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Taliban bomb destroys 22 NATO supply trucks in Afghan north
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 NATO trucks carrying supplies to their forces in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban and police said on Wednesday.
Eighteen fuel trucks and four supply vehicles were parked in Aibak, the capital of Samangan province, when a bomb ripped through them, wounding one person, local police said.
"At 2 a.m. the mujahideen attacked the invader NATO trucks," the Taliban said in a statement, referring to the wagons which had been driven from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan's north.
The trucks were attacked in the same province where prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker Ahmad Khan Samangani was killed on Saturday at his daughter's wedding, in a suicide bomb attack that killed 22 other guests.
"We believe the Taliban carried this out. Eighteen trucks have been totally destroyed, the rest were damaged by fire," Samangan police chief Khalil Andarabi told Reuters.
Separately, police in neighboring Baghlan province said they had detained 10 suspected Taliban members with so-called magnetic bombs, which they were trying to attach to supply trucks.
Pakistan recently reopened its border crossings with Afghanistan for NATO supplies after shutting them in November after a U.S. airstrike unintentionally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
(Reporting by Bashir Ansari, writing by Mirwais Harooni, editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)
British Prime Minister Cameron in Afghanistan
By DAVID STRINGER | Associated Press
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (AP) — The British prime minister backed up a pledge to pull more troops out of Afghanistan next year, during a previously unannounced trip to a restive province on Wednesday.
Britain's contingent is second in size only to U.S. troop strength among Western forces in Afghanistan. Britain plans to pull 500 troops out by December but has not given a timetable for others to leave. NATO plans to turn over security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
Cameron was holding talks with British and Afghan officials in the southern province of Helmand, where Britain has around 9,500 troops.
After visiting soldiers at a base in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's regional capital, and at smaller forward base in Nad Ali, Cameron said he believed the handover of security duties from foreign to local forces was progressing well.
He questioned British soldiers at both camps about the capability of the Afghan army and police, and said their responses would help inform decisions on how many troops to withdraw next year.
Cameron confirmed that a decision on British withdrawals during 2013 would be announced at the end of the year.
Officials have cautioned against public hopes of a major drawdown next year. Britain is expected to confirm its strategy only after a planned meeting in October of Britain's National Security Council, which includes ministers, military commanders and spy chiefs.
"I don't want to raise false hopes. There will be a modest reduction this year, there will be further reductions next year," he told reporters at Camp Bastion, a vast British base in Helmand.
Cameron said he was "encouraged" by progress in Helmand, particularly after visiting troops at Forward Operating Base Shawqat in Nad Ali, which borders a bustling bazaar that didn't exist on his last visit two years ago because of fierce fighting.
Troops praised their Afghan counterparts over a juice and tea with Cameron at the base's store and cafe — decked out in British flags and bunting.
"Their soldiers are no different to ours, they are a little bit lazy compared to ours, but they can go out and fight, they can go on one knee (to fire rifles). They are more than happy to go forward and push the Taliban back," Company Sgt. Maj Nathan Love, 37, said he had told Cameron.
The British leader said he believed the troops' accounts of work alongside Afghan forces were unvarnished.
"British army soldiers aren't going to give you a rose-tinted view of other soldiers. But they say that (the Afghan troops) are brave, that they feel proud to fight alongside them. Increasingly, the more you ask them to do, the more they are able to do," he told reporters.
He said he believed Afghanistan's police and army would be able to provide "a basic level of security" once foreign forces step back from combat roles.
Cameron also held talks at Camp Bastion with Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who was visiting Helmand to meet some of his country's 165 troops serving there.
President Barack Obama has already confirmed that around 23,000 of the 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan will withdraw by September — including from Helmand, which analysts say could put further strain on British forces.
"The immediate challenge is going to be that the Americans are pulling a large number of forces out of Helmand this year, leaving it very vulnerable to attack," said Malcolm Chalmers of London's military think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.
Britain has signaled it does not plan to expand its area of operations from the province's center, meaning the Taliban could seek to recapture parts of northern Helmand, previously the scene of intense combat.
Violence raged in Helmand just ahead of Cameron's visit there. The provincial governor's office said nine Afghan soldiers were killed Tuesday night when militants attacked an Afghan National Army checkpoint in the Washer district. Seven insurgents were killed in the attack, the governor's office said.
Insurgents also clashed Tuesday night with Afghan police in Nad Ali district. An insurgent commander was killed and six other militants were captured during the battle, the governor's office said.
The British leader's visit comes after three British soldiers were killed on July 1 by an Afghan policeman as they attended a meeting of local officials. A total of 26 foreign troops have been killed so far this year in killings involving Afghan security forces attacking NATO allies.
Cameron met with British troops after his defense secretary, Philip Hammond, acknowledged morale within the military was "fragile" because of budget restraint and cuts to units.
Britain's army will shrink from 102,000 troops to 82,000 by 2020 under the government's program of spending cuts. The military is handling an 8 percent cut to its annual 37 billion pound ($59 billion) defense budget.
Britain already announced it will offer about 70 million pounds (US$110 million) per year from 2015 to help fund Afghanistan's police and military after foreign forces have left.
House pushes for terrorist label for Haqqani group
AP By Donna Cassata Tuesday, July 17th 2012
WASHINGTON - Congress is stepping up the pressure on the Obama administration to slap the terrorist label on the Haqqani network, a militant group responsible for plotting and launching attacks from Pakistan against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
By voice vote Tuesday, the House approved a bill that would require the secretary of state to report to Congress on whether the Haqqani network meets the criteria to be designated a foreign terrorist organization and if not, to explain why. The report is due within 30 days of the president signing the measure.
The administration has sanctioned top individuals of the Haqqani network, but it is still reviewing whether to label the entire organization. That delay has frustrated members of Congress. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, added an amendment to the bill stating that it was the sense of Congress that the Haqqani network meets the definition of a terrorist organization and they should be designated as one.
"The Obama administration has been considering formally designating the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law but has yet to act," said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., during a brief House debate.
Last week, the State Department defended its effort.
"We've been very aggressive about sanctioning their top individuals, and we've seen that as the most effective way to go about this. But the review is ongoing, and is actively ongoing," department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters.
The measure now heads to the Senate, which approved a similar bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., last December.
The Haqqani network, largely operating in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, is affiliated with both the Taliban and al-Qaida. U.S. officials say it represents one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan stability because it is believed to use Pakistan as a rear base for attacks on American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.
The House vote comes just weeks after the United States and Pakistan ended a rancorous seven-month standoff with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologizing to Pakistan for the killing of 24 Pakistani troops last fall and in return securing the reopening of critical NATO supply lines into Afghanistan. Throughout the uneasy relationship between the United States and Pakistan, American officials have pressed Islamabad to crack down on the extremist Haqqani network.
The bill states that "nothing in this act may be construed to infringe upon the sovereignty of Pakistan to combat militant or terrorist groups operating inside its boundaries."
In May, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees wrote to Clinton asking her to act immediately in labeling the Haqqani network a terrorist group.
The four leaders — Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., and Rogers — said that based on meetings with U.S. and Afghan officials in Afghanistan, "it was clear that the Haqqani network continues to launch sensational and indiscriminate attacks against U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the group poses a continuing threat to innocent men, women and children in the region."
The four noted that it had been six months since the State Department had undertaken its "final formal review" of the Haqqani network.
"The Haqqanis have continued to attack U.S. troops and the U.S. embassy in Kabul during that period," the lawmakers said.
The letter also noted that the Obama administration may have been reluctant to act while Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was trying to negotiate a reconciliation agreement with the Taliban that may have included or affected the Haqqani network.
Last fall, the top U.S. military officer accused Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency of backing extremists in planning and executing the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and a truck bomb attack that wounded 77 American soldiers.
In his last congressional testimony before retirement, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that the Haqqani insurgent network "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
The House also passed a bill that would strengthen economic and security ties between the United States and Israel. The bipartisan legislation, which was approved by voice vote, would reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel and American support for the Mideast ally's right to self-defense. The bill would extend current loan guarantees to Israel that expire later this year and authorizes the transfer of obsolete or surplus defense material from the United States to Israel.
The bill reiterates U.S. support for a negotiated two-state solution to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
9 Afghan army soldiers killed in southern Helmand province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Up to nine Afghan army soldiers were killed and seven others injured on Tuesday night when Taliban launched an attack against army checkposts in southern Helmand province, a provincial official said Wednesday.
"Nine Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were killed and seven soldiers injured following a Taliban attack on ANA checkposts in Washeer district Tuesday night," a spokesman for provincial government, Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua.
He said seven militants were also killed and five other insurgents were injured in the fighting.
A Taliban commander was killed and six other militants were detained by police following a similar incident in neighboring Nad Ali district also Tuesday night, Ahamdi added.
In another development, three militants were killed in a joint operation carried out by Aghan army and NATO-led coalition forces in Chak-e-Wardak district in eastern Wardak province late Tuesday, a provincial spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, told Xinhua.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
Obama Names New Afghan, Pakistan Ambassadors
July 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. President Barack Obama has appointed two veteran diplomats to be the next ambassadors to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A White House statement said Obama has named Richard Olson, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, to serve in Pakistan.
The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, resigned in May, amid escalating tensions between Washington and Islamabad caused by the killing of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in May 2011 and a botched U.S. airstrike which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The statement said that James Cunningham, the current deputy ambassador to Kabul, will replace Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who announced he was leaving for health reasons.
The new appointees are dues to serve as the United States prepares to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
With reporting by AFP
Afghan forces take over security charge of Kandahar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces took over the security responsibility of major parts of Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital city Kabul, on Wednesday.
"I am confident that the national security forces of Afghanistan are capable enough to take over the security charge of the country by 2014 when the NATO-led force complete its pull out," Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the security transition ceremony.
He also called on the international community to assist Afghanistan in providing training and equipment to its security forces, especially in rebuilding its air force.
The security responsibility of provincial capital Kandahar city, Dand, Daman and Arghandab districts was formally handed over from NATO-led troops to Afghan forces Wednesday.
Afghan forces assumed the security charge of Uruzgan province on Tuesday.
The security transition process from NATO-led force to Afghan government began on July 2011 and is scheduled to complete by the end of 2014.
Russia to Play Key Role in Winding Down Afghan War
Andre deNesnera VOA News July 17, 2012
Russia, which battled mujahedeen guerillas in Afghanistan three decades ago, is once again playing a key role in the country, this time helping the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
Not a single Russian soldier is among 130,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan these days - all of them are from NATO member nations and 90,000 of them are Americans. But experts on the region say that even though Russian doesn’t have a military presence there, it is helping the NATO allies because it too has an interest in an Afghanistan that is stable and at peace.
Many Afghans remember the 10-year war Moscow waged against the mujahedeen - a conflict that ended with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989.
Because of that war, Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan with the RAND Corporation, says Russia is deeply hated in Afghanistan.
“Most Afghans I speak to regularly in Afghanistan have very strong recollections of the Soviet war in the 1980s,” Jones said. “It’s probably best for the moment, that Russia does not have a major role, certainly in combat operations in the country, just because of the memory.”
While not having “boots on the ground,” Jones said Moscow has supported the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, because it believes a Taliban victory or all-out civil war would not be in Russia’s interest.
“The idea of an increasing radical Islam creeping up toward the Russia border is of notable concern to Moscow,” Jones said. “That’s what has motivated the Russians to allow for logistics to come through its territory by air, rail and truck and then through Central Asia.
Russia / NATO accord
The latest logistics agreement between Washington and Moscow involves NATO's use of a Russian military base in Ulyanovsk - roughly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and about 300 kilometers northwest of the border with Kazakhstan. Ulyanovsk, formerly Simbirsk, is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and is now a hub for Russian airborne troops.
“It’s the first time that NATO will have a facility on Russian territory,” said Alexander Cooley, a Central Asian expert at Barnard College, explaining that the base will be used to bring materiel out of Afghanistan.
Cooley said there have been protests against the NATO presence there, “but in reality, the base is going to have quite a significant commercial value.
“Russian officials and bureaucracies will collect hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees,” Cooley said. “So it might actually turn out to be a good commercial deal for Russia.”
Ulyanovsk Logistics hub
But Stephen Blank, a national security affairs expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the issue of how to describe Ulyanovsk and its purpose is a sensitive matter.
“NATO does not want to call it an air base, because that really angers Russian public opinion as well as the government, he said. “It is basically going to be a logistics hub, essentially, by which we can then air lift materiel out of Afghanistan as we withdraw, and then bring it back to Europe or the United States. There won’t be any kind of military operations or forces stationed there.”
But in the final analysis, Blank said Russia has an ambivalent policy toward Afghanistan.
“On the one hand, they certainly understand that the United States is defending their interests by fighting the Taliban and the terrorist organizations,” he said. “On the other hand, they want us out of Central Asia.
“They cannot resolve that contradiction,” Blank continued. “If they want us out of Central Asia, the Ulyanovsk logistics hub is a way to help, because it’s a way to get things out of there faster.”
Many experts say ironically, NATO and the United States will use the border crossing at Termez between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan - the so-called “Friendship Bridge” - as one of their transit points out of Afghanistan - the same road used by Soviet troops when they withdrew from that country in February 1989.
Afghanistan, Iran to Sign Strategic Agreement ‘Soon'
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Afghanistan and Iran are in the process of drafting a strategic agreement to boost cooperation between the two countries, Iranian Foreign Secretary Ali Akbar Salehi told TOLOnews in Japan.
The agreement will focus on different aspects of their relationship, particularly on the training of Afghan national security forces, Salehi said, marking the first time an Iranian high-ranking official has stated the country's interest in training Afghan soldiers.
He confirmed that there were people already working on a draft of a long-term agreement.
"We hope to sign a strategic agreement soon, which was proposed by President [Hamid] Karzai, in order to boost cooperation between the two countries. The two countries' experts are working to write a draft of the agreement which will be signed in the near future," he said.
Salehi pointed out that Iran has a demonstrable interest in Afghanistan's future.
"We have attended many conferences in the past several months including Istanbul, Bonne, Kabul, and now the Tokyo conference which shows the strong commitment of Iran to our Afghan brothers and sisters," Salehi said in the interview.
He added that the Iranian government is already making steps in this regard, trying to connect Afghanistan to international waters through Iran's Chabahar port.
"One of the projects we've announced was to connect Afghanistan to Chabahar port in order to connect the country with waters which will ease the transit issues," Salehi added.
He said that Iran wants Afghanistan to stand on its own feet after withdrawal of the foreign troops from the country.
Iran will be the second regional country to sign a strategic agreement with Afghanistan after India.
Afghanistan has signed similar agreements with countries such as Italy, Britain, Australia, and the US, in recent months to secure their cooperation during the "transformation decade" of 2015 to 2024 and possibly beyond.
Karzai is Not Intending to Fight Corruption: Abdullah
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Karzai's claims to fight corruption are false because he and his team have shown no will to do so, head of Afghanistan's National Coalition party Abdullah Abdullah said Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, Abdullah said that the Afghan people are not aware of most of Karzai's decisions and called for him to give an account of all the deaths of Afghans during his tenure as president.
"The claims made by President Karzai to fight corruption are untrue because he and his team are not committed to do so. The interests of Afghans are ignored in all his decisions - he's making deals that we are not aware of," Abdullah said.
He blamed the government for the ongoing bloodshed, saying it had failed to identify the killers of the Afghan people and bring them to justice.
"Karzai should give an account for all the killings of the Afghan people," he added.
Abdullah said it was his and the Afghan academics duty to awaken the public about the deals the government is doing.
"The government are not considering the will of the country. It's our and the scholars duty to awaken the people and prevent any illegal government deals," he said.
Abdullah added that the role of the Islamic Ulema Council was vital, and that it could play a major part in the future of Afghanistan.
US Ambassador Optimistic About Karzai's Anti-Graft Efforts
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that the Afghan government's anti-corruption efforts are likely to deliver and the international community will be there in support.
In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Crocker said he was optimistic that President Hamid Karzai's statements to fight corruption would come through for the Afghan people.
"I think the government is going to make a very serious effort. President Karzai has been clear on this - it's his top priority for the remaining two years he has in office," Crocker told TOLOnews at the sidelines of the Tokyo conference earlier this month.
"I am optimistic that the government will deliver for the benefit of its own people, and again the international community is here in Tokyo just as they were there in Chicago, for the support of the Afghan people," he said.
"The Afghan people have suffered enough and we are determined that they are going to have a far better future than in the past," he added.
On the role of Afghan social activists, Crocker said that they will play a major role in the country's future through their fight for the respect of human rights and a transparent presidential election.
"I think there is a profound commitment on the part of the Afghan government and Afghans themselves for the respect for human rights, and human rights also means women's rights. Civil society is alive as well, and they will be an important factor in the coming presidential elections as we heard just now from the representatives. They, like all Afghans, insist on free, fair, open and transparent elections," he said.
The international community pledged $16bn for four years to Afghanistan at the Tokyo conference on the condition that corruption was eradicated and the provision of good governance.
Afghan prison chief jailed for raping teenage girl
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal 17/07/2012
KABUL - An Afghan prison chief was jailed for 16 years on Tuesday for raping a teenage girl, a rare show of justice for women in a country where they are suffering increased violence and offered scant protection from the law.
Sayed Nasir Ahmad was found guilty of raping Meena Asifa during the holy month of Ramadan three years ago in eastern Logar province, when she was 15.
She had been detained at the prison where he was director after she ran away from home.
"He raped Asifa and threatened to kill her if she told anyone," her lawyer Mohammad Mujahid Moram told a Kabul courtroom. Asifa and her family did not attend the hearing.
Ahmad, who had previously worked as a judge, denied the charges. "I am being framed by the local government because I stopped them unlawfully obtaining land," he said.
A spokesman for Logar's provincial government declined to comment on his allegation.
The Minister for Women's Affairs, Husn Bano Ghazanfar, praised the sentence handed to Ahmad.
"I welcome this. This is one of the ways we can help decrease violence against women," she told Reuters.
Afghanistan's independent human rights commission has recorded a sharp increase in cases of violence against women - it said there have been almost 1,000 cases in the past four months, compared with about 1,300 for all of last year.
And there have been 52 murders of women in the past four months compared with 20 last year, it said. In most cases of violence, the perpetrators were not punished, it said.
On Friday Hanifa Safi, a regional head of women's affairs, was killed by a bomb attached to her car in eastern Afghanistan, a month after a woman was publicly executed for alleged adultery about an hour's drive from the capital Kabul.
During their 1996-2001 reign, the Taliban banned women from education, voting and most work, and they were not allowed to leave their homes without permission and a male escort.
These rights have been painstakingly won back since the ultra-conservative Islamist group were forced from power by a U.S.-led invasion.
But activists and some lawmakers accuse President Hamid Karzai's government of losing interest in women's rights as most foreign troops prepare to leave the country by the end of 2014 and it seeks peace talks with the Taliban.
(Writing and additional reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Pravin Char)
Russia to Play Key Role in Winding Down Afghan War
Voice of America By Andre deNesnera July 17, 2012
Russia, which battled mujahedeen guerillas in Afghanistan three decades ago, is once again playing a key role in the country, this time helping the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
Not a single Russian soldier is among 130,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan these days - all of them are from NATO member nations and 90,000 of them are Americans. But experts on the region say that even though Russian doesn’t have a military presence there, it is helping the NATO allies because it too has an interest in an Afghanistan that is stable and at peace.
Many Afghans remember the 10-year war Moscow waged against the mujahedeen - a conflict that ended with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989.
Because of that war, Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan with the RAND Corporation, says Russia is deeply hated in Afghanistan.
“Most Afghans I speak to regularly in Afghanistan have very strong recollections of the Soviet war in the 1980s,” Jones said. “It’s probably best for the moment, that Russia does not have a major role, certainly in combat operations in the country, just because of the memory.”
While not having “boots on the ground,” Jones said Moscow has supported the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, because it believes a Taliban victory or all-out civil war would not be in Russia’s interest.
“The idea of an increasing radical Islam creeping up toward the Russia border is of notable concern to Moscow,” Jones said. “That’s what has motivated the Russians to allow for logistics to come through its territory by air, rail and truck and then through Central Asia.
Russia / NATO accord
The latest logistics agreement between Washington and Moscow involves NATO's use of a Russian military base in Ulyanovsk - roughly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and about 300 kilometers northwest of the border with Kazakhstan. Ulyanovsk, formerly Simbirsk, is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and is now a hub for Russian airborne troops.
“It’s the first time that NATO will have a facility on Russian territory,” said Alexander Cooley, a Central Asian expert at Barnard College, explaining that the base will be used to bring materiel out of Afghanistan.
Cooley said there have been protests against the NATO presence there, “but in reality, the base is going to have quite a significant commercial value.
“Russian officials and bureaucracies will collect hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees,” Cooley said. “So it might actually turn out to be a good commercial deal for Russia.”
Ulyanovsk Logistics hub
But Stephen Blank, a national security affairs expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the issue of how to describe Ulyanovsk and its purpose is a sensitive matter.
“NATO does not want to call it an air base, because that really angers Russian public opinion as well as the government, he said. “It is basically going to be a logistics hub, essentially, by which we can then air lift materiel out of Afghanistan as we withdraw, and then bring it back to Europe or the United States. There won’t be any kind of military operations or forces stationed there.”
But in the final analysis, Blank said Russia has an ambivalent policy toward Afghanistan.
“On the one hand, they certainly understand that the United States is defending their interests by fighting the Taliban and the terrorist organizations,” he said. “On the other hand, they want us out of Central Asia.
“They cannot resolve that contradiction,” Blank continued. “If they want us out of Central Asia, the Ulyanovsk logistics hub is a way to help, because it’s a way to get things out of there faster.”
Many experts say ironically, NATO and the United States will use the border crossing at Termez between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan - the so-called “Friendship Bridge” - as one of their transit points out of Afghanistan - the same road used by Soviet troops when they withdrew from that country in February 1989.
Lost In Transition: As U.S. Transfers Power In Afghanistan, Accountability For Civilian Casualties Is Unresolved
The Huffington Post By Joshua Hersh 17/07/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In May, after an errant NATO airstrike on a remote village in eastern Afghanistan killed a family of eight civilians in their home, the top American commander found himself in the uncomfortable position of being called into the office of President Hamid Karzai.
The issue of civilian casualties continues to be a major impediment to the mission of the U.S.-led coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has directed security and combat operations in Afghanistan since 2001. After all, the success of the war is largely contingent on the support of Afghans: killing civilians outrages the population, and Karzai is known to take any civilian casualties, even incidental ones, to heart. When Gen. John R. Allen arrived at the presidential palace that day, he was surprised to find that Karzai had invited a phalanx of reporters to await him.
Faced with the prospect of having to evade difficult questions about a military operation gone catastrophically wrong, Allen and ISAF chose the opposite tack: they apologized profusely and took full responsibility, promising a thorough investigation. “I remain committed to eliminating civilian casualties,” Allen told the president when they met, according to a statement that was later released by the ISAF press office. “It is my highest priority.”
That same month, an Afghan journalist went to a press conference at ISAF headquarters intending to ask a question about night raids, another piece of the Western military mission that is a regular source of both controversy and civilian casualties. In a night raid -- the military prefers to call them “night operations” -- a team of commandos swoop in to capture or kill suspected insurgents while they sleep in their homes. ISAF officials consider the missions a critical component of their counterinsurgency strategy, but they also come at a cost: over the past two years, almost 150 civilians have been killed by pro-government forces in the course of such operations, according to the United Nations.
But when Saboor Hashimi, a Kabul-based reporter for the non-profit Internews Network, asked his question, he was told that under a new policy, ISAF would no longer answer general questions about the raids.
"They said I have to ask the Afghans," Hashimi told The Huffington Post, as he walked out of the headquarters that day.
As the U.S. prepares to conclude its combat operations in Afghanistan and turn over control of military operations to the Afghans, the divergent experiences are instructive of a new trend in the ongoing transition of power -- one that is deeply worrisome to humanitarian organizations in the country.
Unlike airstrikes, night raids are no longer formally under the auspices of the Western coalition. In April, as part of the U.S. military's ongoing transfer of power to the Afghans, authority for approving the missions was transitioned to the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
As a result, a spokesman for ISAF confirmed, unless the question specifically refers to actions by their forces, ISAF will no longer discuss the raids with the media.
"ISAF has been trying for a long time to figure out how to avoid the blame-game on civilian casualties," said Erica Gaston, an Afghanistan analyst with the congressionally funded think-tank U.S. Institute of Peace, who has written extensively on night raids and how the U.S. military manages civilian casualties. "Their latest innovation is to Afghanize the problem, by claiming Afghan authorization for missions that result in civilian casualties in the hope of provoking far less outcry. To be fair, they are transitioning gradually to Afghan control of many missions, but some of what is going on is just strategic communications."
The night raid scenario is particularly troubling because while American accountability for the raids may be ending, American participation in them hasn't. U.S. commandos continue to be closely involved with many of the operations, and U.S. intelligence usually dictates which homes are targeted. As Wired noted shortly after the deal over night-raid authority was inked, American commandos can even conduct a night raid first, and seek the Afghan military's permission later. The transition of public accountability seems to have gotten ahead of the transition itself.
Approaching the U.S. withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of 2014, humanitarian advocates fear that "transition," for all its inevitability, may also be providing cover for Western officials to sidestep their own responsibilities -- accountability, transparency -- for their least popular operations, many of which are likely to continue for years to come.
"I don't take too kindly the suggestions from ISAF that 'It's not our responsibility anymore,'" said Daniel Tyler, a civilian protection specialist with the Norwegian Refugee Council in Kabul. "I think at the moment it's more their responsibility than ever. They genuinely have a very limited timeframe in which an enormous amount needs to be achieved."
'NOT WHERE WE ARE YET'
One place where responsibility for civilian casualties seems to be evaporating is perhaps the place where it is needed most. Two years ago, Western military officials set up a five-person unit within ISAF known as the civilian casualty mitigation team. Using computer databases and a fine-toothed study of civilian casualty incidents, the unit was designed help analyze what actions are prone to cause such events, and help avoid them. The team would also reach out to NGOs and members of Afghan civil society, in order to hear their suggestions on how to better manage relations with the people, and to help spread the results of their investigations.
Many human rights groups credit the efforts of the unit with helping to bring civilian casualty rates to a new low this year.
A key part of ISAF’s mission at this point is to help train the Afghan National Security Forces, and prepare the Ministries of Defense and Interior -- the army and the police -- to handle security in the country on their own. So far so good: Afghan security forces have taken over the land where 75 percent of the population lives.
But at the key Afghan ministries, the one piece of the civilian casualty puzzle that has demonstrated results is still absent: there is no mechanism like ISAF's mitigation team.
"The Afghans are far from ready to assume control for civilian casualty monitoring in the way that the humanitarian and human rights community would like them to be," said Tyler, the civilian protection specialist, echoing the view of several experts interviewed for this article.
ISAF officials say they are aware of this shortcoming, but when humanitarian groups have brought it up, they have received another version of the answer given to the journalist asking about night raids: it’s out of our hands.
"A lot of the language at those meetings has been ISAF holding hands up, saying, 'There's no reason for coming to us, you need to be dialoguing with the Afghans on this,'" said one aid worker who participated in the sessions and asked to remain anonymous to discuss private conversations. Two other participants in the meeting corroborated this account.
The aid worker added that NGOs tried to communicate with Afghan authorities, but without the intervention of ISAF found it virtually impossible. "It wasn't until extremely recently, and at the urging of all of us, that we were even able to identify some counterpart to dialogue with on the ANSF side," the aid worker said.
In an interview, Col. Anthony Choi, the newly appointed director of ISAF's civilian casualty mitigation team, acknowledged that the Afghan government's capacity for monitoring and mitigating civilian casualties "is not where we are yet," but suggested that the problem was one that ISAF could do little about.
"Progress has been made, and hopefully the government of Afghanistan will keep this going forward," Choi said.
This mindset is not good enough, said Trevor Keck, a Kabul-based researcher with the civilian protection organization CIVIC.
“We're often told [the welfare of civilians] is the responsibility of the Afghans,” Keck said. “Yes, Afghan security forces are ultimately responsible for their own conduct, but the conduct of Afghan forces during this withdrawal period will reflect upon NATO's mission -- for better or worse."
He added, "During this withdrawal, international forces have a duty to make sure the forces they're funding, training and equipping are protecting, not harming, the Afghan people.”
THE FOG OF TRANSITION
Gen. Allen has described transition as the “linchpin” of America’s military strategy in Afghanistan, and needless to say, senior ISAF officials don’t view it in quite the same way as the aid workers do.
"It's not a relinquishing of responsibility by ISAF, it is a growing acceptance of responsibility by Afghans, which if you like is simply a reality of transition," said Australian Brigadier Roger Noble, the deputy chief of staff for operations at ISAF, in an interview in Kabul. "What is transition anyway? Transition is the acceptance of responsibility by the Afghans, and with that acceptance comes responsibility for when things go wrong."
One final complication, however, is that transition occurs gradually, no matter what the paperwork says. In the fog of transition, the already hard task of determining who is responsible when an incident occurs -- a civilian caught in a crossfire, a child shot during a night raid -- has become even harder.
Until this year, all of the military missions in which something could go wrong were at least nominally under one command. Even then, accounting for misdeeds could prove discouragingly tough. In its annual reports on civilian casualties, for instance, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) repeatedly warns that they "may be under-reporting night search operations involving civilian casualties" because so many of the missions are classified, and because of the wide variety of nationalities involved.
Now, however, an operation could fall under any of several permutations of command, ever evolving, and determining culpability has become something of a philosophical exercise. A vehicle in a military convoy that strikes a young girl could be an American vehicle in a part of the country that is formally Afghan-led, or it could be an Afghan vehicle travelling in an ISAF convoy, or it could an all-Afghan convoy on a mission guided by American intelligence. Who’s to say where the blame ought to fall?
Col. Choi told HuffPost that in any of these scenarios, ISAF would conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if ISAF personnel might have been involved. But he and other officials were hard to pin down on the definition of “involved.”
"Our position is if it's an incident we caused, then we are responsible for it," Choi said, finally settling on an answer.
In practice, however, a lot can fall through the cracks. When HuffPost asked Maj. Gen. Afzal Aman, the chief of staff for operations at the Afghan Ministry of Defense who bears responsibility for civilian casualties that occur during Afghan-led operations, he replied definitively: "The government of Afghanistan is responsible for this." But he also said -- as did human rights monitors and ISAF officials -- that in those situations it will often be the Americans who end up paying the monetary compensation packages to the families of the victims.
One United Nations official in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity told HuffPost that assigning responsibility for misdeeds has become downright contortionist: In a night raid, American forces might be involved in the planning and operation of the mission, but if they do not actually enter the home in which a civilian is later injured, they might consider themselves alleviated from any fault. "Their part ends at the threshold of the home," the official said.
Mohammad Shafiq Noori, an investigator with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, says that as long as there are Western troops in the country conducting missions that the public associates with foreign militaries -- and as long as the mission still relies on the public’s support -- it shouldn’t make any difference who is in charge of the operation on paper.
"Always they say it was the Americans, always they say it was the international military force, no matter who did the operation," Noori said. "It is still the responsibility of the U.S. and the international community to ensure that the Afghan security forces are using their training the right way."
Australia Officially Hands Uruzgan Security to Afghans
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Afghanistan's troops took over security responsibility of southern Uruzgan from their Australian counterparts as part of the third phase of the national security transition on Tuesday.
The process, which formally began Tuesday, will take 12 to 18 months, officials said.
Provincial spokesman Abdullah Himat confirmed the handover, saying "at a ceremony today, the Afghan troops officially took over full security responsibility from Australian troops."
On the same day in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke at a police graduation ceremony about the strength of the Afghan forces and their readiness to ensure security for their own country when Nato withdraws by the end of 2014.
"I am convinced and the Afghan people are confident that our security forces will ensure security for this country when the handover of security is complete in two years time," Karzai said the graduates.
Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement that the ceremony, attended by Australia's Ambassador in Uruzgan's capital Tarin Kowt, marked the beginning of the handover to local troops.
"The start of the transition in Uruzgan reflects the progress made by Afghan, Australian and International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) military and civilian teams in training and mentoring the Afghan National Security Forces and strengthening security and development," she said.
"It is a welcome sign. The transition in Uruzgan is on track for completion over the next 12 to 18 month period," she added.
Australia's has around 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, most of them based in Uruzgan. A total of 34 soldiers have died in Afghanistan since they began sending troops to fight in the US-led mission.
Australia confirmed earlier this year that it would withdraw most of its forces by 2014, a year earlier than the Nato deadline.
On May 16, Australia pledged to contribute US$300 million to Afghanistan from 2015 to assist local forces with security after the withdrawal of foreign troops.
It followed up this pledge in July with a further promise of US$100 million in civilian aid annually for three years through 2015 "as part of international efforts to help sustain and support Afghan troops beyond the transition".
Back to Top
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 NATO trucks carrying supplies to their forces in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban and police said on Wednesday.
Eighteen fuel trucks and four supply vehicles were parked in Aibak, the capital of Samangan province, when a bomb ripped through them, wounding one person, local police said.
"At 2 a.m. the mujahideen attacked the invader NATO trucks," the Taliban said in a statement, referring to the wagons which had been driven from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan's north.
The trucks were attacked in the same province where prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker Ahmad Khan Samangani was killed on Saturday at his daughter's wedding, in a suicide bomb attack that killed 22 other guests.
"We believe the Taliban carried this out. Eighteen trucks have been totally destroyed, the rest were damaged by fire," Samangan police chief Khalil Andarabi told Reuters.
Separately, police in neighboring Baghlan province said they had detained 10 suspected Taliban members with so-called magnetic bombs, which they were trying to attach to supply trucks.
Pakistan recently reopened its border crossings with Afghanistan for NATO supplies after shutting them in November after a U.S. airstrike unintentionally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
(Reporting by Bashir Ansari, writing by Mirwais Harooni, editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)
British Prime Minister Cameron in Afghanistan
By DAVID STRINGER | Associated Press
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (AP) — The British prime minister backed up a pledge to pull more troops out of Afghanistan next year, during a previously unannounced trip to a restive province on Wednesday.
Britain's contingent is second in size only to U.S. troop strength among Western forces in Afghanistan. Britain plans to pull 500 troops out by December but has not given a timetable for others to leave. NATO plans to turn over security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
Cameron was holding talks with British and Afghan officials in the southern province of Helmand, where Britain has around 9,500 troops.
After visiting soldiers at a base in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's regional capital, and at smaller forward base in Nad Ali, Cameron said he believed the handover of security duties from foreign to local forces was progressing well.
He questioned British soldiers at both camps about the capability of the Afghan army and police, and said their responses would help inform decisions on how many troops to withdraw next year.
Cameron confirmed that a decision on British withdrawals during 2013 would be announced at the end of the year.
Officials have cautioned against public hopes of a major drawdown next year. Britain is expected to confirm its strategy only after a planned meeting in October of Britain's National Security Council, which includes ministers, military commanders and spy chiefs.
"I don't want to raise false hopes. There will be a modest reduction this year, there will be further reductions next year," he told reporters at Camp Bastion, a vast British base in Helmand.
Cameron said he was "encouraged" by progress in Helmand, particularly after visiting troops at Forward Operating Base Shawqat in Nad Ali, which borders a bustling bazaar that didn't exist on his last visit two years ago because of fierce fighting.
Troops praised their Afghan counterparts over a juice and tea with Cameron at the base's store and cafe — decked out in British flags and bunting.
"Their soldiers are no different to ours, they are a little bit lazy compared to ours, but they can go out and fight, they can go on one knee (to fire rifles). They are more than happy to go forward and push the Taliban back," Company Sgt. Maj Nathan Love, 37, said he had told Cameron.
The British leader said he believed the troops' accounts of work alongside Afghan forces were unvarnished.
"British army soldiers aren't going to give you a rose-tinted view of other soldiers. But they say that (the Afghan troops) are brave, that they feel proud to fight alongside them. Increasingly, the more you ask them to do, the more they are able to do," he told reporters.
He said he believed Afghanistan's police and army would be able to provide "a basic level of security" once foreign forces step back from combat roles.
Cameron also held talks at Camp Bastion with Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, who was visiting Helmand to meet some of his country's 165 troops serving there.
President Barack Obama has already confirmed that around 23,000 of the 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan will withdraw by September — including from Helmand, which analysts say could put further strain on British forces.
"The immediate challenge is going to be that the Americans are pulling a large number of forces out of Helmand this year, leaving it very vulnerable to attack," said Malcolm Chalmers of London's military think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.
Britain has signaled it does not plan to expand its area of operations from the province's center, meaning the Taliban could seek to recapture parts of northern Helmand, previously the scene of intense combat.
Violence raged in Helmand just ahead of Cameron's visit there. The provincial governor's office said nine Afghan soldiers were killed Tuesday night when militants attacked an Afghan National Army checkpoint in the Washer district. Seven insurgents were killed in the attack, the governor's office said.
Insurgents also clashed Tuesday night with Afghan police in Nad Ali district. An insurgent commander was killed and six other militants were captured during the battle, the governor's office said.
The British leader's visit comes after three British soldiers were killed on July 1 by an Afghan policeman as they attended a meeting of local officials. A total of 26 foreign troops have been killed so far this year in killings involving Afghan security forces attacking NATO allies.
Cameron met with British troops after his defense secretary, Philip Hammond, acknowledged morale within the military was "fragile" because of budget restraint and cuts to units.
Britain's army will shrink from 102,000 troops to 82,000 by 2020 under the government's program of spending cuts. The military is handling an 8 percent cut to its annual 37 billion pound ($59 billion) defense budget.
Britain already announced it will offer about 70 million pounds (US$110 million) per year from 2015 to help fund Afghanistan's police and military after foreign forces have left.
House pushes for terrorist label for Haqqani group
AP By Donna Cassata Tuesday, July 17th 2012
WASHINGTON - Congress is stepping up the pressure on the Obama administration to slap the terrorist label on the Haqqani network, a militant group responsible for plotting and launching attacks from Pakistan against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
By voice vote Tuesday, the House approved a bill that would require the secretary of state to report to Congress on whether the Haqqani network meets the criteria to be designated a foreign terrorist organization and if not, to explain why. The report is due within 30 days of the president signing the measure.
The administration has sanctioned top individuals of the Haqqani network, but it is still reviewing whether to label the entire organization. That delay has frustrated members of Congress. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, added an amendment to the bill stating that it was the sense of Congress that the Haqqani network meets the definition of a terrorist organization and they should be designated as one.
"The Obama administration has been considering formally designating the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law but has yet to act," said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., during a brief House debate.
Last week, the State Department defended its effort.
"We've been very aggressive about sanctioning their top individuals, and we've seen that as the most effective way to go about this. But the review is ongoing, and is actively ongoing," department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters.
The measure now heads to the Senate, which approved a similar bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., last December.
The Haqqani network, largely operating in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, is affiliated with both the Taliban and al-Qaida. U.S. officials say it represents one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan stability because it is believed to use Pakistan as a rear base for attacks on American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.
The House vote comes just weeks after the United States and Pakistan ended a rancorous seven-month standoff with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton apologizing to Pakistan for the killing of 24 Pakistani troops last fall and in return securing the reopening of critical NATO supply lines into Afghanistan. Throughout the uneasy relationship between the United States and Pakistan, American officials have pressed Islamabad to crack down on the extremist Haqqani network.
The bill states that "nothing in this act may be construed to infringe upon the sovereignty of Pakistan to combat militant or terrorist groups operating inside its boundaries."
In May, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees wrote to Clinton asking her to act immediately in labeling the Haqqani network a terrorist group.
The four leaders — Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., and Rogers — said that based on meetings with U.S. and Afghan officials in Afghanistan, "it was clear that the Haqqani network continues to launch sensational and indiscriminate attacks against U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the group poses a continuing threat to innocent men, women and children in the region."
The four noted that it had been six months since the State Department had undertaken its "final formal review" of the Haqqani network.
"The Haqqanis have continued to attack U.S. troops and the U.S. embassy in Kabul during that period," the lawmakers said.
The letter also noted that the Obama administration may have been reluctant to act while Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was trying to negotiate a reconciliation agreement with the Taliban that may have included or affected the Haqqani network.
Last fall, the top U.S. military officer accused Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency of backing extremists in planning and executing the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and a truck bomb attack that wounded 77 American soldiers.
In his last congressional testimony before retirement, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that the Haqqani insurgent network "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
The House also passed a bill that would strengthen economic and security ties between the United States and Israel. The bipartisan legislation, which was approved by voice vote, would reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel and American support for the Mideast ally's right to self-defense. The bill would extend current loan guarantees to Israel that expire later this year and authorizes the transfer of obsolete or surplus defense material from the United States to Israel.
The bill reiterates U.S. support for a negotiated two-state solution to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
9 Afghan army soldiers killed in southern Helmand province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Up to nine Afghan army soldiers were killed and seven others injured on Tuesday night when Taliban launched an attack against army checkposts in southern Helmand province, a provincial official said Wednesday.
"Nine Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were killed and seven soldiers injured following a Taliban attack on ANA checkposts in Washeer district Tuesday night," a spokesman for provincial government, Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua.
He said seven militants were also killed and five other insurgents were injured in the fighting.
A Taliban commander was killed and six other militants were detained by police following a similar incident in neighboring Nad Ali district also Tuesday night, Ahamdi added.
In another development, three militants were killed in a joint operation carried out by Aghan army and NATO-led coalition forces in Chak-e-Wardak district in eastern Wardak province late Tuesday, a provincial spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, told Xinhua.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
Obama Names New Afghan, Pakistan Ambassadors
July 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. President Barack Obama has appointed two veteran diplomats to be the next ambassadors to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A White House statement said Obama has named Richard Olson, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, to serve in Pakistan.
The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, resigned in May, amid escalating tensions between Washington and Islamabad caused by the killing of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in Pakistan in May 2011 and a botched U.S. airstrike which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The statement said that James Cunningham, the current deputy ambassador to Kabul, will replace Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who announced he was leaving for health reasons.
The new appointees are dues to serve as the United States prepares to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
With reporting by AFP
Afghan forces take over security charge of Kandahar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces took over the security responsibility of major parts of Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital city Kabul, on Wednesday.
"I am confident that the national security forces of Afghanistan are capable enough to take over the security charge of the country by 2014 when the NATO-led force complete its pull out," Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the security transition ceremony.
He also called on the international community to assist Afghanistan in providing training and equipment to its security forces, especially in rebuilding its air force.
The security responsibility of provincial capital Kandahar city, Dand, Daman and Arghandab districts was formally handed over from NATO-led troops to Afghan forces Wednesday.
Afghan forces assumed the security charge of Uruzgan province on Tuesday.
The security transition process from NATO-led force to Afghan government began on July 2011 and is scheduled to complete by the end of 2014.
Russia to Play Key Role in Winding Down Afghan War
Andre deNesnera VOA News July 17, 2012
Russia, which battled mujahedeen guerillas in Afghanistan three decades ago, is once again playing a key role in the country, this time helping the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
Not a single Russian soldier is among 130,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan these days - all of them are from NATO member nations and 90,000 of them are Americans. But experts on the region say that even though Russian doesn’t have a military presence there, it is helping the NATO allies because it too has an interest in an Afghanistan that is stable and at peace.
Many Afghans remember the 10-year war Moscow waged against the mujahedeen - a conflict that ended with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989.
Because of that war, Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan with the RAND Corporation, says Russia is deeply hated in Afghanistan.
“Most Afghans I speak to regularly in Afghanistan have very strong recollections of the Soviet war in the 1980s,” Jones said. “It’s probably best for the moment, that Russia does not have a major role, certainly in combat operations in the country, just because of the memory.”
While not having “boots on the ground,” Jones said Moscow has supported the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, because it believes a Taliban victory or all-out civil war would not be in Russia’s interest.
“The idea of an increasing radical Islam creeping up toward the Russia border is of notable concern to Moscow,” Jones said. “That’s what has motivated the Russians to allow for logistics to come through its territory by air, rail and truck and then through Central Asia.
Russia / NATO accord
The latest logistics agreement between Washington and Moscow involves NATO's use of a Russian military base in Ulyanovsk - roughly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and about 300 kilometers northwest of the border with Kazakhstan. Ulyanovsk, formerly Simbirsk, is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and is now a hub for Russian airborne troops.
“It’s the first time that NATO will have a facility on Russian territory,” said Alexander Cooley, a Central Asian expert at Barnard College, explaining that the base will be used to bring materiel out of Afghanistan.
Cooley said there have been protests against the NATO presence there, “but in reality, the base is going to have quite a significant commercial value.
“Russian officials and bureaucracies will collect hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees,” Cooley said. “So it might actually turn out to be a good commercial deal for Russia.”
Ulyanovsk Logistics hub
But Stephen Blank, a national security affairs expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the issue of how to describe Ulyanovsk and its purpose is a sensitive matter.
“NATO does not want to call it an air base, because that really angers Russian public opinion as well as the government, he said. “It is basically going to be a logistics hub, essentially, by which we can then air lift materiel out of Afghanistan as we withdraw, and then bring it back to Europe or the United States. There won’t be any kind of military operations or forces stationed there.”
But in the final analysis, Blank said Russia has an ambivalent policy toward Afghanistan.
“On the one hand, they certainly understand that the United States is defending their interests by fighting the Taliban and the terrorist organizations,” he said. “On the other hand, they want us out of Central Asia.
“They cannot resolve that contradiction,” Blank continued. “If they want us out of Central Asia, the Ulyanovsk logistics hub is a way to help, because it’s a way to get things out of there faster.”
Many experts say ironically, NATO and the United States will use the border crossing at Termez between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan - the so-called “Friendship Bridge” - as one of their transit points out of Afghanistan - the same road used by Soviet troops when they withdrew from that country in February 1989.
Afghanistan, Iran to Sign Strategic Agreement ‘Soon'
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Afghanistan and Iran are in the process of drafting a strategic agreement to boost cooperation between the two countries, Iranian Foreign Secretary Ali Akbar Salehi told TOLOnews in Japan.
The agreement will focus on different aspects of their relationship, particularly on the training of Afghan national security forces, Salehi said, marking the first time an Iranian high-ranking official has stated the country's interest in training Afghan soldiers.
He confirmed that there were people already working on a draft of a long-term agreement.
"We hope to sign a strategic agreement soon, which was proposed by President [Hamid] Karzai, in order to boost cooperation between the two countries. The two countries' experts are working to write a draft of the agreement which will be signed in the near future," he said.
Salehi pointed out that Iran has a demonstrable interest in Afghanistan's future.
"We have attended many conferences in the past several months including Istanbul, Bonne, Kabul, and now the Tokyo conference which shows the strong commitment of Iran to our Afghan brothers and sisters," Salehi said in the interview.
He added that the Iranian government is already making steps in this regard, trying to connect Afghanistan to international waters through Iran's Chabahar port.
"One of the projects we've announced was to connect Afghanistan to Chabahar port in order to connect the country with waters which will ease the transit issues," Salehi added.
He said that Iran wants Afghanistan to stand on its own feet after withdrawal of the foreign troops from the country.
Iran will be the second regional country to sign a strategic agreement with Afghanistan after India.
Afghanistan has signed similar agreements with countries such as Italy, Britain, Australia, and the US, in recent months to secure their cooperation during the "transformation decade" of 2015 to 2024 and possibly beyond.
Karzai is Not Intending to Fight Corruption: Abdullah
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Karzai's claims to fight corruption are false because he and his team have shown no will to do so, head of Afghanistan's National Coalition party Abdullah Abdullah said Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, Abdullah said that the Afghan people are not aware of most of Karzai's decisions and called for him to give an account of all the deaths of Afghans during his tenure as president.
"The claims made by President Karzai to fight corruption are untrue because he and his team are not committed to do so. The interests of Afghans are ignored in all his decisions - he's making deals that we are not aware of," Abdullah said.
He blamed the government for the ongoing bloodshed, saying it had failed to identify the killers of the Afghan people and bring them to justice.
"Karzai should give an account for all the killings of the Afghan people," he added.
Abdullah said it was his and the Afghan academics duty to awaken the public about the deals the government is doing.
"The government are not considering the will of the country. It's our and the scholars duty to awaken the people and prevent any illegal government deals," he said.
Abdullah added that the role of the Islamic Ulema Council was vital, and that it could play a major part in the future of Afghanistan.
US Ambassador Optimistic About Karzai's Anti-Graft Efforts
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that the Afghan government's anti-corruption efforts are likely to deliver and the international community will be there in support.
In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Crocker said he was optimistic that President Hamid Karzai's statements to fight corruption would come through for the Afghan people.
"I think the government is going to make a very serious effort. President Karzai has been clear on this - it's his top priority for the remaining two years he has in office," Crocker told TOLOnews at the sidelines of the Tokyo conference earlier this month.
"I am optimistic that the government will deliver for the benefit of its own people, and again the international community is here in Tokyo just as they were there in Chicago, for the support of the Afghan people," he said.
"The Afghan people have suffered enough and we are determined that they are going to have a far better future than in the past," he added.
On the role of Afghan social activists, Crocker said that they will play a major role in the country's future through their fight for the respect of human rights and a transparent presidential election.
"I think there is a profound commitment on the part of the Afghan government and Afghans themselves for the respect for human rights, and human rights also means women's rights. Civil society is alive as well, and they will be an important factor in the coming presidential elections as we heard just now from the representatives. They, like all Afghans, insist on free, fair, open and transparent elections," he said.
The international community pledged $16bn for four years to Afghanistan at the Tokyo conference on the condition that corruption was eradicated and the provision of good governance.
Afghan prison chief jailed for raping teenage girl
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal 17/07/2012
KABUL - An Afghan prison chief was jailed for 16 years on Tuesday for raping a teenage girl, a rare show of justice for women in a country where they are suffering increased violence and offered scant protection from the law.
Sayed Nasir Ahmad was found guilty of raping Meena Asifa during the holy month of Ramadan three years ago in eastern Logar province, when she was 15.
She had been detained at the prison where he was director after she ran away from home.
"He raped Asifa and threatened to kill her if she told anyone," her lawyer Mohammad Mujahid Moram told a Kabul courtroom. Asifa and her family did not attend the hearing.
Ahmad, who had previously worked as a judge, denied the charges. "I am being framed by the local government because I stopped them unlawfully obtaining land," he said.
A spokesman for Logar's provincial government declined to comment on his allegation.
The Minister for Women's Affairs, Husn Bano Ghazanfar, praised the sentence handed to Ahmad.
"I welcome this. This is one of the ways we can help decrease violence against women," she told Reuters.
Afghanistan's independent human rights commission has recorded a sharp increase in cases of violence against women - it said there have been almost 1,000 cases in the past four months, compared with about 1,300 for all of last year.
And there have been 52 murders of women in the past four months compared with 20 last year, it said. In most cases of violence, the perpetrators were not punished, it said.
On Friday Hanifa Safi, a regional head of women's affairs, was killed by a bomb attached to her car in eastern Afghanistan, a month after a woman was publicly executed for alleged adultery about an hour's drive from the capital Kabul.
During their 1996-2001 reign, the Taliban banned women from education, voting and most work, and they were not allowed to leave their homes without permission and a male escort.
These rights have been painstakingly won back since the ultra-conservative Islamist group were forced from power by a U.S.-led invasion.
But activists and some lawmakers accuse President Hamid Karzai's government of losing interest in women's rights as most foreign troops prepare to leave the country by the end of 2014 and it seeks peace talks with the Taliban.
(Writing and additional reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Pravin Char)
Russia to Play Key Role in Winding Down Afghan War
Voice of America By Andre deNesnera July 17, 2012
Russia, which battled mujahedeen guerillas in Afghanistan three decades ago, is once again playing a key role in the country, this time helping the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
Not a single Russian soldier is among 130,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan these days - all of them are from NATO member nations and 90,000 of them are Americans. But experts on the region say that even though Russian doesn’t have a military presence there, it is helping the NATO allies because it too has an interest in an Afghanistan that is stable and at peace.
Many Afghans remember the 10-year war Moscow waged against the mujahedeen - a conflict that ended with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989.
Because of that war, Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan with the RAND Corporation, says Russia is deeply hated in Afghanistan.
“Most Afghans I speak to regularly in Afghanistan have very strong recollections of the Soviet war in the 1980s,” Jones said. “It’s probably best for the moment, that Russia does not have a major role, certainly in combat operations in the country, just because of the memory.”
While not having “boots on the ground,” Jones said Moscow has supported the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, because it believes a Taliban victory or all-out civil war would not be in Russia’s interest.
“The idea of an increasing radical Islam creeping up toward the Russia border is of notable concern to Moscow,” Jones said. “That’s what has motivated the Russians to allow for logistics to come through its territory by air, rail and truck and then through Central Asia.
Russia / NATO accord
The latest logistics agreement between Washington and Moscow involves NATO's use of a Russian military base in Ulyanovsk - roughly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and about 300 kilometers northwest of the border with Kazakhstan. Ulyanovsk, formerly Simbirsk, is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and is now a hub for Russian airborne troops.
“It’s the first time that NATO will have a facility on Russian territory,” said Alexander Cooley, a Central Asian expert at Barnard College, explaining that the base will be used to bring materiel out of Afghanistan.
Cooley said there have been protests against the NATO presence there, “but in reality, the base is going to have quite a significant commercial value.
“Russian officials and bureaucracies will collect hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees,” Cooley said. “So it might actually turn out to be a good commercial deal for Russia.”
Ulyanovsk Logistics hub
But Stephen Blank, a national security affairs expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the issue of how to describe Ulyanovsk and its purpose is a sensitive matter.
“NATO does not want to call it an air base, because that really angers Russian public opinion as well as the government, he said. “It is basically going to be a logistics hub, essentially, by which we can then air lift materiel out of Afghanistan as we withdraw, and then bring it back to Europe or the United States. There won’t be any kind of military operations or forces stationed there.”
But in the final analysis, Blank said Russia has an ambivalent policy toward Afghanistan.
“On the one hand, they certainly understand that the United States is defending their interests by fighting the Taliban and the terrorist organizations,” he said. “On the other hand, they want us out of Central Asia.
“They cannot resolve that contradiction,” Blank continued. “If they want us out of Central Asia, the Ulyanovsk logistics hub is a way to help, because it’s a way to get things out of there faster.”
Many experts say ironically, NATO and the United States will use the border crossing at Termez between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan - the so-called “Friendship Bridge” - as one of their transit points out of Afghanistan - the same road used by Soviet troops when they withdrew from that country in February 1989.
Lost In Transition: As U.S. Transfers Power In Afghanistan, Accountability For Civilian Casualties Is Unresolved
The Huffington Post By Joshua Hersh 17/07/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In May, after an errant NATO airstrike on a remote village in eastern Afghanistan killed a family of eight civilians in their home, the top American commander found himself in the uncomfortable position of being called into the office of President Hamid Karzai.
The issue of civilian casualties continues to be a major impediment to the mission of the U.S.-led coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has directed security and combat operations in Afghanistan since 2001. After all, the success of the war is largely contingent on the support of Afghans: killing civilians outrages the population, and Karzai is known to take any civilian casualties, even incidental ones, to heart. When Gen. John R. Allen arrived at the presidential palace that day, he was surprised to find that Karzai had invited a phalanx of reporters to await him.
Faced with the prospect of having to evade difficult questions about a military operation gone catastrophically wrong, Allen and ISAF chose the opposite tack: they apologized profusely and took full responsibility, promising a thorough investigation. “I remain committed to eliminating civilian casualties,” Allen told the president when they met, according to a statement that was later released by the ISAF press office. “It is my highest priority.”
That same month, an Afghan journalist went to a press conference at ISAF headquarters intending to ask a question about night raids, another piece of the Western military mission that is a regular source of both controversy and civilian casualties. In a night raid -- the military prefers to call them “night operations” -- a team of commandos swoop in to capture or kill suspected insurgents while they sleep in their homes. ISAF officials consider the missions a critical component of their counterinsurgency strategy, but they also come at a cost: over the past two years, almost 150 civilians have been killed by pro-government forces in the course of such operations, according to the United Nations.
But when Saboor Hashimi, a Kabul-based reporter for the non-profit Internews Network, asked his question, he was told that under a new policy, ISAF would no longer answer general questions about the raids.
"They said I have to ask the Afghans," Hashimi told The Huffington Post, as he walked out of the headquarters that day.
As the U.S. prepares to conclude its combat operations in Afghanistan and turn over control of military operations to the Afghans, the divergent experiences are instructive of a new trend in the ongoing transition of power -- one that is deeply worrisome to humanitarian organizations in the country.
Unlike airstrikes, night raids are no longer formally under the auspices of the Western coalition. In April, as part of the U.S. military's ongoing transfer of power to the Afghans, authority for approving the missions was transitioned to the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
As a result, a spokesman for ISAF confirmed, unless the question specifically refers to actions by their forces, ISAF will no longer discuss the raids with the media.
"ISAF has been trying for a long time to figure out how to avoid the blame-game on civilian casualties," said Erica Gaston, an Afghanistan analyst with the congressionally funded think-tank U.S. Institute of Peace, who has written extensively on night raids and how the U.S. military manages civilian casualties. "Their latest innovation is to Afghanize the problem, by claiming Afghan authorization for missions that result in civilian casualties in the hope of provoking far less outcry. To be fair, they are transitioning gradually to Afghan control of many missions, but some of what is going on is just strategic communications."
The night raid scenario is particularly troubling because while American accountability for the raids may be ending, American participation in them hasn't. U.S. commandos continue to be closely involved with many of the operations, and U.S. intelligence usually dictates which homes are targeted. As Wired noted shortly after the deal over night-raid authority was inked, American commandos can even conduct a night raid first, and seek the Afghan military's permission later. The transition of public accountability seems to have gotten ahead of the transition itself.
Approaching the U.S. withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of 2014, humanitarian advocates fear that "transition," for all its inevitability, may also be providing cover for Western officials to sidestep their own responsibilities -- accountability, transparency -- for their least popular operations, many of which are likely to continue for years to come.
"I don't take too kindly the suggestions from ISAF that 'It's not our responsibility anymore,'" said Daniel Tyler, a civilian protection specialist with the Norwegian Refugee Council in Kabul. "I think at the moment it's more their responsibility than ever. They genuinely have a very limited timeframe in which an enormous amount needs to be achieved."
'NOT WHERE WE ARE YET'
One place where responsibility for civilian casualties seems to be evaporating is perhaps the place where it is needed most. Two years ago, Western military officials set up a five-person unit within ISAF known as the civilian casualty mitigation team. Using computer databases and a fine-toothed study of civilian casualty incidents, the unit was designed help analyze what actions are prone to cause such events, and help avoid them. The team would also reach out to NGOs and members of Afghan civil society, in order to hear their suggestions on how to better manage relations with the people, and to help spread the results of their investigations.
Many human rights groups credit the efforts of the unit with helping to bring civilian casualty rates to a new low this year.
A key part of ISAF’s mission at this point is to help train the Afghan National Security Forces, and prepare the Ministries of Defense and Interior -- the army and the police -- to handle security in the country on their own. So far so good: Afghan security forces have taken over the land where 75 percent of the population lives.
But at the key Afghan ministries, the one piece of the civilian casualty puzzle that has demonstrated results is still absent: there is no mechanism like ISAF's mitigation team.
"The Afghans are far from ready to assume control for civilian casualty monitoring in the way that the humanitarian and human rights community would like them to be," said Tyler, the civilian protection specialist, echoing the view of several experts interviewed for this article.
ISAF officials say they are aware of this shortcoming, but when humanitarian groups have brought it up, they have received another version of the answer given to the journalist asking about night raids: it’s out of our hands.
"A lot of the language at those meetings has been ISAF holding hands up, saying, 'There's no reason for coming to us, you need to be dialoguing with the Afghans on this,'" said one aid worker who participated in the sessions and asked to remain anonymous to discuss private conversations. Two other participants in the meeting corroborated this account.
The aid worker added that NGOs tried to communicate with Afghan authorities, but without the intervention of ISAF found it virtually impossible. "It wasn't until extremely recently, and at the urging of all of us, that we were even able to identify some counterpart to dialogue with on the ANSF side," the aid worker said.
In an interview, Col. Anthony Choi, the newly appointed director of ISAF's civilian casualty mitigation team, acknowledged that the Afghan government's capacity for monitoring and mitigating civilian casualties "is not where we are yet," but suggested that the problem was one that ISAF could do little about.
"Progress has been made, and hopefully the government of Afghanistan will keep this going forward," Choi said.
This mindset is not good enough, said Trevor Keck, a Kabul-based researcher with the civilian protection organization CIVIC.
“We're often told [the welfare of civilians] is the responsibility of the Afghans,” Keck said. “Yes, Afghan security forces are ultimately responsible for their own conduct, but the conduct of Afghan forces during this withdrawal period will reflect upon NATO's mission -- for better or worse."
He added, "During this withdrawal, international forces have a duty to make sure the forces they're funding, training and equipping are protecting, not harming, the Afghan people.”
THE FOG OF TRANSITION
Gen. Allen has described transition as the “linchpin” of America’s military strategy in Afghanistan, and needless to say, senior ISAF officials don’t view it in quite the same way as the aid workers do.
"It's not a relinquishing of responsibility by ISAF, it is a growing acceptance of responsibility by Afghans, which if you like is simply a reality of transition," said Australian Brigadier Roger Noble, the deputy chief of staff for operations at ISAF, in an interview in Kabul. "What is transition anyway? Transition is the acceptance of responsibility by the Afghans, and with that acceptance comes responsibility for when things go wrong."
One final complication, however, is that transition occurs gradually, no matter what the paperwork says. In the fog of transition, the already hard task of determining who is responsible when an incident occurs -- a civilian caught in a crossfire, a child shot during a night raid -- has become even harder.
Until this year, all of the military missions in which something could go wrong were at least nominally under one command. Even then, accounting for misdeeds could prove discouragingly tough. In its annual reports on civilian casualties, for instance, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) repeatedly warns that they "may be under-reporting night search operations involving civilian casualties" because so many of the missions are classified, and because of the wide variety of nationalities involved.
Now, however, an operation could fall under any of several permutations of command, ever evolving, and determining culpability has become something of a philosophical exercise. A vehicle in a military convoy that strikes a young girl could be an American vehicle in a part of the country that is formally Afghan-led, or it could be an Afghan vehicle travelling in an ISAF convoy, or it could an all-Afghan convoy on a mission guided by American intelligence. Who’s to say where the blame ought to fall?
Col. Choi told HuffPost that in any of these scenarios, ISAF would conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if ISAF personnel might have been involved. But he and other officials were hard to pin down on the definition of “involved.”
"Our position is if it's an incident we caused, then we are responsible for it," Choi said, finally settling on an answer.
In practice, however, a lot can fall through the cracks. When HuffPost asked Maj. Gen. Afzal Aman, the chief of staff for operations at the Afghan Ministry of Defense who bears responsibility for civilian casualties that occur during Afghan-led operations, he replied definitively: "The government of Afghanistan is responsible for this." But he also said -- as did human rights monitors and ISAF officials -- that in those situations it will often be the Americans who end up paying the monetary compensation packages to the families of the victims.
One United Nations official in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity told HuffPost that assigning responsibility for misdeeds has become downright contortionist: In a night raid, American forces might be involved in the planning and operation of the mission, but if they do not actually enter the home in which a civilian is later injured, they might consider themselves alleviated from any fault. "Their part ends at the threshold of the home," the official said.
Mohammad Shafiq Noori, an investigator with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, says that as long as there are Western troops in the country conducting missions that the public associates with foreign militaries -- and as long as the mission still relies on the public’s support -- it shouldn’t make any difference who is in charge of the operation on paper.
"Always they say it was the Americans, always they say it was the international military force, no matter who did the operation," Noori said. "It is still the responsibility of the U.S. and the international community to ensure that the Afghan security forces are using their training the right way."
Australia Officially Hands Uruzgan Security to Afghans
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Afghanistan's troops took over security responsibility of southern Uruzgan from their Australian counterparts as part of the third phase of the national security transition on Tuesday.
The process, which formally began Tuesday, will take 12 to 18 months, officials said.
Provincial spokesman Abdullah Himat confirmed the handover, saying "at a ceremony today, the Afghan troops officially took over full security responsibility from Australian troops."
On the same day in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke at a police graduation ceremony about the strength of the Afghan forces and their readiness to ensure security for their own country when Nato withdraws by the end of 2014.
"I am convinced and the Afghan people are confident that our security forces will ensure security for this country when the handover of security is complete in two years time," Karzai said the graduates.
Meanwhile, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement that the ceremony, attended by Australia's Ambassador in Uruzgan's capital Tarin Kowt, marked the beginning of the handover to local troops.
"The start of the transition in Uruzgan reflects the progress made by Afghan, Australian and International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) military and civilian teams in training and mentoring the Afghan National Security Forces and strengthening security and development," she said.
"It is a welcome sign. The transition in Uruzgan is on track for completion over the next 12 to 18 month period," she added.
Australia's has around 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, most of them based in Uruzgan. A total of 34 soldiers have died in Afghanistan since they began sending troops to fight in the US-led mission.
Australia confirmed earlier this year that it would withdraw most of its forces by 2014, a year earlier than the Nato deadline.
On May 16, Australia pledged to contribute US$300 million to Afghanistan from 2015 to assist local forces with security after the withdrawal of foreign troops.
It followed up this pledge in July with a further promise of US$100 million in civilian aid annually for three years through 2015 "as part of international efforts to help sustain and support Afghan troops beyond the transition".
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