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6 killed, 20 injured as bus turns over in S. Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Up to six people were killed and 20 others injured Friday morning when a passenger bus turned turtle in southern Afghan province of Helmand, a provincial government spokesman said.
"A passenger bus was traveling from southern Kandahar province for western Herat city, capital of Herat province, but the ill- fated bus turned turtle as it lost control on the highway in Durahi area of Lashkar Gah at around 9 a.m. Friday, leaving the casualties," spokesman Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua.
Ahmadi blamed the reckless driving for the incident, saying carelessness of the driver might lead to the bloody accident and claimed the lives of innocent commuters.
He said the injured were shifted to a provincial capital hospital and some of the injured were in critical conditions.
A total of 13 people were killed and four others injured when a passenger bus collided with a truck in Lashkar Gah in November last year.
16 Killed in Pakistan Drone Strike
VOA News August 24, 2012
Security officials in Pakistan say a U.S. drone strike has killed at least 16 people in the restive northwest tribal region near the Afghan border.
Authorities say drone-fired missiles hit three compounds Friday in North Waziristan, a known hub for Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants.
The strikes come a day after Pakistan summoned a U.S. diplomat to protest drone strikes, calling them "unlawful."
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the drone strikes, saying they violate the country's sovereignty, but U.S. officials say the strikes are an important tool in defeating the insurgents.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
U.S. General Asks Kabul To Share Information On Spy Claim
August 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan wants to see intelligence from Kabul to support its claim that spies from neighboring countries encourage Afghan troops to turn on NATO forces.
U.S. General John Allen says Kabul has not yet shared such intelligence.
He said he wants to understand how Kabul came to this conclusion.
Allen said on August 23 that there are probably a variety of reasons for an increase of "insider attacks" by Afghan troops against NATO soldiers over the past year, including the infiltration of Afghan forces by the Taliban.
Kabul has been recruiting tens of thousands of police and soldiers to prepare for NATO's withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Afghan officials have admitted some insider attacks were carried out by recent recruits who were not properly vetted.
Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Attacks on Afghan Troops by Colleagues Are Rising, Allies Say
New York Times By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and GRAHAM BOWLEY August 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Even as attacks by Afghan security forces on NATO troops have become an increasing source of tension, new NATO data shows another sign of vulnerability for the training mission: even greater numbers of the Afghan police and military forces have killed each other this year.
So far, Afghan soldiers or police officers have killed 53 of their comrades and wounded at least 22 others in 35 separate attacks this year, according to NATO data provided to The New York Times by officials in Kabul. By comparison, at least 40 NATO service members were reported killed by Afghan security forces or others working with them.
Both figures fall under what officials call insider attacks, and both numbers have climbed sharply over the past two years, Western officials say. But while officials say that a vast majority of attacks on Western forces are born out of outrage or personal disputes, the Afghan-on-Afghan numbers are said in larger part to reflect a greater vulnerability to infiltration by the Taliban.
Further, there are concerns about cultural clashes within the rapidly expanding Afghan forces themselves, Afghan and NATO officials say, raising questions about their ability to weather the country’s deep factional differences after the NATO troop withdrawal in 2014.
“Three decades of war can play a pivotal role in the internal causes,” said Maj. Bashir Ishaqzia, commander of the Afghan National Police recruitment center in Nangarhar Province. He said one of the biggest challenges for the army and police forces was a lasting “culture of intolerance among Afghans, as well as old family, tribal, ethnic, factional, lingual and personal disputes.”
Afghan and American officials said Thursday that some explanations for the rising number of Afghan-on-Afghan attacks were intuitive: there are about three times as many Afghan security force members as there are NATO and American troops, and only a portion of the Afghan forces regularly work side by side with Western troops. So insider attacks figure as a lower percentage of killings within the Afghan forces, or so-called green-on-green attacks, than they do in Afghan-on-Western violence, known as green-on-blue attacks.
Still, officials noted a growing concern about the issue. In a news conference on Thursday addressing Afghan attacks on Western forces, Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of American and NATO troops, confirmed that Afghan-on-Afghan attacks were seen as an intensifying problem.
“Indeed, the Afghan casualties are higher than ours in this regard,” he said, speaking to Pentagon reporters by satellite from Kabul.
In the briefing, General Allen provided a new perspective on the insider killings of NATO troops. Previously, military officials had said that Taliban infiltration or impersonation of Afghan security members could be blamed for only about 10 percent of such attacks. In addition, the general noted that, roughly, 15 percent of attacks might be caused by Taliban coercion of soldiers or police officers, either directly or through family members.
Taliban influence and outright infiltration is thought to play an even larger role in Afghan-on-Afghan violence, Afghan officials said.
One reason Afghan forces are more at risk of infiltration is that they typically live in compounds without anything near the protection found at bases with American troops, said Gen. Aminullah Amar Khail, former commander of the border police in eastern Afghanistan.
“The enemy would prefer to focus full attention on targeting American and coalition forces,” General Khail said. “But normally they do not have easy access to foreign soldiers.” He said green-on-blue episodes tend to happen only at training centers and joint Afghan-NATO bases and outposts, while green-on-green attacks “have happened everywhere.”
“Infiltrators have easy access to the Afghan police and soldiers,” he said.
He said one point of vulnerability is that Afghan forces sleep together well away from American troops and their upgraded security, making it easier for an impostor to kill Afghans as they doze.
That was the apparent plan in Oruzgan Province this spring when an Afghan policeman on late-night guard duty at a checkpoint allowed Taliban fighters to enter and kill nine other officers in their beds. The Afghan Interior Ministry said evidence indicated the guard was a Taliban infiltrator.
Afghan and American officials have expressed increased urgency about improving the vetting of new army and police recruits — a critical issue as those forces rapidly expand and work alongside Western trainers. Still, General Allen noted that the international coalition remained committed to the strategy of working directly with the Afghans as trainers as those forces assume greater responsibility for security.
“At this particular moment, I don’t believe that we need to contemplate reducing our contact with the Afghans,” he said. “The closer the relationship with them — indeed the more we can foster a relationship of brotherhood — the more secure we are.”
Still, the vulnerabilities brought by a huge number of new recruits are particularly acute for the Afghan forces themselves — particularly within the Afghan Local Police program, in which irregular local militias are armed and trained by American Special Operations forces.
One brutal case involving police-on-police violence occurred in the eastern province of Paktika in March. In that attack, a member of the Afghan Local Police crushed sleeping pills in his colleagues’s food at a command post, Afghan officials say. While they slept, he shot nine of them to death and escaped in a pickup truck with most of their weapons.
As with most public reports of insider killings, the Taliban claimed that the killer had been working on their behalf after infiltrating the Local Police. But Afghan officials said it was unclear whether that was the case or whether the motive was greed or a personal vendetta.
Afghan military officials pointed out that it would be almost impossible for an infiltrator to carry out the same kind of poisoning plot against NATO forces, where food preparation is centralized. Many Afghan security members, on the other hand, prepare their own food, offering an attacker an inviting opportunity.
On Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai’s office asserted that many of the infiltration cases were engineered by foreign spies, with the strong implication that Pakistan or Iran could be involved. But NATO officials said they had not been given evidence of that; in his news conference on Thursday, General Allen said, “I’m looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion.”
Another factor in insider killings is more direct, officials say: young armed men can lose control when they are brought together under pressure, and often with significant background or cultural differences.
“The gun culture that exists here after decades of war, and the sense of honor among young Afghan men, occasionally mixes with deadly results,” said Col. Thomas Collins, a NATO military spokesman in Kabul. Some of the green-on-green episodes he said he had reviewed “came down to two young men in an argument, men with guns that took it to the next level.”
Major Ishaqzia, the police recruiting commander in Nangarhar, said, “Sometimes verbal disputes or disagreement over the ways of doing things among policemen, or taunting and mocking types of behaviors, lead to fighting and the use of firearms.”
Reporting was contributed by Thom Shanker from Washington; Sangar Rahimi, Habib Zahori and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul; and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Khost Province.
Afghanistan, U.S. disagree on culprits behind 'insider' shootings
Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, surprises U.S. and NATO officials by blaming 'foreign spy agencies' for 'insider' shootings.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King August 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A potentially serious rift has emerged in the way the Afghan and U.S. governments view "insider" shootings, instances of Afghan police and soldiers turning their guns on Western troops.
Washington and NATO coalition officials have consistently said most of the shootings, which have claimed the lives of at least 10 U.S. service members this month alone, stem from personal disputes, stress, cultural differences and battle fatigue, with a small percentage of the assailants acting at the behest of the Taliban.
This week, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, visited Kabul for talks mainly centered on the shootings and how to work together to halt the growing phenomenon.
But late Wednesday, a day after Dempsey's departure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai caught Western diplomatic and military officials by surprise when he asserted in a statement that infiltration of the Afghan security apparatus by "foreign spy agencies" was the driving force behind insider attacks, which have taken the lives of 40 coalition members this year.
Although Karzai did not specify whom he was accusing, it appeared he may have meant Pakistan's premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which he has often said is in league with insurgent groups in Afghanistan.
U.S. and other Western military officials have never singled out the ISI as the main culprit in insider attacks. On Thursday, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, met Karzai at the presidential palace to try to clarify the Afghan leader's stance.
Allen, later speaking via satellite link to reporters at the Pentagon, put a diplomatic face on the disagreement.
"I'm looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion, so we can understand how they've drawn that conclusion and we can add that into our analysis," he said.
Afghan officials routinely accuse Pakistan of inciting insurgent violence, and Karzai's statement may have been intended primarily for domestic consumption.
laura.king@latimes.com
Insider Attacks Are Symptoms of Larger Afghan Challenges
Bloomberg By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and David Lerman Aug 24, 2012
The commander of allied forces in Afghanistan said the war effort there is succeeding as Afghan forces assume more responsibility for their nation’s security and bear a greater burden of losses to the Taliban.
Insurgent attacks “are increasingly localized, affecting an ever-shrinking proportion of the Afghan population,” U.S. Marine General John Allen told reporters yesterday by satellite from Kabul. He praised expanded, better-trained Afghan security forces, notwithstanding so-called “green-on-blue” attacks by Afghans against their U.S. and coalition partners.
While Allen and top administration officials herald progress in Afghanistan, other U.S. and NATO officials say the insider attacks on coalition forces are symptomatic of deeper challenges the U.S. and its allies face in their effort to withdraw almost all allied combat forces and turn over security to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
“A lot of the prognosis and analysis has been turning around, ‘Can we or can’t we make the transition in 2014?’” Stephen Biddle, a professor at George Washington University in Washington, said in an interview. That question, he said, is “ultimately short-sighted” because the more important issue is “how we get from 2014 to the end of the war.”
Biddle said a central problem of the Obama administration’s Afghan policy has been its focus on handing responsibility to Afghan security forces without paying equal attention to weak governance, official corruption and rivalries among ethnic groups and factions.
‘Glide Path’
When President Barack Obama announced plans in December 2009 for a troop surge to be followed by a gradual drawdown starting two years later, the idea was to put the war “on a glide path to success in a relatively short time, knock the stuffing out of the insurgency,” and hand off an easier task to Afghan forces, said Biddle, who helped assess conditions in Afghanistan in 2009 for then-U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal when he led U.S. and NATO forces there.
Instead, the insurgents dug in, announcing that they’d wait out the U.S. withdrawal, and attempts to facilitate peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have faltered. U.S. allies have begun pulling out -- troops from Canada and the Netherlands have left, and forces from France and New Zealand are due to withdraw next.
Although the U.S. economy remains the dominant political issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, creating the impression that the war is reaching a successful conclusion has assumed greater importance in the White House as the November election draws near, said two U.S. officials involved in Afghan policy. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
Temporary Surge
U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan have reached 2,091, according to Defense Department figures. About 70 percent of those casualties have occurred since Obama took office in 2009 and temporarily deployed an additional 33,000 troops seeking to squelch the insurgency.
The increase in attacks against North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces by Afghan military, police or civilians has raised concerns about the U.S. and allies’ willingness to keep training Afghans and funding the war. There have been 40 coalition deaths from insider attacks so far this year, compared with 35 in all of 2011, according to the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has blamed the insider attacks on efforts by neighboring Pakistan and Iran to undermine the U.S. and NATO’s partnership with Afghanistan. Allen said from Kabul that the attacks won’t derail the U.S. strategy or scare the U.S. into abandoning cooperation with Afghan forces.
‘Transition Plan’
Obama this week defended the training initiatives, saying that the U.S. military is stepping up counterintelligence, screening of Afghan trainees and U.S. force protection.
“In the long term,” Obama said, “we will see fewer U.S. casualties and coalition casualties by sticking to our transition plan and making sure that we’ve got the most effective Afghan security forces possible” after 2014.
Two U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said they think the spate of insider attacks reflects infiltration of Afghan forces by insurgents and support for the Taliban, as well as cultural clashes with U.S. soldiers and resentment of the almost 11-year American presence in Afghanistan.
The hostility, according to the two officials, as well as a State Department official who served in Afghanistan and also spoke on condition of anonymity, is rooted in frustration over perceived American support for what many Afghans consider an ineffective and corrupt Karzai government, raids that have killed innocent civilians, and U.S. military convoys and bases that are frequent reminders of foreign presence on Afghan soil.
Foreign Presence
The new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, disputed that notion during a press briefing in Kabul last week, saying: “I haven’t seen any wave of Afghans questioning American motives or intentions in Afghanistan.”
Another Obama administration official in Washington who served in Afghanistan also rejected the idea that insider killings reflect wider anti-Americanism. Afghans want Americans to leave their country not because they hate the U.S., but because they want to be a sovereign nation, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Cultural misunderstandings between foreign troops and locals don’t help, said the official, adding that some minority groups want the U.S. to stay as a guarantor of their rights.
Positive View
Said Jawad, a former Afghan ambassador to the U.S. under Karzai, cited polls showing Afghans have more positive views of Americans than citizens of other Muslim nations do.
Jawad said that a Loya Jirga council representing a cross- section of Afghan society voted by secret ballot for a strategic partnership agreement allowing a continued U.S. military presence after combat troops leave in 2014. The agreement was swiftly approved by the Afghan parliament, an impossibility “if there were real anti-U.S. sentiment,” Jawad said.
Corruption may be more at the root of problem, weakening the ability of Karzai’s government to deliver services and undermining Afghans’ trust of the U.S.-backed government, according to some analysts.
Graft also threatens military bases and resources after their transfer to Afghan control. In some cases, Afghan officers skim resources for local warlords, undermining morale among rank-and-file Afghan soldiers, Biddle said.
If corruption worsens, “it will make success impossible,” Biddle said. The last several commanders of coalition forces, he said, “put their priority on security and not on good governance,” which is essential to long-term stability.
‘Civilian Surge’
Kenneth Katzman, an Afghanistan specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said the U.S. “could conceivably be working on the corruption issue for the next 10 years and it could still be a problem.” Ethnic rivalries fan incentives for graft, he said, with various factions stockpiling resources and weapons for a possible future power struggle.
U.S. officials acknowledge that corruption is a challenge to their efforts, though they say critics ignore the progress that’s been made.
A so-called “civilian surge” by the Obama administration brought specialists from U.S. agencies to help the Afghan government in an array of tasks, including probing corruption and training prosecutors and judges to punish the guilty, said another U.S. official involved in Afghan policy who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the U.S. was encouraged that Karzai recently announced a long list of domestic priorities, including anti-corruption measures and electoral reform.
Peace Hurdles
A greater challenge for the U.S. may be the stalled effort to promote reconciliation among the government and insurgent groups, including the Taliban.
Cunningham, in his Senate confirmation hearing last month in Washington, testified that for the first time in a decade, the Taliban “are debating and signaling an openness to negotiations.”
Still, efforts at peacemaking have been marred by the assassinations of senior Afghan officials by killers posing as peace envoys. Efforts to create a channel for talks with the Taliban through an office in Qatar failed in March, when the insurgents broke off negotiations over what they called an “erratic” U.S. stance toward a possible prisoner exchange.
Two U.S. diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Taliban is not a monolithic movement, and it’s hard to know who among the leadership may be open to reconciliation.
‘Escape Route’
Another administration official said that while the reconciliation process is not dead, it has been put on hold. The U.S. has been clear about what the Taliban must accept to join talks -- including renouncing ties to al-Qaeda, disarming, and abiding by the Afghan constitution -- and is ready to resume discussions under those terms, the official said.
The Obama administration fundamentally understands that “the escape route” in Afghanistan is a negotiated settlement to end the conflict that creates a level of power-sharing and gives former insurgents a voice in government, Biddle said.
The dilemma is that by reducing the U.S. force presence gradually through 2014, “you lose your bargaining leverage with the Taliban,” he said.
An administration official who wasn’t authorized to be named said that, in any scenario, the U.S. has limited resources and strategic interests and would have to leave eventually. By signaling the planned drawdown, the U.S. spurred a sense of urgency in the Afghan government to build its own forces and capacity, the official said.
Opposite Effect
Other officials, though, say that signal had the opposite effect, telling the Taliban and neighboring states that American patience is limited and encouraging them to concentrate on battling for power after the U.S. departs.
The administration has sought to underscore a long-term commitment, with Obama flying to Afghanistan to sign a 10-year strategic partnership and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going to Kabul to declare Afghanistan a major, non-NATO ally.
Andrew Exum, a former U.S. military officer who briefly advised McChrystal and former U.S. Army General David Petraeus, now the CIA director, when they were the top allied commanders in Afghanistan, said he thinks Afghans, including the Taliban, now understand that the U.S. isn’t rushing for the exits.
“It’s reasonable to expect that the U.S. and NATO are going to continue to support Afghans in intelligence, supply chains, close air support, Medevac, some degree of logistical support” -- areas of weakness for Afghan forces, said Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
Exum said criticism of Afghan security forces is also largely misplaced. For starters, NATO training has dramatically improved since 2009, he said.
Are Afghan forces “going to be equivalent to a NATO ally or the Lebanese or Iraqi military?” he said. “Probably not, but they don’t need to be. They just need to be slightly better than the Taliban.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net; David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Afghanistan film students hope to educate through television
CNN By Natalie Brunell August 23, 2012
The blue neon light of a Hollywood comedy club appears blurry in the lens of Mujeeb Arez's HD camcorder as he steadies it in his hand. It's almost 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, and he is shooting his documentary after a full day of classes at the University of Southern California.
He adjusts the focus to bring his subject into clear view, the way his instructors trained him. Meanwhile, his colleague and good friend, Taimor Najib, holds the boom mic up and out of the shot as Arez begins his interview.
The techniques they're putting to practice are the same as they will use when they return to their home in Kabul, Afghanistan, to produce television for the Afghan people.
"We don't have any professional production school in Afghanistan," Najib said. "I need to make some professional commercials to change TV and change the people's minds over there from being basic to being professional."
Arez and Najib, both 24, arrived in Los Angeles from Afghanistan in June to study for six weeks at one of the premiere film schools. The USC program, now in its second year, enrolls just two Afghan students in cinema courses during the summer for a crash course in storytelling, camera techniques, lighting, editing and commercial production.
"What we're able to do is bring two people who have had sparse training in broadcasting, bring them here and turn them loose in a film class that lasts six weeks and it's intensive," said David Weitzner, director of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Summer Program.
The program is largely funded by former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, who owns a private company that invests and consults in the media and entertainment businesses. But in the 1970s, Freston was in the clothing business, living and working in Kabul, where he developed a lasting connection to Afghanistan.
"I was lucky enough to have lived there and build a great affinity and understanding for the people, who I think are kind of misrepresented in the world in the last 10, 20, 30 years," Freston said. "This is a moment for them to continue to really move forward and break out and join the world community."
In light of the ongoing conflict that news organizations center on, Najib and Arez have wondered how their classmates view the country they call home.
"I've asked my class fellows and also I've asked my professor about it," Najib said. "And they're still thinking that about the Taliban and the al Qaeda, but I told them no, actually it's not the same thing now. Afghanistan is totally changed now."
The TV industry is at a critical juncture in Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban, there was no television, and today 60% of people have access to broadcast media, according to Weitzner. It has increasingly become the primary source of entertainment and information for Afghans, he said.
More than half the population is still illiterate, but Freston said Afghans are discovering educational value in a show with which many Americans are familiar: "Sesame Street." "We find there's a very big adult population that watches that and learns how to count and speak."
"People in Afghanistan don't go out a lot for dinner, they don't have a lot of the leisure activities that we do, so they stay home and watch television," Freston said, adding that sometimes families rely on car batteries to power their television sets.
With a sense of the power of television to create a sense of national unity, Freston and the program administrators hope Arez and Najib will hit the ground running in Afghanistan and have an immediate effect on the growing audience of television consumers.
"These two young men are going to go back into that world and further accelerate that change through the very effective medium of television by creating television in Afghanistan by Afghans for Afghans," Freston said.
"When I go back to my country, I will share everything that I learned here with my colleagues," Arez said. "That will help them also to work professionally in production and for TV and media."
Arez's documentary, "An Engineer Became a Comedian," deals with the theme of following one's passion rather than money. The film profiles a stand-up comic whose parents wouldn't pay for college unless he studied medicine, law or engineering. So he became an aerospace engineer by day and worked on perfecting his stand-up routine by night.
"This same thing is happening also in Afghanistan," Arez said. "They push their daughter and son to study the field that their parents want."
"I am one of the lucky guys that always had my family support me to work in TV."
Afghan Villagers Hit Back Against Taliban
August 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
A group of angry Afghan villagers have got the Taliban scrambling after they mounted an unlikely rebellion against the insurgents in eastern Afghanistan -- and won.
Remarkably, the poorly-armed tribesmen, calling themselves the National Uprising Movement (NUM), have inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban and succeeded in driving them out from scores of villages and several districts of Ghazni Province, a long-established militant stronghold.
The uprising, which has fed on the popular discontent with the Taliban’s brutal rule, has put the militants in an uncomfortable situation.
Initially, the Taliban responded with heavy-handed tactics, torching villagers' homes and kidnapping tribal elders. But with the villagers standing firm, the militants have since backed down and offered to negotiate, a proposal to which locals have responded with a resounding "no."
According to Ahmad Wali, a resident of Ghazni's restive Andar district where the uprising first began, the revolt started in May when the provincial government introduced a ban on motorcycles, the main form of transportation for the Taliban.
Harassing Locals
Wali recalls how the Taliban began harassing locals as they sought to pressure the government into reversing its ban.
"It was very difficult for people to get around," he says. "The schools and hospitals were all closed down. Nobody could go anywhere [without being harassed by the Taliban]."
Locals in Andar say they tried and failed to reason with the Taliban.
They even offered to side with the militants against the government if they reopened the schools and markets and allowed the roads and wells to be improved. When the Taliban refused, locals went back to their villages and organized themselves into a militia, which became the basis for the National Uprising Movement.
The next day, the shooting started, with the Taliban coming out the worse for it.
Baryolai Andar, a resident of Andar, says the movement, which numbers several hundred, has captured and imprisoned dozens of militants, while scores of others have been killed in fierce fighting. He claims the new militia has brought order back to the area and life, in many ways, is returning to normal.
"All the people are overjoyed with the movement," he says. "God willing, they will take their fight [and free] other areas. They have restored security and have helped us greatly. All the schools that were closed by the Taliban have now been reopened."
The Taliban has accused the movement of being a project engineered by the United States and officials in Kabul, a claim strongly rejected by the NUM.
Abdul Karim Khan, a member of the movement, maintains that the group is acting independently from the NATO-led coalition and the Afghan government, which he insists has little support in the area and is seen as corrupt and a puppet of the West.
"The Taliban is bringing harm and cruelty to our people," he says. "They are attacking and killing the village elders and leaders [of the movement]. We have our own resources and we will lead this fight ourselves."
The Afghan government has said it supports the local uprisings, but has fallen short of confirming they are providing financial or logistical support.
Daud Sultanzoi, a former member of parliament from Ghazni, believes the movement is wary of accepting support from the government for fear that it could damage its legitimacy and its standing as a grass-roots movement.
"Anti-Taliban movements cannot have a sponsor and be identified with this government," he says. "As soon as this government touches anything it turns into evil. The government doesn't have the credibility to be the backbone for such uprisings. These uprisings need energy, which has to come from the people. But people cannot become energized because they say if we fight against the Taliban the alternative is this government."
Quickly Spreading
The NUM has quickly spread beyond Andar in recent months to neighboring districts.
According to the movement, there are currently anti-Taliban rebellions in at least 10 of the 19 districts in Ghazni.
Similar pockets of resistance to the Taliban have also been reported in the neighboring provinces of Paktia, Konar, Nuristan, and Laghman, although these have little connection to the movement in Ghazni.
Jeffrey Dressler, a senior analyst and team leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, suggests that since popular discontent with the Taliban and its tactics are growing, the local uprisings could spread and have the potential to gain a footing in disgruntled communities across Afghanistan.
"We’re not seeing any signs of some sort of a broader cross-provincial or national movement," he says. "But I think the reasons for the uprising are reasons that populations are experiencing throughout the country, which is basically frustrated with the Taliban closing schools, pressuring the population, and intimidation. You’re seeing local tribesman basically saying look we've had enough."
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Ambassador To Afghanistan: 'Vast Majority' Of Afghans Support Coalition
NPR By Mark Memmott and Sarah Handel August 23, 2012
With "green on blue" attacks by Afghans in uniform increasingly in the news, Americans officials are being asked whether the people of Afghanistan are turning against the coalition troops that have been in the Central Asian nation since late 2001. U.S. Marines with 1st Platoon, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), Regimental Combat Team 2, in Afghanistan. (January 2010 file photo.) Corporal David R. Hernandez/3rd Battalion 5th Marines-RCT 2
U.S. Marines with 1st Platoon, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), Regimental Combat Team 2, in Afghanistan. (January 2010 file photo.)
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, told NPR Thursday that it's not America's allies who are shooting at U.S. and coalition forces (or in some cases, attacking with suicide bombs).
"These are very unfortunate and sad events, and we and our Afghan partners are working hard to understand what's happening, why it's happening, and how we can prevent it," he told Weekend Edition host Scott Simon, in a conversation due to be broadcast Saturday. "But ... while they're difficult for both of us — they affect the Afghans as well as the [international forces] — they are a minor part of many thousands of interactions that take place between our military forces every day. And we're determined to find a way to minimize and end them, if we can."
Amb. James Cunningham on who is attacking U.S. troops
Cunningham also said that "it's pretty clear, based on our own contacts and polling that's done here, that by far and away the vast majority of Afghans support the international presence here — military and civilian. They realize that it has literally reshaped their country after decades of war and conflict and want very much to have an ongoing partnership with us going forward."
Related news: Thursday afternoon, NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman said on Talk of the Nation that Gen. John Allen — the U.S. Marine in charge of the war in Afghanistan — told reporters earlier in the day that there are likely several reasons there have been a spate of green on blue attacks in recent weeks.
Tom said Allen points to "Talliban infiltration ... also personal grudges and grievances against American soldiers by Afghans. And he also mentioned something interesting ... the holy month of Ramadan, which is just wrapping up."
Muslims fast from before dawn until after dark during Ramadan and Allen theorized that "the fasting ... the high number of combat operations ... may have caused some of these Afghan soldiers and police to snap somehow and lash out at American forces," Tom said.
Also on Talk of the Nation, Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker said that "the evidence that the U.S. military has been able to gather" indicates that "only a small percentage of these attacks are due to Taliban infiltration."
Instead, military officials believe "that the overwhelming majority of these – 90% — are due to sort of personal reasons," Filkins said. They're being carried out by "angry Afghans, insulted Afghans."
"In many ways," he added, "that's more troubling. It's one thing if you say, 'well, the bad guys are getting in.' You can [always] stop that. But what happens when it's the country you're trying to help?"
Faryab Tops Northern Provinces for Most Civilian Casualties
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 23 August 2012
Afghanistan's northern Faryab province has the highest number of civilian casualties among all the north provinces for the first half of 2012.
United Nations' statistics show that as many as 132 civilians were killed and 175 others were injured in violence in the north of Afghanistan for the first six months of 2012 - 52 percent of these casualties happened in Faryab.
The UN Human Rights Chief in Afghanistan James Rodehaver said in a press briefing Thursday that the civilian casualties were primarily the result of actions of armed government opposition groups.
"Anti-government forces are responsible for 71 percent of these casualties in northern Afghanistan in the first of half of 2012 - 95 civilians killed and 131 others injured," Rodehaver told reporters at the Mazar-e-Sharif briefing.
Pro-government forces were responsible for 12 percent of the deaths in the north. Of the total number of casualties, 12 percent were children and up to ten percent were women.
He said that besides Faryab with over 52 percent of casualties, the other northern provinces to see notable casualty rates were Balkh, Sar-e-Pul, Jawuzjan and Samangan provinces respectively.
Roadside mines, suicide attacks, and car bombs are considered the main causes of civilian causalities at the hands of insurgents. The UN released a report earlier this month, prepared by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, showing that the countrywide total for civilian casualties in the first half of the year was 1,145 people killed and 1,954 others wounded.
Ryan Crocker, Former U.S. Ambassador To Afghanistan, Arrested On DUI And Hit-And-Run Charges
AP By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS and GENE JOHNSON 23/08/2012
SPOKANE, Wash. - Former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker is facing hit-and-run and drunken driving charges in Washington state after striking a semi-truck when he tried to make a right turn from the left lane, authorities said Thursday.
The 63-year-old Spokane native registered a .160 blood-alcohol content – twice the legal limit – and a .152 in successive breath tests when was arrested Aug. 14 in Spokane Valley, Washington State Patrol Trooper Troy Briggs said.
Crocker, who was driving a 2009 Ford Mustang convertible, was stopped in the left lane at a red light. And when the light turned green, he tried to turn right across the path of the semi in the right lane, Briggs said.
The vehicles collided and Crocker's car spun out, but he kept driving, Briggs said. A witness followed him to a nearby bank and called police.
"He was very cooperative but obviously intoxicated," Briggs said.
Crocker retired from the foreign service last month after serving three decades in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots, most recently Afghanistan.
An Arabic speaker and six-time ambassador, he came out of an earlier retirement last year to take the helm of the embassy at President Barack Obama's request. This year, Crocker announced he was retiring due to a serious health issue that he previously had while ambassador to Iraq.
He also ran embassies in Iraq, Pakistan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria.
Crocker was in Beirut when the U.S. Embassy there was blown up in 1983, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. His residence in Syria was ransacked by a mob when he was ambassador there in 1998, and insurgents attacked the embassy in Kabul last September during Crocker's service there.
He served as ambassador to Iraq from 2007 through 2009. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.
Crocker has been on leave from his position as dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
His next court appearance is scheduled for September 12
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Up to six people were killed and 20 others injured Friday morning when a passenger bus turned turtle in southern Afghan province of Helmand, a provincial government spokesman said.
"A passenger bus was traveling from southern Kandahar province for western Herat city, capital of Herat province, but the ill- fated bus turned turtle as it lost control on the highway in Durahi area of Lashkar Gah at around 9 a.m. Friday, leaving the casualties," spokesman Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua.
Ahmadi blamed the reckless driving for the incident, saying carelessness of the driver might lead to the bloody accident and claimed the lives of innocent commuters.
He said the injured were shifted to a provincial capital hospital and some of the injured were in critical conditions.
A total of 13 people were killed and four others injured when a passenger bus collided with a truck in Lashkar Gah in November last year.
16 Killed in Pakistan Drone Strike
VOA News August 24, 2012
Security officials in Pakistan say a U.S. drone strike has killed at least 16 people in the restive northwest tribal region near the Afghan border.
Authorities say drone-fired missiles hit three compounds Friday in North Waziristan, a known hub for Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants.
The strikes come a day after Pakistan summoned a U.S. diplomat to protest drone strikes, calling them "unlawful."
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the drone strikes, saying they violate the country's sovereignty, but U.S. officials say the strikes are an important tool in defeating the insurgents.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
U.S. General Asks Kabul To Share Information On Spy Claim
August 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan wants to see intelligence from Kabul to support its claim that spies from neighboring countries encourage Afghan troops to turn on NATO forces.
U.S. General John Allen says Kabul has not yet shared such intelligence.
He said he wants to understand how Kabul came to this conclusion.
Allen said on August 23 that there are probably a variety of reasons for an increase of "insider attacks" by Afghan troops against NATO soldiers over the past year, including the infiltration of Afghan forces by the Taliban.
Kabul has been recruiting tens of thousands of police and soldiers to prepare for NATO's withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Afghan officials have admitted some insider attacks were carried out by recent recruits who were not properly vetted.
Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Attacks on Afghan Troops by Colleagues Are Rising, Allies Say
New York Times By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and GRAHAM BOWLEY August 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Even as attacks by Afghan security forces on NATO troops have become an increasing source of tension, new NATO data shows another sign of vulnerability for the training mission: even greater numbers of the Afghan police and military forces have killed each other this year.
So far, Afghan soldiers or police officers have killed 53 of their comrades and wounded at least 22 others in 35 separate attacks this year, according to NATO data provided to The New York Times by officials in Kabul. By comparison, at least 40 NATO service members were reported killed by Afghan security forces or others working with them.
Both figures fall under what officials call insider attacks, and both numbers have climbed sharply over the past two years, Western officials say. But while officials say that a vast majority of attacks on Western forces are born out of outrage or personal disputes, the Afghan-on-Afghan numbers are said in larger part to reflect a greater vulnerability to infiltration by the Taliban.
Further, there are concerns about cultural clashes within the rapidly expanding Afghan forces themselves, Afghan and NATO officials say, raising questions about their ability to weather the country’s deep factional differences after the NATO troop withdrawal in 2014.
“Three decades of war can play a pivotal role in the internal causes,” said Maj. Bashir Ishaqzia, commander of the Afghan National Police recruitment center in Nangarhar Province. He said one of the biggest challenges for the army and police forces was a lasting “culture of intolerance among Afghans, as well as old family, tribal, ethnic, factional, lingual and personal disputes.”
Afghan and American officials said Thursday that some explanations for the rising number of Afghan-on-Afghan attacks were intuitive: there are about three times as many Afghan security force members as there are NATO and American troops, and only a portion of the Afghan forces regularly work side by side with Western troops. So insider attacks figure as a lower percentage of killings within the Afghan forces, or so-called green-on-green attacks, than they do in Afghan-on-Western violence, known as green-on-blue attacks.
Still, officials noted a growing concern about the issue. In a news conference on Thursday addressing Afghan attacks on Western forces, Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of American and NATO troops, confirmed that Afghan-on-Afghan attacks were seen as an intensifying problem.
“Indeed, the Afghan casualties are higher than ours in this regard,” he said, speaking to Pentagon reporters by satellite from Kabul.
In the briefing, General Allen provided a new perspective on the insider killings of NATO troops. Previously, military officials had said that Taliban infiltration or impersonation of Afghan security members could be blamed for only about 10 percent of such attacks. In addition, the general noted that, roughly, 15 percent of attacks might be caused by Taliban coercion of soldiers or police officers, either directly or through family members.
Taliban influence and outright infiltration is thought to play an even larger role in Afghan-on-Afghan violence, Afghan officials said.
One reason Afghan forces are more at risk of infiltration is that they typically live in compounds without anything near the protection found at bases with American troops, said Gen. Aminullah Amar Khail, former commander of the border police in eastern Afghanistan.
“The enemy would prefer to focus full attention on targeting American and coalition forces,” General Khail said. “But normally they do not have easy access to foreign soldiers.” He said green-on-blue episodes tend to happen only at training centers and joint Afghan-NATO bases and outposts, while green-on-green attacks “have happened everywhere.”
“Infiltrators have easy access to the Afghan police and soldiers,” he said.
He said one point of vulnerability is that Afghan forces sleep together well away from American troops and their upgraded security, making it easier for an impostor to kill Afghans as they doze.
That was the apparent plan in Oruzgan Province this spring when an Afghan policeman on late-night guard duty at a checkpoint allowed Taliban fighters to enter and kill nine other officers in their beds. The Afghan Interior Ministry said evidence indicated the guard was a Taliban infiltrator.
Afghan and American officials have expressed increased urgency about improving the vetting of new army and police recruits — a critical issue as those forces rapidly expand and work alongside Western trainers. Still, General Allen noted that the international coalition remained committed to the strategy of working directly with the Afghans as trainers as those forces assume greater responsibility for security.
“At this particular moment, I don’t believe that we need to contemplate reducing our contact with the Afghans,” he said. “The closer the relationship with them — indeed the more we can foster a relationship of brotherhood — the more secure we are.”
Still, the vulnerabilities brought by a huge number of new recruits are particularly acute for the Afghan forces themselves — particularly within the Afghan Local Police program, in which irregular local militias are armed and trained by American Special Operations forces.
One brutal case involving police-on-police violence occurred in the eastern province of Paktika in March. In that attack, a member of the Afghan Local Police crushed sleeping pills in his colleagues’s food at a command post, Afghan officials say. While they slept, he shot nine of them to death and escaped in a pickup truck with most of their weapons.
As with most public reports of insider killings, the Taliban claimed that the killer had been working on their behalf after infiltrating the Local Police. But Afghan officials said it was unclear whether that was the case or whether the motive was greed or a personal vendetta.
Afghan military officials pointed out that it would be almost impossible for an infiltrator to carry out the same kind of poisoning plot against NATO forces, where food preparation is centralized. Many Afghan security members, on the other hand, prepare their own food, offering an attacker an inviting opportunity.
On Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai’s office asserted that many of the infiltration cases were engineered by foreign spies, with the strong implication that Pakistan or Iran could be involved. But NATO officials said they had not been given evidence of that; in his news conference on Thursday, General Allen said, “I’m looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion.”
Another factor in insider killings is more direct, officials say: young armed men can lose control when they are brought together under pressure, and often with significant background or cultural differences.
“The gun culture that exists here after decades of war, and the sense of honor among young Afghan men, occasionally mixes with deadly results,” said Col. Thomas Collins, a NATO military spokesman in Kabul. Some of the green-on-green episodes he said he had reviewed “came down to two young men in an argument, men with guns that took it to the next level.”
Major Ishaqzia, the police recruiting commander in Nangarhar, said, “Sometimes verbal disputes or disagreement over the ways of doing things among policemen, or taunting and mocking types of behaviors, lead to fighting and the use of firearms.”
Reporting was contributed by Thom Shanker from Washington; Sangar Rahimi, Habib Zahori and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul; and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Khost Province.
Afghanistan, U.S. disagree on culprits behind 'insider' shootings
Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, surprises U.S. and NATO officials by blaming 'foreign spy agencies' for 'insider' shootings.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King August 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A potentially serious rift has emerged in the way the Afghan and U.S. governments view "insider" shootings, instances of Afghan police and soldiers turning their guns on Western troops.
Washington and NATO coalition officials have consistently said most of the shootings, which have claimed the lives of at least 10 U.S. service members this month alone, stem from personal disputes, stress, cultural differences and battle fatigue, with a small percentage of the assailants acting at the behest of the Taliban.
This week, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, visited Kabul for talks mainly centered on the shootings and how to work together to halt the growing phenomenon.
But late Wednesday, a day after Dempsey's departure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai caught Western diplomatic and military officials by surprise when he asserted in a statement that infiltration of the Afghan security apparatus by "foreign spy agencies" was the driving force behind insider attacks, which have taken the lives of 40 coalition members this year.
Although Karzai did not specify whom he was accusing, it appeared he may have meant Pakistan's premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which he has often said is in league with insurgent groups in Afghanistan.
U.S. and other Western military officials have never singled out the ISI as the main culprit in insider attacks. On Thursday, U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, met Karzai at the presidential palace to try to clarify the Afghan leader's stance.
Allen, later speaking via satellite link to reporters at the Pentagon, put a diplomatic face on the disagreement.
"I'm looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion, so we can understand how they've drawn that conclusion and we can add that into our analysis," he said.
Afghan officials routinely accuse Pakistan of inciting insurgent violence, and Karzai's statement may have been intended primarily for domestic consumption.
laura.king@latimes.com
Insider Attacks Are Symptoms of Larger Afghan Challenges
Bloomberg By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and David Lerman Aug 24, 2012
The commander of allied forces in Afghanistan said the war effort there is succeeding as Afghan forces assume more responsibility for their nation’s security and bear a greater burden of losses to the Taliban.
Insurgent attacks “are increasingly localized, affecting an ever-shrinking proportion of the Afghan population,” U.S. Marine General John Allen told reporters yesterday by satellite from Kabul. He praised expanded, better-trained Afghan security forces, notwithstanding so-called “green-on-blue” attacks by Afghans against their U.S. and coalition partners.
While Allen and top administration officials herald progress in Afghanistan, other U.S. and NATO officials say the insider attacks on coalition forces are symptomatic of deeper challenges the U.S. and its allies face in their effort to withdraw almost all allied combat forces and turn over security to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
“A lot of the prognosis and analysis has been turning around, ‘Can we or can’t we make the transition in 2014?’” Stephen Biddle, a professor at George Washington University in Washington, said in an interview. That question, he said, is “ultimately short-sighted” because the more important issue is “how we get from 2014 to the end of the war.”
Biddle said a central problem of the Obama administration’s Afghan policy has been its focus on handing responsibility to Afghan security forces without paying equal attention to weak governance, official corruption and rivalries among ethnic groups and factions.
‘Glide Path’
When President Barack Obama announced plans in December 2009 for a troop surge to be followed by a gradual drawdown starting two years later, the idea was to put the war “on a glide path to success in a relatively short time, knock the stuffing out of the insurgency,” and hand off an easier task to Afghan forces, said Biddle, who helped assess conditions in Afghanistan in 2009 for then-U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal when he led U.S. and NATO forces there.
Instead, the insurgents dug in, announcing that they’d wait out the U.S. withdrawal, and attempts to facilitate peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have faltered. U.S. allies have begun pulling out -- troops from Canada and the Netherlands have left, and forces from France and New Zealand are due to withdraw next.
Although the U.S. economy remains the dominant political issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, creating the impression that the war is reaching a successful conclusion has assumed greater importance in the White House as the November election draws near, said two U.S. officials involved in Afghan policy. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
Temporary Surge
U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan have reached 2,091, according to Defense Department figures. About 70 percent of those casualties have occurred since Obama took office in 2009 and temporarily deployed an additional 33,000 troops seeking to squelch the insurgency.
The increase in attacks against North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces by Afghan military, police or civilians has raised concerns about the U.S. and allies’ willingness to keep training Afghans and funding the war. There have been 40 coalition deaths from insider attacks so far this year, compared with 35 in all of 2011, according to the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has blamed the insider attacks on efforts by neighboring Pakistan and Iran to undermine the U.S. and NATO’s partnership with Afghanistan. Allen said from Kabul that the attacks won’t derail the U.S. strategy or scare the U.S. into abandoning cooperation with Afghan forces.
‘Transition Plan’
Obama this week defended the training initiatives, saying that the U.S. military is stepping up counterintelligence, screening of Afghan trainees and U.S. force protection.
“In the long term,” Obama said, “we will see fewer U.S. casualties and coalition casualties by sticking to our transition plan and making sure that we’ve got the most effective Afghan security forces possible” after 2014.
Two U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said they think the spate of insider attacks reflects infiltration of Afghan forces by insurgents and support for the Taliban, as well as cultural clashes with U.S. soldiers and resentment of the almost 11-year American presence in Afghanistan.
The hostility, according to the two officials, as well as a State Department official who served in Afghanistan and also spoke on condition of anonymity, is rooted in frustration over perceived American support for what many Afghans consider an ineffective and corrupt Karzai government, raids that have killed innocent civilians, and U.S. military convoys and bases that are frequent reminders of foreign presence on Afghan soil.
Foreign Presence
The new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, disputed that notion during a press briefing in Kabul last week, saying: “I haven’t seen any wave of Afghans questioning American motives or intentions in Afghanistan.”
Another Obama administration official in Washington who served in Afghanistan also rejected the idea that insider killings reflect wider anti-Americanism. Afghans want Americans to leave their country not because they hate the U.S., but because they want to be a sovereign nation, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Cultural misunderstandings between foreign troops and locals don’t help, said the official, adding that some minority groups want the U.S. to stay as a guarantor of their rights.
Positive View
Said Jawad, a former Afghan ambassador to the U.S. under Karzai, cited polls showing Afghans have more positive views of Americans than citizens of other Muslim nations do.
Jawad said that a Loya Jirga council representing a cross- section of Afghan society voted by secret ballot for a strategic partnership agreement allowing a continued U.S. military presence after combat troops leave in 2014. The agreement was swiftly approved by the Afghan parliament, an impossibility “if there were real anti-U.S. sentiment,” Jawad said.
Corruption may be more at the root of problem, weakening the ability of Karzai’s government to deliver services and undermining Afghans’ trust of the U.S.-backed government, according to some analysts.
Graft also threatens military bases and resources after their transfer to Afghan control. In some cases, Afghan officers skim resources for local warlords, undermining morale among rank-and-file Afghan soldiers, Biddle said.
If corruption worsens, “it will make success impossible,” Biddle said. The last several commanders of coalition forces, he said, “put their priority on security and not on good governance,” which is essential to long-term stability.
‘Civilian Surge’
Kenneth Katzman, an Afghanistan specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said the U.S. “could conceivably be working on the corruption issue for the next 10 years and it could still be a problem.” Ethnic rivalries fan incentives for graft, he said, with various factions stockpiling resources and weapons for a possible future power struggle.
U.S. officials acknowledge that corruption is a challenge to their efforts, though they say critics ignore the progress that’s been made.
A so-called “civilian surge” by the Obama administration brought specialists from U.S. agencies to help the Afghan government in an array of tasks, including probing corruption and training prosecutors and judges to punish the guilty, said another U.S. official involved in Afghan policy who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the U.S. was encouraged that Karzai recently announced a long list of domestic priorities, including anti-corruption measures and electoral reform.
Peace Hurdles
A greater challenge for the U.S. may be the stalled effort to promote reconciliation among the government and insurgent groups, including the Taliban.
Cunningham, in his Senate confirmation hearing last month in Washington, testified that for the first time in a decade, the Taliban “are debating and signaling an openness to negotiations.”
Still, efforts at peacemaking have been marred by the assassinations of senior Afghan officials by killers posing as peace envoys. Efforts to create a channel for talks with the Taliban through an office in Qatar failed in March, when the insurgents broke off negotiations over what they called an “erratic” U.S. stance toward a possible prisoner exchange.
Two U.S. diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Taliban is not a monolithic movement, and it’s hard to know who among the leadership may be open to reconciliation.
‘Escape Route’
Another administration official said that while the reconciliation process is not dead, it has been put on hold. The U.S. has been clear about what the Taliban must accept to join talks -- including renouncing ties to al-Qaeda, disarming, and abiding by the Afghan constitution -- and is ready to resume discussions under those terms, the official said.
The Obama administration fundamentally understands that “the escape route” in Afghanistan is a negotiated settlement to end the conflict that creates a level of power-sharing and gives former insurgents a voice in government, Biddle said.
The dilemma is that by reducing the U.S. force presence gradually through 2014, “you lose your bargaining leverage with the Taliban,” he said.
An administration official who wasn’t authorized to be named said that, in any scenario, the U.S. has limited resources and strategic interests and would have to leave eventually. By signaling the planned drawdown, the U.S. spurred a sense of urgency in the Afghan government to build its own forces and capacity, the official said.
Opposite Effect
Other officials, though, say that signal had the opposite effect, telling the Taliban and neighboring states that American patience is limited and encouraging them to concentrate on battling for power after the U.S. departs.
The administration has sought to underscore a long-term commitment, with Obama flying to Afghanistan to sign a 10-year strategic partnership and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going to Kabul to declare Afghanistan a major, non-NATO ally.
Andrew Exum, a former U.S. military officer who briefly advised McChrystal and former U.S. Army General David Petraeus, now the CIA director, when they were the top allied commanders in Afghanistan, said he thinks Afghans, including the Taliban, now understand that the U.S. isn’t rushing for the exits.
“It’s reasonable to expect that the U.S. and NATO are going to continue to support Afghans in intelligence, supply chains, close air support, Medevac, some degree of logistical support” -- areas of weakness for Afghan forces, said Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
Exum said criticism of Afghan security forces is also largely misplaced. For starters, NATO training has dramatically improved since 2009, he said.
Are Afghan forces “going to be equivalent to a NATO ally or the Lebanese or Iraqi military?” he said. “Probably not, but they don’t need to be. They just need to be slightly better than the Taliban.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net; David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Afghanistan film students hope to educate through television
CNN By Natalie Brunell August 23, 2012
The blue neon light of a Hollywood comedy club appears blurry in the lens of Mujeeb Arez's HD camcorder as he steadies it in his hand. It's almost 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, and he is shooting his documentary after a full day of classes at the University of Southern California.
He adjusts the focus to bring his subject into clear view, the way his instructors trained him. Meanwhile, his colleague and good friend, Taimor Najib, holds the boom mic up and out of the shot as Arez begins his interview.
The techniques they're putting to practice are the same as they will use when they return to their home in Kabul, Afghanistan, to produce television for the Afghan people.
"We don't have any professional production school in Afghanistan," Najib said. "I need to make some professional commercials to change TV and change the people's minds over there from being basic to being professional."
Arez and Najib, both 24, arrived in Los Angeles from Afghanistan in June to study for six weeks at one of the premiere film schools. The USC program, now in its second year, enrolls just two Afghan students in cinema courses during the summer for a crash course in storytelling, camera techniques, lighting, editing and commercial production.
"What we're able to do is bring two people who have had sparse training in broadcasting, bring them here and turn them loose in a film class that lasts six weeks and it's intensive," said David Weitzner, director of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Summer Program.
The program is largely funded by former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, who owns a private company that invests and consults in the media and entertainment businesses. But in the 1970s, Freston was in the clothing business, living and working in Kabul, where he developed a lasting connection to Afghanistan.
"I was lucky enough to have lived there and build a great affinity and understanding for the people, who I think are kind of misrepresented in the world in the last 10, 20, 30 years," Freston said. "This is a moment for them to continue to really move forward and break out and join the world community."
In light of the ongoing conflict that news organizations center on, Najib and Arez have wondered how their classmates view the country they call home.
"I've asked my class fellows and also I've asked my professor about it," Najib said. "And they're still thinking that about the Taliban and the al Qaeda, but I told them no, actually it's not the same thing now. Afghanistan is totally changed now."
The TV industry is at a critical juncture in Afghanistan.
Under the Taliban, there was no television, and today 60% of people have access to broadcast media, according to Weitzner. It has increasingly become the primary source of entertainment and information for Afghans, he said.
More than half the population is still illiterate, but Freston said Afghans are discovering educational value in a show with which many Americans are familiar: "Sesame Street." "We find there's a very big adult population that watches that and learns how to count and speak."
"People in Afghanistan don't go out a lot for dinner, they don't have a lot of the leisure activities that we do, so they stay home and watch television," Freston said, adding that sometimes families rely on car batteries to power their television sets.
With a sense of the power of television to create a sense of national unity, Freston and the program administrators hope Arez and Najib will hit the ground running in Afghanistan and have an immediate effect on the growing audience of television consumers.
"These two young men are going to go back into that world and further accelerate that change through the very effective medium of television by creating television in Afghanistan by Afghans for Afghans," Freston said.
"When I go back to my country, I will share everything that I learned here with my colleagues," Arez said. "That will help them also to work professionally in production and for TV and media."
Arez's documentary, "An Engineer Became a Comedian," deals with the theme of following one's passion rather than money. The film profiles a stand-up comic whose parents wouldn't pay for college unless he studied medicine, law or engineering. So he became an aerospace engineer by day and worked on perfecting his stand-up routine by night.
"This same thing is happening also in Afghanistan," Arez said. "They push their daughter and son to study the field that their parents want."
"I am one of the lucky guys that always had my family support me to work in TV."
Afghan Villagers Hit Back Against Taliban
August 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
A group of angry Afghan villagers have got the Taliban scrambling after they mounted an unlikely rebellion against the insurgents in eastern Afghanistan -- and won.
Remarkably, the poorly-armed tribesmen, calling themselves the National Uprising Movement (NUM), have inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban and succeeded in driving them out from scores of villages and several districts of Ghazni Province, a long-established militant stronghold.
The uprising, which has fed on the popular discontent with the Taliban’s brutal rule, has put the militants in an uncomfortable situation.
Initially, the Taliban responded with heavy-handed tactics, torching villagers' homes and kidnapping tribal elders. But with the villagers standing firm, the militants have since backed down and offered to negotiate, a proposal to which locals have responded with a resounding "no."
According to Ahmad Wali, a resident of Ghazni's restive Andar district where the uprising first began, the revolt started in May when the provincial government introduced a ban on motorcycles, the main form of transportation for the Taliban.
Harassing Locals
Wali recalls how the Taliban began harassing locals as they sought to pressure the government into reversing its ban.
"It was very difficult for people to get around," he says. "The schools and hospitals were all closed down. Nobody could go anywhere [without being harassed by the Taliban]."
Locals in Andar say they tried and failed to reason with the Taliban.
They even offered to side with the militants against the government if they reopened the schools and markets and allowed the roads and wells to be improved. When the Taliban refused, locals went back to their villages and organized themselves into a militia, which became the basis for the National Uprising Movement.
The next day, the shooting started, with the Taliban coming out the worse for it.
Baryolai Andar, a resident of Andar, says the movement, which numbers several hundred, has captured and imprisoned dozens of militants, while scores of others have been killed in fierce fighting. He claims the new militia has brought order back to the area and life, in many ways, is returning to normal.
"All the people are overjoyed with the movement," he says. "God willing, they will take their fight [and free] other areas. They have restored security and have helped us greatly. All the schools that were closed by the Taliban have now been reopened."
The Taliban has accused the movement of being a project engineered by the United States and officials in Kabul, a claim strongly rejected by the NUM.
Abdul Karim Khan, a member of the movement, maintains that the group is acting independently from the NATO-led coalition and the Afghan government, which he insists has little support in the area and is seen as corrupt and a puppet of the West.
"The Taliban is bringing harm and cruelty to our people," he says. "They are attacking and killing the village elders and leaders [of the movement]. We have our own resources and we will lead this fight ourselves."
The Afghan government has said it supports the local uprisings, but has fallen short of confirming they are providing financial or logistical support.
Daud Sultanzoi, a former member of parliament from Ghazni, believes the movement is wary of accepting support from the government for fear that it could damage its legitimacy and its standing as a grass-roots movement.
"Anti-Taliban movements cannot have a sponsor and be identified with this government," he says. "As soon as this government touches anything it turns into evil. The government doesn't have the credibility to be the backbone for such uprisings. These uprisings need energy, which has to come from the people. But people cannot become energized because they say if we fight against the Taliban the alternative is this government."
Quickly Spreading
The NUM has quickly spread beyond Andar in recent months to neighboring districts.
According to the movement, there are currently anti-Taliban rebellions in at least 10 of the 19 districts in Ghazni.
Similar pockets of resistance to the Taliban have also been reported in the neighboring provinces of Paktia, Konar, Nuristan, and Laghman, although these have little connection to the movement in Ghazni.
Jeffrey Dressler, a senior analyst and team leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, suggests that since popular discontent with the Taliban and its tactics are growing, the local uprisings could spread and have the potential to gain a footing in disgruntled communities across Afghanistan.
"We’re not seeing any signs of some sort of a broader cross-provincial or national movement," he says. "But I think the reasons for the uprising are reasons that populations are experiencing throughout the country, which is basically frustrated with the Taliban closing schools, pressuring the population, and intimidation. You’re seeing local tribesman basically saying look we've had enough."
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Ambassador To Afghanistan: 'Vast Majority' Of Afghans Support Coalition
NPR By Mark Memmott and Sarah Handel August 23, 2012
With "green on blue" attacks by Afghans in uniform increasingly in the news, Americans officials are being asked whether the people of Afghanistan are turning against the coalition troops that have been in the Central Asian nation since late 2001. U.S. Marines with 1st Platoon, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), Regimental Combat Team 2, in Afghanistan. (January 2010 file photo.) Corporal David R. Hernandez/3rd Battalion 5th Marines-RCT 2
U.S. Marines with 1st Platoon, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5), Regimental Combat Team 2, in Afghanistan. (January 2010 file photo.)
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, told NPR Thursday that it's not America's allies who are shooting at U.S. and coalition forces (or in some cases, attacking with suicide bombs).
"These are very unfortunate and sad events, and we and our Afghan partners are working hard to understand what's happening, why it's happening, and how we can prevent it," he told Weekend Edition host Scott Simon, in a conversation due to be broadcast Saturday. "But ... while they're difficult for both of us — they affect the Afghans as well as the [international forces] — they are a minor part of many thousands of interactions that take place between our military forces every day. And we're determined to find a way to minimize and end them, if we can."
Amb. James Cunningham on who is attacking U.S. troops
Cunningham also said that "it's pretty clear, based on our own contacts and polling that's done here, that by far and away the vast majority of Afghans support the international presence here — military and civilian. They realize that it has literally reshaped their country after decades of war and conflict and want very much to have an ongoing partnership with us going forward."
Related news: Thursday afternoon, NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman said on Talk of the Nation that Gen. John Allen — the U.S. Marine in charge of the war in Afghanistan — told reporters earlier in the day that there are likely several reasons there have been a spate of green on blue attacks in recent weeks.
Tom said Allen points to "Talliban infiltration ... also personal grudges and grievances against American soldiers by Afghans. And he also mentioned something interesting ... the holy month of Ramadan, which is just wrapping up."
Muslims fast from before dawn until after dark during Ramadan and Allen theorized that "the fasting ... the high number of combat operations ... may have caused some of these Afghan soldiers and police to snap somehow and lash out at American forces," Tom said.
Also on Talk of the Nation, Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker said that "the evidence that the U.S. military has been able to gather" indicates that "only a small percentage of these attacks are due to Taliban infiltration."
Instead, military officials believe "that the overwhelming majority of these – 90% — are due to sort of personal reasons," Filkins said. They're being carried out by "angry Afghans, insulted Afghans."
"In many ways," he added, "that's more troubling. It's one thing if you say, 'well, the bad guys are getting in.' You can [always] stop that. But what happens when it's the country you're trying to help?"
Faryab Tops Northern Provinces for Most Civilian Casualties
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 23 August 2012
Afghanistan's northern Faryab province has the highest number of civilian casualties among all the north provinces for the first half of 2012.
United Nations' statistics show that as many as 132 civilians were killed and 175 others were injured in violence in the north of Afghanistan for the first six months of 2012 - 52 percent of these casualties happened in Faryab.
The UN Human Rights Chief in Afghanistan James Rodehaver said in a press briefing Thursday that the civilian casualties were primarily the result of actions of armed government opposition groups.
"Anti-government forces are responsible for 71 percent of these casualties in northern Afghanistan in the first of half of 2012 - 95 civilians killed and 131 others injured," Rodehaver told reporters at the Mazar-e-Sharif briefing.
Pro-government forces were responsible for 12 percent of the deaths in the north. Of the total number of casualties, 12 percent were children and up to ten percent were women.
He said that besides Faryab with over 52 percent of casualties, the other northern provinces to see notable casualty rates were Balkh, Sar-e-Pul, Jawuzjan and Samangan provinces respectively.
Roadside mines, suicide attacks, and car bombs are considered the main causes of civilian causalities at the hands of insurgents. The UN released a report earlier this month, prepared by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, showing that the countrywide total for civilian casualties in the first half of the year was 1,145 people killed and 1,954 others wounded.
Ryan Crocker, Former U.S. Ambassador To Afghanistan, Arrested On DUI And Hit-And-Run Charges
AP By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS and GENE JOHNSON 23/08/2012
SPOKANE, Wash. - Former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker is facing hit-and-run and drunken driving charges in Washington state after striking a semi-truck when he tried to make a right turn from the left lane, authorities said Thursday.
The 63-year-old Spokane native registered a .160 blood-alcohol content – twice the legal limit – and a .152 in successive breath tests when was arrested Aug. 14 in Spokane Valley, Washington State Patrol Trooper Troy Briggs said.
Crocker, who was driving a 2009 Ford Mustang convertible, was stopped in the left lane at a red light. And when the light turned green, he tried to turn right across the path of the semi in the right lane, Briggs said.
The vehicles collided and Crocker's car spun out, but he kept driving, Briggs said. A witness followed him to a nearby bank and called police.
"He was very cooperative but obviously intoxicated," Briggs said.
Crocker retired from the foreign service last month after serving three decades in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots, most recently Afghanistan.
An Arabic speaker and six-time ambassador, he came out of an earlier retirement last year to take the helm of the embassy at President Barack Obama's request. This year, Crocker announced he was retiring due to a serious health issue that he previously had while ambassador to Iraq.
He also ran embassies in Iraq, Pakistan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria.
Crocker was in Beirut when the U.S. Embassy there was blown up in 1983, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. His residence in Syria was ransacked by a mob when he was ambassador there in 1998, and insurgents attacked the embassy in Kabul last September during Crocker's service there.
He served as ambassador to Iraq from 2007 through 2009. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.
Crocker has been on leave from his position as dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
His next court appearance is scheduled for September 12
www.afghanistannewscenter.com