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Panetta: US surge troops out of Afghanistan
By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — The 33,000 additional U.S. troops that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan to tamp down the Taliban attacks nearly two years ago have now left the country, but a new wave of deadly insider attacks and a reassessment of how NATO troops partner with Afghans have raised questions about how well the military strategy is working.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Friday the troops had come out, declaring the surge had accomplished its mission.
But after a tumultuous week in Afghanistan that saw commanders put limits on when NATO and Afghan troops can patrol together, Panetta also acknowledged there will still be difficult days ahead.
"The surge did accomplish it objectives of reversing the Taliban momentum on the battlefield and dramatically increasing the size and capability of the Afghan national security forces," Panetta told reporters at a press conference at the Government House here where he was meeting with New Zealand leaders.
He said the re-deployment of the 33,000 troops was a "very important milestone" and that the U.S. is on track to accomplish its goals in Afghanistan. The withdrawal, which was completed on schedule, still leaves close to 100,000 NATO troops there, including 68,000 Americans.
Panetta's success mantra, however, is called into question by the decision earlier this week that, at least temporarily, NATO operations with small-sized Afghan units are no longer routine, and will require the approval of the regional commander.
Until now, coalition troops routinely conducted operations such as patrolling or manning outposts with small units of their Afghan counterparts. But a growing wave of in so-called insider attacks in which Afghan Army and police troops, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have been turning their guns on U.S. and NATO forces, has shaken the trust between the allied troops and the Afghans they are there to train.
And it's called into question the core strategy that relies on NATO troops working shoulder to shoulder with Afghans, training them to take over the security of their own country so the U.S. and its allies can leave at the end of 2014 as planned.
As of this week 51 coalition troops have been killed in such attacks this year.
Australian Brig. Gen. Roger Noble, deputy to the alliance's operations chief, acknowledged earlier this week that the attacks are rattling the troops.
"It strikes right at the heart of our resolve," he said. "It's one thing to be killed in action by the insurgents. It's quite another to be shot in the back of the head at night by your friends."
Panetta, however, has rejected suggestions that the strategy is failing, and on Friday he said "we have turned the corner," in Afghanistan and have successfully been able to build up the Afghan security forces so they can take the lead in security for large sections of the country.
Panetta said the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, "is saying that the force he has put in place is sufficient to accomplish that mission."
The number of U.S. forces there peaked at about 101,000 last year, and they have been coming out slowly over the past several months.
The surge was aimed at beating back the Taliban to give the Afghan government and its security forces the time and space to take hold. The key goal was to ensure the Taliban did not regain a foothold in the country that could allow it once again to become a safe haven for terror groups. And there was hope that Taliban leaders would be willing to come to the peace table.
Military commanders say they have made broad gains against the Taliban, wresting control of areas where the insurgents once had strong footholds. And Panetta has characterized the insider attacks as the last gasp of a desperate insurgency.
But other top military leaders, including U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are worried about the impact of the attacks on the troops. Dempsey called them a "very serious threat" to the war campaign and has declared that "something has to change."
Afghanistan bans Pakistani newspapers
By AMIR SHAH | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is banning all Pakistani newspapers from entering the country in an attempt to block the Taliban from influencing public opinion via the press.
Friday's order by the Ministry of Interior adds to the mounting tension between the neighboring countries.
The order specifically focuses on blocking entry of the papers at Torkham, a busy border crossing.
It also directed border police to gather up Pakistani newspapers in the three eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan.
In a statement, the ministry called the content of the newspapers Taliban propaganda.
Afghanistan says Pakistani shelling risks "negative consequences"
By Michelle Nichols | Reuters
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Afghanistan's foreign minister warned the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that its ties with Pakistan were being threatened by Pakistani shelling across the two countries' mountainous border that has killed dozens of Afghan civilians.
Afghanistan has for months accused Pakistan's army of firing hundreds of rockets into the two eastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, targeting insurgent havens but also forcing Afghan villagers to flee their homes.
"Failure to end such attacks risks jeopardizing Afghanistan-Pakistan bilateral relations, with potential negative consequences for necessary bilateral cooperation for peace, security and economic development in our two countries and the wider region," Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul said.
Afghanistan has sent additional troops and long-range artillery to the border with Pakistan as tensions rose over the shelling.
"We reiterate our call for an immediate and complete end to these acts, which have taken the lives of dozens of Afghans, mainly civilians, while leaving many more wounded," Rassoul said.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused Afghanistan of giving safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border, particularly in Kunar province, leaving Pakistan vulnerable to counter-attack when it chases them out of its own ethnic Pashtun tribal areas.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon said his country had a robust security force along its border with Afghanistan and had recently enhanced its presence with checkpoints and regular patrolling.
"Our deployment far exceeds the number of international and Afghan forces deployed on the other side, which might also be the reason why so many attacks take place on the western side in Afghanistan," Haroon said. "We continue to be resolute despite the high human and economic cost of this endeavor."
REVOLT AGAINST TALIBAN?
U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said humanitarian agencies have registered about 4,000 people from Kunar province who had been displaced by the cross-border shelling since April.
Kubis said he was "glad to hear authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan are already engaged in multi-level dialogue in order to resolve this situation and its root causes."
He also told the Security Council there had been reports of uprisings against the Taliban in various areas of the country, but that this new development required greater analysis because "the drivers of violence are complex and the actors - and their allegiances - fluid."
"Desire for local communities to have security and justice led them to taking the situation into their own hands. There is a risk of even greater fragmentation of the security environment," Kubis said.
"Many of these localized conflicts would appear to be resistance to the Taliban, but not necessarily in support of a greater government presence."
The Taliban leadership appears anxious to present a more moderate face amid tentative peace moves to end the 11-year war with NATO-led forces, but links to the beheading last month of 17 villagers at a party and the shooting of a young woman accused of adultery in July could further reduce public support for the insurgency.
During their five-year reign, ended by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, the Taliban banned women from voting, from most work and from leaving their homes unless accompanied by their husband or a male relative.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Pakistan to talk counterterrorism with US, Afghans
Associated Press Thursday September 20, 2012
WASHINGTON - Pakistan's foreign minister revealed Thursday that her country would soon hold confidential talks with the United States and Afghanistan to improve a three-way counterterrorism relationship beset by misunderstandings, including one over the Pakistan-based Haqqani network that Washington considers the greatest threat to Afghan stability. But she refused to say whether her government was ready to take any action against the militants.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Hina Rabbani Khar said senior officials from the three countries have been instructed to come up with a strategy for repairing cooperation that has suffered since U.S.-Pakistani relations collapsed a year and half ago. That chill in relations was brought on by a CIA contractor's killing of two Pakistanis, the unilateral U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden's compound inside Pakistan and the accidental killing of 24 Pakistani troops in November by NATO forces.
A key element of the talks will be to determine which militant groups can be persuaded to lay down their arms as part of an Afghan peace treaty — a key if so far lagging part of the U.S. strategy to stabilize the country as it withdraws forces over the next two years.
"This has to be a joint effort to determine who is a threat ... to determine how do we deal with those who are a threat, and how do we bring in those which are not," said Khar, who was in Washington on her first official visit since being appointed Pakistan's top diplomat last year. "We are willing to work with anyone against any forces which are a threat to peace and stability."
Khar also addressed other contentious points in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, heaping scorn on the doctor who allegedly helped the U.S. track down bin Laden in Pakistan last year and defending her government's decision to declare a national holiday on Friday so people can demonstrate against an American-made Internet video that ridicules Islam.
Lawmakers have been demanding tough Pakistani action on the Haqqani network, which the Obama administration formally designated as a terrorist body on Wednesday. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Associated Press in August that he believed a Pakistani attack on the network would occur soon.
A subsidiary of the Taliban and based in the remote North Waziristan region of Pakistan, the Haqqani network is responsible for several attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan, including last September's rocket-propelled grenade assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters. American officials estimate it has 2,000 to 4,000 fighters and that it maintains close relationships with al-Qaida.
Khar dismissed the notion that Pakistan had any special responsibility to deal with the Haqqanis, lumping them in with the 5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
"We would be happy to send each one of them back and live in peace in Pakistan," she said. But she refused to say whether her government would be willing in its three-way talks with the U.S. and Afghanistan to commit to taking on the Haqqanis militarily.
The White House declined to comment on the counterterrorism talks, but U.S. officials familiar with the developments saw cause for optimism in the upcoming negotiations, which were worked out by President Barack Obama's chief Afghanistan and Pakistan advisers, Marc Grossman and Doug Lute, in a meeting last week with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
A "working group" will include top U.S. officials from the White House, State Department and Pentagon along with their Pakistani and Afghan counterparts, one current and one former U.S. official said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly.
The U.S. and Pakistan are also holding talks on other counterterrorism issues, including CIA drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, but the talks so far have produced no breakthroughs, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. Pakistan wants the drone strikes stopped — or it wants to control the drones directly — something the U.S. refuses.
Khar called the working group a "turning point."
But she made it clear that Islamabad wasn't simply going to do Washington's bidding, sharply criticizing Panetta for his comments about supposed Pakistani military operations.
Khar said Panetta was speaking "beyond his scope."
"He is obviously welcome to talk about what military action will take place by American troops," Khar said, but not Pakistan's. And she pointed a finger back at the United States for the "hundreds" of militants crossing the border from Afghanistan and "slaughtering our soldiers," including 17 troops who were beheaded recently.
Khar also sought to explain the Pakistani decision to declare Friday a national holiday, saying the "day of loving the prophet" would motivate the peaceful majority to demonstrate their love for the Prophet Muhammad and not allow extremists to turn it into a show of anger against the United States.
On Thursday, more than 2,000 people tried to reach the guarded enclave housing the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad to protest the anti-Islam video. Riot police used tear gas and batons against stone-throwing demonstrators, some of whom carried flags from hardline Islamist and al-Qaida-linked groups.
"We are very confident this will lessen the violence," Khar said, but acknowledged: "There will always be elements that will try to take advantage of these things."
And she hit back at criticism from the Obama administration and Congress over the treatment of Shakil Afridi, the doctor who is said to have run a fake vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA that might verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed him. Afridi was later convicted and sentenced to 33 years for high treason.
"He did not know who he was working for or what he was trying to achieve, so this 'great man' who was helping the world by assisting us to capture Osama bin Laden is a myth," Khar said. "He was up for hire by anyone who was paying him," she said, accusing him of links to an Islamist militant group and significantly setting back Pakistani efforts against polio.
"For us, he's no hero, believe me," she said. "He is somebody whose activity has endangered our children."
Human Rights Group Calls for End to Taliban Deals
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Abrahimkhail Thursday, 20 September 2012
The group Human Rights Defenders urged the Afghan government Thursday to immediately cease peace negotiations with the Taliban claiming that the role of women was purely symbolic in the work of the country's High Peace Council.
After conducting research in five main Afghan provinces – Kabul, Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Balkh, Herat – the group found that women have not been involved in the decision-making processes of the High Peace Council at the provincial and their role is only representative.
"Women were always sidelined in the decision-making process of the Afghan High Peace Council, which a major point of concern," head of the Human Rights Defenders research group Jamila Omar said Thursday.
Omar also said the talks were not transparent and the negotiations being made to bring the insurgents to the table were not being done secretly or without the women being involved.
"The Taliban do not want women to be involved in the negotiations but the international community and the social activists want that, so the government has given women a role but only a symbolic one in the council," human rights expert Reza Hussaini told TOLOnews.
The group called for the negotiations to cease until there is clarity that they will benefit Afghan women.
Progress Seen in Resolving U.S.-Afghan Dispute Over Detainees
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DOUGLAS SCHORZMAN September 20, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Obama and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, had what an American official called a “serious and positive” discussion on Wednesday night that the Afghans confirmed had made progress toward resolving an increasingly acrimonious dispute over detaining terrorism suspects, which had their two governments and their militaries at loggerheads for weeks.
In a video teleconference, Mr. Karzai and Mr. Obama had a wide-ranging conversation touching almost every hot-button issue that has complicated the plans of the United States to draw down its forces here, senior American and Afghan officials said. Most important, they began to resolve the two countries’ differences on rules for indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trial, known as administrative detention, officials from the two countries said. American military commanders insist on assurances that terrorism suspects they detain in the field will not be summarily released.
The Afghan Constitution and laws do not provide explicitly for indefinite detention, but Mr. Karzai has ordered his judiciary “to come up with a legal framework that allows us to keep those people who pose a serious security threat,” said Aimal Faizi, the president’s spokesman.
While other problems are also urgent, the conflict over the Americans’ insistence that some detainees should continue to be held without charge had begun to spill out in public and undermine diplomatic relations, said people involved in the discussions. Until the issue is resolved, the Americans have refused to turn over the last prisoners that they are holding at Parwan, the American-built detention center adjacent to the Bagram Air Base.
“President Karzai had a good conversation with President Obama last night,” Mr. Faizi said. “There were clear and frank talks — they started in general terms, then got very specific on the details regarding the 650-plus Afghan prisoners.
“After last night’s conference, this should be solved,” Mr. Faizi said. “We’re working to frame this legal issue. The judiciary will look at our laws and soon come up with a legal framework that allows us to keep those people who pose a serious security threat.”
A senior American official who characterized the conversation as “serious and positive” said that the call went on longer than planned.
“It was very matter-of-fact,” the official said. “They talked about resolving it, they didn’t talk about setting a legal framework to do it,” he said. But he added that if the Afghan spokesman had alluded to such a framework, then “that’s good.”
While there was no timetable set either for the Afghans to introduce a new law or regulation or for the Americans to hand over the prisoners, the friendly tone was a turnaround. Over the last three weeks, the Afghans have been increasingly confrontational in press statements and have suggested that the Americans are flouting the country’s sovereignty. The Americans, while keeping much of the argument behind the scenes, “were dug in,” a Western diplomat said.
There have been many ups and downs in the countries’ relationship, but the dispute over detainees has come at a particularly delicate time between Afghanistan and the United States because of deepening worries over killings of American and other coalition troops by infiltrators and disgruntled Afghan security force members and because of the provocative anti-Muslim video produced in the United States that last week set off protests across the Muslim world.
(American officials announced Thursday that the last of the 33,000 “surge” troops had left Afghanistan, leaving a force of 68,000 Americans in the country.)
The debate between the governments over administrative detention touches on a larger disagreement between international human rights advocates and security experts. That is whether countries with weak justice systems should have laws allowing detention without trial — and if they do, what limits should be put on the length of detention without legal review.
“The Afghan government’s justice system, as it is, is very shaky,” said Heather Barr, the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch. “So we are very concerned about setting up a parallel system in which even the protections which are supposed to exist, but are rarely followed, are completely absent.” She noted that many countries put administrative detention regimes in place for a short-term emergency, but never repeal them.
The dispute over detention has centered on the terms of a memorandum of understanding signed in March in which the Americans agreed to hand over all the Afghan detainees held in Parwan, as part of the transfer of security to the Afghans. The memorandum states that “Afghanistan has established an administrative detention regime.”
But there were disagreements among senior Afghan officials about whether the Constitution allowed for indefinitely holding dangerous prisoners who could not be tried because of a lack of admissible evidence. On Tuesday, Mr. Karzai’s legal advisers told him that Afghan law had no provision for detention without trial. On Thursday, Mr. Faizi said that Mr. Karzai had resolved to have his judiciary draft such a provision.
The NATO commander, Gen. John R. Allen, has privately expressed concerns that in the absence of an administrative detention process, dangerous insurgents captured on the basis of intelligence that could not be shared in court might be released and return to the battlefield, as has happened in the past.
The Afghans are signatories to the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which recognizes the right to detain people as inherent in any armed conflict and provides for it to be done in a humane way. The Americans had assumed that their accession to that convention would allow them to put such a system in place, but some senior Afghan legal experts disagreed.
As the Afghans began to air doubts about continued detention, the Americans halted the transfer of the remaining 650 detainees they had captured since the memorandum was signed. That infuriated the Afghans, who viewed it as a violation of the memorandum and an infringement of their sovereignty.
The Afghan government would like to end the practice of having foreign troops detain Afghans, Mr. Faizi said. When they have to, they should not hold them for more than 72 hours, he said.
That could prove far too restrictive to the American military, which wants to hold suspected terrorists for weeks, if not months, for detailed interrogations. People close to the discussions over the detentions say they hope to come to a compromise between 72 hours and the weeks, or even months, requested by military interrogators.
Pakistan must punish military insiders supporting Taliban to end terror in country: Editorial
By ANI
Islamabad, Sept. 21 (ANI): An editorial in a Pakistani daily has said officers in the lower ranks of the military, who may be feeding information to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), should be severely punished, and a massive indoctrination programme should be carried out in order to prevent a shifting of loyalties because Pakistan cannot afford to lose the battle with militants.
According to the editorial in The Express Tribune, the TTP may have been slightly weakened by military operations but not only do they remain a potent force, they may also have become a more tactically astute one.
The only threat the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) face to their power in the tribal areas right now is the possibility of a military operation in North Waziristan, it stated.
Over the last year, there has been a definite shift in the strategy of the TTP. Instead of carrying out massive attacks in large cities where hundreds of helpless civilians are the chief targets, the militants are now concentrating on military targets, it further said.
Thus, Pakistan has witnessed attacks like the ones on the Kamra air base and the PNS Mehran, which are meant to destabilise the chief foe of the militants, the editorial said. This has now been followed by an attack on a PAF van in Peshawar, which killed eight people and injured 25 others, it added.
According to the editorial, by hitting the military hard and exposing its security weaknesses, the TTP is trying to warn the army off. The militants are essentially saying that if the military does attack them in North Waziristan, then such attacks will intensify and expose even more problems for sensitive military installations, it said. It is up to the military now to call the TTP's bluff and go ahead with the proposed North Waziristan operation. There is only one good way for the army to stop the TTP from attacking it and that is by defeating it completely, it added. (ANI)
Local armies increasingly targeting Taliban over 'ultra-restrictive diktats' in Afghanistan
By ANI
Kabul, Sept. 21 (ANI): In an uprising compared with Iraq's Sunni Awakening, people of dozens of villages in Andar, a district of Afghanistan's volatile Ghazni, have taken up arms in the first of several anti-Taliban uprisings spreading across in Afghanistan due to its ultra-restrictive diktats.
Andar's band of fighters, who wear the traditional dress and carry Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, are hard to distinguish from the Taliban.
According to the Wall Street Journal, they are now one of the biggest hopes for America to deal a decisive blow to the Taliban.
U.S. Marine General John Allen, the top coalition commander, has publicly compared the Andar revolt to the so-called Anbar Awakening, a rebellion of Iraq's Sunni tribes against al Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents, that became a turning point in the Iraq war, the report said.
Outgunned by the Taliban, Andar's local fighters urgently need weapons and ammunition, the report added.
"We want support for the uprising. But we want the people to maintain ownership of this uprising," Faizanullah Faizan, the leader of the Andar rebels, said.
According to the report, for the villagers, the stakes are even higher. "If this uprising fails, the people's only hope dies," Sarwar Khan, a resident of Andar, said, adding: "If the Taliban return, we think they will even execute our women and children".
Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, confirmed that the group had restricted villagers' movements in Andar, the report said.
He also dismissed the rebels, characterizing them as a U.S.-backed militia.
"They are directly under Americans' supervision," Mujahid said, adding: "We have been telling them since the beginning to put an end to the turbulence. The schools are reopened... The bazaar was banned because people would use it for spying."
Top U.S. military officials in Kabul said that they aren't providing any support to the Andar movement, but are watching whether they can help without damaging its organic development, the report said. (ANI
Battle inside Afghanistan's most violent corner
British and Afghan troops are sustaining heavy casualties as they take the fight to the insurgents in Nahr-e Saraj
The Guardian By Nick Hopkins Thursday 20 September 2012
Nahr-e Saraj - The meeting took place on Monday last week in building 101 on the main road just outside the town of Gereshk. At one end of a long table was an oversized portrait of Hamid Karzai, and sitting opposite it was Saleem Rodi, the quietly spoken district governor. Rodi was chairing this gathering, huddled around him were the most senior security officials in the area – Afghan and British – and they were in conspiratorial mood.
The subject was the insurgency, their aim was surprise, and their plans had a name: Operation Qalb (Heart).
Rodi said only the people in the room knew the details of the forthcoming attack, and secrecy was paramount if the Taliban were to be caught unawares; other missions had been hindered by leaks. He wanted to hear from everyone around the table about how civilian casualties could be minimised if and when the shooting started. "We have sacrificed a lot of blood already," he said.
Helmand province has been the fiercest battleground in Nato's fight with the Taliban over the last 11 years, and its central district of Nahr-e Saraj has become the most violent area within it. There is no place quite like it.
Eighteen British soldiers have died there since the beginning of the year, nine in the last 10 weeks. Afghan soldiers have perished in even greater numbers, 25 since April. Hours before this security meeting, a government official was assassinated less than a mile away.
The violence here has polarised opinions about the state of the country. No other place in Afghanistan better reflects the competing views about the future – the claims and counter claims about what can and cannot be achieved in the two years before combat troops from Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) leave Afghanistan for good. This urgency prompted British and Afghan commanders to undertake another big heave during this summer's fighting season, co-ordinating three major operations in an attempt to drive the insurgents into sparsely populated desert areas where, it is hoped, they will struggle to mount meaningful attacks against the main towns.
Two of these assignments have been in Nahr-e Saraj, where Afghan and British troops have pushed into badlands that have been a haven for the Taliban for nearly 20 years, and even longer for the narco-gangs they are often aligned with.
British commanders say this is the main reason why casualties have been so high: because the fight is being taken to the insurgents, not the other way around.
But despite having overwhelming military superiority, these gains are gradual and sometimes come at a terrible cost. Whether the areas can be held in the long term is a question nobody can answer.
One British officer involved in both operations in Nahr-e Saraj conceded he was surprised by the insurgents' resilience. "I am constantly amazed by them," he said. "They are completely over-matched by us and the Afghan army. We keep killing them, but they keep coming back for more."
Unable to fight face to face, the insurgents have been attempting to derail the clearance strategy with a mix of roadside bombs and sniper fire. But another tactic has proved much more successful. Their ability to "turn" members of the Afghan security forces to attack Isaf soldiers prompted Nato's hasty decision to reduce some joint patrols with Afghan troops. The so-called green on blue killings have not all been engineered by the insurgents, but they now know how to hurt the western alliance – and will try harder.
For the British, one of the main aims of Operation Qalb is to reinforce security around Gereshk, the busy town that accounts for more than half of the people in Nahr-e Saraj. Having driven the insurgents out of Gereshk, street by street, building by building, this is one of the military's showpiece legacies.
The bazaar here used to look like a bomb had hit it, or several probably. Now that it is vibrant and comparatively calm, business has begun to take root. In the last two years, 500 shops have been built in the town, and all have been bought.
Talking to Afghans who live there, it is obvious they are grateful for being in the security bubble. They also admit feeling apprehensive about what will happen when Isaf leaves.
Bahlool Khan, who has just been re-elected as chair of the Gereshk local council, said: "In the past there was a lot of fighting. There was a lot of bloodshed and people were killing each other. There was no education, no health. People were hiding behind walls. Nobody trusts the insurgents. People have not forgotten."
One woman living in Gereshk added: "The women living here are quite happy to have Isaf around. The girls are going to school again. We don't want the old tribal wars to come back. It has become more peaceful, especially in the bazaar. We don't want to go back to the Taliban days when Isaf goes."
The best way to protect them, Afghan and Nato commanders have decided, is to push the insurgents further away from the town, deeper into Helmand.
The Afghan army has taken the lead in the two most recent operations, supported by Danish and British forces, including the Grenadier Guards, who are stationed at Main Operating Base Price, a short drive from Gereshk.
The tactic is simple, but requires feats of co-ordination to get right.
On Monday and Tuesday nights last week, 1,200 Afghan troops from the 3rd Kandak (battalion), along with 200 British soldiers and advisers, left their neighbouring camps to take up discreet positions in the insurgent-filled region of Pulpazay.Forming a steel ring around villages and compounds, the Afghan National Army (ANA) began a series of house to house searches, gradually sweeping its way through the area, flushing out insurgents. Commanders who have been on previous operations say few insurgents stand and fight, and those who try do not come out alive.
The ones who run are caught in the net around the village and are handed over to the police. All the details of this latest operation have not been disclosed yet because it is not over. But the early days of the mission suggest at least some success. Forty-four improvised explosive devices were discovered, as well as "a significant weapons cache, radio equipment and hundreds of rounds of ammunition".
It will be another week before this mission finishes, by which time the ANA hopes to have built permanent checkpoints to deter the insurgents from coming back again. Locally elected councillors have been preaching there too, offering modest gestures – such as repairing a roof or well – to help persuade those who might be sceptical about whether their "liberation" will last, or do them any good.
The facts that the ANA is taking the lead in these exercises and that Nahr-e Saraj has elected officials are regarded by the British as a measure of the progress that has been made in this district over the last three years. But can the Afghan army, which has basic equipment and is still evolving as a fighting force, continue to protect the safer areas, let alone take on the insurgents in places where the Taliban appear to remain strong?
British commanders believe they can do the former but are more hesitant about the latter. "Last year there was violence inside populated areas; this year, the violence is still at the same level, but it has been displaced," said Brigadier Doug Chalmers, commander of Task Force Helmand.
"Everyone talks about Nahr-e Saraj as if it is toxic. There is a northern part of the district that has a lot of insurgency activity inside rural villages. But the actual city of Gereshk is growing. It is not a city under siege, otherwise it would be withering. Gereshk gives me confidence we are providing the environment for the Afghans to regain a bit of control.
"If people weren't bothering to invest, I would be nervous that what we are doing here might be a bit transitory. But if you go there, it is a bustling regional town. How much better could it be? External investors are oblivious to the violence."
There are big caveats, as Chalmers acknowledges. "Is it going to continue to move forward? I think it will, but I can't guarantee that it will. Will there be the same level of change that we have seen over the last two years? The answer is, I am not sure there will be. The Afghans will do things differently, and as they take responsibility, it will change the dynamic in a way that we don't really know yet."
Chalmers said it may be more important to the Afghan security forces to hold what they already have. "The fact that there may still be an insurgency when we have gone, is that going to affect the city of Gereshk, or will Afghans be prepared to tolerate that? My feeling is that they are slightly more pragmatic than the west. They know what matters."
The local security forces were already reaching out to the insurgents, he said, and local accommodations and agreements could follow. This could lead to deals that leave the Afghan government in control of some areas, and the Taliban free to live in others.
That is not what the UK had once hoped for, but it might be Helmand's best hope now. "Our job is to enable the Afghans to enter the conversation from a position of strength," said Chalmers. "It is very difficult to have those conversations with people if you are the weakling in the room. And it is very difficult for us as genuine outsiders to do that level of negotiation. A lot of it is quite local, village to village. It is very difficult for us to do, and I don't think it is right for us to do."
Chalmers admitted anxiety about relinquishing all control to the Afghans, as Nato is gradually doing as part of its withdrawal strategy. He likened it to a parent watching a child going to university, and becoming truly independent. "I have to force myself to accept that the only way for this to work is to let go."
General Adrian Bradshaw, commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and deputy to Isaf 's commander, General John Allen,said the high levels of violence this year in places such as Nahr-e Saraj were symptomatic of something else. He believes the Taliban are pushing back as hard as they can because their leaders are preparing to enter the political and reconciliation process.
"What we would expect from an insurgency entering the political arena is to seek to maximise the bargaining position. It is often suggested that the Taliban will simply wait us out until 2015 and scale down their effort, and what we are seeing now does not represent the maximum effort. I don't think that is credible at all.
"What they will be doing now, and what they have been doing all of this summer, is absolutely maximising their effort to full capacity because they have to maximise their bargaining position when entering the negotiating arena. All the indications we get from intelligence suggest there is a real push on their junior commanders, from their senior commanders sitting outside the country, to keep up the fight."
Bradshaw said he believed the Taliban had been struggling with funding because they made no money out of opium poppies last year. The insurgents were also short of weapons, he added. "[They] are now coming to the realisation that keeping on and keeping on, pounding themselves against us and our Afghan partners, is not delivering. This is the beginning of an understanding by their higher command that they have to find an alternative approach. And there are signs that some of them are looking to do just that. We are seeing it to a certain degree at all levels. We see signs from mid-level fighters of dissatisfaction.
"Some of them leave the organisation and weare aware that at higher level there also people interested in a political path, or at least concluding that they will not achieve their political ends by military means alone." However, Bradshaw admitted it would be wrong to suggest the insurgency was in any way spent. "I don't want to paint too rosy a picture of the situation. The fact remains that the insurgency is still a significant threat to peace and stability."
And nowhere more so than in Nahr-e Saraj. The area has always been a hotbed of tribal and gang rivalry, quite separate from the insurgency. The assassination of a government official in the district last week was not claimed by the Taliban. That kind of murder is not uncommon in Helmand; such attacks happened before UK troops arrived, and they will continue once they have gone. British commanders accept that and understand better than perhaps ever before that their forces have probably done as much as they can, or were ever likely to be able to do, in a society as complex and feudal as Afghanistan. Now it is up to the Afghans themselves.
One of the men who will have most responsibility for the security of Nahr-e Saraj in the coming years is Colonel Hamayoon, the 36-year-old commander of the ANA's 3rd Kandak. The officer has been working with the British over the last two years, and says he has learned a great deal from them. Like all commanders in every military, he wants better equipment and more of it. But there is a greater need: he wants to go it alone, without Isaf.
"This is our country and our people, and it is our obligation to take responsibility for their safety. There will be peace. The only question is when."
Flip flops with bullet casings to help Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) - Flip flops with AK 47 bullet primers may seem an unusual fashion choice for U.S. beach-goers, but one U.S. special forces veteran hopes the factory he's set up in Kabul to make the footwear will help bring a better life to people in Afghanistan.
Ex-Special Forces serviceman Matthew Griffins says that the unlikely decision to launch the range of beach shoes was a "light bulb" moment inspired in 2010 by watching a factory worker punch holes into a leather strap used to make army boots.
Griffin was back in Afghanistan, on one of many trips to the nation he fell in love with while fighting there from 2003 to 2006, seeking for a way to help a people he remembered as unusually generous.
"I just remember how giving the people in Afghanistan were, we'd go up in the mountains and we'd stay in a village and they literally feed us until they were out of food," Griffin said.
"It was the first part of December and they had the rest of winter to live on the food that they had essentially fed us."
With a view to promoting local employment, he and another U.S. veteran, with backing from a Seattle-based business partner, set up a factory in Kabul to make flip flops.
Their line of "Combat Flip Flops," which run from $65 to $75 each, gives customers the choice of a range of designs that will remind their owners of lands far from sunny U.S. beaches and towns.
"Rather than another product to sell that looks good or feels good or is the new fashion, there's a product with a story to be told and people want to be part of that story," said Combat Flip Flops President Andrew Sewrey.
The designs include AK-47 rifle bullet casings, Navy SEAL logos and even Afghan poppies, a plant grown widely in Afghanistan and used to make illegal drugs like heroin.
"(The AK-47) is the weapon of choice for the military and what not, so we put a AK-47 bullet primer around the strap," Sewrey added, standing beside an Afghan worker making prototypes of the footwear.
So far, their main customers are military families, but they hope the business will appeal to a wider audience and provide long-term employment for Afghans who have come to depend on opportunities linked to the more than decade-long war.
"We got into this and promised Afghans a better life," Griffin said. "We've invested billions of tax dollars and lost some of the best American leaders we have to offer and it'd be a shame if it were nothing."
(Reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal; editing by Jessica Donati and Elaine Lies)
Five civilians killed in roadside bombing in S. Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Up to five civilians were killed and seven others injured in a roadside bombing in southern Afghan province of Helmand on Friday, a provincial police spokesman said.
"The blast occurred when a civilian vehicle was running along a road in Dahsht area of Naway-e-Barakzai area at around 12:30 p.m. local time and the dead included three adult men and two children, " police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told Xinhua.
The vehicle was travelling from Garmser district to provincial capital Lashkar Gah, some 555 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, he said.
The death toll could rise, as many injured remain in critical conditions, he said, blaming Taliban insurgents for placing the bomb to target security forces in the area.
Taliban militants have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) or roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,954 injured in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in insurgency-hit country, 15-percent down in overall civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011, according to a UN report released in Kabul on Aug. 8.
The IEDs were alone accounted for 33 percent of all civilians' deaths, leaving 327 civilians dead and 689 others injured in the same period of time.
Music school strikes chord with Afghan street kids
CNN By Anna Coren September 21, 2012
Kabul - Off a main street in Kabul, standing outside a high walled compound is an old Afghan security guard, manning the front gate.
Walking towards him is a group of well-dressed students in gray and maroon uniforms -- almost looking out of place in this dusty, garbage-littered, rundown city.
Inside are large trees surrounding a deep rose-colored two-storey building, and all you can hear is music.
This is the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), which has been up and running for the past two and a half years. It has 141 students, of whom 41 are girls, and half the placements go to children who are street kids or orphans. Officials believe there are 70,000 street kids in Kabul and as many as 600,000 across the country.
Three generations addicted to opium
In one of the dozen practice rooms on the ground floor is 15-year-old Negin Khpalwak. She lost both her parents several years ago and has been living in an orphanage ever since. She is now one of a handful of students learning to play the sarod -- a traditional Indian instrument that is making a revival in Afghanistan thanks to this school.
"Music is very important to me because it's my future. It saved me," she said.
"I want to teach other students, especially young girls. I know my country has a lot of problems but I hope for peace so girls in Afghanistan can do what they dream of doing."
Across the hall in another practice room is 16-year-old Wahidullah Amiri. He's playing the piano.
With a look of determination and purpose he reads the music, his fingers moving across the keys. Listening to him, you would think this teenager had been playing for most of his life. In fact he'd never touched a piano until two years ago. "I was working on the street selling plastic bags and chewing gum," he said.
"My family is very poor. Now I go to school and study music. Something I never thought I would do."
Skateboard school ramps up Afghan dreams
The man responsible for turning his life around is the founder of ANIM, Ahmad Samarst. The son of a famous Afghan composer, conductor and musician, Samarst wanted to change lives through the power of music. Though he was born and raised in Kabul, he has very close ties to Australia after seeking asylum there when he fled the Taliban. The Islamic militant movement seized power in 1996 following Afghanistan's long civil war.
While in Australia, Samarst studied music -- receiving his PhD in music from Monash University in Melbourne. His wife and two children still live there. He returns every three months and will be heading back again at the end of the year for his daughter's wedding. But he says despite his family, his heart is in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban fell in 2001 he felt a strong desire to return to his country and rebuild the nation's rich and vibrant musical culture. Under the Taliban it had virtually been wiped out with a nationwide ban. Music was considered blasphemous, musicians were persecuted and if you were caught playing an instrument, the punishment for this "crime" was having one of your hands cut off.
The Taliban destroyed most instruments during their brutal five-year rule, often using the wood for heating. If the instruments were too big, like a piano, they would blow them up with a grenade so they could carry them out in pieces.
A true believer in the healing power of music, Samarst explained his vision for ANIM. "It was based on the strong belief of the power of music, as a powerful force, which can play a significant role in establishing a civil and just society in post-Taliban Afghanistan."
It took years of planning, lobbying and gathering financial support but finally Samarst had the beginnings of a national music school. After a $2 million donation from the World Bank, Samart was suddenly overwhelmed by international interest and funding from foreign ministries, embassies and music schools from Germany, Finland, Denmark, the United States, Britain and India.
Samarst said many of the instruments were donated and described the storage rooms upstairs for these valuable pieces as "treasure troves." He said they would be the "envy of many music schools around the world."
As part of the program, he has hired nine international music teachers from the U.S., Europe, Mexico and India to not only teach the students but also train local Afghan teachers.
William Harvey arrived in Kabul two and a half years ago from New York, feeling compelled to act after the September 11 attacks shook the core of his country. He said he had no idea what sort of adventure he was about to embark upon but felt strongly about helping to mend and rebuild a war-ravaged Afghanistan.
He is now the conductor of ANIM's youth orchestra that has just been invited to perform in the U.S. at Washington's Kennedy Center and New York's Carnegie Hall in February next year.
"When the people of the world see there are Afghan girls and boys performing side by side that means to a certain extent that we've won, and that Afghanistan has won, because music is a historical and inalienable part of Afghan culture, and its return is tremendously exciting," he said.
ANIM works very closely with Afghanistan's Ministry of Education, which is very proud of what the school is achieving. Sarmast believes his greatest achievement is co-education within the school. Boys and girls, side by side, in a country where in some towns, girls still don't have access to an education.
The Taliban made it very clear during its rule that no girls were allowed to go to school -- a rule that is still applied in their heartland in southern Afghanistan. But at ANIM young girls smile and laugh with their male classmates, oblivious to the divisions deep with their society.
"This is a revolution for this country," he explained. "These girls are serving as a mother for the entire nation. I'm very pleased our institute is a mother for the country."
One girl who is passionate about education and her country is 10-year-old Sapna Rehamati. Girls don't have to wear headscarves inside the school grounds though Sapna puts one on. But instead of wearing it traditionally over her head and wrapped around her shoulders, she ties it together behind her head, at the nape of her neck. With a mischievous grin she explained, "This is my style."
Asked about the future of the country, this orphaned girl who wasn't even born when the Taliban fell from power, said emphatically, "The Taliban is very bad. Every person has the right to learn. Every child, every human being should have the right to study music. Nobody should interfere in their lives."
Sitting next to her friend Azia on the piano stool, Sapna smiled warmly at her as the two girls hit the keys in time, their little fingers creating the nostalgic sounds of a traditional Afghan tune.
When asked what she wants to do when she grows up and graduates from the school, she replied: "I want to build my country and make Afghanistan a great place. If other people want to build our country I want to work beside them."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — The 33,000 additional U.S. troops that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan to tamp down the Taliban attacks nearly two years ago have now left the country, but a new wave of deadly insider attacks and a reassessment of how NATO troops partner with Afghans have raised questions about how well the military strategy is working.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced on Friday the troops had come out, declaring the surge had accomplished its mission.
But after a tumultuous week in Afghanistan that saw commanders put limits on when NATO and Afghan troops can patrol together, Panetta also acknowledged there will still be difficult days ahead.
"The surge did accomplish it objectives of reversing the Taliban momentum on the battlefield and dramatically increasing the size and capability of the Afghan national security forces," Panetta told reporters at a press conference at the Government House here where he was meeting with New Zealand leaders.
He said the re-deployment of the 33,000 troops was a "very important milestone" and that the U.S. is on track to accomplish its goals in Afghanistan. The withdrawal, which was completed on schedule, still leaves close to 100,000 NATO troops there, including 68,000 Americans.
Panetta's success mantra, however, is called into question by the decision earlier this week that, at least temporarily, NATO operations with small-sized Afghan units are no longer routine, and will require the approval of the regional commander.
Until now, coalition troops routinely conducted operations such as patrolling or manning outposts with small units of their Afghan counterparts. But a growing wave of in so-called insider attacks in which Afghan Army and police troops, or insurgents dressed in their uniforms, have been turning their guns on U.S. and NATO forces, has shaken the trust between the allied troops and the Afghans they are there to train.
And it's called into question the core strategy that relies on NATO troops working shoulder to shoulder with Afghans, training them to take over the security of their own country so the U.S. and its allies can leave at the end of 2014 as planned.
As of this week 51 coalition troops have been killed in such attacks this year.
Australian Brig. Gen. Roger Noble, deputy to the alliance's operations chief, acknowledged earlier this week that the attacks are rattling the troops.
"It strikes right at the heart of our resolve," he said. "It's one thing to be killed in action by the insurgents. It's quite another to be shot in the back of the head at night by your friends."
Panetta, however, has rejected suggestions that the strategy is failing, and on Friday he said "we have turned the corner," in Afghanistan and have successfully been able to build up the Afghan security forces so they can take the lead in security for large sections of the country.
Panetta said the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, "is saying that the force he has put in place is sufficient to accomplish that mission."
The number of U.S. forces there peaked at about 101,000 last year, and they have been coming out slowly over the past several months.
The surge was aimed at beating back the Taliban to give the Afghan government and its security forces the time and space to take hold. The key goal was to ensure the Taliban did not regain a foothold in the country that could allow it once again to become a safe haven for terror groups. And there was hope that Taliban leaders would be willing to come to the peace table.
Military commanders say they have made broad gains against the Taliban, wresting control of areas where the insurgents once had strong footholds. And Panetta has characterized the insider attacks as the last gasp of a desperate insurgency.
But other top military leaders, including U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are worried about the impact of the attacks on the troops. Dempsey called them a "very serious threat" to the war campaign and has declared that "something has to change."
Afghanistan bans Pakistani newspapers
By AMIR SHAH | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan is banning all Pakistani newspapers from entering the country in an attempt to block the Taliban from influencing public opinion via the press.
Friday's order by the Ministry of Interior adds to the mounting tension between the neighboring countries.
The order specifically focuses on blocking entry of the papers at Torkham, a busy border crossing.
It also directed border police to gather up Pakistani newspapers in the three eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan.
In a statement, the ministry called the content of the newspapers Taliban propaganda.
Afghanistan says Pakistani shelling risks "negative consequences"
By Michelle Nichols | Reuters
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Afghanistan's foreign minister warned the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that its ties with Pakistan were being threatened by Pakistani shelling across the two countries' mountainous border that has killed dozens of Afghan civilians.
Afghanistan has for months accused Pakistan's army of firing hundreds of rockets into the two eastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, targeting insurgent havens but also forcing Afghan villagers to flee their homes.
"Failure to end such attacks risks jeopardizing Afghanistan-Pakistan bilateral relations, with potential negative consequences for necessary bilateral cooperation for peace, security and economic development in our two countries and the wider region," Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul said.
Afghanistan has sent additional troops and long-range artillery to the border with Pakistan as tensions rose over the shelling.
"We reiterate our call for an immediate and complete end to these acts, which have taken the lives of dozens of Afghans, mainly civilians, while leaving many more wounded," Rassoul said.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused Afghanistan of giving safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border, particularly in Kunar province, leaving Pakistan vulnerable to counter-attack when it chases them out of its own ethnic Pashtun tribal areas.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon said his country had a robust security force along its border with Afghanistan and had recently enhanced its presence with checkpoints and regular patrolling.
"Our deployment far exceeds the number of international and Afghan forces deployed on the other side, which might also be the reason why so many attacks take place on the western side in Afghanistan," Haroon said. "We continue to be resolute despite the high human and economic cost of this endeavor."
REVOLT AGAINST TALIBAN?
U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said humanitarian agencies have registered about 4,000 people from Kunar province who had been displaced by the cross-border shelling since April.
Kubis said he was "glad to hear authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan are already engaged in multi-level dialogue in order to resolve this situation and its root causes."
He also told the Security Council there had been reports of uprisings against the Taliban in various areas of the country, but that this new development required greater analysis because "the drivers of violence are complex and the actors - and their allegiances - fluid."
"Desire for local communities to have security and justice led them to taking the situation into their own hands. There is a risk of even greater fragmentation of the security environment," Kubis said.
"Many of these localized conflicts would appear to be resistance to the Taliban, but not necessarily in support of a greater government presence."
The Taliban leadership appears anxious to present a more moderate face amid tentative peace moves to end the 11-year war with NATO-led forces, but links to the beheading last month of 17 villagers at a party and the shooting of a young woman accused of adultery in July could further reduce public support for the insurgency.
During their five-year reign, ended by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, the Taliban banned women from voting, from most work and from leaving their homes unless accompanied by their husband or a male relative.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Pakistan to talk counterterrorism with US, Afghans
Associated Press Thursday September 20, 2012
WASHINGTON - Pakistan's foreign minister revealed Thursday that her country would soon hold confidential talks with the United States and Afghanistan to improve a three-way counterterrorism relationship beset by misunderstandings, including one over the Pakistan-based Haqqani network that Washington considers the greatest threat to Afghan stability. But she refused to say whether her government was ready to take any action against the militants.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Hina Rabbani Khar said senior officials from the three countries have been instructed to come up with a strategy for repairing cooperation that has suffered since U.S.-Pakistani relations collapsed a year and half ago. That chill in relations was brought on by a CIA contractor's killing of two Pakistanis, the unilateral U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden's compound inside Pakistan and the accidental killing of 24 Pakistani troops in November by NATO forces.
A key element of the talks will be to determine which militant groups can be persuaded to lay down their arms as part of an Afghan peace treaty — a key if so far lagging part of the U.S. strategy to stabilize the country as it withdraws forces over the next two years.
"This has to be a joint effort to determine who is a threat ... to determine how do we deal with those who are a threat, and how do we bring in those which are not," said Khar, who was in Washington on her first official visit since being appointed Pakistan's top diplomat last year. "We are willing to work with anyone against any forces which are a threat to peace and stability."
Khar also addressed other contentious points in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, heaping scorn on the doctor who allegedly helped the U.S. track down bin Laden in Pakistan last year and defending her government's decision to declare a national holiday on Friday so people can demonstrate against an American-made Internet video that ridicules Islam.
Lawmakers have been demanding tough Pakistani action on the Haqqani network, which the Obama administration formally designated as a terrorist body on Wednesday. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Associated Press in August that he believed a Pakistani attack on the network would occur soon.
A subsidiary of the Taliban and based in the remote North Waziristan region of Pakistan, the Haqqani network is responsible for several attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan, including last September's rocket-propelled grenade assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters. American officials estimate it has 2,000 to 4,000 fighters and that it maintains close relationships with al-Qaida.
Khar dismissed the notion that Pakistan had any special responsibility to deal with the Haqqanis, lumping them in with the 5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
"We would be happy to send each one of them back and live in peace in Pakistan," she said. But she refused to say whether her government would be willing in its three-way talks with the U.S. and Afghanistan to commit to taking on the Haqqanis militarily.
The White House declined to comment on the counterterrorism talks, but U.S. officials familiar with the developments saw cause for optimism in the upcoming negotiations, which were worked out by President Barack Obama's chief Afghanistan and Pakistan advisers, Marc Grossman and Doug Lute, in a meeting last week with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
A "working group" will include top U.S. officials from the White House, State Department and Pentagon along with their Pakistani and Afghan counterparts, one current and one former U.S. official said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks publicly.
The U.S. and Pakistan are also holding talks on other counterterrorism issues, including CIA drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, but the talks so far have produced no breakthroughs, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. Pakistan wants the drone strikes stopped — or it wants to control the drones directly — something the U.S. refuses.
Khar called the working group a "turning point."
But she made it clear that Islamabad wasn't simply going to do Washington's bidding, sharply criticizing Panetta for his comments about supposed Pakistani military operations.
Khar said Panetta was speaking "beyond his scope."
"He is obviously welcome to talk about what military action will take place by American troops," Khar said, but not Pakistan's. And she pointed a finger back at the United States for the "hundreds" of militants crossing the border from Afghanistan and "slaughtering our soldiers," including 17 troops who were beheaded recently.
Khar also sought to explain the Pakistani decision to declare Friday a national holiday, saying the "day of loving the prophet" would motivate the peaceful majority to demonstrate their love for the Prophet Muhammad and not allow extremists to turn it into a show of anger against the United States.
On Thursday, more than 2,000 people tried to reach the guarded enclave housing the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad to protest the anti-Islam video. Riot police used tear gas and batons against stone-throwing demonstrators, some of whom carried flags from hardline Islamist and al-Qaida-linked groups.
"We are very confident this will lessen the violence," Khar said, but acknowledged: "There will always be elements that will try to take advantage of these things."
And she hit back at criticism from the Obama administration and Congress over the treatment of Shakil Afridi, the doctor who is said to have run a fake vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA that might verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed him. Afridi was later convicted and sentenced to 33 years for high treason.
"He did not know who he was working for or what he was trying to achieve, so this 'great man' who was helping the world by assisting us to capture Osama bin Laden is a myth," Khar said. "He was up for hire by anyone who was paying him," she said, accusing him of links to an Islamist militant group and significantly setting back Pakistani efforts against polio.
"For us, he's no hero, believe me," she said. "He is somebody whose activity has endangered our children."
Human Rights Group Calls for End to Taliban Deals
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Abrahimkhail Thursday, 20 September 2012
The group Human Rights Defenders urged the Afghan government Thursday to immediately cease peace negotiations with the Taliban claiming that the role of women was purely symbolic in the work of the country's High Peace Council.
After conducting research in five main Afghan provinces – Kabul, Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Balkh, Herat – the group found that women have not been involved in the decision-making processes of the High Peace Council at the provincial and their role is only representative.
"Women were always sidelined in the decision-making process of the Afghan High Peace Council, which a major point of concern," head of the Human Rights Defenders research group Jamila Omar said Thursday.
Omar also said the talks were not transparent and the negotiations being made to bring the insurgents to the table were not being done secretly or without the women being involved.
"The Taliban do not want women to be involved in the negotiations but the international community and the social activists want that, so the government has given women a role but only a symbolic one in the council," human rights expert Reza Hussaini told TOLOnews.
The group called for the negotiations to cease until there is clarity that they will benefit Afghan women.
Progress Seen in Resolving U.S.-Afghan Dispute Over Detainees
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DOUGLAS SCHORZMAN September 20, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Obama and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, had what an American official called a “serious and positive” discussion on Wednesday night that the Afghans confirmed had made progress toward resolving an increasingly acrimonious dispute over detaining terrorism suspects, which had their two governments and their militaries at loggerheads for weeks.
In a video teleconference, Mr. Karzai and Mr. Obama had a wide-ranging conversation touching almost every hot-button issue that has complicated the plans of the United States to draw down its forces here, senior American and Afghan officials said. Most important, they began to resolve the two countries’ differences on rules for indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trial, known as administrative detention, officials from the two countries said. American military commanders insist on assurances that terrorism suspects they detain in the field will not be summarily released.
The Afghan Constitution and laws do not provide explicitly for indefinite detention, but Mr. Karzai has ordered his judiciary “to come up with a legal framework that allows us to keep those people who pose a serious security threat,” said Aimal Faizi, the president’s spokesman.
While other problems are also urgent, the conflict over the Americans’ insistence that some detainees should continue to be held without charge had begun to spill out in public and undermine diplomatic relations, said people involved in the discussions. Until the issue is resolved, the Americans have refused to turn over the last prisoners that they are holding at Parwan, the American-built detention center adjacent to the Bagram Air Base.
“President Karzai had a good conversation with President Obama last night,” Mr. Faizi said. “There were clear and frank talks — they started in general terms, then got very specific on the details regarding the 650-plus Afghan prisoners.
“After last night’s conference, this should be solved,” Mr. Faizi said. “We’re working to frame this legal issue. The judiciary will look at our laws and soon come up with a legal framework that allows us to keep those people who pose a serious security threat.”
A senior American official who characterized the conversation as “serious and positive” said that the call went on longer than planned.
“It was very matter-of-fact,” the official said. “They talked about resolving it, they didn’t talk about setting a legal framework to do it,” he said. But he added that if the Afghan spokesman had alluded to such a framework, then “that’s good.”
While there was no timetable set either for the Afghans to introduce a new law or regulation or for the Americans to hand over the prisoners, the friendly tone was a turnaround. Over the last three weeks, the Afghans have been increasingly confrontational in press statements and have suggested that the Americans are flouting the country’s sovereignty. The Americans, while keeping much of the argument behind the scenes, “were dug in,” a Western diplomat said.
There have been many ups and downs in the countries’ relationship, but the dispute over detainees has come at a particularly delicate time between Afghanistan and the United States because of deepening worries over killings of American and other coalition troops by infiltrators and disgruntled Afghan security force members and because of the provocative anti-Muslim video produced in the United States that last week set off protests across the Muslim world.
(American officials announced Thursday that the last of the 33,000 “surge” troops had left Afghanistan, leaving a force of 68,000 Americans in the country.)
The debate between the governments over administrative detention touches on a larger disagreement between international human rights advocates and security experts. That is whether countries with weak justice systems should have laws allowing detention without trial — and if they do, what limits should be put on the length of detention without legal review.
“The Afghan government’s justice system, as it is, is very shaky,” said Heather Barr, the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch. “So we are very concerned about setting up a parallel system in which even the protections which are supposed to exist, but are rarely followed, are completely absent.” She noted that many countries put administrative detention regimes in place for a short-term emergency, but never repeal them.
The dispute over detention has centered on the terms of a memorandum of understanding signed in March in which the Americans agreed to hand over all the Afghan detainees held in Parwan, as part of the transfer of security to the Afghans. The memorandum states that “Afghanistan has established an administrative detention regime.”
But there were disagreements among senior Afghan officials about whether the Constitution allowed for indefinitely holding dangerous prisoners who could not be tried because of a lack of admissible evidence. On Tuesday, Mr. Karzai’s legal advisers told him that Afghan law had no provision for detention without trial. On Thursday, Mr. Faizi said that Mr. Karzai had resolved to have his judiciary draft such a provision.
The NATO commander, Gen. John R. Allen, has privately expressed concerns that in the absence of an administrative detention process, dangerous insurgents captured on the basis of intelligence that could not be shared in court might be released and return to the battlefield, as has happened in the past.
The Afghans are signatories to the Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which recognizes the right to detain people as inherent in any armed conflict and provides for it to be done in a humane way. The Americans had assumed that their accession to that convention would allow them to put such a system in place, but some senior Afghan legal experts disagreed.
As the Afghans began to air doubts about continued detention, the Americans halted the transfer of the remaining 650 detainees they had captured since the memorandum was signed. That infuriated the Afghans, who viewed it as a violation of the memorandum and an infringement of their sovereignty.
The Afghan government would like to end the practice of having foreign troops detain Afghans, Mr. Faizi said. When they have to, they should not hold them for more than 72 hours, he said.
That could prove far too restrictive to the American military, which wants to hold suspected terrorists for weeks, if not months, for detailed interrogations. People close to the discussions over the detentions say they hope to come to a compromise between 72 hours and the weeks, or even months, requested by military interrogators.
Pakistan must punish military insiders supporting Taliban to end terror in country: Editorial
By ANI
Islamabad, Sept. 21 (ANI): An editorial in a Pakistani daily has said officers in the lower ranks of the military, who may be feeding information to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), should be severely punished, and a massive indoctrination programme should be carried out in order to prevent a shifting of loyalties because Pakistan cannot afford to lose the battle with militants.
According to the editorial in The Express Tribune, the TTP may have been slightly weakened by military operations but not only do they remain a potent force, they may also have become a more tactically astute one.
The only threat the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) face to their power in the tribal areas right now is the possibility of a military operation in North Waziristan, it stated.
Over the last year, there has been a definite shift in the strategy of the TTP. Instead of carrying out massive attacks in large cities where hundreds of helpless civilians are the chief targets, the militants are now concentrating on military targets, it further said.
Thus, Pakistan has witnessed attacks like the ones on the Kamra air base and the PNS Mehran, which are meant to destabilise the chief foe of the militants, the editorial said. This has now been followed by an attack on a PAF van in Peshawar, which killed eight people and injured 25 others, it added.
According to the editorial, by hitting the military hard and exposing its security weaknesses, the TTP is trying to warn the army off. The militants are essentially saying that if the military does attack them in North Waziristan, then such attacks will intensify and expose even more problems for sensitive military installations, it said. It is up to the military now to call the TTP's bluff and go ahead with the proposed North Waziristan operation. There is only one good way for the army to stop the TTP from attacking it and that is by defeating it completely, it added. (ANI)
Local armies increasingly targeting Taliban over 'ultra-restrictive diktats' in Afghanistan
By ANI
Kabul, Sept. 21 (ANI): In an uprising compared with Iraq's Sunni Awakening, people of dozens of villages in Andar, a district of Afghanistan's volatile Ghazni, have taken up arms in the first of several anti-Taliban uprisings spreading across in Afghanistan due to its ultra-restrictive diktats.
Andar's band of fighters, who wear the traditional dress and carry Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, are hard to distinguish from the Taliban.
According to the Wall Street Journal, they are now one of the biggest hopes for America to deal a decisive blow to the Taliban.
U.S. Marine General John Allen, the top coalition commander, has publicly compared the Andar revolt to the so-called Anbar Awakening, a rebellion of Iraq's Sunni tribes against al Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents, that became a turning point in the Iraq war, the report said.
Outgunned by the Taliban, Andar's local fighters urgently need weapons and ammunition, the report added.
"We want support for the uprising. But we want the people to maintain ownership of this uprising," Faizanullah Faizan, the leader of the Andar rebels, said.
According to the report, for the villagers, the stakes are even higher. "If this uprising fails, the people's only hope dies," Sarwar Khan, a resident of Andar, said, adding: "If the Taliban return, we think they will even execute our women and children".
Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, confirmed that the group had restricted villagers' movements in Andar, the report said.
He also dismissed the rebels, characterizing them as a U.S.-backed militia.
"They are directly under Americans' supervision," Mujahid said, adding: "We have been telling them since the beginning to put an end to the turbulence. The schools are reopened... The bazaar was banned because people would use it for spying."
Top U.S. military officials in Kabul said that they aren't providing any support to the Andar movement, but are watching whether they can help without damaging its organic development, the report said. (ANI
Battle inside Afghanistan's most violent corner
British and Afghan troops are sustaining heavy casualties as they take the fight to the insurgents in Nahr-e Saraj
The Guardian By Nick Hopkins Thursday 20 September 2012
Nahr-e Saraj - The meeting took place on Monday last week in building 101 on the main road just outside the town of Gereshk. At one end of a long table was an oversized portrait of Hamid Karzai, and sitting opposite it was Saleem Rodi, the quietly spoken district governor. Rodi was chairing this gathering, huddled around him were the most senior security officials in the area – Afghan and British – and they were in conspiratorial mood.
The subject was the insurgency, their aim was surprise, and their plans had a name: Operation Qalb (Heart).
Rodi said only the people in the room knew the details of the forthcoming attack, and secrecy was paramount if the Taliban were to be caught unawares; other missions had been hindered by leaks. He wanted to hear from everyone around the table about how civilian casualties could be minimised if and when the shooting started. "We have sacrificed a lot of blood already," he said.
Helmand province has been the fiercest battleground in Nato's fight with the Taliban over the last 11 years, and its central district of Nahr-e Saraj has become the most violent area within it. There is no place quite like it.
Eighteen British soldiers have died there since the beginning of the year, nine in the last 10 weeks. Afghan soldiers have perished in even greater numbers, 25 since April. Hours before this security meeting, a government official was assassinated less than a mile away.
The violence here has polarised opinions about the state of the country. No other place in Afghanistan better reflects the competing views about the future – the claims and counter claims about what can and cannot be achieved in the two years before combat troops from Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) leave Afghanistan for good. This urgency prompted British and Afghan commanders to undertake another big heave during this summer's fighting season, co-ordinating three major operations in an attempt to drive the insurgents into sparsely populated desert areas where, it is hoped, they will struggle to mount meaningful attacks against the main towns.
Two of these assignments have been in Nahr-e Saraj, where Afghan and British troops have pushed into badlands that have been a haven for the Taliban for nearly 20 years, and even longer for the narco-gangs they are often aligned with.
British commanders say this is the main reason why casualties have been so high: because the fight is being taken to the insurgents, not the other way around.
But despite having overwhelming military superiority, these gains are gradual and sometimes come at a terrible cost. Whether the areas can be held in the long term is a question nobody can answer.
One British officer involved in both operations in Nahr-e Saraj conceded he was surprised by the insurgents' resilience. "I am constantly amazed by them," he said. "They are completely over-matched by us and the Afghan army. We keep killing them, but they keep coming back for more."
Unable to fight face to face, the insurgents have been attempting to derail the clearance strategy with a mix of roadside bombs and sniper fire. But another tactic has proved much more successful. Their ability to "turn" members of the Afghan security forces to attack Isaf soldiers prompted Nato's hasty decision to reduce some joint patrols with Afghan troops. The so-called green on blue killings have not all been engineered by the insurgents, but they now know how to hurt the western alliance – and will try harder.
For the British, one of the main aims of Operation Qalb is to reinforce security around Gereshk, the busy town that accounts for more than half of the people in Nahr-e Saraj. Having driven the insurgents out of Gereshk, street by street, building by building, this is one of the military's showpiece legacies.
The bazaar here used to look like a bomb had hit it, or several probably. Now that it is vibrant and comparatively calm, business has begun to take root. In the last two years, 500 shops have been built in the town, and all have been bought.
Talking to Afghans who live there, it is obvious they are grateful for being in the security bubble. They also admit feeling apprehensive about what will happen when Isaf leaves.
Bahlool Khan, who has just been re-elected as chair of the Gereshk local council, said: "In the past there was a lot of fighting. There was a lot of bloodshed and people were killing each other. There was no education, no health. People were hiding behind walls. Nobody trusts the insurgents. People have not forgotten."
One woman living in Gereshk added: "The women living here are quite happy to have Isaf around. The girls are going to school again. We don't want the old tribal wars to come back. It has become more peaceful, especially in the bazaar. We don't want to go back to the Taliban days when Isaf goes."
The best way to protect them, Afghan and Nato commanders have decided, is to push the insurgents further away from the town, deeper into Helmand.
The Afghan army has taken the lead in the two most recent operations, supported by Danish and British forces, including the Grenadier Guards, who are stationed at Main Operating Base Price, a short drive from Gereshk.
The tactic is simple, but requires feats of co-ordination to get right.
On Monday and Tuesday nights last week, 1,200 Afghan troops from the 3rd Kandak (battalion), along with 200 British soldiers and advisers, left their neighbouring camps to take up discreet positions in the insurgent-filled region of Pulpazay.Forming a steel ring around villages and compounds, the Afghan National Army (ANA) began a series of house to house searches, gradually sweeping its way through the area, flushing out insurgents. Commanders who have been on previous operations say few insurgents stand and fight, and those who try do not come out alive.
The ones who run are caught in the net around the village and are handed over to the police. All the details of this latest operation have not been disclosed yet because it is not over. But the early days of the mission suggest at least some success. Forty-four improvised explosive devices were discovered, as well as "a significant weapons cache, radio equipment and hundreds of rounds of ammunition".
It will be another week before this mission finishes, by which time the ANA hopes to have built permanent checkpoints to deter the insurgents from coming back again. Locally elected councillors have been preaching there too, offering modest gestures – such as repairing a roof or well – to help persuade those who might be sceptical about whether their "liberation" will last, or do them any good.
The facts that the ANA is taking the lead in these exercises and that Nahr-e Saraj has elected officials are regarded by the British as a measure of the progress that has been made in this district over the last three years. But can the Afghan army, which has basic equipment and is still evolving as a fighting force, continue to protect the safer areas, let alone take on the insurgents in places where the Taliban appear to remain strong?
British commanders believe they can do the former but are more hesitant about the latter. "Last year there was violence inside populated areas; this year, the violence is still at the same level, but it has been displaced," said Brigadier Doug Chalmers, commander of Task Force Helmand.
"Everyone talks about Nahr-e Saraj as if it is toxic. There is a northern part of the district that has a lot of insurgency activity inside rural villages. But the actual city of Gereshk is growing. It is not a city under siege, otherwise it would be withering. Gereshk gives me confidence we are providing the environment for the Afghans to regain a bit of control.
"If people weren't bothering to invest, I would be nervous that what we are doing here might be a bit transitory. But if you go there, it is a bustling regional town. How much better could it be? External investors are oblivious to the violence."
There are big caveats, as Chalmers acknowledges. "Is it going to continue to move forward? I think it will, but I can't guarantee that it will. Will there be the same level of change that we have seen over the last two years? The answer is, I am not sure there will be. The Afghans will do things differently, and as they take responsibility, it will change the dynamic in a way that we don't really know yet."
Chalmers said it may be more important to the Afghan security forces to hold what they already have. "The fact that there may still be an insurgency when we have gone, is that going to affect the city of Gereshk, or will Afghans be prepared to tolerate that? My feeling is that they are slightly more pragmatic than the west. They know what matters."
The local security forces were already reaching out to the insurgents, he said, and local accommodations and agreements could follow. This could lead to deals that leave the Afghan government in control of some areas, and the Taliban free to live in others.
That is not what the UK had once hoped for, but it might be Helmand's best hope now. "Our job is to enable the Afghans to enter the conversation from a position of strength," said Chalmers. "It is very difficult to have those conversations with people if you are the weakling in the room. And it is very difficult for us as genuine outsiders to do that level of negotiation. A lot of it is quite local, village to village. It is very difficult for us to do, and I don't think it is right for us to do."
Chalmers admitted anxiety about relinquishing all control to the Afghans, as Nato is gradually doing as part of its withdrawal strategy. He likened it to a parent watching a child going to university, and becoming truly independent. "I have to force myself to accept that the only way for this to work is to let go."
General Adrian Bradshaw, commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and deputy to Isaf 's commander, General John Allen,said the high levels of violence this year in places such as Nahr-e Saraj were symptomatic of something else. He believes the Taliban are pushing back as hard as they can because their leaders are preparing to enter the political and reconciliation process.
"What we would expect from an insurgency entering the political arena is to seek to maximise the bargaining position. It is often suggested that the Taliban will simply wait us out until 2015 and scale down their effort, and what we are seeing now does not represent the maximum effort. I don't think that is credible at all.
"What they will be doing now, and what they have been doing all of this summer, is absolutely maximising their effort to full capacity because they have to maximise their bargaining position when entering the negotiating arena. All the indications we get from intelligence suggest there is a real push on their junior commanders, from their senior commanders sitting outside the country, to keep up the fight."
Bradshaw said he believed the Taliban had been struggling with funding because they made no money out of opium poppies last year. The insurgents were also short of weapons, he added. "[They] are now coming to the realisation that keeping on and keeping on, pounding themselves against us and our Afghan partners, is not delivering. This is the beginning of an understanding by their higher command that they have to find an alternative approach. And there are signs that some of them are looking to do just that. We are seeing it to a certain degree at all levels. We see signs from mid-level fighters of dissatisfaction.
"Some of them leave the organisation and weare aware that at higher level there also people interested in a political path, or at least concluding that they will not achieve their political ends by military means alone." However, Bradshaw admitted it would be wrong to suggest the insurgency was in any way spent. "I don't want to paint too rosy a picture of the situation. The fact remains that the insurgency is still a significant threat to peace and stability."
And nowhere more so than in Nahr-e Saraj. The area has always been a hotbed of tribal and gang rivalry, quite separate from the insurgency. The assassination of a government official in the district last week was not claimed by the Taliban. That kind of murder is not uncommon in Helmand; such attacks happened before UK troops arrived, and they will continue once they have gone. British commanders accept that and understand better than perhaps ever before that their forces have probably done as much as they can, or were ever likely to be able to do, in a society as complex and feudal as Afghanistan. Now it is up to the Afghans themselves.
One of the men who will have most responsibility for the security of Nahr-e Saraj in the coming years is Colonel Hamayoon, the 36-year-old commander of the ANA's 3rd Kandak. The officer has been working with the British over the last two years, and says he has learned a great deal from them. Like all commanders in every military, he wants better equipment and more of it. But there is a greater need: he wants to go it alone, without Isaf.
"This is our country and our people, and it is our obligation to take responsibility for their safety. There will be peace. The only question is when."
Flip flops with bullet casings to help Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) - Flip flops with AK 47 bullet primers may seem an unusual fashion choice for U.S. beach-goers, but one U.S. special forces veteran hopes the factory he's set up in Kabul to make the footwear will help bring a better life to people in Afghanistan.
Ex-Special Forces serviceman Matthew Griffins says that the unlikely decision to launch the range of beach shoes was a "light bulb" moment inspired in 2010 by watching a factory worker punch holes into a leather strap used to make army boots.
Griffin was back in Afghanistan, on one of many trips to the nation he fell in love with while fighting there from 2003 to 2006, seeking for a way to help a people he remembered as unusually generous.
"I just remember how giving the people in Afghanistan were, we'd go up in the mountains and we'd stay in a village and they literally feed us until they were out of food," Griffin said.
"It was the first part of December and they had the rest of winter to live on the food that they had essentially fed us."
With a view to promoting local employment, he and another U.S. veteran, with backing from a Seattle-based business partner, set up a factory in Kabul to make flip flops.
Their line of "Combat Flip Flops," which run from $65 to $75 each, gives customers the choice of a range of designs that will remind their owners of lands far from sunny U.S. beaches and towns.
"Rather than another product to sell that looks good or feels good or is the new fashion, there's a product with a story to be told and people want to be part of that story," said Combat Flip Flops President Andrew Sewrey.
The designs include AK-47 rifle bullet casings, Navy SEAL logos and even Afghan poppies, a plant grown widely in Afghanistan and used to make illegal drugs like heroin.
"(The AK-47) is the weapon of choice for the military and what not, so we put a AK-47 bullet primer around the strap," Sewrey added, standing beside an Afghan worker making prototypes of the footwear.
So far, their main customers are military families, but they hope the business will appeal to a wider audience and provide long-term employment for Afghans who have come to depend on opportunities linked to the more than decade-long war.
"We got into this and promised Afghans a better life," Griffin said. "We've invested billions of tax dollars and lost some of the best American leaders we have to offer and it'd be a shame if it were nothing."
(Reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal; editing by Jessica Donati and Elaine Lies)
Five civilians killed in roadside bombing in S. Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Up to five civilians were killed and seven others injured in a roadside bombing in southern Afghan province of Helmand on Friday, a provincial police spokesman said.
"The blast occurred when a civilian vehicle was running along a road in Dahsht area of Naway-e-Barakzai area at around 12:30 p.m. local time and the dead included three adult men and two children, " police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told Xinhua.
The vehicle was travelling from Garmser district to provincial capital Lashkar Gah, some 555 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, he said.
The death toll could rise, as many injured remain in critical conditions, he said, blaming Taliban insurgents for placing the bomb to target security forces in the area.
Taliban militants have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) or roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,954 injured in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in insurgency-hit country, 15-percent down in overall civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011, according to a UN report released in Kabul on Aug. 8.
The IEDs were alone accounted for 33 percent of all civilians' deaths, leaving 327 civilians dead and 689 others injured in the same period of time.
Music school strikes chord with Afghan street kids
CNN By Anna Coren September 21, 2012
Kabul - Off a main street in Kabul, standing outside a high walled compound is an old Afghan security guard, manning the front gate.
Walking towards him is a group of well-dressed students in gray and maroon uniforms -- almost looking out of place in this dusty, garbage-littered, rundown city.
Inside are large trees surrounding a deep rose-colored two-storey building, and all you can hear is music.
This is the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), which has been up and running for the past two and a half years. It has 141 students, of whom 41 are girls, and half the placements go to children who are street kids or orphans. Officials believe there are 70,000 street kids in Kabul and as many as 600,000 across the country.
Three generations addicted to opium
In one of the dozen practice rooms on the ground floor is 15-year-old Negin Khpalwak. She lost both her parents several years ago and has been living in an orphanage ever since. She is now one of a handful of students learning to play the sarod -- a traditional Indian instrument that is making a revival in Afghanistan thanks to this school.
"Music is very important to me because it's my future. It saved me," she said.
"I want to teach other students, especially young girls. I know my country has a lot of problems but I hope for peace so girls in Afghanistan can do what they dream of doing."
Across the hall in another practice room is 16-year-old Wahidullah Amiri. He's playing the piano.
With a look of determination and purpose he reads the music, his fingers moving across the keys. Listening to him, you would think this teenager had been playing for most of his life. In fact he'd never touched a piano until two years ago. "I was working on the street selling plastic bags and chewing gum," he said.
"My family is very poor. Now I go to school and study music. Something I never thought I would do."
Skateboard school ramps up Afghan dreams
The man responsible for turning his life around is the founder of ANIM, Ahmad Samarst. The son of a famous Afghan composer, conductor and musician, Samarst wanted to change lives through the power of music. Though he was born and raised in Kabul, he has very close ties to Australia after seeking asylum there when he fled the Taliban. The Islamic militant movement seized power in 1996 following Afghanistan's long civil war.
While in Australia, Samarst studied music -- receiving his PhD in music from Monash University in Melbourne. His wife and two children still live there. He returns every three months and will be heading back again at the end of the year for his daughter's wedding. But he says despite his family, his heart is in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban fell in 2001 he felt a strong desire to return to his country and rebuild the nation's rich and vibrant musical culture. Under the Taliban it had virtually been wiped out with a nationwide ban. Music was considered blasphemous, musicians were persecuted and if you were caught playing an instrument, the punishment for this "crime" was having one of your hands cut off.
The Taliban destroyed most instruments during their brutal five-year rule, often using the wood for heating. If the instruments were too big, like a piano, they would blow them up with a grenade so they could carry them out in pieces.
A true believer in the healing power of music, Samarst explained his vision for ANIM. "It was based on the strong belief of the power of music, as a powerful force, which can play a significant role in establishing a civil and just society in post-Taliban Afghanistan."
It took years of planning, lobbying and gathering financial support but finally Samarst had the beginnings of a national music school. After a $2 million donation from the World Bank, Samart was suddenly overwhelmed by international interest and funding from foreign ministries, embassies and music schools from Germany, Finland, Denmark, the United States, Britain and India.
Samarst said many of the instruments were donated and described the storage rooms upstairs for these valuable pieces as "treasure troves." He said they would be the "envy of many music schools around the world."
As part of the program, he has hired nine international music teachers from the U.S., Europe, Mexico and India to not only teach the students but also train local Afghan teachers.
William Harvey arrived in Kabul two and a half years ago from New York, feeling compelled to act after the September 11 attacks shook the core of his country. He said he had no idea what sort of adventure he was about to embark upon but felt strongly about helping to mend and rebuild a war-ravaged Afghanistan.
He is now the conductor of ANIM's youth orchestra that has just been invited to perform in the U.S. at Washington's Kennedy Center and New York's Carnegie Hall in February next year.
"When the people of the world see there are Afghan girls and boys performing side by side that means to a certain extent that we've won, and that Afghanistan has won, because music is a historical and inalienable part of Afghan culture, and its return is tremendously exciting," he said.
ANIM works very closely with Afghanistan's Ministry of Education, which is very proud of what the school is achieving. Sarmast believes his greatest achievement is co-education within the school. Boys and girls, side by side, in a country where in some towns, girls still don't have access to an education.
The Taliban made it very clear during its rule that no girls were allowed to go to school -- a rule that is still applied in their heartland in southern Afghanistan. But at ANIM young girls smile and laugh with their male classmates, oblivious to the divisions deep with their society.
"This is a revolution for this country," he explained. "These girls are serving as a mother for the entire nation. I'm very pleased our institute is a mother for the country."
One girl who is passionate about education and her country is 10-year-old Sapna Rehamati. Girls don't have to wear headscarves inside the school grounds though Sapna puts one on. But instead of wearing it traditionally over her head and wrapped around her shoulders, she ties it together behind her head, at the nape of her neck. With a mischievous grin she explained, "This is my style."
Asked about the future of the country, this orphaned girl who wasn't even born when the Taliban fell from power, said emphatically, "The Taliban is very bad. Every person has the right to learn. Every child, every human being should have the right to study music. Nobody should interfere in their lives."
Sitting next to her friend Azia on the piano stool, Sapna smiled warmly at her as the two girls hit the keys in time, their little fingers creating the nostalgic sounds of a traditional Afghan tune.
When asked what she wants to do when she grows up and graduates from the school, she replied: "I want to build my country and make Afghanistan a great place. If other people want to build our country I want to work beside them."
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