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Karzai Expresses Confidence in Security Transition
VOA News June 14, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says international partners are cooperating to help his country fight terrorism and radicalism and bring peace and economic progress to the region.
President Karzai spoke Thursday at a one-day conference in Kabul, where officials were discussing the future of Afghanistan after foreign troops withdraw in 2014. The talks follow similar discussions last November in Turkey.
Karzai said Afghanistan is "certain" it will complete a transition to handling its own security next year ahead of the withdrawal of international forces in 2014.
He also highlighted the work of Afghanistan's High Peace Council as one of the most important elements of the transition, saying the head of the council will soon travel for talks in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Karzai thanked the nations that pledged during last month's NATO summit in Chicago to support Afghanistan's security forces through 2024.
The Afghan president, whose term ends in 2014, said he also wants to take steps to improve governance in the country, and plans to call a special parliamentary session next week to discuss steps to help start the next leader on a "better footing." He said it is only in "stability and harmony" that Afghanistan can prosper.
The Kabul talks, known as the "Heart of Asia" conference, involve 15 regional countries, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. The talks also involve representatives from France, Britain, Germany and the United States, as well as NATO and the European Union.
Next month, Japan is set to host a conference focusing on Afghanistan's future economic development.
Karzai Urges Cooperation As International Conference Opens
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has called on neighboring and regional countries to do more to strengthen stability and economic development in Afghanistan.
Speaking at the start of the one-day international "Heart of Asia" conference in Kabul, Karzai said greater economic and security cooperation would bring the entire region "much needed relief from terrorism, radicalism, and violence."
Karzai thanked Saudi Arabia for help it has given toward finding a political resolution to the war in Afghanistan, saying Afghans "hope that our brothers and sisters in Pakistan will do same."
He also said Salahuddin Rabbani, the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, will soon visit Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to seek their help in bringing Taliban leaders to peace talks in the hope of ending decades of war.
Rabbani is the son of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed in September 2011 by a suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban.
The Taliban's leadership has been willing in the past to hold preliminary confidence-building talks in Qatar with the United States. But the hard-line Islamist militia publicly refuses to talks to the Afghan government.
Karzai insists that some Taliban leaders have spoken with Afghan government emissaries in private. He has been pushing for Saudi Arabia to be a venue for any possible talks.
At the conference on June 14, Karzai also sought to reassure Iran that ties between Kabul and Tehran would not be damaged because of strategic partnership deals signed by Karzai's government with the United States, a leading rival of Iran, and other Western countries.
The deals seek to define Western relations with Kabul after 2014, when NATO-led combat troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving security in the hands of Afghan forces.
But Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the conference that U.S. efforts to establish foreign military bases in Afghanistan would hurt peace efforts and could turn Afghanistan "once again into a scene of security rivalries."
Karzai said he is confident, despite persistent Taliban attacks aimed at overthrowing his government, that Afghan forces will be capable of taking full control of the country's security during 2013, ahead of the planned withdrawal of NATO-led foreign forces.
Afghanistan is currently in the third phase of a five-stage transition, in which the centers of all provincial capitals, including the violence-plagued south and east, will be handed over to Afghan forces.
The "Heart of Asia" conference is the second of its kind after a similar event in Istanbul in November 2011.
In addition to Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, participants at the conference include Russia, China, India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates.
Representatives of 15 mostly Western countries and a dozen regional and international organizations also are attending. They include the United States, Britain, Germany, the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO.
With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa
Local Taliban commander killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, June 14 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban commander was killed Thursday in an operation carried out by Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops in the country's southern province of Kandahar, the coalition said in a statement.
"An Afghan-led security force, supported by coalition troops, killed the Taliban commander Fayez Jan and one additional insurgent during an operation in Daman district, Kandahar province, today," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) said in the statement.
Two Afghan males were injured in the battle and transported to coalition medical facilities for treatment, the statement added.
"Fayez Jan constructed, distributed and directed the placement of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) throughout Daman and Shah Wali Kot districts. At the time of his death, Fayez Jan was planning to launch an IED attack against Afghan and coalition convoys in the area," the statement said.
Afghan Taliban has launched massive IED attacks against security forces in recent years.
Two ISAF soldiers were killed in two separate IED blasts in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday and another NATO soldier died of wounds following an IED attack in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Separately, Afghan police and army, backed by ISAF troops, have eliminated six armed Taliban insurgents during operations within the past 24 hours, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday morning.
Four other insurgents were wounded and three suspects were detained by joint forces during the four cleanup operations in four provinces, it added.
They also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of a spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
Afghan forces and some 130,000-strong ISAF troops have intensified cleanup operations against insurgents recently. Records kept by Xinhua, based on figures released by Interior Ministry, reveal that around 540 insurgents have been killed, 116 wounded and over 500 others detained since May 1 by joint forces.
Afghanistan shelves plans for ambassador accused of fraud
Mohammad Daud Yaar, accused by Afghan family in US of defrauding them, had been chosen as ambassador in London
Guardian.co.uk By Luke Harding and Emma Graham-Harrison Wednesday 13 June 2012
Kabul - Afghanistan has quietly shelved plans to send a man accused of fraud in the US to head its embassy in Britain.
Mohammad Daud Yaar, director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry in Kabul, had been chosen for the high-profile job, with confirmation expected to be little more than a formality. But last week the Guardian reported that an Afghan immigrant family in California had accused Yaar of defrauding them. In 2010 they obtained a civil court judgment against him. Yaar admits to owing the family $100,000 but says he intends to pay them back.
In the wake of the fraud claims, a government spokesman in Kabul had said his nomination was "proceeding as normal". But sources now say that, although Daud's contacts may protect his longer-term hopes of an ambassadorial posting, his candidacy for London is on hold.
Yaar is a long-standing and close friend of Mahmoud Karzai, the influential brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Yaar lived with another Karzai brother, Ahmed Wali, in Chicago in the late 1980s and 90s. He had been expected to arrive in London shortly.
It is understood the decision to pull the plug on his nomination came last Friday after Karzai and several senior ministers returned from a summit of regional leaders in Beijing.
The British embassy in Kabul said it did not comment on ambassadorial appointments until they were confirmed.
UK foreign secretary William Hague, visiting Kabul for an international conference on Afghanistan's future, also declined to comment, but said on Wednesday he was not concerned that Kabul had gone months without appointing an ambassador.
Yaar's imminent appointment had followed a year in which London lay vacant as Kabul struggled to find a consensus candidate for what is considered one of the most prestigious diplomatic posts. There are now likely to be further delays. "Embassies do continue to operate without ambassadors for extended periods of time, but obviously we will welcome an Afghan ambassador in due course," Hague told a news conference.
Sources outside Afghanistan say Yaar secured the UK job after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by Mahmoud Karzai, whose business activities in the US are also being investigated. Yaar spent about 20 years in the US, where he worked as a part-time professor and also built up an extensive property portfolio.
He returned to Kabul in 2009 after the civil action. The plaintiffs, two Afghan-born brothers, Jamal and Ajmal Staneckzai, claim Yaar "tricked, defrauded and deceived" them over the 2001 purchase of a house in Fresno, California. Yaar insisted the case, from California's superior court in Contra Costa, was a business deal gone wrong. He vehemently denied fraud.
"If I had committed fraud, why did they settle?" he told the Guardian last week in his office in a low-rise building inside the sprawling grounds of the Afghan foreign ministry. "It was a business agreement and the other side backed off [from their side of the deal] and went to the courts. They couldn't prove anything."
Yaar said he was planning to pay off the remainder of the money he owed as soon as he could afford it, but his home in California was in negative equity and his small government salary in Kabul did not leave room for savings. He stressed: "My intention was to help these guys to solve their housing problem."
But one of his alleged victims told the Guardian Yaar was not a fit person to become UK ambassador, let alone hold responsibility in Kabul for big financial issues. Jamal Staneckzai said he had wanted to buy a home for his elderly parents, Ghani and Amani, who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation.
Unable to get a mortgage, he and four other families from the close-knit Afghan community in California turned to Yaar for help. Yaar bought a property in 2001 on their behalf, but registered it in his own name. The Staneckzais made regular mortgage payments, with several family friends providing the initial deposit as a loan, he said.
In 2005 the Staneckzais were finally able to get a mortgage. When they asked Yaar to transfer the property to them he refused and sold it to them for $358,900, promising to refund the net proceeds.
Yaar never refunded the money, Staneckzai alleges. "I was a part-time student at university back in 2001, which is why I couldn't get a loan. We regarded Yaar as a close and respected uncle. He told us, 'You guys will pay the mortgage costs and I will transfer everything back to you". Instead he took every dollar from us. He took our equity."
Panetta Backs Conditions For Pakistani Aid
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Washington should consider putting conditions on aid to Pakistan.
Speaking at a Senate budget hearing, Panetta said Washington should not end aid to Pakistan, but examine putting conditions on it. He didn't elaborate.
He said Pakistan's decision to close land routes to Afghanistan was costing the United States millions more to ship supplies to forces there.
"We've also had the closure of these ground lines, the so-called g-locks in Pakistan. And the result of that is that it is very expensive because we're using the northern transit route in order to be able to draw down our forces and also supply our forces. I think the amount is about $100 million a month because of the closure," Panetta explained.
Pakistan took the step after a NATO air attack last November accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
On June 11, the United States announced it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a deal to reopen the routes.
One of the issues holding up an agreement is believed to be Pakistani insistence the United States apologize for the November strike, something the Pentagon has been unwilling to do.
But Panetta explained at the hearing that the apology wasn't the only issue.
"The United States has made clear that mistakes were made, and they were made on our side, they were also made on the Pakistani side. We expressed condolences for the mistakes that were made, we've made that clear. We have certainly continued to make clear the mistakes that were made. I think the problem is that at this point, they're asking not only for that [an apology], but there are other elements of the negotiation that are also involved," Panetta said.
The comments come less than a week after Panetta said during a trip to Kabul that the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens it offered to insurgents fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.
Based on AFP and Reuters reporting
Pakistan Rift Costs U.S. $100 Million Extra a Month
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS June 13, 2012
WASHINGTON - The U.S. is spending an extra $100 million a month to get supplies into Afghanistan because of Pakistan's closure of key transit routes into the war zone, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, putting a dollar figure for the first time on the added cost of the breakdown in relations with Islamabad.
Pakistan closed ground-resupply routes into Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces accidently killed two dozen Pakistani troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Nov. 26.
Pakistan has demanded an apology for the deaths. The White House has offered condolences but has resisted apologizing, saying mistakes were made by both U.S. and Pakistani forces.
In response to Pakistan's closure, the Pentagon has expanded an alternative northern distribution network and stepped up air shipments into land-locked Afghanistan to ensure troops have the supplies they need, officials say.
But doing so has come at a price, which, until now, the Pentagon had declined to disclose.
Mr. Panetta didn't provide a breakdown of the total cost to U.S. taxpayers of re-routing supplies into Afghanistan by air or through the northern distribution network. But in testimony to Congress Wednesday, Mr. Panetta estimated the added cost of Pakistan's border closure at about $100 million a month.
U.S. defense officials had previously estimated that it costs the U.S. about 2.5 times as much to bring a container of supplies into Afghanistan through the northern distribution network than it costs to bring a container into Afghanistan through Pakistan. Air shipments cost far more.
Defense officials said they wouldn't disclose dollar-figures because of concerns that Pakistan would use the information in negotiations in Islamabad to drive up the amount the U.S. pays per container.
The Pentagon said this week that it has withdrawn its supply-route negotiating team from Pakistan.
Officials on both sides had said the terms of a supply deal have largely been worked out. But officials say Pakistan's leaders are reluctant to finalize the deal in the absence of a U.S. apology for the Nov. 26 incident.
Mr. Panetta told members of a Senate Appropriations Committee panel that an apology was one of several issues still being discussed with Pakistan to try to resolve differences over the reopening of supply routes into Afghanistan. "That alone isn't the only issue that's being discussed and that needs to be resolved to get the [supply routes] open," he said.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
Clinton, Indian Foreign Minister Discuss Afghanistan, Pakistan
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna have discussed regional issues with a focus on Afghanistan.
Clinton welcomed Indian efforts to help stabilize Afghanistan, noting New Delhi will host an investment conference for Afghanistan later this month.
Clinton pointed out that India has contributed $2 billion to help develop the New Silk Road Initiative aimed at boosting regional trade.
Clinton said she and Krishna also discussed efforts India and Pakistan are making to increase trade, investment, and travel between their two countries.
Life After Karzai
America might not be able to pick a winner in Afghanistan, but at least it can try to block a loser.
Foreign Policy (blog) BY MICHAEL O'HANLON JUNE 13, 2012
Foreign Policy introduces "Trip Report," a new feature that takes readers behind closed doors with some of the world's sharpest minds for an intimate, unfiltered look at subjects ranging from the European economic crisis to the course of the war in Afghanistan. Think of it as a new kind of intelligence -- a backstage pass to rooms you haven't been cleared into before.
Where I went: For all the worries about Afghanistan today, there was something uplifting about many of the conversations I was privileged to be part of on my most recent trip there, in May, with former U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann as my travel partner and with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as the official sponsor of the trip.
A spirit of hopefulness, more than fear, characterized most people I spoke with in Kabul. The recent signing of the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) to guide cooperation after 2014, when the NATO combat mission is set to end, reassures many Afghans that they will not be left to their own darker angels -- or the mercy of their neighbors -- when ISAF's transition is complete. Although implementing protocols and a status of forces agreement for the SPA may prove difficult to negotiate, the accord has definitely given a boost to the strides of many Afghan reformers who continue to work hard for their country's future.
What's new: More than ever before, politics is breaking out in Afghanistan. The 2014 presidential election is still two years away, but new political organizations like the Right and Justice Party are forming under the leadership of people like former Interior Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar. Reform movements designed to get out the vote and improve the independence and integrity of the electoral process, like the Coalition for Reform and Development, are gaining steam.
And everyone is forming shortlists of the most likely candidates for the race. Among the names one hears are former officials like Atmar and Abdullah Abdullah; U.S. citizens with Afghan ties or ancestry, including former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali; current government officials including Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak, presidential advisor Ashraf Ghani, and perhaps even Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai of Nangarhar province. But not all is well; the shortlists also often include some who give major apprehensions to many foreign officials -- among them a former chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai and some of the president's relatives.
There are other hopeful indicators in Afghanistan on the political front, too. For example, recent Asia Foundation work suggests that the quality of governance at the provincial level in Afghanistan is improving. There are still too many bad actors and too much interference from Kabul in the day-to-day operations of regional governments. But by one itemized system of measurement, at least, the average quality of provincial governance has improved at least 10 percent over the last year.
Much still needs to be done on the political front, of course, before 2014 elections even happen. Electoral watchdog organizations need to be strengthened and made more independent of the presidential palace, and means of possible voting fraud need to be reduced. Otherwise, cheating and scandal could delegitimize the election outcomes and contribute to more ethnic tension.
Beyond these technical improvements, we also need much clearer focus on the big issue: how to use Western leverage to ensure that no warlord or extremely corrupt actor is elected president. This is the 800-pound gorilla that is not yet getting adequate attention, perhaps out of too much political correctness that the international community should not pick winners in a sovereign state's own elections. It is true that the international community should not pick a winner. But it can and must identify a few surefire losers -- before they can build up enough momentum to have a chance to win the presidency.
The takeaway: Often, the Afghanistan policy debate has an oxymoronic feel. We focus on the military transition from ISAF-led operations to Afghan-based security, according to a careful plan worked out first at NATO's Lisbon summit in 2010 and recently reaffirmed at the May 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. This is fine and necessary. But we spend far less time thinking about political transition as Karzai's second term ends and what will happen when he is required to vacate the palace come 2014.
Military strategist Carl von Clausewitz taught us that war is a continuation of politics by other means, implying that a successful end to any war must be politically based. This is even truer in counterinsurgency, where much of the struggle is for the proverbial hearts and minds of citizens who might or might not support the insurgency depending on their views about the legitimacy of their government.
Not all is lost. The international community does focus on specific aspects of Afghan politics. We try to pressure Karzai to fight corruption more assertively. Personnel from the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, along with foreign advisors from other countries, embed with military units in the field to try to help strengthen local Afghan governance. We all chase after the elusive and improbable peace deal with the Taliban. And of course, we try to struggle through our tortured half-partnership and half-rivalry with Pakistan.
But in most NATO capitals, we think far less about the fact that Afghanistan is due to have a presidential election in 2014 -- the results of which could be the single-most important determinant of our prospects for reaching an acceptable outcome and averting defeat in this seemingly interminable war. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and others on the ground in Kabul are surely aware of the crucial significance of the upcoming election, but it has not yet been grasped in Washington. For example, Crocker and others have, in recent months, helped persuade Karzai to firm up his public pledges that he will not extraconstitutionally seek another term in office. But leverage over the most important Afghan transition of all requires much more than a pledge. We need a strategy to be sure that the next Afghan president is more effective than Karzai -- rather than even more prone to cronyism or even less able to get a handle on corruption and patronage. Right now there is no such strategy, and Afghans can tell.
A snapshot of Afghanistan today: The war in Afghanistan is now a slog, at best. Even those of us supporting the mission there must acknowledge that it has been slower and harder going than expected. With Osama bin Laden dead and other al Qaeda leaders also out of the picture (or out of the region), the original motivation for the effort seems less compelling to many as well.
But there are considerable reasons for hope in Afghanistan. These positive indicators must be kept in mind lest we persuade ourselves incorrectly that the mission has somehow already failed -- an increasingly prevalent view among Western publics, parliaments, and some top officials.
At the same time, for every hopeful indicator, there is a reminder of how far we still have to go. This should not be seen as reason for fatalism, but as a clarion call of just how important the 2014 political transition will be for Afghanistan's future. Reasonably competent and serious leadership -- and there are many in Afghanistan who can provide such qualities for their country -- can build on the positive trends, even if it will take a long time to construct a strong Afghan state. Poor leadership could result in the fragile gains dissipating and the prospects of stronger insurgency, civil conflict, and state collapse increasing.
In terms of encouraging trends, consider the following:
Afghan security forces have almost reached their envisioned full size of 352,000, counting army and police. They are fighting, too. They are now collectively taking at least twice the casualties of NATO forces, participating in at least 90 percent of operations, and leading some 40 percent of operations (albeit usually the simpler ones at this point). They repulsed the April 15 Haqqani network attack on Kabul and other cities largely on their own.
Although the security forces still suffer from political patronage appointments and corruption, the problems are being partially addressed. Some 50 Afghan army leaders in the country's east alone have been replaced over the last year; 70 police officers were just fired recently in the country's west for poor performance; the Defense Ministry has opened a full criminal investigation into the problems that produced corruption and theft at Afghanistan's main military hospital last year. Such efforts could be too little, too late. There are serious corruption problems -- as in the Afghan Air Force. And some of the firings and hirings raise concerns of ethnic bias in the security ministries. But on balance the progress is picking up.
The Afghan Local Police (ALP), a form of armed community watch overseen by NATO troops, is generally proving its mettle. These lightly armed and locally organized forces, which now number some 12,000, are holding their ground in some 80 percent of firefights, even when sometimes outgunned by the Taliban, taking the highest rate of casualties of any part of the Afghan security forces in the process.
There have been a handful of cases of abuse within this program, and a number of illegal militias are falsely adopting the name Afghan Local Police to disguise their true nature (which is sometimes to attack their neighboring tribes or communities). But U.S. Special Forces have monitored and worked with the actual ALP forces effectively and stepped in to address problems when needed. They only allow the formation of ALP units after several months of getting to know an area and working with local elders to try to ensure a reasonable mix of ALP members. The admittedly daunting challenge in coming months and years will be to keep growing the program while also handing oversight gradually to Afghan special-operations forces.
Each of the above areas of progress with the Afghan security forces also underscores the fragility of the situation. While Afghan forces are much bigger and better than before, they are nowhere near good enough, so professionalism and discipline must not only be maintained, but improved. While a large number of incompetent or corrupt leaders within the security forces' ranks have been replaced, many remain -- and under the present government, uniformed leaders and ministers of interior and defense only have so much power to replace poor leaders on their own, given the political interests still at play in many appointments.
The ALP can only be effective in the future if Afghanistan's own special forces are increasingly able to play the oversight role that NATO has provided to date. This clearly assumes a level of competence and integrity within the Afghan special-operations forces that will not survive poor national leadership, should the wrong person wind up in charge after Karzai. The wrong president could also generate ethnic tensions that could fracture the overall security force.
If we examine the other efforts to reduce corruption and the influence of patronage networks within Afghanistan, we reach a similar conclusion -- real and sometimes substantial, but uneven and insufficient, progress that by itself is neither adequate nor self-sustaining. This was apparent in discussions with Task Force-Shafafiyat (a legacy of Gen. David Petraeus and Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, as well as Task Force 2010), which seeks to reduce corruption in how NATO administers its contracts with Afghans, as well as with Americans and other foreigners. Again, the importance of future political leadership will be crucial. Consider the magnitude and complexity of the problems:
* Counternarcotics courts and prosecutors, by contrast, are pretty good. Lots of big fish have been going to jail, including recently the second-biggest drug trafficker in Nimruz province.
* But the Attorney General's Office and the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption within the Afghan government remain disappointments.
* Overall the court system in Afghanistan remains poor, with inadequate resources and far too much bribery and favoritism.
More happily, at least one Afghan Supreme Court judge and others are pushing general judicial reform at long last. This is resulting in the firing of 200 to 300 judges a year (which may be a touch worrisome given that only 125 judges are being trained or graduated each year). But on balance the judiciary is still very problematic, weak, and underresourced -- and reforms are making it smaller rather than larger in the short term, due to all the firings, however necessary.
Personnel changes in the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry are generally encouraging, and the Defense Ministry's inspector general is well regarded. Yet some big problems remain within these organizations, of course -- notably, the Border Police and the Air Force still suffer from the influence of strong criminal patronage networks.
Crucially, NATO is belatedly cleaning up its own act, no longer unwittingly funding nearly as many corrupt actors or insurgent groups as it did before. Task Force 2010, the ISAF organization designed to increase transparency and accountability in how NATO awards contracts for logistics services and related activities in Afghanistan, is finally gaining steam. More than 100 companies or individuals have now been barred from ISAF contracting. Transparency requirements make it easier to check on who is involved in these companies, and lots more intelligence is being devoted to the problem. It often takes a couple of months to develop good intelligence on new companies, so when they reorganize or rename themselves, they can sometimes evade notice for a short time. But overall this set of problems is getting serious attention.
Incredibly, only recently has U.S. legislation been passed that finally allows the United States to break contracts with companies when they are linked directly to the enemy. Until now, the country couldn't do that unless it had other reasons too! Under U.S. law, apparently, it was seen as a worse sin to fill out paperwork wrong than to be a member of the Taliban, until only recently. More than 10 percent cost savings have been achieved to date, normalized for the relevant workload, by the reforms in contracting. More important than simply saving money is that this is a promising indicator of fewer funds being diverted to malevolent actors who skim off the top of contracts.
Unfortunately, there are many areas of the anti-corruption struggle where we are only beginning to scratch the surface at best. For example, no one whom I spoke with on my recent trip claimed progress on land reform -- protecting private property and also regularizing the way public lands are developed. The only good news I heard on that front was one former minister saying that, in general, the blatant expropriations of land for the personal gain of well-placed political actors occur only on public property (though because so many lands in Afghanistan are public, and so many of those are already used by subsistence farmers, this is of little solace). So again, this whole set of efforts clearly still has its major limits even among its most passionate proponents.
The 2014 question: Beyond specific reforms that might be made in the next two years, what was clear from my conversations in Afghanistan this May was that what we need most is a way to influence the 2014 political transition.
The core element of this strategy is to make sure Afghans know, beyond any doubt, that U.S. willingness to support them financially, developmentally, and militarily after 2014 will be a function of the quality of their governance and the character of their leaders. It is inconceivable that the U.S. Congress will sustain up to 20,000 troops in Afghanistan at a cost of perhaps $25 billion a year, and add another $3 billion to $5 billion annually in direct security and economic support to the Afghan government and people, if the next Afghan government is corrupt beyond hope.
If that were to happen, I am confident that the U.S. commitment would be scaled back dramatically -- to levels of assistance perhaps one-third to one-fifth the amounts sketched out above, or even less. That would be regrettable.
Some Afghan reformists want us to state a clear preference soon for who the next president of their country should be and promise to cut off all aid to anyone else who might win the election. Such an approach by the United States and other key foreign countries is highly unlikely, as it would constitute excessive meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Not only that, we would quite possibly choose wrong. But what is certainly within our means is to signal that good Afghan leadership will inspire much greater outside confidence and related willingness to stay engaged -- whereas the opposite will invalidate the premise for the current hopeful talk about our long-term commitment to Afghanistan. Strategic Partnership Agreement or not, major cooperation and financial help will not be provided to a criminally corrupt or malicious regime. We should probably also be willing to say, by name if necessary, who the unacceptable leaders would be, if they choose to run for president. This could be done privately at first, perhaps, and publicly if necessary.
No formal or binding promise is possible; Americans don't yet even know who will run their own government come 2014, 2015, and beyond. But a coordinated message by current congressional leadership of both parties -- and by President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- could help a great deal and achieve much of the desired effect. If it is too soon to generate this kind of coordinated message now, policymakers should think now about doing so soon after America's own November elections. There is still a little time to sort this matter out, though not that much.
Many Afghans think that U.S. interest in their country is so great -- whether for military bases for operations in broader South and Central Asia or some other nefarious purpose -- that the United States would never scale back its commitment to their country. That view is bunk and fails to account for America's war weariness with the Afghanistan conflict as well as its greater hopefulness that, with al Qaeda central on the ropes, the future of Afghanistan is slightly less crucial to U.S. security than it might have seemed a decade ago.
On the other hand, many Afghans think the United States will desert them anyway, regardless of what they do. That view fails to recognize what the country learned by its premature and precipitous withdrawal from the region a quarter-century ago, together with its lingering worries about the possibility that some part of al Qaeda might indeed seek future sanctuary on Afghan territory. After so much investment of American blood and treasure, it is clear that the United States will not simply abandon the effort. And though it favors and hopes for a serious effort at peace talks with at least some elements of the Taliban, it will not desert a future Afghan government simply because such talks might fail.
Finally, some Afghans seem to think that the United States actually enjoys quarreling with Karzai, since it often seems that way. In fact, while U.S. strategy toward the current Afghan government has not been steady or clearheaded at times, the history of the last 10 years underscores two dueling realities: that the United States wants very much to work constructively with Afghan political leadership, but that it is increasingly frustrated by the difficulty of doing so and no longer so confident that success is even possible.
The next Afghan leader has a chance to restore America's faith and the strength of its support. He has the chance to help forge the kind of enduring security partnership that America established over the years, through good times and bad, from Greece and Turkey to Jordan and Egypt to South Korea and Taiwan. America needs to find a way to signal this clearly and thereby persuade Afghans to work cohesively and doggedly to defeat the crooks and warlords who may seek to replace Hamid Karzai in two years and to elect a serious, competent, and non-corrupt new president. The fate of 13 years of effort, blood, sweat, tears, and treasure depends more than anything on how well such an effort can succeed.
In the Afghan War, a Little Robot Can Be a Soldier's Best Friend
Some Are as Adorable as WALL-E, and Injured Ones Now Go to Bot Rehab
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE Updated June 13, 2012
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - The 310 SUGV is a distant cousin of the Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner currently being promoted as a Father's Day gift. In Afghanistan, the Marines call him the Devil Pup.
And when a Devil Pup gets sick, Marines can send the little bot to the Joint Robotics Repair Detachment—Afghanistan, where a team of military and civilian technicians practice the healing arts on robots.
Army Spec. Steven Grado recently tended to a Devil Pup, shipped from the front lines to the repair facility in a travel case. He installed a battery, switched the robot on and, like a yoga instructor, put the little guy through a series of poses. He scribbled notes, listing the symptoms.
Made by iRobot Corp., IRBT -1.11% the Devil Pup looks like a sibling of Disney's fictional WALL-E movie character. It scoots around on tank-like treads, equipped with a manipulator arm and high-resolution cameras. It can wade through 6 inches of water, clamber over an obstacle or walk point in front of a patrol. This robot—"really strong for its size," according to Spec. Grado—was easy to diagnose. The robotic hand it uses to probe roadside bombs wouldn't fully close.
That, in turn, required physical therapy. Spec. Grado turned a calibration switch on, manipulated the arm until the full range of motion was restored, then rebooted it. "Sometimes they take a couple tries," says Spec. Grado. "That's just how computers go."
Robots used to be the war's disposable heroes: If one got in trouble, the device could simply be junked. But now, in a time of fiscal constraints, these machines are getting the loving care they deserve.
The detachment, housed at Bagram Airfield, the sprawling military installation north of Kabul, has surgery bays and diagnostic tools to give the military's robot companions a second chance. Col. King says the focus now is on developing robots that are durable rather than disposable.
The military currently has as many as 3,500 robots in Afghanistan, from small contraptions that a soldier can pitch through a window to bulldozer-size machines that can plow over mine-seeded roads. Instead of dispatching a young soldier to probe for a mine or search a cave, a commander these days often sends in a small robot.
This, in turn, means that the combat troops sometimes develop emotional attachments to their robotic companions. Army Maj. Christopher Orlowski, science and technology officer for the robotics detachment at Bagram, said the soldiers and Marines sometimes name their robots—and even give them battlefield "promotions" for successfully spotting mines or explosive devices.
When some damaged robots are brought in, said Maj. Orlowski, who has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and wrote a thesis on insectlike drones, some troops insist that they get the same robot back—not a replacement unit.
The robots may have their adorable qualities, but they are engaged in a serious business. Col. King showed the remains of one robot that recently arrived at the depot: an olive-drab box held the blast-shattered remains. What was left—a heap of gears, rubber treads and a frayed wiring harness—were the remains of a PackBot, another model made by iRobot.
Like thousands of robots deployed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, PackBot fulfilled a mission that flesh-and-bones soldiers, risking life and limb, used to do. According to statistics provided The Wall Street Journal by the U.S. military, more than 750 such robots have been lost in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan—a number that translates into many saved lives.
Even parts of a bomb-damaged robot can be salvaged. In the case of the PackBot, technicians recovered the controller, an important piece of hardware that could be paired with another bot.
Rich Ramsey, a civilian technician, said that this was one of the more serious casualties the facility had to treat. "This one took a hit on both sides, and in the center," he explained. "And probably got run over at the same time. Sothere isn't a whole lot left."
While the human lives that these robots save are priceless, the robots themselves often are very expensive. The smallest robot that comes in for diagnostic work at the Bagram repair facility costs $9,000. A remote-controlled vehicle used to clear mines can cost a quarter of a million dollars.
The Army has recently ordered new throwable robots such as the ReconRobotics Inc. Recon Scout XT, a dumbbell-shaped robot, and the iRobot FirstLook, a small robot designed to survive a 15-foot drop. Many of these robots will require some attention during their tour.
Once cured, robots here get a little fresh-air therapy. After finishing repairs, the technicians put the robots through their paces out on Disney Drive, Bagram's main drag, drawing stares from soldiers on the base. The street was named in honor of Army Spec. Jason Disney, killed in 2002 when clearing scrap metal at Bagram.
Inside the robot hospital one day recently, technician Thomas Vialpando was tinkering with the innards of a Honeywell International Inc. HON -1.66% T-Hawk, a hovering robot used by ordnance-disposal teams.
The T-Hawk, which resembles a quarter keg of beer or a hibachi, has a swiveling robotic eye mounted on a gimbal so it can hover and stare at a target. The robot's ducted-fan design can be temperamental in the dust and high altitudes of Afghanistan—and Mr. Vialpando was swapping out the robot's two-stroke engine so it could stay aloft.
The robot doctors at Bagram recently took in a Talon robot, a larger, brawnier cousin to the Devil Pup made by U.K.'s QinetiQ Group PLC. The Talon had a strange malady: It spun in circles as if possessed.
No exorcism was required. The robot doctors simply installed a new OCU—operator control unit—and the Talon was back in working order.
For soldiers who work at the facility, the job has its tangible rewards. "That's my biggest mission: to make sure the robots are 100% healthy before they go out the door," says Spec. Grado.
If a robot is sacrificed in the line of duty, he adds, "that's fine, as long as everybody comes home."
Worry Replaces Hope In Race To Restore Ancient Afghan City
By Frud Bezhan, Zarif Nazar June 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Once filled with treasure-adorned minarets, grand libraries and mosques, and a towering fortress overlooking a vast empire, the ancient city of Ghazni was in the past a great center of Islamic power and culture.
But looking at it today, you would never guess that this city in central-east Afghanistan once anchored an empire that reached far and wide -- to modern-day northern India in the east, and spanning Iran to the west.
Ghazni, which means "jewel," has become a scruffy city plagued by militancy in recent times. Locals here live in fear without electricity, adequate water supplies, or a sewage system.
Consequently in 2007, when the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) chose Ghazni as an "Islamic capital of culture" for 2013, hopes were raised that the city might be restored to its former grandeur.
With less than a year before the cultural festivals begin, however, these hopes have given way to fear that negligence and insecurity will derail the celebrations.
Every year ISESCO designates three cities -- one each for Arabic, African, and Asian regions -- as part of its efforts to recognize Islamic cultural centers.
But some Afghan officials worry that Ghazni could be stripped of the honor if preparations are not completed for the monthlong celebrations slated to begin in August 2013.
That is not what was envisioned when Ghazni was chosen as a cultural capital. The thinking was that with funding from the Afghan government and foreign donors, including UNESCO and USAID, infrastructure projects and job opportunities would follow.
Precarious Security Situation
Ashraf Ghairat, a journalist in Ghazni, accuses the central and provincial governments of incompetence.
"Unfortunately, in the last few years all the projects that should have been completed haven't materialized," he says. "These projects need a long time to complete. I don't think we will have enough time because many of these projects haven't even been started yet."
Ghairat says insecurity has also hampered efforts, claiming that, out of 19 districts in Ghazni Province, the government controls only three, with the rest in the hands of Taliban militants.
He says that violence could eventually strip Ghazni of the event, regardless of whether the projects are completed.
Amid growing concerns that the project in Ghazni will not be finished in time, the speaker of the Afghan parliament, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, summoned Ghazni's governor and information and culture minister to parliament on June 3.
After hours of questioning, Ibrahimi concluded that both men had made "many mistakes" and ordered an independent investigation.
"A special commission will be established to investigate all these shortcomings, mistakes, carelessness, and those who are responsible," he said. "This commission should make a comprehensive report to the National Assembly. After everything is cleared up, we will make a decision."
'Still Enough Time'
The Information and Culture Ministry has outlined some 65 projects that could restore some of the shine of Ghazni's heyday when, under the rule of 10th-century Emperor Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, the city became a cultural center for poets and scholars revered throughout the Islamic world.
Ghazni plans for the event include building an airport, paving 150 kilometers of roads, building a fully functioning power grid, constructing an Islamic cultural center to house a museum and accommodate some 1,000 foreign guests, and restoring some 100 damaged historical sites.
Musa Khan Akbarzada, the governor of Ghazni Province, has downplayed the role of insecurity in the faltering development efforts.
According to him, the main reason for the problems is that various government ministries, which combined have received $10 million a year from the government, have failed to spend their allocated sums and therefore that funding has been returned to Kabul.
"From 2007 until now, many government ministries have failed to embrace the project in Ghazni," he says. "If you see the budget, you will see that many ministries didn't undertake any project."
Akbarzada, who admits many of the 65 projects have not been completed, says that he has had to cut the number of undertakings to about half in order to defer resources to the most important ones.
Akbarzada says some 50 kilometers of road have been paved in the city and a dozen historical sites have been restored, while the construction of Ghazni airport and the Islamic cultural center has begun in earnest in the last few weeks.
Information and Culture Minister Saeed Makhdoom Rahim admits the current situation is undesirable.
He accepts that many of the organizers -- including himself -- must take some blame, but insists that there is still enough time to ensure Ghazni is a success.
"God willing, despite every shortcoming -- even if I was to blame for all of them -- we still have time," he says. Our pain is great. We have learned lessons from our failures and our window of opportunity is not so short."
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan, with additional reporting by Zarif Nazar
U.S. Air Force says it briefed Afghan plane bidders
Reuters By Andrea Shalal-Esa Wed Jun 13, 2012
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Air Force insisted on Wednesday it had briefed both U.S. defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp and Hawker Beechcraft Corp and got their input on plans to redo a bungled competition to supply 20 light planes to Afghanistan.
Privately held Sierra Nevada Corp, which is partnered with Brazil's Embraer, said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Air Force to win back a $355 million contract that the Air Force abruptly canceled in February. It said the Air Force had not adequately explained its decision to scrap the initial deal.
The lawsuit has raised concerns about how soon Afghan forces will receive the already delayed light support planes, a move U.S. officials say is particularly important given U.S. plans to withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan.
The incident has been an embarrassment for U.S. Air Force acquisition officials, who have been at pains to rebuild their reputation after a procurement scandal in the early 2000s in which a former Air Force weapons buyer and a former Boeing chief financial officer were sent to prison for ethics violations.
The issue is also being watched closely in Brazil, where officials are still smarting from the cancellation of another U.S. military deal involving Embraer planes.
U.S. Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian underscored the importance of the competition, and rejected Sierra Nevada's claim that it had not been adequately briefed.
"We absolutely briefed both offerors on the new request for proposal and enabled them to provide us input into that," Dorrian told Reuters late on Wednesday.
He said both companies had thorough discussions with the Air Force about its approach to the follow-on competition on April 17, and then submitted comments on those plans on April 26.
Sierra Nevada, together with planemaker Embraer, beat out Hawker Beechcraft to win the contract last year, but the Air Force canceled the deal in February and launched a fresh competition after discovering that its own documentation of the contract award was insufficient.
Taco Gilbert, a retired Air Force officer and vice president at Sierra Nevada, called the Air Force's corrective action an "extreme response to what appears to be paperwork errors."
He said Air Force officials did map out their plan for the follow-on competition, but never explained why they terminated the contract in the first place.
"We're asking, 'Why did you terminate the contract?' They have never debriefed us on why they terminated the contract," Gilbert told Reuters on Wednesday.
Hawker declined to comment on Sierra Nevada's lawsuit. "The company continues working hard to meet the Air Force's needs," said company spokeswoman Nicole Alexander.
Dorrian said the Air Force was concerned about the lawsuit and whether it would delay the delivery of the new planes to Afghanistan, which needs the aircraft to defend itself.
"We have to continue this process because we recognize that getting these aircraft to the Afghans and getting them ready to fly them to protect themselves is part of the (U.S.) exit strategy," he said.
Most foreign combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with the transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces already well under way.
33rd Death Anniversary of Legendary Ahmad Zahir
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Ahmad Zahir, was born on June 14 1946 in southern Laghman province. His father Abdul Zahir, was a royal court doctor, minister of health, Prime Minister of Afghanistan between 1971 and 1972, speaker of the parliament and an influential figure during king Zahir Shah era. He also helped writing the 1964 constitution of Afghanistan.
Ahmad Zahir grew up in Kabul and attended Habibia High school in early 1960s, he was once known as Bulbul Habibia (Best Voice of Habibia). Later he attended a teachers college in Kabul and then went to India to continue his higher education, however he decided that music was his true calling.
Ahmad Zahir worked with major mentors such as Ismail Azami, Nangialai and many others including Naynawaz and Taranaz who later composed most of his songs.
He recorded over 22 albums in 1970s as his songs were noted for their mellifluous tones, poetic style, compelling depth and passionate emotional evocation. Ahmaz Zahir was professionally on the scene of Afghan Music for only 10 years however he managed to record more than 30 albums a total of 400 songs. All of his albums were successful and vastly accepted by everyone not only in Afghanistan but also in Tajikistan, Iran, Pakistan and possibly India. He only recorded two video songs in his career.
He was controversially died on June 14 1979, on his 33rd birthday. There are many speculations about his dead as his son Rishad Zahir said that his father was assassinated by a communist commander.
Apparently, Ahmad Zahir was killed in a traffic accident in Salang valley but according to his father he had bullet wounds on his temple region.
A large crowd of mourners attended Zahir's funeral in Kabul, clogging the city streets and bringing daily activities to a halt. After his death Zahir became a national hero and his image was mythologized by the Afghan people. Because of his privileged family background, Zahir helped to establish music as a more respected profession which in turn led to the founding of The Kabul Music School in 1974.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News June 14, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says international partners are cooperating to help his country fight terrorism and radicalism and bring peace and economic progress to the region.
President Karzai spoke Thursday at a one-day conference in Kabul, where officials were discussing the future of Afghanistan after foreign troops withdraw in 2014. The talks follow similar discussions last November in Turkey.
Karzai said Afghanistan is "certain" it will complete a transition to handling its own security next year ahead of the withdrawal of international forces in 2014.
He also highlighted the work of Afghanistan's High Peace Council as one of the most important elements of the transition, saying the head of the council will soon travel for talks in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Karzai thanked the nations that pledged during last month's NATO summit in Chicago to support Afghanistan's security forces through 2024.
The Afghan president, whose term ends in 2014, said he also wants to take steps to improve governance in the country, and plans to call a special parliamentary session next week to discuss steps to help start the next leader on a "better footing." He said it is only in "stability and harmony" that Afghanistan can prosper.
The Kabul talks, known as the "Heart of Asia" conference, involve 15 regional countries, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. The talks also involve representatives from France, Britain, Germany and the United States, as well as NATO and the European Union.
Next month, Japan is set to host a conference focusing on Afghanistan's future economic development.
Karzai Urges Cooperation As International Conference Opens
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has called on neighboring and regional countries to do more to strengthen stability and economic development in Afghanistan.
Speaking at the start of the one-day international "Heart of Asia" conference in Kabul, Karzai said greater economic and security cooperation would bring the entire region "much needed relief from terrorism, radicalism, and violence."
Karzai thanked Saudi Arabia for help it has given toward finding a political resolution to the war in Afghanistan, saying Afghans "hope that our brothers and sisters in Pakistan will do same."
He also said Salahuddin Rabbani, the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, will soon visit Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to seek their help in bringing Taliban leaders to peace talks in the hope of ending decades of war.
Rabbani is the son of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed in September 2011 by a suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban.
The Taliban's leadership has been willing in the past to hold preliminary confidence-building talks in Qatar with the United States. But the hard-line Islamist militia publicly refuses to talks to the Afghan government.
Karzai insists that some Taliban leaders have spoken with Afghan government emissaries in private. He has been pushing for Saudi Arabia to be a venue for any possible talks.
At the conference on June 14, Karzai also sought to reassure Iran that ties between Kabul and Tehran would not be damaged because of strategic partnership deals signed by Karzai's government with the United States, a leading rival of Iran, and other Western countries.
The deals seek to define Western relations with Kabul after 2014, when NATO-led combat troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving security in the hands of Afghan forces.
But Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the conference that U.S. efforts to establish foreign military bases in Afghanistan would hurt peace efforts and could turn Afghanistan "once again into a scene of security rivalries."
Karzai said he is confident, despite persistent Taliban attacks aimed at overthrowing his government, that Afghan forces will be capable of taking full control of the country's security during 2013, ahead of the planned withdrawal of NATO-led foreign forces.
Afghanistan is currently in the third phase of a five-stage transition, in which the centers of all provincial capitals, including the violence-plagued south and east, will be handed over to Afghan forces.
The "Heart of Asia" conference is the second of its kind after a similar event in Istanbul in November 2011.
In addition to Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, participants at the conference include Russia, China, India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates.
Representatives of 15 mostly Western countries and a dozen regional and international organizations also are attending. They include the United States, Britain, Germany, the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO.
With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa
Local Taliban commander killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, June 14 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban commander was killed Thursday in an operation carried out by Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops in the country's southern province of Kandahar, the coalition said in a statement.
"An Afghan-led security force, supported by coalition troops, killed the Taliban commander Fayez Jan and one additional insurgent during an operation in Daman district, Kandahar province, today," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) said in the statement.
Two Afghan males were injured in the battle and transported to coalition medical facilities for treatment, the statement added.
"Fayez Jan constructed, distributed and directed the placement of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) throughout Daman and Shah Wali Kot districts. At the time of his death, Fayez Jan was planning to launch an IED attack against Afghan and coalition convoys in the area," the statement said.
Afghan Taliban has launched massive IED attacks against security forces in recent years.
Two ISAF soldiers were killed in two separate IED blasts in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday and another NATO soldier died of wounds following an IED attack in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Separately, Afghan police and army, backed by ISAF troops, have eliminated six armed Taliban insurgents during operations within the past 24 hours, the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement on Thursday morning.
Four other insurgents were wounded and three suspects were detained by joint forces during the four cleanup operations in four provinces, it added.
They also found and seized weapons, the statement said, without saying if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of a spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
Afghan forces and some 130,000-strong ISAF troops have intensified cleanup operations against insurgents recently. Records kept by Xinhua, based on figures released by Interior Ministry, reveal that around 540 insurgents have been killed, 116 wounded and over 500 others detained since May 1 by joint forces.
Afghanistan shelves plans for ambassador accused of fraud
Mohammad Daud Yaar, accused by Afghan family in US of defrauding them, had been chosen as ambassador in London
Guardian.co.uk By Luke Harding and Emma Graham-Harrison Wednesday 13 June 2012
Kabul - Afghanistan has quietly shelved plans to send a man accused of fraud in the US to head its embassy in Britain.
Mohammad Daud Yaar, director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry in Kabul, had been chosen for the high-profile job, with confirmation expected to be little more than a formality. But last week the Guardian reported that an Afghan immigrant family in California had accused Yaar of defrauding them. In 2010 they obtained a civil court judgment against him. Yaar admits to owing the family $100,000 but says he intends to pay them back.
In the wake of the fraud claims, a government spokesman in Kabul had said his nomination was "proceeding as normal". But sources now say that, although Daud's contacts may protect his longer-term hopes of an ambassadorial posting, his candidacy for London is on hold.
Yaar is a long-standing and close friend of Mahmoud Karzai, the influential brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. Yaar lived with another Karzai brother, Ahmed Wali, in Chicago in the late 1980s and 90s. He had been expected to arrive in London shortly.
It is understood the decision to pull the plug on his nomination came last Friday after Karzai and several senior ministers returned from a summit of regional leaders in Beijing.
The British embassy in Kabul said it did not comment on ambassadorial appointments until they were confirmed.
UK foreign secretary William Hague, visiting Kabul for an international conference on Afghanistan's future, also declined to comment, but said on Wednesday he was not concerned that Kabul had gone months without appointing an ambassador.
Yaar's imminent appointment had followed a year in which London lay vacant as Kabul struggled to find a consensus candidate for what is considered one of the most prestigious diplomatic posts. There are now likely to be further delays. "Embassies do continue to operate without ambassadors for extended periods of time, but obviously we will welcome an Afghan ambassador in due course," Hague told a news conference.
Sources outside Afghanistan say Yaar secured the UK job after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by Mahmoud Karzai, whose business activities in the US are also being investigated. Yaar spent about 20 years in the US, where he worked as a part-time professor and also built up an extensive property portfolio.
He returned to Kabul in 2009 after the civil action. The plaintiffs, two Afghan-born brothers, Jamal and Ajmal Staneckzai, claim Yaar "tricked, defrauded and deceived" them over the 2001 purchase of a house in Fresno, California. Yaar insisted the case, from California's superior court in Contra Costa, was a business deal gone wrong. He vehemently denied fraud.
"If I had committed fraud, why did they settle?" he told the Guardian last week in his office in a low-rise building inside the sprawling grounds of the Afghan foreign ministry. "It was a business agreement and the other side backed off [from their side of the deal] and went to the courts. They couldn't prove anything."
Yaar said he was planning to pay off the remainder of the money he owed as soon as he could afford it, but his home in California was in negative equity and his small government salary in Kabul did not leave room for savings. He stressed: "My intention was to help these guys to solve their housing problem."
But one of his alleged victims told the Guardian Yaar was not a fit person to become UK ambassador, let alone hold responsibility in Kabul for big financial issues. Jamal Staneckzai said he had wanted to buy a home for his elderly parents, Ghani and Amani, who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation.
Unable to get a mortgage, he and four other families from the close-knit Afghan community in California turned to Yaar for help. Yaar bought a property in 2001 on their behalf, but registered it in his own name. The Staneckzais made regular mortgage payments, with several family friends providing the initial deposit as a loan, he said.
In 2005 the Staneckzais were finally able to get a mortgage. When they asked Yaar to transfer the property to them he refused and sold it to them for $358,900, promising to refund the net proceeds.
Yaar never refunded the money, Staneckzai alleges. "I was a part-time student at university back in 2001, which is why I couldn't get a loan. We regarded Yaar as a close and respected uncle. He told us, 'You guys will pay the mortgage costs and I will transfer everything back to you". Instead he took every dollar from us. He took our equity."
Panetta Backs Conditions For Pakistani Aid
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Washington should consider putting conditions on aid to Pakistan.
Speaking at a Senate budget hearing, Panetta said Washington should not end aid to Pakistan, but examine putting conditions on it. He didn't elaborate.
He said Pakistan's decision to close land routes to Afghanistan was costing the United States millions more to ship supplies to forces there.
"We've also had the closure of these ground lines, the so-called g-locks in Pakistan. And the result of that is that it is very expensive because we're using the northern transit route in order to be able to draw down our forces and also supply our forces. I think the amount is about $100 million a month because of the closure," Panetta explained.
Pakistan took the step after a NATO air attack last November accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
On June 11, the United States announced it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a deal to reopen the routes.
One of the issues holding up an agreement is believed to be Pakistani insistence the United States apologize for the November strike, something the Pentagon has been unwilling to do.
But Panetta explained at the hearing that the apology wasn't the only issue.
"The United States has made clear that mistakes were made, and they were made on our side, they were also made on the Pakistani side. We expressed condolences for the mistakes that were made, we've made that clear. We have certainly continued to make clear the mistakes that were made. I think the problem is that at this point, they're asking not only for that [an apology], but there are other elements of the negotiation that are also involved," Panetta said.
The comments come less than a week after Panetta said during a trip to Kabul that the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens it offered to insurgents fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.
Based on AFP and Reuters reporting
Pakistan Rift Costs U.S. $100 Million Extra a Month
Wall Street Journal By ADAM ENTOUS June 13, 2012
WASHINGTON - The U.S. is spending an extra $100 million a month to get supplies into Afghanistan because of Pakistan's closure of key transit routes into the war zone, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, putting a dollar figure for the first time on the added cost of the breakdown in relations with Islamabad.
Pakistan closed ground-resupply routes into Afghanistan after U.S.-led forces accidently killed two dozen Pakistani troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on Nov. 26.
Pakistan has demanded an apology for the deaths. The White House has offered condolences but has resisted apologizing, saying mistakes were made by both U.S. and Pakistani forces.
In response to Pakistan's closure, the Pentagon has expanded an alternative northern distribution network and stepped up air shipments into land-locked Afghanistan to ensure troops have the supplies they need, officials say.
But doing so has come at a price, which, until now, the Pentagon had declined to disclose.
Mr. Panetta didn't provide a breakdown of the total cost to U.S. taxpayers of re-routing supplies into Afghanistan by air or through the northern distribution network. But in testimony to Congress Wednesday, Mr. Panetta estimated the added cost of Pakistan's border closure at about $100 million a month.
U.S. defense officials had previously estimated that it costs the U.S. about 2.5 times as much to bring a container of supplies into Afghanistan through the northern distribution network than it costs to bring a container into Afghanistan through Pakistan. Air shipments cost far more.
Defense officials said they wouldn't disclose dollar-figures because of concerns that Pakistan would use the information in negotiations in Islamabad to drive up the amount the U.S. pays per container.
The Pentagon said this week that it has withdrawn its supply-route negotiating team from Pakistan.
Officials on both sides had said the terms of a supply deal have largely been worked out. But officials say Pakistan's leaders are reluctant to finalize the deal in the absence of a U.S. apology for the Nov. 26 incident.
Mr. Panetta told members of a Senate Appropriations Committee panel that an apology was one of several issues still being discussed with Pakistan to try to resolve differences over the reopening of supply routes into Afghanistan. "That alone isn't the only issue that's being discussed and that needs to be resolved to get the [supply routes] open," he said.
Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com
Clinton, Indian Foreign Minister Discuss Afghanistan, Pakistan
June 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna have discussed regional issues with a focus on Afghanistan.
Clinton welcomed Indian efforts to help stabilize Afghanistan, noting New Delhi will host an investment conference for Afghanistan later this month.
Clinton pointed out that India has contributed $2 billion to help develop the New Silk Road Initiative aimed at boosting regional trade.
Clinton said she and Krishna also discussed efforts India and Pakistan are making to increase trade, investment, and travel between their two countries.
Life After Karzai
America might not be able to pick a winner in Afghanistan, but at least it can try to block a loser.
Foreign Policy (blog) BY MICHAEL O'HANLON JUNE 13, 2012
Foreign Policy introduces "Trip Report," a new feature that takes readers behind closed doors with some of the world's sharpest minds for an intimate, unfiltered look at subjects ranging from the European economic crisis to the course of the war in Afghanistan. Think of it as a new kind of intelligence -- a backstage pass to rooms you haven't been cleared into before.
Where I went: For all the worries about Afghanistan today, there was something uplifting about many of the conversations I was privileged to be part of on my most recent trip there, in May, with former U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann as my travel partner and with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as the official sponsor of the trip.
A spirit of hopefulness, more than fear, characterized most people I spoke with in Kabul. The recent signing of the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) to guide cooperation after 2014, when the NATO combat mission is set to end, reassures many Afghans that they will not be left to their own darker angels -- or the mercy of their neighbors -- when ISAF's transition is complete. Although implementing protocols and a status of forces agreement for the SPA may prove difficult to negotiate, the accord has definitely given a boost to the strides of many Afghan reformers who continue to work hard for their country's future.
What's new: More than ever before, politics is breaking out in Afghanistan. The 2014 presidential election is still two years away, but new political organizations like the Right and Justice Party are forming under the leadership of people like former Interior Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar. Reform movements designed to get out the vote and improve the independence and integrity of the electoral process, like the Coalition for Reform and Development, are gaining steam.
And everyone is forming shortlists of the most likely candidates for the race. Among the names one hears are former officials like Atmar and Abdullah Abdullah; U.S. citizens with Afghan ties or ancestry, including former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali; current government officials including Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak, presidential advisor Ashraf Ghani, and perhaps even Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai of Nangarhar province. But not all is well; the shortlists also often include some who give major apprehensions to many foreign officials -- among them a former chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai and some of the president's relatives.
There are other hopeful indicators in Afghanistan on the political front, too. For example, recent Asia Foundation work suggests that the quality of governance at the provincial level in Afghanistan is improving. There are still too many bad actors and too much interference from Kabul in the day-to-day operations of regional governments. But by one itemized system of measurement, at least, the average quality of provincial governance has improved at least 10 percent over the last year.
Much still needs to be done on the political front, of course, before 2014 elections even happen. Electoral watchdog organizations need to be strengthened and made more independent of the presidential palace, and means of possible voting fraud need to be reduced. Otherwise, cheating and scandal could delegitimize the election outcomes and contribute to more ethnic tension.
Beyond these technical improvements, we also need much clearer focus on the big issue: how to use Western leverage to ensure that no warlord or extremely corrupt actor is elected president. This is the 800-pound gorilla that is not yet getting adequate attention, perhaps out of too much political correctness that the international community should not pick winners in a sovereign state's own elections. It is true that the international community should not pick a winner. But it can and must identify a few surefire losers -- before they can build up enough momentum to have a chance to win the presidency.
The takeaway: Often, the Afghanistan policy debate has an oxymoronic feel. We focus on the military transition from ISAF-led operations to Afghan-based security, according to a careful plan worked out first at NATO's Lisbon summit in 2010 and recently reaffirmed at the May 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. This is fine and necessary. But we spend far less time thinking about political transition as Karzai's second term ends and what will happen when he is required to vacate the palace come 2014.
Military strategist Carl von Clausewitz taught us that war is a continuation of politics by other means, implying that a successful end to any war must be politically based. This is even truer in counterinsurgency, where much of the struggle is for the proverbial hearts and minds of citizens who might or might not support the insurgency depending on their views about the legitimacy of their government.
Not all is lost. The international community does focus on specific aspects of Afghan politics. We try to pressure Karzai to fight corruption more assertively. Personnel from the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, along with foreign advisors from other countries, embed with military units in the field to try to help strengthen local Afghan governance. We all chase after the elusive and improbable peace deal with the Taliban. And of course, we try to struggle through our tortured half-partnership and half-rivalry with Pakistan.
But in most NATO capitals, we think far less about the fact that Afghanistan is due to have a presidential election in 2014 -- the results of which could be the single-most important determinant of our prospects for reaching an acceptable outcome and averting defeat in this seemingly interminable war. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and others on the ground in Kabul are surely aware of the crucial significance of the upcoming election, but it has not yet been grasped in Washington. For example, Crocker and others have, in recent months, helped persuade Karzai to firm up his public pledges that he will not extraconstitutionally seek another term in office. But leverage over the most important Afghan transition of all requires much more than a pledge. We need a strategy to be sure that the next Afghan president is more effective than Karzai -- rather than even more prone to cronyism or even less able to get a handle on corruption and patronage. Right now there is no such strategy, and Afghans can tell.
A snapshot of Afghanistan today: The war in Afghanistan is now a slog, at best. Even those of us supporting the mission there must acknowledge that it has been slower and harder going than expected. With Osama bin Laden dead and other al Qaeda leaders also out of the picture (or out of the region), the original motivation for the effort seems less compelling to many as well.
But there are considerable reasons for hope in Afghanistan. These positive indicators must be kept in mind lest we persuade ourselves incorrectly that the mission has somehow already failed -- an increasingly prevalent view among Western publics, parliaments, and some top officials.
At the same time, for every hopeful indicator, there is a reminder of how far we still have to go. This should not be seen as reason for fatalism, but as a clarion call of just how important the 2014 political transition will be for Afghanistan's future. Reasonably competent and serious leadership -- and there are many in Afghanistan who can provide such qualities for their country -- can build on the positive trends, even if it will take a long time to construct a strong Afghan state. Poor leadership could result in the fragile gains dissipating and the prospects of stronger insurgency, civil conflict, and state collapse increasing.
In terms of encouraging trends, consider the following:
Afghan security forces have almost reached their envisioned full size of 352,000, counting army and police. They are fighting, too. They are now collectively taking at least twice the casualties of NATO forces, participating in at least 90 percent of operations, and leading some 40 percent of operations (albeit usually the simpler ones at this point). They repulsed the April 15 Haqqani network attack on Kabul and other cities largely on their own.
Although the security forces still suffer from political patronage appointments and corruption, the problems are being partially addressed. Some 50 Afghan army leaders in the country's east alone have been replaced over the last year; 70 police officers were just fired recently in the country's west for poor performance; the Defense Ministry has opened a full criminal investigation into the problems that produced corruption and theft at Afghanistan's main military hospital last year. Such efforts could be too little, too late. There are serious corruption problems -- as in the Afghan Air Force. And some of the firings and hirings raise concerns of ethnic bias in the security ministries. But on balance the progress is picking up.
The Afghan Local Police (ALP), a form of armed community watch overseen by NATO troops, is generally proving its mettle. These lightly armed and locally organized forces, which now number some 12,000, are holding their ground in some 80 percent of firefights, even when sometimes outgunned by the Taliban, taking the highest rate of casualties of any part of the Afghan security forces in the process.
There have been a handful of cases of abuse within this program, and a number of illegal militias are falsely adopting the name Afghan Local Police to disguise their true nature (which is sometimes to attack their neighboring tribes or communities). But U.S. Special Forces have monitored and worked with the actual ALP forces effectively and stepped in to address problems when needed. They only allow the formation of ALP units after several months of getting to know an area and working with local elders to try to ensure a reasonable mix of ALP members. The admittedly daunting challenge in coming months and years will be to keep growing the program while also handing oversight gradually to Afghan special-operations forces.
Each of the above areas of progress with the Afghan security forces also underscores the fragility of the situation. While Afghan forces are much bigger and better than before, they are nowhere near good enough, so professionalism and discipline must not only be maintained, but improved. While a large number of incompetent or corrupt leaders within the security forces' ranks have been replaced, many remain -- and under the present government, uniformed leaders and ministers of interior and defense only have so much power to replace poor leaders on their own, given the political interests still at play in many appointments.
The ALP can only be effective in the future if Afghanistan's own special forces are increasingly able to play the oversight role that NATO has provided to date. This clearly assumes a level of competence and integrity within the Afghan special-operations forces that will not survive poor national leadership, should the wrong person wind up in charge after Karzai. The wrong president could also generate ethnic tensions that could fracture the overall security force.
If we examine the other efforts to reduce corruption and the influence of patronage networks within Afghanistan, we reach a similar conclusion -- real and sometimes substantial, but uneven and insufficient, progress that by itself is neither adequate nor self-sustaining. This was apparent in discussions with Task Force-Shafafiyat (a legacy of Gen. David Petraeus and Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, as well as Task Force 2010), which seeks to reduce corruption in how NATO administers its contracts with Afghans, as well as with Americans and other foreigners. Again, the importance of future political leadership will be crucial. Consider the magnitude and complexity of the problems:
* Counternarcotics courts and prosecutors, by contrast, are pretty good. Lots of big fish have been going to jail, including recently the second-biggest drug trafficker in Nimruz province.
* But the Attorney General's Office and the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption within the Afghan government remain disappointments.
* Overall the court system in Afghanistan remains poor, with inadequate resources and far too much bribery and favoritism.
More happily, at least one Afghan Supreme Court judge and others are pushing general judicial reform at long last. This is resulting in the firing of 200 to 300 judges a year (which may be a touch worrisome given that only 125 judges are being trained or graduated each year). But on balance the judiciary is still very problematic, weak, and underresourced -- and reforms are making it smaller rather than larger in the short term, due to all the firings, however necessary.
Personnel changes in the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry are generally encouraging, and the Defense Ministry's inspector general is well regarded. Yet some big problems remain within these organizations, of course -- notably, the Border Police and the Air Force still suffer from the influence of strong criminal patronage networks.
Crucially, NATO is belatedly cleaning up its own act, no longer unwittingly funding nearly as many corrupt actors or insurgent groups as it did before. Task Force 2010, the ISAF organization designed to increase transparency and accountability in how NATO awards contracts for logistics services and related activities in Afghanistan, is finally gaining steam. More than 100 companies or individuals have now been barred from ISAF contracting. Transparency requirements make it easier to check on who is involved in these companies, and lots more intelligence is being devoted to the problem. It often takes a couple of months to develop good intelligence on new companies, so when they reorganize or rename themselves, they can sometimes evade notice for a short time. But overall this set of problems is getting serious attention.
Incredibly, only recently has U.S. legislation been passed that finally allows the United States to break contracts with companies when they are linked directly to the enemy. Until now, the country couldn't do that unless it had other reasons too! Under U.S. law, apparently, it was seen as a worse sin to fill out paperwork wrong than to be a member of the Taliban, until only recently. More than 10 percent cost savings have been achieved to date, normalized for the relevant workload, by the reforms in contracting. More important than simply saving money is that this is a promising indicator of fewer funds being diverted to malevolent actors who skim off the top of contracts.
Unfortunately, there are many areas of the anti-corruption struggle where we are only beginning to scratch the surface at best. For example, no one whom I spoke with on my recent trip claimed progress on land reform -- protecting private property and also regularizing the way public lands are developed. The only good news I heard on that front was one former minister saying that, in general, the blatant expropriations of land for the personal gain of well-placed political actors occur only on public property (though because so many lands in Afghanistan are public, and so many of those are already used by subsistence farmers, this is of little solace). So again, this whole set of efforts clearly still has its major limits even among its most passionate proponents.
The 2014 question: Beyond specific reforms that might be made in the next two years, what was clear from my conversations in Afghanistan this May was that what we need most is a way to influence the 2014 political transition.
The core element of this strategy is to make sure Afghans know, beyond any doubt, that U.S. willingness to support them financially, developmentally, and militarily after 2014 will be a function of the quality of their governance and the character of their leaders. It is inconceivable that the U.S. Congress will sustain up to 20,000 troops in Afghanistan at a cost of perhaps $25 billion a year, and add another $3 billion to $5 billion annually in direct security and economic support to the Afghan government and people, if the next Afghan government is corrupt beyond hope.
If that were to happen, I am confident that the U.S. commitment would be scaled back dramatically -- to levels of assistance perhaps one-third to one-fifth the amounts sketched out above, or even less. That would be regrettable.
Some Afghan reformists want us to state a clear preference soon for who the next president of their country should be and promise to cut off all aid to anyone else who might win the election. Such an approach by the United States and other key foreign countries is highly unlikely, as it would constitute excessive meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Not only that, we would quite possibly choose wrong. But what is certainly within our means is to signal that good Afghan leadership will inspire much greater outside confidence and related willingness to stay engaged -- whereas the opposite will invalidate the premise for the current hopeful talk about our long-term commitment to Afghanistan. Strategic Partnership Agreement or not, major cooperation and financial help will not be provided to a criminally corrupt or malicious regime. We should probably also be willing to say, by name if necessary, who the unacceptable leaders would be, if they choose to run for president. This could be done privately at first, perhaps, and publicly if necessary.
No formal or binding promise is possible; Americans don't yet even know who will run their own government come 2014, 2015, and beyond. But a coordinated message by current congressional leadership of both parties -- and by President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- could help a great deal and achieve much of the desired effect. If it is too soon to generate this kind of coordinated message now, policymakers should think now about doing so soon after America's own November elections. There is still a little time to sort this matter out, though not that much.
Many Afghans think that U.S. interest in their country is so great -- whether for military bases for operations in broader South and Central Asia or some other nefarious purpose -- that the United States would never scale back its commitment to their country. That view is bunk and fails to account for America's war weariness with the Afghanistan conflict as well as its greater hopefulness that, with al Qaeda central on the ropes, the future of Afghanistan is slightly less crucial to U.S. security than it might have seemed a decade ago.
On the other hand, many Afghans think the United States will desert them anyway, regardless of what they do. That view fails to recognize what the country learned by its premature and precipitous withdrawal from the region a quarter-century ago, together with its lingering worries about the possibility that some part of al Qaeda might indeed seek future sanctuary on Afghan territory. After so much investment of American blood and treasure, it is clear that the United States will not simply abandon the effort. And though it favors and hopes for a serious effort at peace talks with at least some elements of the Taliban, it will not desert a future Afghan government simply because such talks might fail.
Finally, some Afghans seem to think that the United States actually enjoys quarreling with Karzai, since it often seems that way. In fact, while U.S. strategy toward the current Afghan government has not been steady or clearheaded at times, the history of the last 10 years underscores two dueling realities: that the United States wants very much to work constructively with Afghan political leadership, but that it is increasingly frustrated by the difficulty of doing so and no longer so confident that success is even possible.
The next Afghan leader has a chance to restore America's faith and the strength of its support. He has the chance to help forge the kind of enduring security partnership that America established over the years, through good times and bad, from Greece and Turkey to Jordan and Egypt to South Korea and Taiwan. America needs to find a way to signal this clearly and thereby persuade Afghans to work cohesively and doggedly to defeat the crooks and warlords who may seek to replace Hamid Karzai in two years and to elect a serious, competent, and non-corrupt new president. The fate of 13 years of effort, blood, sweat, tears, and treasure depends more than anything on how well such an effort can succeed.
In the Afghan War, a Little Robot Can Be a Soldier's Best Friend
Some Are as Adorable as WALL-E, and Injured Ones Now Go to Bot Rehab
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE Updated June 13, 2012
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - The 310 SUGV is a distant cousin of the Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner currently being promoted as a Father's Day gift. In Afghanistan, the Marines call him the Devil Pup.
And when a Devil Pup gets sick, Marines can send the little bot to the Joint Robotics Repair Detachment—Afghanistan, where a team of military and civilian technicians practice the healing arts on robots.
Army Spec. Steven Grado recently tended to a Devil Pup, shipped from the front lines to the repair facility in a travel case. He installed a battery, switched the robot on and, like a yoga instructor, put the little guy through a series of poses. He scribbled notes, listing the symptoms.
Made by iRobot Corp., IRBT -1.11% the Devil Pup looks like a sibling of Disney's fictional WALL-E movie character. It scoots around on tank-like treads, equipped with a manipulator arm and high-resolution cameras. It can wade through 6 inches of water, clamber over an obstacle or walk point in front of a patrol. This robot—"really strong for its size," according to Spec. Grado—was easy to diagnose. The robotic hand it uses to probe roadside bombs wouldn't fully close.
That, in turn, required physical therapy. Spec. Grado turned a calibration switch on, manipulated the arm until the full range of motion was restored, then rebooted it. "Sometimes they take a couple tries," says Spec. Grado. "That's just how computers go."
Robots used to be the war's disposable heroes: If one got in trouble, the device could simply be junked. But now, in a time of fiscal constraints, these machines are getting the loving care they deserve.
The detachment, housed at Bagram Airfield, the sprawling military installation north of Kabul, has surgery bays and diagnostic tools to give the military's robot companions a second chance. Col. King says the focus now is on developing robots that are durable rather than disposable.
The military currently has as many as 3,500 robots in Afghanistan, from small contraptions that a soldier can pitch through a window to bulldozer-size machines that can plow over mine-seeded roads. Instead of dispatching a young soldier to probe for a mine or search a cave, a commander these days often sends in a small robot.
This, in turn, means that the combat troops sometimes develop emotional attachments to their robotic companions. Army Maj. Christopher Orlowski, science and technology officer for the robotics detachment at Bagram, said the soldiers and Marines sometimes name their robots—and even give them battlefield "promotions" for successfully spotting mines or explosive devices.
When some damaged robots are brought in, said Maj. Orlowski, who has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and wrote a thesis on insectlike drones, some troops insist that they get the same robot back—not a replacement unit.
The robots may have their adorable qualities, but they are engaged in a serious business. Col. King showed the remains of one robot that recently arrived at the depot: an olive-drab box held the blast-shattered remains. What was left—a heap of gears, rubber treads and a frayed wiring harness—were the remains of a PackBot, another model made by iRobot.
Like thousands of robots deployed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, PackBot fulfilled a mission that flesh-and-bones soldiers, risking life and limb, used to do. According to statistics provided The Wall Street Journal by the U.S. military, more than 750 such robots have been lost in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan—a number that translates into many saved lives.
Even parts of a bomb-damaged robot can be salvaged. In the case of the PackBot, technicians recovered the controller, an important piece of hardware that could be paired with another bot.
Rich Ramsey, a civilian technician, said that this was one of the more serious casualties the facility had to treat. "This one took a hit on both sides, and in the center," he explained. "And probably got run over at the same time. Sothere isn't a whole lot left."
While the human lives that these robots save are priceless, the robots themselves often are very expensive. The smallest robot that comes in for diagnostic work at the Bagram repair facility costs $9,000. A remote-controlled vehicle used to clear mines can cost a quarter of a million dollars.
The Army has recently ordered new throwable robots such as the ReconRobotics Inc. Recon Scout XT, a dumbbell-shaped robot, and the iRobot FirstLook, a small robot designed to survive a 15-foot drop. Many of these robots will require some attention during their tour.
Once cured, robots here get a little fresh-air therapy. After finishing repairs, the technicians put the robots through their paces out on Disney Drive, Bagram's main drag, drawing stares from soldiers on the base. The street was named in honor of Army Spec. Jason Disney, killed in 2002 when clearing scrap metal at Bagram.
Inside the robot hospital one day recently, technician Thomas Vialpando was tinkering with the innards of a Honeywell International Inc. HON -1.66% T-Hawk, a hovering robot used by ordnance-disposal teams.
The T-Hawk, which resembles a quarter keg of beer or a hibachi, has a swiveling robotic eye mounted on a gimbal so it can hover and stare at a target. The robot's ducted-fan design can be temperamental in the dust and high altitudes of Afghanistan—and Mr. Vialpando was swapping out the robot's two-stroke engine so it could stay aloft.
The robot doctors at Bagram recently took in a Talon robot, a larger, brawnier cousin to the Devil Pup made by U.K.'s QinetiQ Group PLC. The Talon had a strange malady: It spun in circles as if possessed.
No exorcism was required. The robot doctors simply installed a new OCU—operator control unit—and the Talon was back in working order.
For soldiers who work at the facility, the job has its tangible rewards. "That's my biggest mission: to make sure the robots are 100% healthy before they go out the door," says Spec. Grado.
If a robot is sacrificed in the line of duty, he adds, "that's fine, as long as everybody comes home."
Worry Replaces Hope In Race To Restore Ancient Afghan City
By Frud Bezhan, Zarif Nazar June 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Once filled with treasure-adorned minarets, grand libraries and mosques, and a towering fortress overlooking a vast empire, the ancient city of Ghazni was in the past a great center of Islamic power and culture.
But looking at it today, you would never guess that this city in central-east Afghanistan once anchored an empire that reached far and wide -- to modern-day northern India in the east, and spanning Iran to the west.
Ghazni, which means "jewel," has become a scruffy city plagued by militancy in recent times. Locals here live in fear without electricity, adequate water supplies, or a sewage system.
Consequently in 2007, when the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) chose Ghazni as an "Islamic capital of culture" for 2013, hopes were raised that the city might be restored to its former grandeur.
With less than a year before the cultural festivals begin, however, these hopes have given way to fear that negligence and insecurity will derail the celebrations.
Every year ISESCO designates three cities -- one each for Arabic, African, and Asian regions -- as part of its efforts to recognize Islamic cultural centers.
But some Afghan officials worry that Ghazni could be stripped of the honor if preparations are not completed for the monthlong celebrations slated to begin in August 2013.
That is not what was envisioned when Ghazni was chosen as a cultural capital. The thinking was that with funding from the Afghan government and foreign donors, including UNESCO and USAID, infrastructure projects and job opportunities would follow.
Precarious Security Situation
Ashraf Ghairat, a journalist in Ghazni, accuses the central and provincial governments of incompetence.
"Unfortunately, in the last few years all the projects that should have been completed haven't materialized," he says. "These projects need a long time to complete. I don't think we will have enough time because many of these projects haven't even been started yet."
Ghairat says insecurity has also hampered efforts, claiming that, out of 19 districts in Ghazni Province, the government controls only three, with the rest in the hands of Taliban militants.
He says that violence could eventually strip Ghazni of the event, regardless of whether the projects are completed.
Amid growing concerns that the project in Ghazni will not be finished in time, the speaker of the Afghan parliament, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, summoned Ghazni's governor and information and culture minister to parliament on June 3.
After hours of questioning, Ibrahimi concluded that both men had made "many mistakes" and ordered an independent investigation.
"A special commission will be established to investigate all these shortcomings, mistakes, carelessness, and those who are responsible," he said. "This commission should make a comprehensive report to the National Assembly. After everything is cleared up, we will make a decision."
'Still Enough Time'
The Information and Culture Ministry has outlined some 65 projects that could restore some of the shine of Ghazni's heyday when, under the rule of 10th-century Emperor Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, the city became a cultural center for poets and scholars revered throughout the Islamic world.
Ghazni plans for the event include building an airport, paving 150 kilometers of roads, building a fully functioning power grid, constructing an Islamic cultural center to house a museum and accommodate some 1,000 foreign guests, and restoring some 100 damaged historical sites.
Musa Khan Akbarzada, the governor of Ghazni Province, has downplayed the role of insecurity in the faltering development efforts.
According to him, the main reason for the problems is that various government ministries, which combined have received $10 million a year from the government, have failed to spend their allocated sums and therefore that funding has been returned to Kabul.
"From 2007 until now, many government ministries have failed to embrace the project in Ghazni," he says. "If you see the budget, you will see that many ministries didn't undertake any project."
Akbarzada, who admits many of the 65 projects have not been completed, says that he has had to cut the number of undertakings to about half in order to defer resources to the most important ones.
Akbarzada says some 50 kilometers of road have been paved in the city and a dozen historical sites have been restored, while the construction of Ghazni airport and the Islamic cultural center has begun in earnest in the last few weeks.
Information and Culture Minister Saeed Makhdoom Rahim admits the current situation is undesirable.
He accepts that many of the organizers -- including himself -- must take some blame, but insists that there is still enough time to ensure Ghazni is a success.
"God willing, despite every shortcoming -- even if I was to blame for all of them -- we still have time," he says. Our pain is great. We have learned lessons from our failures and our window of opportunity is not so short."
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan, with additional reporting by Zarif Nazar
U.S. Air Force says it briefed Afghan plane bidders
Reuters By Andrea Shalal-Esa Wed Jun 13, 2012
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Air Force insisted on Wednesday it had briefed both U.S. defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp and Hawker Beechcraft Corp and got their input on plans to redo a bungled competition to supply 20 light planes to Afghanistan.
Privately held Sierra Nevada Corp, which is partnered with Brazil's Embraer, said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Air Force to win back a $355 million contract that the Air Force abruptly canceled in February. It said the Air Force had not adequately explained its decision to scrap the initial deal.
The lawsuit has raised concerns about how soon Afghan forces will receive the already delayed light support planes, a move U.S. officials say is particularly important given U.S. plans to withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan.
The incident has been an embarrassment for U.S. Air Force acquisition officials, who have been at pains to rebuild their reputation after a procurement scandal in the early 2000s in which a former Air Force weapons buyer and a former Boeing chief financial officer were sent to prison for ethics violations.
The issue is also being watched closely in Brazil, where officials are still smarting from the cancellation of another U.S. military deal involving Embraer planes.
U.S. Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Dorrian underscored the importance of the competition, and rejected Sierra Nevada's claim that it had not been adequately briefed.
"We absolutely briefed both offerors on the new request for proposal and enabled them to provide us input into that," Dorrian told Reuters late on Wednesday.
He said both companies had thorough discussions with the Air Force about its approach to the follow-on competition on April 17, and then submitted comments on those plans on April 26.
Sierra Nevada, together with planemaker Embraer, beat out Hawker Beechcraft to win the contract last year, but the Air Force canceled the deal in February and launched a fresh competition after discovering that its own documentation of the contract award was insufficient.
Taco Gilbert, a retired Air Force officer and vice president at Sierra Nevada, called the Air Force's corrective action an "extreme response to what appears to be paperwork errors."
He said Air Force officials did map out their plan for the follow-on competition, but never explained why they terminated the contract in the first place.
"We're asking, 'Why did you terminate the contract?' They have never debriefed us on why they terminated the contract," Gilbert told Reuters on Wednesday.
Hawker declined to comment on Sierra Nevada's lawsuit. "The company continues working hard to meet the Air Force's needs," said company spokeswoman Nicole Alexander.
Dorrian said the Air Force was concerned about the lawsuit and whether it would delay the delivery of the new planes to Afghanistan, which needs the aircraft to defend itself.
"We have to continue this process because we recognize that getting these aircraft to the Afghans and getting them ready to fly them to protect themselves is part of the (U.S.) exit strategy," he said.
Most foreign combat troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with the transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces already well under way.
33rd Death Anniversary of Legendary Ahmad Zahir
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Ahmad Zahir, was born on June 14 1946 in southern Laghman province. His father Abdul Zahir, was a royal court doctor, minister of health, Prime Minister of Afghanistan between 1971 and 1972, speaker of the parliament and an influential figure during king Zahir Shah era. He also helped writing the 1964 constitution of Afghanistan.
Ahmad Zahir grew up in Kabul and attended Habibia High school in early 1960s, he was once known as Bulbul Habibia (Best Voice of Habibia). Later he attended a teachers college in Kabul and then went to India to continue his higher education, however he decided that music was his true calling.
Ahmad Zahir worked with major mentors such as Ismail Azami, Nangialai and many others including Naynawaz and Taranaz who later composed most of his songs.
He recorded over 22 albums in 1970s as his songs were noted for their mellifluous tones, poetic style, compelling depth and passionate emotional evocation. Ahmaz Zahir was professionally on the scene of Afghan Music for only 10 years however he managed to record more than 30 albums a total of 400 songs. All of his albums were successful and vastly accepted by everyone not only in Afghanistan but also in Tajikistan, Iran, Pakistan and possibly India. He only recorded two video songs in his career.
He was controversially died on June 14 1979, on his 33rd birthday. There are many speculations about his dead as his son Rishad Zahir said that his father was assassinated by a communist commander.
Apparently, Ahmad Zahir was killed in a traffic accident in Salang valley but according to his father he had bullet wounds on his temple region.
A large crowd of mourners attended Zahir's funeral in Kabul, clogging the city streets and bringing daily activities to a halt. After his death Zahir became a national hero and his image was mythologized by the Afghan people. Because of his privileged family background, Zahir helped to establish music as a more respected profession which in turn led to the founding of The Kabul Music School in 1974.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com