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Panetta in Afghanistan to Discuss Troop Drawdown
VOA News December 12, 2012
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit that will include talks with President Hamid Karzai.
Panetta arrived in Kabul on Wednesday for consultations with Karzai and top military commanders, including U.S. General John Allen, about troop levels in the country after the international combat mission ends in 2014.
Before arriving in Afghanistan, Panetta told reporters the White House hoped to have a decision soon on the U.S. troop make-up after the withdrawal.
"Part of the reason for this trip is to talk with General Allen and to discuss with him some of the options that are being prepared for the president's considering, with regards to the enduring presence. Our hope is that we can complete that process within the next few weeks," he said.
Panetta traveled to Afghanistan from Kuwait.
About 68,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Military officials have called for keeping as many as 15,000 troops in the region after 2014 for training and counterterrorism efforts.
In November, Panetta said the U.S. would need to keep a substantial number of troops in the country to ensure that al-Qaida "never again finds a safe haven." He did not specify how many troops would be needed to achieve this goal. The U.S. and Afghanistan are in the process of negotiating a bilateral security agreement outlining the future U.S. presence in the country.
The defense secretary also noted a decline in the number of attacks by Afghan security forces against U.S. forces but said these so-called insider attacks remained a concern.
In another development, Afghan and coalition forces say they have arrested a Taliban leader who controlled a group of insurgents who had launched attacks on coalition troops and Afghan forces.
Security forces say the unidentified militant leader was involved in planning a suicide attack when he was arrested in Ghazni province on Wednesday.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
11 Afghan Cabinet Ministers Face Impeachment
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan December 12, 2012
KABUL -- Afghanistan's lower house of parliament has voted to start impeachment proceedings against 11 cabinet ministers.
The parliament's deputy speaker, Abdul Zaher Qadir, said on December 12 that a majority of lawmakers in the Wolesi Jirga voted in favor of the measure.
The ministers are facing criticism for having spent less than half of their ministries’ 2012 budgets aimed at developing projects such as infrastructure-building.
The 11 ministers include the Interior, Defense, Economy, Water and Energy, Education, Urban Development, Mining, Higher Education, Antinarcotics, and Information and Culture ministries.
Earlier this month, the lower house cleared the minister of water and energy, Mohammad Ismail Khan, of wrongdoing in impeachment proceedings.
He was accused of budget irregularities and was also under scruntiny for allegedly mobilizing his militia.
Tale of the Taliban Bomber: Behind the Plot to Kill Afghanistan’s Spy Chief
TIME By Mujib Mashal Dec. 11, 2012
Kabul - For Asadullah Khalid, the morning of Dec. 6 — the day the Taliban tried to kill him — was as routine as any other. Dressed in an embroidered beige shirt, Kabul’s recently-appointed intelligence chief signed papers and reviewed the interior design of the new office he intended to occupy. Then, he left for a lunch meeting in one of his agency’s guesthouses in the Afghan capital. But during the meeting he was critically wounded by his Taliban interlocutor, who had been carrying about 2.5 kgs of explosives in his underwear. Khalid was flown to the U.S. air base in Bagram a few hours after the attack. He regained consciousness the next day, but requires several additional operations after suffering serious abdominal injuries.
At a fraught moment, dark questions circle. Afghan officials claim the attack was planned across the border in Pakistan; the Pakistanis have retorted, saying Afghanistan needs to do a better job resolving its perennial security woes. A cloud now hangs over scheduled meetings this week in Ankara between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart President Asif Zardari—Khalid, indeed, had been slated to fly to Turkey to attend the talks.
In hindsight, Khalid was a prime target for the Taliban, whose leadership has long been ensconced across the border in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Unlike many of his peers who have fought the Islamist militants, Khalid is an ethnic Pashtun who commands considerable stature and support in the southern Pashtun heartlands where the Taliban hold the most sway. Further north, he has the respect and backing of many other factions in Afghanistan’s fractious political landscape. Charismatic with a savvy military mind, Khalid was known, not uncontroversially, to do things his way during eight years as governor of two key Afghan provinces — Ghazni and Kandahar — and then as a cabinet minister in Karzai’s government. Some say it was his self-confidence bordering on recklessness that nearly got him killed on Dec. 6.
What else explains why Afghanistan’s intelligence chief would make himself so vulnerable to a Taliban attack? Despite having a reputation of being vehemently anti-Taliban, Khalid, as Karzai’s intelligence chief, had to show support for the government’s policy of prioritizing peace with the militant group.
Moreover, an approach from an emissary of the Taliban in Quetta would have seemed to him personal vindication of his supposed recent efforts to target the Taliban leadership. Mullah Sayyid Ahmad Shahid Khel, a senior Taliban official believed to be responsible for planning the suicide bomb-assassination of Afghanistan’s deputy intelligence chief in 2009, was gunned down in Quetta in November. Karzai rejected media reports then implicating Khalid in the killing across the border.
Despite being new to his post, Khalid has been directly overseeing the security of southern Afghanistan and the borderlands with Pakistan for over a year and half now. And his vast network there dates even further — when he was governor of Kandahar, between 2005 and 2008. As governor, he often personally participated in battles against the Taliban, which led U.S. diplomats to write in cables leaked by Wikileaks that Khalid had a “tendency to focus on security at the cost of governance and development issues.” The success of his reign in the insurgency’s heartland did not lie in his ability to build roads or protect schools, but in the enemy body counts he amassed — or, at least, claimed credit for. One day in May 2007, Khalid called reporters to his gubernatorial palace in Kandahar and displayed the body of the Taliban’s fearsome deputy. Laid out on a stretcher and covered in pink sheets, the one-legged Mullah Dadullah — still wearing a shoe on his intact leg — had been killed in neighboring Helmand province.
The fact that the body was displayed triumphantly instead by Khalid spoke volumes of how his rule and reach extended far beyond official bounds—and with the blessing of the president, who had grown increasingly close to him over the years.
During his governorship, Canadian diplomats also accused him of torturing prisoners and running a dungeon under his private residence. Khalid has denied these accusations. The Afghan Human Rights commission also exonerated him before his parliamentary confirmation, saying there was no evidence behind the allegations of torture.
Even after taking over the intelligence agency, Khalid frequently drove around without bodyguards. While the streets to the houses of two former security ministers are both barricaded, there was still no check post in front of Khalid’s home three months into his assignment. Visitors would simply knock on the door. On a recent trip two-hour drive to an eastern province to check out the scene where nine suicide bombers had blown themselves up, Khalid was accompanied by only two bodyguards. In October, after a suicide attack killed 41 in northern Faryab province, Khalid was dispatched to secure the area for the president to visit the victims. Late in the night, he was told that General Dostum, a fearsome northern strongman, was approaching the city with some 200 of his armed guards. Khalid, with only one aide at his side, drove to Dostum and convinced him not to enter the city.
According to sources close to Khalid, the man who tried to kill him sported a thick dark beard and shaggy hair. He was given a new set of clothes to change into in a bathroom manned with surveillance cameras – a precautionary measure to detect explosives or weapons on his body. The loophole, some suggest, could be that social mores meant the camera only filmed from above shoulder height. Others say it was a sign of a larger systemic problem.
“They had no file on the guy [the Taliban emissary] and his background, yet they convinced the highest intelligence official that he was so important only he should talk to him,” says a former security official. The emissary should have been kept under surveillance “in an exhaustive environment” so that his secret intentions would have become clear before he could take any lives.
Khalid was accompanied in the room by a close confidant of his. Conflicting narratives suggest that both men – Khalid and his confidant – had left the room at least once during the meeting. The confidant, who received less-threatening injuries, had walked out to answer a call, while Khalid had followed an aide who was returning lunch dishes to the kitchen. The assassin was most likely not sure which one of the two individuals in the room was the intelligence chief, sources say. They had only spoken on the phone before. Khalid and his confidant both have similar builds and speak a similar accent of Pashto, several sources who have met both men say. When the confidant returned from his phone call and announced that he had to leave, Khalid got up to convince him he should stay a few minutes and they can leave together. The assassin got nervous that he might miss his target and detonated his explosives. Khalid lives, but his aura of invulnerability went up in smoke.
News Analysis: Taliban attack on Afghan spy chief could derail ongoing peace efforts by Pakistan
Xinhua By Muhammad Tahir Dec. 11, 2012
ISLAMABAD - The attack last month by Taliban militants against Afghanistan's intelligence chief could derail Pakistani efforts in helping the peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban after Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly said that the attacker came from Pakistan.
The Afghan president made this charge a day after the failed attempt to assassinate Asadullah Khalid, head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) and a close confidant of President Karzai.
Khalid, who was attacked Thursday in one of the highly- protected guest houses of the spy agency in Kabul, was only injured, according to the Afghan media.
The Taliban had immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it was done to avenge the recent execution of several Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the attacker had posed as a peace messenger.
President Karzai rejected the notion that the attack was conducted by the Taliban alone, saying that it was impossible for the Taliban to carry out what he described as a "complicated attack."
Karzai said that the attack was planned in Pakistan and must be investigated as to who were behind it.
He also claimed that the attack against Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan peace envoy, had also been planned in Quetta, Pakistan.
Pakistan, which had quickly condemned the attack on Khalid, showed angry reaction to Karzai's remarks and asked the Afghan government to share evidence instead of leveling allegations in the media.
"Before leveling charges, the Afghan government would do well if they share information or evidence with the government of Pakistan that they might have with regard to the cowardly attack on the head of NDS. They would also do well by ordering an investigation into any lapses in the security arrangements around the NDS chief," a statement from the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said.
Days after President Karzai's remarks, Afghan senators went further by directly charging Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for its involvement in the high profile attack.
Kabul's charges and Islamabad's angry reaction once again raised doubts on the efficacy of Islamabad's role in the reconciliation talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
Last month, as part of its confidence-building efforts, Pakistan released 13 Afghan Taliban detainees in Pakistani prisons. Kabul had welcomed Taliban release and described it as a 'first practical' step by Pakistan to push the much-anticipated peace move.
Pakistan had also agreed to free more Afghan Taliban to give a boost to the peace process in the war-ravaged Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of all foreign troops to avoid more bloodshed.
The United States and Afghanistan widely believe that Pakistan' s role is key to the political solution in Afghanistan as it still has deep influence on the Afghan Taliban. It was Pakistan that had facilitated Taliban leaders going to Qatar to hold talks with the United States.
Islamabad had also agreed with the U.S. and Afghanistan in April on a 'safe passage' mechanism for those Taliban who want to talk to the Afghan government.
Pakistani officials said they have taken several steps to push the Afghan peace process and was ready to take more in the coming days. However it is thought that the blame game from Afghan leaders can hamper Islamabad's efforts as the country is highly sensitive when it is publicly charged for actions in which it has no role.
Pakistan has always argued that Afghan officials should take up their complaints in bilateral forums to find out solutions to complex matters.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are passing through a difficult time as both Muslims nations are faced with the continuing threat from armed factions in their border areas and who have already killed hundreds of security forces and civilians.
Their bilateral cooperation is a must for a political solution to the Afghan conflict to avoid possibility of another civil war in the post-2014 Afghanistan that could also destabilize Pakistan.
Analysts here said that Pakistan and Afghanistan will both suffer if they fail to resolve their differences and work in tandem in the search for lasting peace in the region.
U.S. finds Afghan anti-corruption efforts ‘deeply troubling’
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Dec 11, 2012
Two small machines sit on a shelf in a closet at Kabul International Airport, surrounded by cardboard boxes and idle desk fans.
The machines are bulk currency counters, provided by the United States to help Afghanistan stop cash smuggling estimated last year at $4.5 billion. When U.S. investigators visited in September, they found the counters in working order but they “did not observe any use of the machines.”
Not far away, the investigators found that an airport lounge that allowed departing VIPs to bypass security and customs screenings had been expanded. The new area was designation for those the Afghan government deemed “very, very important persons.”
The saga of the cash counters, described in a report released Tuesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, is emblematic of the difficulties looming over international plans to provide Afghanistan with long-term economic support following the departure of U.S. combat troops two years from now.
U.S. and other donors pledged $4 billion a year after 2014 at an international conference in Tokyo this year. But the money is contingent on Afghanistan meeting a series of good-government and anti-corruption benchmarks.
Threats to curtail aid have been made and abandoned many times in the past in the face of impervious corruption in Afghanistan. But the Tokyo agreement noted that “business as usual” could not continue, and both sides agreed on the need to “move from promise to practice.”
In October, Afghan President Hamid Karzai fulfilled one of the Tokyo commitments by promising to hold the country’s next presidential election on time, setting the vote for April 5, 2014. Postponement of the last election, which gave Karzai a second term in 2009, contributed to widespread charges of electoral fraud.
But Afghanistan has yet to pass an electoral law that would allow foreigners to oversee the upcoming vote, and elections experts say that they confront substantial organizational work.
The more immediate challenges are corruption and good-government practices. Specific Tokyo benchmarks remain unaddressed, including putting those responsible for the failure of Kabul Bank on trial and implementing money laundering measures.
Smuggling bulk cash is one of the principal forms of laundering money “to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the SIGAR report said. It is also one of the primary ways that senior Afghan government officials are suspected of transferring ill-gotten gains to safety outside the country.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul tried to address the problem in 2010 by placing bulk currency counters at the international airport to get a sense of how much cash was leaving the country. The Afghan government pledged to adopt regulations within a year to govern bulk transfers of cash.
The cash counters also are designed to capture currency serial numbers and create databases to be transmitted via the Internet to a records center in Kabul, where the information could be used by law enforcement authorities.
A contract was awarded in 2010 to install the currency counters in the airport customs area, but the machines were not installed until nearly a year later, the SIGAR report said, “in part because U.S. and Afghan officials disagreed on where to put them.”
In April, U.S. investigators found that the machines were being used to count cash, but they discovered that the serial numbers on the bills were not being recorded and that VIP passengers, who presumably had cash to carry, were allowed to bypass all screenings and use a separate entrance to the airport’s secured area.
Despite this lack of cooperation, the government “continued to make public commitments to combat corruption and institute stronger border controls,” including at the Tokyo conference in July, the report noted.
When investigators returned Sept. 20, they found the currency machines had been moved to “a small, closet-like area.” The machines were plugged in and apparently in working order, but they were not connected to the Internet and were not being used.
In addition, VIPs continued to be exempt from screening, although “many of the individuals who traffic money leave from the VIP area,” according to a Department of Homeland Security official who accompanied the SIGAR investigators.
“A new Very Very Important Persons (VVIP) lounge was built to provide easier boarding access for high-ranking officials, again allowing transit without main customs screenings or use of a bulk currency counter,” the report said.
In its conclusion, the SIGAR report called the situation “deeply troubling.”
Vast sums of aid continue to be stolen in Afghanistan
Despite years of supposed effort to stop money laundering out of Kabul airport, billions continue to flow from the country unchecked.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff writer December 11, 2012
In the summer of 2010, the US decided to do something about the enormous sucking sound being generated by the bulk cash shipments funneling through Afghanistan's Kabul airport and on to Dubai, Zurich, and London – every point of the compass, really.
With Afghanistan's two principal cash crops being opium and slicing chunks off the top of international aid, there were no prizes for guessing where the tens of billions of dollars transferred from Afghanistan since the US-led war began in 2002 came from, or how the luxury villas of so many Afghan officials in the United Arab Emirates had been paid for.
So, the US embassy in Kabul created a "bulk cash flow action plan" and the Karzai government said it was on board. The results since? Well, around $4.5 billion flowed out of Afghanistan in 2011, according to the Congressional Research Service, the vast majority of it unmonitored and unregistered. That's about 22 percent of gross domestic product, an astonishing amount of capital flight.
How is the plan doing this year? About the same as last year, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a US government auditor, released today.
The failure so far is a reminder that nice-seeming US plans in Afghanistan rarely achieve their desired results, and that the Afghan government's will to rein in corruption has consistently ended with empty promises made across conference tables for a decade now.
What happened?
The US government bought high-tech currency counting machines, that could process 900 bills a minute and record both their value and their serial numbers. The machines were supposed to be electronically connected to the Afghan central bank, so that officials there could monitor who was taking money out of the country, how often, and investigate accordingly.
There was only one problem: Afghan officials decided not to fully install the machines. In 2011, US government auditors found that Afghans running the machines at Kabul airport were not recording serial numbers or transmitting information to the central bank. Without those steps, the machines were essentially useless. What's more, any person granted "VIP" status by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai could carry as much cash as they liked through the airport without having it counted.
That was more than a year ago, so between September and November, SIGAR auditors revisited Kabul airport to see how Afghanistan had done in delivering on promises to address the problem. As with the first set of promises, nothing was actually done.
"We found that, more than 1 year since our last visit to [Kabul airport], the cash counters are still not being used for their intended purpose, and VIPs continue to bypass key controls," SIGAR writes in the report, Anti-Corruption Measures: Persistent Problems Exist in Monitoring Bulk Cash Flows at Kabul International Airport. "A new Very Very Important Persons (VVIP) lounge was built to provide easier boarding access for high-ranking officials, again allowing transit without main customs screenings or use of a bulk currency counter."
Why aren't efforts being made to deal with money laundering? According to a US Department of Homeland Security official interviewed by SIGAR, Afghan customs officials at Kabul airport are "afraid that they would experience negative repercussions from [the Afghan government] if progress in instituting controls at the airport was made. As of October 2012, according to DHS officials, efforts to connect the bulk currency counters to the internet or a computer server were 'at a standstill.'"
That was the environment in which President Barack Obama conducted his expensive surge at the urging of Gen. David Petraeus, the since-disgraced former commander of the Afghan war and former CIA boss. This is not a case where a huge amount of resources, or technical skills that don't exist in the Afghan population, are required. It's entirely a matter of whether Afghanistan's political class and business elites are willing to have their activities subjected to scrutiny and accountability.
"Although proper controls to monitor cash flows are important for any country to institute, they are particularly critical for a country fraught with corruption, narcotics trafficking, and insurgent activity," SIGAR writes. "In 2010, Ambassador Eikenberry presciently noted that 'many of these measures [in the bulk cash flow action plan] require few, if any, additional resources; their success depends largely on the degree of [Afghan government] political will.'”
The answer so far has been "you can't make us," and that's something US policymakers, and voters, should keep in mind, particularly when considering how much more money to bequeath to the Afghan military. Another US government report out today on Afghanistan says that after 10 years of training and equipping the Afghan National Army, at a cost of well over $20 billion, only one of 23 combat brigades is capable of operating without US financial and professional assistance.
Afghans in Marjah prefer Taliban rule
Associated Press Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Marjah, Afghanistan -- Nearly three years after U.S.-led forces opened the biggest operation of the war to clear insurgents, foster economic growth and set a model for the rest of Afghanistan, angry residents of Helmand province say they are too afraid to go out after dark because of marauding bands of thieves.
And during the day, they say corrupt police and government officials bully them into paying bribes. After 11 years of war, many in the province long for a return of the Taliban. They say that under the Taliban, who routinely punished thieves by cutting off a hand, they were at least safe from crime and corruption.
It was in the town of Marjah in early 2010 that 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces waged the war's biggest battle. They not only fought the Taliban with weapons, they promised to bring good governance to Marjah and the rest of the southern province of Helmand - and demonstrate to the residents the advantages of shunning the militants.
But it appears the flaw in the plan was with the quality of Afghans chosen by President Hamid Karzai to govern and police the area after most of the fighting ended. And that adds to growing doubts about the entire country's future after foreign troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
Despite military claims of gains across the province and an overall drop in violence, Marjah residents said NATO's counterinsurgency experiment has failed. A bleak picture also emerges from anecdotal evidence collected from dozens of interviews with residents elsewhere in the province, some from the most violent districts.
Many contend the U.S.-funded local police, a type of locally sanctioned militia, routinely demand bribes and threaten to accuse those who do not comply of being members of the Taliban. Good governance never came to Marjah, they say.
The larger question, of course, is whether what's happening in Helmand is a harbinger of what the rest of Afghanistan will look like after the departure of the international troops.
Over 200 Children Held in Bagram Prison: HRW
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Over 200 juvenile Afghans are being detained at the Bagram detention center north of Kabul, the international Human Rights Watch said Tuesday, an issue that it has brought to the attention of the United Nations.
"The US has admitted that there are over 200 Afghan children imprisoned in Bagram and these are children have been arrested by US forces," researcher for the Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan, Heather Barr, told TOLOnews in an interview.
"Human Rights Watch has complained about this specific issue to the United Nations," Barr added.
In addition to concerns about the detainment of children inside the military prison, Barr said the children's treatment went against international regulations.
"We visited Bagram in March last year and we were very concerned about this issue because not only the children are there but they're being kept in the same cells together with adults which is not acceptable under international standards," she said.
"And they don't have as much access as they should have to specialised services for child educational services and other programs that should be provided to them."
The United Nations Human Rights Director Georgette Gagnon said that the issue would be followed up.
"We have the report and obviously we will be looking at it and addressing any issues that we are asked to look at," Gagnon said.
The US and Afghan officials are yet to respond to requests for comment about the detention of juveniles in Bagram.
In Afghanistan, a girl's killing stands out – for police response
Police have arrested suspects in the recent beheading of a girl, but a new report released today by the UN finds that violent acts against women remain under reported and often ignored.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Peterson, Staff writer December 11, 2012
Kunduz, Afghanistan - The poor Afghan family never took a photograph of their 14-year-old daughter, Geysina, before her life was cut short.
All the mementos of their devoted daughter fit in a single sack, carried from their village in northern Afghanistan – the totems of the latest grisly episode in a surge of killings of young women and girls in Kunduz Province. There's a pair of worn sandals repaired with loops of thick thread, which bring tears to the eyes of Geysina's father when he holds them. And there is a ring made of cheap metal – no more than costume jewelry for children – inset with a small oval of lime-green plastic.
Geysina was wearing the ring the morning in late November when she was beheaded 150 yards from home while fetching water.
"She was too young for gold," explains Geysina's father Mohamad Rahim, whose threadbare sleeves and calloused hands attest to a life spent farming. He tips his head and grey silk turban at the memories of Geysina, one of nine children whose walk, smile, and laugh set her apart. "We were all lying on the ground, crying and screaming – there is nothing like this [killing of innocents] in Islam."
Her family and local police blame a neighbor, a butcher living next door, who they say threatened Geysina's life repeatedly for not accepting several proposals for marriage to the butcher's brother – the latest rejection made just the night before the killing.
Geysina lived and died in a hard country for women, a point highlighted again by a United Nations report released today. Despite a landmark 2009 law called the "Elimination of Violence Against Women," crimes against women remain under reported and largely not investigated.
The reasons, the report states, include “cultural restraints, social norms and taboos, customary practices and religious beliefs, discrimination against women that leads to wider acceptance of violence against them and, at times threat to life.”
In 16 provinces, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted the discrepancy between the "very low" figure of 470 officially reported incidents of violence in the past year and the 4,010 recorded by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
UNAMA's human rights director, Georgette Gagnon, called on Afghan authorities to "take further steps to ensure that police and prosecutors register and investigate all reports of violence against women." Arrests in Geysina's case
In Geysina's case, the police have taken some action.
Police say the butcher, Mohamad Sadiq, and a relative and suspected accomplice, are now behind bars. They deny the murder, but were caught fleeing the scene, says Kunduz police spokesman Said Sarwar Husaini. Evidence includes bloody clothes in their possession, and the motive was well-known locally to all, due to a string of threats.
"I am sure the court will punish them," says Mr. Husaini, noting likely sentences of 20 years or life in prison. Such sentences are an increasingly common result, according to the UNAMA report. Of the 470 referred to a judicial process, some 163 saw indictments filed and 100 of those ended in convictions using the 2009 law.
"Women are always the victims, so we pursue these cases very seriously," says Husaini. "Women have a weak status in society, so we are very careful about women's cases and investigate deeply because they can't protect themselves." Violence spikes in Kunduz
But violence against women is not showing signs of abating in Afghanistan. The acting head of women’s affairs in Laghman Province in northeast Afghanistan, Najia Sediqi, was assassinated yesterday. Her predecessor was killed last July for defending a girl who married for love, instead of an arranged marriage to an older man.
And in Kunduz, Geysina was only one among a dozen young women and girls recorded killed in the last nine months alone, compared to just one in the previous year. Police statistics show that those murders account for more than one-quarter of the 42 killings registered across the province in that period.
Residents and police in Kunduz list a host of reasons: lack of education, poverty, increased militia activity, traditional practices of forced and early marriage – and growing resistance to those practices – and even democracy, along with mental health problems stemming from decades of conflict.
"There are many reasons behind it," says Nadira Geyah, the head of the Kunduz office of the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs. An Afghan flag sits on her desk, beside a group of cloth flowers in well-appointed offices. The UNAMA report noted the “crucial role” of such provincial women's affairs offices.
Most women are killed at the hands of illegal militias, which have taken root in Kunduz the last two years, says Ms. Geyah. But a tradition of forced marriages also "create problems in the family and are used as reasons to kill." 'A generation of war'
On top of that, decades of war – of Soviet occupation in the 1980s, civil war in the 1990s, and finally since 2001 American and NATO intervention – has left its mark.
"This is a generation of war, so people have mental problems and are very quick to anger and to act," says Geyah.
Yet another reason is the process of spreading the news of women's rights across the country, as the Ministry of Women's Affairs does. In Kunduz, Geyah's office uses sympathetic religious scholars to spread the message, with the help of the media. Key topics are women's rights according to Islam, under international human rights law, and Afghan prohibitions on violence against women.
"When a woman in a rural area hears that, she stands up to her family, and instead of going to a magistrate [with a problem], they may prefer to kill [the woman]," says Geyah.
Not all scholars are on board, and their preaching has also led to the killing of women. "It's a big challenge and we need more time. We should struggle against that," she adds.
Even more fundamentally, education is key. Families often prefer that their children work instead of go to school, "so what kind of behavior can we expect of them?" asks Geyah.
Geysina is a case in point: None of the nine children in the family went to school. “She was like a house girl, busy at home, cooking with her mother or bringing us lunch in the fields,” says the murdered girl’s father, Mr. Rahim. “She was not a school girl.” Reasons for optimism
Despite the surge in killings, Geyah is optimistic about changes in coming years.
"In the past, there were a small number of girls in school, and that number is increasing," says Geyah. "And before, there were no women in Kunduz government offices; now we have many examples."
And on the ground in Kunduz, the police say they are making progress. They have stepped up arrests in the past two years, as their own capacity and numbers have grown. In the last half-year Kunduz police have investigated 500 cases, 56 of them related to murders, says Husaini. On his desk is a calendar with a photograph of a crop of uniformed women police recruits.
The death toll will drop, says Husaini, as police numbers grow, and if magistrates rule consistently: "If they give appropriate punishment, it will make a difference."
Yet those future changes, if they come, were too late for Geysina and her mourning family.
"When you would fight with her, she would come back and make peace – she was very kind," says her brother, Mohamad Noor. "These days we were getting ready for a wedding party."
"She even asked for new clothes!" says father Rahim, laughing, adding that he vetoed as inappropriate her request for a short-sleeved outfit.
The shock of her loss to this family is something Geysina's killers will never understand, he says. "Those who did this don't know anything about humanity or Islam."
* Follow Scott Peterson on Twitter @peterson__scott
Jonathan Kay: As Afghanistan and Pakistan destroy themselves, will an ethnic Pashtunistan take root?
National Post By Jonathan Kay Dec 11, 2012
In the Western mind, Afghanistan’s mountainous Nuristan region is known primarily as the setting of Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 novella The Man Who Would Be King — an entertaining story of two plucky white adventurers who aspire to become local chieftains. The real Nuristan of 2012, on the other hand, is a violent, fantastically inaccessible backwater full of gangsters and smugglers.
In 2006, as part of the American military’s campaign to establish a greater military presence in more far-flung parts of Afghanistan, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division established Combat Outpost Keating near the Nuristani town of Kamdesh. From the beginning, commanders expressed bafflement at the location. COP Keating sat at the base of a mountain — and was bounded on two sides by rivers, and on the other by a town teeming with hostiles. The only usable road serving the area was a cliff-side path that was just six feet across at points. As Jake Tapper describes in his new book about the base, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, soldiers stationed at COP Keating couldn’t even patrol effectively: The only thing they could do was sit around and wait to be attacked.
In short, the camp was what one lieutenant-colonel referred to as a “self-licking ice cream cone”: It had no purpose other than to defend itself from attack.
At 6am on October 3, 2009, that attack came. Three hundred Taliban fighters came at COP Keating’s five dozen defenders with a ferocious assault, now remembered as the Battle of Kamdesh. Only thanks to the Americans’ superior discipline, training and weaponry were they able to prevent the base from being completely overrun. Eight Americans died during the battle. The disaster spawned an investigation, which found that the location of the camp had no strategic or tactical purpose. The Americans abandoned the base, and then sent bombers in to blow up all the equipment they’d left behind.
More than a decade after the original American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Outpost Keating stands as a symbol for the entire war.
More than a decade after the original American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Outpost Keating stands as a symbol for the entire war
It would be an exaggeration to say that the conflict itself had no strategic purpose or effect. The Americans kicked the Taliban out of Kabul and other cities, and sent their al-Qaeda guests fleeting to Pakistan, Yemen and points beyond. Eventually, they killed Osama Bin Laden himself, as well as the vast majority of his lieutenants on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (In case you missed it, this week brought another drone-strike kill: senior al-Qaeda commander Mohammad Ahmed al-Mansoor. These surgical victories have become so common that they no longer even make the front pages.) But it also has become clear that, overall, Afghanistan is a Nuristan among nations — an isolated, rock-hard gallstone of violence and backwardness lodged in Asia’s stomach.
Parts of Afghanistan clearly are salvageable, including Kabul itself, Herat in the West, the former redoubts of the Northern Alliance in the Uzbek and Tajik north, and some parts of the fertile south. (At a foreign-policy conference in Washington last week, I heard a proud father tell of his military son’s recent deployment to Helmand province, a once-violent place where fighting apparently is now so rare that some American soldiers deployed in the region actually half-wish for a skirmish or two, just to keep their skills sharp.)
But other areas likely won’t become civilized places in my lifetime. That includes Nuristan — whose fierce animist tribes didn’t even bend the knee to Islam until the late 1890s, and who were among the first to take up arms against the Soviets. If these people can’t be broken by the far more brutal methods of 19th-century Muslim hordes and the Red Army, what chance do our own “nation-builders” have?
Pakistan is facing many internal threats, and its military is having trouble keeping the country stitched together as it is
This week, the McClatchy news agency reportedly obtained documents that suggest the corrupt Karzai administration — which the West has been propping up for a decade now — is prepared to cede swathes of the southern and eastern parts of the country to the Taliban as part of a comprehensive peace plan. Five years ago, this would have sown outrage in Western capitals. These days, it barely makes the news: To the extent any functional governance of this part of Afghanistan is possible, a band of hyper-violent Islamist misogynists may be the only ones capable of (or even much interested in) the task. And with drones having become America’s long-range weapon of choice, perhaps the shape of the U.S. footprint matters less than it once did: If al-Qaeda training camps take root in Taliban-run parts of Afghanistan, they can be destroyed by joystick.
This blueprint for Afghanistan involves not one country, but two: a Taliban-administered patchwork of provinces bordering Pakistan, and a Western-friendly (or at least Western aid-dependent) rump. But that scenario itself raises an interesting possibility for an even more seismic transformation: With Taliban-led, ethnic Pashtun Islamist enclaves on both sides of the invisible Afghanistan-Pakistan border, each essentially independent of Kabul and Islamabad, what is there to stop the de facto creation of the long-dreamed-of Pashtunistan, stretching from the Amu to Indus rivers?
Ethnic Pashtuns have their own language, Pashto, and code of behaviour, Pashtunwali. Moreover, the national border that divides Afghan Pashtuns from Pakistani Pashtuns, the Durand Line, is an essentially arbitrary creation of a 19th-century British foreign secretary. Afghan revanchists have been claiming parts of northern Pakistan for generations. For many tribesmen in the area, the Durand Line has as much real-life significance as those American highway sculptures you pass in northern U.S. states, noting the 45th parallel.
Fighting is the one and only thing that the Taliban does well, on both sides of the border
A few days ago, I discussed all this with an Indian diplomat who specializes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. His view was that Pakistan would never recognize an autonomous status for Pashtuns — because doing so would not only serve to effectively give up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (where Pakistani sovereignty is only nominal), but also parts of Balochistan. The Pakistani military will not accede to the break-up of their country without a fight.
On the other hand, Pakistan is facing many internal threats, and its military is having trouble keeping the country stitched together as it is. Moreover, fighting is the one and only thing that the Taliban does well, on both sides of the border. If they do manage to carve out an independent Pashtunistan, they may well produce the most stable political arrangement the area has witnessed since the days of Kipling.
No doubt it would be a violent and unpleasant place, but it’s hard to imagine anything being worse than the status quo.
Karzai Heads to Turkey for Trilateral Summit
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 11 December 2012
President Hamid Karzai left Kabul for Turkey on Tuesday morning to attend a trilateral meeting between Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Afghan and Pakistan delegations, led respectively by the countries' presidents Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari, will arrive in Turkey's capital of Ankara to attend the three-day summit starting Wednesday.
The delegations also include communication and interior ministers, along with high-ranking military officials.
The summit will focus on strengthening economic and commercial cooperation through improving existing ties and developing new links of transportation between the three countries.
The first of the annual summits was held in Ankara in April 2007, focusing mainly on security issues in war-torn Afghanistan.
Karzai said on Saturday that he will be asking Pakistan about the assassination attempt against Afghan spy chief Asadullah Khalid.
He said that a full investigation into the attack is underway, but one thing is already known for sure - the bomber was from Pakistan and the plot was planned in Quetta.
Pakistan's Foreign Office has rejected Karzai's claim and said that instead of blaming Pakistan, Afghanistan should investigate the security failure which gave the bomber a chance to infiltrate the high security zone area.
Khalid survived the Thursday afternoon suicide attack at a National Directorate of Security guesthouse in Kabul, but received substantial injuries to the lower part of his body.
Afghan Forces Require Massive Assistance: Pentagon
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Tuesday, 11 December 2012
A US Department of Defense report released Monday states that only one of the Afghan National Army's 23 brigades is able to operate independently without support of the US or Nato troops.
The report also stresses that the Taliban are still a major threat to Afghanistan while widespread corruption continues in the central government and Pakistan continues to provide critical support to insurgents.
The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) responded Tuesday saying that it will work together with Pakistan to solve the issue of extremism in the region.
"Because peace and security in Afghanistan and Pakistan has a regional dimension, the Afghan and Pakistani governments are trying to have negotiations with other countries to eradicate extremism from the region," MoFA spokesman Janan Mosazai said in Kabul.
Afghan Ministry of Interior acknowledged that insurgent safe havens in Pakistan have been a threat to the security and stability of the country for the past eleven years and are expected to remain a fundamental threat in the future.
"The insurgents, Al Qaeda, Haqqani and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan have been a major to Afghanistan in the past eleven years. They should be eliminated," MOI spokesman Sediq Seddiqi told TOLOnews on Tuesday.
With most of the 68,000 US troops expected to remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2013, American officials have said that the progress of war depends on whether the Taliban could rebuild since their reported depletion during the US "surge" of 33,000 soldiers in the past two years in the south.
Corruption, weak governance, limited human capacity, lack of access to rural areas, insecurity, lack coordination between central and provincial governments and uneven distribution of power in the government braches are considered to be other major challenges ahead of the country, as stated by the report.
Attack on Afghan Official Shows Up Security Flaws
Analysts say it is no longer good enough to blame outside enemies.
IWPR By Hafizullah Gardesh 11 Dec 12
Afghanistan - A bomb attack that seriously injured the head of Afghanistan’s security service has raised concerns about the government’s ability to safeguard its members as they go about their business in the capital Kabul.
While top officials immediately pointed the finger at Pakistan’s intelligence service, analysts said that explanation was too easy a let-out, and ignored worrying failings in the security network.
Asadullah Khaled, head of the National Directorate for Security, NDS, went to a Kabul guesthouse on December 6 to meet a man who presented himself as a Taleban emissary arriving to take the nascent peace process forward. When Khaled embraced him, the attacker set off a concealed bomb. The NDS chief survived but suffered severe injuries.
President Hamed Karzai later gave a press conference at which he claimed the attack was planned and orchestrated in Pakistan.
"Skill and complexity were involved in planting the bomb. Skilled hands were involved in it. This was not the work of the Taleban," he said. "We want clarification from the Pakistani government. We know that this individual travelled from Pakistan.”
Karzai made it clear that despite the serious allegations, relations with Islamabad would not be broken off.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry hit back with a statement saying it would certainly cooperate with any investigation, but that before levelling accusations of this kind, the Afghan government should have shared its evidence with Islamabad.
Karzai’s spokesman Siamak Herawi responded, "Whatever Pakistan says is not a response to our claim There is evidence that the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] was involved in this attack."
The method of attack, where a suicide bomber pretends to be a Taleban negotiator in order to get close to a top official, is virtually a copy of the September 2011 assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. (See Rabbani Killing Casts Doubt on Afghan Peace Efforts.)
At that time, too, suggestions of Pakistani involvement affected the two countries’ already difficult relationship.
After the attempt on Khaled’s life, Karzai commented that whenever progress is made towards a peace deal with insurgents, there is an attack on senior Afghan figures.
The incident has further dented Afghans’ confidence in their national security forces.
"This attack has run alarm bells for people, particularly high-ranking officials, investors and national-level figures,” political and defence expert Atiqullah Amarkhel said. “The question that arises for everyone is that if the NDS chief – the government's ears and eyes – comes under attack from our enemies, what can the rest of us expect?"
Meeting on December 4, the upper house of Afghanistan’s parliament accused the government of negligence when it came to spotting suicide bombers, and warned that such attacks were likely to increase if screening methods were not improved.
While alleging that such attacks were orchestrated from Pakistan, senators said there must also be people inside Afghanistan helping the bombers get access to their targets.
Another political analyst, Wahid Mozhda, agreed that the bomber must have received assistance from the inside.
"I know Khaled very well. He’s a very cautious person. If he agreed to meet [this individual], it’s very probably because a powerful government official ordered him to," he said.
Mozhda said it was inadequate to blame external forces alone.
"If a guest comes to your house several times, and one night he takes away all your belongings, should you accuse your neighbour of assisting the thief? When this man came from Pakistan on several occasions and met Afghan officials, did the government inform Pakistan about it?" he asked.
The attack raises broader questions about the capacity and cohesion of all three security-sector institutions – the army, the police and the NDS intelligence service – especially since they will assume complete responsibility for defending the country once international forces leave in 2014.
"People have a right to be worried,” Amarkhel said. “The three security agencies face problems like training, a dearth of modern military equipment, lack of sound leadership, and discrimination on linguistic and regional grounds. Overall, one might say these three forces are not national, so people cannot trust them."
Even Interior Minister Mojtaba Patang – who is responsible for the Afghan National Police – has warned that the force is “political and factional” rather than truly national. In remarks before a committee of parliament’s upper house, he said the police were currently unable to fulfill their responsibilities, but said he was developing plans to address the problems.
A serving police officer accused some of Patang’s predecessors of failing to build a united force. He recalled how he took 20 of his relatives – all police officers – when he was transferred to the eastern Nuristan province.
"I slept in a container at night. The policemen who were my relatives were my security. I couldn’t sleep at my headquarters, because none of the police were to be trusted. They were mixed up in various groups including smuggling mafia," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Herawi said attacks like the one targeting Khaled were not a direct reflection of the security forces’ capacity.
"Terrorist attacks take place in many countries. When someone wants to commit suicide, he can hit his target anywhere in the world," he said. “The foreign troop presence is the main factor for poor security. When they leave this country, security will be ensured. It’s already better in those areas where responsibility has been handed over to Afghan forces."
That might not console Kabul property dealer Momen Khan, who sees a direct correlation between security and the housing market.
"Prices go down a few percentage points after every suicide attack. Land and house prices have fallen 30 per cent since last year,” he said. “I have a long list of houses and land for sale, but there are no buyers. People are either saving their money or transferring it abroad, because the security situation is deteriorating on a daily basis."
Khan asked, “When the NDS chief can’t ensure his own security, how is he going to ensure ours?"
Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR editor for Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News December 12, 2012
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit that will include talks with President Hamid Karzai.
Panetta arrived in Kabul on Wednesday for consultations with Karzai and top military commanders, including U.S. General John Allen, about troop levels in the country after the international combat mission ends in 2014.
Before arriving in Afghanistan, Panetta told reporters the White House hoped to have a decision soon on the U.S. troop make-up after the withdrawal.
"Part of the reason for this trip is to talk with General Allen and to discuss with him some of the options that are being prepared for the president's considering, with regards to the enduring presence. Our hope is that we can complete that process within the next few weeks," he said.
Panetta traveled to Afghanistan from Kuwait.
About 68,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Military officials have called for keeping as many as 15,000 troops in the region after 2014 for training and counterterrorism efforts.
In November, Panetta said the U.S. would need to keep a substantial number of troops in the country to ensure that al-Qaida "never again finds a safe haven." He did not specify how many troops would be needed to achieve this goal. The U.S. and Afghanistan are in the process of negotiating a bilateral security agreement outlining the future U.S. presence in the country.
The defense secretary also noted a decline in the number of attacks by Afghan security forces against U.S. forces but said these so-called insider attacks remained a concern.
In another development, Afghan and coalition forces say they have arrested a Taliban leader who controlled a group of insurgents who had launched attacks on coalition troops and Afghan forces.
Security forces say the unidentified militant leader was involved in planning a suicide attack when he was arrested in Ghazni province on Wednesday.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
11 Afghan Cabinet Ministers Face Impeachment
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan December 12, 2012
KABUL -- Afghanistan's lower house of parliament has voted to start impeachment proceedings against 11 cabinet ministers.
The parliament's deputy speaker, Abdul Zaher Qadir, said on December 12 that a majority of lawmakers in the Wolesi Jirga voted in favor of the measure.
The ministers are facing criticism for having spent less than half of their ministries’ 2012 budgets aimed at developing projects such as infrastructure-building.
The 11 ministers include the Interior, Defense, Economy, Water and Energy, Education, Urban Development, Mining, Higher Education, Antinarcotics, and Information and Culture ministries.
Earlier this month, the lower house cleared the minister of water and energy, Mohammad Ismail Khan, of wrongdoing in impeachment proceedings.
He was accused of budget irregularities and was also under scruntiny for allegedly mobilizing his militia.
Tale of the Taliban Bomber: Behind the Plot to Kill Afghanistan’s Spy Chief
TIME By Mujib Mashal Dec. 11, 2012
Kabul - For Asadullah Khalid, the morning of Dec. 6 — the day the Taliban tried to kill him — was as routine as any other. Dressed in an embroidered beige shirt, Kabul’s recently-appointed intelligence chief signed papers and reviewed the interior design of the new office he intended to occupy. Then, he left for a lunch meeting in one of his agency’s guesthouses in the Afghan capital. But during the meeting he was critically wounded by his Taliban interlocutor, who had been carrying about 2.5 kgs of explosives in his underwear. Khalid was flown to the U.S. air base in Bagram a few hours after the attack. He regained consciousness the next day, but requires several additional operations after suffering serious abdominal injuries.
At a fraught moment, dark questions circle. Afghan officials claim the attack was planned across the border in Pakistan; the Pakistanis have retorted, saying Afghanistan needs to do a better job resolving its perennial security woes. A cloud now hangs over scheduled meetings this week in Ankara between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart President Asif Zardari—Khalid, indeed, had been slated to fly to Turkey to attend the talks.
In hindsight, Khalid was a prime target for the Taliban, whose leadership has long been ensconced across the border in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Unlike many of his peers who have fought the Islamist militants, Khalid is an ethnic Pashtun who commands considerable stature and support in the southern Pashtun heartlands where the Taliban hold the most sway. Further north, he has the respect and backing of many other factions in Afghanistan’s fractious political landscape. Charismatic with a savvy military mind, Khalid was known, not uncontroversially, to do things his way during eight years as governor of two key Afghan provinces — Ghazni and Kandahar — and then as a cabinet minister in Karzai’s government. Some say it was his self-confidence bordering on recklessness that nearly got him killed on Dec. 6.
What else explains why Afghanistan’s intelligence chief would make himself so vulnerable to a Taliban attack? Despite having a reputation of being vehemently anti-Taliban, Khalid, as Karzai’s intelligence chief, had to show support for the government’s policy of prioritizing peace with the militant group.
Moreover, an approach from an emissary of the Taliban in Quetta would have seemed to him personal vindication of his supposed recent efforts to target the Taliban leadership. Mullah Sayyid Ahmad Shahid Khel, a senior Taliban official believed to be responsible for planning the suicide bomb-assassination of Afghanistan’s deputy intelligence chief in 2009, was gunned down in Quetta in November. Karzai rejected media reports then implicating Khalid in the killing across the border.
Despite being new to his post, Khalid has been directly overseeing the security of southern Afghanistan and the borderlands with Pakistan for over a year and half now. And his vast network there dates even further — when he was governor of Kandahar, between 2005 and 2008. As governor, he often personally participated in battles against the Taliban, which led U.S. diplomats to write in cables leaked by Wikileaks that Khalid had a “tendency to focus on security at the cost of governance and development issues.” The success of his reign in the insurgency’s heartland did not lie in his ability to build roads or protect schools, but in the enemy body counts he amassed — or, at least, claimed credit for. One day in May 2007, Khalid called reporters to his gubernatorial palace in Kandahar and displayed the body of the Taliban’s fearsome deputy. Laid out on a stretcher and covered in pink sheets, the one-legged Mullah Dadullah — still wearing a shoe on his intact leg — had been killed in neighboring Helmand province.
The fact that the body was displayed triumphantly instead by Khalid spoke volumes of how his rule and reach extended far beyond official bounds—and with the blessing of the president, who had grown increasingly close to him over the years.
During his governorship, Canadian diplomats also accused him of torturing prisoners and running a dungeon under his private residence. Khalid has denied these accusations. The Afghan Human Rights commission also exonerated him before his parliamentary confirmation, saying there was no evidence behind the allegations of torture.
Even after taking over the intelligence agency, Khalid frequently drove around without bodyguards. While the streets to the houses of two former security ministers are both barricaded, there was still no check post in front of Khalid’s home three months into his assignment. Visitors would simply knock on the door. On a recent trip two-hour drive to an eastern province to check out the scene where nine suicide bombers had blown themselves up, Khalid was accompanied by only two bodyguards. In October, after a suicide attack killed 41 in northern Faryab province, Khalid was dispatched to secure the area for the president to visit the victims. Late in the night, he was told that General Dostum, a fearsome northern strongman, was approaching the city with some 200 of his armed guards. Khalid, with only one aide at his side, drove to Dostum and convinced him not to enter the city.
According to sources close to Khalid, the man who tried to kill him sported a thick dark beard and shaggy hair. He was given a new set of clothes to change into in a bathroom manned with surveillance cameras – a precautionary measure to detect explosives or weapons on his body. The loophole, some suggest, could be that social mores meant the camera only filmed from above shoulder height. Others say it was a sign of a larger systemic problem.
“They had no file on the guy [the Taliban emissary] and his background, yet they convinced the highest intelligence official that he was so important only he should talk to him,” says a former security official. The emissary should have been kept under surveillance “in an exhaustive environment” so that his secret intentions would have become clear before he could take any lives.
Khalid was accompanied in the room by a close confidant of his. Conflicting narratives suggest that both men – Khalid and his confidant – had left the room at least once during the meeting. The confidant, who received less-threatening injuries, had walked out to answer a call, while Khalid had followed an aide who was returning lunch dishes to the kitchen. The assassin was most likely not sure which one of the two individuals in the room was the intelligence chief, sources say. They had only spoken on the phone before. Khalid and his confidant both have similar builds and speak a similar accent of Pashto, several sources who have met both men say. When the confidant returned from his phone call and announced that he had to leave, Khalid got up to convince him he should stay a few minutes and they can leave together. The assassin got nervous that he might miss his target and detonated his explosives. Khalid lives, but his aura of invulnerability went up in smoke.
News Analysis: Taliban attack on Afghan spy chief could derail ongoing peace efforts by Pakistan
Xinhua By Muhammad Tahir Dec. 11, 2012
ISLAMABAD - The attack last month by Taliban militants against Afghanistan's intelligence chief could derail Pakistani efforts in helping the peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban after Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly said that the attacker came from Pakistan.
The Afghan president made this charge a day after the failed attempt to assassinate Asadullah Khalid, head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) and a close confidant of President Karzai.
Khalid, who was attacked Thursday in one of the highly- protected guest houses of the spy agency in Kabul, was only injured, according to the Afghan media.
The Taliban had immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it was done to avenge the recent execution of several Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the attacker had posed as a peace messenger.
President Karzai rejected the notion that the attack was conducted by the Taliban alone, saying that it was impossible for the Taliban to carry out what he described as a "complicated attack."
Karzai said that the attack was planned in Pakistan and must be investigated as to who were behind it.
He also claimed that the attack against Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan peace envoy, had also been planned in Quetta, Pakistan.
Pakistan, which had quickly condemned the attack on Khalid, showed angry reaction to Karzai's remarks and asked the Afghan government to share evidence instead of leveling allegations in the media.
"Before leveling charges, the Afghan government would do well if they share information or evidence with the government of Pakistan that they might have with regard to the cowardly attack on the head of NDS. They would also do well by ordering an investigation into any lapses in the security arrangements around the NDS chief," a statement from the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said.
Days after President Karzai's remarks, Afghan senators went further by directly charging Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for its involvement in the high profile attack.
Kabul's charges and Islamabad's angry reaction once again raised doubts on the efficacy of Islamabad's role in the reconciliation talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
Last month, as part of its confidence-building efforts, Pakistan released 13 Afghan Taliban detainees in Pakistani prisons. Kabul had welcomed Taliban release and described it as a 'first practical' step by Pakistan to push the much-anticipated peace move.
Pakistan had also agreed to free more Afghan Taliban to give a boost to the peace process in the war-ravaged Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of all foreign troops to avoid more bloodshed.
The United States and Afghanistan widely believe that Pakistan' s role is key to the political solution in Afghanistan as it still has deep influence on the Afghan Taliban. It was Pakistan that had facilitated Taliban leaders going to Qatar to hold talks with the United States.
Islamabad had also agreed with the U.S. and Afghanistan in April on a 'safe passage' mechanism for those Taliban who want to talk to the Afghan government.
Pakistani officials said they have taken several steps to push the Afghan peace process and was ready to take more in the coming days. However it is thought that the blame game from Afghan leaders can hamper Islamabad's efforts as the country is highly sensitive when it is publicly charged for actions in which it has no role.
Pakistan has always argued that Afghan officials should take up their complaints in bilateral forums to find out solutions to complex matters.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are passing through a difficult time as both Muslims nations are faced with the continuing threat from armed factions in their border areas and who have already killed hundreds of security forces and civilians.
Their bilateral cooperation is a must for a political solution to the Afghan conflict to avoid possibility of another civil war in the post-2014 Afghanistan that could also destabilize Pakistan.
Analysts here said that Pakistan and Afghanistan will both suffer if they fail to resolve their differences and work in tandem in the search for lasting peace in the region.
U.S. finds Afghan anti-corruption efforts ‘deeply troubling’
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Dec 11, 2012
Two small machines sit on a shelf in a closet at Kabul International Airport, surrounded by cardboard boxes and idle desk fans.
The machines are bulk currency counters, provided by the United States to help Afghanistan stop cash smuggling estimated last year at $4.5 billion. When U.S. investigators visited in September, they found the counters in working order but they “did not observe any use of the machines.”
Not far away, the investigators found that an airport lounge that allowed departing VIPs to bypass security and customs screenings had been expanded. The new area was designation for those the Afghan government deemed “very, very important persons.”
The saga of the cash counters, described in a report released Tuesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, is emblematic of the difficulties looming over international plans to provide Afghanistan with long-term economic support following the departure of U.S. combat troops two years from now.
U.S. and other donors pledged $4 billion a year after 2014 at an international conference in Tokyo this year. But the money is contingent on Afghanistan meeting a series of good-government and anti-corruption benchmarks.
Threats to curtail aid have been made and abandoned many times in the past in the face of impervious corruption in Afghanistan. But the Tokyo agreement noted that “business as usual” could not continue, and both sides agreed on the need to “move from promise to practice.”
In October, Afghan President Hamid Karzai fulfilled one of the Tokyo commitments by promising to hold the country’s next presidential election on time, setting the vote for April 5, 2014. Postponement of the last election, which gave Karzai a second term in 2009, contributed to widespread charges of electoral fraud.
But Afghanistan has yet to pass an electoral law that would allow foreigners to oversee the upcoming vote, and elections experts say that they confront substantial organizational work.
The more immediate challenges are corruption and good-government practices. Specific Tokyo benchmarks remain unaddressed, including putting those responsible for the failure of Kabul Bank on trial and implementing money laundering measures.
Smuggling bulk cash is one of the principal forms of laundering money “to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the SIGAR report said. It is also one of the primary ways that senior Afghan government officials are suspected of transferring ill-gotten gains to safety outside the country.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul tried to address the problem in 2010 by placing bulk currency counters at the international airport to get a sense of how much cash was leaving the country. The Afghan government pledged to adopt regulations within a year to govern bulk transfers of cash.
The cash counters also are designed to capture currency serial numbers and create databases to be transmitted via the Internet to a records center in Kabul, where the information could be used by law enforcement authorities.
A contract was awarded in 2010 to install the currency counters in the airport customs area, but the machines were not installed until nearly a year later, the SIGAR report said, “in part because U.S. and Afghan officials disagreed on where to put them.”
In April, U.S. investigators found that the machines were being used to count cash, but they discovered that the serial numbers on the bills were not being recorded and that VIP passengers, who presumably had cash to carry, were allowed to bypass all screenings and use a separate entrance to the airport’s secured area.
Despite this lack of cooperation, the government “continued to make public commitments to combat corruption and institute stronger border controls,” including at the Tokyo conference in July, the report noted.
When investigators returned Sept. 20, they found the currency machines had been moved to “a small, closet-like area.” The machines were plugged in and apparently in working order, but they were not connected to the Internet and were not being used.
In addition, VIPs continued to be exempt from screening, although “many of the individuals who traffic money leave from the VIP area,” according to a Department of Homeland Security official who accompanied the SIGAR investigators.
“A new Very Very Important Persons (VVIP) lounge was built to provide easier boarding access for high-ranking officials, again allowing transit without main customs screenings or use of a bulk currency counter,” the report said.
In its conclusion, the SIGAR report called the situation “deeply troubling.”
Vast sums of aid continue to be stolen in Afghanistan
Despite years of supposed effort to stop money laundering out of Kabul airport, billions continue to flow from the country unchecked.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff writer December 11, 2012
In the summer of 2010, the US decided to do something about the enormous sucking sound being generated by the bulk cash shipments funneling through Afghanistan's Kabul airport and on to Dubai, Zurich, and London – every point of the compass, really.
With Afghanistan's two principal cash crops being opium and slicing chunks off the top of international aid, there were no prizes for guessing where the tens of billions of dollars transferred from Afghanistan since the US-led war began in 2002 came from, or how the luxury villas of so many Afghan officials in the United Arab Emirates had been paid for.
So, the US embassy in Kabul created a "bulk cash flow action plan" and the Karzai government said it was on board. The results since? Well, around $4.5 billion flowed out of Afghanistan in 2011, according to the Congressional Research Service, the vast majority of it unmonitored and unregistered. That's about 22 percent of gross domestic product, an astonishing amount of capital flight.
How is the plan doing this year? About the same as last year, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a US government auditor, released today.
The failure so far is a reminder that nice-seeming US plans in Afghanistan rarely achieve their desired results, and that the Afghan government's will to rein in corruption has consistently ended with empty promises made across conference tables for a decade now.
What happened?
The US government bought high-tech currency counting machines, that could process 900 bills a minute and record both their value and their serial numbers. The machines were supposed to be electronically connected to the Afghan central bank, so that officials there could monitor who was taking money out of the country, how often, and investigate accordingly.
There was only one problem: Afghan officials decided not to fully install the machines. In 2011, US government auditors found that Afghans running the machines at Kabul airport were not recording serial numbers or transmitting information to the central bank. Without those steps, the machines were essentially useless. What's more, any person granted "VIP" status by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai could carry as much cash as they liked through the airport without having it counted.
That was more than a year ago, so between September and November, SIGAR auditors revisited Kabul airport to see how Afghanistan had done in delivering on promises to address the problem. As with the first set of promises, nothing was actually done.
"We found that, more than 1 year since our last visit to [Kabul airport], the cash counters are still not being used for their intended purpose, and VIPs continue to bypass key controls," SIGAR writes in the report, Anti-Corruption Measures: Persistent Problems Exist in Monitoring Bulk Cash Flows at Kabul International Airport. "A new Very Very Important Persons (VVIP) lounge was built to provide easier boarding access for high-ranking officials, again allowing transit without main customs screenings or use of a bulk currency counter."
Why aren't efforts being made to deal with money laundering? According to a US Department of Homeland Security official interviewed by SIGAR, Afghan customs officials at Kabul airport are "afraid that they would experience negative repercussions from [the Afghan government] if progress in instituting controls at the airport was made. As of October 2012, according to DHS officials, efforts to connect the bulk currency counters to the internet or a computer server were 'at a standstill.'"
That was the environment in which President Barack Obama conducted his expensive surge at the urging of Gen. David Petraeus, the since-disgraced former commander of the Afghan war and former CIA boss. This is not a case where a huge amount of resources, or technical skills that don't exist in the Afghan population, are required. It's entirely a matter of whether Afghanistan's political class and business elites are willing to have their activities subjected to scrutiny and accountability.
"Although proper controls to monitor cash flows are important for any country to institute, they are particularly critical for a country fraught with corruption, narcotics trafficking, and insurgent activity," SIGAR writes. "In 2010, Ambassador Eikenberry presciently noted that 'many of these measures [in the bulk cash flow action plan] require few, if any, additional resources; their success depends largely on the degree of [Afghan government] political will.'”
The answer so far has been "you can't make us," and that's something US policymakers, and voters, should keep in mind, particularly when considering how much more money to bequeath to the Afghan military. Another US government report out today on Afghanistan says that after 10 years of training and equipping the Afghan National Army, at a cost of well over $20 billion, only one of 23 combat brigades is capable of operating without US financial and professional assistance.
Afghans in Marjah prefer Taliban rule
Associated Press Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Marjah, Afghanistan -- Nearly three years after U.S.-led forces opened the biggest operation of the war to clear insurgents, foster economic growth and set a model for the rest of Afghanistan, angry residents of Helmand province say they are too afraid to go out after dark because of marauding bands of thieves.
And during the day, they say corrupt police and government officials bully them into paying bribes. After 11 years of war, many in the province long for a return of the Taliban. They say that under the Taliban, who routinely punished thieves by cutting off a hand, they were at least safe from crime and corruption.
It was in the town of Marjah in early 2010 that 15,000 NATO and Afghan forces waged the war's biggest battle. They not only fought the Taliban with weapons, they promised to bring good governance to Marjah and the rest of the southern province of Helmand - and demonstrate to the residents the advantages of shunning the militants.
But it appears the flaw in the plan was with the quality of Afghans chosen by President Hamid Karzai to govern and police the area after most of the fighting ended. And that adds to growing doubts about the entire country's future after foreign troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
Despite military claims of gains across the province and an overall drop in violence, Marjah residents said NATO's counterinsurgency experiment has failed. A bleak picture also emerges from anecdotal evidence collected from dozens of interviews with residents elsewhere in the province, some from the most violent districts.
Many contend the U.S.-funded local police, a type of locally sanctioned militia, routinely demand bribes and threaten to accuse those who do not comply of being members of the Taliban. Good governance never came to Marjah, they say.
The larger question, of course, is whether what's happening in Helmand is a harbinger of what the rest of Afghanistan will look like after the departure of the international troops.
Over 200 Children Held in Bagram Prison: HRW
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Over 200 juvenile Afghans are being detained at the Bagram detention center north of Kabul, the international Human Rights Watch said Tuesday, an issue that it has brought to the attention of the United Nations.
"The US has admitted that there are over 200 Afghan children imprisoned in Bagram and these are children have been arrested by US forces," researcher for the Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan, Heather Barr, told TOLOnews in an interview.
"Human Rights Watch has complained about this specific issue to the United Nations," Barr added.
In addition to concerns about the detainment of children inside the military prison, Barr said the children's treatment went against international regulations.
"We visited Bagram in March last year and we were very concerned about this issue because not only the children are there but they're being kept in the same cells together with adults which is not acceptable under international standards," she said.
"And they don't have as much access as they should have to specialised services for child educational services and other programs that should be provided to them."
The United Nations Human Rights Director Georgette Gagnon said that the issue would be followed up.
"We have the report and obviously we will be looking at it and addressing any issues that we are asked to look at," Gagnon said.
The US and Afghan officials are yet to respond to requests for comment about the detention of juveniles in Bagram.
In Afghanistan, a girl's killing stands out – for police response
Police have arrested suspects in the recent beheading of a girl, but a new report released today by the UN finds that violent acts against women remain under reported and often ignored.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Peterson, Staff writer December 11, 2012
Kunduz, Afghanistan - The poor Afghan family never took a photograph of their 14-year-old daughter, Geysina, before her life was cut short.
All the mementos of their devoted daughter fit in a single sack, carried from their village in northern Afghanistan – the totems of the latest grisly episode in a surge of killings of young women and girls in Kunduz Province. There's a pair of worn sandals repaired with loops of thick thread, which bring tears to the eyes of Geysina's father when he holds them. And there is a ring made of cheap metal – no more than costume jewelry for children – inset with a small oval of lime-green plastic.
Geysina was wearing the ring the morning in late November when she was beheaded 150 yards from home while fetching water.
"She was too young for gold," explains Geysina's father Mohamad Rahim, whose threadbare sleeves and calloused hands attest to a life spent farming. He tips his head and grey silk turban at the memories of Geysina, one of nine children whose walk, smile, and laugh set her apart. "We were all lying on the ground, crying and screaming – there is nothing like this [killing of innocents] in Islam."
Her family and local police blame a neighbor, a butcher living next door, who they say threatened Geysina's life repeatedly for not accepting several proposals for marriage to the butcher's brother – the latest rejection made just the night before the killing.
Geysina lived and died in a hard country for women, a point highlighted again by a United Nations report released today. Despite a landmark 2009 law called the "Elimination of Violence Against Women," crimes against women remain under reported and largely not investigated.
The reasons, the report states, include “cultural restraints, social norms and taboos, customary practices and religious beliefs, discrimination against women that leads to wider acceptance of violence against them and, at times threat to life.”
In 16 provinces, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) noted the discrepancy between the "very low" figure of 470 officially reported incidents of violence in the past year and the 4,010 recorded by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
UNAMA's human rights director, Georgette Gagnon, called on Afghan authorities to "take further steps to ensure that police and prosecutors register and investigate all reports of violence against women." Arrests in Geysina's case
In Geysina's case, the police have taken some action.
Police say the butcher, Mohamad Sadiq, and a relative and suspected accomplice, are now behind bars. They deny the murder, but were caught fleeing the scene, says Kunduz police spokesman Said Sarwar Husaini. Evidence includes bloody clothes in their possession, and the motive was well-known locally to all, due to a string of threats.
"I am sure the court will punish them," says Mr. Husaini, noting likely sentences of 20 years or life in prison. Such sentences are an increasingly common result, according to the UNAMA report. Of the 470 referred to a judicial process, some 163 saw indictments filed and 100 of those ended in convictions using the 2009 law.
"Women are always the victims, so we pursue these cases very seriously," says Husaini. "Women have a weak status in society, so we are very careful about women's cases and investigate deeply because they can't protect themselves." Violence spikes in Kunduz
But violence against women is not showing signs of abating in Afghanistan. The acting head of women’s affairs in Laghman Province in northeast Afghanistan, Najia Sediqi, was assassinated yesterday. Her predecessor was killed last July for defending a girl who married for love, instead of an arranged marriage to an older man.
And in Kunduz, Geysina was only one among a dozen young women and girls recorded killed in the last nine months alone, compared to just one in the previous year. Police statistics show that those murders account for more than one-quarter of the 42 killings registered across the province in that period.
Residents and police in Kunduz list a host of reasons: lack of education, poverty, increased militia activity, traditional practices of forced and early marriage – and growing resistance to those practices – and even democracy, along with mental health problems stemming from decades of conflict.
"There are many reasons behind it," says Nadira Geyah, the head of the Kunduz office of the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs. An Afghan flag sits on her desk, beside a group of cloth flowers in well-appointed offices. The UNAMA report noted the “crucial role” of such provincial women's affairs offices.
Most women are killed at the hands of illegal militias, which have taken root in Kunduz the last two years, says Ms. Geyah. But a tradition of forced marriages also "create problems in the family and are used as reasons to kill." 'A generation of war'
On top of that, decades of war – of Soviet occupation in the 1980s, civil war in the 1990s, and finally since 2001 American and NATO intervention – has left its mark.
"This is a generation of war, so people have mental problems and are very quick to anger and to act," says Geyah.
Yet another reason is the process of spreading the news of women's rights across the country, as the Ministry of Women's Affairs does. In Kunduz, Geyah's office uses sympathetic religious scholars to spread the message, with the help of the media. Key topics are women's rights according to Islam, under international human rights law, and Afghan prohibitions on violence against women.
"When a woman in a rural area hears that, she stands up to her family, and instead of going to a magistrate [with a problem], they may prefer to kill [the woman]," says Geyah.
Not all scholars are on board, and their preaching has also led to the killing of women. "It's a big challenge and we need more time. We should struggle against that," she adds.
Even more fundamentally, education is key. Families often prefer that their children work instead of go to school, "so what kind of behavior can we expect of them?" asks Geyah.
Geysina is a case in point: None of the nine children in the family went to school. “She was like a house girl, busy at home, cooking with her mother or bringing us lunch in the fields,” says the murdered girl’s father, Mr. Rahim. “She was not a school girl.” Reasons for optimism
Despite the surge in killings, Geyah is optimistic about changes in coming years.
"In the past, there were a small number of girls in school, and that number is increasing," says Geyah. "And before, there were no women in Kunduz government offices; now we have many examples."
And on the ground in Kunduz, the police say they are making progress. They have stepped up arrests in the past two years, as their own capacity and numbers have grown. In the last half-year Kunduz police have investigated 500 cases, 56 of them related to murders, says Husaini. On his desk is a calendar with a photograph of a crop of uniformed women police recruits.
The death toll will drop, says Husaini, as police numbers grow, and if magistrates rule consistently: "If they give appropriate punishment, it will make a difference."
Yet those future changes, if they come, were too late for Geysina and her mourning family.
"When you would fight with her, she would come back and make peace – she was very kind," says her brother, Mohamad Noor. "These days we were getting ready for a wedding party."
"She even asked for new clothes!" says father Rahim, laughing, adding that he vetoed as inappropriate her request for a short-sleeved outfit.
The shock of her loss to this family is something Geysina's killers will never understand, he says. "Those who did this don't know anything about humanity or Islam."
* Follow Scott Peterson on Twitter @peterson__scott
Jonathan Kay: As Afghanistan and Pakistan destroy themselves, will an ethnic Pashtunistan take root?
National Post By Jonathan Kay Dec 11, 2012
In the Western mind, Afghanistan’s mountainous Nuristan region is known primarily as the setting of Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 novella The Man Who Would Be King — an entertaining story of two plucky white adventurers who aspire to become local chieftains. The real Nuristan of 2012, on the other hand, is a violent, fantastically inaccessible backwater full of gangsters and smugglers.
In 2006, as part of the American military’s campaign to establish a greater military presence in more far-flung parts of Afghanistan, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division established Combat Outpost Keating near the Nuristani town of Kamdesh. From the beginning, commanders expressed bafflement at the location. COP Keating sat at the base of a mountain — and was bounded on two sides by rivers, and on the other by a town teeming with hostiles. The only usable road serving the area was a cliff-side path that was just six feet across at points. As Jake Tapper describes in his new book about the base, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, soldiers stationed at COP Keating couldn’t even patrol effectively: The only thing they could do was sit around and wait to be attacked.
In short, the camp was what one lieutenant-colonel referred to as a “self-licking ice cream cone”: It had no purpose other than to defend itself from attack.
At 6am on October 3, 2009, that attack came. Three hundred Taliban fighters came at COP Keating’s five dozen defenders with a ferocious assault, now remembered as the Battle of Kamdesh. Only thanks to the Americans’ superior discipline, training and weaponry were they able to prevent the base from being completely overrun. Eight Americans died during the battle. The disaster spawned an investigation, which found that the location of the camp had no strategic or tactical purpose. The Americans abandoned the base, and then sent bombers in to blow up all the equipment they’d left behind.
More than a decade after the original American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Outpost Keating stands as a symbol for the entire war.
More than a decade after the original American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Outpost Keating stands as a symbol for the entire war
It would be an exaggeration to say that the conflict itself had no strategic purpose or effect. The Americans kicked the Taliban out of Kabul and other cities, and sent their al-Qaeda guests fleeting to Pakistan, Yemen and points beyond. Eventually, they killed Osama Bin Laden himself, as well as the vast majority of his lieutenants on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. (In case you missed it, this week brought another drone-strike kill: senior al-Qaeda commander Mohammad Ahmed al-Mansoor. These surgical victories have become so common that they no longer even make the front pages.) But it also has become clear that, overall, Afghanistan is a Nuristan among nations — an isolated, rock-hard gallstone of violence and backwardness lodged in Asia’s stomach.
Parts of Afghanistan clearly are salvageable, including Kabul itself, Herat in the West, the former redoubts of the Northern Alliance in the Uzbek and Tajik north, and some parts of the fertile south. (At a foreign-policy conference in Washington last week, I heard a proud father tell of his military son’s recent deployment to Helmand province, a once-violent place where fighting apparently is now so rare that some American soldiers deployed in the region actually half-wish for a skirmish or two, just to keep their skills sharp.)
But other areas likely won’t become civilized places in my lifetime. That includes Nuristan — whose fierce animist tribes didn’t even bend the knee to Islam until the late 1890s, and who were among the first to take up arms against the Soviets. If these people can’t be broken by the far more brutal methods of 19th-century Muslim hordes and the Red Army, what chance do our own “nation-builders” have?
Pakistan is facing many internal threats, and its military is having trouble keeping the country stitched together as it is
This week, the McClatchy news agency reportedly obtained documents that suggest the corrupt Karzai administration — which the West has been propping up for a decade now — is prepared to cede swathes of the southern and eastern parts of the country to the Taliban as part of a comprehensive peace plan. Five years ago, this would have sown outrage in Western capitals. These days, it barely makes the news: To the extent any functional governance of this part of Afghanistan is possible, a band of hyper-violent Islamist misogynists may be the only ones capable of (or even much interested in) the task. And with drones having become America’s long-range weapon of choice, perhaps the shape of the U.S. footprint matters less than it once did: If al-Qaeda training camps take root in Taliban-run parts of Afghanistan, they can be destroyed by joystick.
This blueprint for Afghanistan involves not one country, but two: a Taliban-administered patchwork of provinces bordering Pakistan, and a Western-friendly (or at least Western aid-dependent) rump. But that scenario itself raises an interesting possibility for an even more seismic transformation: With Taliban-led, ethnic Pashtun Islamist enclaves on both sides of the invisible Afghanistan-Pakistan border, each essentially independent of Kabul and Islamabad, what is there to stop the de facto creation of the long-dreamed-of Pashtunistan, stretching from the Amu to Indus rivers?
Ethnic Pashtuns have their own language, Pashto, and code of behaviour, Pashtunwali. Moreover, the national border that divides Afghan Pashtuns from Pakistani Pashtuns, the Durand Line, is an essentially arbitrary creation of a 19th-century British foreign secretary. Afghan revanchists have been claiming parts of northern Pakistan for generations. For many tribesmen in the area, the Durand Line has as much real-life significance as those American highway sculptures you pass in northern U.S. states, noting the 45th parallel.
Fighting is the one and only thing that the Taliban does well, on both sides of the border
A few days ago, I discussed all this with an Indian diplomat who specializes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. His view was that Pakistan would never recognize an autonomous status for Pashtuns — because doing so would not only serve to effectively give up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (where Pakistani sovereignty is only nominal), but also parts of Balochistan. The Pakistani military will not accede to the break-up of their country without a fight.
On the other hand, Pakistan is facing many internal threats, and its military is having trouble keeping the country stitched together as it is. Moreover, fighting is the one and only thing that the Taliban does well, on both sides of the border. If they do manage to carve out an independent Pashtunistan, they may well produce the most stable political arrangement the area has witnessed since the days of Kipling.
No doubt it would be a violent and unpleasant place, but it’s hard to imagine anything being worse than the status quo.
Karzai Heads to Turkey for Trilateral Summit
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 11 December 2012
President Hamid Karzai left Kabul for Turkey on Tuesday morning to attend a trilateral meeting between Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Afghan and Pakistan delegations, led respectively by the countries' presidents Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari, will arrive in Turkey's capital of Ankara to attend the three-day summit starting Wednesday.
The delegations also include communication and interior ministers, along with high-ranking military officials.
The summit will focus on strengthening economic and commercial cooperation through improving existing ties and developing new links of transportation between the three countries.
The first of the annual summits was held in Ankara in April 2007, focusing mainly on security issues in war-torn Afghanistan.
Karzai said on Saturday that he will be asking Pakistan about the assassination attempt against Afghan spy chief Asadullah Khalid.
He said that a full investigation into the attack is underway, but one thing is already known for sure - the bomber was from Pakistan and the plot was planned in Quetta.
Pakistan's Foreign Office has rejected Karzai's claim and said that instead of blaming Pakistan, Afghanistan should investigate the security failure which gave the bomber a chance to infiltrate the high security zone area.
Khalid survived the Thursday afternoon suicide attack at a National Directorate of Security guesthouse in Kabul, but received substantial injuries to the lower part of his body.
Afghan Forces Require Massive Assistance: Pentagon
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Tuesday, 11 December 2012
A US Department of Defense report released Monday states that only one of the Afghan National Army's 23 brigades is able to operate independently without support of the US or Nato troops.
The report also stresses that the Taliban are still a major threat to Afghanistan while widespread corruption continues in the central government and Pakistan continues to provide critical support to insurgents.
The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) responded Tuesday saying that it will work together with Pakistan to solve the issue of extremism in the region.
"Because peace and security in Afghanistan and Pakistan has a regional dimension, the Afghan and Pakistani governments are trying to have negotiations with other countries to eradicate extremism from the region," MoFA spokesman Janan Mosazai said in Kabul.
Afghan Ministry of Interior acknowledged that insurgent safe havens in Pakistan have been a threat to the security and stability of the country for the past eleven years and are expected to remain a fundamental threat in the future.
"The insurgents, Al Qaeda, Haqqani and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan have been a major to Afghanistan in the past eleven years. They should be eliminated," MOI spokesman Sediq Seddiqi told TOLOnews on Tuesday.
With most of the 68,000 US troops expected to remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2013, American officials have said that the progress of war depends on whether the Taliban could rebuild since their reported depletion during the US "surge" of 33,000 soldiers in the past two years in the south.
Corruption, weak governance, limited human capacity, lack of access to rural areas, insecurity, lack coordination between central and provincial governments and uneven distribution of power in the government braches are considered to be other major challenges ahead of the country, as stated by the report.
Attack on Afghan Official Shows Up Security Flaws
Analysts say it is no longer good enough to blame outside enemies.
IWPR By Hafizullah Gardesh 11 Dec 12
Afghanistan - A bomb attack that seriously injured the head of Afghanistan’s security service has raised concerns about the government’s ability to safeguard its members as they go about their business in the capital Kabul.
While top officials immediately pointed the finger at Pakistan’s intelligence service, analysts said that explanation was too easy a let-out, and ignored worrying failings in the security network.
Asadullah Khaled, head of the National Directorate for Security, NDS, went to a Kabul guesthouse on December 6 to meet a man who presented himself as a Taleban emissary arriving to take the nascent peace process forward. When Khaled embraced him, the attacker set off a concealed bomb. The NDS chief survived but suffered severe injuries.
President Hamed Karzai later gave a press conference at which he claimed the attack was planned and orchestrated in Pakistan.
"Skill and complexity were involved in planting the bomb. Skilled hands were involved in it. This was not the work of the Taleban," he said. "We want clarification from the Pakistani government. We know that this individual travelled from Pakistan.”
Karzai made it clear that despite the serious allegations, relations with Islamabad would not be broken off.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry hit back with a statement saying it would certainly cooperate with any investigation, but that before levelling accusations of this kind, the Afghan government should have shared its evidence with Islamabad.
Karzai’s spokesman Siamak Herawi responded, "Whatever Pakistan says is not a response to our claim There is evidence that the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] was involved in this attack."
The method of attack, where a suicide bomber pretends to be a Taleban negotiator in order to get close to a top official, is virtually a copy of the September 2011 assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. (See Rabbani Killing Casts Doubt on Afghan Peace Efforts.)
At that time, too, suggestions of Pakistani involvement affected the two countries’ already difficult relationship.
After the attempt on Khaled’s life, Karzai commented that whenever progress is made towards a peace deal with insurgents, there is an attack on senior Afghan figures.
The incident has further dented Afghans’ confidence in their national security forces.
"This attack has run alarm bells for people, particularly high-ranking officials, investors and national-level figures,” political and defence expert Atiqullah Amarkhel said. “The question that arises for everyone is that if the NDS chief – the government's ears and eyes – comes under attack from our enemies, what can the rest of us expect?"
Meeting on December 4, the upper house of Afghanistan’s parliament accused the government of negligence when it came to spotting suicide bombers, and warned that such attacks were likely to increase if screening methods were not improved.
While alleging that such attacks were orchestrated from Pakistan, senators said there must also be people inside Afghanistan helping the bombers get access to their targets.
Another political analyst, Wahid Mozhda, agreed that the bomber must have received assistance from the inside.
"I know Khaled very well. He’s a very cautious person. If he agreed to meet [this individual], it’s very probably because a powerful government official ordered him to," he said.
Mozhda said it was inadequate to blame external forces alone.
"If a guest comes to your house several times, and one night he takes away all your belongings, should you accuse your neighbour of assisting the thief? When this man came from Pakistan on several occasions and met Afghan officials, did the government inform Pakistan about it?" he asked.
The attack raises broader questions about the capacity and cohesion of all three security-sector institutions – the army, the police and the NDS intelligence service – especially since they will assume complete responsibility for defending the country once international forces leave in 2014.
"People have a right to be worried,” Amarkhel said. “The three security agencies face problems like training, a dearth of modern military equipment, lack of sound leadership, and discrimination on linguistic and regional grounds. Overall, one might say these three forces are not national, so people cannot trust them."
Even Interior Minister Mojtaba Patang – who is responsible for the Afghan National Police – has warned that the force is “political and factional” rather than truly national. In remarks before a committee of parliament’s upper house, he said the police were currently unable to fulfill their responsibilities, but said he was developing plans to address the problems.
A serving police officer accused some of Patang’s predecessors of failing to build a united force. He recalled how he took 20 of his relatives – all police officers – when he was transferred to the eastern Nuristan province.
"I slept in a container at night. The policemen who were my relatives were my security. I couldn’t sleep at my headquarters, because none of the police were to be trusted. They were mixed up in various groups including smuggling mafia," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Herawi said attacks like the one targeting Khaled were not a direct reflection of the security forces’ capacity.
"Terrorist attacks take place in many countries. When someone wants to commit suicide, he can hit his target anywhere in the world," he said. “The foreign troop presence is the main factor for poor security. When they leave this country, security will be ensured. It’s already better in those areas where responsibility has been handed over to Afghan forces."
That might not console Kabul property dealer Momen Khan, who sees a direct correlation between security and the housing market.
"Prices go down a few percentage points after every suicide attack. Land and house prices have fallen 30 per cent since last year,” he said. “I have a long list of houses and land for sale, but there are no buyers. People are either saving their money or transferring it abroad, because the security situation is deteriorating on a daily basis."
Khan asked, “When the NDS chief can’t ensure his own security, how is he going to ensure ours?"
Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR editor for Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com