[Afghan News] October 4, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Karzai Accuses U.S. of Duplicity in Fighting Afghan Enemies
The New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and HABIB ZAHORI October 4, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, on Thursday accused the United States of playing a “double game” by fighting a war against Afghan insurgents rather than their backers in Pakistan, and by refusing to supply his country with the weapons it needs to fight enemies across the border. He threatened to turn to China, India and Russia for those arms.

He also accused the Western news media of trying to undermine the confidence of the Afghan people by publishing articles suggesting that a civil war and economic collapse might follow the departure of NATO troops at the end of 2014. However, he also promised, using his strongest words to date, that he would step down from the presidency and that there would be an election.

“No circumstance, no foreign propaganda or intervention and no insecurity can prevent the election from happening,” Mr. Karzai said at a news conference. It was the second time in recent days that Mr. Karzai had sounded angry and resentful over the policies of his American partners, and his comments Thursday were among his most pointedly critical in recent years, Afghan analysts said, suggesting that the always rocky relationship between the countries is hitting a new low. Mr. Karzai touched on a number of similar points in an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sunday.

“NATO and Afghanistan should fight this war where terrorism stems from,” Mr. Karzai said on Thursday, alluding to the havens in Pakistan where the Taliban take refuge. “But the United States is not ready to go and fight the terrorists there. This shows a double game. They say one thing and do something else.

“If this war is against insurgency, then it is an Afghan and internal issue, then why are you here? Let us take care of it.

“But if you are here to fight terrorism, then you should go to where their safe havens are and where terrorism is financed and manufactured,” he said.

He also expressed frustration about the lack of sophisticated weapons from NATO countries, saying, “Are we going to wait and do nothing, or should we buy them from Russia, China, India or other countries?”

The relationship between Afghanistan and the United States has been on a downward slide since midsummer, shortly after a conference in Tokyo at which Western countries pledged $16 billion to support Afghanistan through 2015.

Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, with whom Mr. Karzai had built a strong relationship, left for health reasons. His replacement, James Cunningham, lacks the same history with the Afghan leader. Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO commander as well as the American commander for Afghanistan, also does not have an especially close relationship with Mr. Karzai, although the two talk regularly.

In August, a tense and unpleasant dispute began between the countries over the terms for handing over Afghan prisoners at the American-run detention facility in Parwan. With most prisoners handed over, the Americans halted the remaining transfers in September after indications that the Afghans might release some of the most dangerous ones. The Afghans were furious and charged the Americans with breaking the terms of a memorandum of understanding on the handover. It took a lengthy phone call by President Obama to Mr. Karzai to get discussions back on track.

Then, eight Afghan women were killed in American-led airstrikes as they collected firewood in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan. At the same time, the frequency of insider killings of Western troops by Afghan security forces was undermining the relationship between the American and Afghan soldiers on the ground.

These developments, along with a lack of clarity about American policy after the November presidential election, appear to have enraged Mr. Karzai.

His remarks Thursday suggest that he is not sure whether he can count on the Americans, analysts said, and he is trying to leverage some commitment from the United States regarding Afghanistan’s future.

“He is tremendously confused about our interests and priorities,” Stephen Biddle, a professor of defense studies at George Washington University, said in a telephone interview. “Sometimes it sounds like Karzai thinks we want Afghanistan as a kind of aircraft carrier in Central Asia to use to attack our enemies in the region.

“He doesn’t have a very clear picture of what we are after, so he flops around between various fairly extreme ideas of American interest, because what he has seen from us is so inconsistent.”

Afghan analysts emphasized that Mr. Karzai was speaking to Afghans and trying to reassure them that he was not a tool of the Americans and Europeans, even though they still hold the country’s purse strings.

“By lashing out at the West and the U.S., the president is trying to send a message to the people of Afghanistan that he is not a puppet of the West,” said Khalil Roman, an analyst based in Kabul.


Afghan President Says 2014 Election Will Be On Time
October 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says his country's presidential election, set for 2014, will be held on time.

Karzai told a press conference in Kabul on October 3 that the election "will definitely happen," saying that his term, "if prolonged by even a day, will be seen as illegitimate."

Karzai denied speculation that he would seek to amend the constitution to allow himself to stay in office.

On the subject of terrorism, he accused Western governments of having a double standard.

The Afghan president said international forces came to Afghanistan to fight terror, but they were not doing enough to fight the roots of terror outside his country.

Karzai, Afghanistan's only elected head of state since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, was reelected in a flawed 2009 election.

Based on reporting by Reuters and RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan


A framework to end the Afghan war
Washington Post By David Ignatius Thursday, October 4, 2012
While the overlooked war in Afghanistan grinds on, a group of officials in Washington, Kabul and Islamabad are exploring a bare-bones strategy that would narrow each side’s demands to a set of minimum conditions for escaping the current diplomatic dead end.

The aim is to create a pathway for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from a war that almost nobody sees as “winnable” by military force alone. The goal is a framework for political transition where each side’s demands are boiled down to the irreducible essentials — providing a better deal for each party than they could get from battling on.

U.S. officials involved in the informal discussions liken this approach to the 1993 Downing Street Declaration on Northern Ireland that narrowed Catholic and Protestant demands to the basic items that created space for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the civil conflict there.

U.S. officials have explored such an approach with Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, a former chief of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate and a former chairman of the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff. He outlined his seven-point “road map” during a recent conversation at the Nixon Center in Washington. The aim of this exercise, he said, was to focus on political transition, rather than the military impasse.

Haq sees two baseline U.S. demands: No al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, and no return to the Taliban’s oppressive policies toward women; the Taliban, according to Haq, has just one irreducible demand:No more foreign forces in Afghanistan.

These minimum conditions for the two main combatants can probably be met, argues Haq. He notes that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, in his recent message on the Muslim holiday known as the Eid al-Fitr, defended peace talks with the United States as a way to “reach our goals” and said that the Taliban would “give all legitimate rights to women in the light of the Islamic principles, national interests and our noble culture.” Other Taliban statements have appeared to reject al-Qaeda.

Haq’s road map also addresses the core demands of other parties: for Afghanistan’s Tajik and Hazara communities, he would stress reconstruction and economic assistance, as well as a broad process of national reconciliation — for which Omar’s Eid statement also indicated support. To calm the region, Haq proposed a kind of Afghan neutrality, with no foreign interference. And to address Pakistan’s anxieties, he proposed that Afghanistan take back its millions of refugees who fled the war, and the two countries jointly establish a border that, in his words, is “hardened, regulated and stabilized.”

While Haq’s formula emerged through a private “Track Two” process, similar discussions have taken place among a “core group” that includes the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar disclosed the confidential three-way talks last month, and officials say the Pakistanis are urging the Taliban to enter negotiations. The Pakistanis evidently have concluded that a negotiated political transition is better for their security than the alternative of a ragged transition and possible civil war. One small success of the core group is that Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States have agreed on arranging “safe passage” so that Taliban leaders can attend peace discussions inside Afghanistan.

Marc Grossman, the U.S. special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has continued his quiet shuttle diplomacy, trying to coax the Afghan parties toward the kind of dialogue that could avert a civil war when the U.S. begins to pull out its main combat force next year. One positive factor was agreement in May on a “strategic partnership” document that pledges Washington will continue to support Afghan security forces for 10 years after NATO troops leave in 2014. In Grossman’s view, this will reassure Afghans (especially the Tajiks, Hazaras and other non-Pashtun groups) that the United States isn’t abandoning them — and warn the Taliban that it can’t expect a cakewalk into Kabul when most Americans leave in 2014.

The frustration of the Afghan war has been dramatized by the sharp increase recently in “green on blue” killings of NATO forces by the Afghan security forces they’re supposedly trying to help.

Given the dead end in Afghanistan, you might think that the war there — and strategies for ending it — would be a big topic in the U.S. presidential campaign. But sadly, soldiers and diplomats continue to operate in a political vacuum, and the candidates act as if the brutal Afghanistan conflict will somehow solve itself.

davidignatius@washpost.com


One NATO soldier dies in Afghanistan
KABUL, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- A NATO soldier died in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the coalition forces confirmed in a press release issued here.

"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died as a result of a non-battle related injury in southern Afghanistan today," the coalition or ISAF said in the release.

The brief statement disclosed neither the nationality of the victim nor the details about the incident under the ISAF policy.

A total of 50 countries are contributing 100,000-strong forces in Afghanistan with over 68,000 of them American mainly stationed in the east and south, followed by 9,500 from UK mainly based in southern Afghanistan.


More than 70 Taliban militants killed in Afghanistan within day
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Up to 70 Taliban militants have been killed in military operations and direct fighting with security forces in different Afghan provinces within a 24-hour period of time, authorities said on Thursday.

"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan army and the NDS or Afghan intelligence agency in collaboration with the NATO-led coalition forces launched 13 joint cleanup operations in Kabul, Laghman, Baghlan, Kunduz, Badakhshan, Sari Pul and Kandahar provinces, killing 27 armed Taliban, wounding eight armed militants over the past 24 hours," the Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement earlier Thursday.

The ANP also detained eight other suspected Taliban militants during the above raids, the statement said, adding "the ANP also found and seized one rocket launcher, one PK-M machine gun, eight different types of weapons, one radio handset, 22 heavy rounds, 13 different types of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and 11 motorcycles used by the militants in the operations."

The counter-insurgency operations, aiming to dismantle the insurgency's mid-level command structure and its supply line, have been stepped up in the country particularly since early May this year when Taliban launched an annual rebel offensive to target security forces.

In separate development, up to 30 militants were killed during clashes in the country's eastern province of Paktika, some 155 km south of capital city of Kabul overnight, the provincial government said in a statement earlier Thursday.

"The Afghan Local Police (ALP) repelled an insurgent attack against an ALP checkpoint in Markozo area of Sar Hawza district at around 2:00 a.m. local time Thursday forcing dozens of militants to flee the area and leaving 30 dead behind," the statement said, adding the ALP has also found 26 militants' dead bodies and would hand them to ANP later in the day besides finding weapons and ammunitions on the ground.

A Taliban commander Mullah Sayed Noor is believed to be killed in the fighting which lasted for more than an hour, it said.

The NATO and U.S.-funded ALP or community police was established in August 2010 to protect villages and districts around the insurgency-hit country where Afghan army and police have limited presence.

In addition, a total of 15 Taliban militants were killed by NATO-led forces' helicopters in the country's southern province of Kandahar Wedmesday, the provincial government said in a statement Thursday.

"The ALP security forces were manning a checkpoint in Tangi area of Shah Wali Kot district Wednesday night when they found more than 30 armed militants approaching their post to launch an attack and they called in an airpower support," the statement said, adding as the helicopters with the NATO-led coalition arrived the militants fled the area but 15 militants were killed in the airstrike.

A search operation was launched to arrest the fled militants who took shelter in a populated area and the gardens around the vicinity in the province 450 km south of Kabul.

The security force found and seized 10 AK-47 guns, a PK-M machine gun, a RPG-rocket and several hand grenades, according to the statement.

It said no ALP service man or civilian were harmed in the airstrike.

Meanwhile, another setback for the Taliban insurgent group was the loss of five local leaders and commanders in eastern Wardak province in a six day operation ending on Wednesday.

"Dozens of Afghan soldiers and police, supported by coalition special operations forces, concluded a six-day operation against insurgent networks in the Chak district, Wardak province yesterday, " the NATO-led coalition said in a press release earlier Thursday.

"More than 30 insurgents were killed by Afghan Commandos, Afghan National Police, Afghan National Army, and coalition forces, who participated in the operation," the ISAF release said, adding that coalition officials have confirmed five of the insurgents who were killed were high level Taliban commanders operating in the area in the province 35 km west of Kabul.

The dead Taliban leaders named Ahmad Shah, Mullah Malang, Zubair, Rasul Jan and Wahdat.

The Taliban insurgents, who have been waging more than a decade- long insurgency, launched an annual spring offensive starting from May 3 to target Afghan forces as well as U.S. and NATO troops across the country.

The Taliban has warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants besides warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.

The Taliban insurgent group has yet to confirm the death of the insurgent commanders and fighters.


858 newly graduates join Afghan army in northern province
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Up to 858 newly graduates were commissioned to the Afghan army in the country's northern province of Balkh on Thursday, an army commander said.

"Today, after a nine-week training phase at army Corps 209 Shahin Headquarters' training center in Mazar-i-Sharif city, a total of 858 graduates were commissioned to the Afghan National Army (ANA) to serve the nation," General Aminullah Mubin, deputy commander of regional army Corps 209 Shahin, told Xinhua.

The new graduates are prepared to be deployed to any part of the country to provide security for their people, he said.

The Afghan government and NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A) have stepped up efforts to train and equip Afghan police and army recently.

The process of handing over security responsibilities from over 100,000 U.S. and NATO-led forces stationed in Afghanistan to Afghan forces began in July, 2011 and would be completed by the end of 2014 when Afghanistan will take over the full leadership of its own security duties from foreign forces.

Under the U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, the last of 33,000 U.S. surge troops pulled out from Afghanistan in September.


Taliban-style punishment for women still prevalent in rural Afghanistan
by Abdul Haleem and Jawid Omid
KABUL, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- People from the surrounding villages have gathered and watched the public lashing of an alleged adulterer, Sabira, in an isolated village of Ghajori district, Ghazni province, 125 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.

"Extra-judicial punishment took place in Hotqul village on 15th Sinbillah (Sept. 5) in an area where scores of villagers gathered to watch," said Mohammad Hassan, recalling the horrible scene.

"Surely it was the reminder of Taliban-style punishment given to alleged adulterers during the Taliban reign in the country," said the 55-year-old eye-witness who sports a beard.

Sabira, 15, was punished with 100 lashes by local clerics and influential chieftains after she was found to have an illicit relationship with a boy.

But while the clerics imposed a sever punishment on Sabira, her alleged lover was fined with only around 1,600 U.S. dollars.

The public lashing of Sabira has triggered outrage among human right activists and parliamentarians in the embattled country.

"Convicting and punishing Sabira by mock courts is only one of thousands of such cases happening in Afghanistan's rural areas," Legislator Abdul Hafiz Mansoor told the Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Afghan Parliament. He called on the Afghan government to immediately act on the report.

In late September, hundreds of people demonstrated in the streets of Kabul condemning the lashing of Sabira and calling on the government to bring to justice those behind the abuse. The demonstrators represented a cross-section of the Afghan public.

"Those behind the crime of lashing my sister and assaulting her are now threatening us. Our utmost desire is to see to it that the culprits are severely punished," Sabira's sister, Shafiqa Itesami, who is a medical student here, told Xinhua.

A female lawmaker, Shah Gul Rezai, said: "Lashing a girl in public is against the law of the land. It is a serious case and we want it to be investigated immediately for the government to punish all those responsible for this atrocious crime."

This was not the first time that an alleged adulterer has been publicly punished by locals in the post-Taliban Afghanistan 11 years after the collapse of the Taliban regime.

The Taliban, who were driven out of power by U.S. forces in late 2001, had confined women to their houses and had forbidden them even to go to school.

The former Taliban regime had amputated the limbs of alleged thieves and robbers, executed murderers and stoned to death or lashed alleged adulterers in public, often at the National Sport Stadium in Kabul on Fridays, the Muslim day-off.

Aside from Sabira, there have been similar lashing incidents done by Taliban militants or extremist chieftains in other parts of Afghanistan which are under their control.

In July, in the Shinwari district of Parwan province, some 90 km north of the national capital, Taliban militants publicly shot to death a 22-year-old woman named Najiba, also for adultery.

Extra-judicial punishment and killing women have also been reported in Kunduz, Herat and Badghis provinces over the past couple of years.


The 'Andar Uprising' and Progress in Afghanistan
The war is far from won, but a path to victory remains evident and viable if we have the will to pursue it.
Wall Street Journal By FREDERICK W. KAGAN AND KIMBERLY KAGAN OPINION October 4, 2012
Success in Afghanistan remains possible. As tragic and regrettable as they are, recent "green-on-blue" attacks against U.S. forces do not signify the failure of U.S.-Afghan partnership efforts or the enmity of the Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan people. Incidents spectacular enough to grab headlines in an overheated election year have badly distorted our understanding of what actually has happened on the ground in Afghanistan this fighting season.

The most important developments have been the failure of a determined Taliban effort to regain key terrain that they had lost, and the displacement of continuing violence away from populated areas and toward remote locations. Add to that the resiliency of the Afghan Local Police in key villages under determined Taliban attack, and the emergence of new anti-Taliban movements in former Taliban strongholds. The war is far from won, but a path to victory remains evident and viable if we have the will to pursue it.

In December 2009, the Taliban controlled all of the approaches to Kandahar and were gaining control of the city itself. They controlled most of Helmand province with a fortified and uncontested command node in the town of Marjah. There was virtually no Afghan security-forces presence in Helmand, and the Afghan forces in Kandahar were ineffective if not disloyal.

The NATO International Security Assistance Force had only a small presence in Kandahar. Local Afghans generally either tolerated or actively supported the Taliban. President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was widely accused of corruption, monopolized power in the area in a way that marginalized and alienated large segments of the population. In nearly every way, we were on the road to defeat.

Then came the much-needed "surge" of 30,000 U.S. troops into southern Afghanistan. President Obama announced the policy on Dec. 1, 2009, and the last surge forces reached their positions in Kandahar in September 2010. By the following November and the end of the 2011 fighting season, the situation throughout the south had been reversed. NATO and Afghan forces had driven the Taliban from nearly all their safe havens in Kandahar, cleared Marjah and most of the Central Helmand River Valley, and begun pursuing the Taliban into more remote areas.

An entire Afghan corps was fielded in Helmand alone, doubling the Afghan National Army's combat power in the south. Local Afghans turned away from the Taliban and began supporting Afghan Local Police initiatives throughout these areas and even into remote locales that regular Afghan military forces could not reach.

More recently, each province has fielded a Provincial Response Company—like a cross between SWAT teams and Special Operations Forces—to react rapidly to attacks and threats. Ahmed Wali Karzai's murder by one of his security guards in July 2011 opened politics in the south to a larger number of players representing a somewhat broader constituency. Corruption certainly remains extensive, but the municipality of Kandahar City is now raising its own revenue through fees and licenses—and spending some of that money on urban improvements.

At the end of 2011, we said that the test of the progress in the south would be whether it held through the inevitable Taliban effort to undo it in 2012. There was a lot of fighting this year in the south, including spectacular attacks, assassinations, green-on-blue incidents, IEDs and small-arms fire. But the Taliban has not regained the ground it has lost, and they have become further alienated from the people.

It goes underreported, but the Afghan military has fought hard—sustaining many more casualties than NATO—and held its own, partnered with NATO, even as thousands of U.S. and allied forces have left the area. The post-surge drawdown has just been completed. The next test of the resiliency of the progress in the south will be whether the Afghan forces can continue to hold when supported by fewer international troops during the next fighting season.

The bulk of the surge forces went into southern Afghanistan with the expectation that some of them would shift to the east at some point. But Mr. Obama's order to remove all surge forces by this September largely prevented that shift from occurring, so the impact of the surge on eastern Afghanistan has been limited.

There has nevertheless been important change even in the east. By far the most surprising has been the emergence of a militant anti-Taliban movement in the Andar district of Ghazni province. Andar has traditionally been a Taliban safe haven whose population actively supported the Taliban and vehemently opposed the Afghan government. The Taliban had freedom of movement, logistics bases, financial support, recruiting and training bases, and safe places to keep (and visit) their families.

That all began to change this spring when an American brigade moved into southern Ghazni for the first time. The Taliban increased their resources and efforts in the province, placing a great deal of pressure on the population. When the population resisted that pressure, they found that they had both NATO and Afghan military support for the first time.

The Taliban attempted to crush this nascent resistance. But local fighters supported by NATO and Afghan forces defeated them, sending shock waves through the Taliban leadership and the Afghan government. As a result, many villages across Afghanistan are now modeling the "Andar Uprising," by which they mean forming anti-Taliban groups that seek the help of NATO and the Afghan military.

This phenomenon is not as widespread or pivotal as Iraq's "Anbar Awakening" in 2006-07, when Sunni tribesmen helped turn the tide against al Qaeda-backed insurgents. But it is extremely important as a harbinger. While the meme in the U.S. is the perceived hopelessness of victory, the meme in villages across Afghanistan is that Afghans can and should rise up against the Taliban and expel them. That's progress.

Yet Washington seems preoccupied with fulfilling the president's promise to withdraw most U.S. forces by 2014. The premature withdrawal of the surge forces in the middle of the fighting season has seriously hampered our ability to capitalize on these changes and turn them into stable gains. The situation in the east remains precarious. And it remains to be seen whether the south can be held at post-surge force levels.

What is clear is that we are rushing to judgment. We are looking for success too quickly and abandoning hope too soon. The outcome remains balanced on a knife's edge, but a collapse on the ground is unlikely as long as we remain active and partnered with the Afghan security forces and people.

Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups will almost certainly re-establish sanctuaries in the wake of our retreat—as they are actively trying to do while we are still there—if we do not finish setting conditions to prevent that outcome. Given those stakes, it is imperative that we persevere as long as there is still a viable path to achieving our core national security objectives. There is.

Mr. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Ms. Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War.


Northern Ireland Lessons Offered to Afghanistan
Al Pessin VOA News October 3, 2012
LONDON — The New York Times reports U.S. officials now believe there will be no political settlement in Afghanistan before most foreign troops withdraw at the end of 2014. But the paper says they hold out hope for an Afghan-led settlement later. Meanwhile, some politicians from a perhaps surprising location are trying to help. A member of the British parliament from Northern Ireland has been to Kabul to suggest that Afghans apply some of the lessons learned from the resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict to their reconciliation effort.

On the surface, there would seem to be little in common between these Taliban fighters preparing to attack a NATO base -- and the youths in Northern Ireland attacking British policemen. But the ethnic and political tensions behind the violence do have some parallels.

One of Northern Ireland's representatives in the British Parliament, Jeffrey Donaldson, packed his bag for a trip to Afghanistan to share some lessons he learned back home with Afghans who are struggling with their own reconciliation process.

"I think people want to hear more about our experience in Northern Ireland. Not that there is a Northern Ireland template that can be applied readily in Afghanistan," said Donaldson. "But I think, there are parallels that we can draw on and lessons that can be learned."

Donaldson says chief among those lessons is the need to include even the most extreme and violent elements in the process.

In Afghanistan, that means the Taliban, who have been responsible for attacks like this one in September that killed 12 people in Kabul. A year ago, the Taliban assassinated the top Afghan government peace negotiator, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

"I can remember back to the early days of the peace process in Northern Ireland, and I have to say I was a skeptic. And I sense that among people in Afghanistan at the moment," stated Donaldson. "And yet being able to look at the process there from a distance, I think it has all the ingredients, if they can just be put together, to bring about a successful outcome."

At one time, such an outcome seemed as far-fetched in Northern Ireland as it appears to be in Afghanistan today.

But Afghanistan expert Michael Clark, director of London's Royal United Services Institute, says the prospects for reconciliation are not as bleak as they seem. "There are a lot of indications that the Taliban are really more moderate, that they calculate more, that they are more realistic now than they were five or six years ago," Clark explained. "But that will not be revealed until the eleventh hour. There's a reasonable chance that out of nothing, some sort of reconciliation might emerge, because ultimately the Taliban seem to know that they do not want to be responsible for another 20 years of civil war."

Clarke says that could lead to more scenes like these of Taliban fighters who agreed to a local reconciliation program with the Afghan government. But Northern Ireland's Jeffrey Donaldson says that will require strong leadership, the inclusion of all groups and, like in Northern Ireland, a lot of time and patience.


China's Afghan Moment
As the United States draws down in Afghanistan, China is finally moving in.
Foreign Policy BY ANDREW SMALL OCTOBER 3, 2012
Until recently, Beijing's policy in Afghanistan could be characterized as masterful inactivity: It sat on the sidelines of a war that it wanted neither side to win. But the late September visit by security chief Zhou Yongkang, the first by a senior Chinese leader in almost five decades, is the most visible sign that the U.S. 2014 withdrawal date is bringing that spectator status to an end. As the United States dials down its goal of defeating the Taliban, China could become Afghanistan's most important mediator and investor.

Since the 9/11 attacks, China's goals in Afghanistan have been almost entirely negative: no victory for the West, nor for extremists; no long-term U.S. bases and no terrorist training camps for Uighur separatists. Most importantly, the Chinese wanted no serious involvement in Afghanistan. With the exception of its large but painfully slow-moving Aynak copper-mine project, China has steered clear of anything beyond a token presence in Afghanistan's economic, security, or political affairs. Fearing the reaction in the Islamic world if it were visibly associated with the Western-led war effort, yet not wanting to poison its relations with the West by rooting for the insurgency, Beijing has treated Afghanistan as a neighbor in name only. China has denied Afghanistan, separated by a mountainous sliver of land and a tiny border kept as closed and undeveloped as possible, the political attention and largesse that such a strategically significant country might have expected.

But the looming U.S. drawdown has changed this calculus. After years of fretting about encirclement, Chinese officials are instead now urging the United States to withdraw responsibly. China fears that the rapid drawdown of NATO troops could lead to civil war, an escalation of proxy battles among Afghanistan's neighbors, and the destabilization of the wider region -- most worryingly, Pakistan. Reluctant though Beijing is to assume responsibility for preventing any of these scenarios, it has accepted that sitting on its hands is no longer an adequate strategy.

But Beijing lacks the usual Western tools of nation-building. It has no tradition of providing large volumes of aid, its limited peacekeeping force has no experience in combat, and its international training programs remain weak. One participant from the Afghan National Police dismissively described his experience on a Chinese anti-narcotics course as "being taken on a visit to Xinjiang and lectured about China's reform and opening policy." No wonder that instead of getting more involved directly, Beijing is instead using its economic clout and its leverage over Pakistan and the Taliban to expand its influence in Afghanistan.

China's relationship with the reclusive head of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, goes back to his rule over Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Among the only non-Muslims to meet with Omar, Chinese officials promised political recognition and support in the shape of telecom projects and other investments. In return, the Afghan side promised that its territory would not be used by "separatist forces" to launch attacks against China. The 9/11 attacks curtailed the relationship, but the essentials of the deal remain in place. China has maintained its contacts with the Quetta Shura, the top leadership of the Afghan Taliban; Chinese and Pakistani officials I've spoken to over the last year say that contacts are increasing. Although Beijing fears the radicalizing consequences of a full resumption of Taliban control, it is far more comfortable than any Western actor in dealing with the group as a political force.

Any Chinese influence over the Taliban ultimately comes through Pakistan, its closest friend in the region. Unlike the mutual mistrust that characterizes ties between Pakistan and the United States, Pakistan's relationship with China commands deep support across the Pakistani political spectrum. Beijing expects Pakistan to accommodate and protect its interests in Afghanistan and its preferences over the country's political future. As one former Chinese official who remains closely involved in the discussions put it: "We want to see a balance of power in Afghanistan, and we've been telling the Pakistanis that they shouldn't be an obstacle to that. We have our ways to influence them if necessary."

Beijing's stance is partly the result of its improving relationship with Kabul, including its intelligence services. In recent years, Afghan officials have successfully raised doubts among their Chinese counterparts about how comprehensively China should be relying on its friends in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency when it comes to dealing with Uighur militant groups. After decades in which China's intelligence in the region has been filtered through Pakistan, Beijing is starting to see advantages in diversification.

The shifting trilateral ties among China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan over the last year are one of the clearest signs of Beijing's willingness to play an enlarged political role as 2014 approaches. Afghanistan's most immediate reward has been its systematic upgrade in China's regional diplomacy. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Central Asian security and economic bloc that China founded in 2001, admitted Afghanistan as an observer at its June summit in Beijing. Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a new strategic partnership agreement with China on the same trip. In February, Beijing finally greenlighted a trilateral meeting process with Pakistan and Afghanistan, which will increase its role in mediating between the two sides.

September's "surprise" visit to Kabul was even more striking. Members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, often visit seemingly insignificant states -- over the last three years, the committee's No. 2 member, Wu Bangguo, visited Fiji, Namibia, and the Bahamas. Not only was Zhou's trip the first to Afghanistan by a Standing Committee member in 46 years, but he represents China's security and intelligence apparatus, rather than one of the softer faces of Chinese economic diplomacy. Zhou discussed terrorism and border security, and he announced a deal for China's Ministry of Public Security to "train, fund, and equip Afghan police," demonstrating Beijing's intention to be a player in Afghanistan's dark arts as well as its commercial ones.

Beijing's unusually healthy relationships with all sides to the conflict underpin its greatest contribution: long-term investments that have a better chance of being left in peace. The company operating the $3 billion Aynak copper deal, Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), has been understandably skittish about the occasional rocket attack, even though its facility has never been subjected to a major assault. Accounts from Chinese officials suggest that MCC's reluctance to move ahead with the contract -- like the reluctance of other Chinese companies to sink money into Afghanistan -- has been as much about not wanting to be identified with the U.S. war effort as direct security concerns. But that political context is changing.

Trade between China and Afghanistan remains a modest $234 million, albeit increasing from barely $25 million in 2000. China previously saw economic activities, especially those on a large scale, as providing ballast to a long-term U.S. presence in the country and therefore best pursued slowly or not at all. Now, with 2014 approaching, the spigots are starting to open again. After four years in which no significant contracts were signed, the last 12 months saw a major oil exploration bid accepted on terms sufficiently generous to the Afghan government as to imply that the contract will be the first of many.

The United States has been asking China for years to do more to incorporate Afghanistan into the region's political and economic order. Now that U.S. troops are heading for the exits, China has finally acceded. But unlike the far-off United States, once China commits serious political and economic resources to the country, no one expects it to leave.


NATO chief Rasmussen given another year in office
Reuters By Adrian Croft Wed Oct 3, 2012
BRUSSELS - NATO allies agreed on Wednesday to extend Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen's term by a year to the end of July 2014, keeping him in charge as NATO-led forces wind down their combat role in Afghanistan.

Rasmussen, a 59-year-old former Danish prime minister, will stay in the job until a few months before the end-2014 deadline for NATO to hand over full responsibility for security in the country to Afghans.

"I think the first of August 2014 is an appropriate time to change leadership, so that a new secretary-general can oversee the implementation of the new mission we will establish in Afghanistan from 2015," Rasmussen told reporters.

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan faces a huge logistical task over the next few years to withdraw foreign soldiers and their equipment.

From 2015, NATO will scale back its role to leading a mission to train and advise Afghan security forces. That mission will be discussed by alliance defense ministers at a meeting in Brussels next week.

U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed the decision to extend Rasmussen's tenure, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

"The United States commends the secretary-general for his strong leadership of America's most important security alliance, and we look forward to continuing to work with him and with our NATO allies and partners as we strengthen and revitalize NATO for the 21st century," he said.

Potential successors have begun to jostle to take over from Rasmussen, with former Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini throwing his hat into the ring.

The contest to succeed Rasmussen after five years in 2014 will coincide with a scramble for top jobs at Brussels' other main international institution, the European Commission. The current term of the Commission, the EU's executive, runs until February 2014.

Rasmussen took the helm at NATO in August 2009 and has been chief during a turbulent period in Afghanistan, where NATO-led forces have been engaged in fierce fighting against Taliban insurgents.

More than 2,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel have been killed in 11 years of war in Afghanistan as well as more than 400 British soldiers and 158 Canadians.

The NATO mission has also seen a surge in attacks on foreign troops by gunmen wearing Afghan police or army uniforms.

At least 52 members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force have been killed this year in rogue attacks, leading to a temporary suspension of some joint operations with Afghan forces last month that has now been largely lifted.

Last year, a NATO bombing campaign in Libya, approved by the U.N. Security Council, helped underpin an Arab Spring uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi's rule.

NATO chiefs are traditionally appointed for a four-year term with the possibility of extending by a year. There have been cases where a NATO chief's term has been extended for a few months beyond that but in recent times, secretaries-general have not been given full second terms.

(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie, Paul Taylor and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Alison Williams)


Doubt Cast on Afghan Mining
U.S. Says High Cost of Railway May Quash a Pillar of Kabul's Economic Strategy
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM October 3, 2012
WASHINGTON - Afghanistan's hopes of transforming its $1 trillion in mineral deposits into an economic engine could be derailed by obstacles to the construction of a railway system needed to transport minerals out of the country, according to a draft report by the U.S. military.

Researchers working for the U.S. military have concluded that it could cost more than $54 billion to build and run a railway network across Afghanistan, a price the report says could make some large-scale mining economically unviable in one of the world's poorest countries.

The conclusions, found inside an 80-page draft report commissioned by the Department of Defense that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal raise major questions about Afghanistan's ambitious plans to convert its valuable mineral deposits into a reliable economic base.

Janan Mosazai, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry, questioned the high price-tag and predicted that the benefits of a nationwide rail network would outweigh the costs in the long run.

"Connecting Afghanistan to the region's established railway networks is a critical component of realizing the vision of an economically integrated heart of Asia region, with Afghanistan at its center," Mr. Mosazai said.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the preliminary report.

As the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan winds down and billions of dollars in aid dwindles, American and Afghan leaders are working to fuel the South Asian nation's anemic economy with money from oil, natural gas, copper, iron and other mining deals.

Afghan officials hope to generate $300 million from mining projects—about 15% of the civilian budget—by 2016. Over the next 12 years, Afghan leaders hope mining revenue will make up half of the country's GDP. Afghanistan has no large-scale mining projects in operation yet.

Backed by U.S. Defense Department strategists, the Afghan government has been aggressively selling off its biggest mineral interests to companies from China, India, Canada and the U.S., from whom it hopes to collect licensing fees and royalties.

The U.S. began touting minerals as a possible economic savior for Afghanistan in 2010, when it trumpeted its estimate that the nation was home to nearly $1 trillion in potential resources.

But Afghanistan's mining prospects have been delayed by a series of complications—from bribery allegations that sidelined one mining minister to insurgent attacks that pose a security challenge to development.

One of the biggest evolving projects—plans by India's government and a private Canadian company to develop a massive iron-ore deposit in central Bamiyan province—will require a reliable railway system in a country with virtually no rail.

Chinese officials are conducting their own analysis of the country to determine if it makes sense for them to build a railway as part of their copper project at Mes Aynak, a site outside Kabul that Chinese state-owned companies have pledged to spend $3.5 billion to develop.

But the U.S. military's researchers, who warned that the new draft study was based on a variety of unpredictable measures that could alter the dim projections, outlined hurdles that will be difficult to overcome.

Getting iron ore out of the country would require construction of up to 3,000 miles of track through 16,000-foot mountain ranges that, in some places, would need a large number of bridges and tunnels, the report concluded.

Because of the daunting terrain between Bamiyan and Kabul, it would cost nearly $7.5 billion to build one 600-mile section of rail, including double tracking in mountainous areas.

The report concluded that there appeared to be no good rail route to transport iron ore out of Bamiyan, the remote province at 9,000-feet that was home to towering Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. "Neither the segments between Kunduz to Bamiyan or Bamiyan to Kabul showed grade profiles conducive to heavy-haul iron ore traffic," the draft study says.

The best alternative, the researchers found, would be a 2,260-mile rail network linked to Pakistan that would cost more than $45 billion by 2040. Even in that case, the study concluded, the project would cost $10 billion more than it was worth.

If investors were to build the rail to Pakistan, Western officials said that the neighboring nation's railroad system is so dysfunctional that linking Afghanistan's mineral routes to Pakistan would be a gamble in itself.

"I don't think it is very realistic to think about Pakistan as a railway route," said one Western official in Afghanistan who works on mining issues. "Pakistan is a mess."

Afghanistan is also constrained by the fact that neighboring nations use three different types of track, which complicates its own ability to build a rail route that could link to the adjacent countries.

Western officials familiar with the report's contents privately questioned the research estimates and said Afghanistan will be able to pursue some major projects—including the Chinese copper deal—that can use trucks rather than rail, to transport the minerals.

Researchers are considering other potential routes out of the country as the iron-ore project moves forward. The Indian-Canadian project developers are expected to spend at least three years exploring the 1.8-million ton iron deposit before they decide if it is worthwhile to extract the minerals and transport them out of the country.

While the Afghan government has been pushing China to complete its study and build the rail line, there is a growing consensus among Western officials involved in mining that China is unlikely to build rail in Afghanistan because it isn't essential to move its copper out of the country.

Moreover, no rail line in Afghanistan will be worth building, the military report concluded, unless it would transport the iron ore.

"A general-purpose railway is never going to be economic in Afghanistan," said the Western official in Afghanistan. "If the Afghan authorities are keen on that they are essentially saddling themselves with a liability."

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com


British general warns against hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan
The Washington Times By Kristina Wong Wednesday, October 3, 2012
A top commander from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan warned against a precipitous withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, after recent news reports suggested that an accelerated pullout could take place.

“The plan is in place, and it relies on building capability and confidence, and not pulling back too soon and undermining that confidence. If we do that, we could have serious consequences,” said British ArmyLt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The transition of security responsibility from NATO to Afghan troops is on track, with 75 percent of Afghans living under Afghan security forces, the general said during a video-conference briefing from Kabul. Insurgent attacks are down 10 percent from last year, and coalition deaths are down by 40 percent, he added.

Gen. Bradshaw acknowledged the seriousness of attacks by Afghan soldiers on NATO troops, which have killed 45 percent more coalition troops than last year, but he said they amounted to only 4 percent of overall deaths since the war began in 2001. However, the so-called insider attacks have caused nearly 20 percent of all hostile coalition casualties this year.

“I don’t seek to minimize that aspect of it at all,” he said in response to whether he was downplaying the attacks.

“Everybody appreciates that the threat that this represents to the mission is more of a morale threat than a physical threat, and that’s why we take it very seriously.”

The general said Afghans have also begun to take the threat more seriously. A few weeks ago, Afghan president Hamid Karzai urged his forces to bear down on insider attacks and has directed Afghan National Army religious and cultural affairs officers to help coalition forces train Afghan soldiers.

“They have a top-class officer in the Afghan National Army working to head up the effort, and he has been extremely energetic,” he said.

More Afghan officials are involved in counterintelligence within the Afghan army, and there is closer cooperation between the Afghan’s intelligence organization and NATO partners, he added.

Gen. Bradshaw echoed Pentagon officials’ comments that the 35,000-man strong Taliban insurgency was suffering.

“This year, we’ve seen the enemy pushed further into the margins, away from the population centers. We’ve seen signs of pressure in our intelligence reporting, of shortages of finance and equipment,” he said.

“We’ve seen their leadership now showing divisions at the middle levels and at the high levels, concluding that they’re not going to achieve their aims by military means alone,” he said.

“Now, the enemy will continue to throw challenges at us; of course, he will. But he knows he cannot achieve his political aims now through military means. So this is the time to hold our resolve.”


Afghan Students Protest Renaming Of Their University After Former President Rabbani
By Frud Bezhan October 3, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Public tributes to Afghanistan's fallen national heroes are readily apparent to any traveler driving through the country's capital, where scores of prominent streets, squares, and schools have been renamed to honor the dead.

But deciding just who is a national hero and who is a national villain has proved highly contentious, a byproduct of conflict among rival and even warring ethnic, religious, and political groups.

Each has their own interpretation of the country's bloody history, and a figure idolized by one side is likely to be abhorred by another.

There have been numerous examples in the past decade.

There was the Afghan government's decision to honor Ahmad Shah Masud, the powerful ethnic Tajik militia commander who was assassinated in 2001, by naming Kabul's main airport road the "Great Masud Road."

And there was the decision to honor Abdul Ali Mazari, a Hazara leader who was killed by the Taliban in 1995, by naming a Kabul square "Martyr Mazari Square."

Each led to an equal measure of support and backlash within Afghanistan's fractured society.

'Martyr Of Peace'

The latest controversy to erupt came after Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on September 20 ordering that a university in Kabul be renamed after Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The ethnic Tajik Rabbani served as president of the postcommunist, pre-Taliban Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992-96, and later as the temporary president of the country immediately after the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

Admirers have dubbed him the "Martyr of Peace" for his role as head of the High Peace Council in trying to reconcile with the Taliban, which cost him his life when he was assassinated in 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy.

Rabbani's detractors note that he was accused of gross human rights abuses while commanding his forces during the country's brutal civil war.

Reports have emerged that Karzai also plans to rename Kandahar airport, in the country's Pashtun-dominated south, after Rabbani, whose power base resided primarily in the country's north.

Students have responded to the renaming of the Kabul Education and Training University by staging daily protests that have effectively closed down the institution.

The rallies have brought together hundreds of students since Karzai's September 20 decree, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of Rabbani's assassination.

On September 29, demonstrators locked arm-in-arm blocked the entrance to the parliament building, forcing its temporary closure.

Among them was Nulifar, who declined to provide her full name. The 24-year-old literature student believes the decision to rename her university to "Martyr Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani University" could politicize the institution and promote conflict among its ethnically diverse student body.

"On the one hand, we are a week behind in our studies and it's putting our education in jeopardy," she said. "When we go to study, we are not at peace because, if there wasn't a threat from our enemies before, there will be now. If people like this [Rabbani] did something good we respect them, but they're also immersing us in politics."

Demonstrators like Nilufar have been careful not to provoke the fury of Rabbani's supporters, with many praising the ex-president and avoiding direct criticism.

Many have also been keen to emphasize that the rallies are not ethnically motivated, insisting that the protestors represent a "national group."

Kabir, a 25-year-old engineering student, says he does not have a problem with Rabbani. He suggests that renaming the university after any ethnic leader would have provoked similar protests.

"If the government really respects peace and freedom, let them build another university and name it after the Martyr of Peace," he said.

List Of Grievances

In a statement released on October 1, the organizers of the protest called the government's decision to rename their institution a "great mistake" and vowed to continue demonstrating until their demands are met.

It also says the group has contacted the Afghan parliament and the Independent Human Rights Commission several times to gather support for their cause, although they have so far been unsuccessful.

The statement goes on to list several of the group's grievances.

It says hundreds of Afghan police have been summoned to the university in a bid to intimidate protestors. According to the statement, police have beaten protestors and shot bullets in the air in an effort to disperse the demonstrations.

The statement also accuses lawmaker Qazi Nazir Hanafi, from western Herat Province, of running over and injuring several protestors on September 29 when they blocked his car's entrance to parliament.

Hanafi has denied the allegations, telling the Afghan TV channel TOLOnews that "the protestors were blocking the way when my car was entering parliament and started punching the mirrors. But I am not complaining about it."

Several prominent Afghan lawmakers have also backed the protests, including Ramazan Bashardost, a former independent presidential candidate and a member of parliament.

Bashardost maintains that the government should reconsider its decision and leave it to the Afghan people to decide whom they want to honor.

"Somebody is a traitor or a servant of the country; a patriot or an enemy of the country," he said. "We have to let the Afghan people decide for themselves. For 40 years, there has been war and misfortune in Afghanistan. The Afghan people are not stupid. The Afghan government should listen."

The controversy over the tributes to Rabbani comes amid rising public scrutiny of the country's controversial former warlords and militia leaders, many of whom still wield significant influence on the country's political affairs, much to the chagrin of their detractors.

Written and reported by Frud Bezhan, with additional reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan


Ex-Afghanistan envoy: The progress is extraordinary
CNN By Michael O’Hanlon, Special to CNN October 3rd, 2012
Michael O’Hanlon is senior fellow at Brookings and author of The Wounded Giant: America’s Armed Forces in an Age of Austerity. The views expressed are his own.

A few weeks ago, Ryan Crocker visited Washington after completing his year-long tour as U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, as well as a storied 38-year career in the Foreign Service during which he also served as ambassador to Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, and Pakistan. While Washington was caught up in everything from the Benghazi attacks to the presidential race to Congress’s brief visit to town before adjourning again to campaign, Crocker’s visit – and the subject of Afghanistan in particular – got relatively little notice.

That is regrettable. Crocker’s speech at the Carnegie Endowment on September 17, covered by CSPAN, and his public conversation with us at Brookings on September 18 were hugely informative and important. For those despondent about this war effort, they were moderately encouraging as well. There was, as usual, no naive optimism in Crocker’s remarks, no promise of an easy and quick win. Known affectionately if somewhat sardonically as “Mr. Sunshine,” a nickname first given him by President Bush, Crocker is famous for hard-hitting and extremely realistic assessments of the challenges facing America abroad. Those lucky enough to visit Iraq during the surge often remember a beaming Dave Petraeus standing beside a grim-faced Crocker, two very different personalities leading America’s greatest military turnaround since Inchon. So any hopeful words from Crocker merit particular attention.

And there were many, in fact. Crocker began by noting the enormous progress that Afghanistan has made since 2002, when Crocker did his first tour there as head of mission shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban. As he put it:

“You know, as we kind of gauge where we are in Afghanistan, we’ve got to do what we don’t do terribly well, which is take some perspective on it. I won’t take you back to Amanullah Khan and the 1920s, but I will take you back to my own experience, which was arriving in Afghanistan about 10 days after President Karzai got there from Bonn, the day after New Year’s 2002, and what it looked like then. And I’ve seen a lot of bad places, like Lebanon during the civil war – and this was worse. It was total, absolute, utter devastation. Driving in from Bagram, nothing but mud fields and destroyed houses. You dare not stray from what was left of the pavement of the road because of the minefields on both sides unclearedNo electricity, no water, no security forces, a completely dead economy, no nothing.

“So if the end of ’01/beginning of ’02 is your starting point, Afghanistan is looking beyond pretty good. If you were out there in May, you know, Kabul is a major South Asian metropolis: huge traffic snarls, commercial activity, sidewalks thronged, stores open, you know, 8 plus million kids in school, life expectancy vastly increased, close to 350,000 security forces in training or deployed. You know, the progress is extraordinary.”

Then there is the matter of those Afghan security forces. Hampered by illiteracy and corruption and ethnic tension, they are now also infamous in the United States for the insider attacks that have killed more than 50 NATO troops this year alone. Crocker hardly trivialized these problems. But he also provided vivid illustrations of how much those forces have grown and improved.

“The fact is in basically a period of just a little over three years, because we only really got serious, as you know, about sustained, large-scale training ’08/’09, well, what that has produced in a fairly short time is quite extraordinary. We have Afghan units leading in almost 50 percent of operations, and many of these are unpartnered. When we had the Koran incident out at Bagram, we went through a period of a couple of weeks in which we simply – “we,” the International Security Assistance Force – could not be in the field. We would just be gasoline on the fire. So Afghan forces had to deal with the protests on their own. They were not trained for it. They were not equipped for it, for riot control. They behaved very credibly and I think the surge bought the time for that training program to produce those kinds of results.”

Crocker also spoke of Afghanistan’s upcoming presidential race. While hardly predicting the imminent victory of an Afghan George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, he had some encouraging things to say on this subject too: “Politically, 2014 elections, everybody’s talking to everybody. Everybody is maneuvering. It kind of looks like American primaries. That’s not a bad thing...I think President Karzai is committed to leaving office in 2014, which obviously – and these are his own words – it’s essential for the legitimacy of the democratic process that in 2014 you have a president who is not named Karzai. He is thinking, again, very long term; he’s thinking of legacy. And I think, again, that has him focusing on not just an outcome, but a process that institutionally strengthens Afghanistan.”

Perhaps best of all was Crocker's assessment of Afghanistan’s people. Normally in Western debates, we emphasize how shallow this talent pool has become after 30 years of warfare as well as rampant corruption in Kabul today. Alas those harsh realities cannot be ignored. But consider again Crocker’s words:

“In terms of human talent, you know, I was surprised to find at least as great and very possibly greater depth and breadth of talent in Afghanistan than I did in Iraq. Some extremely capable ministers, very capable deputies underneath them, you know, wrestling with some of the most volatile and changeable politics you can imagine, more so than Iraq. You’ve met many of them in finance, in mining, in health, in education. I mean, these are people who, you know, could run just about anybody’s ministry.

“Then there’s thatnew element. It’s the 20-somethings, the early 30-somethings; it’s the women, the immediate post-university generation and their younger brothers and sisters, and their older brothers and sisters to an extent. In other words, those who came of age in perhaps a volatile and dangerous, but, nonetheless, free and open Afghanistan with access to the Internet, with access to a plethora of television, radio stations, newspapers, and so forth, boy, they ain’t their daddies and mommies. And can be, as you’ve heard yourself, blistering on the subject of their daddies and mommies. They see a new Afghanistan. And I think one of our major obligations as an international community is to buy them the time to really make a difference in politics.”

Of course, to paraphrase Crocker from another time period, all of this is hard, and it’s hard every day. To underscore the difficulty of moving beyond the burdens of recent history, not only within Afghanistan but Pakistan as well, Crocker also quoted Faulkner – the past is never dead, in fact it’s not even past.” But for a country where America has invested so much, and still has such high stakes, Crocker’s restrained but still reassuring words should carry great weight in our future policy choices.


Poor strategy in Afghanistan
The Australian By Peter Leahy October 04, 2012
AFTER more than a decade in Afghanistan, and despite the best of intentions, the coalition effort looks to be pretty well snookered.

Rather than any predetermined end state in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of coalition forces is timed to coincide with political events and worsening economic conditions in foreign capitals. Complicating matters is the increase in "green on blue" murders and the NATO command response to limit coalition exposure to the Afghan National Army. While this is the right response, it means that the coalition will find it increasingly difficult to train indigenous security forces and certify them as ready to assume security responsibilities. There goes the exit strategy. Now it really looks like, "Going, ready or not".

Afghanistan has been a place of many missions: retaliate and destroy al-Qa'ida; rid the country of the Taliban; reconstruct and develop a shattered nation; train and mentor the Afghan security forces to assume security responsibilities; and now withdraw. Amid these many missions there has been a concerning lack of a coherent strategy. Mission creep has not been accompanied by advancing strategic thought. A clear vision and end state (apart from kill al-Qa'ida) were missing from the start and the most appropriate elements of national power have not been consistently applied. If the primary mission was really about eliminating al-Qa'ida then the mission is far from over because they have been scattered and moved to Pakistan, Somalia, Mali and many other places.

Despite some credible improvements, Afghanistan remains overwhelmed by problems. There are still elements of al-Qa'ida on the loose and it is inevitable that the Taliban will be a constituent part of any future political landscape in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is in his last term as President and he has failed to establish a popular and legitimate government in Afghanistan. Reconstruction and development efforts may have improved the lives of many Afghans but serious questions remain about how sustainable the advances will be. Also in doubt is the resolve of already weary donor nations to fulfil their promises of billions of dollars in ongoing aid.

The prospects for a peaceful Afghanistan are limited. Loyalty belongs at the tribal and regional level, not in Kabul. Personal interests and corruption take precedence over national identity. The Pashtun population and the Durand Line, an unfortunate bequest of the British, divide the country north and south and inextricably link the fate of Afghanistan to that of beleaguered Pakistan.

The war is in its end phase now and it is hard to identify what victory will look like. The NATO coalition will struggle to get out with dignity, an intact reputation and with any real affirmation that NATO can be a reliable partner for countries in trouble in the future.

It is time to start asking questions about what Australia has learned after a decade plus in Afghanistan. The Australian government must review what has happened and what has gone right and what has gone wrong. The focus of the review must be at the strategic level and focused on how well Australia identified an aim in Afghanistan, developed a strategy and then applied the right resources in a consistent and co-ordinated manner.

Australia may profess to be a middle power but it has limited strategic influence, especially in a NATO-led coalition of 50 nations. Seeking to maintain some independence, as it has in previous wars, Australia demanded a province of its own and was allocated Oruzgan province. In the big scheme of things Oruzgan has little bearing on the outcome of the conflict in Afghanistan. Of much greater significance are the population centres of Afghanistan and the decisions made in the capitals of the US, NATO and Pakistan.

Australia has performed exceptionally well at the tactical level in Oruzgan. The nation should be very proud of its troops and the civilians that have laboured, been wounded and, regrettably, died there. Their performance mirrors the excellent performance of Australians in Phuoc Tuy province in South Vietnam and Mutannah province in Iraq. But as American colonel Harry Summers reminded us in his book about the Vietnam War, On Strategy, it doesn't matter how well you perform at the tactical or provincial level, wars are ultimately won at the strategic level. Australia has followed the coalition lead and strategy, and has struggled to influence coalition strategic decision-making.

The strategic level is the business of government. It is where the big decisions are made and now it is where the big questions over Afghanistan belong. Did Australia make the right decision to go in 2001? Yes. Did Australia make the right decision to return in 2005? Not so clear. Is Australia making the right decision to stay? This needs further explanation by the Australian government. It should also explain how many Australian troops will be in Afghanistan after 2014, why they will stay, what tasks they will be given and what are the risks.

The other big question is: what does Australia do now? Clearly the government has made a strategic decision to stay but only for a tightly defined time. This can be counted against coalition solidarity more than strategic necessity and national interests. If it were about strategy and national interests we would stay until the job was done. The troops on the ground must now make the best of the changed operational and tactical circumstances. It will not be easy implementing maximum force protection measures while trying to help the Afghan National Army as much as possible before departing. This is now the task of the Australian commanders on the ground. Their task is to make the best of a bad and potentially deteriorating situation.

Peter Leahy is the director of the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra. He was chief of army from 2002 to 2008.


Is the U.S. Admitting Defeat in Afghanistan?
The law of diminishing returns - and rising costs - appears likely to bring Western troops home from Afghanistan even as the Taliban insurgency rages
TIME By Tony Karon | @tonykaron October 3, 2012
Don’t expect to hear about it in the presidential campaign debates, but the U.S. will leave Afghanistan locked in an escalating civil war when it observes the 2014 deadline for withdrawing combat troops set by the Obama Administration — and supported by Gov. Mitt Romney. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the U.S. military has had to give up on hopes of inflicting enough pain on the Taliban to set favorable terms for a political settlement. Instead, it will be left up to the Afghan combatants to find their own political solution once the U.S. and its allies take themselves out of the fight.

Washington has known for years that it had no hope of destroying the Taliban, and that it would have to settle for a compromise political solution with an indigenous insurgency that remains sufficiently popular to have survived the longest U.S. military campaign in history. Still, as late as 2009, the U.S. had hoped to set the terms of that compromise, and force the Taliban to find a place for themselves in the constitutional order created by the NATO invasion and accept a Karzai government it has long dismissed as “puppets.” This was the logic behind President Obama’s “surge,” which sent an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the Taliban’s heartland, with the express purpose of bloodying the insurgents to the point that their leaders would sue for peace on Washington’s terms. But the surge ended last month with the Taliban less inclined than ever to accept U.S. terms as the 2014 departure date for U.S. forces looms.

Now, according to the Times, the best case scenario has been reduced to on in which, as a result of NATO’s training and armaments, “the Taliban find the Afghan Army a more formidable adversary than they expect and [will] be compelled, in the years after NATO withdraws, to come to terms with what they now dismiss as a ‘puppet’ government.” Some would see that as another in a long line of optimistic assessments. The Afghan security forces, or at least its ethnic Tajik core, may well find the political will to fight the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, and the means to prevent themselves from being overrun. But it’s a safe bet that the security forces will control considerably less Afghan territory than NATO forces currently do.

And once it is clear that even a raging Taliban insurgency is no longer considered an obstacle to the departure of U.S. and allied combat units, the rationale for staying even through 2014 becomes murky. Already there’s been talk of having little more than a residual force of trainers and special forces in place by the time the withdrawal deadline arrives — and that such a force would stay beyond the deadline, anyway. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen conceded in an interview with the Guardian that the Alliance is considering an earlier withdrawal, its morale battered by ongoing “insider” attacks, which in this year alone have seen more than 50 alliance troops killed by members of the very Afghan forces they’re mentoring.

More pessimistic analysts harbor doubt that either the current system of government, or the security forces, will long survive a U.S. departure. Despite Western donors and backers still issuing the same pleas for good governance and anti-corruption efforts that have been made of President Hamid Karzai for the best part of a decade, there are serious doubts that an election scheduled for 2014 — in which Karzai, after two terms, is constitutionally barred from running — will be any more successful in creating a new national consensus than previous, crooked elections have been. Karzai, in fact, but is believed to be preparing to run his older brother, Abdul Qayum, in his stead, and keep power within his immediate circle.

His regime remains shot through with corruption, but the West has long struggled with the absence of a credible alternative. And a transition in which Afghans will be required to take charge of their own security against the Taliban is likely to exacerbate Karzai’s tendency to empower warlords whose backing he needs in a fight. And with NATO eyeing the exits, it’s an open question just how much pressure Karzai will face to ensure a credible election.

British Conservative MP Rory Stewart, who served the coalition authority in Iraq and who, in 2002, famously walked the length of Afghanistan, alone, documenting his encounters with locals along the way, insists that it’s time to face up to grim reality in Afghanistan. He recently wrote in the Financial Times:

If the U.S., Britain and their allies leave Afghanistan, there will be chaos and perhaps civil war. The economy will falter and the Afghan government will probably be unable to command the loyalty or support of its people. The Taliban could significantly strengthen their position in the south and east, and attack other areas. Powerful men, gorged on foreign money, extravagantly armed and connected to the deepest veins of corruption and gangsterism, will flex their muscles. For all these reasons departure will feel – rightly – like a betrayal of Afghans and of the soldiers who have died.

But a decade of war has proved that Western armies are no more capable than their Soviet counterparts had been in the 1980s of eliminating an indigenous insurgency in Afghanistan. Stewart continues

In the absence of “victory”, three alternative strategies have been proposed: training the Afghan security forces, political settlement with the Taliban and a regional solution. But training Afghan forces, which cost $12bn in 2010 alone, will not guarantee their future loyalty to a Kabul government. Two years and many regional conferences have passed since the formation of the Afghan Higher Peace council, and the clear NATO endorsement of reconciliation: but there is no sign that insurgents, the Kabul government or its neighbours will reach a deal, or feel much desire so to do. So there is no military solution, and no political solution either. Nor will there be before the troops leave. We will have to deal for decades with a troubled Afghanistan, which is not likely in my lifetime to be as wealthy as Libya, as effectively governed as Iraq, as educated as Syria, or as institutionally mature as Pakistan.

Western countries, he argues, have done as much as they are able; their only option now is provide financial backing to sustain the Kabul government and the sort of military support — from nearby airbases — that would prevent the Taliban mobilizing heavy weaponry to overrun its rivals. The rest will be up to the Afghans to sort out among themselves — a conversation that will be conducted with weapons until the limits of each side’s capacity to impose its will are apparent to their commanders and regional backers, and that new battlefield equilibrium sets the terms for new political arrangements. Chances are, it’s not going to look much like the Afghanistan the U.S. had hoped to leave behind.


Gunmen Shoot Dead Family in Parwan
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 03 October 2012
Five members of a family were shot dead by gunmen in the Parwan province north of Kabul on Tuesday night, local officials said Wednesday.

Gunmen entered a house in the Wand Dara area of Parwan's Sorkh Parsa district and shot dead two women, two men and a four year-old child, provincial spokeswoman Roshna Khalid said.

The number of gunmen was not confirmed, but it was said to be "several", while the motives were not believed to be related to militants or insurgent action.

"This happened as a result of family conflicts. Police have started investigating to capture the suspects," she told TOLOnews Wednesday.

It comes after two women and two policemen were injured in a gunfight in Parwan's capital Charakar on Tuesday afternoon, the spokeswoman said.

The shootout happened when a car passing through a police checkpoint did not stop as required, and the police opened fire, according to Khalid.

The male occupants of the car have been detained and police have begun questioning them, she added, while the injured have been taken to a nearby hospital in city.


Top Afghan Officials Admit Fears for Prison Control
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Wednesday, 03 October 2012
Afghanistan's top prison officials on Wednesday said that the country is struggling to control and maintain adequate conditions in its prisons and that security concerns were high including at the recently gained Bagram Detention Centre.

Head of the Central Prison Directorate Amir Mohammad Jamshidi and the Director of Afghanistan's largest prison Pul-e-Charkhi Khan Mohammad Khan told Afghan senators in Wednesday's sitting session that insufficient space and staff plague the system.

Jamshidi said that he was concerned about the handover of Bagram military prison from US to Afghan control last month, voicing doubts that the Ministry of Interior and Defense are able to properly control and secure it.

The comments contradict the stance of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who has repeatedly depicted control of Bagram prison as a sign of Afghanistan's sovereignty.

The senators heard from Jamshidi that insufficient space at the prisons saw up to 200 prisoners detained in areas intended to accommodate 15 people.

"It's previously been said that the Ministry of Justice will take the control of the prisoners, but now they are handing it over to Ministry of Interior which the lack sufficient ability and space to control them," Jamishidi said, adding that Taliban prisoners are trying to plan suicide attacks from within the detention centers.

He said that the country's intelligence departments should be doing more to prevent such conspiracies and infiltration within the prisons.

"They are always trying to plan attacks. A Pakistani citizen was arrested in the Pul-e-Charkhi area... It's the responsibility of the intelligence departments to take care of this," he added.

Jamshidi lamented that there was a lack of modern equipment at the prisons to detect drugs and illegal material from entering inside the prisons and accepted that prison guards were involved in helping get these things inside.

"We don't have modern detection equipment – some female visitors are carrying drugs in on their bodies. I confirm that the prison's security officials are involved in this as well," he added.

Pul-e-Charkhi's director also confirmed the involvement of some guards in transporting drugs into the prisons.

"About five percent of the guards are involved in carrying drugs within the prison. I confirm that they are also involved in corruption and bribery," Khan said.

Some senators criticised the Afghan government for taking responsibility for Bagram detention centre saying that if this was the state of the prisons then how did they demand to take responsibility for another.

According to the prison officials, there are more than 23,000 prisoners detained in Afghanistan.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com