.
Some of the soldiers stood stiff. Others knelt. All intently watched their 43-year-old commander, a sturdy man with silvery hair from Little Rock, Ark., who had driven in especially from the battalion headquarters to bolster their spirits and their courage.
Until they leave, Colonel Daniel warned them sternly, they have a difficult job to do.
“Afghanistan will have the best chance possible to stand on its own feet,” he said. “Until then we have to look after ourselves.”
America is preparing to end its longest war. It is already getting ready to draw down its troops so that in two and a half years nearly all will be gone from this country. Back home, the attention of most Americans has long since shifted elsewhere.
But out here in what feels like the edge of the world, in remote eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, the battle is a tough day-to-day reality for these soldiers. They fight to keep one another alive in a war that has already been called off.
Their base, Combat Outpost Rahman Khel, is a couple of acres of gravel, mustard-colored barracks, a gym tent, a medical hut and a fluttering American flag, hedged by tall, gray Hesco blast walls.
The soldiers posted here, one company of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division, have their home base in Alaska. Now, they peer out from shaded watchtowers at miles of flat water meadows where sheep graze and, on the northern horizon, at a low brown mud-brick village with some trees.
In the east are grand hills and a tall, snow-streaked mountain range the soldiers call the Whale.
Sgt. Christopher Keeney was standing in the wind on Watchtower Four holding a pair of binoculars in one hand while he pointed with the other.
These mountains are where coalition forces carried out Operation Anaconda in March 2002 to rout Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from remote valleys, one of the highest profile operations in the early years of the war.
Ten years later, insurgents are still coming down out of the mountains from Pakistan and the Shah-i-Kot Valley, gathering at a shrine in the foothills and using the plain around Rahman Khel as a transit route to head to the fighting farther west.
“It’s a breeding ground,” said Sergeant Keeney, from Washington State. “At night we see flares and lots of light signals from the villages. It ends up here in the mountains.”
There are other worries, too: at one point during his watch, a stray dog wandered onto the base, and Sergeant Keeney climbed down from a tower to shoot it, trying to keep rabies off the long list of challenges here.
The job of the soldiers at this outpost is to patrol a space of land stretching almost as far as the eye can see. They disrupt Taliban supply lines, search for caches of explosives, clear the roads of land mines.
“We’ve got a pretty big sector,” said Sgt. First Class Jacob Nestor, a short, tough man with a sunburned face and rolling shoulders. He was wearing shades as he scanned the hills. “It’s from those mountains, 35 clicks out, and 10-20 clicks the other way.”
Most days they travel out in convoys of brown armored trucks, posting letters at night in the villages to assure the local Afghans they are there to protect them, collecting fingerprints from would-be mine planters, resolving tribal disputes, meeting elders and trying to gain their trust so the villagers will pass on information when the fighting season begins in earnest.
“We talk to them, we try and see what they need, try to get intelligence about what the enemy is doing,” Sergeant Nestor said.
So far, the men here have been lucky. The camp has received blasts of mortar fire from the village across the meadow to the north, but no one has been hurt.
But this is eastern Afghanistan, and luck holds only so long. Around midday, the camp learns that a convoy from an outpost five miles away has been ambushed on a road to the north. It sounds bad: A platoon sergeant from another company in their battalion was shot in the thigh and abdomen.
But then word comes that he will live: He has been airlifted to Bagram Airbase, and on to Landstuhl, the military hospital in Germany.
The camp settles into some kind of normalcy. Its own patrol, in a line of three huge, mine-protected vehicles called MRAPs, rolls in from the surrounding villages. Soldiers climb out, dusty, tired, but safe. Stretching, some get out their chewing tobacco.
As the afternoon wears on, a white civilian aid helicopter of a type the soldiers nickname the Jinglebird descends loudly from the cloudy sky. Soldiers emerge in clumps from the rec room, hoping the Jinglebird has brought them mail from home.
Colonel Daniel tells them they will be replaced at this outpost after they leave. But after that, who knows? He says the next year or so will be about closing posts like Rahman Khel, figuring out where the Afghans are strong enough to take control on their own and where they still need help.
It is going to get tough, he warns.
He is about to leave for another base, and his convoy of MRAPs waits impatiently behind him in the brownish morning light that settles on the camp.
He tells them again the reason he came here in the first place: to plant the American flag on Afghan soil and teach the insurgents a lesson for what they did in New York City, he says.
He says reintegration back in America will be difficult for the soldiers. He recounts his own fights with his wife at home, and the joy of helping his son.
Out here, he promises, he will come to their aid if they need him with all the force the American military possesses. But the fighting is going to intensify before they leave. For these soldiers, the war is still going on.
“We have been very fortunate,” he said in an interview. “It will come.”
And he told the soldiers: “Some of the things you are going to see are hard.”
Afghanistan's 'graveyard of foreigners'
By Andrew North BBC News 9 June 2012
Kabul - Few countries in the world have been invaded as often, and by so many other nations, as Afghanistan, where many soldiers and civilians of various nationalities are buried in Kabul's Kabre Gora, or "graveyard of foreigners".
There is an odd kink in Martyrs Road in the Sherpur district of Kabul. It forces the traffic - from cyclists to rattling yellow taxis - to slow down suddenly, in what looks almost like a mark of respect.
But no-one looks up at the weathered metal sign on the wall on the bend which reads "British Cemetery".
It is a high wall. From outside you cannot see in and, once inside, it muffles the sounds of Kabul.
When you pass through the wooden gates into the small, tree-lined graveyard you have a feeling of entering another world - and another era.
The cemetery was created in the 19th Century, during Britain's past wars in Afghanistan.
Some 160 soldiers from that period are thought to be buried here, although that is just a small fraction of the casualties from successive battles fought to keep Kabul in British hands.
They first took the city in 1839 with little trouble.
It was a straight land-grab to stop Russia getting in first. But an Afghan uprising soon began and, two years later, the British were forced out in a now well-chronicled disaster.
Nearly the entire Kabul garrison of 16,000 British and Indian troops, their families and servants, were slaughtered by Afghan forces as they tried to retreat.
British troops marched back in the same year, razing much of Kabul to the ground in revenge.
But they tried to learn their lesson - that while invading may be relatively simple, occupying Afghanistan was impossibly costly - and initially they adopted a hands-off approach from their bastions in British India.
Yet three and a half decades later, they were invading again and the second British-Afghan war was under way.
Most of the soldiers buried here are from that time, and the remains of their original headstones are now set into the southern wall, shaded by nearby trees.
Glass-covered displays record their stories.
There was Lieutenant John Hearsey, of the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, shot through the heart in December 1879. There is also a mass grave for dozens of unnamed infantrymen from the 67th Foot Regiment, mown down by Afghan fire as they tried to storm a strategic hill.
The British did retake Kabul but the war lasted several more years and they were back again in 1919, before London finally decided Afghanistan was just too much trouble. Britain signed a treaty accepting its empire would never stretch beyond the Khyber Pass and granting the Afghans their independence.
At the other end of the cemetery's southern wall, there are 10 newer marble plaques.
They bear the names of scores of service men and women who have given their lives in the fourth British war in Afghanistan - the current one. And 10 plaques, it seems, are not enough.
Many of those who have died since the US-led invasion in 2001 have yet to be recorded here.
But it is perhaps more appropriate to use the Afghan name for this place - Kabre Gora or graveyard of foreigners. There are ad-hoc memorials here for soldiers from the US, Germany, Italy and many other nations of the Nato alliance who have sent forces.
But it is not just a military cemetery. I have come here with Norine Macdonald, an enterprising Canadian researcher and lawyer, who is helping the British embassy to look after the graveyard (prompted by the burial here of a friend, an American eye doctor shot dead in 2001). On my last visit several years ago, the graveyard looked very neglected but now the flower beds are well-tended.
New wooden benches have been brought in and this peaceful garden of graves has become a symbol of Afghanistan's extraordinary history of conquest, superpower intrigue and strategic value.
From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, to the empires of the Mughals, the British and the Soviets - and now the many nations of the US-led coalition - few countries have been invaded so many times by so many others.
And there are also aid workers, journalists and even hippies from the 1960s interred here.
Norine shows me the graveyard's best known residents - Sir Aurel Stein, a British-Hungarian archaeologist, and Henning Christensen, a famous Danish explorer, who both died here in the 1940s.
We pass another grave with Russian script, although it is not someone linked with the Soviet invasion. It turns out to be a Cossack who fled here in the aftermath of Russia's 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Eventually, I open the wooden gates and step back into 21st Century Kabul.
As I walk away, I pass a convoy of heavily-armoured American vehicles, wheezing their way through gridlocked traffic.
Afghanistan's latest invaders may be tiring now, but few Afghans believe they will be the last to step on their soil.
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST.
Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only).
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Diplomacy » Long plagued by distrust, the relationship hits low point since bin Laden raid.
The Associated Press By SEBASTIAN ABBOT and REBECCA SANTANA June 9th 2012
Islamabad - You know a friendship has gone sour when you start making mean jokes about your friend in front of his most bitter nemesis.
So it was a bad sign this week when the U.S. defense secretary joshed in front of an audience of Indians about how Washington kept Pakistan in the dark about the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a year ago.
"They didn’t know about our operation. That was the whole idea," Leon Panetta said with a chuckle at a Q&A session after a speech in New Delhi, raising laughs from the audience. The Bin Laden raid by U.S. commandos in a Pakistani town infuriated Islamabad because it had no advance notice, and it was seen by Pakistan’s powerful military as a humiliation.
The U.S. and Pakistan are starting to look more like enemies than allies, threatening the U.S. fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants based in the country and efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan before American troops withdraw.
Long plagued by frustration and mistrust, the relationship has plunged to its lowest level since the 9/11 attacks forced the countries into a tight but awkward embrace over a decade ago. The U.S. has lost its patience with Pakistan and taken the gloves off to make its anger clear.
"It has taken on attributes and characteristics now of a near adversarial relationship, even though neither side wants it to be that way," said Maleeha Lodhi, who was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and was key in hurriedly putting together the two countries’ alliance.
The latest irritant is Pakistan’s refusal to end its six-month blockade of NATO troop supplies meant for Afghanistan. Even if that issue is resolved, however, the relationship may be on an irreversible downward slide. The main source of U.S. anger is Pakistan’s unwillingness to go after militants using its territory to launch attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
On the Pakistani side, officials are fed up with Washington’s constant demands for more without addressing Islamabad’s concerns or sufficiently appreciating the country’s sacrifice. Pakistan has lost thousands of troops fighting a domestic Taliban insurgency fueled partly by resentment of the alliance with the U.S.
Panetta’s comments about the bin Laden raid may have been unscripted, but others he made while in India and Afghanistan seemed calculated to step up pressure on Pakistan. He stressed Washington’s strong relationship with India — which Islamabad considers its main, historic enemy — and defended unpopular American drone attacks in Pakistan.
He also said in unusually sharp terms that the U.S. was running out of patience with Islamabad’s failure to go after the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, considered the most dangerous militant group fighting in Afghanistan.
Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target the Haqqanis and other Afghan militants based on its soil because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, especially in countering the influence of India.
Pakistan lashed out at Panetta on Saturday and denied the country was providing safe havens for militants.
Panetta "is oversimplifying some of the very complex issues we are dealing with in our efforts against extremism and terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said. "We strongly believe that such statements are misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region."
A senior U.S. official described the relationship as "the worst it has ever been."
"This is from Washington’s point of view and from Pakistan’s point of view, and even among the real well-wishers on both sides who are appalled and befuddled that we can’t get past all of this and move beyond," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
After years of frosty relations caused by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, Washington and Islamabad were thrust together on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida attacked New York and Washington. The U.S. demanded Pakistan support the war against bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan and sought to convince Islamabad it was not simply interested in a "transactional" relationship based on counterterrorism cooperation, but wanted a long-term strategic partnership.
U.S. officials have largely abandoned that argument over the past 18 months as the relationship has suffered repeated crises.
"Because of the toxic atmosphere on both sides, the two countries cannot even work in a transactional way," said Lodhi, the former Pakistani ambassador.
In January 2011, a CIA contractor sparked outrage when he shot to death two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore who he claimed were trying to rob him. Anger over the incident was still simmering when the U.S. killed bin Laden in May.
In November, American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at two Afghan border posts. The U.S. has said it was an accident, but the Pakistani army claims it was deliberate.
Pakistan retaliated by kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones and closing its border to NATO supplies meant for troops in Afghanistan. Negotiations to reopen the route have been hampered by Islamabad’s demand for much higher transit fees and Washington’s refusal to apologize for the deaths of the Pakistani troops.
The U.S. has attempted to bridge the difference over money by offering to repave highways used by the supply trucks, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
But Pakistani officials have made clear the route will not reopen without some kind of apology. The U.S. has expressed its regret over the incident but has refused to apologize for fear it could open the Obama administration up to criticism by Republicans upset with Pakistan.
A senior U.S. defense official, Peter Lavoy, arrived in Pakistan on Friday to participate in the negotiations. But Panetta’s comments could complicate matters.
Such statements do "water down the willingness to cooperate with the United States," said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
President Barack Obama showed U.S. anger over the supply issue at a NATO summit last month in Chicago by refusing a one-on-one meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
However, the U.S. and Pakistan both have reasons to walk the relationship back from the brink.
The U.S. continues to receive some intelligence cooperation from Pakistan on militants and has been able to continue drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal region despite public protests, likely because of tacit agreement by Pakistani military leaders. Both could be threatened if the relationship heads farther south.
Just as important is Pakistan’s support on the Afghan war. Pakistan is seen as key to striking a peace deal with the Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan that will allow the U.S. to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014 without the country descending into further chaos.
Pakistan is keen on freeing up over a billion dollars in frozen U.S. aid, which will only be released if it reopens the supply line. Also, Pakistan can ill afford to become a true enemy of the U.S. at a time when it is struggling to contain its own Taliban insurgency and right its stuttering economy.
But politics on both sides make breaking the impasse difficult, particularly with U.S. elections this fall and Pakistani elections due early next year — possibly even sooner.
Historically, Pakistan’s army has steered the relationship with the U.S. But fearing public backlash in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant, the generals have tossed the NATO supply line issue to Pakistan’s weak and unpopular civilian government. The politicians are reluctant to do anything that could hurt their election prospects.
"The longer Islamabad delays and dithers, the opinion in Washington is hardening," said Lodhi. "Time is the enemy of a reset in relations."
Karzai: U.S. failed to consult Afghans on airstrike
AP By Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez Sunday, June 10, 2012
KABUL - Afghanistan’s president said Saturday that the United States failed to consult Afghan forces when it called in an airstrike that killed 18 civilians, and he warned that his government will consider such actions in the future to be in violation of the country’s pact with Washington.
In the east, meanwhile, a Taliban suicide bomber disguised as a woman wearing a burqa killed four French soldiers when he blew himself up in a market.
Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said President Hamid Karzai met with investigators earlier in the day and concluded that U.S. troops called in Wednesday’s strike without coordinating with Afghan units.
The incident occurred during a nighttime raid on militants taking cover in a house in a village in Logar province. Karzai has long objected to such raids, saying they put civilians at risk of injury or death. Military officials say they are key to capturing and killing Taliban leaders.
The United States and Afghanistan signed an agreement in April that put the Afghan government in charge of most such “special operations,” a move designed to resolve some of the long-standing tensions.
Faizi said investigators told Karzai that Afghan forces surrounded the house in question but that the U.S. troops decided not to wait for them to try to flush out the militants, calling in aircraft instead. They discovered later that there had also been women, children and elderly men inside.
“This airstrike was a one-sided decision,” Faizi said, adding that Karzai and his advisers decided after hearing the report that they would consider such actions in the future as a breach of the special-operations pact.
According to a separate statement issued by the president’s office, Karzai met with the top U.S. military commander in the country and the U.S. ambassador and told them that there had been multiple incidents since the signing of the broad long-term partnership last month in which international airstrikes had killed or injured civilians.
The U.S. commander in Afghanistan apologized Friday for the civilian deaths in Logar, and a NATO investigation ruled that the coalition forces were responsible for the unintended deaths of civilians.
A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan declined to comment on the Afghan findings but said the country’s forces had approved the larger Logar operation.
“This was an Afghan/coalition operation,” Col. Gary Kolb said. Kolb and U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on whether the special-operations pact had been violated in the Logar incident.
The attack on the French forces took place as they were responding to a report of a bomb planted under a bridge in the main market area of Kapisa province’s Nijrab district, said Qais Qadri, a spokesman for the provincial government. The bomber walked up to the soldiers and detonated his explosives, Qadri said. In addition to the four soldiers killed, five French troops and four Afghan civilians were reportedly wounded.
The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack in an e-mail.
— Associated Press
The 'Great Game' of influence in Afghanistan continues but with different players
FoxNews.com By David Piper June 09, 2012
In the 19th Century Afghanistan was seen as a major prize for the superpowers of that time, Britain and Russia.
It was known as ‘The Great Game’ and involved the two nations attempting to gain influence over Afghanistan and surrounding Central Asian countries by bribes, intimidation or military conquest.
The heart of that 19th Century ‘Cold War’ was the desire to gain access to sell their wares in the lucrative markets of the region and also the prize of India, which Britain then ruled and feared Russia coveted.
Afghanistan has been fought over so many times that it has become well known as a graveyard for invading armies.
The British found that out to their cost in the 19th Century and the USSR discovered that bitter truth in the 20th Century.
Now the U.S. led coalition is counting down the days until all its combat troops have left the country by the end of 2014.
The Alliance has vowed, though, to keep supporting the Afghan government as it battles the Taliban and other groups for control of the country.
Afghanistan is, of course, too important to allow it to become a safe haven again for terrorists to launch further attacks on the West.
But while the soldiers of the Alliance get ready to pack up and head home other countries are now preparing for a new struggle to gain influence in this troubled country.
China, Russia and four Central Asian countries have now vowed to play a larger role in Afghanistan.
At a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) this week in Beijing Afghanistan was also granted observer status of the group that was created as a counterbalance to US and NATO influence in Central Asia.
Chinese President Hu Jintao was quoted in the People’s Daily newspaper:
"We will... play a greater role in the peaceful reconstruction process in AfghanistanThe SCO supports Afghanistan becoming an independent, peaceful, prosperous, neighborly country, free from terrorism and drugs," he said.
James Brazier from HIS Global Insight believes fears over the spread of terrorism across the region once the US led alliance pulls out is uppermost in the minds of those countries:
“The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has reason to fear an unstable Afghanistan. Its main role is to prevent insurgency and narcotics smuggling throughout Central Asia.
If Afghanistan again becomes Disneyworld for jihadists, then there’s a risk of contagion into the brittle post-Soviet states in Central Asia the SCO is designed to protect.”
The SCO is also committed to closer security ties including adopting an anti-terrorism plan and, what it describes as, establishing a swift response mechanism.
That mechanism would allow SCO members to request help of other members during domestic emergencies.
Such a policy could, though. mean Russian and Chinese forces getting involved in dealing with terrorists in the region, including Afghanistan if it becomes a full member.
Neither China or Russia at the moment seem to have the stomach for an Afghan adventure but even the possibility of the country coming within their orbit will concern the United States and its allies.
The major counterbalances to that in the region have historically been India and Pakistan.
But China has already got strong military ties with Pakistan while Russia has for decades been on good relations with India.
The Obama administration, though, is clearly hoping that India will be the answer with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calling for deeper military ties with the country during his visit this week to Delhi.
"I think close partnership with America will be key to meeting India's own stated aims of a modern and effective defense force," he said.
The US is also looking to India to have more influence in Afghanistan, despite its history of non-alignment.
India has, though, already signed a wide-ranging agreement with Kabul to strengthen ties between the two countries, including the training of Afghan officers in India.
James Brazier of HIS Global Insight doesn’t believe India is the answer to US concerns about creeping Chinese and Russian influence:
“India’s regional influence in Central Asia is constricted because its tucked under the Himalayas and Pakistan acts as its “gatekeeper” to the west. So if the US wants a someone to help project influence in Central Asia, I doubt that India’s it.”
He instead believes the US and Pakistan should try to resolve their current differences and work together in the future as they did in the past when they helped push Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
Beyond concerns about spreading terrorism and spheres of influence there is a growing factor that seems to be concentrating the minds of all the major powers, and that is the potential riches to be unearthed in Afghanistan and as a route for pipelines and trade.
The US has, what it describes as a “New Silk Road” strategy that involves attempting to improve trade ties between the countries of central Asia and the Indian sub-continent.
The aim of it is to bring economic prosperity to the region and hopefully that will undermine the extremists.
The US is also promoting the benefits of the TAPI pipeline project that would bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to markets in Pakistan and India.
Rival powers are already, though, arguing over who will build the pipeline with India objecting to Chinese engineers being involved in the project despite their experience, as some suggest it would bring Beijing more influence in the region and a player in the longstanding disputes between India and Pakistan.
The race for the Afghanistan’s natural resources has already begun and China and India are the frontrunners.
A Pentagon report back in 2010 said that surveys showed that Afghanistan has untapped mineral deposits of nearly a $1 trillion.
Despite the potential bonanza US companies have shied away from investing here because of security concerns, but Chinese and Indian companies have dived in despite the risks.
A consortium of Indian companies has won extraction rights to part of a massive 1.8 billion tones iron ore deposit less than a hundred miles from Kabul.
The Indian government has promised to support the development of the mining sector in Afghanistan and its thought one of the reasons behind the investment was the fear that China and Pakistan was trying to dominate the sector.
Chinese companies are currently developing a huge copper mine just 20 miles from Kabul in the province of Logar.
They expect to begin production by 2015 despite the discovery of an ancient Buddhist site in the area that slowed its development.
The challenge will be to get the natural resources to markets.
India is looking at improving rail links from Afghanistan to ports in Iran, while China is looking to develop the railway north through Uzbekistan despite the security problems of going that way.
The new “Great Game” seems to have started already in trying to gain influence over Afghanistan and exploit its natural resources.
But it’s unlikely to involve foreign armies, instead Chinese and Indian companies are pouring into the country in search of riches.
Afghanistan war coming home to U.S.
Mizgon Zahir Darby Sunday, June 10, 2012 San Francisco Chronicle
President Obama and President Hamid Karzai signed the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on May 2. The document repeated promises made by the United States in previous years, solidified a transition strategy and reaffirmed a U.S. commitment to the facade of democracy in Afghanistan.
Although the agreement looks pretty on paper, it does not address the concerns of Afghans living inside and outside Afghanistan. Chief among them is the concern that the war has been outsourced and that Afghans employed by the subcontractors will not receive adequate compensation for injury or trauma and will end up being financial burdens to the United States.
The war in Afghanistan is coming home - to the United States. Thousands of Afghan military and paramilitary members and war refugees have moved to the United States, where few social services are available to meet their needs. Once it was the language barrier that created difficulties for the social service agencies trying to help them. Today, the lack of programs for those who served with the U.S. military through defense subcontractors presents a whole new host of problems.
The exact number of injured and traumatized Afghans who have immigrated is unknown. It is known that, last year, 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan.
Of those, 386 were working for the Defense Department, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Federal law requires American defense contractors to carry insurance to provide employees with medical care and compensation, but there is no verifiable data as to how many employees who are Afghan nationals receive compensation after injury.
The federal government needs to provide veteran services for those who became refugees as a consequence of serving with the U.S. military. Better yet, the contractors need to provide more protection and compensation for these individuals in Afghanistan to keep them from becoming refugees.
Our tax money went to fund the war, and now it funds social services to help these people once they become refugees. Ultimately, the taxpayer pays double.
To many, the presidents' new partnership agreement is nothing more than a commitment to arm more Afghans who have little loyalty to the Afghan government and to supply more funding that will never reach the Afghan people. Instead, the money will go to defense contractors who will leave unfinished projects and injured people once the money runs out.
Meanwhile, education, health and women's rights issues are left on the back burner.
Whatever withdrawal policy Obama ultimately adopts, he must consider the impact it will have in the United States. This one will not do the job.
Afghans living in Northern California
An estimated 60,000 Afghans - the largest population outside of Afghanistan - live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many settled here because of the availability of social services for the refugees, people granted asylum and immigrants. The influx is notable: Last year, 410 Afghan refugees resettled in the United States. Of those, 103 elected to call California home.
Source: Office of Refugee Resettlement
Mizgon Zahir Darby, an Afghan American journalist, is the program manager of the Afghan Mental Health Project, a program of the Afghan Coalition, a nonprofit social service provider in Fremont.
This article appeared on page Z - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Afghanistan tunnel carries risks for NATO
By John Bentley June 9, 2012 CBS News
SALANG, Afghanistan - Since Pakistan closed the Khyber Pass border-crossing late last year, NATO has had to supply its forces through the Salang Tunnel, a 1.6-mile long Soviet-era relic with unforgiving dimensions and a deadly history.
With only inches to spare, a huge tanker squeezed past a bus and through the Salang Tunnel.
The badly rutted road can jam trucks against the rocks or tip them over. Drivers can wait for more than a week to get through this dangerous mountain pass.
Despite the risks, coalition troops rely on the tunnel for 85 percent of their fuel. This is the best route available since Pakistan closed its borders to NATO trucks seven months ago.
Since then, a tunnel built for 1,000 vehicles a day has 10 times that traffic.
Afghan Gen. Mohammad Rajab is in charge of maintenance on the pass. "It's just one accident away from disaster," he said. "And unless something is done soon, it will be impossible for the tunnel to function."
The tunnel has no lights. And the ventilation system doesn't work. The air is choked with such high levels of carbon monoxide that some passengers get sick.
While there are other routes through the Hindu Kush mountains, the Salang Tunnel is the only one that is protected. So drivers have to make a choice: take your chances on this road, or risk being attacked by insurgents.
Like many here, this driver hauls fuel for U.S. troops. "I have been stuck for days on this road," he said. "It's very dangerous."
The Salang Tunnel was built by the Soviets in 1964, but never completely finished. Almost 1,000 Soviet troops died of asphyxiation in 1982 when an explosion trapped them in the tunnel. Since then, hundreds of travelers have died in accidents and avalanches.
Coalition forces wouldn't comment on the tunnel, but Gen. Rajab told CBS News NATO should pay for the repairs the added traffic has caused.
"Their convoys destroyed the road," he said, "and they have a responsibility to help us rebuild it."
So far, there are no plans to rebuild. The Salang Tunnel remains a critical artery for coalition supplies.
Sar-e Pul Security Chiefs Sacked over Jail Break
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 09 June 2012
Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior sacked the Sar-e-Pul police chief and the prison director after the jailbreak on Friday in which as many as 30 Taliban insurgents escaped, the ministry said in a statement Saturday.
The pair, Sar-e-Pul police chief Abdul Yaqoob Zabuli and prison director Colonel Mohammad Aslam, were also summoned to Kabul for questioning, according to the statement.
Nearly 30 inmates managed to break out of the jail in Afghanistan's northern Sar-e-Pul province after a bomb near the wall of the prison was detonated on Friday. Although the guards began to shoot at the escapees and those assisting them, many still managed to flee.
Deputy provincial governor Akhtar Mohammad Khairzada told the Associated Press on Friday that 14 were re-captured but 16 others are still under police pursuit.
He also added that three inmates were killed in the gunfire following the explosion and 28 others were wounded during the clash between the security forces and the attackers.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said more than 170 inmates managed to escape the prison.
"As a result of the attack, 170 prisoners escaped from the prison. The mujahideen took them to a safer place. The escaped detainees include Taliban's district chiefs and other commanders," Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban said.
Last April more than 470 inmates at a prison in the southern Kandahar province escaped through a underground tunnel hundreds of metres long and dug from outside the jail.
A member of Sar-e-Pul provincial council Abdul Ghani told AP that he fears the jail-break will mean a deterioration in security in the province.
Earlier this year Afghanistan and the US reached a deal to transfer any US-run prisons in the country to Afghan control.
War May Be Ending, but Fight Isn’t Over for Soldiers in Remote Afghanistan
By GRAHAM BOWLEY The New York Times June 9, 2012
COMBAT OUTPOST RAHMAN KHEL, Afghanistan - Lt. Col. Shawn Daniel, standing in the middle of this dusty little outpost beneath the Afghan mountains, reassured the 70 soldiers gathered close around him that they would be going home soon.
In 2014, “we are getting out of this,” he told the circle of expectant, upturned faces he had beckoned near.
The United States is withdrawing all of its combat troops by 2014, but the soldiers at this base are scheduled to leave before the end of the year.
Some of the soldiers stood stiff. Others knelt. All intently watched their 43-year-old commander, a sturdy man with silvery hair from Little Rock, Ark., who had driven in especially from the battalion headquarters to bolster their spirits and their courage.
Until they leave, Colonel Daniel warned them sternly, they have a difficult job to do.
“Afghanistan will have the best chance possible to stand on its own feet,” he said. “Until then we have to look after ourselves.”
America is preparing to end its longest war. It is already getting ready to draw down its troops so that in two and a half years nearly all will be gone from this country. Back home, the attention of most Americans has long since shifted elsewhere.
But out here in what feels like the edge of the world, in remote eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, the battle is a tough day-to-day reality for these soldiers. They fight to keep one another alive in a war that has already been called off.
Their base, Combat Outpost Rahman Khel, is a couple of acres of gravel, mustard-colored barracks, a gym tent, a medical hut and a fluttering American flag, hedged by tall, gray Hesco blast walls.
The soldiers posted here, one company of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division, have their home base in Alaska. Now, they peer out from shaded watchtowers at miles of flat water meadows where sheep graze and, on the northern horizon, at a low brown mud-brick village with some trees.
In the east are grand hills and a tall, snow-streaked mountain range the soldiers call the Whale.
Sgt. Christopher Keeney was standing in the wind on Watchtower Four holding a pair of binoculars in one hand while he pointed with the other.
These mountains are where coalition forces carried out Operation Anaconda in March 2002 to rout Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from remote valleys, one of the highest profile operations in the early years of the war.
Ten years later, insurgents are still coming down out of the mountains from Pakistan and the Shah-i-Kot Valley, gathering at a shrine in the foothills and using the plain around Rahman Khel as a transit route to head to the fighting farther west.
“It’s a breeding ground,” said Sergeant Keeney, from Washington State. “At night we see flares and lots of light signals from the villages. It ends up here in the mountains.”
There are other worries, too: at one point during his watch, a stray dog wandered onto the base, and Sergeant Keeney climbed down from a tower to shoot it, trying to keep rabies off the long list of challenges here.
The job of the soldiers at this outpost is to patrol a space of land stretching almost as far as the eye can see. They disrupt Taliban supply lines, search for caches of explosives, clear the roads of land mines.
“We’ve got a pretty big sector,” said Sgt. First Class Jacob Nestor, a short, tough man with a sunburned face and rolling shoulders. He was wearing shades as he scanned the hills. “It’s from those mountains, 35 clicks out, and 10-20 clicks the other way.”
Most days they travel out in convoys of brown armored trucks, posting letters at night in the villages to assure the local Afghans they are there to protect them, collecting fingerprints from would-be mine planters, resolving tribal disputes, meeting elders and trying to gain their trust so the villagers will pass on information when the fighting season begins in earnest.
“We talk to them, we try and see what they need, try to get intelligence about what the enemy is doing,” Sergeant Nestor said.
So far, the men here have been lucky. The camp has received blasts of mortar fire from the village across the meadow to the north, but no one has been hurt.
But this is eastern Afghanistan, and luck holds only so long. Around midday, the camp learns that a convoy from an outpost five miles away has been ambushed on a road to the north. It sounds bad: A platoon sergeant from another company in their battalion was shot in the thigh and abdomen.
But then word comes that he will live: He has been airlifted to Bagram Airbase, and on to Landstuhl, the military hospital in Germany.
The camp settles into some kind of normalcy. Its own patrol, in a line of three huge, mine-protected vehicles called MRAPs, rolls in from the surrounding villages. Soldiers climb out, dusty, tired, but safe. Stretching, some get out their chewing tobacco.
As the afternoon wears on, a white civilian aid helicopter of a type the soldiers nickname the Jinglebird descends loudly from the cloudy sky. Soldiers emerge in clumps from the rec room, hoping the Jinglebird has brought them mail from home.
Colonel Daniel tells them they will be replaced at this outpost after they leave. But after that, who knows? He says the next year or so will be about closing posts like Rahman Khel, figuring out where the Afghans are strong enough to take control on their own and where they still need help.
It is going to get tough, he warns.
He is about to leave for another base, and his convoy of MRAPs waits impatiently behind him in the brownish morning light that settles on the camp.
He tells them again the reason he came here in the first place: to plant the American flag on Afghan soil and teach the insurgents a lesson for what they did in New York City, he says.
He says reintegration back in America will be difficult for the soldiers. He recounts his own fights with his wife at home, and the joy of helping his son.
Out here, he promises, he will come to their aid if they need him with all the force the American military possesses. But the fighting is going to intensify before they leave. For these soldiers, the war is still going on.
“We have been very fortunate,” he said in an interview. “It will come.”
And he told the soldiers: “Some of the things you are going to see are hard.”
Afghanistan's 'graveyard of foreigners'
By Andrew North BBC News 9 June 2012
Kabul - Few countries in the world have been invaded as often, and by so many other nations, as Afghanistan, where many soldiers and civilians of various nationalities are buried in Kabul's Kabre Gora, or "graveyard of foreigners".
There is an odd kink in Martyrs Road in the Sherpur district of Kabul. It forces the traffic - from cyclists to rattling yellow taxis - to slow down suddenly, in what looks almost like a mark of respect.
But no-one looks up at the weathered metal sign on the wall on the bend which reads "British Cemetery".
It is a high wall. From outside you cannot see in and, once inside, it muffles the sounds of Kabul.
When you pass through the wooden gates into the small, tree-lined graveyard you have a feeling of entering another world - and another era.
The cemetery was created in the 19th Century, during Britain's past wars in Afghanistan.
Some 160 soldiers from that period are thought to be buried here, although that is just a small fraction of the casualties from successive battles fought to keep Kabul in British hands.
They first took the city in 1839 with little trouble.
It was a straight land-grab to stop Russia getting in first. But an Afghan uprising soon began and, two years later, the British were forced out in a now well-chronicled disaster.
Nearly the entire Kabul garrison of 16,000 British and Indian troops, their families and servants, were slaughtered by Afghan forces as they tried to retreat.
British troops marched back in the same year, razing much of Kabul to the ground in revenge.
But they tried to learn their lesson - that while invading may be relatively simple, occupying Afghanistan was impossibly costly - and initially they adopted a hands-off approach from their bastions in British India.
Yet three and a half decades later, they were invading again and the second British-Afghan war was under way.
Most of the soldiers buried here are from that time, and the remains of their original headstones are now set into the southern wall, shaded by nearby trees.
Glass-covered displays record their stories.
There was Lieutenant John Hearsey, of the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, shot through the heart in December 1879. There is also a mass grave for dozens of unnamed infantrymen from the 67th Foot Regiment, mown down by Afghan fire as they tried to storm a strategic hill.
The British did retake Kabul but the war lasted several more years and they were back again in 1919, before London finally decided Afghanistan was just too much trouble. Britain signed a treaty accepting its empire would never stretch beyond the Khyber Pass and granting the Afghans their independence.
At the other end of the cemetery's southern wall, there are 10 newer marble plaques.
They bear the names of scores of service men and women who have given their lives in the fourth British war in Afghanistan - the current one. And 10 plaques, it seems, are not enough.
Many of those who have died since the US-led invasion in 2001 have yet to be recorded here.
But it is perhaps more appropriate to use the Afghan name for this place - Kabre Gora or graveyard of foreigners. There are ad-hoc memorials here for soldiers from the US, Germany, Italy and many other nations of the Nato alliance who have sent forces.
But it is not just a military cemetery. I have come here with Norine Macdonald, an enterprising Canadian researcher and lawyer, who is helping the British embassy to look after the graveyard (prompted by the burial here of a friend, an American eye doctor shot dead in 2001). On my last visit several years ago, the graveyard looked very neglected but now the flower beds are well-tended.
New wooden benches have been brought in and this peaceful garden of graves has become a symbol of Afghanistan's extraordinary history of conquest, superpower intrigue and strategic value.
From Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, to the empires of the Mughals, the British and the Soviets - and now the many nations of the US-led coalition - few countries have been invaded so many times by so many others.
And there are also aid workers, journalists and even hippies from the 1960s interred here.
Norine shows me the graveyard's best known residents - Sir Aurel Stein, a British-Hungarian archaeologist, and Henning Christensen, a famous Danish explorer, who both died here in the 1940s.
We pass another grave with Russian script, although it is not someone linked with the Soviet invasion. It turns out to be a Cossack who fled here in the aftermath of Russia's 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Eventually, I open the wooden gates and step back into 21st Century Kabul.
As I walk away, I pass a convoy of heavily-armoured American vehicles, wheezing their way through gridlocked traffic.
Afghanistan's latest invaders may be tiring now, but few Afghans believe they will be the last to step on their soil.
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST.
Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only).
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