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Woman's Executers Live Freely Under Peace Programme
TOLOnews.com By Saboory Ghafoor Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Former Taliban members who killed an Afghan woman on the charge of adultery two years ago have joined Afghanistan's Peace and Reintegration Programme, while continuing to defend their decision to execute her.
The woman they put to death, Sanam, was a resident of Khordak village in Badghis' Qads district. She was accused by a Taliban drum-head court of having an illicit relationship with a wealthy local man Gul Mohammad, and was sentenced the death. Mohammad, on the other hand, was lashed and fined.
Badghis deputy governor Abdul Ghani Sabari said Tuesday that those who issued the sentence and executed Sanam have since joined the official government programme for reintegration of insurgents, but they continue to defend their actions.
"They joined the peace process and right now they are living in Qala-e Nawo, the capital of the province," he said. "They executed the poor woman without proof or evidence."
The Taliban mullah Malawi Asfandyar, who issued Sanam's sentence, told TOLOnews Tuesday that she confessed to the "crime" and so she must be killed.
Asfanyar, a former member of the Taliban Ulema Council in Badghis, admitted that the woman was killed by a member of his group, Mullah Yousouf, and that all those who were involved in that incident had joined the peace programme and were living freely in the province, exempt from all responsibility.
Asfandyar said that Sanam was executed because she did not have any relatives, whereas the man was released after he was lashed and fined because he belonged to relatives within the group.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in nearby Herat province condemned the action, saying it was a crime and that there should be an investigation with those responsible brought to trial.
"The perpetrators [of this crime] are still not executed – my request is to execute them," Herat AIHRC chief Abdul Qadir Rahimi told TOLOnews.
It remains unclear both in law and in practice whether those who have committed serious crimes, but who later join the government reconciliation programme will ever be punished or if their past deeds are ignored.
Pentagon says partnered operation with Afghan forces continuing
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Partnered operations between NATO and Afghan forces are continuing despite a decision by the U. S. commander to scale them back after a string of deadly insider attacks, Pentagon spokesman George Little said here on Tuesday.
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Little described such scaling back as "a temporary measure," adding that some patrols below the battalion level still continue.
"Let me be clear as well that operations with our Afghan partners continue," said Little.
John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, ordered on Sept. 16 that all combined International Security Assistance Force and Afghan operations below the battalion level must be approved at the regional command level, following insider attacks that have killed 51 members of the coalition forces so far this year.
The insider attacks refer to those perpetrated by people wearing Afghan soldier and police uniforms.
Little said it would be up to the command in Afghanistan to determine how long partnered operations are scaled back, but U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta strongly supports Allen's decision.
5.1-magnitude quake hits Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan -- USGS
HONG KONG, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale jolted Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan at 08:33: 01 GMT on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The epicenter, with a depth of 33.50 km, was initially determined to be at 36.3831 degrees north latitude and 69.1857 degrees east longitude.
NATO: 2 service members killed in Afghanistan
Associated Press – Wed, Sep 26, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide attack on a NATO patrol in eastern Afghanistan killed two service members in the U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday, NATO and Afghan officials said.
The attack included small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and a man wearing a vest laden with explosives, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition.
The coalition gave no other details, but Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman in Logar province, said the suicide bomber, who was on foot, struck the international soldiers as they were patrolling a section of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital.
The nationalities of the soldiers killed were not disclosed.
So far this year, 285 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.
Training Afghan Allies, With Guard Firmly Up
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 25, 2012
BAD PAKH, Afghanistan - When American military advisers fly into Afghan Army outposts like the one nestled on the floor of this forested valley, they keep their body armor on and their weapons loaded.
Their guard was up even though they were there for a day of training Afghan soldiers without once leaving the confines of a fortified base — even when chatting with the Afghan officers over a lunch of goat meat and yogurt.
Afghan soldiers and police officers have gunned down 51 American and allied troops so far this year, and now no one is taking chances. The advisers’ extreme caution lays bare the steep challenge ahead after the official end of the American troop “surge” on Friday and as the mission shifts toward the next chapter of the war: preparing the Afghans to fight on their own.
“They come here and they look like they are going to fight us,” said Sgt. Abdul Karim Haq, 25, an Afghan soldier at the outpost. “They are always talking down to us like we are little children.”
American military leaders say they have little choice as insider killings have become a prevalent cause of death. Attacks by Afghan forces against Western soldiers and Marines this month led to new precautions over where and when joint operations and training sessions happen. At the same time, a video and cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad are stoking outrage and violence against Americans across the Muslim world.
In the field, where small teams of American advisers are now working with Afghan units, even minor misunderstandings are treated as potentially violent confrontations.
When a pair of Afghan soldiers decided to take a nap in a guard tower in which the Americans had taken up a position at this outpost, the coalition advisory team commander, Capt. John Chung, 28, sent his interpreter to hustle out the Afghans with an admonishment to “be gentle. No trouble, you know what I mean.”
Aside from a fear of being gunned down, the advisers said they were more vigilant because they also doubted the ability of Afghan soldiers to secure the base from an insurgent attack.
“Exhibit A,” one adviser noted about the Afghans’ nap in the guard tower.
“I think we need to be ready for everything. Maybe it’s coming from inside, or maybe it gets in here from the outside,” said the adviser, a young soldier who did not want to be identified for fear of damaging his career. “I mean, sleeping in a tower? There are a lot of reasons to be careful out here.”
By here, he meant behind high walls that American soldiers had built near Bad Pakh, in eastern Afghanistan, just a few years ago and guarded until handing the outpost over to the Afghan Army in March. Once home to Americans, it is now treated by them as another dangerous place in a hostile country.
And for good reason, judging by comments from Afghan soldiers here and elsewhere in the country.
Abdul Hanan, 20, a soldier also based in the east, was blunt. “We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”
He said the Americans treat the Afghans roughly, cursing at and bullying them. “We like the Americans’ heavy weapons, but we don’t like their soldiers,” he said.
He and other soldiers nonetheless acknowledged what the Pentagon’s own public reporting makes clear: the Afghans are not ready to fight without American help, and the United States is eager to see that they still get it.
American forces may be dwindling, but “there’s still going to be an insurgency here,” said Brig. Gen. David G. Fox, the top adviser north of Kabul. The advisers’ brief is to “make sure the Afghans can take it on themselves.”
Despite a decade-long, $33 billion allied effort to build the military and the police, Afghanistan’s security forces “continue to confront challenges, including attrition, leadership deficits and limited capabilities in staff planning, management, logistics and procurement,” according to an April review of Afghan security by the Pentagon.
The army was improving, the report said, pointing to the fact that 13 of the Afghan Army’s 156 battalions were now rated by the coalition as “independent with advisers,” up from one in 2011. The ranking is the highest given by the coalition.
Yet the report readily acknowledged that its own figures were suspect. This year the coalition stopped using officers independent of its training command to validate ratings, and the change “has resulted in the recent increase in ‘independent with advisers’ units,” it said.
Persistent corruption and organized crime networks within the security forces also risk undermining rising public esteem for the army and the police, and could “pose a threat to the transition process,” it said.
The police, in particular, have a reputation for brutality and corruption. In Bagh-e-Pol, a village near the southern city of Kandahar, the police chief, Abdul Wali, boasted that he and his men often beat people suspected of being members of the Taliban so badly that “sometimes he loses an arm, sometimes he loses a leg.”
Mr. Wali’s American advisers smiled uncomfortably as he explained in an interview that he did not need a trial to know who deserved a beating.
Senior American and European officials say privately that problems within the Afghan forces have reinforced internal doubts about Afghanistan’s long-term stability.
As one Western official put it, American and European talk of the transition in Afghanistan being “conditions based” is really about the conditions in America and Europe, where majorities no longer support the war.
The immediate result is that coalition resources are diminishing fast, though senior American officers said scarcity could have its advantages. With less to give to the Afghans, who for years looked to coalition forces for everything from clean drinking water to air cover, they will have to learn to fend for themselves.
But that does not include Western assets like surveillance drones, attack helicopters and medical evacuation helicopters, which will remain in Afghanistan for some time, officials say.
Advisers flew into Bad Pakh last month to teach the Afghans how to load wounded soldiers into an American medevac helicopter. Time permitting, they also planned mortar practice.
But when the Americans flew out 10 hours later, the training day had gone much like three previous ones held here in the past two months: the helicopter never showed. It was either down for maintenance or called away for a more pressing mission. The advisers never got a clear answer why.
Mortar practice also had to be scratched when it turned out the Afghans were missing the sight for their sole mortar tube.
With plenty of time to talk, the Afghans told stories about life without the Americans. Their first big test came in June when a patrol ran out of ammunition after being ambushed by the Taliban, who killed one soldier and captured another, said Sgt. Maj. Ghulam Jilani, 45, the senior Afghan enlisted soldier at the base.
The Americans had pulled out three months earlier, and the Afghans quickly determined that a rescue mission was too risky without the air cover and surveillance once readily provided by their now-departed allies.
So, Sergeant Major Jilani said, they got their man back the “Afghan way.” They rounded up fighting-age men from a nearby village and took them back to the base. The villagers basically became hostages.
“We made sure everyone knew: ‘Give us the soldier back and we’ll free the men,’ ” Sergeant Major Jilani said.
By dusk, the district governor had brokered a trade.
Without American backup, “we could only do what these village people would understand,” Sergeant Major Jilani said. “Why should there be any objections to this method? We did not shoot the men.”
An Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Army General Charged with Forcible Sodomy During Tour in Afghanistan
By Luis Martinez | ABC OTUS News
An Army brigadier general has been charged with forcible sodomy, inappropriate relationships, and possessing alcohol and pornography while serving as a senior commander in Afghanistan earlier this year.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, a deputy commanding general of the 82 nd Airborne Division, faces a possible court martial over the charges handed down Wednesday.
In May, Sinclair was sent home to the United States in the middle of his combat tour in Afghanistan, where he was serving in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar as the deputy commander of logistics and support for the 82 nd Airborne.
Sinclair was sent to the division's home base of Fort Bragg, N.C., so allegations of potential misconduct could be investigated. At the time of his return, base spokesmen confirmed that Sinclair was under criminal investigation.
A news release by the Fort Bragg Public Affairs Office listed the charges presented against Sinclair as including "forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, attempted violation of an order, violations of regulations by wrongfully engaging in inappropriate relationships and misusing a government travel charge card, violating general orders by possessing alcohol and pornography while deployed, maltreatment of subordinates, filing fraudulent claims, engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman and engaging in conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, or of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."
Few specifics about the allegations against Sinclair were released Wednesday, but a Defense Department official said "several women were the subject of Sinclair's alleged misconduct."
A former U.S. official who worked with Sinclair during his deployment in Kandahar said he and other officials who knew Sinclair were shocked by the news of the charges. He described Sinclair as being "very proactive" and a "gregarious individual."
Sinclair remains at Fort Bragg, where he has been serving in a placeholder position as a special assistant to the commanding general of the 18 th Airborne Corps. A Defense Department official said Sinclair was read the charges against him on Monday. Another official added that Sinclair is not under detention at the base.
Sinclair will now face an Article 32 hearing, at which evidence will be presented to a presiding officer to determine if his case should proceed to a court martial. No date has been set for that hearing.
This past decade, Sinclair has served two tours in Iraq and was on his second deployment to Afghanistan. He had also deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Army spokesman George Wright says that in the past decade there have been only two Army general officers who have undergone courts martial.
In June, Brig. Gen. Roger B. Duff, a former commander of the 95th Training Division, pleaded guilty to two charges of false statements, two charges of conduct unbecoming, and seven charges of wearing unauthorized badges, awards or ribbons. Duff was sentenced to two months confinement and dismissal but, because of a pre-trial agreement, only the dismissal could be imposed. Duff's sentence has not been finalized.
Prior to Duff's case, the only other court martial involving an Army general officer was in 1999, when Maj. Gen. R.E. Hale pled guilty to seven counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and one count of making a false statement about an adulterous relationship. He was reprimanded, fined $10,000, ordered to forfeit $1,000 a month in pay and retired as a brigadier general.
Foreign Ignorance Triggers Insider Attacks: MOD
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Afghan Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi on Tuesday said that the lack of knowledge of Afghan culture among the Nato-led foreign soldiers is a key cause of "insider attacks" in Afghanistan.
Speaking to the Afghan Parliament, the newly-appointed minister said that the burning of the Quran and abuse of Islamic values clearly caused insecurity to escalate.
"Today in the morning, I talked with US Joint Chief of Staff... I told him to respect our culture – the things you are doing not only incites the enemy but also incites me and my soldiers and the president," Mohammadi told the lawmakers.
"The enemy has only 20 percent infiltration inside our forces – the remaining 80 percent is the cause of disrespect to our culture and religion," he added.
As many as 51 foreign soldiers have died this year in insider attacks, so called because a Nato troop is killed or wounded by a member of the Afghan security forces deliberately turning a weapon against them.
The Defence Minister was summoned to Parliament, along with the Interior Minister and the chief of the National Directorate of Security, to answer questions on the increase of insecurity in the country.
Mohammadi also told the MPs that insurgents are trying to cause unrest in the north of the country by hiding into the eastern regions of Afghanistan. He added that while the situation in Kunar and Nuristan is not so bad, the routes headed east are insecure because of the infiltration of Jahish Mohammad, Lashkare Taiba and Nefaz Sharyat terrorist networks.
Meanwhile, the new Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang stressed to the MPs that insurgents are being sent to Afghanistan from other countries.
"As far as the international terrorism is concerned, the insurgents are sent to Afghanistan from one of the neighboring countries and they are being fed by the narcotics money. They are a threat to the region," Patang said.
Head of Afghanistan's spy agency the NDS Asadullah Khalid believes that terrorist safe havens should be targeted and their plans should be neutralised within.
"I believe that the conspiracies should be neutralised from within, as you know where their bases are," Khalid said.
He welcomed the local uprisings against the Taliban and insurgents in several district of the country, saying that they are not influenced by Hezb-e-Islami or any other groups.
Green on blue attacks reveal flaws in Afghan recruitment process
BBC News By Gerry Northam BBC Radio 4's File on 4 25 September 2012
The growing number of coalition troops killed by their Afghan allies is raising questions about the recruitment procedures of Afghan security forces - and the trustworthiness of the tribal leaders who endorse each recruit.
"There were two officers who came up and rang the doorbell. Like they say in the movies, you don't want to see the suits come to the door," recalls Rod Watkins.
"As soon as they asked if I was Paul's father, I knew something was wrong."
Rod's son Paul, a Lance Corporal with the Royal Lancers, had been killed in Afghanistan. He was 24-years-old.
From then on, it only got worse. Rod soon discovered that Paul had not died in combat. He was shot by a soldier of the Afghan National Army - a man he was helping to train and who was supposed to be his ally against the Taliban.
Mr Watkins was not satisfied with the account he received from the military of exactly what happened, so from his home in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, he pieced the story together using evidence from the inquest and what he gleaned from his son's comrades.
Paul was part of a unit which had been sent out short-handed. There were only seven men instead of eight - the missing man was on R&R (Rest and Recuperation).
So, as the other six went out on foot patrol in dangerous territory in Helmand province, Paul was left to guard both their vehicles with two Afghan soldiers.
One of them put his rifle down and went to relieve himself in the bushes. The other saw his chance and fired two bursts of automatic fire straight at Paul. He hit him six times.
"He had two shots to the brain - he would have died before he hit the ground," says Mr Watkins.
"I am very upset with the British Army because I entrusted my son to them and they didn't look after him properly. That's my personal feeling," he told Radio 4's File on 4.
"Something went wrong and they say sorry afterwards, but sorry doesn't bring back my son."
51 deaths this year
Military commanders call these rogue attacks "green-on-blue" - green for Afghan forces and blue for the coalition. They have accounted for 114 deaths since 2007 - which includes 18 British soldiers.
The official NATO analysis says about a quarter of rogue attacks are the result of Taliban infiltration or influence. The rest are due to individual grudges or disputes which get out of hand.
However, the rate of attacks is increasing and this year has been by far the worst, with 51 coalition casualties - 9 of which were British. One in seven coalition casualties is now the result of a green-on-blue killing.
The former head of the British Army General Lord Dannatt sees this as a deliberate policy adopted by enemy fighters:
"People must understand that this is a Taliban tactic and it's potentially a very successful tactic because it potentially reduces trust and lowers morale among troops engaged in the operation.
"And of course it provokes a reaction at home: if we are supposed to be helping them why are they killing us?"
At the end of July this year, Richard Chamberlain was lying in bed, reading, at his home in Broadstairs in Kent when his mother started knocking frantically downstairs. Again there was an awful sense of foreboding.
"When there's a knock at the door at 10:30pm, it's rarely good news," says Richard.
Richard's brother David had also been killed in Afghanistan - although he was not in the army, but an experienced senior customs official working under contract as a civilian mentor. He was killed while training officers of the Afghan customs and border police in Herat.
"Dave enjoyed the work and the camaraderie. He believed that they were there for a good reason, even a noble reason," says his brother.
The facts have yet to emerge in detail but it is known that the man who shot him also killed two others and wounded five more. He was wearing an Afghan police uniform.
Richard sees his brother's death as part of a pattern of treachery in Afghanistan.
"It is happening more and more often now. I suppose they are taking recruits where they can find them.
"It is a near-impossible task to vet Afghans and say these people will not commit an atrocity."
Tribal recommendations
Green on blue attacks raise serious questions about the vetting processes for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
How do they let in recruits who are either Taliban loyalists in disguise or so hot-headed that they respond to a grievance with murder?
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly will meet in November to review progress in Afghanistan and will consider a draft report from its Defence and Security Committee which says that tighter vetting procedures were introduced in February of this year - five years after green on blue attacks began.
The author Sven Mikser, of the Estonian parliament, acknowledges that in a poor and largely illiterate country like Afghanistan there are bound to be weaknesses in the system.
"It's a country with more than 30 years of war, so when it comes to nationwide databases and registers then they have been non-existent," he tells File On 4.
"There are biometric databases and other databases, which in the past have been inadequate but are getting better and better."
A large part of the vetting process depends on a distinctly Afghan form of job reference - the recommendation of a tribal elder. Mr Mikser says this is helpful and an important part of procedure - but he accepts its limitations.
"It requires the local elders to also be fully trustworthy sources of information... our service people in Afghanistan are in a good position to assess, but obviously in a country like Afghanistan nothing can be 100% fool-proof."
Something the families of David Chamberlain and L/Cpl Paul Watkins know too well. The men who killed them were both recruited into the ANSF via tribal leaders and both were on duty at the time they attacked.
At the coalition HQ in Kabul, spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz defends the reliance on tribal elders in the recruiting process.
"It is important to note that this vetting process is an Afghan-led process and they know the best about their culture and about their honour and pride in this regard.
"So when our Afghan partners rely on the elders in those villages we believe they know exactly what they are doing and trust them."
He points to hundreds of members of the Afghan forces who have recently been dismissed following re-vetting.
"Maybe the first vetting process was not solid enough. Maybe there was some new information.
"It is a case-by-case issue here and I think the Afghans take it very seriously. The fact that they do the re-vetting again - very successfully, I have to say - shows how important it is for them."
When NATO decided this month to restrict future joint operations with Afghan forces, it indicated that its motive was to preserve the safety of its own troops.
But Brigadier General Katz says the coalition remains committed to partnering, training and assisting the joint operation - something that is essential, he argues, if the Afghan army and police are to be trained to take control of their own country.
That is the key to a policy which is seen as vital in Britain, the United States and throughout NATO - withdrawal of their troops by the end of 2014.
Listen to the full report on File on 4 on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 24 September at 20:00 BST and Sunday, 30 September at 17:00 BST. You can also listen again via the Radio 4 website or File on 4 download.
Afghanistan prognosis looks gloomier
By Jim Lobe Asia Times - Sep 26 12:24am
WASHINGTON - With all foreign troops due to leave Afghanistan just two years from now, the news out of the Central Asian nation is becoming increasingly gloomy.
Adding to the pessimism is a just-released report by one of the most astute observers of the US war, Gilles Dorronsoro, an Afghanistan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), who, among other things, predicts that the regime in Kabul "will most probably collapse in a few years" given current trends.
"Political fragmentation, whether in the form of militias or the establishment of sanctuaries in the north, is laying the ground work for a long civil war" that is likely to be fueled by competition among regional powers, according to his report, which also joined the call by a growing number of experts for Washington to open negotiations with the Taliban as soon as possible.
Indeed, a series of setbacks just this month have renewed questions about even the short-term viability of the US-led strategy to keep the Taliban at bay while bolstering the central government enough to persuade key elements of the insurgency to negotiate rather than fight on.
In recent days, some of the most die-hard Republican supporters of US intervention have suggested throwing in the towel early, particularly in view of the growing number of fatal "insider" attacks - 51 so far this year - by uniformed Afghan personnel against US and coalition trainers and soldiers.
The latest attacks prompted US commanders to sharply curb joint operations by coalition and Afghan forces pending a massive re-vetting of the latter for possible Taliban sympathies. The move, according to more than a few observers, strikes at the heart of the US strategy of building up Afghan forces while gradually transferring more security responsibilities to them.
"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can," said Bill Young, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Committee. "I just think we're killing kids that don't need to die."
Similarly, Senator John McCain, a steadfast backer of the Afghanistan war, also suggested that Washington should consider an early withdrawal, although he later backed away from the statement while blaming the administration of President Barack Obama for failing to follow the advice of his field commanders.
The rise in so-called "green-on-blue" attacks and the subsequent reduction in joint operations between the two forces are just two of the signs that things are not going well for Washington and its allies, who, in principle, are committed to withdrawing all their combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Just last week, US forces were stunned by an unprecedented Taliban assault on a heavily fortified coalition air base in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan that, in addition to killing two Marines, destroyed six fighter jets worth a combined total of more than US$200 million.
The attack, in which the assailants wore US uniforms, demonstrated both the insurgents' sophistication and their continued presence in Helmand, the main focus of the US "surge" of some 33,000 troops two years ago. Indeed, the coincidence of the attack and the withdrawal of the last "surge" troops last week underlined the potential holes left in their wake.
At the same time, a coalition airstrike that killed eight women collecting wood for morning cooking fires in eastern Afghanistan, combined with continuing wrangling between Washington and the government of President Hamid Karzai over the fate of foreign and Afghan prisoners held by the US in Bagram Air Base, deepened existing tensions between the two governments.
The latest incidents all took place even before Dorronsoro finished drafting his deeply pessimistic report which noted that, in some respects, the current regime in Kabul is less prepared to survive a challenge by the Taliban than the communist government that hung on for three years against the mujahideen after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
There are "two major differences," he wrote. "First the current regime does not possess the ideological and social cohesion of the communist regime, and its ability to survive militarily has not been demonstrated. ... Second, the Taliban form a united movement with few rifts, compared to the infighting of the mujahideen in the 1990s."
Already next year, when tens of thousands of coalition forces will remain in Afghanistan, Dorronsoro predicted that the eastern part of the country and the region around the capital itself will be "gravely threatened by a Taliban advance" with the onset of spring.
"The situation will only worsen after 2014, when most US troops are out of the country and aid going to the Afghan government steeply declines," according to the 23-page report, "Waiting for the Taliban in Afghanistan".
As coalition forces withdraw, including the 68,000 US combat troops that remain in-country, the Taliban will "automatically" advance, especially in the east and the south where the insurgency has been contained as a result of constant pressure by the coalition forces.
Dorronsoro is particularly critical of Washington's counter-insurgency strategy which gave precedence to tactical military operations aimed at systematically eliminating local insurgent leaders over a political approach of engaging the rebel leadership based in Pakistan.
One indication of the Taliban's resilience has been the fate of the coalition-backed "re-integration" program which not only failed to bring over significant numbers of insurgents in the targeted areas - the east and the south - but also fueled corruption, according to Dorronsoro.
Meanwhile, the Karzai regime will face three major crises while the coalition withdraws: an economic crisis precipitated by a sharp drop in Western aid and spending; an institutional crisis with the end of Karzai's term in 2014 and indications that much of the political elite are already preparing to go into exile; and a security crisis in which large parts of the country fall outside the government's control despite the overwhelming official size of the security forces.
"Maintaining control of Afghanistan's major cities and main transport corridors is ... the only realistic goal," according to the report.
Certain eventualities could stabilize the situation for a few years, including a reduction in Pakistani support for the Taliban, the development of divisions within the insurgency, and the possibility that a new president in Kabul who could inspire greater confidence and support than Karzai.
"In reality, these developments are unlikely and would come about only as a result of unpredictable events - a major political crisis in Pakistan or the death of the Taliban's spiritual leader Mullah Omar, for instance," according to the report.
In terms of recommendations, Dorronsoro calls for the coalition to strengthen security in the east and around Kabul, even at the expense of losing control of the south more quickly.
And while negotiations with the Taliban are unlikely before the troops withdrawal, Washington should understand that it will "not be able to pursue its longer-term interests in and around Afghanistan if it is not willing to deal with the Taliban" which, alone among the various contenders for power if the Kabul regime collapses, "can potentially control the Afghan border and expel transnational jihadists from Afghanistan".
Thus, Washington "must not further limit its ability to open negotiations with the Taliban", and coalition military and drone operations "should focus first and foremost on foreign jihadist groups", not on the Taliban insurgency.
In his blog at the national interest.com, Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called Dorronsoro's recommendation "good advice".
Sound policy, he noted, requires "getting away from the mistaken tendency to view the Afghan Taliban as if they were themselves a transnational terrorist group - which they are not, notwithstanding their previous alliance with Osama bin Laden."
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
(Inter Press Service)
Pakistani Papers Banned by Afghanistan in East
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND and DECLAN WALSH September 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In the often ill-tempered war of words between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Afghans have just taken a new tack: outlawing Pakistani words.
The Afghan government has banned Pakistani newspapers from eastern Afghanistan. Granted, that is an area where only 29 percent of the population can read, but it was at least a symbolic smack in the mouth.
Afghan police officers at the two countries’ notoriously porous border crossings this week began seizing copies of a dozen Pakistani daily newspapers, in English, Pashto and Urdu, after the Afghan Interior Ministry issued an order on Friday saying the publications were “functioning as mouthpieces and propaganda tools for the Taliban.”
Some Pakistani news outlets are clearly not shy about reporting on Afghanistan in terms that would please the insurgents. A headline last year in the English-language newspaper The Nation read “18 Puppets Killed in Spin Boldak Martyrdom Attack,” reporting about a Taliban suicide bombing of a government border post.
That article bore the byline of Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, described as “our staff reporter.” Mr. Ahmadi is the Taliban’s official spokesman for southern Afghanistan. His counterpart in the east and north, Zabiullah Mujahid, is also frequently listed as a Nation “staff reporter.”
Still, The Nation is a fringe publication, owned by the right-wing Pakistani nationalist Majid Nizami, that sells only 10,000 copies daily, by the most generous industry estimates. Few copies ever reach Afghanistan. (The most respected paper in Pakistan, Dawn, sells at least 10 times as many copies.)
Editors of less lurid English-language publications say that such brazenly pro-Taliban coverage is the exception, though the Pakistani press features plenty of criticism of President Hamid Karzai’s government and of the United States. “The Afghans have gone overboard,” said Rashed Rahman, editor of The Daily Times, based in Lahore. “I understand their sensitivities, but to say the Pakistani press is pro-Taliban is difficult to justify.”
Intermedia Pakistan, an aid group that specializes in news media development, recently conducted an analysis of how Afghanistan is portrayed in the Pakistani news media. Its executive director, Adnan Rehmat, said there was a strong pro-Taliban bias after the 2001 invasion by the United States, but the bias shifted after homegrown Pakistani Taliban militants took up arms.
Even so, the deep suspicions between the two countries are reflected in the press.
Ahmad Ahmadani, a staff correspondent employed by The Nation, rather than the Taliban, called the Afghan government’s action “a form of intimidation.” While he agreed that The Nation was somewhat pro-Taliban in its tone, he said it reflected how Muslims in general feel, “so how can they talk against them?” The more mainstream English-language papers in Pakistan offer plenty of considered analysis — some of it sharply critical of the powerful military. But publications in Urdu, the main language of Pakistan and a widely spoken tongue in eastern Afghanistan, are another matter. Some carry extreme views that at times make The Nation seem a model of restraint.
Ansar Abbasi, an influential journalist writing in the leading Urdu daily Jang in July accused the Pakistani and American governments of handing Afghanistan over to Jews and Christians, and killing “hundreds of thousands of people in 11 years.” A writer in the Urdu daily Nawai Waqt — also owned by Mr. Nizami, the Punjabi nationalist — declared last week that America had already lost the war in Afghanistan, and that a majority of its troops had become drug users.
Mr. Rehmat, of Intermedia Pakistan, said there was strong antipathy in the Urdu press toward Mr. Karzai, who is often presented as an American puppet, as well as skepticism about the broader American project in Afghanistan.
“They are unabashedly anti-Karzai, and in general view the American partnership in Afghan governance as being not in Pakistan’s interest,” he said.
For their part, the Afghan news media make criticism of Pakistan a mainstay of their coverage as well, particularly for providing sanctuaries for the Taliban. Many Afghan critics assert that there would be no insurgency in Afghanistan had Pakistan not created it.
There are other factors at play in the Pakistani coverage. The civilian government wields indirect influence over newspapers through its large advertising budget, while the powerful military prevails on major news media companies to stick to the official line on national security issues, especially on Afghanistan and India.
Even mainstream Pakistani papers give prominence to conspiratorial, and occasionally extremist, views. The newspaper News International, for instance, offers regular columns by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program, and by Ahmed Quraishi, a right-wing populist with close military ties.
In one article last May, Mr. Quraishi claimed that the C.I.A. had been “grooming and supporting terrorism and insurgency inside Pakistan” for the past decade.
The All Pakistan Newspapers Society, whose members include the largest English and Urdu papers, expressed “serious concern” about the Afghan ban, calling it an infringement of the “people’s right to know.”
For the most part, though, the move was little noticed east of the border, partly because it did not create much financial hardship. A newspaper distributor in Jalalabad, the largest city in eastern Afghanistan, said that total sales there amounted to just 500 to 800 copies a day.
Rod Nordland reported from Kabul, and Declan Walsh from Islamabad, Pakistan. Khalid Alokozay contributed reporting from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
Highway Robbery on Major Afghan Road
IWPR reporter finds evidence of arbitrary, undocumented taxation on road through Laghman province.
IWPR By Enqelabi Zwan 25 Sep 12
Afghanistan - Local officials in Afghanistan’s Laghman province are taking tens of thousands of US dollars a month in fees and taxes from drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, and the way the money is collected indicates that it is being pocketed.
An investigation by IWPR contributors over a three-month period reveals that various forms of irregular fees are being imposed on the road.
First, the toll that drivers are legally obliged to pay is not subject to the mandatory documentation. Second, truck drivers have to pay bribes to let their overweight vehicles pass. Third, local government officials charge road users a “municipal tax” which does not even exist. And all the while, traffic police are levying their own informal “fees”.
Although Afghan media have reported on this issue before, this is the first attempt to track corrupt practices on the Kabul-Jalalabad road.
Since extortion takes place on an individual basis, gathering evidence is a laborious process. Interviews, videos and photographs gathered in the course of this investigation suggest that staff from three areas of government bodies are involved – the Ministry of Public Works, municipality employees, and the traffic police.
A rough calculation based on IWPR’s observations suggest that officials net around 50,000 dollars a month, meaning a potential loss to the treasury of millions of dollars over recent years. And that is only on one road, in one Afghan province.
ROAD TAX PAYMENTS GO UNDOCUMENTED
On the stretch of road running through Sorkhakan district, the Afghan public works ministry has a checkpoint tasked with levying a toll on light vehicles as well as trucks carrying freight. The checkpoint has a staff of 12 revenue officers from the ministry, who are required to collect the toll in Afghan currency, issue a receipt to the driver, and transfer the funds to the relevant government bank account.
The officers do collect fees, but negotiate a discount for drivers who agree not to take a receipt. The lack of paperwork, and the fact that fees are collected in Pakistani rupees rather than afghanis, suggest that the funds will never reach Kabul.
Pakistani rupees, known locally as “kaldars”, have been in common use in eastern Afghanistan for the last two decades. Even though they are not legal tender in Afghanistan, they are widely used for day-to-day transactions.
The going rate at the Sorkhakan checkpoint is between 100 and 600 rupees (one to six US dollars) depending on the size of the vehicle. The official rate, calculated by the kilometre for the distance between Kabul and Torkham on the border with Pakistan, is about 320 afghanis for large vehicles and 50 to 110 for smaller ones.
“Tax officials take money off me every time I come through Laghman,” Mir Wali, driving a truck full of flour and rice to Kabul, told IWPR. “It isn’t more than 300 or 400 rupees. They’d stop my truck if I refused to pay up.”
IWPR interviewed another man, Akbar, driving a truck carrying cement, at a restaurant stop on the approaches to the checkpoint.
“Whenever the transport officials stop me, I put 400 kaldars in their hand and drive on. If I asked for a receipt, they’d take 300 afghanis instead of 400 kaldars [six dollars instead of four],” he said. “Since I gain by paying 400 kaldars, I forget about the receipt.”
For this investigation, an IWPR contributor stopped 75 cars and trucks on the road, although only 25 drivers were prepared to be interviewed and have their voices recorded. They gave accounts that confirmed Akbar’s description of the process.
Over the course of six days, the reporter also monitored vehicles as they left the checkpoint, and discovered that in the space of one hour, 80 drivers paid fees, all of them in rupees and virtually none with a receipt.
At an average rate of, say, 50 vehicles an hour paying 100 rupees a time, the checkpoint must be taking at least 3,600,000 rupees a month, about 36,000 dollars.
Sayed Nusrat Agha, director of public works in Laghman, has direct responsibility for road tolls collection in the province. Interviewed by IWPR, he confirmed that the checkpoint staff employed by his ministry were required to accept only afghanis in payment and to issue receipts.
Shown two video clips in which staff were seen breaking both these rules, he said, “this is all lies” and angrily left the room.
IWPR also approached the tax officers themselves on four occasions, but they refused to comment on the grounds that the ministry had instructed staff not to speak to the media.
BRIBES FOR OVERWEIGHT TRUCKS
Another section of the public works ministry has responsibility for ensuring that freight vehicles are within the prescribed weight limit of 40 tons. Here, too, IWPR has uncovered unorthodox practices.
There is a healthy flow of commercial traffic up and down the highway, especially of vehicles transporting cement, rice, fresh fruit and other foodstuffs to the Afghan capital.
At an office in Kamar Mashal in Sorkhakan district, the trucks are driven onto a set of digital scales to check their weight and ensure that they are not carrying a load of over 40 tons . According to the rules, offending drivers have to remove any excess freight on the spot and pay a cash fine.
But a sample group of 12 haulage drivers told IWPR that they were regularly five, ten or even 20 tons over, and simply handed over sums of 10,000-20,000 rupees (100 to 200 dollars) to the weighing station staff so that they could drive on with their load intact.
“I have 45 tons of cement in my truck, five tons more than the maximum set by the government,” Jawid, a driver coming up to Kabul from the Pakistani city of Peshawar, said. “A few minutes ago, when the machine showed I was five tons over, officers told me to go over to that old guy and he’d sort me out. I went up to the man, who cooks food for the officers. He told me to pay 20,000 rupees and make the problem go away.”
Jawid duly paid the sum and went on his way.
“The officials are afraid of being caught taking bribes, so they use their cook as broker,” he alleged.
The reporter monitored the weighing process over several days, and concluded that with a minimum of five large trucks coming through every hour and paying an illicit fee of 10,000 rupees a time, the total inflow of cash-in-hand payments could be at least 6,500 dollars a month.
Staff at the weighing station refused four requests for an interview, saying – like their colleagues at the highway toll point – that their superiors had expressly barred them from doing so.
Drivers and the traders who employ them say the practices at the Laghman weighing station are so much part of the routine that they just factor illicit payments into their costs.
“By law, we have to load our trailers up to 40 tons, but the traders ask us to carry up to 50 or 60 tons, because they know the weighing officials won’t say anything as long as they get paid,” driver Mir Wali said.
Nasrullah, a merchant originally from Laghman and now living in Kabul, has been bringing in cement along the highway for the last two year.
“Transporting 60 tons of cement to Kabul is more profitable for us than taking 40 tons at a time,” he said. “We pay the drivers 1,100 dollars extra for the additional 20 tons, and we know they pay more than half of that sum as a bribe to government officials and keep the rest themselves. But we still make a huge profit by doing this, as transporting a separate load of 20 tons of cement from Torkham to Kabul would cost us up to 3,000 dollars.”
“MUNICIPAL TAX”
A third fee that drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway have to pay is described as “municipal tax”. Such a payment does not exist in Afghan law, but local government officials collect it both on the highway and on another road from Laghman’s provincial centre Mehtarlam to Kabul.
IWPR spent ten days monitoring and videoing officers collecting 20 rupees from every driver. Operating from a specially-built office by the roadside, they stand guard from seven in the morning to seven in the evening. They are armed with one-metre-long sticks, and threaten drivers who are reluctant to pay up.
Drivers interviewed at various points along both roads confirmed the practice.
“I take passengers from Laghman to Jalalabad four or five times a day, and every time I go through the Sorkhakan area, the municipality people take 20 kaldars from me and don’t give me a receipt,” taxi driver Maruf said.
Maruf said this had been going on for the last ten years, and nothing had ever been done to stop it.
IWPR’s reporter calculated that six vehicles an hour translated into 28,800 rupees or nearly 300 dollars a month.
To find out more about the payments, the reporter went to Mohammad Fahim, who heads of the municipality office in Sorkhakan. He had been filmed taking money from drivers.
“Based on what law, bill or order are you taking 20 rupees from the drivers?” the reporter asked.
Fahim replied, “I don’t know.”
He then said he was not authorised to give interviews, adding, “Go to the mayor and ask him why the money is collected, and where it goes.”
The reporter duly went to see Abdul Moqim Abdullah, the mayor of Mehtarlam. After nine unsuccessful visits, the reporter managed to interview the mayor, who acknowledged that his staff were collecting a tax, although he would not comment on what happened to the money.
Abdullah said “I have told my employees to take ten afghanis [20 cents, equivalent to 20 rupees] from each driver as a tax, but the allegation that they don’t give receipts to the drivers is a lie.”
Shown film of municipality staff collecting rupees and abusing drivers, Abdullah said, “These are not my employees. They belong to the traffic department and [public works ministry] traffic; that’s who takes money from drivers by force.”
After being presented with more evidence, Abdullah conceded that the individuals shown in the footage did work for his administration.
“These actions by these four employees are against the law. I promise I will stop them,” he said.
POLICE FILMED EXTORTING CASH
Yet another hazard for drivers going through Laghman is the traffic police who stop trucks heading from Nangarhar to Kabul and arbitrarily demand payment
IWPR filmed four separate examples of the practice in the Sorkhakan district, and spoke to nine truck drivers who said police had been exacting payment for years. Refusing to pay would simply make trouble, they said, as police would then stop them and accuse them of a traffic offence.
Even at 100 rupees or one dollar, IWPR calculated that police net 180,000 rupees a month, or some 1,800 dollars, over the course of a month.
The traffic police department chief in Laghman, Abdul Samad, told IWPR that officers did demand money from heavy goods vehicle drivers, but insisted there was nothing illegal going on.
“We impose a fine on some trailer drivers and we take money from them. It’s a fine, not a bribe,” he said.
Overall, the picture suggests that little attention is being paid at higher levels of government to tax collection from motorists, that there is at least considerable confusion between legal and illicit practices, and that systems for tracking revenue streams are not being implemented.
Enqelabi Zwan is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
Britain to Transfer Afghan Historical Documents
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 25 September 2012
The UK National Archives will hand over copies of some of its 5,000 Afghanistan-related documents to the Afghan national archive authorities, officials said Tuesday.
According to the Afghan authorities, the transfer of the documents currently held in the London archives was discussed with British officials for two years, resulting in the transfer of some of the documents last year. But more will soon be sent.
"In our meetings with British officials we emphasised that copies of Afghanistan-related documents and cultural heritage should be transferred to Afghan Archive. Fortunately, copies of 145 documents and heritages were transferred from London to Afghanistan last year," Afghan National Archive Manager Sakhi Munir said.
He said the heritage items consist of historical photos, contracts, and other books and documents related to Afghanistan.
London Archive Arts Coordinator John Falconer said that there are around 5,000 documents available at the London Archive related to Afghanistan's history and copies of them will be given to Afghanistan after a review.
"We will hand over the copies of these documents as per Afghanistan's request. These documents are historical and political photos, maps, contracts and other documents," Falconer said.
According to Afghanistan's archive officials, there are around 3 million historical documents at the Presidential Palace which are being processed for inclusion in the national archive.
Moves are also underway to obtain historical and heritage items pertaining to Afghanistan from India and other countries.
Students Continue Protest Over Rabbani University Name
TOLOnews.com By Milad Sekandary Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Students of Kabul's Education University continued their protest Tuesday against changing their university's name to Martyr of Peace Burhanuddin Rabbani.
The students claim that the name change has promoted conflict among students from different regions of Afghanistan and that teachers at the university have also resigned over the change.
Students called for the Afghan parliament to intervene.
"I want the House of Representatives to respect our demands and intervene," one protestor said.
"We want the government to respect the rights of its citizens. I clearly remember that President [Hamid] Karzai once said that universities are places of learning, not the place to do politics," another protestor told TOLOnews.
The students said their protest would continue until their demand is met.
On the one-year anniversary of Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination last week, the Council of Ministers announced it was renaming Polytechnic University Road and the Education University after him for his peace efforts.
Rabbani was assassinated September 19 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy. He was head of the Afghan High Peace Council at the time, and has served as Afghanistan's President.
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www.afghanistannewscenter.com
TOLOnews.com By Saboory Ghafoor Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Former Taliban members who killed an Afghan woman on the charge of adultery two years ago have joined Afghanistan's Peace and Reintegration Programme, while continuing to defend their decision to execute her.
The woman they put to death, Sanam, was a resident of Khordak village in Badghis' Qads district. She was accused by a Taliban drum-head court of having an illicit relationship with a wealthy local man Gul Mohammad, and was sentenced the death. Mohammad, on the other hand, was lashed and fined.
Badghis deputy governor Abdul Ghani Sabari said Tuesday that those who issued the sentence and executed Sanam have since joined the official government programme for reintegration of insurgents, but they continue to defend their actions.
"They joined the peace process and right now they are living in Qala-e Nawo, the capital of the province," he said. "They executed the poor woman without proof or evidence."
The Taliban mullah Malawi Asfandyar, who issued Sanam's sentence, told TOLOnews Tuesday that she confessed to the "crime" and so she must be killed.
Asfanyar, a former member of the Taliban Ulema Council in Badghis, admitted that the woman was killed by a member of his group, Mullah Yousouf, and that all those who were involved in that incident had joined the peace programme and were living freely in the province, exempt from all responsibility.
Asfandyar said that Sanam was executed because she did not have any relatives, whereas the man was released after he was lashed and fined because he belonged to relatives within the group.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in nearby Herat province condemned the action, saying it was a crime and that there should be an investigation with those responsible brought to trial.
"The perpetrators [of this crime] are still not executed – my request is to execute them," Herat AIHRC chief Abdul Qadir Rahimi told TOLOnews.
It remains unclear both in law and in practice whether those who have committed serious crimes, but who later join the government reconciliation programme will ever be punished or if their past deeds are ignored.
Pentagon says partnered operation with Afghan forces continuing
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Partnered operations between NATO and Afghan forces are continuing despite a decision by the U. S. commander to scale them back after a string of deadly insider attacks, Pentagon spokesman George Little said here on Tuesday.
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Little described such scaling back as "a temporary measure," adding that some patrols below the battalion level still continue.
"Let me be clear as well that operations with our Afghan partners continue," said Little.
John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, ordered on Sept. 16 that all combined International Security Assistance Force and Afghan operations below the battalion level must be approved at the regional command level, following insider attacks that have killed 51 members of the coalition forces so far this year.
The insider attacks refer to those perpetrated by people wearing Afghan soldier and police uniforms.
Little said it would be up to the command in Afghanistan to determine how long partnered operations are scaled back, but U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta strongly supports Allen's decision.
5.1-magnitude quake hits Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan -- USGS
HONG KONG, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale jolted Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan at 08:33: 01 GMT on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The epicenter, with a depth of 33.50 km, was initially determined to be at 36.3831 degrees north latitude and 69.1857 degrees east longitude.
NATO: 2 service members killed in Afghanistan
Associated Press – Wed, Sep 26, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide attack on a NATO patrol in eastern Afghanistan killed two service members in the U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday, NATO and Afghan officials said.
The attack included small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and a man wearing a vest laden with explosives, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition.
The coalition gave no other details, but Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman in Logar province, said the suicide bomber, who was on foot, struck the international soldiers as they were patrolling a section of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital.
The nationalities of the soldiers killed were not disclosed.
So far this year, 285 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.
Training Afghan Allies, With Guard Firmly Up
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 25, 2012
BAD PAKH, Afghanistan - When American military advisers fly into Afghan Army outposts like the one nestled on the floor of this forested valley, they keep their body armor on and their weapons loaded.
Their guard was up even though they were there for a day of training Afghan soldiers without once leaving the confines of a fortified base — even when chatting with the Afghan officers over a lunch of goat meat and yogurt.
Afghan soldiers and police officers have gunned down 51 American and allied troops so far this year, and now no one is taking chances. The advisers’ extreme caution lays bare the steep challenge ahead after the official end of the American troop “surge” on Friday and as the mission shifts toward the next chapter of the war: preparing the Afghans to fight on their own.
“They come here and they look like they are going to fight us,” said Sgt. Abdul Karim Haq, 25, an Afghan soldier at the outpost. “They are always talking down to us like we are little children.”
American military leaders say they have little choice as insider killings have become a prevalent cause of death. Attacks by Afghan forces against Western soldiers and Marines this month led to new precautions over where and when joint operations and training sessions happen. At the same time, a video and cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad are stoking outrage and violence against Americans across the Muslim world.
In the field, where small teams of American advisers are now working with Afghan units, even minor misunderstandings are treated as potentially violent confrontations.
When a pair of Afghan soldiers decided to take a nap in a guard tower in which the Americans had taken up a position at this outpost, the coalition advisory team commander, Capt. John Chung, 28, sent his interpreter to hustle out the Afghans with an admonishment to “be gentle. No trouble, you know what I mean.”
Aside from a fear of being gunned down, the advisers said they were more vigilant because they also doubted the ability of Afghan soldiers to secure the base from an insurgent attack.
“Exhibit A,” one adviser noted about the Afghans’ nap in the guard tower.
“I think we need to be ready for everything. Maybe it’s coming from inside, or maybe it gets in here from the outside,” said the adviser, a young soldier who did not want to be identified for fear of damaging his career. “I mean, sleeping in a tower? There are a lot of reasons to be careful out here.”
By here, he meant behind high walls that American soldiers had built near Bad Pakh, in eastern Afghanistan, just a few years ago and guarded until handing the outpost over to the Afghan Army in March. Once home to Americans, it is now treated by them as another dangerous place in a hostile country.
And for good reason, judging by comments from Afghan soldiers here and elsewhere in the country.
Abdul Hanan, 20, a soldier also based in the east, was blunt. “We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”
He said the Americans treat the Afghans roughly, cursing at and bullying them. “We like the Americans’ heavy weapons, but we don’t like their soldiers,” he said.
He and other soldiers nonetheless acknowledged what the Pentagon’s own public reporting makes clear: the Afghans are not ready to fight without American help, and the United States is eager to see that they still get it.
American forces may be dwindling, but “there’s still going to be an insurgency here,” said Brig. Gen. David G. Fox, the top adviser north of Kabul. The advisers’ brief is to “make sure the Afghans can take it on themselves.”
Despite a decade-long, $33 billion allied effort to build the military and the police, Afghanistan’s security forces “continue to confront challenges, including attrition, leadership deficits and limited capabilities in staff planning, management, logistics and procurement,” according to an April review of Afghan security by the Pentagon.
The army was improving, the report said, pointing to the fact that 13 of the Afghan Army’s 156 battalions were now rated by the coalition as “independent with advisers,” up from one in 2011. The ranking is the highest given by the coalition.
Yet the report readily acknowledged that its own figures were suspect. This year the coalition stopped using officers independent of its training command to validate ratings, and the change “has resulted in the recent increase in ‘independent with advisers’ units,” it said.
Persistent corruption and organized crime networks within the security forces also risk undermining rising public esteem for the army and the police, and could “pose a threat to the transition process,” it said.
The police, in particular, have a reputation for brutality and corruption. In Bagh-e-Pol, a village near the southern city of Kandahar, the police chief, Abdul Wali, boasted that he and his men often beat people suspected of being members of the Taliban so badly that “sometimes he loses an arm, sometimes he loses a leg.”
Mr. Wali’s American advisers smiled uncomfortably as he explained in an interview that he did not need a trial to know who deserved a beating.
Senior American and European officials say privately that problems within the Afghan forces have reinforced internal doubts about Afghanistan’s long-term stability.
As one Western official put it, American and European talk of the transition in Afghanistan being “conditions based” is really about the conditions in America and Europe, where majorities no longer support the war.
The immediate result is that coalition resources are diminishing fast, though senior American officers said scarcity could have its advantages. With less to give to the Afghans, who for years looked to coalition forces for everything from clean drinking water to air cover, they will have to learn to fend for themselves.
But that does not include Western assets like surveillance drones, attack helicopters and medical evacuation helicopters, which will remain in Afghanistan for some time, officials say.
Advisers flew into Bad Pakh last month to teach the Afghans how to load wounded soldiers into an American medevac helicopter. Time permitting, they also planned mortar practice.
But when the Americans flew out 10 hours later, the training day had gone much like three previous ones held here in the past two months: the helicopter never showed. It was either down for maintenance or called away for a more pressing mission. The advisers never got a clear answer why.
Mortar practice also had to be scratched when it turned out the Afghans were missing the sight for their sole mortar tube.
With plenty of time to talk, the Afghans told stories about life without the Americans. Their first big test came in June when a patrol ran out of ammunition after being ambushed by the Taliban, who killed one soldier and captured another, said Sgt. Maj. Ghulam Jilani, 45, the senior Afghan enlisted soldier at the base.
The Americans had pulled out three months earlier, and the Afghans quickly determined that a rescue mission was too risky without the air cover and surveillance once readily provided by their now-departed allies.
So, Sergeant Major Jilani said, they got their man back the “Afghan way.” They rounded up fighting-age men from a nearby village and took them back to the base. The villagers basically became hostages.
“We made sure everyone knew: ‘Give us the soldier back and we’ll free the men,’ ” Sergeant Major Jilani said.
By dusk, the district governor had brokered a trade.
Without American backup, “we could only do what these village people would understand,” Sergeant Major Jilani said. “Why should there be any objections to this method? We did not shoot the men.”
An Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Army General Charged with Forcible Sodomy During Tour in Afghanistan
By Luis Martinez | ABC OTUS News
An Army brigadier general has been charged with forcible sodomy, inappropriate relationships, and possessing alcohol and pornography while serving as a senior commander in Afghanistan earlier this year.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, a deputy commanding general of the 82 nd Airborne Division, faces a possible court martial over the charges handed down Wednesday.
In May, Sinclair was sent home to the United States in the middle of his combat tour in Afghanistan, where he was serving in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar as the deputy commander of logistics and support for the 82 nd Airborne.
Sinclair was sent to the division's home base of Fort Bragg, N.C., so allegations of potential misconduct could be investigated. At the time of his return, base spokesmen confirmed that Sinclair was under criminal investigation.
A news release by the Fort Bragg Public Affairs Office listed the charges presented against Sinclair as including "forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, attempted violation of an order, violations of regulations by wrongfully engaging in inappropriate relationships and misusing a government travel charge card, violating general orders by possessing alcohol and pornography while deployed, maltreatment of subordinates, filing fraudulent claims, engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman and engaging in conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, or of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."
Few specifics about the allegations against Sinclair were released Wednesday, but a Defense Department official said "several women were the subject of Sinclair's alleged misconduct."
A former U.S. official who worked with Sinclair during his deployment in Kandahar said he and other officials who knew Sinclair were shocked by the news of the charges. He described Sinclair as being "very proactive" and a "gregarious individual."
Sinclair remains at Fort Bragg, where he has been serving in a placeholder position as a special assistant to the commanding general of the 18 th Airborne Corps. A Defense Department official said Sinclair was read the charges against him on Monday. Another official added that Sinclair is not under detention at the base.
Sinclair will now face an Article 32 hearing, at which evidence will be presented to a presiding officer to determine if his case should proceed to a court martial. No date has been set for that hearing.
This past decade, Sinclair has served two tours in Iraq and was on his second deployment to Afghanistan. He had also deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Army spokesman George Wright says that in the past decade there have been only two Army general officers who have undergone courts martial.
In June, Brig. Gen. Roger B. Duff, a former commander of the 95th Training Division, pleaded guilty to two charges of false statements, two charges of conduct unbecoming, and seven charges of wearing unauthorized badges, awards or ribbons. Duff was sentenced to two months confinement and dismissal but, because of a pre-trial agreement, only the dismissal could be imposed. Duff's sentence has not been finalized.
Prior to Duff's case, the only other court martial involving an Army general officer was in 1999, when Maj. Gen. R.E. Hale pled guilty to seven counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and one count of making a false statement about an adulterous relationship. He was reprimanded, fined $10,000, ordered to forfeit $1,000 a month in pay and retired as a brigadier general.
Foreign Ignorance Triggers Insider Attacks: MOD
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Afghan Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi on Tuesday said that the lack of knowledge of Afghan culture among the Nato-led foreign soldiers is a key cause of "insider attacks" in Afghanistan.
Speaking to the Afghan Parliament, the newly-appointed minister said that the burning of the Quran and abuse of Islamic values clearly caused insecurity to escalate.
"Today in the morning, I talked with US Joint Chief of Staff... I told him to respect our culture – the things you are doing not only incites the enemy but also incites me and my soldiers and the president," Mohammadi told the lawmakers.
"The enemy has only 20 percent infiltration inside our forces – the remaining 80 percent is the cause of disrespect to our culture and religion," he added.
As many as 51 foreign soldiers have died this year in insider attacks, so called because a Nato troop is killed or wounded by a member of the Afghan security forces deliberately turning a weapon against them.
The Defence Minister was summoned to Parliament, along with the Interior Minister and the chief of the National Directorate of Security, to answer questions on the increase of insecurity in the country.
Mohammadi also told the MPs that insurgents are trying to cause unrest in the north of the country by hiding into the eastern regions of Afghanistan. He added that while the situation in Kunar and Nuristan is not so bad, the routes headed east are insecure because of the infiltration of Jahish Mohammad, Lashkare Taiba and Nefaz Sharyat terrorist networks.
Meanwhile, the new Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang stressed to the MPs that insurgents are being sent to Afghanistan from other countries.
"As far as the international terrorism is concerned, the insurgents are sent to Afghanistan from one of the neighboring countries and they are being fed by the narcotics money. They are a threat to the region," Patang said.
Head of Afghanistan's spy agency the NDS Asadullah Khalid believes that terrorist safe havens should be targeted and their plans should be neutralised within.
"I believe that the conspiracies should be neutralised from within, as you know where their bases are," Khalid said.
He welcomed the local uprisings against the Taliban and insurgents in several district of the country, saying that they are not influenced by Hezb-e-Islami or any other groups.
Green on blue attacks reveal flaws in Afghan recruitment process
BBC News By Gerry Northam BBC Radio 4's File on 4 25 September 2012
The growing number of coalition troops killed by their Afghan allies is raising questions about the recruitment procedures of Afghan security forces - and the trustworthiness of the tribal leaders who endorse each recruit.
"There were two officers who came up and rang the doorbell. Like they say in the movies, you don't want to see the suits come to the door," recalls Rod Watkins.
"As soon as they asked if I was Paul's father, I knew something was wrong."
Rod's son Paul, a Lance Corporal with the Royal Lancers, had been killed in Afghanistan. He was 24-years-old.
From then on, it only got worse. Rod soon discovered that Paul had not died in combat. He was shot by a soldier of the Afghan National Army - a man he was helping to train and who was supposed to be his ally against the Taliban.
Mr Watkins was not satisfied with the account he received from the military of exactly what happened, so from his home in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, he pieced the story together using evidence from the inquest and what he gleaned from his son's comrades.
Paul was part of a unit which had been sent out short-handed. There were only seven men instead of eight - the missing man was on R&R (Rest and Recuperation).
So, as the other six went out on foot patrol in dangerous territory in Helmand province, Paul was left to guard both their vehicles with two Afghan soldiers.
One of them put his rifle down and went to relieve himself in the bushes. The other saw his chance and fired two bursts of automatic fire straight at Paul. He hit him six times.
"He had two shots to the brain - he would have died before he hit the ground," says Mr Watkins.
"I am very upset with the British Army because I entrusted my son to them and they didn't look after him properly. That's my personal feeling," he told Radio 4's File on 4.
"Something went wrong and they say sorry afterwards, but sorry doesn't bring back my son."
51 deaths this year
Military commanders call these rogue attacks "green-on-blue" - green for Afghan forces and blue for the coalition. They have accounted for 114 deaths since 2007 - which includes 18 British soldiers.
The official NATO analysis says about a quarter of rogue attacks are the result of Taliban infiltration or influence. The rest are due to individual grudges or disputes which get out of hand.
However, the rate of attacks is increasing and this year has been by far the worst, with 51 coalition casualties - 9 of which were British. One in seven coalition casualties is now the result of a green-on-blue killing.
The former head of the British Army General Lord Dannatt sees this as a deliberate policy adopted by enemy fighters:
"People must understand that this is a Taliban tactic and it's potentially a very successful tactic because it potentially reduces trust and lowers morale among troops engaged in the operation.
"And of course it provokes a reaction at home: if we are supposed to be helping them why are they killing us?"
At the end of July this year, Richard Chamberlain was lying in bed, reading, at his home in Broadstairs in Kent when his mother started knocking frantically downstairs. Again there was an awful sense of foreboding.
"When there's a knock at the door at 10:30pm, it's rarely good news," says Richard.
Richard's brother David had also been killed in Afghanistan - although he was not in the army, but an experienced senior customs official working under contract as a civilian mentor. He was killed while training officers of the Afghan customs and border police in Herat.
"Dave enjoyed the work and the camaraderie. He believed that they were there for a good reason, even a noble reason," says his brother.
The facts have yet to emerge in detail but it is known that the man who shot him also killed two others and wounded five more. He was wearing an Afghan police uniform.
Richard sees his brother's death as part of a pattern of treachery in Afghanistan.
"It is happening more and more often now. I suppose they are taking recruits where they can find them.
"It is a near-impossible task to vet Afghans and say these people will not commit an atrocity."
Tribal recommendations
Green on blue attacks raise serious questions about the vetting processes for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
How do they let in recruits who are either Taliban loyalists in disguise or so hot-headed that they respond to a grievance with murder?
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly will meet in November to review progress in Afghanistan and will consider a draft report from its Defence and Security Committee which says that tighter vetting procedures were introduced in February of this year - five years after green on blue attacks began.
The author Sven Mikser, of the Estonian parliament, acknowledges that in a poor and largely illiterate country like Afghanistan there are bound to be weaknesses in the system.
"It's a country with more than 30 years of war, so when it comes to nationwide databases and registers then they have been non-existent," he tells File On 4.
"There are biometric databases and other databases, which in the past have been inadequate but are getting better and better."
A large part of the vetting process depends on a distinctly Afghan form of job reference - the recommendation of a tribal elder. Mr Mikser says this is helpful and an important part of procedure - but he accepts its limitations.
"It requires the local elders to also be fully trustworthy sources of information... our service people in Afghanistan are in a good position to assess, but obviously in a country like Afghanistan nothing can be 100% fool-proof."
Something the families of David Chamberlain and L/Cpl Paul Watkins know too well. The men who killed them were both recruited into the ANSF via tribal leaders and both were on duty at the time they attacked.
At the coalition HQ in Kabul, spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz defends the reliance on tribal elders in the recruiting process.
"It is important to note that this vetting process is an Afghan-led process and they know the best about their culture and about their honour and pride in this regard.
"So when our Afghan partners rely on the elders in those villages we believe they know exactly what they are doing and trust them."
He points to hundreds of members of the Afghan forces who have recently been dismissed following re-vetting.
"Maybe the first vetting process was not solid enough. Maybe there was some new information.
"It is a case-by-case issue here and I think the Afghans take it very seriously. The fact that they do the re-vetting again - very successfully, I have to say - shows how important it is for them."
When NATO decided this month to restrict future joint operations with Afghan forces, it indicated that its motive was to preserve the safety of its own troops.
But Brigadier General Katz says the coalition remains committed to partnering, training and assisting the joint operation - something that is essential, he argues, if the Afghan army and police are to be trained to take control of their own country.
That is the key to a policy which is seen as vital in Britain, the United States and throughout NATO - withdrawal of their troops by the end of 2014.
Listen to the full report on File on 4 on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 24 September at 20:00 BST and Sunday, 30 September at 17:00 BST. You can also listen again via the Radio 4 website or File on 4 download.
Afghanistan prognosis looks gloomier
By Jim Lobe Asia Times - Sep 26 12:24am
WASHINGTON - With all foreign troops due to leave Afghanistan just two years from now, the news out of the Central Asian nation is becoming increasingly gloomy.
Adding to the pessimism is a just-released report by one of the most astute observers of the US war, Gilles Dorronsoro, an Afghanistan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), who, among other things, predicts that the regime in Kabul "will most probably collapse in a few years" given current trends.
"Political fragmentation, whether in the form of militias or the establishment of sanctuaries in the north, is laying the ground work for a long civil war" that is likely to be fueled by competition among regional powers, according to his report, which also joined the call by a growing number of experts for Washington to open negotiations with the Taliban as soon as possible.
Indeed, a series of setbacks just this month have renewed questions about even the short-term viability of the US-led strategy to keep the Taliban at bay while bolstering the central government enough to persuade key elements of the insurgency to negotiate rather than fight on.
In recent days, some of the most die-hard Republican supporters of US intervention have suggested throwing in the towel early, particularly in view of the growing number of fatal "insider" attacks - 51 so far this year - by uniformed Afghan personnel against US and coalition trainers and soldiers.
The latest attacks prompted US commanders to sharply curb joint operations by coalition and Afghan forces pending a massive re-vetting of the latter for possible Taliban sympathies. The move, according to more than a few observers, strikes at the heart of the US strategy of building up Afghan forces while gradually transferring more security responsibilities to them.
"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can," said Bill Young, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Committee. "I just think we're killing kids that don't need to die."
Similarly, Senator John McCain, a steadfast backer of the Afghanistan war, also suggested that Washington should consider an early withdrawal, although he later backed away from the statement while blaming the administration of President Barack Obama for failing to follow the advice of his field commanders.
The rise in so-called "green-on-blue" attacks and the subsequent reduction in joint operations between the two forces are just two of the signs that things are not going well for Washington and its allies, who, in principle, are committed to withdrawing all their combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Just last week, US forces were stunned by an unprecedented Taliban assault on a heavily fortified coalition air base in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan that, in addition to killing two Marines, destroyed six fighter jets worth a combined total of more than US$200 million.
The attack, in which the assailants wore US uniforms, demonstrated both the insurgents' sophistication and their continued presence in Helmand, the main focus of the US "surge" of some 33,000 troops two years ago. Indeed, the coincidence of the attack and the withdrawal of the last "surge" troops last week underlined the potential holes left in their wake.
At the same time, a coalition airstrike that killed eight women collecting wood for morning cooking fires in eastern Afghanistan, combined with continuing wrangling between Washington and the government of President Hamid Karzai over the fate of foreign and Afghan prisoners held by the US in Bagram Air Base, deepened existing tensions between the two governments.
The latest incidents all took place even before Dorronsoro finished drafting his deeply pessimistic report which noted that, in some respects, the current regime in Kabul is less prepared to survive a challenge by the Taliban than the communist government that hung on for three years against the mujahideen after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
There are "two major differences," he wrote. "First the current regime does not possess the ideological and social cohesion of the communist regime, and its ability to survive militarily has not been demonstrated. ... Second, the Taliban form a united movement with few rifts, compared to the infighting of the mujahideen in the 1990s."
Already next year, when tens of thousands of coalition forces will remain in Afghanistan, Dorronsoro predicted that the eastern part of the country and the region around the capital itself will be "gravely threatened by a Taliban advance" with the onset of spring.
"The situation will only worsen after 2014, when most US troops are out of the country and aid going to the Afghan government steeply declines," according to the 23-page report, "Waiting for the Taliban in Afghanistan".
As coalition forces withdraw, including the 68,000 US combat troops that remain in-country, the Taliban will "automatically" advance, especially in the east and the south where the insurgency has been contained as a result of constant pressure by the coalition forces.
Dorronsoro is particularly critical of Washington's counter-insurgency strategy which gave precedence to tactical military operations aimed at systematically eliminating local insurgent leaders over a political approach of engaging the rebel leadership based in Pakistan.
One indication of the Taliban's resilience has been the fate of the coalition-backed "re-integration" program which not only failed to bring over significant numbers of insurgents in the targeted areas - the east and the south - but also fueled corruption, according to Dorronsoro.
Meanwhile, the Karzai regime will face three major crises while the coalition withdraws: an economic crisis precipitated by a sharp drop in Western aid and spending; an institutional crisis with the end of Karzai's term in 2014 and indications that much of the political elite are already preparing to go into exile; and a security crisis in which large parts of the country fall outside the government's control despite the overwhelming official size of the security forces.
"Maintaining control of Afghanistan's major cities and main transport corridors is ... the only realistic goal," according to the report.
Certain eventualities could stabilize the situation for a few years, including a reduction in Pakistani support for the Taliban, the development of divisions within the insurgency, and the possibility that a new president in Kabul who could inspire greater confidence and support than Karzai.
"In reality, these developments are unlikely and would come about only as a result of unpredictable events - a major political crisis in Pakistan or the death of the Taliban's spiritual leader Mullah Omar, for instance," according to the report.
In terms of recommendations, Dorronsoro calls for the coalition to strengthen security in the east and around Kabul, even at the expense of losing control of the south more quickly.
And while negotiations with the Taliban are unlikely before the troops withdrawal, Washington should understand that it will "not be able to pursue its longer-term interests in and around Afghanistan if it is not willing to deal with the Taliban" which, alone among the various contenders for power if the Kabul regime collapses, "can potentially control the Afghan border and expel transnational jihadists from Afghanistan".
Thus, Washington "must not further limit its ability to open negotiations with the Taliban", and coalition military and drone operations "should focus first and foremost on foreign jihadist groups", not on the Taliban insurgency.
In his blog at the national interest.com, Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called Dorronsoro's recommendation "good advice".
Sound policy, he noted, requires "getting away from the mistaken tendency to view the Afghan Taliban as if they were themselves a transnational terrorist group - which they are not, notwithstanding their previous alliance with Osama bin Laden."
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
(Inter Press Service)
Pakistani Papers Banned by Afghanistan in East
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND and DECLAN WALSH September 25, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In the often ill-tempered war of words between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Afghans have just taken a new tack: outlawing Pakistani words.
The Afghan government has banned Pakistani newspapers from eastern Afghanistan. Granted, that is an area where only 29 percent of the population can read, but it was at least a symbolic smack in the mouth.
Afghan police officers at the two countries’ notoriously porous border crossings this week began seizing copies of a dozen Pakistani daily newspapers, in English, Pashto and Urdu, after the Afghan Interior Ministry issued an order on Friday saying the publications were “functioning as mouthpieces and propaganda tools for the Taliban.”
Some Pakistani news outlets are clearly not shy about reporting on Afghanistan in terms that would please the insurgents. A headline last year in the English-language newspaper The Nation read “18 Puppets Killed in Spin Boldak Martyrdom Attack,” reporting about a Taliban suicide bombing of a government border post.
That article bore the byline of Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, described as “our staff reporter.” Mr. Ahmadi is the Taliban’s official spokesman for southern Afghanistan. His counterpart in the east and north, Zabiullah Mujahid, is also frequently listed as a Nation “staff reporter.”
Still, The Nation is a fringe publication, owned by the right-wing Pakistani nationalist Majid Nizami, that sells only 10,000 copies daily, by the most generous industry estimates. Few copies ever reach Afghanistan. (The most respected paper in Pakistan, Dawn, sells at least 10 times as many copies.)
Editors of less lurid English-language publications say that such brazenly pro-Taliban coverage is the exception, though the Pakistani press features plenty of criticism of President Hamid Karzai’s government and of the United States. “The Afghans have gone overboard,” said Rashed Rahman, editor of The Daily Times, based in Lahore. “I understand their sensitivities, but to say the Pakistani press is pro-Taliban is difficult to justify.”
Intermedia Pakistan, an aid group that specializes in news media development, recently conducted an analysis of how Afghanistan is portrayed in the Pakistani news media. Its executive director, Adnan Rehmat, said there was a strong pro-Taliban bias after the 2001 invasion by the United States, but the bias shifted after homegrown Pakistani Taliban militants took up arms.
Even so, the deep suspicions between the two countries are reflected in the press.
Ahmad Ahmadani, a staff correspondent employed by The Nation, rather than the Taliban, called the Afghan government’s action “a form of intimidation.” While he agreed that The Nation was somewhat pro-Taliban in its tone, he said it reflected how Muslims in general feel, “so how can they talk against them?” The more mainstream English-language papers in Pakistan offer plenty of considered analysis — some of it sharply critical of the powerful military. But publications in Urdu, the main language of Pakistan and a widely spoken tongue in eastern Afghanistan, are another matter. Some carry extreme views that at times make The Nation seem a model of restraint.
Ansar Abbasi, an influential journalist writing in the leading Urdu daily Jang in July accused the Pakistani and American governments of handing Afghanistan over to Jews and Christians, and killing “hundreds of thousands of people in 11 years.” A writer in the Urdu daily Nawai Waqt — also owned by Mr. Nizami, the Punjabi nationalist — declared last week that America had already lost the war in Afghanistan, and that a majority of its troops had become drug users.
Mr. Rehmat, of Intermedia Pakistan, said there was strong antipathy in the Urdu press toward Mr. Karzai, who is often presented as an American puppet, as well as skepticism about the broader American project in Afghanistan.
“They are unabashedly anti-Karzai, and in general view the American partnership in Afghan governance as being not in Pakistan’s interest,” he said.
For their part, the Afghan news media make criticism of Pakistan a mainstay of their coverage as well, particularly for providing sanctuaries for the Taliban. Many Afghan critics assert that there would be no insurgency in Afghanistan had Pakistan not created it.
There are other factors at play in the Pakistani coverage. The civilian government wields indirect influence over newspapers through its large advertising budget, while the powerful military prevails on major news media companies to stick to the official line on national security issues, especially on Afghanistan and India.
Even mainstream Pakistani papers give prominence to conspiratorial, and occasionally extremist, views. The newspaper News International, for instance, offers regular columns by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program, and by Ahmed Quraishi, a right-wing populist with close military ties.
In one article last May, Mr. Quraishi claimed that the C.I.A. had been “grooming and supporting terrorism and insurgency inside Pakistan” for the past decade.
The All Pakistan Newspapers Society, whose members include the largest English and Urdu papers, expressed “serious concern” about the Afghan ban, calling it an infringement of the “people’s right to know.”
For the most part, though, the move was little noticed east of the border, partly because it did not create much financial hardship. A newspaper distributor in Jalalabad, the largest city in eastern Afghanistan, said that total sales there amounted to just 500 to 800 copies a day.
Rod Nordland reported from Kabul, and Declan Walsh from Islamabad, Pakistan. Khalid Alokozay contributed reporting from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
Highway Robbery on Major Afghan Road
IWPR reporter finds evidence of arbitrary, undocumented taxation on road through Laghman province.
IWPR By Enqelabi Zwan 25 Sep 12
Afghanistan - Local officials in Afghanistan’s Laghman province are taking tens of thousands of US dollars a month in fees and taxes from drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, and the way the money is collected indicates that it is being pocketed.
An investigation by IWPR contributors over a three-month period reveals that various forms of irregular fees are being imposed on the road.
First, the toll that drivers are legally obliged to pay is not subject to the mandatory documentation. Second, truck drivers have to pay bribes to let their overweight vehicles pass. Third, local government officials charge road users a “municipal tax” which does not even exist. And all the while, traffic police are levying their own informal “fees”.
Although Afghan media have reported on this issue before, this is the first attempt to track corrupt practices on the Kabul-Jalalabad road.
Since extortion takes place on an individual basis, gathering evidence is a laborious process. Interviews, videos and photographs gathered in the course of this investigation suggest that staff from three areas of government bodies are involved – the Ministry of Public Works, municipality employees, and the traffic police.
A rough calculation based on IWPR’s observations suggest that officials net around 50,000 dollars a month, meaning a potential loss to the treasury of millions of dollars over recent years. And that is only on one road, in one Afghan province.
ROAD TAX PAYMENTS GO UNDOCUMENTED
On the stretch of road running through Sorkhakan district, the Afghan public works ministry has a checkpoint tasked with levying a toll on light vehicles as well as trucks carrying freight. The checkpoint has a staff of 12 revenue officers from the ministry, who are required to collect the toll in Afghan currency, issue a receipt to the driver, and transfer the funds to the relevant government bank account.
The officers do collect fees, but negotiate a discount for drivers who agree not to take a receipt. The lack of paperwork, and the fact that fees are collected in Pakistani rupees rather than afghanis, suggest that the funds will never reach Kabul.
Pakistani rupees, known locally as “kaldars”, have been in common use in eastern Afghanistan for the last two decades. Even though they are not legal tender in Afghanistan, they are widely used for day-to-day transactions.
The going rate at the Sorkhakan checkpoint is between 100 and 600 rupees (one to six US dollars) depending on the size of the vehicle. The official rate, calculated by the kilometre for the distance between Kabul and Torkham on the border with Pakistan, is about 320 afghanis for large vehicles and 50 to 110 for smaller ones.
“Tax officials take money off me every time I come through Laghman,” Mir Wali, driving a truck full of flour and rice to Kabul, told IWPR. “It isn’t more than 300 or 400 rupees. They’d stop my truck if I refused to pay up.”
IWPR interviewed another man, Akbar, driving a truck carrying cement, at a restaurant stop on the approaches to the checkpoint.
“Whenever the transport officials stop me, I put 400 kaldars in their hand and drive on. If I asked for a receipt, they’d take 300 afghanis instead of 400 kaldars [six dollars instead of four],” he said. “Since I gain by paying 400 kaldars, I forget about the receipt.”
For this investigation, an IWPR contributor stopped 75 cars and trucks on the road, although only 25 drivers were prepared to be interviewed and have their voices recorded. They gave accounts that confirmed Akbar’s description of the process.
Over the course of six days, the reporter also monitored vehicles as they left the checkpoint, and discovered that in the space of one hour, 80 drivers paid fees, all of them in rupees and virtually none with a receipt.
At an average rate of, say, 50 vehicles an hour paying 100 rupees a time, the checkpoint must be taking at least 3,600,000 rupees a month, about 36,000 dollars.
Sayed Nusrat Agha, director of public works in Laghman, has direct responsibility for road tolls collection in the province. Interviewed by IWPR, he confirmed that the checkpoint staff employed by his ministry were required to accept only afghanis in payment and to issue receipts.
Shown two video clips in which staff were seen breaking both these rules, he said, “this is all lies” and angrily left the room.
IWPR also approached the tax officers themselves on four occasions, but they refused to comment on the grounds that the ministry had instructed staff not to speak to the media.
BRIBES FOR OVERWEIGHT TRUCKS
Another section of the public works ministry has responsibility for ensuring that freight vehicles are within the prescribed weight limit of 40 tons. Here, too, IWPR has uncovered unorthodox practices.
There is a healthy flow of commercial traffic up and down the highway, especially of vehicles transporting cement, rice, fresh fruit and other foodstuffs to the Afghan capital.
At an office in Kamar Mashal in Sorkhakan district, the trucks are driven onto a set of digital scales to check their weight and ensure that they are not carrying a load of over 40 tons . According to the rules, offending drivers have to remove any excess freight on the spot and pay a cash fine.
But a sample group of 12 haulage drivers told IWPR that they were regularly five, ten or even 20 tons over, and simply handed over sums of 10,000-20,000 rupees (100 to 200 dollars) to the weighing station staff so that they could drive on with their load intact.
“I have 45 tons of cement in my truck, five tons more than the maximum set by the government,” Jawid, a driver coming up to Kabul from the Pakistani city of Peshawar, said. “A few minutes ago, when the machine showed I was five tons over, officers told me to go over to that old guy and he’d sort me out. I went up to the man, who cooks food for the officers. He told me to pay 20,000 rupees and make the problem go away.”
Jawid duly paid the sum and went on his way.
“The officials are afraid of being caught taking bribes, so they use their cook as broker,” he alleged.
The reporter monitored the weighing process over several days, and concluded that with a minimum of five large trucks coming through every hour and paying an illicit fee of 10,000 rupees a time, the total inflow of cash-in-hand payments could be at least 6,500 dollars a month.
Staff at the weighing station refused four requests for an interview, saying – like their colleagues at the highway toll point – that their superiors had expressly barred them from doing so.
Drivers and the traders who employ them say the practices at the Laghman weighing station are so much part of the routine that they just factor illicit payments into their costs.
“By law, we have to load our trailers up to 40 tons, but the traders ask us to carry up to 50 or 60 tons, because they know the weighing officials won’t say anything as long as they get paid,” driver Mir Wali said.
Nasrullah, a merchant originally from Laghman and now living in Kabul, has been bringing in cement along the highway for the last two year.
“Transporting 60 tons of cement to Kabul is more profitable for us than taking 40 tons at a time,” he said. “We pay the drivers 1,100 dollars extra for the additional 20 tons, and we know they pay more than half of that sum as a bribe to government officials and keep the rest themselves. But we still make a huge profit by doing this, as transporting a separate load of 20 tons of cement from Torkham to Kabul would cost us up to 3,000 dollars.”
“MUNICIPAL TAX”
A third fee that drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway have to pay is described as “municipal tax”. Such a payment does not exist in Afghan law, but local government officials collect it both on the highway and on another road from Laghman’s provincial centre Mehtarlam to Kabul.
IWPR spent ten days monitoring and videoing officers collecting 20 rupees from every driver. Operating from a specially-built office by the roadside, they stand guard from seven in the morning to seven in the evening. They are armed with one-metre-long sticks, and threaten drivers who are reluctant to pay up.
Drivers interviewed at various points along both roads confirmed the practice.
“I take passengers from Laghman to Jalalabad four or five times a day, and every time I go through the Sorkhakan area, the municipality people take 20 kaldars from me and don’t give me a receipt,” taxi driver Maruf said.
Maruf said this had been going on for the last ten years, and nothing had ever been done to stop it.
IWPR’s reporter calculated that six vehicles an hour translated into 28,800 rupees or nearly 300 dollars a month.
To find out more about the payments, the reporter went to Mohammad Fahim, who heads of the municipality office in Sorkhakan. He had been filmed taking money from drivers.
“Based on what law, bill or order are you taking 20 rupees from the drivers?” the reporter asked.
Fahim replied, “I don’t know.”
He then said he was not authorised to give interviews, adding, “Go to the mayor and ask him why the money is collected, and where it goes.”
The reporter duly went to see Abdul Moqim Abdullah, the mayor of Mehtarlam. After nine unsuccessful visits, the reporter managed to interview the mayor, who acknowledged that his staff were collecting a tax, although he would not comment on what happened to the money.
Abdullah said “I have told my employees to take ten afghanis [20 cents, equivalent to 20 rupees] from each driver as a tax, but the allegation that they don’t give receipts to the drivers is a lie.”
Shown film of municipality staff collecting rupees and abusing drivers, Abdullah said, “These are not my employees. They belong to the traffic department and [public works ministry] traffic; that’s who takes money from drivers by force.”
After being presented with more evidence, Abdullah conceded that the individuals shown in the footage did work for his administration.
“These actions by these four employees are against the law. I promise I will stop them,” he said.
POLICE FILMED EXTORTING CASH
Yet another hazard for drivers going through Laghman is the traffic police who stop trucks heading from Nangarhar to Kabul and arbitrarily demand payment
IWPR filmed four separate examples of the practice in the Sorkhakan district, and spoke to nine truck drivers who said police had been exacting payment for years. Refusing to pay would simply make trouble, they said, as police would then stop them and accuse them of a traffic offence.
Even at 100 rupees or one dollar, IWPR calculated that police net 180,000 rupees a month, or some 1,800 dollars, over the course of a month.
The traffic police department chief in Laghman, Abdul Samad, told IWPR that officers did demand money from heavy goods vehicle drivers, but insisted there was nothing illegal going on.
“We impose a fine on some trailer drivers and we take money from them. It’s a fine, not a bribe,” he said.
Overall, the picture suggests that little attention is being paid at higher levels of government to tax collection from motorists, that there is at least considerable confusion between legal and illicit practices, and that systems for tracking revenue streams are not being implemented.
Enqelabi Zwan is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
Britain to Transfer Afghan Historical Documents
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 25 September 2012
The UK National Archives will hand over copies of some of its 5,000 Afghanistan-related documents to the Afghan national archive authorities, officials said Tuesday.
According to the Afghan authorities, the transfer of the documents currently held in the London archives was discussed with British officials for two years, resulting in the transfer of some of the documents last year. But more will soon be sent.
"In our meetings with British officials we emphasised that copies of Afghanistan-related documents and cultural heritage should be transferred to Afghan Archive. Fortunately, copies of 145 documents and heritages were transferred from London to Afghanistan last year," Afghan National Archive Manager Sakhi Munir said.
He said the heritage items consist of historical photos, contracts, and other books and documents related to Afghanistan.
London Archive Arts Coordinator John Falconer said that there are around 5,000 documents available at the London Archive related to Afghanistan's history and copies of them will be given to Afghanistan after a review.
"We will hand over the copies of these documents as per Afghanistan's request. These documents are historical and political photos, maps, contracts and other documents," Falconer said.
According to Afghanistan's archive officials, there are around 3 million historical documents at the Presidential Palace which are being processed for inclusion in the national archive.
Moves are also underway to obtain historical and heritage items pertaining to Afghanistan from India and other countries.
Students Continue Protest Over Rabbani University Name
TOLOnews.com By Milad Sekandary Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Students of Kabul's Education University continued their protest Tuesday against changing their university's name to Martyr of Peace Burhanuddin Rabbani.
The students claim that the name change has promoted conflict among students from different regions of Afghanistan and that teachers at the university have also resigned over the change.
Students called for the Afghan parliament to intervene.
"I want the House of Representatives to respect our demands and intervene," one protestor said.
"We want the government to respect the rights of its citizens. I clearly remember that President [Hamid] Karzai once said that universities are places of learning, not the place to do politics," another protestor told TOLOnews.
The students said their protest would continue until their demand is met.
On the one-year anniversary of Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination last week, the Council of Ministers announced it was renaming Polytechnic University Road and the Education University after him for his peace efforts.
Rabbani was assassinated September 19 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy. He was head of the Afghan High Peace Council at the time, and has served as Afghanistan's President.
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