[Afghan News] September 13, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Afghanistan Tries to Block Video and Head Off Rioting
By ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times September 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Racing to head off potentially violent demonstrations over an anti-Islamic video, the Afghan government on Thursday pushed Internet providers to shut down access to Web sites hosting the clip, and asked political and religious leaders to urge calm, senior Afghan officials said.
The quick action stood in contrast to a slow government response in February after deadly rioting broke out at the news that American soldiers had burned Korans. In that case, Afghan officials were slow to try to head off violence, and American officials later said they were concerned and angered by the delay. At least 29 Afghans and six American service members were killed by members of the Afghan security forces in days of violence after the Koran burning.
The decision Thursday to ask Internet companies to block access to YouTube and related Google-owned Web sites through which people could have gained access to the video was a first for the country, where the Internet is still a rarity outside the capital. By early evening, YouTube, Google News and Gmail could not be reached in the capital, and Google’s browser, Google Chrome, was also blocked.
The blockage was not uniform and the sites were still accessible on some smartphone devices, but only a small percentage of Afghans own those.
The Afghan government also sent an official letter of complaint to YouTube for providing access to a video that insulted and abused Islam’s founder and asked that the company remove it from the Web site. In a statement, Google, which owns YouTube, said that the video would not be taken down, but that the company was working with the governments of Libya and Egypt, at their request, to block access to it in those countries. It was unclear late Thursday whether that cooperation was occurring in Afghanistan as well.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the video as soon as news of it spread on Wednesday afternoon, and repeated that condemnation Thursday in a sober statement that described his conversation late Wednesday with President Obama in which it said the two leaders “denounced the film and termed it as insulting to Islamic beliefs and values.”
While Mr. Karzai did not personally call for calm in his statement, he and his government turned to influential people in communities across the country to tamp down emotions and urged clerics to avoid provocation at the weekly Friday Prayer.
In the past, it has often been radical religious leaders here who have incensed the faithful to violence. In March 2011, it was clerics who inflamed their congregations over a Florida pastor’s burning of the Koran, contributing to angry men pouring into the streets of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and killing seven international United Nations staff members in a United Nations guesthouse.
“We must keep people quiet about this,” said Rangin Spanta, the national security adviser, describing Mr. Karzai’s behind-the-scenes call for calm. “We instructed all security forces of Afghanistan, all governors, all decision makers to work with the elders, to work with the clergy, to work with the imams to not talk, to not provoke people.”
The NATO-led international military command in Afghanistan immediately issued instructions to Western troops across the country to minimize their exposure to places and situations where there could be violence, said Brig. Gen. Roger Noble, the deputy commander for NATO Operations in Afghanistan. The military told troops to “minimize the chance of being at the wrong time or inadvertently being in a place that might inflame a protest in the next few days,” he said and underscored that the international forces have “strong” respect for the Afghans’ Muslim faith.
Although senior Afghan government officials said they understood that the video was the product of a fringe element in the United States, Mr. Spanta said, “We are very, very sad about it.”
The overwhelming majority of Afghans are deeply pious and conservative Muslims, and the worry is that the film’s trailer, which coarsely portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and murderous thug, would bring Afghans into the streets, willing to do violence both to the government’s forces, who work closely with the West, and to foreigners, especially Americans, many of whom live in Kabul.
In Kandahar, where the governor and local leaders followed Mr. Karzai’s orders and held a lengthy closed meeting to discuss the film and the appropriate reaction, there was an overwhelming sense of pain over the video.
“This is deeply and extremely unacceptable for all Muslims all over the world, and this actually generates loathing for the Americans,” said Mohammed Omar Satti, a tribal elder in Kandahar and a member of the provincial Peace and Reconciliation Commission.
Several Kandahar clerics emphasized that people of all religions were appalled by the video and asked the American government to arrest the man who made it. A Kandahar imam, Mullah Azhar, asked people to be tolerant and condemn it, but to refrain from damaging Muslim property.
Like many others, he was genuinely puzzled by free speech laws in the United States that allow such work to be made public. “I ask the government of America, why did they allow a person to insult a man, Muhammad, when by insulting him they sadden the whole Muslim world and create hatred toward Americans?”
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and an employee of The New York Times from Kabul.

Fearing Unrest, Afghan President Delays Trip Abroad
VOA News September 13, 2012
Officials say Afghan President Hamid Karzai has postponed a trip to Norway following the violent protests that erupted in Libya and Egypt over an anti-Islam film.
Norway's Foreign Ministry said it was informed by the the Afghan Foreign Ministry that Karzai's visit set for Friday has been delayed.
The Norwegian foreign ministry said Thursday that the Afghan leader finds it necessary to remain in Afghanistan "in light of the serious events in some Arab countries recently."
A spokesman for President Karzai also confirmed the postponement to VOA, but would not give details.
On Wednesday, Karzai discussed the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya during a phone call with President Barack Obama. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, were killed by suspected Islamist militants.
The White House said President Karzai expressed condolences for the "tragic loss of American life." The two leaders also discussed the importance of working together to help ensure the circumstances that led to the violence in Libya and Egypt do not pose a threat to U.S. forces or Afghans.
An obscure American-made film mocking the Prophet Muhammad prompted the protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. The movie's trailer had been posted online.
U.S. troops sparked outrage in Afghanistan last February for burning copies of the Quran. The incident resulted in violence across Afghanistan that left 30 people dead.
Afghans have also taken to the streets in recent years to protest the publishing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers and a Dutch film said to be critical of the Quran.
Elsewhere in South Asia, at least 100 demonstrators in Bangladesh's capital chanted anti-American slogans and burned a U.S. flag Thursday to protest the American-made film.

Britain considers early withdrawal from Afghanistan: paper
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain could withdraw its troops from Afghanistan faster than expected next year, as military commanders reassess how many troops they need to help local forces fight the Taliban, Britain's defense secretary said in an interview.
Britain is due to withdraw 500 soldiers by the end of this year, leaving 9,000 soldiers to help Afghan National Security Forces, but Philip Hammond said there WAs potential to further "draw down troops in 2013."
"Six months ago the message coming from them was that we really need to hold on to everything we have got for as long as we possibly can. I think they are seeing potentially more flexibility in the situation," Hammond told Friday's Guardian newspaper.
He did not go into details and said no decisions had been taken on an accelerated withdrawal of troops, with the bulk of Britain's soldiers planned to return home by the end of 2014.
"I think there is a bit of a rethinking going on about how many troops we do actually need," said Hammond.
"There may be some scope for a little bit more flexibility on the way we draw down, and that is something commanders on the ground are looking at very actively."
He said British military thinking was evolving because commanders had been "surprised by the extent to which they have been able to draw back and leave the Afghans to take the lion's share of the combat role".
Hammond said the security situation was improving in Helmand province in Afghanistan's southwest, where British troops have mainly been based, after some of the bloodiest fighting in the Afghan conflict and the deaths of more than 20 British troops in recent months.
(Reporting by Stephen Mangan; editing by Andrew Roche)

15 Taliban militants killed in Afghanistan within 24 hours: gov't
KABUL, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Military operations carried out by the Afghan police, army and the NATO-led coalition forces have claimed the lives of 15 Taliban militants in different Afghan provinces within the past 24 hours, authorities said Thursday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan army and intelligence agency in collaboration with the coalition forces launched 13 joint cleanup operations in Kapisa, Baghlan, Jowzjan, Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Wardak, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika and Helmand provinces over the past 24 hours," the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement issued here.
"As a result of these operations, 15 armed Taliban were killed, four wounded and 10 others were arrested by the ANP," the statement said, adding that the joint forces also found and seized weapons and explosive during the above raids.
The statement did not say whether there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not made comments yet.
Afghan forces and some 130,000 NATO-led coalition troops have recently intensified cleanup operations against Taliban and other militants throughout the country.
As the militants are facing the ever-mounting pressure from the strikes launched by security forces, they have changed their tactics by avoiding direct conflicts with troops and shifting to attack on the so-called "soft targets" such as civilian, government agency buildings and infrastructure in a bid to force the government to stop the strikes against them.
Up to 30 people including eight policemen were killed and more than 30 others injured in two suicide bombings in northern Kunduz and western Herat province on Monday and Tuesday.

Joint Police Operation Destroys Afghan Drug Labs
September 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Russian officials say a joint operation with U.S. and Afghan drug agencies eliminated six illegal drug labs in Afghanistan along with 5.6 tons of narcotics.
Russia's Federal Service for Drugs Control said the sites were in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Badakhshan.
It said the labs were synthesizing several types of drugs from opium.
Drugs confiscated in the operation included 180 kilograms of heroin, 1,500 kilograms of morphine, and 1,200 kilograms of opium.
Seventy Afghan police took part in the operation along with Russian officers and agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Drugs produced by the labs reportedly were meant to be smuggled to Central Asia and Russia, from where criminal gangs often forward Afghan heroin and opium onto the international black market.
Based on reporting by Interfax and ITAR-TASS

Improving Pakistan-India Ties Crucial for Afghanistan's Future
Sharon Behn VOA News September 12, 2012
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — Analysts say that warming ties between India and Pakistan in recent months are especially important for Afghanistan as foreign troops prepare to leave in the coming year. There are myriad ways that relations between the arch-rivals affect the entire region.
After years of sour relations and three wars, neighbors Pakistan and India this month agreed to ease visa restrictions between their countries, allowing more cross-border travel.
The small - yet symbolic - development comes at an important political time, as cooperation between Islamabad and New Delhi is seen as key to Afghanistan’s future. Ahmad Majidyar of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington explains the importance.
“As far as Afghanistan is concerned, both Islamabad and New Delhi are pursuing divergent interests, so a normalization of ties between India and Pakistan will put an end to the proxy wars that are happening in Afghanistan and will lead to stability in the country,” said Majidyar.
Ties to militant groups
India and Pakistan have accused each other of backing different militant groups as subversive tools of their nations’ foreign policy.
The so-called Haqqani network, reportedly based in northwestern Pakistan, is one of the most powerful militant factions in Afghanistan and is believed to have links to the Pakistani military.
Majidyar said improving ties with India, however, could lead Pakistan to distance itself from the Haqqani group.
“The reason that the Pakistanis still see the Haqqani network and the Taliban in general as strategic assets for their interests in Afghanistan - one reason is India. So if there is any improved relations between India and Pakistan, that would put an end to those calculations,” said Majidyar.
India still maintains serious concerns over Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group in Pakistan accused of perpetrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Hassan Abbas, senior adviser at the Asia Society in Washington, said the way in which Pakistan addresses its relationship with these militant groups is a key factor for its external relations.
“The peace process in South Asia is linked to how militant groups are dealt with, and linked to the situation in Afghanistan,” said Abbas.
Trending in right direction
There are signs that Pakistan is taking some steps toward outlawing militant groups that long have been tolerated by the government.
Pakistan has been strengthening its own antiterrorism laws to deal with militants regularly killing soldiers and civilians, but analysts say it is still too early to determine if they will be effectively implemented.
Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent security analyst in Islamabad, said the warming ties with India and changing attitude toward domestic militants points to a positive trend, but a limited one.
“These are small building blocks. One hopes that eventually it all comes together and improves the regional situation, but for the time being they are small initiatives,” said Siddiqa.
Siddiqa said much more still has to be done before there is a solution to the region's long-running conflicts.

A Long View of Afghanistan’s Wars
By RICHARD OPPEL The New York Times September 13, 2012, 5:00 am
KABUL, Afghanistan - One of the most troubling things about the national conversation about Afghanistan is that it tends to focus almost solely on the decade since the 2001 American-led invasion. Perhaps this is understandable, since the Afghan conflict marks the longest stretch of time that the United States has actively been at war. And as always, the latest crisis, any of them, dominates attention: the growing threat posed by Afghan forces who kill their NATO colleagues, the unwillingness of Pakistan to stop sheltering militants who carry out attacks in Kabul, the plague of official corruption that undermines Western trust and the Afghan public's support.
But both Afghanistan's current throes and any educated guess about its future can only be appreciated by considering not just the course of the American-led occupation but three other distinct periods over the past
quarter-century as well. Illustrating the arc of all four - and thus giving a glimpse of the sort of possibilities that could be in store for the next phase - is the accomplishment of "A Distant War," a new book-length project by Bob Nickelsberg, one of the region's longest-serving photojournalists.
Mr. Nickelsberg came to Afghanistan the year before the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a period that some compare to the current American and NATO coalition: A large, long-term foreign occupier that built up a huge indigenous security force only to withdraw after failing to defeat rugged guerrillas, who in many parts of the country, remained the de facto government administration.
In "A Distant War," Mr. Nickelsberg dwells into all four violent phases that followed: His first chapter encompasses the ending years of the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s and the fight for Kabul and other major cities that ensued. The second tracks the 1992 fall of Kabul and the Soviet-backed government and the brutal four-year civil war that followed, one fought more for power than ideology.
It was the depredations of the warlords who ruled this period, many of whom are nearly as powerful today as back then, that laid the groundwork for the third chapter: the rise and dominion of the Taliban, who seized Kabul
in 1996, and before the United States invasion, controlled 90 percent of the country despite being almost entirely made up of Pashtuns, who are less than half the population. After a decade of occupation - the subject of Mr. Nickelsberg's fourth chapter - the Taliban still effectively control much of the country, particularly in the south and east and some of the north, where local residents, out of expediency or fear, or both, turn to mullahs to settle disputes instead of whatever anemic and corrupt government presence exists.
So with nearly all Western troops scheduled to be pulled out in two years, the last phase Mr. Nickelsberg chronicles is beginning to draw to a close. What will be the fate of the fifth? A collapse of the foreign-backed government, followed by civil war, similar to what happened after the Soviets left? A successful peace deal that allows for the Pashtun-dominated Taliban to share power with their nemesis, the old Northern Alliance factions? Or perhaps the minority groups - the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, who have a disproportionate presence in the country's fledgling security forces - will be able to defend Kabul, while the Taliban dominate the south and the east.
And will the Hazara, the long-oppressed Shiite minority group, be able to retain heart-stirring advances in education, employment and political representation? Will women be consigned to abuse and illiteracy?
Mr. Nickelsberg doesn't see an identical repeat of the early 1990s replaying after Western troops leave: Some of the mujahedeen leaders who drove the Soviets out are now heavily invested in the new Afghan order, both politically and commercially. And despite all the recent "insider" killings by Afghan forces, Western military troops are seen by many Afghans as far more benevolent than a Soviet war machine that killed one million people in a decade. Some Western troops - and a lot of Western aid money - will remain as well.
But looking back on his two decades roaming the most austere corners of Afghanistan - the very places where the country's power brokers derive their greatest influence - Mr. Nickelsberg believes the West is in for
disappointment.
"A lot of things have improved," he said in a phone interview from New York. "But the cohesiveness that a lot of countries had sought will never come. They had high hopes that Afghans would rally around a central
government, but that is never going to happen. It's just the nature of the place. There is no real trust in a central government, and because there are no properly-functioning civil institutions in Afghanistan, politics is all about the people, and all very locally oriented." And in Afghanistan, local politics all too often means warlords and Taliban mullahs.
Conflict has been a constant for so long here that only those in their late 30s or older remember life before the Soviet occupation, leaving only a precious few with memories of anything besides war, given that some
estimates of average life expectancy are still no better than 50. Even after the mujahedeen defeated the Soviet-backed government and took control of Kabul 20 years ago, all that meant was the beginning of an even more horrific phase for those who live in Kabul, who soon came under bombardment from warring factions, signaling the start of the 1992-96 civil war.
"There was very little time to celebrate that victory, because it immediately turned into another battle," Mr. Nickelsberg said. "There has never been any period of celebration; it just continued on to another chapter of violence. And unless you stopped and pulled back from this, you wouldn't gain any sense of continuity from one chapter to another."
Mr. Nickelsberg, who would shoot for Time magazine, The New York Times and other publications in Afghanistan for more than two decades while based in New Delhi and New York, first came here in January 1988. (Bob and I are friends and we have worked together in Afghanistan and Iraq.) He traveled to all corners of the country in taxis rented by the week or the month, and sent rolls of film out of the country with friends or businessmen traveling to Pakistan's Islamabad, New Delhi or Europe, where undeveloped film could be sent onward to picture editors in New York and Hong Kong.
The reporter who worked most closely with him in Afghanistan, Tim McGirk, recently recalled seeking him out when he arrived in 1990, "thinking, unwisely, that he would keep me from getting shot at. It was quite the
reverse. Nickelsberg reacts to gunfire like a bird-dog to the rustle of quail." Mr. McGirk, a former Time magazine bureau chief, claims to be the faster runner in retreat, but he admired Mr. Nickelsberg's style.
"He dresses for war as if going for a brisk walk in the Vermont hills, his hair as clipped as a military officer's, perfectly parted," he wrote on Time's Web site. "In the midst of Afghanistan's chaos, Nickelsberg always kept his composure."
For anyone here, one of the first pictures Mr. Nickelsberg ever took in Afghanistan has a spooky resonance: An Afghan soldier handing a small flag to a Soviet soldier riding in the hatch of a troop carrier as a Soviet column departed the country. The two men, Afghan and Russian, are smiling. In the last months before Kabul fell to the mujahedeen and the city was decimated by warring factions, Mr. Nickelsberg also captured Afghan men performing a traditional dance in Kabul's Babur Gardens. They do the same dance there now as well, though many of the country's young and educated fear such expressive liberties may disappear.
It was also in this period that Mr. Nickelsberg first met Jalaluddin Haqqani (Slide 8), leader of the fearsome clan that now dominates a portion of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier and who American intelligence officials say functions with support from the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. The Haqqanis carry out many of the deadliest and most sophisticated attacks on American and Indian targets in Kabul. But when Mr. Nickelsberg snapped a picture of the patriarch in May 1990 at his jihadist training base in Afghanistan's Khost Province, he encountered not hostility but a vain man who cared a lot about his appearance - especially a beard as large as his head.
Mr. Haqqani has been a C.I.A. ally in the 1980s and by then was growing committed to global jihad, but "nobody took that concept seriously back then," Mr. Nickelsberg recalls. But the warlord made an impression: deft
and manipulative, if a bit preening.
"He reminded me of Ben Cartwright," he said, referring to the family patriarch in the show "Bonanza." "He knew how to manipulate extremely well, to stay in power not only politically but also commercially, as his family was heavily into smuggling. He took a lot of care about his appearance but had an air of confidence." As Mr. Nickelsberg took pictures, Scud missiles fired by government forces who then still controlled the provincial capital landed nearby. Mr. Haqqani just chuckled.
Many of Mr. Nickelsberg's most remarkable pictures are from the 1992-96 civil war and document the destruction not only of Kabul's buildings but also the souls of its harrowed residents. In one of the seminal pictures of that era, Mr. Nickelsberg captured a frame of two fighters loyal to the Uzbek commander Abdul Rashid Dostum firing on Hezb-i-Islami forces of the Pakistani-backed warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in southwest Kabul.
Mr. Hekmatyar (below), still a powerful insurgent leader today, was Mr. Nickelsberg's bête noire, in his view the worst of the warlords of that era, "at least as far as indiscriminate killing and violence in Kabul." (Many Afghans would rank some other warlords right alongside him as well.) Mr. Hekmatyar's deviousness was only surpassed by his competitiveness with other warlords, Mr. Nickelsberg recalls. He controlled much of the east and recruited from refugee camps in Peshawar, Pakistan, and other places. Mr. Nickelsberg was struck by how Mr. Hekmatyar used a translator even though he spoke English, a device, perhaps, to make it easier to deflect questions he cared not to answer.
Mr. Hekmatyar also represents what Mr. Nickelsberg admits is an obsession with a singular theme that has bedeviled the country throughout decades of fighting: Foreign influences, particularly the Pakistanis and their
highly-effective spy agency that turned the Pashtun clans on the frontier into sophisticated and fearsome movements that can strike at the heart of the most guarded enclaves of Kabul.
For the Pakistanis, Mr. Nickelsberg believes, it all goes back to the 1947 partition and a continuing paranoia that India, now wealthier and more powerful, will undermine Pakistan by strengthening its alliance with Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan stuck in the middle.
Pakistan seethes that "India plays big brother through their foreign relations, and Afghanistan was one place that this anger and animosity would play out," Mr. Nickelsberg said. Yet Pakistan was hardly alone: Iran supported minority Shiite groups, the Saudis supported the fighters of warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf as well as Arab Al Qaeda fighters and other Sunni movements, and Tajik fighters got backing from India and Russia.
Pakistan eventually shifted much of its support from Mr. Hekmatyar to the Taliban, who eventually did what Mr. Hekmatyar could never do: capture Kabul.
As the Taliban moved on the capital in September 1996, Mr. Nickelsberg was there, shooting pictures as they fired rockets at retreating Northern Alliance forces, until one very angry Taliban commander chased him away.
And he was with the Taliban in May 1997, when for a very brief period they were part of a power-sharing arrangement with Uzbek commanders in Mazar-i-Sharif, the country's northern hub. Thirty-six hours after the truce, Mr. Nickelsberg and a handful of other journalists heard pings on rooftops, and venturing onto a main street, he snapped away as a Taliban fighter perhaps a 100 feet from him was gunned down by an Uzbek militia fighter who had lured him into an ambush. It proved the beginning of an all-out massacre of the Taliban; the city's Uzbek population had quickly rejected decrees to stop educating girls and for men to turn in weapons. As gunfire erupted, Mr. Nickelsberg and some colleagues were pinned down for 15 minutes before scrambling away and taking shelter at an International Committee of the Red Cross clinic. For two days, huge numbers of Taliban fighters were massacred across the city.
If Mr. Hekmatyar was the most craven figure he encountered, the most charismatic was Ahmed Shah Massoud - Mr. Hekmatyar's rival from university days - and the military commander of the Northern Alliance. Mr. Massoud's picture still bedecks banners across Kabul, his handsome, bearded and chiseled features staring out over squares in the capital city.
But Mr. Massoud was actually a little shy and aloof, and not much of a public speaker, Mr. Nickelsberg said. Always in motion, brave and intuitively and strategically brilliant, Mr. Massoud, who also spoke French, last granted Mr. Nickelsberg an audience in May 2001 at his camp in Takhar Province near the Tajikistan border. The Taliban by that time controlled almost all of the country, and it was only a matter of time, Mr. Nickelsberg said, that they would drive Mr. Massoud's forces even out of Takhar. It wasn't from lack of resolve against the Taliban, but by 2001, there had been too much starvation, too much blood and too much fatigue. The Northern Alliance was tired and ripe to give way, Mr. Nickelsberg felt.
He also remembers Mr. Massoud saying during that last visit, just four months before the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, that his enemies had something major in the works. "Massoud's contacts in Kandahar were picking up that something was going on," Mr. Nickelsberg recalled. "They were working on something, some big Western project."
Indeed, for Mr. Massoud and the Northern Alliance, fate would intercede a few months after Mr. Nickelsberg photographed him striding out of his headquarters in Takhar as he rolled up his sleeves (above): Mr. Massoud was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001 by two Al Qaeda members posing as journalists. Two days later the twin towers fell - perhaps the project Mr. Massoud's agents had caught some hint of - and soon C.I.A. paramilitary forces were working to drive out the Taliban with Northern Alliance forces. Two months later, Kabul would fall for the third time in a decade.
Mr. Nickelsberg, now 61, still has the curiosity and energy of a college student. He can keep pace-for-pace with troops one-third his age, as he did in the 125-degree summer of 2009 in southern Helmand Province, where
he documented Marines doing the civil and administrative jobs in a tiny village that Afghan forces were supposed to be doing. And he did it that year as well in Ghazni Province, talking pictures of a fledgling Afghan police force decimated not so much by the Taliban but by thievery of their own leaders and corruption so endemic that the commander of an American outpost described the Afghan promotion system as: "Hey, your sister has a pretty mouth - do you want to be a general?"
Mr. Nickelsberg takes no position on whether the Americans and NATO should stay or go in 2014, the planned pullout date. But he finds it hard to be optimistic about what will follow. He recalls being one of a handful of journalists watching as the United States closed its embassy in Kabul in 1989. The flag was lowered as it snowed.
"I nearly put my camera down and walked away," he said. "It was so evident that things were going to spiral out of control."

Afghanistan’s sad death toll barely noted
By Robert Burns Associated Press
It was another week at war in Afghanistan, another string of U.S. casualties and another collective shrug by a nation weary of a faraway conflict whose hallmark is its grinding inconclusiveness.
After nearly 11 years, many by now have grown numb to the sting of losing soldiers such as Pfc. Shane W. Cantu of Corunna, Mich. He died of shrapnel wounds in the remoteness of eastern Afghanistan, not far from the getaway route that Osama bin Laden took when U.S. forces invaded after Sept. 11, 2001, and began America's longest war.
Cantu was 10 back then.
Nearly every day, the Pentagon posts another formulaic death notice, each one brief and unadorned, revealing the barest of facts – name, age and military unit – but no words that might capture the meaning of the loss.
The death of Cantu, who joined the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade on Sept. 11 last year and went to Afghanistan last month, was among five U.S. deaths announced this past week as the Democrats and Republicans wrapped up back-to-back presidential nominating conventions.
U.S. troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a pace that often doesn't register beyond their hometowns.
So far this year, the average is 31 a month, or one per day. National attention is drawn, briefly, to grim and arbitrary milestones such as the 1,000th and 2,000th war deaths.
But days, weeks and months pass with little focus by the general public or its political leaders on the individuals behind the statistics.
Each week at war has a certain sameness for those not fighting it, yet every week brings distinct pain and sorrow to families who learn that their son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother was killed or wounded.
Cantu died Aug. 28, but the Pentagon did not publicly release his name until Sept. 5. He was memorialized by his paratrooper "sky soldier" comrades in Italy on Sept. 6 and honored in his hometown of Corunna. He would have turned 21 next month.
His roommate in Afghanistan, Pfc. Cameron Richards, 23, remembers Cantu as a larger-than-life figure, a guy with an infectious smile who took pride in whipping up spaghetti, tacos and other dinners on his portable skillet. It was a knack he attributed to having grown up with five sisters with whom he shared family meal duties.
"He was the type of person you wanted to be around every day," Pfc. Richards said in a telephone interview Friday from the brigade's headquarters in Italy, where he returned after being wounded by shrapnel from a hand grenade two weeks before Cantu was killed.
"When he was in the room, you knew he was in the room. He'd be the loudest one laughing," he added. "He impacted everybody."
As the war drags on, it remains a faraway puzzle for many Americans.
Max Boot, a military historian and defense analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, has called Afghanistan the "Who Cares?" war.
"Few, it seems, do, except for service personnel and their families," he wrote recently. "It is almost as if the war isn't happening at all."
One measure of how far the war has receded into the background in America is that it was not even mentioned by Mitt Romney in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination on Aug. 30.
President Obama has pledged to end the main U.S. combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but current plans call for thousands of U.S. troops to remain long after that to train Afghans and hunt terrorists.
The war remains at the forefront, naturally, for members of the military such as Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly, whose son, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly, was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan in November 2010.
"America as a whole today is certainly not at war, not as a country, not as a people," Gen. Kelly said in a speech Aug. 28 at the American Legion's national convention. Gen. Kelly is Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta's senior military assistant.
"Only a tiny fraction of American families fear all day and every day a knock at the door that will shatter their lives," Gen. Kelly said.

Afghan Intelligence Should Work with Pakistan: Former ISI Chief
TOLonews.com By Rafi Sediqi Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Afghan security officials should have close ties with the Pakistan intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and less interest in working with India, former ISI chief Gen. Hamid told TOLOnews Wednesday.
He said that the two nations security and intelligence bodies should work closely in order to unite the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In the current situation, anyone who is appointed as head of the Afghan spy agency should have good ties with Pakistan and less interest in India," Gul said via a telephone interview.
Afghan lawmakers dismissed Gul's statements saying that he was guilty of human rights violations and was only interested in interfering in Afghanistan.
"The Afghan people do not have good memories of Gen. Hamid Gul's role in the ISI because of the severe criminal and human rights' violations which have occurred in Afghanistan, supported by the Pakistani spy and military agencies," Badakhshan MP Fawzia Kofi told TOLOnews.
"Because Afghanistan's intelligence agency is so important for Pakistan, that is why they want to have some kind of influence over it. It's a clear intervention into Afghanistan," she added.
Gul's comments come after the nominated chief to head Afghanistan's intelligence agency National Directorate of Security (NDS), Asadullah Khalid, is known to be strongly opposed to the ISI.
However, some lawmakers believe that officials at the NDS have revealed nationally-sensitive plans to ISI in the past, so they are keen to have figures in the top security and intelligence positions who are not interested in working with Pakistan.

Afghanistan's best and worst case scenarios
13 September 2012 BBC News
BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson in Kabul says that there there is not much optimism nowadays among Afghan politicians, diplomats and soldiers.
In a country which has known nothing but war for 40 years, the assumption is that it will just continue.
The most serious danger is that a political vacuum will build up.
There are considerable anxieties about this among Western governments.
The latest figure to check out the political health of the Karzai administration is UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond.
He arrived at a moment when the Afghan government was anxious that protests would erupt here about the anti-Islamic film which has been made in the United States, as they have in Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
Mr Hammond's anxieties were different.
He was worried about the recent numbers of attacks by Afghans on Western soldiers who are teaching or mentoring them: the so-called "green-on-blue" incidents.
These would, he told President Hamid Karzai, endanger the entire British and American strategy for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
As a result, Mr Karzai issued new guidelines to his forces, designed to prevent this kind of thing: some practical, such as examining the backgrounds of new Afghan recruits more carefully, and some cultural, explaining Western attitudes a little better.
But Mr Hammond must also have wanted to find out whether President Karzai is becoming a spent force.
He has recently sacked some of his top ministers, but is finding it hard to get the Afghan parliament to approve new ones.
Elections wrecked
And the year 2014, when most Americans and British troops will pull out, is getting closer.
Afghanistan will hold a new presidential election that summer, two years from now. President Karzai will have to stand down, yet no-one has any idea yet who might take over from him.
So what is likely to happen?
The gloomiest scenario runs as follows: President Karzai will smooth the way for his brother, who has been accused of gross corruption, to stand for the presidency.
Many people here feel this would discredit the entire election process. Foreign countries would be reluctant to give Afghanistan the aid they have promised.
The Taliban, the scenario continues, will raise their campaign to new heights, and wreck the elections altogether.
The political system will then implode. The British and American troops will withdraw, and Afghanistan will be once more what the outside world allowed it to become in the 1990s: a black hole, in which only the most extreme elements could thrive.
This is scary stuff, and quite a few people here believe it. But when you examine it more closely, it does not really stand up.
For a start, people close to President Karzai seriously doubt that he will encourage his brother to stand in his place; in fact, they say, he will warn him off.
Hamid Karzai himself apparently wants to become an elder statesman after leaving office - someone above the fray, who can bring the warring factions together in peace.
Those hopes would be wrecked if his questionable brother were in power.
As for the Taliban, the Afghan experts say, they are not a united force in any way. They fall into three broad groups:
Those who enjoyed being in power, as they were from 1996 to 2001, and want to get back into government again
Those who joined the Taliban to get rid of Western troops
Those who want to keep on fighting, because it gives them a purpose in life
Muddle along
Top government people in Kabul maintain they can do a deal with the first two of these groups.
Jobs in government will be made available to the Taliban, and most Western troops are going anyway.
The only group they cannot come to terms with is those who are determined to keep on fighting.
The Taliban are clever and daring, but they do not seem to have the capability to take over the country again.
A much more likely outcome after 2014 is that the new Afghan government, like the present one, will control only the main cities and the air routes.
The rest of the country will be dangerous, and largely in the hands of Taliban groups or warlords.
So Afghanistan is not going to turn into Switzerland.
But if the outside world keeps its promises about financial help and does not forget about the country again, it could maybe muddle along.
Even civil wars peter out in the end.
With luck, Afghanistan will get a little richer, a little safer and a little better-run every year; until one day Afghans will wake up and realise that the decades of civil war are just a nasty memory.
You could scarcely win an election on a manifesto like that. But it is probably the best outcome Afghanistan can hope for.

Western support for Afghanistan war collapsing, survey shows
Large majorities in Europe and US favour withdrawal or troop reduction, according to transatlantic trends survey
Guardian.co.uk By Simon Tisdall Wednesday 12 September 2012
Public support for the war in Afghanistan is collapsing in western and Nato member countries, with 53% of Europeans and 44% of Americans favouring the immediate withdrawal of all troops, an international survey shows.
Large majorities – 75% of European respondents and 68% of Americans – support either withdrawal or an immediate troop reduction, according to the annual transatlantic trends survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
In each of the top European Nato members supplying troops in Afghanistan, the majority of respondents preferred complete withdrawal: Germany (51%), the UK (52%), Italy (55%), France (61%), and Poland (62%).
The number of Americans who preferred increasing troop levels in Afghanistan shrank from 30% in 2009 to 5% this year, and the proportion wanting immediate withdrawal rose nine points in a year, from 35% in 2011.
The findings come amid worries that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating after a spate of lethal attacks on coalition troops by members of the Afghan army and police, and continuing casualties among Afghan civilians.
Under present plans, the US and British governments are committed to handing over security control to Afghan forces and withdrawing their troops by 2014. Little substantive progress has been made in peace talks with the Taliban, despite numerous initiatives in the past two years.
The survey found a sharp increase in public doubts about the prospects for a successful outcome in Afghanistan: 56% of Americans said they were pessimistic and 38% optimistic, an almost exact reversal of the findings two years ago. On average, 70% of Europeans were gloomy about the conflict, with the French (84%) and the Germans (81%) the most pessimistic of all.
The survey reveals that public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic is split on the overall wisdom of military intervention. Fewer than 50% of people in most European countries believed the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions were worthwhile. Even last year's Libya Nato intervention, which was judged successful at the time, received very mixed support.
The survey found very little support for military action against Iran to halt its suspected nuclear programme. Only 7% of people in the EU preferred military action over all other options, and 34% preferred offering economic incentives to Tehran to abandon the programme.
In the US, 32% preferred economic sanctions. American public support for the Obama administration's policy of helping the Iranian opposition fell sharply from 25% in 2010 to 10% in 2012, closely matching the European figure of 13%.
When respondents were given an either-or choice between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or using military force to prevent it, opinion shifted significantly. In Europe, 46% said they would support military action, and in the US 57%. But resistance to an attack on Iran was high even in this scenario. In the UK 49% of people said they would prefer to accept a nuclear-armed Iran rather than go to war.
When those who said they would support military action against Iran were asked whether they also supported their own country's involvement, or the use of their country's ground troops, enthusiasm for an attack ebbed even further.
Large majorities on both sides of the Atlantic agreed with the proposition that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians against violence by their own government. But this sentiment did not translate into strong support for western military intervention in Syria, the survey found. Roughly one in three respondents in the US, Europe and Turkey backed the idea of intervention in Syria. Majorities in Europe (59%), the US (55%) and Turkey (57%) said their countries should stay out of the conflict completely.
• The German Marshall Fund of the United States transatlantic trends survey interviewed people in the US, Russia and Turkey and 12 European countries in June this year.

INSIGHT - Afghans seek shelter in Dubai ahead of pullout
Reuters By Praveen Menon and Matthew Green Thu Sep 13, 2012
DUBAI/KABUL - Not long ago, Mohammed Daoud was making good money hiring out halls for wedding parties thrown by a new class of Afghan war entrepreneurs.
Today, he is using some of the profits to buy a $160,000 apartment nestled amid the skyscrapers and shopping malls of Dubai.
Daoud sees his 27th-floor bolt-hole as both a canny investment and the ultimate insurance policy against the darkest scenarios he can envisage for his homeland when the bulk of foreign forces leave.
"Nobody knows what's going to happen after 2014," he told Reuters in Kabul. "If something happens with the security situation here, I can take my family. We feel safe in Dubai."
Wealthy Afghans have sharply increased the pace of investment in property in the Gulf Emirate, motivated by a mix of hard-headed commercial calculations and more nebulous security fears sparked by the drawdown.
AFGHAN SHOPPING SPREES
Afghan buyers spent 220 million dirhams on property in Dubai in the first six months of this year, a 27 percent increase compared with the same period in 2011, according to Dubai government data obtained by Reuters. Some are spending up to 20 million dirhams on shopping sprees for multiple villas, while many buy million-dollar homes in cash, dealers say.
The growth outpaced a 21 percent rise in total property transactions in Dubai by both local and foreign investors in the same period. The interest was driven in part by a steep decline in prices in the Emirate's once white-hot property market.
The figures will make troubling reading for Western allies struggling to convince an uneasy Afghan population the transition will not be a prelude to international abandonment or an escalation in fighting with the Taliban.
Haji Obaidullah Sader Khail, chairman of the Afghan-Dubai Business Council, said the true scale of Afghan investment could be four times higher than the data suggests because many transactions may not have been registered.
"I know people who have bought 15 to 20 villas," he said.
According to the official figures, the number of properties Afghans bought in Dubai jumped to 114 in the first half compared to 76 in the same period in 2011.
BILLIONS IN SUITCASES
Reports from real estate agents that Afghans routinely buy luxury homes in cash will do little to ease concerns that some of the billions of dollars the United States and its allies spend to bankroll the government and security forces is seeping abroad.
Afghanistan's central bank says that Afghans carried $4.5 billion in cash from Kabul airport last year in declared currency exports, double the amount in 2010. The bank estimates that the total amount of cash leaving Afghanistan each year could be as much as $8 billion -- almost twice the size of last year's budget.
The exodus of money is even larger than the $6.37 billion in net official development assistance Afghanistan received in 2010 -- 45 percent of gross domestic product -- making it one of the world's most aid-dependent countries.
The central bank imposed new rules limiting the amount of cash an individual can take out of the country to $20,000 in March, but officials say cash is finding alternative paths, such as the poorly-supervised airport in Kandahar in the south.
"People are still taking physical cash from Afghanistan," deputy central bank governor Khan Afzal Hadawal told Reuters. "We are working on a mechanism to ensure the money is channelled through the banking sector."
While much of the outflow may represent the proceeds of regional currency trading or licit commerce in a cash-based economy, Afghan and Western officials believe a share is derived from government corruption, the theft of aid or heroin trafficking.
"With the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan a feeling of insecurity is setting in," said Parvees Gafur, chief executive of Dubai-based Propsquare Real Estate. "They want to invest before it's too late."
"TRADERS ARE LIKE BIRDS"
The legacy of the West's adventure in Afghanistan will not depend solely on the fight against the Taliban; if growth stalls it may be harder for the state to consolidate its authority as most foreign troops return home.
The flood of cash leaving Kabul airport in boxes and suitcases has stoked fears that entrenched graft and persistent capital flight will make it harder to put a booming but fragile war economy on a more sustainable path.
A U.S. government audit report last year found it was almost impossible to track where much of the billions of dollars spent on security and development projects in the last decade had gone given the country's weak financial tracking system and poor bank oversight. Afghanistan ranks near the bottom of Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Afghanistan's power elite has long cherished second, third or fourth homes in Dubai as footholds in a land of designer boutiques and safe neighbourhoods less than a three-hour flight from the more unpredictable streets of Kabul.
Since the United States ousted the Taliban in 2001, lucrative and often badly-supervised contracting opportunities offered by NATO forces or civilian agencies have spawned a new breed of oligarchs who boast ostentatious addresses. With international forces scaling back, growth is sure to slow.
"Spending from the U.S. and international community is going to decrease," said Ajmal Saifi, chief executive of Prestige Real Estate in Dubai, part of an Afghan family-run conglomerate that includes construction and retail interests in Afghanistan.
UNCERTAINTY AFTER KARZAI
Uncertainty about who will replace President Hamid Karzai, due to step down in 2014, has compounded investor anxieties in a patronage-driven economy where fortunes are won or lost as the political landscape shifts.
Under pressure from aid donors, Karzai has ordered ministries to take steps to fight corruption and told the Supreme Court to accelerate investigations into long-standing graft cases.
Although few believe his call will have much impact, the announcements have caused jitters among Afghan plutocrats.
Western countries have pledged durable support to the Afghan government, keen to allay fears of a replay of the slow-motion collapse and civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
But Afghan investors are wary of risking their savings to build factories or farm projects that could help reduce Afghanistan's chronic dependence on foreign aid while the country is in flux.
"The traders are like birds, always looking for greener and more suitable places. But now they are flying from Afghanistan," said Khan Jan Alokozai, one of Afghanistan's most prominent traders and Vice-Chairman of the country's chamber of commerce.
"They all fear that if the government starts to crack down on corruption, they will lose all they have earned. So it's a good time to take out as much as they can," he said.
"ALWAYS CASH BUYS"
Buyers jetting in from Kabul are mainly purchasing property worth between three million dirhams and four million dirhams, according to Gafur, the dealer.
Some have found their dream home in the Palm Jumeirah, a frond-shaped development of luxury seafront villas whose vista of passing yachts cuts a stark contrast with the panorama of tawny hills encircling Kabul.
Others have sought an abode in up-market developments with names like Emirates Living and Business Bay and in the needle-shaped Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.
In spite of the sums involved, Afghans often prefer to pay cash to avoid the higher fees and greater scrutiny required to move money through the banking system, dealers say.
"They are always on cash buys," said Said Quaid Abbas, managing partner at Mideast Properties, a Dubai-based real estate firm, which counts some Afghans among its clientele. "They don't deal through banks."
BARGAIN HUNTING
Security concerns have motivated many Afghan house-hunters to buy in Dubai, but some are primarily looking for bargains.
Dubai real estate prices slumped by more than 60 percent from their peak in 2008 after the global economic crisis triggered a collapse in the Emirate's property market.
Prices have started to recover. The total value of real estate transactions in Dubai topped 63 billion dirhams in the first half of 2012, a 21 percent increase over the same period in the previous year, according to the data.
Foreign investors bought 22 billion dirhams of the total, buying 12,875 properties.
Indians, Pakistanis and Britons were the top three investors in Dubai real estate, followed by Iranians, Russians and Saudis. The government only ranks the top ten most active buyers by nationality and Afghans do not figure on that list.
Middle Eastern investors seeking a haven from the turmoil of the Arab Spring are also snapping up houses, estate agents say.
In Afghanistan, a sharp slowdown in the property market has encouraged investment in Dubai.
Haji Shir Shah Ahmadzai, managing director of a real estate company in Kabul, said property prices in Afghanistan had fallen by about 35 to 50 per cent in the past year. "The only people who are selling properties are people who need money fast," he said.
BANK SCANDAL
The propensity of rich Afghans to acquire assets in Dubai fell under the spotlight after a run at Kabul Bank, the country's biggest private lender, in 2010.
Dubai villas account for about $160 million of some $900 million in assets auditors are trying to recover from the collapsed bank, which extended unsecured loans to a roster of well-connected individuals, according to a former senior Afghan official.
In June, the Afghan government told the International Monetary Fund that it had managed to retrieve properties in Dubai worth an estimated $44 million.
Afghans' faith in their financial system has yet to recover from the Kabul Bank scandal. It is a measure of the lack of confidence in the Afghani that some 70 per cent of deposits in Afghan banks are held in dollars, according to central bank officials.
Not everyone is gloomy. "We can't expect some John, or Matt, or others to build our country ... we have to do it and lead ourselves," said Ajmal Saifi, whose family business continues to invest in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, Daoud's labourers toil at the concrete skeleton of a new hall he is building in the belief that the top tier of Afghan society still has many more wedding parties ahead. He rests a little easier in the knowledge that there are at least six flights a day to his second home in Dubai.
(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor and Mirwais Harooni in KABUL and Susan Cornwell in WASHINGTON; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Generals deny trying to stop Afghan hospital probe
Associated Press By LARRY MARGASAK Sep 12, 2012
WASHINGTON - Two U.S. generals denied Wednesday that they tried to stop an inspector general's investigation in 2010 into corruption and patient neglect at a U.S.-funded Afghan military hospital.
Lt. Gen. William Caldwell and Maj. Gen. Gary Patton disputed congressional testimony from July, when an active-duty colonel and two retired colonels said Caldwell sought to prevent the probe of the Dawood National Military Hospital. One of the July witnesses referred to "Auschwitz-like" conditions at the facility.
Caldwell said he only wanted a short delay, which amounted to less than two weeks, to inform his superior, Gen. David Petraeus, about the need for an investigation. Caldwell said he also needed time for Petraeus to ask Afghan President Hamid Karzai to remove the Afghan surgeon general, who U.S. officials believed was responsible for corruption and conditions at the hospital.
Caldwell also denied making a statement, cited by the active-duty colonel in July, that the general mentioned the then-upcoming 2010 congressional elections during a meeting where Caldwell said he wanted a delay.
Testifying before the same House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee where the accusations were made, Caldwell denied an accusation from the previous hearing that he indicated, while mentioning the elections, that he was on a first-name basis with President Barack Obama.
When the controversy occurred in the fall of 2010, Caldwell was in charge of the training mission for Afghanistan's army and police; Patton was his deputy. Caldwell currently is head of the Army North Command and senior commander of Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Patton is director of the Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.
Caldwell said he needed time to inform Petraeus, the overall commander of U.S. forces back then and now the CIA director, who would need to contact Karzai about the surgeon general, Ahmad Zia Yaftali.
"I wanted a few more days before I made an official request to move forward," Caldwell testified.
The investigation eventually did get approved and Yaftali was removed.
Kenneth Moorefield, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general for special plans and operations, testified that the investigation never was delayed, because investigators arrived in Afghanistan quickly after the request went through.
At the July hearing, Army Col. Mark Fassl, who was inspector general for the training command, made the allegations against Caldwell and said he was shocked when the general brought up the 2010 congressional elections. He quoted Caldwell as asking: "How could we ... make this request with elections coming? He calls me Bill."
Fassl said he believed this was a reference to the general's relationship with the president.
Caldwell said that in discussions of the proposed investigation, "At no time ... did I ever make that statement."
He said that at an earlier time, when he was briefing the president about Afghanistan, Obama did call him by his nickname, and Caldwell told his staff he was impressed with that. Caldwell said that briefing had no connection to problems at the hospital or the inspector general's investigation.
The chairman of the House subcommittee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, displayed pictures of neglected Afghan patients that he had shown at the first hearing. He asked several times how Caldwell could have failed to investigate these conditions.
"From July to November 2010, senior U.S. military officers reported these issues up their chain of command," Chaffetz said. "This included briefings to Gen. David Petraeus, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, and Maj. Gen. Gary Patton.
"Despite all of the evidence, there appeared to be a hesitation to investigate."
Caldwell disputed Chaffetz' comments. He said the warnings were about corruption, not patient neglect.
"We knew there were challenges with patient care," Caldwell said. But he said patient neglect was brought to his attention for the first time in the fall of 2010. Caldwell added that until then, he believed the main problems at the hospital involved corruption, including the disappearance of millions of dollars of pharmaceuticals.
"None of us saw the patient neglect that we saw in images that were on the screen" at the hearing, Caldwell insisted.
Patton testified, "I never directed subordinates, nor received orders from superiors that the visit from the inspector general be delayed for political reasons." He recalled that the subject of the 2010 elections came up briefly during discussions, but insisted that the subject had "no relationship" to the hospital investigation.
Moorefield, the deputy inspector general, added, "No, we never received any indication there was any attempt ... to delay our investigation ... or turn it off."

Ghor, Badghis Residents Driving Out Taliban
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Dozens of residents in western Ghor and Badghis provinces are fighting against the Taliban in their districts after the militants killed innocent people and refused to obey the law.
Residents said that they took up arms against the Taliban because of the number of innocent people being killed and their refusal to surrender to government laws.
One resident of Ghor told TOLOnews: "We don't want the Taliban insurgents in province. They are killing our innocent people. We want to drive them out."
The resident said that the uprising to clear out insurgents first began a month ago in Chaghcharan, the capital of Ghor province, and it is continuing.
The head of Ghor provincial council Ramazan Akhundzada called on the government for more support.
"The government should support them to clear the province of Taliban insurgents, and this is a good tool to remove them from the battle fields," he told TOLOnews.
Meanwhile, in Badghis province, residents of the Qads and Jawand districts have also taken up arms against Taliban insurgents.
The residents of the district called on the Taliban that "if they didn't surrender to government, they will be killed by the people."
One resident told TOLOnews that for more the seven years the Taliban have "abused the residents and killed them."
A resident of Qads district said: "They are kidnapping our sons and extorting money from us. After this we cannot tolerate this."
Badghis deputy governor Abdul Ghazni Sabiri said that the government welcomed the uprising and they supported the residents.
"There is no other way," he told TOLOnews. "The tribal elders have talked to them several times, but they have not accepted. And so the residents started this uprising."
Ordinary civilians fighting back against the militant Islamists was first reported in eastern Ghazni province in June. Since then it has continued to be reported in several parts of Afghanistan, including, Faryab, Laghman, Nangarhar, and Kapisa.
However, lawmakers recently raised concerns over the rise of "illegal" militia, and also whether other militant groups such as Hezb-i-Islami were taking advantage of the uprisings in villages to wrest power from the Taliban.
They called for the government to closely monitor these situations in order to prevent other groups from gaining power in the upheaval.

Indian gov't hails arrest of Kandahar plane hijack suspect
NEW DELHI, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Indian government Thursday hailed the arrest of a Kandahar plane hijack suspect, Mehrajuddin Dand alias Javed, in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
"Such events need to be confirmed. If he has been caught, I welcome it. I will confirm it and get back to you (media)," Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told the media in the national capital.
Javed was suspected for providing fake travel papers and logistical support to the hijackers of Indian Airlines flight IC- 814 nearly 13 years back. His arrest was confirmed to the local media by police in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while the cops were conducting a search operation, acting on a tip-off.
The aircraft was hijacked by gunmen shortly after it entered Indian airspace in 1999 after taking off from Nepal. After re- fueling stopovers in Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai, the hijackers forced the aircraft to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The hijackers released 27 of 176 passengers in Dubai but fatally stabbed one and wounded several others. India's lack of recognition of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan complicated negotiations between Indian authorities and the hijackers.
The hijacking had lasted for seven days and ended after India released three militants -- Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar who were lodged in Indian jails.

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