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Afghanistan: ‘Green on Blue’ Killings Explained
Why are so many Afghan soldiers turning their guns on the Americans? And can they be stopped?
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau Aug 27, 2012
The toll keeps rising. By the time this issue of Newsweek went to press, members and civilian employees of Afghanistan’s security forces had killed no fewer than 40 coalition troops this year—at least 10 of the dead, all of them Americans, in the first three weeks of August alone. The count has already passed last year’s total of 35 dead, and it’s reached fully double the figure for all of 2010. But as worried as U.S. commanders are by the growing number of insider attacks—“green-on-blue killings,” they’re sometimes called—Major Hasanzada (as he asks us to call him) says the trend doesn’t surprise him. “I understand why our men are shooting U.S. and NATO soldiers,” the Afghan National Army officer tells Newsweek. “I too have been personally hurt by the way American forces behave towards my soldiers, our villagers, our religion and culture. Too many of them are racist, arrogant, and simply don’t respect us.”
Those festering resentments are becoming a serious threat to America’s withdrawal plans. A problem that emerged as a few isolated violent incidents in 2005 is now undermining the trust that’s essential if allied forces hope to prepare the Afghans to shoulder their country’s security responsibilities by the 2014 withdrawal deadline. In the past year or so, coalition troops have been working more closely than ever with Afghan troops. In fact, some U.S. commanders partly blame the rising frequency of insider attacks on this closer partnership between coalition and Afghan forces on the ground.
But these days the partnership is strained. The Americans and other coalition members are busy watching their backs, just in case some disgruntled Afghan recruit decides to avenge some insult, whether imagined or real. The threat is anything but imaginary. Several of the men under Major Hasanzada’s command have told him that they too have thought about shooting their foreign trainers and counterparts, he says: “One soldier told me, ‘In my heart I want to empty my bullets into their chests.’ He has not done anything yet, but we are watching him carefully.”
The trouble is that the estrangement is feeding on itself. A 48-year-old Afghan Army colonel confirms that the once cordial relations between Afghan and U.S. troops, both on the frontlines and in the barracks, have deteriorated badly in the past year. A veteran soldier who served under the communist-run government in the 1980s and early 1990s, he says the Americans have worsened the divide recently by shunning the Afghans, largely for fear of insider attacks. “We had a very good understanding with each other for years, but in the past year the Americans seem reluctant to deal with us,” he tells Newsweek. (Since he is not authorized to speak to the press, he asks that we not disclose his location or his unit’s designation.) “Our social relations and professional cooperation are getting worse,” he says.
The colonel looks back fondly on the fraternization and camaraderie he used to enjoy with the Americans. “After duties were done, we used to go to their side of the base, and they used to come to our barracks for talks and meals,” he recalls. “Now we rarely meet except for professional duties.” Major Hasanzada says he also has been aware of the Americans’ retreat: “I think these [insider] attacks have reduced, if not ended, our social relations. I think the Americans do not see any solution except to keep their distance.”
The colonel says he understands the Americans’ standoffishness: “One of our soldiers shot a number of U.S. soldiers in Paktika in broad daylight and escaped,” he says, refusing to be more specific about the circumstances. “After investigating, we found that the soldier had Taliban connections and had joined the army to kill Americans.” Although coalition commanders have said that only one green-on-blue attack in 10 is committed by Taliban infiltrators, the colonel says he thinks the number may be much higher. “The number of recruits who have a Taliban consciousness and are joining the army with the aim of looking for American blood should not be underestimated,” he says. “The Taliban are hunting two birds with one arrow: they are killing coalition soldiers while at the same time hurting working relations between our allied forces.”
That’s exactly what the insurgents are hoping for. “These [insider] attacks are perhaps our most effective tool to create a golden gap between the Americans and the Afghans,” a senior Taliban commander in northern Kunduz province tells Newsweek. “We are aware that the Afghan security forces are getting stronger, so this is best way for us to weaken and divide them from the Americans.” He claims that the insurgents have a carefully planned strategy to infiltrate the Afghan ranks, not only to stage insider hits on allied soldiers but also to undermine morale. “We are working like termites, eating into this already rotten wooden structure,” he says.
The colonel may well be right that the 10 percent estimate is low. In a video press conference last week, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, said as many as a quarter of the insider killings could be the work of Taliban infiltrators or troops who are acting under Taliban coercion. It’s impossible to give more than a rough guess, he explained: most green-on-blue shooters don’t live to explain themselves. Nevertheless, he said, the majority of the attacks so far have apparently been motivated by rage rather than ideology.
The rage keeps growing—and not only among Afghans in uniform. Last year an Afghan Air Force pilot, a 20-year veteran named Ahmad Gul, gunned down eight U.S. Air Force flight instructors and an American civilian contractor after an argument at Kabul International Airport. The pilot’s brother, Dr. Mohammad Hassan Sahibi, was quoted at the time as denying that Gul had any ties to the insurgency. He blaming financial problems for the shooting. Reached by phone last week, the doctor may have spoken more candidly when asked what had caused his brother’s outburst. “You are journalist—you should know what’s going on in this country,” he told Newsweek’s reporter. “My brother did it because of what’s going on in Afghanistan!” With that, he cut off his cellphone.
Major Hasanzada doesn’t hate America. Far from it, he says: like most Afghans he appreciates the sacrifices that have been made by U.S. troops and the enormous military and financial support the country has poured into Afghanistan since 2001. “America has done a lot for us,” Hasanzada says. “But the terrible, individual acts of a few U.S. soldiers have caused enormous collective damage to our relations.”
Afghans—especially Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group—tend to be deeply sensitive to any perceived slights to their religion or to their conservative culture. They have little if any tolerance for anyone who transgresses religious and tribal mores and values. Ignorance of their principles is no excuse. Ethnic Pashtuns, in whose homelands the war is largely being fought, will do just about anything to honor and protect a guest under their time-honored Pashtunwali customs. But there are strict boundaries even to that code of honor. “Even for guests there are limitations,” says Major Hasanzada. “They must respect our Islamic values and cultural traditions.” There are no exceptions. And forgiveness is not an option, no matter what the offender’s explanation may be.
Most Americans may have forgotten the religious and cultural offenses by U.S. troops that have shocked ordinary Afghans over the past year, but Afghans can’t forget them. There was the discovery of charred copies of the Quran in a garbage dump at Bagram Air Base that sparked several days of anti-American riots in February. There was the infamous and inexplicable rampage by a U.S. sergeant who allegedly slaughtered 16 women, children, and old men as they slept and then attempted to burn their corpses. There was the video of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters—and the photos of U.S. troops showing off body parts taken from dead insurgents. It made no difference that the bodies were those of enemy fighters: in Afghanistan the dead are not to be desecrated.
The list of grievances doesn’t end there. Many Afghan civilians also have a visceral hatred of the U.S.-led late-night surprise assaults on Afghan homes suspected of harboring Taliban militants. “Burning Qurans, massacring defenseless women and children, urinating on dead bodies, and midnight raids are outrages for which the U.S. is now paying a heavy cost,” says Major Hasanzada. “These soldiers who are reacting against the U.S. are not Taliban, but these terrible incidents seem to have made them instant Taliban.”
But the anger among the security forces is about more than the big provocations. The commonplace, daily cultural misunderstandings and mistranslations on both sides can be just as damaging to relations, says the major. For example he recounts an incident that took place when he and his men were on patrol with U.S. troops in a dangerous and contested area. Through an interpreter, one of his soldiers asked one of the Americans if he believed in God. The American shook his head no and said he didn’t. Overhearing the conversation, Hasanzada quickly ordered the interpreter not to respond. But it was no use: the Afghan soldier had seen the American’s body language and understood. “My soldier got very upset, quit the army within days, and gave his salary to poor local people,” says Hasanzada. “At least he didn’t react with his Kalashnikov.”
Routine American profanity can appall even the toughest Afghan men. The major puts it delicately: “Americans use the word f--k all the time,” says the major. Most Afghan troops take the meaning sexually, not as a meaningless expletive, he says. “Sometimes our mutual understanding is lost in translation.” He tells of an incident that occurred on another joint patrol: “I remember one U.S. soldier who saw some Afghan women carrying heavy loads of firewood on their heads and who remarked: ‘Those f--king Afghan women really work hard.’ The next day I heard a number of complaints from my men saying that these U.S. soldiers are lusting after our women and abusing our culture.” Women are a particularly raw subject. The major says his soldiers hate it when U.S. troopers urinate on rural trails that may be used by village women or when they stare at local women drawing water from wells.
But even the best intentions go wrong. This past Ramadan an American soldier nearly provoked a fight with one of Hasanzada’s men by sympathetically asking the fasting Afghan: “F--king hell, how can you go all day without drinking?” Another American cultural misstep is to give an Afghan ally an affectionate pat on the butt, as American athletes often do when saluting a teammate’s good play. “It’s a supreme insult and a sign of bad intentions to touch the bottom of an Afghan man,” says the major.
In the end, he says, it all boils down to one thing: the Americans have been in Afghanistan too long. After 11 years of war, many Afghans regard them as occupiers rather than as liberators. Too often the U.S. forces—and other foreign troops too, he says—tend to act as if they ruled the land, like an old-fashioned colonial army. “Perhaps what angers our soldiers more than anything is that they see our people being treated like inferiors or like the enemy,” he says. “An Afghan soldier can react with the gun in his hand, but the villager has to accept the insult or join the Taliban.”
There’s no shortage of alternative explanations for the killings. Allen has raised the possibility that the recent spike in attacks may be linked to the month-long Ramadan fasting season, when devout Muslims consume no food or even a sip of water from sunrise to sunset, and to the infernal August heat. Both can shorten tempers and raise frustration, although this has scarcely been the first hot summer of the 11-year war, or its first Ramadan, either.
Last week an Afghan presidential spokesman announced that his government has evidence from captured shooters and from radio and phone intercepts that a “foreign spy agency”—an Afghan euphemism for Pakistan—is at least partially responsible for the killings. U.S. commanders seem politely unconvinced. “I’ll tell you that I’m looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion so that we can understand how they draw that conclusion, and add that to our analysis,” said Allen. For years Kabul has been blaming Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate for almost everything bad that happens in Afghanistan.
The truth is that the ISI, Ramadan, and the summer heat may all be factors, but only in the context of U.S. troops making Afghans angry with their religious and cultural transgressions. Until recently U.S. commanders tried to downplay the shootings, blaming them on personal quarrels and the outbursts of temper that are all but inevitable in such a high-pressure environment. But ignoring them didn’t make them go away. Now U.S. troops have been ordered to keep a fully loaded magazine locked into their individual weapons at all times and to be ready to fire at a moment’s notice, just as if they were on patrol, whether they’re on a training mission, sitting down in the mess hall, or working out at the gym. And no matter where they are, several troops in their midst will be acting as stealthy “guardian angels,” watching their Afghan counterparts closely in case one of them tries to make a false move.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said to be personally concerned about the killings—and is under heavy diplomatic pressure to stop them. Afghan intelligence agents are now secretly embedded inside Afghan units to watch for any soldier or cop who may be inclined to shoot an ally. Other government agents have been instructed to vet Afghan recruits more carefully in the hope of weeding out Taliban operatives who try to join the security forces.
The effort may be futile. As the colonel points out, it will be practically impossible to do an adequate job of vetting the tens of thousands of recruits who are needed if the Afghan military and police are to reach their target strength of 350,000 by next year. “We realistically don’t have the time to study the case of each applicant,” he says. “We look them over, have short interviews, and make background checks. But who knows what is really in the young man’s heart and soul?”
And that’s the real problem. Undercover Taliban hitmen seem to be a lesser threat than the potentially explosive resentment of an ordinary Afghan recruit from an ultraconservative village, particularly if he’s from the ethnic Pashtun areas. Still, the only response seems to be to keep soldiering on and hoping for the best. “At this particular moment I don’t believe that we need to contemplate reducing our contact with the Afghans,” General Allen said last week. “The closer the relationship with them—indeed, the more we can foster a relationship of brotherhood—the more secure we are.” He’s undoubtedly right. But how can you expect any such relationship when the man beside you might suddenly turn and gun you down?
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent, and has been covering the region for the magazine for the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Iran drawing India closer with talks on train, road access to Afghanistan
Associated Press August 25, 2012
NEW DELHI - India, Iran and Afghanistan will hold talks on giving greater access to landlocked Afghanistan, a move that could also ease Iran’s isolation in the region, Indian officials said Saturday.
The three countries will meet Sunday to discuss how best to utilize the southeastern Iranian port of Chahbahar and develop road and rail links from there to Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai told reporters.
As NATO troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, India fears the possibility of the country falling into the hands of a Taliban-led regime, thus endangering many of India’s interests there.
India has been one of the largest contributors of development aid to Afghanistan. Over the past decade, it has spent more than $2 billion to help build infrastructure, including roads, power projects and hospitals.
For India the shortest and most economical route for sending supplies to Afghanistan would be by road through Pakistan, but its decades-long rival has denied New Delhi road access to Kabul, making the route through Iran all the more significant.
Iran is also hoping to develop an industrial zone near Chahbahar port and wants to attract foreign investment to set up industries there, Mathai said.
The trilateral talks come days ahead of a non-aligned summit meeting hosted by Iran in which leaders of some 120 countries are expected to participate.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who will be in Tehran to attend the summit, is to hold bilateral talks with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the sidelines.
India’s closer cooperation with Iran will likely offend the United States, which has been pushing the international community to punish Iran over its nuclear program.
India has come under increasing pressure from Washington over its ties with Iran, but New Delhi needs Iranian crude supplies to power its economic growth. Iran supplies about 12 percent of India’s energy needs.
India’s talks with Iran will explore ways to expand trade to improve the heavily skewed balance of trade between the two countries, Mathai said.
Two-way trade in the last year totaled about $16 billion, of which Indian oil imports from Iran accounted for $13.5 billion.
Mathai said India would accept sanctions imposed by the United Nations, but would not heed those imposed by others, referring to harsher sanctions maintained by the United States and Europe.
India has been gradually cutting its oil imports from Iran, buying more from Iraq and Kuwait. But with nearly 70 percent of its oil consumption supplied by imports, rapid shifts are difficult.
What will end the deadlock in Afghanistan?
Can the Afghan government break the stalemate without selling out its values and reversing democratic gains?
Aljazeera By Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan intelligence chief, is an opposition leader 25 Aug 2012
What will end the deadlock in Afghanistan?
There are three competing narratives about Afghanistan’s situation.
NATO’s narrative is that it has done enough, and is working on a gradual but flawed transition to Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). It sees the Afghan government as a viable partner, even though it is under enormous stress, constantly pushed and pulled by internal and external forces.
The Afghan government’s narrative is vague, confusing and unconvincing. The government hopes to hold elections in 2014, fill the vacuum of a reduced NATO presence, ensure a degree of good governance, fight the country’s endemic and widespread corruption, keep reaching out to the Taliban, and, above all, get ready for a political transition. But despite its rhetoric, the government is deeply involved in unhealthy politicking and managing internal chaos.
Finally, the Taliban’s narrative: By protracting the insurgency and bogging down the ANSF, it has increased the cost of war and security for NATO and the Afghan government. It has not yielded to military pressure, has rejected talks, and continues to preach victory.
This is clearly a strategic deadlock.
The aim of NATO’s troop surge in 2010 was to either defeat the Taliban or push it into irrelevance. What seems to have happened is a half-accomplished mission leaving the ANSF in charge of the stabilisation and consolidation of the gained areas. This signifies the beginning of a defence phase for NATO/ANSF, and of an offensive by the Taliban. The continuation of night raids and special operations targeting mid-level operators and Taliban commanders will not change the strategic calculus.
U-turn unrealistic
The only game changer will be a U-turn in Pakistan’s policy, closure of Taliban sanctuaries and a reformed Afghan government. It doesn’t sound realistic, though, to expect Pakistan to change now, when memories of 9/11 seem so distant and NATO prepares for a massive reduction in troops. Pakistan once again portrays the Taliban as a reality on the ground, a policy line similar to that taken during the 1990s.
Most indicators show Pakistan as a declining state. Yet in one area, Afghanistan, Pakistan has outsmarted and outmanoeuvred everyone. Pakistan has kept the Taliban alive and deadly, and continues to keep the US as an ally with deep pockets under any circumstances.
A decade ago the ISAF/NATO mission was simply to decrease the size of the “black space” and increase the size of the “white space”. Thanks to their efforts, the democratic space is acknowledged by all of us. But the harsh reality is the emergence of a vast grey space and an increasing size of the black space.
This “grey area” consists of complex layers of corruption, bad governance, unemployment, political disunity, alienation and poverty. Against this backdrop, the democratic space is too fragile and vulnerable.
So who will overcome the deadlock and how?
The Taliban seems to follow a strict insurgency script by encircling big cities and dominating its base areas with intimidations and executions. They also count on NATO’s impatience, Pakistan’s resilience and the weakness of the Afghan state.
The fate of the capital city, Kabul, is an example of the Taliban’s encirclement strategy. While NATO keeps handing over security responsibilities to the ANSF, the Taliban has managed to maintain its presence in all directions surrounding Kabul. The districts of Uzbeen, Tagab and Kohe Safee in the east; the provinces of Logar and Wardak in the south; several pockets in Ghorband district; where last month a woman was shot to death for alleged adultery; and in the north – all have a significant Taliban presence. These Taliban-controlled pockets will logically try to connect to each other when the bulk of responsibilities fall on the ANSF.
The counter-measure against this is the long-term presence of the US military in Afghanistan, which has agreed to provide tactical and strategic assistance to the ANSF.
Obviously the Taliban is not capable of a military breakthrough at this point. It will continue to strengthen its presence in remote areas. It will continue to launch spectacular attacks in major cities to register its strength, infiltrate the ANSF, and create world headlines. The Taliban won’t try to consolidate its gains by administering base areas and creating hierarchical structures at the local level. This will create a financial burden and make them vulnerable to NATO/ANSF military attacks.
Instead, the Taliban seems to be flexible in planning and conducting operations, and to be hierarchical in leadership. For the Taliban, there is no “moment of ripeness” in sight at this point. It has occasionally agreed to talks merely to gain further legitimacy, boost the morale of its supporters, and gain international recognition. But it won’t conduct any meaningful negotiations until it sees itself as a dominating force.
A peripheral force
Despite their gains, the Taliban are still considered a peripheral military force. Its utopian moment may never come, but they solidly believe in it. Unfortunately, the Taliban is still able to mire the country in a stalemate, frighten investors, and reduce the confidence of the small and anxious middle class.
Can the Afghan government break the stalemate without selling out its values and reversing democratic gains? To be able to do so, the Afghan government will continue to ask for more financial support from donors as the cost of security and development rises.
The Afghan government’s continued hat-in-hand approach will cause fatigue, depression and blame both inside and outside Afghanistan, and will be accused of irresponsible spending. While the Afghan government will be pre-occupied with meeting donors’ expectations and politicking, the democratic opposition will continue to apply pressure, demanding space for itself.
A handful of well-educated technocrats equipped with modern knowledge may be able to create a fancy façade for Afghanistan, but the task of absorbing tens of thousands of low-quality degree holders, hundreds of thousands of unskilled, unemployed youth, and an ever-increasing ethnic quota in civil service and development projects will be monumentally difficult. This internal stress can only be overcome if Afghanistan diversifies its income sources and expands its extractive industries.
This, however, may only add one more layer to the conflict’s complexity if deals benefiting the ruling clique continue.
To counter the Taliban effectively at the community level, the Afghan Local Police should be strengthened, and receive better training and equipment, but be insulated from political influence of current government stakeholders. Many consider the ALP a political cash cow if the current approach continues. Ideally, the Afghan National Army should become a strategic asset at the theatre level and be relieved from the current level of stress it is now under.
At the macro level, unifying and rallying the Afghan population in an organised way against the Taliban, whom they largely hate anyway, requires national consensus and ending the politicisation of the security forces and the judiciary. State institutions should be seen as platforms for promoting the national interest of Afghanistan, not for the protection of narrow interests.
A number of opportunities are waiting to be taken, such as the still-generous support of the international community, the thirst of the Afghan people for reform and good governance, the country’s untapped underground resources, and above all the universal rejection of extremism by Afghans of all ethnic groups. None of these opportunities exist for the Taliban. Their rejectionist and reclusiveness has reduced them to the status of a militant group at best.
But abundant resources are never a guarantee of success. Exploiting talent and intelligently applying tools and resources can change the situation. For countries like Afghanistan, management means doing more with less. That is an art the current administration lacks.
Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan intelligence chief, is an opposition leader.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Ragtag Revolts in Parts of Afghanistan Repel Taliban
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG August 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army.
“They wanted to make our children illiterate and miserable,” Malik Ghulam Rusal, a district elder, said about the Taliban. “We told them that if you want to wage jihad, go and fight the foreigners, not ordinary people. But they did not listen.”
What began as a ragtag uprising by rural woodcutters and shopkeepers in a few villages in Laghman Province expanded into something extraordinary: in just the past two months, the Taliban presence in the entire district, and then in a neighboring one, has been largely silenced. And in another eastern province, Ghazni, villagers ignited a similar movement to drive the Taliban away.
The uprisings, however, are far from a simple case of outrage growing into action. They spread quickly, but in considerable part because commanders from a rival militant faction, Hezb-i-Islami, saw a chance to gain ground against the Taliban, and because Afghan government officials saw the movement as a valuable opportunity to help local leaders organize against the insurgents.
For close watchers of Afghanistan’s complex factional landscape, the movement has become another case study of a classic Afghan problem that directly challenges the Western goal of a stable country after the 2014 troop withdrawal: a threat posed by an armed group is answered by arming another group, which in turn becomes a game piece to be fought over by larger forces.
“Now it’s a bit of a mess,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It started as an anti-Taliban type thing, then Hezb-i-Islami moved in, then the government and the N.D.S. got involved and there are lots of different players, and that makes the people who started the whole thing suspicious.”
The N.D.S. is the National Directorate of Security, the main Afghan spy agency.
At its heart, the uprising in the Laghman villages began not because of support for the government, or even because of hatred of the Taliban as a whole, but because the wrong Taliban had come to power: Locals like Ghulam Rusal say they resented the more extreme religious teachings and draconian enforcement by militants who had come from far-off provinces and from Pakistan.
Similar resentment factored in the uprising in Ghazni Province this summer. There, in an area that has been locked under Taliban control for at least three years, the uprising started when a couple of Taliban with roots in the local community split off from the others and began to form completely indigenous groups to oppose control by what they saw as foreign Taliban leaders. Now at least 40 villages in Ghazni’s Andar district have broken away from the mainstream Taliban, though small-scale shootings still occur at times, according to local commanders and residents.
Such local resentment presented fertile opportunities for both Hezb-i-Islami and government officials.
For Hezb-i-Islami, it was a continuation of an on-and-off battle with the Taliban for dominance. The group is part militant faction, part legitimate political party — one wing fights both the Afghan government and the Taliban, another takes part in the national government based in Kabul.
Though Hezb-i-Islami is rooted in a conservative Islamist worldview, it is seen as generally less rigid than the Taliban, allowing girls to attend school and permitting some other aspects of modern life. In any possible future reconciliation with the insurgency, the faction most likely to engage in a peace deal would be Hezb-i-Islami, former Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said in a recent interview. In that light, both the Afghan government and the Americans are inclined to support the group’s fight against the Taliban.
In both Ghazni and Laghman, there is a long history of deep aversion to the Kabul government, as well as a sense of hurt: many feel abandoned by the government and only reluctantly turned to the Taliban. That is true even of Hezb-i-Islami fighters who live in those areas, said Abdul Jabar Shilgari, a former Parliament member from Ghazni who is a member of the Hezb-i-Islami party.
“The people there did not have any thought of coming over to the government, because they were fed up with the government,” Mr. Shilgari said. “But that was not a logical thought on their part — we knew they couldn’t stand up to the Taliban for long.”
Hezb-i-Islami activated former commanders and sent them into the fight with rifles and ammunition, and with orders to make more contacts and expand the effort, members of the group said.
For the government, it has been a chance to try to encourage local forces to organize against the Taliban.
In Laghman, the governor, Mohammed Iqbal Azizi, said the government had given mostly food and ammunition to the fighters, but only relatively small quantities of ammunition.
The man bearing the government’s standard in the Ghazni uprising is Asadullah Khalid, the minister of tribal and border affairs, a confidant of President Hamid Karzai’s, a Ghazni native as well as a former governor of the province. Although he is a charismatic, implacable foe of the Taliban, locals in Ghazni say they have mixed feelings about his involvement, and many see him as corrupt. He was dismissed in 2008 from his position as Kandahar governor after allegations of corruption and human-rights abuses.
“I am leading this in part because I am a son of Ghazni, and because I am a minister of tribal affairs and there are tribes living in Ghazni,” Mr. Khalid said during a recent interview in his Kabul office. “Ghazni and the south of Afghanistan are burning in the same fire — you cannot talk with the Taliban, you have to be their slave or fight with them.”
He has brought both government money and local allies into the Ghazni fight. But there has been controversy, too: at least three commanders and several local officials say that he has distributed large amounts of cash — perhaps as much as $200,000, they say — to just a few close allies, and very little has made it to individual fighters.
“We have heard many complaints from local uprising commanders that thousands of dollars have come from the minister of tribal and border affairs, but the commanders are only receiving 4,000 Pakistani rupees” — roughly $42 — “for each fighter,” said Sher Khan, the district governor of Andar in Ghazni Province.
Mr. Khalid denies those accusations. “I wish I had $200,000, but all we could do was help some of the martyrs’ families,” he said.
Locals also complained about the men Mr. Khalid had brought to run the uprising, who, while from Ghazni, were not part of the early days of fighting. They said that the National Directorate of Security was involved in supplying money and ammunition — and that suspicion has brought concerns that the United States, which helps support the N.D.S., may be getting involved, too.
American diplomats and NATO military officials have welcomed the developments in Laghman and Ghazni, although diplomats especially have been careful to keep their comments spare in part, it seems, to avoid raising hopes given all the uncertainties of local politics here.
“What I hope happens is that the local people will decide they have had enough and will act to get the Taliban out of their villages,” the new ambassador, James B. Cunningham, said at a recent news conference. “Whether that will happen or not, I don’t know, but hope that it would.”
Although locals may want to keep control of the movement, it is unlikely that the movement could spread without help from the government, local officials say, because the fighters have insufficient arms and resources to take on the Taliban for a sustained period.
Even given that, though, the officials are uneasy about the Afghan government’s growing involvement and worry aloud that it may drive people away rather than encourage more confidence.
“We are tired of the government’s corruption, and we are tired of the Taliban’s tortures,” said Juma Khan, 50, a commander from the Ghazni village of Omarzai, who takes exception to the commanders Mr. Khalid has backed.
“We don’t want anyone here, just leave us the way we are and let us fight for our people ourselves,” he said. “Now they are trying to change this into a national uprising and into a business and these corrupt officials are trying to make money from it, not to help the people.”
Gunmen Shoot Dead Provincial Head of Hajj in Logar
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 26 August 2012
Gunmen shot dead eastern Logar province's head of Hajj and Pilgrimage on Saturday night while he was shopping at the market, a local official said.
The shooting happened around 7:00 PM local time in the Wagh Jan market bazaar of the Mohammad Agha district when gunmen on a motorbike drove by the market and shot at the provincial Head of Hajj Mawlawi Ghulaam Rasoul, Logar governor spokesman Din Mohammad Darwish said.
"There is no exact information as to why they shot dead Mawlawi Ghulaam Rasoul and the police have started investigating about the incident," he said.
He added that insurgents have been frequently targeting local officials in the district.
No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
On August 20, Afghan and Nato troops launched a military operation in the district in which a Taliban leader and several other insurgents were captured.
Isaf said that the operation was launched in the district to capture an Haqqani arms supplier.
The Haqqani arms supplier provided weapons, explosives, and improvised explosive device components to Haqqani fighters throughout the province, according to Isaf.
Kabul Municipality's Onerous Fees Prevent Investment: ACCI
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 25 August 2012
The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) blamed Kabul Municipality for hurting investment in the construction sector after charging onerous service fees from investors.
According to the ACCI officials, Kabul Municipality is charging up to US$1000 per square metre for "services" rendered by the local government to investors behind new construction in the city.
"Kabul Municipality is taking large amounts of money from investors. Also it does not have a convincing reason for such actions, why they are taking the money," ACCI Director Mohammad Qurban Haq Ju told TOLOnews on Saturday.
Ju warned that this action will prevent the development of construction in the capital.
Kabul Municipality officials did not reject the claim when asked by TOLOnews, but said that they are working on a law which will cover building construction buildings to help address such problems.
The Municipality's Construction and Control Department head Abdul Tawab Ahmadi said: "We are making the law to send Council of Ministers. By approving this law, the problem will be solved."
Ju welcomed the move to draft a Construction Law, saying that without it "we will lose more investment".
Lawmakers Urge Karzai to Address Apparent Rise in Insecurity
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 25 August 2012
Afghan lawmakers urged President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to find a solution for the country's security challenges in order to prevent any deterioration of the gains made so far.
The MPs criticised the efforts of the government to date, saying that providing security to the people of Afghanistan is the key responsibility of the government, yet the situation appears to be getting worse.
Herat MP Munawar Shah Bahaduri believes that a Grand Assembly (Loya Jirga) should be held to discuss solutions to the current security challenges and blamed the government for prioritising personal benefits over national interests.
"Who will take responsibility for the bloodshed in Afghanistan? Why are we, the parliament and the government careless? We must find a final solution for these issues through a Loya Jirga. The government holds Loya Jirga's for its personal benefits but when national interests are raised, it keeps quiet," Bahaduri said in parliament on Saturday.
"I want the parliament and the President himself to launch an emergency meeting to discuss the escalation of security problems in the country." Sar-e-Pul MP Mohammad Sharif Balkhabi said.
During the month of Ramadan, insurgents increased their activities in most of the provinces with the deadliest suicide attacks seen in Nimroz and Kunduz provinces.
Furthermore, cross border rocket attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan has not ceased and is one the major issues facing the international community and Afghan security forces right now.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Why are so many Afghan soldiers turning their guns on the Americans? And can they be stopped?
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau Aug 27, 2012
The toll keeps rising. By the time this issue of Newsweek went to press, members and civilian employees of Afghanistan’s security forces had killed no fewer than 40 coalition troops this year—at least 10 of the dead, all of them Americans, in the first three weeks of August alone. The count has already passed last year’s total of 35 dead, and it’s reached fully double the figure for all of 2010. But as worried as U.S. commanders are by the growing number of insider attacks—“green-on-blue killings,” they’re sometimes called—Major Hasanzada (as he asks us to call him) says the trend doesn’t surprise him. “I understand why our men are shooting U.S. and NATO soldiers,” the Afghan National Army officer tells Newsweek. “I too have been personally hurt by the way American forces behave towards my soldiers, our villagers, our religion and culture. Too many of them are racist, arrogant, and simply don’t respect us.”
Those festering resentments are becoming a serious threat to America’s withdrawal plans. A problem that emerged as a few isolated violent incidents in 2005 is now undermining the trust that’s essential if allied forces hope to prepare the Afghans to shoulder their country’s security responsibilities by the 2014 withdrawal deadline. In the past year or so, coalition troops have been working more closely than ever with Afghan troops. In fact, some U.S. commanders partly blame the rising frequency of insider attacks on this closer partnership between coalition and Afghan forces on the ground.
But these days the partnership is strained. The Americans and other coalition members are busy watching their backs, just in case some disgruntled Afghan recruit decides to avenge some insult, whether imagined or real. The threat is anything but imaginary. Several of the men under Major Hasanzada’s command have told him that they too have thought about shooting their foreign trainers and counterparts, he says: “One soldier told me, ‘In my heart I want to empty my bullets into their chests.’ He has not done anything yet, but we are watching him carefully.”
The trouble is that the estrangement is feeding on itself. A 48-year-old Afghan Army colonel confirms that the once cordial relations between Afghan and U.S. troops, both on the frontlines and in the barracks, have deteriorated badly in the past year. A veteran soldier who served under the communist-run government in the 1980s and early 1990s, he says the Americans have worsened the divide recently by shunning the Afghans, largely for fear of insider attacks. “We had a very good understanding with each other for years, but in the past year the Americans seem reluctant to deal with us,” he tells Newsweek. (Since he is not authorized to speak to the press, he asks that we not disclose his location or his unit’s designation.) “Our social relations and professional cooperation are getting worse,” he says.
The colonel looks back fondly on the fraternization and camaraderie he used to enjoy with the Americans. “After duties were done, we used to go to their side of the base, and they used to come to our barracks for talks and meals,” he recalls. “Now we rarely meet except for professional duties.” Major Hasanzada says he also has been aware of the Americans’ retreat: “I think these [insider] attacks have reduced, if not ended, our social relations. I think the Americans do not see any solution except to keep their distance.”
The colonel says he understands the Americans’ standoffishness: “One of our soldiers shot a number of U.S. soldiers in Paktika in broad daylight and escaped,” he says, refusing to be more specific about the circumstances. “After investigating, we found that the soldier had Taliban connections and had joined the army to kill Americans.” Although coalition commanders have said that only one green-on-blue attack in 10 is committed by Taliban infiltrators, the colonel says he thinks the number may be much higher. “The number of recruits who have a Taliban consciousness and are joining the army with the aim of looking for American blood should not be underestimated,” he says. “The Taliban are hunting two birds with one arrow: they are killing coalition soldiers while at the same time hurting working relations between our allied forces.”
That’s exactly what the insurgents are hoping for. “These [insider] attacks are perhaps our most effective tool to create a golden gap between the Americans and the Afghans,” a senior Taliban commander in northern Kunduz province tells Newsweek. “We are aware that the Afghan security forces are getting stronger, so this is best way for us to weaken and divide them from the Americans.” He claims that the insurgents have a carefully planned strategy to infiltrate the Afghan ranks, not only to stage insider hits on allied soldiers but also to undermine morale. “We are working like termites, eating into this already rotten wooden structure,” he says.
The colonel may well be right that the 10 percent estimate is low. In a video press conference last week, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, said as many as a quarter of the insider killings could be the work of Taliban infiltrators or troops who are acting under Taliban coercion. It’s impossible to give more than a rough guess, he explained: most green-on-blue shooters don’t live to explain themselves. Nevertheless, he said, the majority of the attacks so far have apparently been motivated by rage rather than ideology.
The rage keeps growing—and not only among Afghans in uniform. Last year an Afghan Air Force pilot, a 20-year veteran named Ahmad Gul, gunned down eight U.S. Air Force flight instructors and an American civilian contractor after an argument at Kabul International Airport. The pilot’s brother, Dr. Mohammad Hassan Sahibi, was quoted at the time as denying that Gul had any ties to the insurgency. He blaming financial problems for the shooting. Reached by phone last week, the doctor may have spoken more candidly when asked what had caused his brother’s outburst. “You are journalist—you should know what’s going on in this country,” he told Newsweek’s reporter. “My brother did it because of what’s going on in Afghanistan!” With that, he cut off his cellphone.
Major Hasanzada doesn’t hate America. Far from it, he says: like most Afghans he appreciates the sacrifices that have been made by U.S. troops and the enormous military and financial support the country has poured into Afghanistan since 2001. “America has done a lot for us,” Hasanzada says. “But the terrible, individual acts of a few U.S. soldiers have caused enormous collective damage to our relations.”
Afghans—especially Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group—tend to be deeply sensitive to any perceived slights to their religion or to their conservative culture. They have little if any tolerance for anyone who transgresses religious and tribal mores and values. Ignorance of their principles is no excuse. Ethnic Pashtuns, in whose homelands the war is largely being fought, will do just about anything to honor and protect a guest under their time-honored Pashtunwali customs. But there are strict boundaries even to that code of honor. “Even for guests there are limitations,” says Major Hasanzada. “They must respect our Islamic values and cultural traditions.” There are no exceptions. And forgiveness is not an option, no matter what the offender’s explanation may be.
Most Americans may have forgotten the religious and cultural offenses by U.S. troops that have shocked ordinary Afghans over the past year, but Afghans can’t forget them. There was the discovery of charred copies of the Quran in a garbage dump at Bagram Air Base that sparked several days of anti-American riots in February. There was the infamous and inexplicable rampage by a U.S. sergeant who allegedly slaughtered 16 women, children, and old men as they slept and then attempted to burn their corpses. There was the video of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters—and the photos of U.S. troops showing off body parts taken from dead insurgents. It made no difference that the bodies were those of enemy fighters: in Afghanistan the dead are not to be desecrated.
The list of grievances doesn’t end there. Many Afghan civilians also have a visceral hatred of the U.S.-led late-night surprise assaults on Afghan homes suspected of harboring Taliban militants. “Burning Qurans, massacring defenseless women and children, urinating on dead bodies, and midnight raids are outrages for which the U.S. is now paying a heavy cost,” says Major Hasanzada. “These soldiers who are reacting against the U.S. are not Taliban, but these terrible incidents seem to have made them instant Taliban.”
But the anger among the security forces is about more than the big provocations. The commonplace, daily cultural misunderstandings and mistranslations on both sides can be just as damaging to relations, says the major. For example he recounts an incident that took place when he and his men were on patrol with U.S. troops in a dangerous and contested area. Through an interpreter, one of his soldiers asked one of the Americans if he believed in God. The American shook his head no and said he didn’t. Overhearing the conversation, Hasanzada quickly ordered the interpreter not to respond. But it was no use: the Afghan soldier had seen the American’s body language and understood. “My soldier got very upset, quit the army within days, and gave his salary to poor local people,” says Hasanzada. “At least he didn’t react with his Kalashnikov.”
Routine American profanity can appall even the toughest Afghan men. The major puts it delicately: “Americans use the word f--k all the time,” says the major. Most Afghan troops take the meaning sexually, not as a meaningless expletive, he says. “Sometimes our mutual understanding is lost in translation.” He tells of an incident that occurred on another joint patrol: “I remember one U.S. soldier who saw some Afghan women carrying heavy loads of firewood on their heads and who remarked: ‘Those f--king Afghan women really work hard.’ The next day I heard a number of complaints from my men saying that these U.S. soldiers are lusting after our women and abusing our culture.” Women are a particularly raw subject. The major says his soldiers hate it when U.S. troopers urinate on rural trails that may be used by village women or when they stare at local women drawing water from wells.
But even the best intentions go wrong. This past Ramadan an American soldier nearly provoked a fight with one of Hasanzada’s men by sympathetically asking the fasting Afghan: “F--king hell, how can you go all day without drinking?” Another American cultural misstep is to give an Afghan ally an affectionate pat on the butt, as American athletes often do when saluting a teammate’s good play. “It’s a supreme insult and a sign of bad intentions to touch the bottom of an Afghan man,” says the major.
In the end, he says, it all boils down to one thing: the Americans have been in Afghanistan too long. After 11 years of war, many Afghans regard them as occupiers rather than as liberators. Too often the U.S. forces—and other foreign troops too, he says—tend to act as if they ruled the land, like an old-fashioned colonial army. “Perhaps what angers our soldiers more than anything is that they see our people being treated like inferiors or like the enemy,” he says. “An Afghan soldier can react with the gun in his hand, but the villager has to accept the insult or join the Taliban.”
There’s no shortage of alternative explanations for the killings. Allen has raised the possibility that the recent spike in attacks may be linked to the month-long Ramadan fasting season, when devout Muslims consume no food or even a sip of water from sunrise to sunset, and to the infernal August heat. Both can shorten tempers and raise frustration, although this has scarcely been the first hot summer of the 11-year war, or its first Ramadan, either.
Last week an Afghan presidential spokesman announced that his government has evidence from captured shooters and from radio and phone intercepts that a “foreign spy agency”—an Afghan euphemism for Pakistan—is at least partially responsible for the killings. U.S. commanders seem politely unconvinced. “I’ll tell you that I’m looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion so that we can understand how they draw that conclusion, and add that to our analysis,” said Allen. For years Kabul has been blaming Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate for almost everything bad that happens in Afghanistan.
The truth is that the ISI, Ramadan, and the summer heat may all be factors, but only in the context of U.S. troops making Afghans angry with their religious and cultural transgressions. Until recently U.S. commanders tried to downplay the shootings, blaming them on personal quarrels and the outbursts of temper that are all but inevitable in such a high-pressure environment. But ignoring them didn’t make them go away. Now U.S. troops have been ordered to keep a fully loaded magazine locked into their individual weapons at all times and to be ready to fire at a moment’s notice, just as if they were on patrol, whether they’re on a training mission, sitting down in the mess hall, or working out at the gym. And no matter where they are, several troops in their midst will be acting as stealthy “guardian angels,” watching their Afghan counterparts closely in case one of them tries to make a false move.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said to be personally concerned about the killings—and is under heavy diplomatic pressure to stop them. Afghan intelligence agents are now secretly embedded inside Afghan units to watch for any soldier or cop who may be inclined to shoot an ally. Other government agents have been instructed to vet Afghan recruits more carefully in the hope of weeding out Taliban operatives who try to join the security forces.
The effort may be futile. As the colonel points out, it will be practically impossible to do an adequate job of vetting the tens of thousands of recruits who are needed if the Afghan military and police are to reach their target strength of 350,000 by next year. “We realistically don’t have the time to study the case of each applicant,” he says. “We look them over, have short interviews, and make background checks. But who knows what is really in the young man’s heart and soul?”
And that’s the real problem. Undercover Taliban hitmen seem to be a lesser threat than the potentially explosive resentment of an ordinary Afghan recruit from an ultraconservative village, particularly if he’s from the ethnic Pashtun areas. Still, the only response seems to be to keep soldiering on and hoping for the best. “At this particular moment I don’t believe that we need to contemplate reducing our contact with the Afghans,” General Allen said last week. “The closer the relationship with them—indeed, the more we can foster a relationship of brotherhood—the more secure we are.” He’s undoubtedly right. But how can you expect any such relationship when the man beside you might suddenly turn and gun you down?
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent, and has been covering the region for the magazine for the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Iran drawing India closer with talks on train, road access to Afghanistan
Associated Press August 25, 2012
NEW DELHI - India, Iran and Afghanistan will hold talks on giving greater access to landlocked Afghanistan, a move that could also ease Iran’s isolation in the region, Indian officials said Saturday.
The three countries will meet Sunday to discuss how best to utilize the southeastern Iranian port of Chahbahar and develop road and rail links from there to Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai told reporters.
As NATO troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, India fears the possibility of the country falling into the hands of a Taliban-led regime, thus endangering many of India’s interests there.
India has been one of the largest contributors of development aid to Afghanistan. Over the past decade, it has spent more than $2 billion to help build infrastructure, including roads, power projects and hospitals.
For India the shortest and most economical route for sending supplies to Afghanistan would be by road through Pakistan, but its decades-long rival has denied New Delhi road access to Kabul, making the route through Iran all the more significant.
Iran is also hoping to develop an industrial zone near Chahbahar port and wants to attract foreign investment to set up industries there, Mathai said.
The trilateral talks come days ahead of a non-aligned summit meeting hosted by Iran in which leaders of some 120 countries are expected to participate.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who will be in Tehran to attend the summit, is to hold bilateral talks with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the sidelines.
India’s closer cooperation with Iran will likely offend the United States, which has been pushing the international community to punish Iran over its nuclear program.
India has come under increasing pressure from Washington over its ties with Iran, but New Delhi needs Iranian crude supplies to power its economic growth. Iran supplies about 12 percent of India’s energy needs.
India’s talks with Iran will explore ways to expand trade to improve the heavily skewed balance of trade between the two countries, Mathai said.
Two-way trade in the last year totaled about $16 billion, of which Indian oil imports from Iran accounted for $13.5 billion.
Mathai said India would accept sanctions imposed by the United Nations, but would not heed those imposed by others, referring to harsher sanctions maintained by the United States and Europe.
India has been gradually cutting its oil imports from Iran, buying more from Iraq and Kuwait. But with nearly 70 percent of its oil consumption supplied by imports, rapid shifts are difficult.
What will end the deadlock in Afghanistan?
Can the Afghan government break the stalemate without selling out its values and reversing democratic gains?
Aljazeera By Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan intelligence chief, is an opposition leader 25 Aug 2012
What will end the deadlock in Afghanistan?
There are three competing narratives about Afghanistan’s situation.
NATO’s narrative is that it has done enough, and is working on a gradual but flawed transition to Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). It sees the Afghan government as a viable partner, even though it is under enormous stress, constantly pushed and pulled by internal and external forces.
The Afghan government’s narrative is vague, confusing and unconvincing. The government hopes to hold elections in 2014, fill the vacuum of a reduced NATO presence, ensure a degree of good governance, fight the country’s endemic and widespread corruption, keep reaching out to the Taliban, and, above all, get ready for a political transition. But despite its rhetoric, the government is deeply involved in unhealthy politicking and managing internal chaos.
Finally, the Taliban’s narrative: By protracting the insurgency and bogging down the ANSF, it has increased the cost of war and security for NATO and the Afghan government. It has not yielded to military pressure, has rejected talks, and continues to preach victory.
This is clearly a strategic deadlock.
The aim of NATO’s troop surge in 2010 was to either defeat the Taliban or push it into irrelevance. What seems to have happened is a half-accomplished mission leaving the ANSF in charge of the stabilisation and consolidation of the gained areas. This signifies the beginning of a defence phase for NATO/ANSF, and of an offensive by the Taliban. The continuation of night raids and special operations targeting mid-level operators and Taliban commanders will not change the strategic calculus.
U-turn unrealistic
The only game changer will be a U-turn in Pakistan’s policy, closure of Taliban sanctuaries and a reformed Afghan government. It doesn’t sound realistic, though, to expect Pakistan to change now, when memories of 9/11 seem so distant and NATO prepares for a massive reduction in troops. Pakistan once again portrays the Taliban as a reality on the ground, a policy line similar to that taken during the 1990s.
Most indicators show Pakistan as a declining state. Yet in one area, Afghanistan, Pakistan has outsmarted and outmanoeuvred everyone. Pakistan has kept the Taliban alive and deadly, and continues to keep the US as an ally with deep pockets under any circumstances.
A decade ago the ISAF/NATO mission was simply to decrease the size of the “black space” and increase the size of the “white space”. Thanks to their efforts, the democratic space is acknowledged by all of us. But the harsh reality is the emergence of a vast grey space and an increasing size of the black space.
This “grey area” consists of complex layers of corruption, bad governance, unemployment, political disunity, alienation and poverty. Against this backdrop, the democratic space is too fragile and vulnerable.
So who will overcome the deadlock and how?
The Taliban seems to follow a strict insurgency script by encircling big cities and dominating its base areas with intimidations and executions. They also count on NATO’s impatience, Pakistan’s resilience and the weakness of the Afghan state.
The fate of the capital city, Kabul, is an example of the Taliban’s encirclement strategy. While NATO keeps handing over security responsibilities to the ANSF, the Taliban has managed to maintain its presence in all directions surrounding Kabul. The districts of Uzbeen, Tagab and Kohe Safee in the east; the provinces of Logar and Wardak in the south; several pockets in Ghorband district; where last month a woman was shot to death for alleged adultery; and in the north – all have a significant Taliban presence. These Taliban-controlled pockets will logically try to connect to each other when the bulk of responsibilities fall on the ANSF.
The counter-measure against this is the long-term presence of the US military in Afghanistan, which has agreed to provide tactical and strategic assistance to the ANSF.
Obviously the Taliban is not capable of a military breakthrough at this point. It will continue to strengthen its presence in remote areas. It will continue to launch spectacular attacks in major cities to register its strength, infiltrate the ANSF, and create world headlines. The Taliban won’t try to consolidate its gains by administering base areas and creating hierarchical structures at the local level. This will create a financial burden and make them vulnerable to NATO/ANSF military attacks.
Instead, the Taliban seems to be flexible in planning and conducting operations, and to be hierarchical in leadership. For the Taliban, there is no “moment of ripeness” in sight at this point. It has occasionally agreed to talks merely to gain further legitimacy, boost the morale of its supporters, and gain international recognition. But it won’t conduct any meaningful negotiations until it sees itself as a dominating force.
A peripheral force
Despite their gains, the Taliban are still considered a peripheral military force. Its utopian moment may never come, but they solidly believe in it. Unfortunately, the Taliban is still able to mire the country in a stalemate, frighten investors, and reduce the confidence of the small and anxious middle class.
Can the Afghan government break the stalemate without selling out its values and reversing democratic gains? To be able to do so, the Afghan government will continue to ask for more financial support from donors as the cost of security and development rises.
The Afghan government’s continued hat-in-hand approach will cause fatigue, depression and blame both inside and outside Afghanistan, and will be accused of irresponsible spending. While the Afghan government will be pre-occupied with meeting donors’ expectations and politicking, the democratic opposition will continue to apply pressure, demanding space for itself.
A handful of well-educated technocrats equipped with modern knowledge may be able to create a fancy façade for Afghanistan, but the task of absorbing tens of thousands of low-quality degree holders, hundreds of thousands of unskilled, unemployed youth, and an ever-increasing ethnic quota in civil service and development projects will be monumentally difficult. This internal stress can only be overcome if Afghanistan diversifies its income sources and expands its extractive industries.
This, however, may only add one more layer to the conflict’s complexity if deals benefiting the ruling clique continue.
To counter the Taliban effectively at the community level, the Afghan Local Police should be strengthened, and receive better training and equipment, but be insulated from political influence of current government stakeholders. Many consider the ALP a political cash cow if the current approach continues. Ideally, the Afghan National Army should become a strategic asset at the theatre level and be relieved from the current level of stress it is now under.
At the macro level, unifying and rallying the Afghan population in an organised way against the Taliban, whom they largely hate anyway, requires national consensus and ending the politicisation of the security forces and the judiciary. State institutions should be seen as platforms for promoting the national interest of Afghanistan, not for the protection of narrow interests.
A number of opportunities are waiting to be taken, such as the still-generous support of the international community, the thirst of the Afghan people for reform and good governance, the country’s untapped underground resources, and above all the universal rejection of extremism by Afghans of all ethnic groups. None of these opportunities exist for the Taliban. Their rejectionist and reclusiveness has reduced them to the status of a militant group at best.
But abundant resources are never a guarantee of success. Exploiting talent and intelligently applying tools and resources can change the situation. For countries like Afghanistan, management means doing more with less. That is an art the current administration lacks.
Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan intelligence chief, is an opposition leader.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Ragtag Revolts in Parts of Afghanistan Repel Taliban
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG August 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army.
“They wanted to make our children illiterate and miserable,” Malik Ghulam Rusal, a district elder, said about the Taliban. “We told them that if you want to wage jihad, go and fight the foreigners, not ordinary people. But they did not listen.”
What began as a ragtag uprising by rural woodcutters and shopkeepers in a few villages in Laghman Province expanded into something extraordinary: in just the past two months, the Taliban presence in the entire district, and then in a neighboring one, has been largely silenced. And in another eastern province, Ghazni, villagers ignited a similar movement to drive the Taliban away.
The uprisings, however, are far from a simple case of outrage growing into action. They spread quickly, but in considerable part because commanders from a rival militant faction, Hezb-i-Islami, saw a chance to gain ground against the Taliban, and because Afghan government officials saw the movement as a valuable opportunity to help local leaders organize against the insurgents.
For close watchers of Afghanistan’s complex factional landscape, the movement has become another case study of a classic Afghan problem that directly challenges the Western goal of a stable country after the 2014 troop withdrawal: a threat posed by an armed group is answered by arming another group, which in turn becomes a game piece to be fought over by larger forces.
“Now it’s a bit of a mess,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It started as an anti-Taliban type thing, then Hezb-i-Islami moved in, then the government and the N.D.S. got involved and there are lots of different players, and that makes the people who started the whole thing suspicious.”
The N.D.S. is the National Directorate of Security, the main Afghan spy agency.
At its heart, the uprising in the Laghman villages began not because of support for the government, or even because of hatred of the Taliban as a whole, but because the wrong Taliban had come to power: Locals like Ghulam Rusal say they resented the more extreme religious teachings and draconian enforcement by militants who had come from far-off provinces and from Pakistan.
Similar resentment factored in the uprising in Ghazni Province this summer. There, in an area that has been locked under Taliban control for at least three years, the uprising started when a couple of Taliban with roots in the local community split off from the others and began to form completely indigenous groups to oppose control by what they saw as foreign Taliban leaders. Now at least 40 villages in Ghazni’s Andar district have broken away from the mainstream Taliban, though small-scale shootings still occur at times, according to local commanders and residents.
Such local resentment presented fertile opportunities for both Hezb-i-Islami and government officials.
For Hezb-i-Islami, it was a continuation of an on-and-off battle with the Taliban for dominance. The group is part militant faction, part legitimate political party — one wing fights both the Afghan government and the Taliban, another takes part in the national government based in Kabul.
Though Hezb-i-Islami is rooted in a conservative Islamist worldview, it is seen as generally less rigid than the Taliban, allowing girls to attend school and permitting some other aspects of modern life. In any possible future reconciliation with the insurgency, the faction most likely to engage in a peace deal would be Hezb-i-Islami, former Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said in a recent interview. In that light, both the Afghan government and the Americans are inclined to support the group’s fight against the Taliban.
In both Ghazni and Laghman, there is a long history of deep aversion to the Kabul government, as well as a sense of hurt: many feel abandoned by the government and only reluctantly turned to the Taliban. That is true even of Hezb-i-Islami fighters who live in those areas, said Abdul Jabar Shilgari, a former Parliament member from Ghazni who is a member of the Hezb-i-Islami party.
“The people there did not have any thought of coming over to the government, because they were fed up with the government,” Mr. Shilgari said. “But that was not a logical thought on their part — we knew they couldn’t stand up to the Taliban for long.”
Hezb-i-Islami activated former commanders and sent them into the fight with rifles and ammunition, and with orders to make more contacts and expand the effort, members of the group said.
For the government, it has been a chance to try to encourage local forces to organize against the Taliban.
In Laghman, the governor, Mohammed Iqbal Azizi, said the government had given mostly food and ammunition to the fighters, but only relatively small quantities of ammunition.
The man bearing the government’s standard in the Ghazni uprising is Asadullah Khalid, the minister of tribal and border affairs, a confidant of President Hamid Karzai’s, a Ghazni native as well as a former governor of the province. Although he is a charismatic, implacable foe of the Taliban, locals in Ghazni say they have mixed feelings about his involvement, and many see him as corrupt. He was dismissed in 2008 from his position as Kandahar governor after allegations of corruption and human-rights abuses.
“I am leading this in part because I am a son of Ghazni, and because I am a minister of tribal affairs and there are tribes living in Ghazni,” Mr. Khalid said during a recent interview in his Kabul office. “Ghazni and the south of Afghanistan are burning in the same fire — you cannot talk with the Taliban, you have to be their slave or fight with them.”
He has brought both government money and local allies into the Ghazni fight. But there has been controversy, too: at least three commanders and several local officials say that he has distributed large amounts of cash — perhaps as much as $200,000, they say — to just a few close allies, and very little has made it to individual fighters.
“We have heard many complaints from local uprising commanders that thousands of dollars have come from the minister of tribal and border affairs, but the commanders are only receiving 4,000 Pakistani rupees” — roughly $42 — “for each fighter,” said Sher Khan, the district governor of Andar in Ghazni Province.
Mr. Khalid denies those accusations. “I wish I had $200,000, but all we could do was help some of the martyrs’ families,” he said.
Locals also complained about the men Mr. Khalid had brought to run the uprising, who, while from Ghazni, were not part of the early days of fighting. They said that the National Directorate of Security was involved in supplying money and ammunition — and that suspicion has brought concerns that the United States, which helps support the N.D.S., may be getting involved, too.
American diplomats and NATO military officials have welcomed the developments in Laghman and Ghazni, although diplomats especially have been careful to keep their comments spare in part, it seems, to avoid raising hopes given all the uncertainties of local politics here.
“What I hope happens is that the local people will decide they have had enough and will act to get the Taliban out of their villages,” the new ambassador, James B. Cunningham, said at a recent news conference. “Whether that will happen or not, I don’t know, but hope that it would.”
Although locals may want to keep control of the movement, it is unlikely that the movement could spread without help from the government, local officials say, because the fighters have insufficient arms and resources to take on the Taliban for a sustained period.
Even given that, though, the officials are uneasy about the Afghan government’s growing involvement and worry aloud that it may drive people away rather than encourage more confidence.
“We are tired of the government’s corruption, and we are tired of the Taliban’s tortures,” said Juma Khan, 50, a commander from the Ghazni village of Omarzai, who takes exception to the commanders Mr. Khalid has backed.
“We don’t want anyone here, just leave us the way we are and let us fight for our people ourselves,” he said. “Now they are trying to change this into a national uprising and into a business and these corrupt officials are trying to make money from it, not to help the people.”
Gunmen Shoot Dead Provincial Head of Hajj in Logar
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 26 August 2012
Gunmen shot dead eastern Logar province's head of Hajj and Pilgrimage on Saturday night while he was shopping at the market, a local official said.
The shooting happened around 7:00 PM local time in the Wagh Jan market bazaar of the Mohammad Agha district when gunmen on a motorbike drove by the market and shot at the provincial Head of Hajj Mawlawi Ghulaam Rasoul, Logar governor spokesman Din Mohammad Darwish said.
"There is no exact information as to why they shot dead Mawlawi Ghulaam Rasoul and the police have started investigating about the incident," he said.
He added that insurgents have been frequently targeting local officials in the district.
No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
On August 20, Afghan and Nato troops launched a military operation in the district in which a Taliban leader and several other insurgents were captured.
Isaf said that the operation was launched in the district to capture an Haqqani arms supplier.
The Haqqani arms supplier provided weapons, explosives, and improvised explosive device components to Haqqani fighters throughout the province, according to Isaf.
Kabul Municipality's Onerous Fees Prevent Investment: ACCI
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 25 August 2012
The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) blamed Kabul Municipality for hurting investment in the construction sector after charging onerous service fees from investors.
According to the ACCI officials, Kabul Municipality is charging up to US$1000 per square metre for "services" rendered by the local government to investors behind new construction in the city.
"Kabul Municipality is taking large amounts of money from investors. Also it does not have a convincing reason for such actions, why they are taking the money," ACCI Director Mohammad Qurban Haq Ju told TOLOnews on Saturday.
Ju warned that this action will prevent the development of construction in the capital.
Kabul Municipality officials did not reject the claim when asked by TOLOnews, but said that they are working on a law which will cover building construction buildings to help address such problems.
The Municipality's Construction and Control Department head Abdul Tawab Ahmadi said: "We are making the law to send Council of Ministers. By approving this law, the problem will be solved."
Ju welcomed the move to draft a Construction Law, saying that without it "we will lose more investment".
Lawmakers Urge Karzai to Address Apparent Rise in Insecurity
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 25 August 2012
Afghan lawmakers urged President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to find a solution for the country's security challenges in order to prevent any deterioration of the gains made so far.
The MPs criticised the efforts of the government to date, saying that providing security to the people of Afghanistan is the key responsibility of the government, yet the situation appears to be getting worse.
Herat MP Munawar Shah Bahaduri believes that a Grand Assembly (Loya Jirga) should be held to discuss solutions to the current security challenges and blamed the government for prioritising personal benefits over national interests.
"Who will take responsibility for the bloodshed in Afghanistan? Why are we, the parliament and the government careless? We must find a final solution for these issues through a Loya Jirga. The government holds Loya Jirga's for its personal benefits but when national interests are raised, it keeps quiet," Bahaduri said in parliament on Saturday.
"I want the parliament and the President himself to launch an emergency meeting to discuss the escalation of security problems in the country." Sar-e-Pul MP Mohammad Sharif Balkhabi said.
During the month of Ramadan, insurgents increased their activities in most of the provinces with the deadliest suicide attacks seen in Nimroz and Kunduz provinces.
Furthermore, cross border rocket attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan has not ceased and is one the major issues facing the international community and Afghan security forces right now.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com