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Afghan president dismisses spy chief
AFP – Tue, Aug 28, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday announced the dismissal of his intelligence chief ahead of an imminent cabinet reshuffle involving the top security ministries.
The head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Rahmatullah Nabil, was dismissed as Karzai had decided that no intelligence chief could serve longer than two years, the president's office said.
"President Karzai commended the dedication Mr Nabil demonstrated in the job over the past two years and wished him success in the new job he would soon take over as an ambassador to a foreign country," the palace said.
The move follows the ouster of two other top security officials, defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and interior minister Besmillah Mohammadi, by the country's parliament earlier this month.
Lawmakers said they had failed to stop a resurgence in a 10-year Taliban insurgency and cross-border shelling from Pakistan.
A palace official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Mohammadi would be appointed as the new defence minister while his former deputy Mushtaba Patanag would take over as interior minister.
Assadullah Khaled, current minister of border and tribal affairs, would become the new NDS chief, he said.
After Wardak was dismissed as defence minister, Karzai named him as senior presidential adviser on army reform.
Afghan President risks deeper row with MPs over appointments
By Hamid Shalizi | Reuters – Wed, Aug 29, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai filled gaps in two top security ministries on Wednesday as part of a reshuffle forced on him by a fractious parliament, but risked a destabilizing row with lawmakers by reappointing a sacked minister.
Parliament, in a rebuff to Karzai, earlier this month voted to remove Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi over deteriorating security, corruption accusations clouding the government and cross-border attacks blamed on Pakistan.
But Karzai appointed Mohammadi, an ethnic Tajik with a strong powerbase in northern Afghanistan, as Defence Minister, while removing spy agency chief Rahmatullah Nabil, charged with countering the Taliban and cutting insider attacks by Afghan police and soldiers on foreign troops.
"Intelligence chiefs cannot serve more than two years. President Karzai called Nabil today and thanked him for his services," Karzai's chief spokesman Aimal Faizi told Reuters ahead of the announcement.
Karzai said he would appoint current interior ministry deputy Mushtaba Patang as minister, and influential former Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid is expected to become head of the intelligence agency, known as the NDS.
But all three positions would need parliamentary approval and MPs said they wanted fresh appointments, rather than members of Karzai's increasingly unpopular inner circle.
"We hope that we get new faces rather faces which have already been examined and which the people are not happy with," said Parwan province MP Hajji Almaas Zahed.
Karzai's powerful finance minister, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, is also under a cloud over accusations aired on Afghan television that he stashed away more than $1 million in overseas banks and property. He has denied the accusations.
The political turmoil in the government has been hampering decision making on several crucial pieces of legislation, including a revised mining law being closely watched by Western donors and foreign mining companies.
The laws, which aim to bring Afghan tender procedures into line with international norms, are in limbo after several cabinet members last month asked for them to be re-drafted to give Afghans a higher return on natural resource projects.
Any fresh argument between Karzai and the parliament could also complicate the timetable for transition of security to Afghan forces and a withdrawal by most foreign combat troops by 2014.
Spokesman Faizi said Nabil would soon be appointed as an ambassador, while ex army chief of staff Mohammadi's appointment to the defence ministry was aimed at reinforcing stability.
Khalid, who will head up the powerful National Directorate of Security, is an ethnic Pashtun with strong connections in Afghanistan's south, from where the Taliban draw most support.
Khalid escaped an assassination attempt in 2007, but a string of law and order controversies surrounding him may worry western backers of the government who have tied $16 billion in aid pledges to a crackdown on corruption.
"Nabil was a strong man in foiling many insurgent attacks. His removal for Khalid could deal a major blow to the security of this country," said Naheed Fareed, a lawmaker from western Herat province.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi; Writing by Rob Taylor Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
Five Afghan Soldiers Killed In Suicide Attack
August 29, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Officials say five Afghan Army soldiers have been killed in an insurgent roadside bombing and suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan.
Officials said the soldiers were attacked late on August 28 in Kunar Province, a militant hotbed.
They said a suicide bomber approached the troops on foot and detonated explosives following a smaller explosion caused by a roadside bomb.
Mohammad Amin Tokhi, the Kunar provincial deputy governor, said some of the soldiers had gotten out of their vehicles to investigate the first explosion.
The incident occurred in Kunar's Manogai district, known as a hive of Taliban insurgency.
Dozens of militants were reported killed in a NATO air strike in the region earlier in August.
Based on reporting by AFP and pajhwok.com
News analysis: Afghan peace dialogue with the Taliban remains in limbo
By Abdul Halee and Chen Xin
KABUL, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Amid continuing charges and counter- charges between Kabul and Islamabad and increasing militancy in Afghanistan, efforts to bring the Taliban into the Afghan political mainstream looked increasingly difficult to succeed, analysts here said.
"Since the intelligence agencies of some countries in the region are involved in a proxy war in Afghanistan to find a negotiated settlement is a very complex job," political analyst Ahmad Zia Rafat told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Rafat, a professor at Kabul University, said that since the Taliban has been used as a pressure group by Pakistan against the Afghanistan government, it could not possibly enter into a dialogue with Kabul unless with the permission of Islamabad.
However, Taliban has rejected the notion, saying that the group is independent and would act and fight independently free from foreign influence.
To accelerate the process of peace talks with Taliban, a delegation of the government-backed peace body, the High Council for Peace would be visiting Pakistan soon reportedly to seek the release of Taliban former commander Mullah Brother who was arrested in 2010 in Karachi city of Pakistan.
"I think the release of Mullah Brother and taking him to Kabul would not change the mind of Taliban leadership to hold direct talks with Afghan government," the analyst said, adding that the Taliban usually dismiss any of its leaders who are arrested or who would join the government.
Afghan peace talks were started in the l980s and since then whoever was in power in Kabul had initiated talks with armed groups in the country, notably the Taliban, but all these efforts failed.
Interestingly the armed groups opposing the government in Kabul have their bases in neighboring Pakistan prompting some Kabul officials to conclude that these armed groups are being supported by Pakistan. But Islamabad has consistently denied these accusations.
In 1980s, the then Moscow-backed regimes had frequently offered peace talks with the Pakistan-based Mujahideen groups. Even though, the direct and indirect contacts for achieving national reconciliation continued till 1992, all had ended in a fiasco.
The then government of Najibullah in Kabul collapsed; Mujahideen groups had overrun Kabul in April 1992 and established their administration. Nonetheless, the war didn't end as a new breed of Taliban, with bases in Pakistan had emerged, forcing new rulers in Kabul to ask the help of Pakistan in trying to open talks with the militants.
Despite holding several rounds of talks between the administration of the erstwhile Burhanudin Rabbani and the Taliban, the group finally ousted the Kabul regime and established its authoritarian reign in 1996.
According to Afghans, the same scenario is happening right now, with the incumbent Afghan government trying to open a dialogue with the Taliban.
Blaming Pakistan's Inter-service Intelligence (ISI) for backing Taliban militants, Afghan officials allege that Pakistan' s lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan have served as safe havens for Taliban militants.
In a counter-accusation, Pakistani officials have blamed Afghanistan for allegedly supporting anti-Pakistan militants.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rahman Malik, according to media reports, said recently that Mawlana Fazlullah who escaped Pakistan couple of years ago has taken shelter in Afghanistan's Nurisan province where he is reportedly organizing attacks inside Pakistan. The claim has been denied by Afghan officials.
Taliban militants have increased their attacks since launching its spring offensive early May this year. Recently, the Taliban beheaded 17 civilians and executed 10 Afghan soldiers in Helmand province besides killing two NATO soldiers in Laghman. The militants also carried out a suicide car bomb attack in their former stronghold Kandahar late Monday night killing four civilians and injuring 21 others, mostly non-combatants.
Afghan war is silent issue of US politics
Financial Times By Geoff Dyer August 28, 2012
Washington - In most election years, the unravelling of a war involving more than 80,000 American soldiers would be a defining issue – especially if the incumbent was a Democrat whom his Republican challenger claimed was a soft touch.
As this year’s election campaign enters its business phase, the US and Nato war effort in Afghanistan is facing one of the most serious challenges in the more than a decade of fighting as a result of “insider” attacks on its soldiers by their Afghan counterparts.
Yet even with the inevitable election focus on the economy and unemployment, the striking thing about the war in Afghanistan is how little either party wants to talk about it, despite the big questions now facing the strategy.
The Republicans will give a nod towards foreign policy at their convention in Tampa on Wednesday night, with senator John McCain and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice due to give speeches. However, on the campaign trail itself, Afghanistan hardly gets a mention. The US death toll in Afghanistan passed 2,000 last week, a milestone that went largely unremarked.
“It is crazy that they are not talking about it more, given the number of soldiers and the amount of money being spent,” says Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security Project, a Washington think-tank. “It is as if they just want the problems to go away.”
In the latest ‘insider’ attack, two US troops were killed on Monday by an Afghan soldier after an argument – taking the tally for such deaths this month to 12, the largest since the start of the war. According to Nato, 42 coalition soldiers have died in insider attacks this year.
The attacks are damaging because they strike to the core of Nato’s evolving role in Afghanistan. Under the strategy unveiled in May, combat operations will be wound down by next year, with the remaining soldiers shifting to training Afghan forces so that they can take over responsibility for security.
That means that coalition troops are being attacked by some of the very soldiers they are now supposed to be mentoring, an indication of how poisoned the relationship has become. “If US forces are going to be at increased risk, then that is going to be a non-starter,” says Linda Robinson, at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In terms of the election, the lack of discussion of Afghanistan is a reflection of both the unpopularity of the war and its complexity. According to a poll by Quinnipiac University last month, 60 per cent of registered voters said the US should no longer be involved, while only 31 per cent said the US was right to remain fighting.
Given the lack of support for the war, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has endorsed most of the Obama administration’s strategy, criticising only some of the smaller points. In a recent interview with Time, he said that it was right to end the Nato operation in 2014 but that the 30,000 US troops due to leave Afghanistan this summer should have stayed until later in the year. “There are some similarities and some differences,” he said.
Yet if the silence is politically understandable, some analysts believe that the lack of discussion will undermine support for the long-term US strategy in Afghanistan. Although the Nato operation finishes in 2014, the plan calls for a sizeable number of troops to remain in the country to continue with training and to conduct operations against terrorists.
Nato has committed to providing support to Afghanistan for another decade after 2014, with the contribution to the country’s security budget currently set at around $5bn a year. On top of that, coalition governments will also have to pay for the troops which remain and other aid projects.
Yet the US is not alone in facing enormous fiscal problems over the coming years. Political support for such funding, which in many countries will need to be approved every year, could easily evaporate – especially if the number of insider attacks escalates.
“Unless there is a concerted public campaign to build support by whoever wins the election, this strategy is simply not sustainable,” says Mr Foust.
Paul Ryan: 2014 is ‘good, reasonable timeline’ for drawdown in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Felicia Sonmez August 28, 2012
Rep. Paul Ryan last week told a North Carolina TV station that he believes the 2014 date set by President Obama for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a “good, reasonable timeline,” marking the first time that Ryan has publicly backed the drawdown date since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee earlier this month.
Last Monday, at a joint rally with Mitt Romney in Goffstown, N.H., Ryan responded to a question from a veteran on the war in Afghanistan by criticizing a different part of the current timetable.
“A drawdown occurring in the middle of a fighting season — when we’re still giving our military that same mission — we don’t want to do something that would put them in jeopardy, we want them to fulfill the missions the safest way possible,’’ Ryan told the crowd at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.
He addressed another part of the timetable in an interview with Raleigh ABC affiliate WTVD on Thursday after a defense roundtable in Fayetteville, N.C.
“We should be thinking of national security,” the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee said in response to a question about his views on the way forward in Afghanistan. “We should be thinking of troop security and safety first and foremost and not some political timetable, which I fear is how the president has made some of these decisions. We want to make sure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists to plot future attacks against us.”
“At the same time, I think the timeline with Afghanistan on a 2014 date is a good, reasonable timeline,” he added.
Even as Ryan said he backs the 2014 date, he – along with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney – has been sharply critical of a separate drawdown date of October 2012. That date marks the deadline set by Obama for the return of some 30,000 surge troops – a move that Republicans as well as some military advisers have argued becaause it is set to take place at the height of the fighting season.
Last Monday, at a joint rally with Romney in Goffstown, N.H., Ryan responded to a question from a veteran on the war in Afghanistan by echoing GOP criticism of the fall 2012 date, which he argued is based on Obama’s political considerations rather than on the advice of commanders on the ground.
“A drawdown occurring in the middle of a fighting season -- when we’re still giving our military that same mission -- we don’t want to do something that would put them in jeopardy, we want them to fulfill the missions the safest way possible,’’ Ryan told the crowd at St. Anselm College.
At the same New Hampshire rally where Ryan expressed opposition to the October date, Romney voiced support for the 2014 timeline, although he, too, accused Obama of making a politically-motivated decision. Romney also recently told Time Magazine that he backs the 2014 timeline but “would not have announced [the date] publicly.”
Ryan has had a relatively smooth transition to the national stage since Romney tapped him to serve as his running mate a little over two weeks ago, but he has had a few apparent stumbles on foreign issues.
At the Fayetteville defense roundtable he led before last Thursday’s interview, Ryan seemed to be caught off guard by an attendee’s question about a recent statement made by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on whether veterans hould speak out politically.
The previous day, Ryan fielded a question on Obama’s foreign policy in part by discussing the looming $500 billion across-the-board cuts to defense spending, an answer that highlighted his budgetary expertise.
Afghanistan—The 'Who Cares?' War
Public apathy isn't necessarily fatal for the war effort. It could even provide the opportunity to finally get it 'right.'
Wall Street Journal By MAX BOOT Opinion August 28, 2012
In 2006, the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran published a 336-page indictment of the Iraq war, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." According to Nielsen BookScan, it sold more than 120,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. Two months ago, he published a 368-page indictment of the Afghanistan war, "Little America." It has since sold roughly 5,000 copies in hardcover.
So little attention is the public paying that even attacks by best-selling authors on the current conflict are dismissed with a collective shrug.
Yet there are still more than 80,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and every day soldiers and Marines, sailors and aircrews walk, drive and fly into harm's way. News coverage is sparse—save for occasional disasters such as "green on blue" attacks by Afghan security forces on coalition personnel or terrorist attacks in Kabul that only serve to confirm the popular perception that the war is lost.
The public's disengagement isn't all bad (more on that to come). But it is a bit surprising given that at its inception, in October 2001, this was one of the most popular conflicts the U.S. had ever undertaken. Despite the conventional wisdom that toppling the Taliban would be neither fast nor easy (remember the dread "Afghan winter"?), almost all Americans supported the decision to fight after 9/11.
But when the Taliban fell far faster and more easily than expected, complacency crept in. Convinced that the war was over, President George W. Bush refused to commit the resources necessary to rebuild Afghanistan's government and security forces. This gave the Taliban, secure in its Pakistan sanctuaries, an opening to stage a resurgence.
By 2008, security in Afghanistan was deteriorating and both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama promised to send more resources. As president, Mr. Obama delivered on his campaign pledge by almost tripling U.S. forces—to 100,000 from 34,000.
But the Obama surge did not put the war front-and-center in American politics. The president is willing to order troops to fight but not to talk about why they fight or how their fight is going. His only major speech on Afghanistan this year was May 1, to mark the signing of a strategic partnership accord in Kabul. Visitors to the White House website would be hard-pressed to find any mention of Afghanistan. The one tab under "defense" issues is for "End of Iraq War."
There is much speculation about why Mr. Obama won't talk about the war. My theory is that it is because he doesn't have a coherent message to deliver. His rationale for the troop buildup was to fight al Qaeda—notwithstanding that the terrorist group has a minimal presence in Afghanistan. He never spoke of defeating the Taliban, our actual enemies in Afghanistan, and he denied that U.S. troops would fight a "counterinsurgency" or engage in "nation-building" even while they were doing just that.
His conduct of the war has been ambivalent as well. He agreed in 2009 to send more troops, but fewer than the generals wanted. He said yes to 30,000 when Gen. Stanley McChrystal asked for at least 40,000. Then he decided to pull the surge troops out faster than the generals wanted—by the end of this September rather than waiting until at least the end of the year as then-Gen. David Petraeus advised.
Reluctant to tell the American people he is pursuing a split-the-difference policy in Afghanistan—doing just enough to avert immediate defeat but not enough to secure certain victory—Mr. Obama instead has fallen uncharacteristically quiet. His silence hasn't been filled by partisans of either political persuasion. Liberals vehemently oppose the war, but their opposition is muted because the war is being pursued by one of their own. Conservatives are uneasy because they sense the president isn't doing enough to win. But they are not sure what alternative to offer, so their criticisms too are muted.
That makes Afghanistan the "Who Cares?" war. Few, it seems, do—except for service personnel and their families. According to polls by the New York Times/CBS News and others, more than 60% of Americans think that the U.S. should not be at war in Afghanistan, but there is no intensity to the opposition. There are no antiwar marches and the war isn't an election issue. It is almost as if the war isn't happening at all.
Ideally, U.S. troops should fight with wholehearted domestic support. But public apathy isn't necessarily fatal for the war effort. It even presents a potential opportunity to finally get Afghanistan "right"—or at least as right as possible at this late stage.
We will need to maintain at least 30,000 troops in Afghanistan past 2014 to advise and assist local security forces in their battles against weakened but undefeated foes. That commitment would be hard to sustain in the face of active domestic opposition. But it may be possible in today's atmosphere of apathy. Just as there is little public awareness of troop deployments in Kosovo or South Korea or the Sinai Peninsula, so troops could conceivably stay in Afghanistan for years—as long as they don't take many casualties.
That may sound improbable now, but recall that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq had fallen off the radar screen by the time it ended last year. From a domestic standpoint, the U.S. could have continued the deployment indefinitely. The problem was that Mr. Obama didn't really want to (that ambivalence again) and therefore couldn't convince the reluctant Iraqis to go along. But the Afghans, lacking Iraq's oil, are more eager for foreign protection. Thus we could still arrive at the right policy in Afghanistan, even if the public isn't paying attention.
Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present" (Liveright, 2013).
NATO may need more troops to ship home Afghan gear
Reuters By Adrian Croft Tue Aug 28, 2012
BRUNSSUM, The Netherlands - NATO countries may temporarily send more troops to Afghanistan to pack up and ship out huge quantities of weapons and equipment as they wind down operations after more than a decade of war, a military planner said on Tuesday.
Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Richardson also said coalition members could use other routes to ship home their equipment even if the troubled crossing through Pakistan were closed to them.
With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw by the end of 2014, NATO must send home or dispose of 200,000 shipping containers and vehicles, said Richardson, a Canadian logistics expert at a NATO command in the Dutch town of Brunssum that supports the Afghan operation.
According to some estimates, more than $60 billion worth of equipment needs to be pulled out while soldiers continue operations against Taliban insurgents in a war that shows no sign of abating.
While the total number of foreign troops is falling as they gradually turn over security to Afghan forces, Richardson said the job of cleaning, packing and shipping equipment may lead some countries to send in more soldiers temporarily.
"Experience has shown us that for many of the troop-contributing nations, their troop levels will actually experience a slight increase as they bring in extra forces to prepare their equipment for redeployment," Richardson told reporters during a briefing at Brunssum.
NATO forces are expected to use a mixture of air, land and sea routes to ship home equipment and they are not completely dependent on transit through Pakistan, he said.
PAKISTAN TENSIONS
Pakistan banned trucks from carrying supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan for seven months in protest at a cross-border NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The route reopened in July after the United States said "sorry" for the deaths but U.S.-Pakistan ties remain difficult.
"Would all the nations prefer to have the Pakistan option available? Yes. Can we redeploy without it? Yes. We do have other options," Richardson said.
NATO has secured transit deals with three Central Asian states, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and with Russia.
The task of sending home unwanted kit has already begun, with cargo planes flying supplies into Afghanistan now being loaded up with surplus gear for the return leg, Richardson said.
NATO members draw up their own plans for shipping out gear but the alliance coordinates them "to make sure they are not all trying to use the same routes at the same time", he said.
Some frontline combat troops have complained that the rollback from bases across Afghanistan and packing up of military equipment was disrupting operations against insurgents, but U.S. Major-General Joseph Reynes, director of operations at Brunssum, denied this was the case. {ID:nL3E8JQ027]
"There is no conflict with operational activities," he said.
Richardson said all "sensitive equipment", such as weapons, ammunition and communications devices, would be shipped out by air as it was the most secure method.
(editing by David Stamp)
Second Steel Plant Opens in Herat
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Afghanistan's second steel plant began operating on Tuesday, giving the country an additional 5 percent capacity to meet its own steel demand, according to the Commerce and Industries Minister Anwarul Haq Ahadi.
Ahadi said Tuesday that the establishment of the factory in western Herat province will help the country to reduce its iron and steel imports while also providing more employment opportunities for Afghans.
"The factory is effective for both Herat and the whole country's economy," he said at the plant's inauguration Tuesday.
The country's second factory has a capital worth of $8 million, largely funded by an Afghan trader, and employs 100 people.
Herat governor Daoud Saba spoke at the inauguration of several other reconstruction and development projects inside the province.
He said he was optimistic at the growth of commerce in Herat, saying that "more efforts will be made to begin other development projects".
The factory chief Esmatullah Wardak said the plant mainly produces rods and poles for construction from the raw material of old iron.
Wardak added that, in total, he had already invested up to $25 million in the factory.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
AFP – Tue, Aug 28, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday announced the dismissal of his intelligence chief ahead of an imminent cabinet reshuffle involving the top security ministries.
The head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Rahmatullah Nabil, was dismissed as Karzai had decided that no intelligence chief could serve longer than two years, the president's office said.
"President Karzai commended the dedication Mr Nabil demonstrated in the job over the past two years and wished him success in the new job he would soon take over as an ambassador to a foreign country," the palace said.
The move follows the ouster of two other top security officials, defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and interior minister Besmillah Mohammadi, by the country's parliament earlier this month.
Lawmakers said they had failed to stop a resurgence in a 10-year Taliban insurgency and cross-border shelling from Pakistan.
A palace official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Mohammadi would be appointed as the new defence minister while his former deputy Mushtaba Patanag would take over as interior minister.
Assadullah Khaled, current minister of border and tribal affairs, would become the new NDS chief, he said.
After Wardak was dismissed as defence minister, Karzai named him as senior presidential adviser on army reform.
Afghan President risks deeper row with MPs over appointments
By Hamid Shalizi | Reuters – Wed, Aug 29, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai filled gaps in two top security ministries on Wednesday as part of a reshuffle forced on him by a fractious parliament, but risked a destabilizing row with lawmakers by reappointing a sacked minister.
Parliament, in a rebuff to Karzai, earlier this month voted to remove Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi over deteriorating security, corruption accusations clouding the government and cross-border attacks blamed on Pakistan.
But Karzai appointed Mohammadi, an ethnic Tajik with a strong powerbase in northern Afghanistan, as Defence Minister, while removing spy agency chief Rahmatullah Nabil, charged with countering the Taliban and cutting insider attacks by Afghan police and soldiers on foreign troops.
"Intelligence chiefs cannot serve more than two years. President Karzai called Nabil today and thanked him for his services," Karzai's chief spokesman Aimal Faizi told Reuters ahead of the announcement.
Karzai said he would appoint current interior ministry deputy Mushtaba Patang as minister, and influential former Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid is expected to become head of the intelligence agency, known as the NDS.
But all three positions would need parliamentary approval and MPs said they wanted fresh appointments, rather than members of Karzai's increasingly unpopular inner circle.
"We hope that we get new faces rather faces which have already been examined and which the people are not happy with," said Parwan province MP Hajji Almaas Zahed.
Karzai's powerful finance minister, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, is also under a cloud over accusations aired on Afghan television that he stashed away more than $1 million in overseas banks and property. He has denied the accusations.
The political turmoil in the government has been hampering decision making on several crucial pieces of legislation, including a revised mining law being closely watched by Western donors and foreign mining companies.
The laws, which aim to bring Afghan tender procedures into line with international norms, are in limbo after several cabinet members last month asked for them to be re-drafted to give Afghans a higher return on natural resource projects.
Any fresh argument between Karzai and the parliament could also complicate the timetable for transition of security to Afghan forces and a withdrawal by most foreign combat troops by 2014.
Spokesman Faizi said Nabil would soon be appointed as an ambassador, while ex army chief of staff Mohammadi's appointment to the defence ministry was aimed at reinforcing stability.
Khalid, who will head up the powerful National Directorate of Security, is an ethnic Pashtun with strong connections in Afghanistan's south, from where the Taliban draw most support.
Khalid escaped an assassination attempt in 2007, but a string of law and order controversies surrounding him may worry western backers of the government who have tied $16 billion in aid pledges to a crackdown on corruption.
"Nabil was a strong man in foiling many insurgent attacks. His removal for Khalid could deal a major blow to the security of this country," said Naheed Fareed, a lawmaker from western Herat province.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi; Writing by Rob Taylor Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
Five Afghan Soldiers Killed In Suicide Attack
August 29, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Officials say five Afghan Army soldiers have been killed in an insurgent roadside bombing and suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan.
Officials said the soldiers were attacked late on August 28 in Kunar Province, a militant hotbed.
They said a suicide bomber approached the troops on foot and detonated explosives following a smaller explosion caused by a roadside bomb.
Mohammad Amin Tokhi, the Kunar provincial deputy governor, said some of the soldiers had gotten out of their vehicles to investigate the first explosion.
The incident occurred in Kunar's Manogai district, known as a hive of Taliban insurgency.
Dozens of militants were reported killed in a NATO air strike in the region earlier in August.
Based on reporting by AFP and pajhwok.com
News analysis: Afghan peace dialogue with the Taliban remains in limbo
By Abdul Halee and Chen Xin
KABUL, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Amid continuing charges and counter- charges between Kabul and Islamabad and increasing militancy in Afghanistan, efforts to bring the Taliban into the Afghan political mainstream looked increasingly difficult to succeed, analysts here said.
"Since the intelligence agencies of some countries in the region are involved in a proxy war in Afghanistan to find a negotiated settlement is a very complex job," political analyst Ahmad Zia Rafat told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Rafat, a professor at Kabul University, said that since the Taliban has been used as a pressure group by Pakistan against the Afghanistan government, it could not possibly enter into a dialogue with Kabul unless with the permission of Islamabad.
However, Taliban has rejected the notion, saying that the group is independent and would act and fight independently free from foreign influence.
To accelerate the process of peace talks with Taliban, a delegation of the government-backed peace body, the High Council for Peace would be visiting Pakistan soon reportedly to seek the release of Taliban former commander Mullah Brother who was arrested in 2010 in Karachi city of Pakistan.
"I think the release of Mullah Brother and taking him to Kabul would not change the mind of Taliban leadership to hold direct talks with Afghan government," the analyst said, adding that the Taliban usually dismiss any of its leaders who are arrested or who would join the government.
Afghan peace talks were started in the l980s and since then whoever was in power in Kabul had initiated talks with armed groups in the country, notably the Taliban, but all these efforts failed.
Interestingly the armed groups opposing the government in Kabul have their bases in neighboring Pakistan prompting some Kabul officials to conclude that these armed groups are being supported by Pakistan. But Islamabad has consistently denied these accusations.
In 1980s, the then Moscow-backed regimes had frequently offered peace talks with the Pakistan-based Mujahideen groups. Even though, the direct and indirect contacts for achieving national reconciliation continued till 1992, all had ended in a fiasco.
The then government of Najibullah in Kabul collapsed; Mujahideen groups had overrun Kabul in April 1992 and established their administration. Nonetheless, the war didn't end as a new breed of Taliban, with bases in Pakistan had emerged, forcing new rulers in Kabul to ask the help of Pakistan in trying to open talks with the militants.
Despite holding several rounds of talks between the administration of the erstwhile Burhanudin Rabbani and the Taliban, the group finally ousted the Kabul regime and established its authoritarian reign in 1996.
According to Afghans, the same scenario is happening right now, with the incumbent Afghan government trying to open a dialogue with the Taliban.
Blaming Pakistan's Inter-service Intelligence (ISI) for backing Taliban militants, Afghan officials allege that Pakistan' s lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan have served as safe havens for Taliban militants.
In a counter-accusation, Pakistani officials have blamed Afghanistan for allegedly supporting anti-Pakistan militants.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rahman Malik, according to media reports, said recently that Mawlana Fazlullah who escaped Pakistan couple of years ago has taken shelter in Afghanistan's Nurisan province where he is reportedly organizing attacks inside Pakistan. The claim has been denied by Afghan officials.
Taliban militants have increased their attacks since launching its spring offensive early May this year. Recently, the Taliban beheaded 17 civilians and executed 10 Afghan soldiers in Helmand province besides killing two NATO soldiers in Laghman. The militants also carried out a suicide car bomb attack in their former stronghold Kandahar late Monday night killing four civilians and injuring 21 others, mostly non-combatants.
Afghan war is silent issue of US politics
Financial Times By Geoff Dyer August 28, 2012
Washington - In most election years, the unravelling of a war involving more than 80,000 American soldiers would be a defining issue – especially if the incumbent was a Democrat whom his Republican challenger claimed was a soft touch.
As this year’s election campaign enters its business phase, the US and Nato war effort in Afghanistan is facing one of the most serious challenges in the more than a decade of fighting as a result of “insider” attacks on its soldiers by their Afghan counterparts.
Yet even with the inevitable election focus on the economy and unemployment, the striking thing about the war in Afghanistan is how little either party wants to talk about it, despite the big questions now facing the strategy.
The Republicans will give a nod towards foreign policy at their convention in Tampa on Wednesday night, with senator John McCain and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice due to give speeches. However, on the campaign trail itself, Afghanistan hardly gets a mention. The US death toll in Afghanistan passed 2,000 last week, a milestone that went largely unremarked.
“It is crazy that they are not talking about it more, given the number of soldiers and the amount of money being spent,” says Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security Project, a Washington think-tank. “It is as if they just want the problems to go away.”
In the latest ‘insider’ attack, two US troops were killed on Monday by an Afghan soldier after an argument – taking the tally for such deaths this month to 12, the largest since the start of the war. According to Nato, 42 coalition soldiers have died in insider attacks this year.
The attacks are damaging because they strike to the core of Nato’s evolving role in Afghanistan. Under the strategy unveiled in May, combat operations will be wound down by next year, with the remaining soldiers shifting to training Afghan forces so that they can take over responsibility for security.
That means that coalition troops are being attacked by some of the very soldiers they are now supposed to be mentoring, an indication of how poisoned the relationship has become. “If US forces are going to be at increased risk, then that is going to be a non-starter,” says Linda Robinson, at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In terms of the election, the lack of discussion of Afghanistan is a reflection of both the unpopularity of the war and its complexity. According to a poll by Quinnipiac University last month, 60 per cent of registered voters said the US should no longer be involved, while only 31 per cent said the US was right to remain fighting.
Given the lack of support for the war, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has endorsed most of the Obama administration’s strategy, criticising only some of the smaller points. In a recent interview with Time, he said that it was right to end the Nato operation in 2014 but that the 30,000 US troops due to leave Afghanistan this summer should have stayed until later in the year. “There are some similarities and some differences,” he said.
Yet if the silence is politically understandable, some analysts believe that the lack of discussion will undermine support for the long-term US strategy in Afghanistan. Although the Nato operation finishes in 2014, the plan calls for a sizeable number of troops to remain in the country to continue with training and to conduct operations against terrorists.
Nato has committed to providing support to Afghanistan for another decade after 2014, with the contribution to the country’s security budget currently set at around $5bn a year. On top of that, coalition governments will also have to pay for the troops which remain and other aid projects.
Yet the US is not alone in facing enormous fiscal problems over the coming years. Political support for such funding, which in many countries will need to be approved every year, could easily evaporate – especially if the number of insider attacks escalates.
“Unless there is a concerted public campaign to build support by whoever wins the election, this strategy is simply not sustainable,” says Mr Foust.
Paul Ryan: 2014 is ‘good, reasonable timeline’ for drawdown in Afghanistan
Washington Post By Felicia Sonmez August 28, 2012
Rep. Paul Ryan last week told a North Carolina TV station that he believes the 2014 date set by President Obama for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a “good, reasonable timeline,” marking the first time that Ryan has publicly backed the drawdown date since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee earlier this month.
Last Monday, at a joint rally with Mitt Romney in Goffstown, N.H., Ryan responded to a question from a veteran on the war in Afghanistan by criticizing a different part of the current timetable.
“A drawdown occurring in the middle of a fighting season — when we’re still giving our military that same mission — we don’t want to do something that would put them in jeopardy, we want them to fulfill the missions the safest way possible,’’ Ryan told the crowd at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.
He addressed another part of the timetable in an interview with Raleigh ABC affiliate WTVD on Thursday after a defense roundtable in Fayetteville, N.C.
“We should be thinking of national security,” the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee said in response to a question about his views on the way forward in Afghanistan. “We should be thinking of troop security and safety first and foremost and not some political timetable, which I fear is how the president has made some of these decisions. We want to make sure that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists to plot future attacks against us.”
“At the same time, I think the timeline with Afghanistan on a 2014 date is a good, reasonable timeline,” he added.
Even as Ryan said he backs the 2014 date, he – along with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney – has been sharply critical of a separate drawdown date of October 2012. That date marks the deadline set by Obama for the return of some 30,000 surge troops – a move that Republicans as well as some military advisers have argued becaause it is set to take place at the height of the fighting season.
Last Monday, at a joint rally with Romney in Goffstown, N.H., Ryan responded to a question from a veteran on the war in Afghanistan by echoing GOP criticism of the fall 2012 date, which he argued is based on Obama’s political considerations rather than on the advice of commanders on the ground.
“A drawdown occurring in the middle of a fighting season -- when we’re still giving our military that same mission -- we don’t want to do something that would put them in jeopardy, we want them to fulfill the missions the safest way possible,’’ Ryan told the crowd at St. Anselm College.
At the same New Hampshire rally where Ryan expressed opposition to the October date, Romney voiced support for the 2014 timeline, although he, too, accused Obama of making a politically-motivated decision. Romney also recently told Time Magazine that he backs the 2014 timeline but “would not have announced [the date] publicly.”
Ryan has had a relatively smooth transition to the national stage since Romney tapped him to serve as his running mate a little over two weeks ago, but he has had a few apparent stumbles on foreign issues.
At the Fayetteville defense roundtable he led before last Thursday’s interview, Ryan seemed to be caught off guard by an attendee’s question about a recent statement made by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on whether veterans hould speak out politically.
The previous day, Ryan fielded a question on Obama’s foreign policy in part by discussing the looming $500 billion across-the-board cuts to defense spending, an answer that highlighted his budgetary expertise.
Afghanistan—The 'Who Cares?' War
Public apathy isn't necessarily fatal for the war effort. It could even provide the opportunity to finally get it 'right.'
Wall Street Journal By MAX BOOT Opinion August 28, 2012
In 2006, the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran published a 336-page indictment of the Iraq war, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." According to Nielsen BookScan, it sold more than 120,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. Two months ago, he published a 368-page indictment of the Afghanistan war, "Little America." It has since sold roughly 5,000 copies in hardcover.
So little attention is the public paying that even attacks by best-selling authors on the current conflict are dismissed with a collective shrug.
Yet there are still more than 80,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and every day soldiers and Marines, sailors and aircrews walk, drive and fly into harm's way. News coverage is sparse—save for occasional disasters such as "green on blue" attacks by Afghan security forces on coalition personnel or terrorist attacks in Kabul that only serve to confirm the popular perception that the war is lost.
The public's disengagement isn't all bad (more on that to come). But it is a bit surprising given that at its inception, in October 2001, this was one of the most popular conflicts the U.S. had ever undertaken. Despite the conventional wisdom that toppling the Taliban would be neither fast nor easy (remember the dread "Afghan winter"?), almost all Americans supported the decision to fight after 9/11.
But when the Taliban fell far faster and more easily than expected, complacency crept in. Convinced that the war was over, President George W. Bush refused to commit the resources necessary to rebuild Afghanistan's government and security forces. This gave the Taliban, secure in its Pakistan sanctuaries, an opening to stage a resurgence.
By 2008, security in Afghanistan was deteriorating and both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama promised to send more resources. As president, Mr. Obama delivered on his campaign pledge by almost tripling U.S. forces—to 100,000 from 34,000.
But the Obama surge did not put the war front-and-center in American politics. The president is willing to order troops to fight but not to talk about why they fight or how their fight is going. His only major speech on Afghanistan this year was May 1, to mark the signing of a strategic partnership accord in Kabul. Visitors to the White House website would be hard-pressed to find any mention of Afghanistan. The one tab under "defense" issues is for "End of Iraq War."
There is much speculation about why Mr. Obama won't talk about the war. My theory is that it is because he doesn't have a coherent message to deliver. His rationale for the troop buildup was to fight al Qaeda—notwithstanding that the terrorist group has a minimal presence in Afghanistan. He never spoke of defeating the Taliban, our actual enemies in Afghanistan, and he denied that U.S. troops would fight a "counterinsurgency" or engage in "nation-building" even while they were doing just that.
His conduct of the war has been ambivalent as well. He agreed in 2009 to send more troops, but fewer than the generals wanted. He said yes to 30,000 when Gen. Stanley McChrystal asked for at least 40,000. Then he decided to pull the surge troops out faster than the generals wanted—by the end of this September rather than waiting until at least the end of the year as then-Gen. David Petraeus advised.
Reluctant to tell the American people he is pursuing a split-the-difference policy in Afghanistan—doing just enough to avert immediate defeat but not enough to secure certain victory—Mr. Obama instead has fallen uncharacteristically quiet. His silence hasn't been filled by partisans of either political persuasion. Liberals vehemently oppose the war, but their opposition is muted because the war is being pursued by one of their own. Conservatives are uneasy because they sense the president isn't doing enough to win. But they are not sure what alternative to offer, so their criticisms too are muted.
That makes Afghanistan the "Who Cares?" war. Few, it seems, do—except for service personnel and their families. According to polls by the New York Times/CBS News and others, more than 60% of Americans think that the U.S. should not be at war in Afghanistan, but there is no intensity to the opposition. There are no antiwar marches and the war isn't an election issue. It is almost as if the war isn't happening at all.
Ideally, U.S. troops should fight with wholehearted domestic support. But public apathy isn't necessarily fatal for the war effort. It even presents a potential opportunity to finally get Afghanistan "right"—or at least as right as possible at this late stage.
We will need to maintain at least 30,000 troops in Afghanistan past 2014 to advise and assist local security forces in their battles against weakened but undefeated foes. That commitment would be hard to sustain in the face of active domestic opposition. But it may be possible in today's atmosphere of apathy. Just as there is little public awareness of troop deployments in Kosovo or South Korea or the Sinai Peninsula, so troops could conceivably stay in Afghanistan for years—as long as they don't take many casualties.
That may sound improbable now, but recall that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq had fallen off the radar screen by the time it ended last year. From a domestic standpoint, the U.S. could have continued the deployment indefinitely. The problem was that Mr. Obama didn't really want to (that ambivalence again) and therefore couldn't convince the reluctant Iraqis to go along. But the Afghans, lacking Iraq's oil, are more eager for foreign protection. Thus we could still arrive at the right policy in Afghanistan, even if the public isn't paying attention.
Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present" (Liveright, 2013).
NATO may need more troops to ship home Afghan gear
Reuters By Adrian Croft Tue Aug 28, 2012
BRUNSSUM, The Netherlands - NATO countries may temporarily send more troops to Afghanistan to pack up and ship out huge quantities of weapons and equipment as they wind down operations after more than a decade of war, a military planner said on Tuesday.
Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Richardson also said coalition members could use other routes to ship home their equipment even if the troubled crossing through Pakistan were closed to them.
With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw by the end of 2014, NATO must send home or dispose of 200,000 shipping containers and vehicles, said Richardson, a Canadian logistics expert at a NATO command in the Dutch town of Brunssum that supports the Afghan operation.
According to some estimates, more than $60 billion worth of equipment needs to be pulled out while soldiers continue operations against Taliban insurgents in a war that shows no sign of abating.
While the total number of foreign troops is falling as they gradually turn over security to Afghan forces, Richardson said the job of cleaning, packing and shipping equipment may lead some countries to send in more soldiers temporarily.
"Experience has shown us that for many of the troop-contributing nations, their troop levels will actually experience a slight increase as they bring in extra forces to prepare their equipment for redeployment," Richardson told reporters during a briefing at Brunssum.
NATO forces are expected to use a mixture of air, land and sea routes to ship home equipment and they are not completely dependent on transit through Pakistan, he said.
PAKISTAN TENSIONS
Pakistan banned trucks from carrying supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan for seven months in protest at a cross-border NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November.
The route reopened in July after the United States said "sorry" for the deaths but U.S.-Pakistan ties remain difficult.
"Would all the nations prefer to have the Pakistan option available? Yes. Can we redeploy without it? Yes. We do have other options," Richardson said.
NATO has secured transit deals with three Central Asian states, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and with Russia.
The task of sending home unwanted kit has already begun, with cargo planes flying supplies into Afghanistan now being loaded up with surplus gear for the return leg, Richardson said.
NATO members draw up their own plans for shipping out gear but the alliance coordinates them "to make sure they are not all trying to use the same routes at the same time", he said.
Some frontline combat troops have complained that the rollback from bases across Afghanistan and packing up of military equipment was disrupting operations against insurgents, but U.S. Major-General Joseph Reynes, director of operations at Brunssum, denied this was the case. {ID:nL3E8JQ027]
"There is no conflict with operational activities," he said.
Richardson said all "sensitive equipment", such as weapons, ammunition and communications devices, would be shipped out by air as it was the most secure method.
(editing by David Stamp)
Second Steel Plant Opens in Herat
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Afghanistan's second steel plant began operating on Tuesday, giving the country an additional 5 percent capacity to meet its own steel demand, according to the Commerce and Industries Minister Anwarul Haq Ahadi.
Ahadi said Tuesday that the establishment of the factory in western Herat province will help the country to reduce its iron and steel imports while also providing more employment opportunities for Afghans.
"The factory is effective for both Herat and the whole country's economy," he said at the plant's inauguration Tuesday.
The country's second factory has a capital worth of $8 million, largely funded by an Afghan trader, and employs 100 people.
Herat governor Daoud Saba spoke at the inauguration of several other reconstruction and development projects inside the province.
He said he was optimistic at the growth of commerce in Herat, saying that "more efforts will be made to begin other development projects".
The factory chief Esmatullah Wardak said the plant mainly produces rods and poles for construction from the raw material of old iron.
Wardak added that, in total, he had already invested up to $25 million in the factory.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com