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One insurgent killed, 6 captured in eastern Afghan operations: ISAF
KABUL, Dec.14 (Xinhua) -- One insurgent has been killed and six insurgents detained in different operations in eastern Afghan provinces, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) said Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces killed one insurgent, detained six, and cleared one improvised explosive device (IED) during operations in eastern Afghanistan throughout the past 24 hours," the ISAF's Regional Command-East (RC-East) said in a statement.
The Afghan National Army soldiers killed one insurgent during an engagement in Bar Kunar (Asmar) District in eastern Kunar province 185 km east of Kabul, the statement said.
The captured militants were detained by the Afghan and coalition forces following an engagement in Bati Kot District, Nangarhar province,120 km east of Kabul, it said, adding that the detained suspects were transferred to a base for questioning.
The IED was found and defused by the joint forces in Bati Kot District.
"Operations in RC-East are ongoing," the coalition said.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan forces and some 100,000 NATO-led coalition troops have intensified cleanup operations against Taliban and other militants recently but the insurgents in retaliation responded by carrying out suicide attacks and roadside bombings.
One U.S. soldier and two Afghan civilians were killed and 21 others, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded when Taliban carried out a suicide car bombing in Kandahar province 450 km south of Kabul on Thursday evening.
Bomber Strikes Coalition Convoy in Afghanistan
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and THOM SHANKER December 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A car bomber struck a coalition convoy outside a sprawling base in southern Afghanistan on Thursday hours after a visit by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta. There were no indications that the suicide attack near the gates of Kandahar Air Field was connected to the visit from Mr. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Wednesday. His day trip to Kandahar on Thursday was not publicized in advance and garnered little news media attention. Mr. Panetta never left the well-fortified base.
At a late evening news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said the attack had killed one American service member and wounded three others. Javed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar Province, said the attack also killed three Afghan civilians and wounded 18 others. It took place shortly before 5 p.m. near an entrance to the base on a road that has been the site of previous bombings. Mr. Panetta said the suicide bomber rammed into a heavily armored vehicle, called an MRAP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from the Taliban. Also on Thursday, Afghan officials said the powerful chief of the country’s spy service was airlifted to the United States to be treated for wounds he sustained in an attempted assassination last week.
The militants have claimed responsibility for the attack on the official, Asadullah Khalid, at a Kabul guesthouse by a Taliban suicide bomber with explosives packed into his groin. Mr. Khalid survived but his abdominal wounds were grievous. Treating them was beyond the scope of the doctors and facilities available at Bagram Air Base, a sprawling coalition base north of Kabul where the spy chief was taken within hours of the attempted assassination, Afghan and coalition officials said.
Shafiqullah Tahiri, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the spy agency’s official name, said that Mr. Khalid left Afghanistan on Wednesday. “His doctors in Bagram suggested that he needed to be treated in a proper hospital where all necessary facilities and resources are available,” Mr. Tahiri said.
Mr. Khalid was flown out aboard a military transport configured to carry severely wounded soldiers. He was taken to an American military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, and would be moved to United States in the coming days, the coalition said.
Neither the N.D.S. nor the coalition provided specifics of Mr. Khalid’s condition, apart from saying that the wounds he sustained were primarily in the abdomen and will require multiple surgeries to treat.
President Hamid Karzai has since suggested that the insurgents were aided by Pakistan’s intelligence service in their attempt to kill Mr. Khalid, an ethnic Pashtun who was one of the militants’ most implacable and, in the view of many coalition officials, effective foes. The Taliban draws almost all its support from Pashtuns, the ethnic group to which Mr. Karzai also belongs.
In Mr. Khalid’s absence, the N.D.S. is being run by one of his deputies, Gen. Hisaamuddin Khan, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul who fought Taliban rule in the 1990s. The N.D.S. said Mr. Khan would run the agency until Mr. Khalid had recovered and could return to work.
Apart from signaling the severity of Mr. Khalid’s wounds, the move to the United States also reflected Afghanistan’s continued dependence on the West for high-end medical care, which is virtually nonexistent here. Even Mr. Karzai, who has increasingly tried to distance his administration and country from the United States and its allies, said after Mr. Khalid was wounded that he would send the spy chief abroad for medical treatment, if necessary.
Many other Afghans — from senior officials to children wounded as a result of the fight against the Taliban — have been or are currently being treated at civilian and military hospitals in the United States and Europe.
The American record of treating Afghans wounded in combat goes back to the 1980s, when more than two dozen Afghans wounded fighting the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country were brought to the United States for medical care.
During his news conference with the Afghan president, Mr. Panetta also announced that President Obama had invited Mr. Karzai, to visit Washington the week of Jan. 7 to discuss a “shared vision of Afghanistan beyond 2014,” when the NATO mission expires.
The goal is an enduring American military presence expected to focus on training and support to Afghan security forces, and probably include a small American counterterrorism contingent with an eye on Al Qaeda and senior insurgent leaders. The American proposal is expected to total no more than 10,000 troops — or even less — despite the desire of some military officers for a larger force.
As part of any deal, the United States is demanding that its service personnel be subject to American military law, and not Afghan law, something that has rankled the Afghans. The Afghan government is seeking a number of comprises from the United States to assure its sovereignty, including power over detention facilities and detainees, as well as commitment for significant financial support to Afghan security forces.
Both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Panetta repeated expressions of confidence a deal can be reached.
“We are committed to respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” Mr. Panetta said. “We believe that we can achieve the kind of agreement that would be acceptable to both countries.”
Mr. Karzai concurred, saying any agreement that respects “Afghan sovereignty and Afghan laws” is one that he can present to his public “with ease.”
Afghan politicians seek steps now for fair election
USA TODAY By Carmen Gentile Special for USA TODAY December 14. 2012
KABUL - Afghan political aspirants say the election to replace President Hamid Karzai will only result in unrest if something is not done now to ensure its results are untainted by fraud.
Former presidential candidate and long-time Karzai rival, Abdullah Abdullah said in an interview with USA TODAY that he has yet to decide if he will run in the election, not scheduled to take place until the spring of 2014.
But he says already he sees problems. Among them is the extreme difficulty he would have trying to campaign in the mountainous north where most ethnic Tajiks who make up his base reside.
"How can one even campaign in those parts of the country in the winter?" he asks, explaining that many mountain passes and roads will still be blocked by ice and snow in springtime.
Abdullah withdrew from the 2009 second-round election runoff amid widespread accusations of pro-Karzai vote-rigging, fraud and election poll intimidation. The United Nations was among the critics of the vote.
Abdullah says the next president will face enormous challenges to keeping his country stable and democratic, something U.S. and allied troops have fought and died for over the past 10 years.
Among the problems to rectify: top-to-bottom government corruption. The country's next president must reform a notoriously corrupt judiciary and allow provincial governors to be elected rather than appointed by the president as they are now.
Ending financial corruption is also a factor for a stable future, he says.
A review released by the International Monetary Fund said that hundreds of millions of dollars from Kabul Bank were smuggled out of Afghanistan — some packed inside airline food trays loaded onto international flights to be deposited in bank accounts in more than two dozen countries.
Loans were made but rarely repaid, the report said. Borrowers took out loans to pay back loans. Company documents and financial statements were fabricated. The smuggling scheme led to the collapse of the bank, the nation's largest financial institution.
"The biggest challenge is that the absence of the rule of law is now the rule of law in Afghanistan," says Abdullah, who previously served under Karzai and is now a critic of his administration.
Several critics accuse Karzai of ignoring the needs of the majority of Afghans for the benefit of family and business associates. Karzai, who is serving his second five-year term, said Thursday that corruption is due to the way NATO and the United States have set up the contracting process in Afghanistan.
"The contracts are not issued by the Afghan government. The contracts are issued by the international community, mainly by the United States," he said. "Now whether this corruption in Afghanistan is an accident, a byproduct of the situation in the past 10 years or is it perpetrated also on purpose is today my main question."
Dark horse contender Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, says that if Afghanistan holds a "fair, transparent election, then I'll be there."
Yasini ran in 2009, coming in fifth among a field of nearly 40 candidates, and says it will be hard for him or anyone not favored by Karzai to prevail because they will not have access to much in the way of campaign funds.
"I am not a corrupt person so it will be difficult for me to raise as much money as other candidates," Yasini says.
Yasini sees the main issues as persistent security concerns and a lack of a viable, self-sustaining economy outside the illicit opium trade.
"Right now we are living off of other taxpayers," he says referring to the billions of dollars in international aid contributed by international donors, most notably the United States.
Yasini, like Abdullah, expresses concern about the legitimacy of the 2014 election were it to resemble the previous presidential election in 2009. The International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank, agrees.
"It is a near certainty that under current conditions the 2014 elections will be plagued by massive fraud," reads a recent Crisis Group report. "High levels of violence across the country before and on the day of the polls are likely to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands more would-be voters."
The group says the previous elections' chaos and chicanery risk triggering a constitutional crisis and erode trust in the democratic institutions that the USA and others have spent billions of dollars to build.
"In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim," it said, referring to the possibility that Karzai may act to ensure his family maintains some power.
Among the potential candidates are Karzai's elder brother Quayum Karzai, an elected official in Afghanistan and a businessman in the USA. Afghanistan's education minister, Ghulam Farooq Wardak, a Karzai appointee, could earn the president's endorsement as well.
Former Karzai ally Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the country's one-time interior minister, has said he may run as has Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an Ivy League graduate, and former officials at the World Bank and United Nations.
No matter who runs, Abdullah says they must face up to the problem of continued militancy. By the time the election rolls around, all U.S. combat troops will have left the country under current plans of President Obama.
But Abdullah said he believes it won't be insurgents who can take down what they have spent years building.
"The main challenge for security won't come just from the Taliban," he says. "Corruption can turn this country into a failed state."
Grossman Pledges Continued US Support to Afghanistan, Pakistan
VOA News December 13, 2012
U.S. President Barack Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan has pledged Washington's continued support for the region as the three countries work together toward peace in Afghanistan.
Ambassador Marc Grossman spoke with VOA's Urdu service this week ahead of stepping down after nearly two years in his position. He said that over the past year, an Afghan-owned peace process has been the main focus of the countries' repeated meetings.
Grossman said he has always believed Washington's role was to get the talks going and "just stand back" as Islamabad and Kabul work together. He credited Pakistan with becoming more involved in the discussions over the past year.
He also said that compared to the end of 2011, relations between Islamabad and Washington are "getting better." He said both sides realize they must work together on important issues, ranging from counterterrorism, Afghanistan, bilateral investment and ground lines of communication.
During his tenure, Grossman has had to deal with several major challenges to the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, from the NATO helicopter attack that mistakenly killed 26 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border, the covert unilateral U.S. raid into Pakistan to kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Pakistani public anger at the U.S. drone campaign targeting militants in the country's northwest.
Grossman said that the first thing he plans to do after stepping down is sleep and read, two things he said he has not been able to do much during the past two years.
Pakistan, Afghanistan trying to get 'some Taliban leaders off UN terrorist list'
Islamabad, Dec 14 (ANI): Pakistan and Afghanistan are pursuing a new peace initiative that would allow some Taliban members to be removed from a UN list of terrorists, an official has said.
Azizullah Din Mohammad, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told Bloomsburg that the draft plan would allow the Taliban to join the Afghan government or take part in national, parliamentary or provincial elections.
He also added that before doing so, they must sever any ties to Al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and respect the Afghan Constitution, the Dawn reports.
According to the paper, some US officials rejected the suggestion that the plan would reduce America's role in the Afghan peace process.
They said Washington would support any plan that brought peace to Afghanistan and had always encouraged direct talks between Islamabad and Kabul, the report said. (ANI)
Taliban release helps Afghan-Pakistani ties and raises hopes for peace deal
Pakistan frees more Taliban leaders as Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai meets his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger in Kabul and Jonathan Boone in Islamabad Thursday 13 December 2012
Afghan officials say Pakistan has released a new batch of Taliban prisoners, in the latest of a series of concessions to Kabul that could signal greater Pakistani support for a peace deal in Afghanistan.
According to sources in Kabul, Pakistan released nine middle-ranking Taliban commanders, making a total of 18 such prisoners let out of Pakistani jails since last month. Afghan and western officials said most of the Taliban prisoners had been arrested because they had shown interest in making peace, without the permission of the Pakistani military, which has long seen its backing for the insurgents as a strategic bargaining chip.
The prisoner releases come amid a flurry of bilateral meetings and a significant warming in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, which is almost universally seen as critical to hopes of peaceful settlement in the 11-year Afghan conflict.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, met in Ankara on Wednesday. The outcome of the meeting has not been revealed other than an agreement to conduct a joint investigation into an assassination attempt last week against Asadullah Khalid, the head of Afghan intelligence.
A hotline has also been established between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. The Ankara summit followed a meeting of security officials in London on 5 December, and a visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan's high peace council last month.
The head of the council's executive, Masoom Stanekzai, said: "You can see two things. One is there is a change of language. Second is they are taking some practical steps."
He added that the prisoner releases "sent a positive message in terms of building confidence both among the public and with the Taliban".
Another Afghan official, speaking off the record, said: "If Pakistan co-operates, there could be a major breakthrough in 2013, and that means a sustained period of face-to-face negotiations, and a ceasefire leading to Taliban participation in the [2014] election."
However, there is still significant scepticism about Pakistan's motives in Kabul and western capitals, which for years have accused it of stoking the insurgency while paying lip service to peace. "We don't yet know if this is a tactical or strategic shift," an Afghan official said.
Pakistan has still not released its most senior Taliban prisoners, most importantly the former second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who Kabul believes could be a key participant in any future peace talks. The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said on Wednesday that it was still too early to discuss Baradar's release but that Pakistan would continue to release Taliban inmates.
Afghan officials would also prefer to have had a chance to talk to the Taliban prisoners on their release, but they were instead allowed to disperse. Most are thought to have gone back to their families in Pakistan, though one mid-level official is said to have gone to Saudi Arabia, where he has family, and there were unconfirmed reports that at least one had returned to the fight in Afghanistan and another had been re-arrested.
"The litmus test is the insurgency and that has continued unabated," said one doubtful western expert on the Taliban. "There is no sign that they have reined in these guys because they still think they are their best asset to get the government in Kabul that they want."
Optimists inside the Karzai government insist that such views do not take into account the dramatically different atmosphere in the most recent talks. They believe there that is now substantial evidence that Pakistan is taking a new view of its long-term interests and preparing for the possibility of the success of an Afghan settlement rather than its failure. They say the Pakistani leadership appears less preoccupied by the longstanding fear that Afghanistan could become an Indian client state that would contribute to Pakistan's encirclement.
"That is a real change. They didn't even mention India," said a participant in recent talks. "They didn't ask for India to close its consulates. They didn't talk about their need for a 'friendly' Afghanistan. They said they needed a stable Afghanistan."
He said Pakistan had made further concessions, agreeing to guarantee safe passage to a Taliban delegation to forthcoming informal talks in Chantilly, outside Paris. The Afghan and Pakistani leadership have also discussed deepening military co-ordination. Stanekzai said that there was agreement to organise a joint meeting of Afghan and Pakistani Islamic clerics early in the new year, focused on "how to change the narrative of violence to a narrative of peace".
Stanekzai would not comment on reports that Afghan officials had visited Baradar in jail in Pakistan, but US officials said that at least one such meeting took place. It is also believed that senior Taliban inmates in Pakistan have been placed under a more liberal regime, such as being allowed to make telephone calls under supervision.
In light of Pakistan's more positive approach, Stanekzai said, Kabul was determined that last week's assassination attempt against its national security director would not derail the improvement in the bilateral relationship, although Afghanistan had evidence that the would-be killer – who hid explosives in his underpants – came from Quetta in Pakistan.
"No doubt there are enemies of the peace [process] everywhere and they don't want this reconciliation to move forward, people who benefit from the continuation of conflict and war," he said. "They will always create obstacles in order to prevent it, and every time we make some progress there is an incident that happens"
He also called on the Obama administration to release Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay, so they could take part in a peace process that began and then stalled in Qatar earlier this year. The release of five Taliban inmates has been delayed because of a lack of agreement between the US and the insurgent leadership on guarantees that they would not re-enter the conflict.
"We do hope that issue is resolved quickly, as this can be a step forward," Stanekzai said, adding that in return, the Taliban would have to commit to direct peace talks and a ceasefire. He said: "In negotiation and peace talks, you have to give something and you have to get something."
Top general expects IED problem to rise in Afghanistan
CNN December 13th, 2012
Deaths and injuries from improvised explosive devices are falling a bit Afghanistan, but IEDs still account for more than 60% of U.S. casualties there, a Senate subcommittee heard Thursday.
"This year nearly 1,900 U.S. casualties have been caused by IEDs," Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero testified, and he was not optimistic about the future.
Pakistan is a major source of the problem, he said.
Evidence shows that most of the IEDs in Afghanistan are made with ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombing, Barbero said, and it is illegal to make or import ammonium nitrate into Afghanistan.
The United States has made several proposals to Pakistan to reduce the threat from fertilizer-based bombs, including putting die in all ammonium nitrate to make it easier for border patrol agents in Afghanistan to spot, or reformulating it so it could still feed crops but wouldn't be explosive.
So far this year, IED attacks in Afghanistan are down 12% to 18%, the general said, but that's compared with last year, the worst year on record. And there is reason to think the number could rise again.
Barbero, who is head of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, said that when the United States began pulling troops out of Iraq, IED attacks went up, and the same could happen over the next 24 months in Afghanistan.
"I'm concerned, like we saw in Iraq, as we draw down forces situational awareness drops. Frankly, your movements on the road become more predictable," he said.
Barbero concluded his testimony in the open portion of the hearing saying, "To sum up, I believe the IED will continue to be the weapon of choice against our forces and we must remain vigilant."
Khalid Assassin Was Former Prisoner: Saleh
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Thursday, 13 December 2012
The man who attempted to kill Afghan spy chief Asadullah Khaled last Thursday was a Taliban prisoner who was released by the Afghan government, former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh claimed Thursday.
In an interview with TOLOnews, Saleh said he had information that the prisoner was released from a prison in Afghanistan and went to Pakistan's city of Quetta to plot the attack on the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
"According to my information, the suicide attacker who targeted NDS chief Asadullah Khalid was a Taliban member pardoned by the Afghan government and released from the prison. He then went to Pakistan and planned the attack with the Quetta Council," Saleh said.
He did not provide details on where he received this information from.
He criticised the government for the practice of pardoning prisoners, and asking on what guarantee the Taliban prisoners were released.
"I support the Afghan government's call on Pakistan to provide information over the attack. I also urge the government to find out about the roots of the attack inside of the country," he said.
This comes as President Hamid Karzai met with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari in Turkey for peace and trade talks, and is understood talked about the investigation with him.
According to some reports, a suicide bomber in his early 20s was to meet with Asadullah Khalid for peace talks but he was looking suspicious and scared. He was ordered to change his clothes, which he did, but the bomb was hidden in his underwear and the personnel monitoring him in the dressing room with a camera missed this.
Experts have criticised this method of search and have suggested that there may be a possible insider in the NDS.
Q&A: What does the future hold for Afghanistan?
CNN By Kyle Almond December 13, 2012
Program note: At 7 p.m. ET Thursday, Erin Burnett will be live from Kabul with an exclusive interview of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who talks about the future of Afghanistan and the ongoing fight against al Qaeda.
America's longest war is expected to conclude by the end of next year, when the United States plans to withdraw all its combat troops from Afghanistan.
But many challenges remain.
Insurgents are still a "resilient and determined" threat, according to a Pentagon report released this week. Afghan security forces must be fully trained to take over for U.S. troops. And the two countries have to come to an agreement over what kind of troop presence the U.S. will have in 2014.
"How this war winds down is very important to Afghanistan, to the United States and so many other countries," said CNN's Erin Burnett, who has been in Afghanistan this week talking to U.S. officials, troops and Afghan civilians. "People paid for this with their lives. People have died, people have spent a decade of their lives fighting this war away from home. And of course, the U.S. has spent about $650 billion on the war alone."
Burnett talked to CNN.com on Thursday about her trip and what she's been hearing from various people about the transition and their hopes for Afghanistan's future. Here is an edited version of the conversation:
CNN.com: You talked with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday. What's he saying about the war effort? Has the U.S. accomplished its mission?
Erin Burnett: Panetta points out the success in bringing down key members of core al Qaeda, and he believes he has made real progress on fighting al Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan. But he acknowledges that insurgents are still a problem, and he acknowledges that al Qaeda and terrorists have now spread and they're in other places. He specifically mentioned to me Yemen, Somalia and Mali. And he still thinks that al Qaeda is the single biggest threat to the American homeland.
CNN.com: What does that mean for U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the 2014 drawdown?
Burnett: Both Panetta and (Army Maj. Gen. Robert) Abrams, the regional commander in Kandahar, are very wary of discussing troop count. ... Some of it's going to come down to the treatment of U.S. troops' indemnity, which Panetta told me he's sure won't be a problem but the deputy foreign minister here in Afghanistan said was a serious issue that is on the table.
We're a long way away from having the details set in an agreement that the United States would actually sign. I got the sense that the overall agreement is something that's going to take a significant amount of time.
CNN.com: Are Afghan forces going to be prepared by 2014?
Burnett: In Kabul, traffic is a really huge problem, and they now have Afghan National Police doing the traffic control. Traffic control is something we in America take for granted, but you can see there's still a long way to go for them in terms of learning basic protocols.
And that kind of fits in with the recent Pentagon report that said only one in 23 brigades of the Afghan National Security Forces are actually ready to do their job from A to Z -- from dealing with things like electricity to (medical evacuations), whatever it is to operate a war.
The deputy foreign minister I talked to said, "Look that's not really fair, we're trying to train brigades on one thing at a time." But you had issues like that.
I talked to a U.S. sergeant in Kandahar who works at a forward operating base and his job has now become training Afghans. I asked him what his relationship was with them. And he said he had to trust them completely and they were like his brothers. This is a guy who's served four tours, missed three Christmases, put a lot of time in. And he really was loyal to them.
When I asked him explicitly, saying, "A lot of the coverage is pretty negative on how this training's coming, what have you seen?" he was very positive and he gave some examples on the communication they have with each other and their units and what significant progress he feels they have made. He really felt a sense of accomplishment and achievement, and you have to hope that his version of things ends up being the real version.
CNN.com: What's the general feeling among the Afghan people? Are they glad the U.S. is making plans to leave?
Burnett: I'm hearing two totally different stories.
Some people we've spoken to here sort of take it for granted that there's going to be a civil war when the United States leaves. It happened before when the Soviet Union left. One female member of parliament I talked to, she wasn't totally in that camp, but she was extremely afraid of it, saying: "I hope that it won't and I have to have confidence that we're going to be able to overcome it. But yes, I have that fear."
And then there are others who really try to be more optimistic. We were at a bazaar today, and we asked a whole bunch of people whether they thought it was a good thing that the United States was leaving. Many said they were glad, and they basically said we're glad because it's time we take this on ourselves. There was a real sense of pride that they could do it. These weren't people in the military. These were regular people on the street.
CNN.com: What else has stood out to you during your trip?
Burnett: During the Taliban, basically there were thousands of girls going to school in Afghanistan. Now you have millions of girls going to school. So there's been real progress on women's rights. Obviously, there remain a lot of problems -- honor killings, forced marriages, domestic violence -- but there has been real progress.
There are women's rights activists who are really afraid that when the U.S. leaves, a lot of the progress will be rolled back.
The female member of parliament I talked to, she is worried but hopeful. She has two daughters, 13 and 14. They really want to stay in their country, and they say, in their own experience, that there's been such a change in what girls can do. One of them wants to be president. One of them wants to be a space engineer. It was a pretty cool and inspiring thing to see, but it sort of brought home the risks and what's at stake here. ...
This was the most meaningful to me: the hopes that they have and the fact that they want to stay in their country and they want to fight for its future. If you have that going for you, then I think that's probably the best sign of hope that there is.
Fear spurs new drive for talks with Afghan Taliban
McClatchy Newspapers By Saeed Shah Thursday, December 13, 2012
ISLAMABAD - For the last decade, the United States and Afghanistan have viewed Pakistan as part of the problem as they worked to subdue the Afghan insurgency. Yet suddenly the three countries are working together for an Afghan peace, with Pakistan handling one of the trickiest aspects of the effort: bringing the Taliban to the talks.
From villain, Pakistan has emerged as the key to working out a deal, an amazing transformation for a country that was long seen as the Taliban’s main foreign backer when they were in power in Afghanistan, and whose territory, willingly or unwillingly, provided a haven when U.S. and NATO drove the Taliban from power in 2001.
Driving the new collaborative spirit after years of acrimony, diplomats say, was one thing: fear that chaos will follow the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. .Such anarchy could cost thousands more lives in Afghanistan, make a mockery of the U.S.-led coalition’s claims of success, threaten the security of Pakistan and allow international terrorists, including al Qaida, to find sanctuary there again. Other countries also are involved heavily in the diplomatic push for peace negotiations, especially Turkey and the United Kingdom. Last month, Pakistan took the first step in trying to build confidence, freeing 18 low-ranking Taliban prisoners last month whose release the extremists had sought.
Pakistan had been ready to cooperate a year ago, said diplomats who, like other officials quoted here, spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. But that was impossible after relations between Washington and Islamabad nearly broke down in the wake of a “friendly fire” incident in November last year in which American aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers manning a border post. Ties between Pakistan and the United States were repaired only this summer.
Pakistan has called for a political settlement with the Taliban for years, an arrangement that would give them a share of power in Afghanistan. But the Afghan government until now hasn’t been willing to trust Pakistan, suspecting that the Pakistanis wanted a return of the Taliban government, and the United States has pursued a policy that saw negotiations as something that could come only after decisive gains on the battlefield.
But that attitude has changed as it’s become clear that the surge of troops President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan in 2009 failed to change the course of the war. With thousands of troops having returned home and tens of thousands more to follow soon, a cease-fire now wouldn’t be so painful for the United States.
The new cooperative effort, which McClatchy revealed last weekend, envisions a cease-fire in the second half of next year. It also contemplates the Taliban holding public posts that would essentially hand them control of parts of Afghanistan.
For Pakistan, a peace accord is vital because it has a ferocious extremism problem of its own, including a Pakistani version of the Taliban. Islamabad thinks that once the Afghan Taliban and its allied Haqqani network are politically accommodated in Afghanistan, they’ll abandon Pakistani territory. That would allow Pakistan to move against its own militants.
The two stripes of militants often share the same geographical space along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, making that region an ungovernable threat to the whole of Pakistan.
The growth of the extremist menace in Pakistan and its apparent close cooperation with the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network has made Islamabad reassess the Afghan Islamist movement it once favored.
Aftab Sherpao, a former Pakistani interior minister, said, “Pakistan doesn’t want a totally Taliban government. They want an all-inclusive government. If that doesn’t happen, there will be trouble.”
Pakistan wants not only the Taliban to be enticed back to Afghanistan, but also for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees it’s accommodated since the 1980s to go home. Around 3 million Afghans live in Pakistan, of whom about 1.7 million are registered, the largest such displaced population in the world.
Pakistan also is concerned about the trends it sees in Afghanistan: a deteriorating security environment, an economy that’s drying up and deep internal political divisions. If that downward spiral continues, millions more refugees might flood into Pakistan, rather than those already there returning home, officials fear. Worse, chaos across the border would provide a sanctuary for Pakistani extremists. Pakistani militants already are using the eastern Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar to stage attacks in Pakistan.
So a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, not a rerun of the 1990s Taliban-run Afghanistan, is in the interests of Pakistan.
“Afghanistan is nobody’s strategic depth,” a Pakistani official said, referring to the old Pakistani military doctrine that wanted to keep Afghanistan as a client state. “Everybody has tried to determine Afghanistan’s future and failed.”
So far, the Taliban haven’t agreed even to consider talks with the regime of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, seeing its officials as “puppets.” Instead, it wants talks with the United States. A lot of persuasion will be needed to get them to start a dialogue with Kabul, the Pakistani official said.
Pakistan, he added, can only “try to persuade them to come to the table.”
“We cannot force them,” he said. Copyright 2012 McClatchy Newspapers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.
Afghanistan, Pakistan Draft Plan for Talks With Taliban
By Eltaf Najafizada - Dec 14, 2012 10:56 AM BLOOMBERG
Afghanistan and Pakistan are pursuing a new peace initiative that would permit members of the Taliban to be removed from the United Nations terrorist list to join negotiations and hold Afghan government posts.
The five-step blueprint, entitled “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015,” was initiated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in coordination with Pakistan and formally presented to Pakistani officials last month by Salahuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, Azizullah Din Mohammad, a senior council member, said in a phone interview yesterday.
The draft plan, first reported by McClatchy Newspapers, says Taliban who join the Afghan government or take part in national, parliamentary or provincial elections must sever any ties to al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and respect the Afghan Constitution, said a U.S. official familiar with the proposals.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic communications, the official said the plan almost certainly would give the ultra-conservative Islamic movement de facto control of Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. That, the official said, would have troubling implications for women’s rights, the education of girls and efforts to crack down on opium poppy growing.
The plan calls for Pakistan, rather than the U.S., to arrange direct talks in Saudi Arabia between Taliban representatives and the Afghan government next year after an Afghan cease-fire is in place.
“It diminishes the U.S. role in coordinating the talks, but it does not mean we won’t respect U.S. peace efforts at all,” said Din Mohammad, a former warlord who fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s and participated in talks on the plan last month in Pakistan.
Direct Talks
The U.S. continues to support an Afghan-led peace process and welcomes initiatives through which Afghans sit down with other Afghans in pursuit of that goal, said a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In order to facilitate direct talks, the blueprint calls for Pakistan to release more Taliban prisoners by the first half of 2013, while the two countries and the U.S. push the United Nations to remove Taliban leaders willing to engage in peace talks from the terrorism list, an official of the peace council said on condition of anonymity. They then would be given safe passage to participate in negotiations, the official said.
Travel Waivers
In June 2011, the UN Security Council split the international sanctions regime for al-Qaeda and the Taliban to encourage the Taliban to join reconciliation efforts. There now is one blacklist of individuals and organizations accused of links to al-Qaeda and a second -- with 132 names -- for those linked to the Taliban.
The Afghans have asked the council to streamline its procedures to allow individuals on the Taliban list to travel for peace talks. Although it’s sometimes honored in the breach, the existing process for granting waivers is extremely cumbersome, and a move to facilitate temporary exemptions, to which all 15 council members must agree, will come up for a decision on Dec. 17.
The Afghan government has long considered Pakistan a hindrance to peace because the Taliban and other militant Islamist groups have bases there and receive financing from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere through Pakistani channels. Karzai said an assassination attempt last week on Asadullah Khalid, the director of the Afghan intelligence service was planned in Pakistan, though not by the Taliban.
Positive Role
Nevertheless, members of the Afghan peace council said Pakistan also can play a positive role.
“Because it backs insurgents, that’s why the country can also encourage them for peace,” Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, another senior member of the peace council, said in a phone interview yesterday. “No country, including the U.S., can help Afghanistan with its peace plans except Pakistan.”
“The Taliban leadership and Taliban sanctuaries are all based in Pakistan, and they know very well how to put forward our peace efforts and bring them to the negotiating table,” he said. “We must not forget Pakistan’s effective role, and without their help we cannot achieve peace.”
The U.S. is due to withdraw the majority of its combat troops by the end of 2014. Afghan and U.S. officials have accused Pakistan of allowing Taliban militants and allied guerrillas groups sanctuary on its soil in a bit to ensure it has a pivotal role in determining Afghanistan’s future.
Vulnerable Borders
“Pakistan now feels more secure as it’s got a leading role in Afghanistan’s end game,” Talat Masood, a retired army lieutenant general and security analyst in Islamabad, said of the talks plan. “Pakistan’s main concern was that if it’s left out in this peace process, a future set-up in Kabul will be a hostile one, making its western borders vulnerable.”
Pakistan has realized that it should not limit its outreach in Afghanistan to the Pashtun population, Masood said. “That’s a game changer which has also softened up opposition within the Karzai regime for Pakistan.”
Pakistan has made a “welcome shift” toward implementing what the blueprint proposes, Din Mohammad said. “Pakistan did not ignore our enduring peace plan, but instead they promised they would help implement our plan and they freed several Taliban prisoners last month in order to endorse our plan.”
“If the plan succeeds, then we will have a permanent peace. And if it is not implemented, the country’s 2014 situation will be the worst ever,” he said.
Turkey Talks
Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari have discussed the plan in Ankara, Turkey, this week, and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Afghanistan, said Karzai had accepted an invitation from President Barack Obama to visit Washington during the week of Jan. 7.
The next Afghan-Pakistani meeting “will be held in the near future by the two countries’ officials, including our Islamic and religious scholars, and that may be held in Kabul,” Din Mohammad said.
“It’s not clear whether this power-sharing offer will attract hard-line Taliban to start negotiations,” said Masood in a phone interview today. “This is an attempt to split moderate Taliban from the hardliners -- and it might work.”
To contact the reporter on this story: John Walcott in Washington atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
UK Envoy Accepts Foreign Aid Abetted Afghan Graft
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Thursday, 13 December 2012
UK Ambassador to Afghanistan Richard Stagg has accepted the involvement of the international community in the expansion of corruption in Afghanistan, although he was clear that ultimate responsibility lies with the Afghan government.
"In some cases we should take some of the blame ourselves as having not spent our own money in a very sensible way," Stagg said in an exclusive interview with TOLOnews.
"But overall addressing the problem of corruption is an issue of the government of Afghanistan. It's about setting up the right procedures, the right systems and the right controls to ensure that the use of public money is transparent," he added.
His comments come after Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview with US media outlet NBC last week that Nato and other foreign donors had to take some responsibility for the country's rampant corruption.
Stagg went on the reiterate the push of the international community for the Afghan government to do more to curb the graft.
"We do these things on very important issues. We raise it very regularly with the government," he said.
"We want them to take very firm action on the Kabul Bank which is a very visible symbol of the problem and we want them to give a very high priority to creating systems in government which make corruption less likely and more difficult."
Corruption has plagued the Afghan government at the highest level, recently recognised as one of the three worst countries in the world in an international survey of public sector corruption released by Transparency International.
On the matter of Pakistan, Stagg pointed to the history between the two countries as one that had previously been amicable.
Pakistan was a friend and benefactor to Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s but the public perception is now unfortunately one of hostility, Stagg said, mainly because of their support of the militant Taliban.
"Pakistan, which 20 years ago perhaps was seen as a benefactor which had taken in large number of refugees and helped Afghanistan during the period of Soviet occupation, is now viewed so negatively by so many people here. I think its correct that by supporting the Taliban they have generated a good deal of hostility in public opinion in Afghanistan," Stagg said.
Ghazni Development Still a Dream: MP
TOLOnews.com By Azim Arash Thursday, 13 December 2012
Afghan lawmakers from central Ghazni province on Thursday said that the government of Afghanistan has lost multiple opportunities and chances to rehabilitate the province ahead of the worldwide attention it will receive in 2013.
Ghazni MP Mohammad Ali Akhlaqi said at a cultural and social workshop launched by the Ustan Ghulam Jailani Jalali Foundation in Kabul that the government failed to prepare the province to be the Islamic civilization capital for 2013, as selected by UNESCO.
"Unfortunately, since 2007 the government has failed to prepare Ghazni as the capital of Islamic Civilization for the year 2013. What was expected is not done and government is losing time and chances," Akhlaqi said.
Meanwhile, United Nations representative in Kabul Talaat Baig urged the Afghan government and international community to fully cooperate in rehabilitation of the city.
"The ethnic makeup is another advantage of Ghazni, with a population of various ethnicities. We and can call it mini Afghanistan. The United Nations will try to do its best to help coordinate the development of the city,"
Security, poor economy, and a lack of education and modernisation are the main challenges ahead of the rehabilitation of Ghazni province.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
KABUL, Dec.14 (Xinhua) -- One insurgent has been killed and six insurgents detained in different operations in eastern Afghan provinces, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) said Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces killed one insurgent, detained six, and cleared one improvised explosive device (IED) during operations in eastern Afghanistan throughout the past 24 hours," the ISAF's Regional Command-East (RC-East) said in a statement.
The Afghan National Army soldiers killed one insurgent during an engagement in Bar Kunar (Asmar) District in eastern Kunar province 185 km east of Kabul, the statement said.
The captured militants were detained by the Afghan and coalition forces following an engagement in Bati Kot District, Nangarhar province,120 km east of Kabul, it said, adding that the detained suspects were transferred to a base for questioning.
The IED was found and defused by the joint forces in Bati Kot District.
"Operations in RC-East are ongoing," the coalition said.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan forces and some 100,000 NATO-led coalition troops have intensified cleanup operations against Taliban and other militants recently but the insurgents in retaliation responded by carrying out suicide attacks and roadside bombings.
One U.S. soldier and two Afghan civilians were killed and 21 others, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded when Taliban carried out a suicide car bombing in Kandahar province 450 km south of Kabul on Thursday evening.
Bomber Strikes Coalition Convoy in Afghanistan
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and THOM SHANKER December 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - A car bomber struck a coalition convoy outside a sprawling base in southern Afghanistan on Thursday hours after a visit by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta. There were no indications that the suicide attack near the gates of Kandahar Air Field was connected to the visit from Mr. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Wednesday. His day trip to Kandahar on Thursday was not publicized in advance and garnered little news media attention. Mr. Panetta never left the well-fortified base.
At a late evening news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said the attack had killed one American service member and wounded three others. Javed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar Province, said the attack also killed three Afghan civilians and wounded 18 others. It took place shortly before 5 p.m. near an entrance to the base on a road that has been the site of previous bombings. Mr. Panetta said the suicide bomber rammed into a heavily armored vehicle, called an MRAP.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from the Taliban. Also on Thursday, Afghan officials said the powerful chief of the country’s spy service was airlifted to the United States to be treated for wounds he sustained in an attempted assassination last week.
The militants have claimed responsibility for the attack on the official, Asadullah Khalid, at a Kabul guesthouse by a Taliban suicide bomber with explosives packed into his groin. Mr. Khalid survived but his abdominal wounds were grievous. Treating them was beyond the scope of the doctors and facilities available at Bagram Air Base, a sprawling coalition base north of Kabul where the spy chief was taken within hours of the attempted assassination, Afghan and coalition officials said.
Shafiqullah Tahiri, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the spy agency’s official name, said that Mr. Khalid left Afghanistan on Wednesday. “His doctors in Bagram suggested that he needed to be treated in a proper hospital where all necessary facilities and resources are available,” Mr. Tahiri said.
Mr. Khalid was flown out aboard a military transport configured to carry severely wounded soldiers. He was taken to an American military hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, and would be moved to United States in the coming days, the coalition said.
Neither the N.D.S. nor the coalition provided specifics of Mr. Khalid’s condition, apart from saying that the wounds he sustained were primarily in the abdomen and will require multiple surgeries to treat.
President Hamid Karzai has since suggested that the insurgents were aided by Pakistan’s intelligence service in their attempt to kill Mr. Khalid, an ethnic Pashtun who was one of the militants’ most implacable and, in the view of many coalition officials, effective foes. The Taliban draws almost all its support from Pashtuns, the ethnic group to which Mr. Karzai also belongs.
In Mr. Khalid’s absence, the N.D.S. is being run by one of his deputies, Gen. Hisaamuddin Khan, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul who fought Taliban rule in the 1990s. The N.D.S. said Mr. Khan would run the agency until Mr. Khalid had recovered and could return to work.
Apart from signaling the severity of Mr. Khalid’s wounds, the move to the United States also reflected Afghanistan’s continued dependence on the West for high-end medical care, which is virtually nonexistent here. Even Mr. Karzai, who has increasingly tried to distance his administration and country from the United States and its allies, said after Mr. Khalid was wounded that he would send the spy chief abroad for medical treatment, if necessary.
Many other Afghans — from senior officials to children wounded as a result of the fight against the Taliban — have been or are currently being treated at civilian and military hospitals in the United States and Europe.
The American record of treating Afghans wounded in combat goes back to the 1980s, when more than two dozen Afghans wounded fighting the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country were brought to the United States for medical care.
During his news conference with the Afghan president, Mr. Panetta also announced that President Obama had invited Mr. Karzai, to visit Washington the week of Jan. 7 to discuss a “shared vision of Afghanistan beyond 2014,” when the NATO mission expires.
The goal is an enduring American military presence expected to focus on training and support to Afghan security forces, and probably include a small American counterterrorism contingent with an eye on Al Qaeda and senior insurgent leaders. The American proposal is expected to total no more than 10,000 troops — or even less — despite the desire of some military officers for a larger force.
As part of any deal, the United States is demanding that its service personnel be subject to American military law, and not Afghan law, something that has rankled the Afghans. The Afghan government is seeking a number of comprises from the United States to assure its sovereignty, including power over detention facilities and detainees, as well as commitment for significant financial support to Afghan security forces.
Both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Panetta repeated expressions of confidence a deal can be reached.
“We are committed to respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” Mr. Panetta said. “We believe that we can achieve the kind of agreement that would be acceptable to both countries.”
Mr. Karzai concurred, saying any agreement that respects “Afghan sovereignty and Afghan laws” is one that he can present to his public “with ease.”
Afghan politicians seek steps now for fair election
USA TODAY By Carmen Gentile Special for USA TODAY December 14. 2012
KABUL - Afghan political aspirants say the election to replace President Hamid Karzai will only result in unrest if something is not done now to ensure its results are untainted by fraud.
Former presidential candidate and long-time Karzai rival, Abdullah Abdullah said in an interview with USA TODAY that he has yet to decide if he will run in the election, not scheduled to take place until the spring of 2014.
But he says already he sees problems. Among them is the extreme difficulty he would have trying to campaign in the mountainous north where most ethnic Tajiks who make up his base reside.
"How can one even campaign in those parts of the country in the winter?" he asks, explaining that many mountain passes and roads will still be blocked by ice and snow in springtime.
Abdullah withdrew from the 2009 second-round election runoff amid widespread accusations of pro-Karzai vote-rigging, fraud and election poll intimidation. The United Nations was among the critics of the vote.
Abdullah says the next president will face enormous challenges to keeping his country stable and democratic, something U.S. and allied troops have fought and died for over the past 10 years.
Among the problems to rectify: top-to-bottom government corruption. The country's next president must reform a notoriously corrupt judiciary and allow provincial governors to be elected rather than appointed by the president as they are now.
Ending financial corruption is also a factor for a stable future, he says.
A review released by the International Monetary Fund said that hundreds of millions of dollars from Kabul Bank were smuggled out of Afghanistan — some packed inside airline food trays loaded onto international flights to be deposited in bank accounts in more than two dozen countries.
Loans were made but rarely repaid, the report said. Borrowers took out loans to pay back loans. Company documents and financial statements were fabricated. The smuggling scheme led to the collapse of the bank, the nation's largest financial institution.
"The biggest challenge is that the absence of the rule of law is now the rule of law in Afghanistan," says Abdullah, who previously served under Karzai and is now a critic of his administration.
Several critics accuse Karzai of ignoring the needs of the majority of Afghans for the benefit of family and business associates. Karzai, who is serving his second five-year term, said Thursday that corruption is due to the way NATO and the United States have set up the contracting process in Afghanistan.
"The contracts are not issued by the Afghan government. The contracts are issued by the international community, mainly by the United States," he said. "Now whether this corruption in Afghanistan is an accident, a byproduct of the situation in the past 10 years or is it perpetrated also on purpose is today my main question."
Dark horse contender Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, says that if Afghanistan holds a "fair, transparent election, then I'll be there."
Yasini ran in 2009, coming in fifth among a field of nearly 40 candidates, and says it will be hard for him or anyone not favored by Karzai to prevail because they will not have access to much in the way of campaign funds.
"I am not a corrupt person so it will be difficult for me to raise as much money as other candidates," Yasini says.
Yasini sees the main issues as persistent security concerns and a lack of a viable, self-sustaining economy outside the illicit opium trade.
"Right now we are living off of other taxpayers," he says referring to the billions of dollars in international aid contributed by international donors, most notably the United States.
Yasini, like Abdullah, expresses concern about the legitimacy of the 2014 election were it to resemble the previous presidential election in 2009. The International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank, agrees.
"It is a near certainty that under current conditions the 2014 elections will be plagued by massive fraud," reads a recent Crisis Group report. "High levels of violence across the country before and on the day of the polls are likely to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands more would-be voters."
The group says the previous elections' chaos and chicanery risk triggering a constitutional crisis and erode trust in the democratic institutions that the USA and others have spent billions of dollars to build.
"In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim," it said, referring to the possibility that Karzai may act to ensure his family maintains some power.
Among the potential candidates are Karzai's elder brother Quayum Karzai, an elected official in Afghanistan and a businessman in the USA. Afghanistan's education minister, Ghulam Farooq Wardak, a Karzai appointee, could earn the president's endorsement as well.
Former Karzai ally Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the country's one-time interior minister, has said he may run as has Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an Ivy League graduate, and former officials at the World Bank and United Nations.
No matter who runs, Abdullah says they must face up to the problem of continued militancy. By the time the election rolls around, all U.S. combat troops will have left the country under current plans of President Obama.
But Abdullah said he believes it won't be insurgents who can take down what they have spent years building.
"The main challenge for security won't come just from the Taliban," he says. "Corruption can turn this country into a failed state."
Grossman Pledges Continued US Support to Afghanistan, Pakistan
VOA News December 13, 2012
U.S. President Barack Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan has pledged Washington's continued support for the region as the three countries work together toward peace in Afghanistan.
Ambassador Marc Grossman spoke with VOA's Urdu service this week ahead of stepping down after nearly two years in his position. He said that over the past year, an Afghan-owned peace process has been the main focus of the countries' repeated meetings.
Grossman said he has always believed Washington's role was to get the talks going and "just stand back" as Islamabad and Kabul work together. He credited Pakistan with becoming more involved in the discussions over the past year.
He also said that compared to the end of 2011, relations between Islamabad and Washington are "getting better." He said both sides realize they must work together on important issues, ranging from counterterrorism, Afghanistan, bilateral investment and ground lines of communication.
During his tenure, Grossman has had to deal with several major challenges to the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, from the NATO helicopter attack that mistakenly killed 26 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border, the covert unilateral U.S. raid into Pakistan to kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Pakistani public anger at the U.S. drone campaign targeting militants in the country's northwest.
Grossman said that the first thing he plans to do after stepping down is sleep and read, two things he said he has not been able to do much during the past two years.
Pakistan, Afghanistan trying to get 'some Taliban leaders off UN terrorist list'
Islamabad, Dec 14 (ANI): Pakistan and Afghanistan are pursuing a new peace initiative that would allow some Taliban members to be removed from a UN list of terrorists, an official has said.
Azizullah Din Mohammad, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told Bloomsburg that the draft plan would allow the Taliban to join the Afghan government or take part in national, parliamentary or provincial elections.
He also added that before doing so, they must sever any ties to Al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and respect the Afghan Constitution, the Dawn reports.
According to the paper, some US officials rejected the suggestion that the plan would reduce America's role in the Afghan peace process.
They said Washington would support any plan that brought peace to Afghanistan and had always encouraged direct talks between Islamabad and Kabul, the report said. (ANI)
Taliban release helps Afghan-Pakistani ties and raises hopes for peace deal
Pakistan frees more Taliban leaders as Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai meets his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger in Kabul and Jonathan Boone in Islamabad Thursday 13 December 2012
Afghan officials say Pakistan has released a new batch of Taliban prisoners, in the latest of a series of concessions to Kabul that could signal greater Pakistani support for a peace deal in Afghanistan.
According to sources in Kabul, Pakistan released nine middle-ranking Taliban commanders, making a total of 18 such prisoners let out of Pakistani jails since last month. Afghan and western officials said most of the Taliban prisoners had been arrested because they had shown interest in making peace, without the permission of the Pakistani military, which has long seen its backing for the insurgents as a strategic bargaining chip.
The prisoner releases come amid a flurry of bilateral meetings and a significant warming in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, which is almost universally seen as critical to hopes of peaceful settlement in the 11-year Afghan conflict.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, met in Ankara on Wednesday. The outcome of the meeting has not been revealed other than an agreement to conduct a joint investigation into an assassination attempt last week against Asadullah Khalid, the head of Afghan intelligence.
A hotline has also been established between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. The Ankara summit followed a meeting of security officials in London on 5 December, and a visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan's high peace council last month.
The head of the council's executive, Masoom Stanekzai, said: "You can see two things. One is there is a change of language. Second is they are taking some practical steps."
He added that the prisoner releases "sent a positive message in terms of building confidence both among the public and with the Taliban".
Another Afghan official, speaking off the record, said: "If Pakistan co-operates, there could be a major breakthrough in 2013, and that means a sustained period of face-to-face negotiations, and a ceasefire leading to Taliban participation in the [2014] election."
However, there is still significant scepticism about Pakistan's motives in Kabul and western capitals, which for years have accused it of stoking the insurgency while paying lip service to peace. "We don't yet know if this is a tactical or strategic shift," an Afghan official said.
Pakistan has still not released its most senior Taliban prisoners, most importantly the former second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who Kabul believes could be a key participant in any future peace talks. The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said on Wednesday that it was still too early to discuss Baradar's release but that Pakistan would continue to release Taliban inmates.
Afghan officials would also prefer to have had a chance to talk to the Taliban prisoners on their release, but they were instead allowed to disperse. Most are thought to have gone back to their families in Pakistan, though one mid-level official is said to have gone to Saudi Arabia, where he has family, and there were unconfirmed reports that at least one had returned to the fight in Afghanistan and another had been re-arrested.
"The litmus test is the insurgency and that has continued unabated," said one doubtful western expert on the Taliban. "There is no sign that they have reined in these guys because they still think they are their best asset to get the government in Kabul that they want."
Optimists inside the Karzai government insist that such views do not take into account the dramatically different atmosphere in the most recent talks. They believe there that is now substantial evidence that Pakistan is taking a new view of its long-term interests and preparing for the possibility of the success of an Afghan settlement rather than its failure. They say the Pakistani leadership appears less preoccupied by the longstanding fear that Afghanistan could become an Indian client state that would contribute to Pakistan's encirclement.
"That is a real change. They didn't even mention India," said a participant in recent talks. "They didn't ask for India to close its consulates. They didn't talk about their need for a 'friendly' Afghanistan. They said they needed a stable Afghanistan."
He said Pakistan had made further concessions, agreeing to guarantee safe passage to a Taliban delegation to forthcoming informal talks in Chantilly, outside Paris. The Afghan and Pakistani leadership have also discussed deepening military co-ordination. Stanekzai said that there was agreement to organise a joint meeting of Afghan and Pakistani Islamic clerics early in the new year, focused on "how to change the narrative of violence to a narrative of peace".
Stanekzai would not comment on reports that Afghan officials had visited Baradar in jail in Pakistan, but US officials said that at least one such meeting took place. It is also believed that senior Taliban inmates in Pakistan have been placed under a more liberal regime, such as being allowed to make telephone calls under supervision.
In light of Pakistan's more positive approach, Stanekzai said, Kabul was determined that last week's assassination attempt against its national security director would not derail the improvement in the bilateral relationship, although Afghanistan had evidence that the would-be killer – who hid explosives in his underpants – came from Quetta in Pakistan.
"No doubt there are enemies of the peace [process] everywhere and they don't want this reconciliation to move forward, people who benefit from the continuation of conflict and war," he said. "They will always create obstacles in order to prevent it, and every time we make some progress there is an incident that happens"
He also called on the Obama administration to release Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay, so they could take part in a peace process that began and then stalled in Qatar earlier this year. The release of five Taliban inmates has been delayed because of a lack of agreement between the US and the insurgent leadership on guarantees that they would not re-enter the conflict.
"We do hope that issue is resolved quickly, as this can be a step forward," Stanekzai said, adding that in return, the Taliban would have to commit to direct peace talks and a ceasefire. He said: "In negotiation and peace talks, you have to give something and you have to get something."
Top general expects IED problem to rise in Afghanistan
CNN December 13th, 2012
Deaths and injuries from improvised explosive devices are falling a bit Afghanistan, but IEDs still account for more than 60% of U.S. casualties there, a Senate subcommittee heard Thursday.
"This year nearly 1,900 U.S. casualties have been caused by IEDs," Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero testified, and he was not optimistic about the future.
Pakistan is a major source of the problem, he said.
Evidence shows that most of the IEDs in Afghanistan are made with ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombing, Barbero said, and it is illegal to make or import ammonium nitrate into Afghanistan.
The United States has made several proposals to Pakistan to reduce the threat from fertilizer-based bombs, including putting die in all ammonium nitrate to make it easier for border patrol agents in Afghanistan to spot, or reformulating it so it could still feed crops but wouldn't be explosive.
So far this year, IED attacks in Afghanistan are down 12% to 18%, the general said, but that's compared with last year, the worst year on record. And there is reason to think the number could rise again.
Barbero, who is head of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, said that when the United States began pulling troops out of Iraq, IED attacks went up, and the same could happen over the next 24 months in Afghanistan.
"I'm concerned, like we saw in Iraq, as we draw down forces situational awareness drops. Frankly, your movements on the road become more predictable," he said.
Barbero concluded his testimony in the open portion of the hearing saying, "To sum up, I believe the IED will continue to be the weapon of choice against our forces and we must remain vigilant."
Khalid Assassin Was Former Prisoner: Saleh
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Thursday, 13 December 2012
The man who attempted to kill Afghan spy chief Asadullah Khaled last Thursday was a Taliban prisoner who was released by the Afghan government, former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh claimed Thursday.
In an interview with TOLOnews, Saleh said he had information that the prisoner was released from a prison in Afghanistan and went to Pakistan's city of Quetta to plot the attack on the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
"According to my information, the suicide attacker who targeted NDS chief Asadullah Khalid was a Taliban member pardoned by the Afghan government and released from the prison. He then went to Pakistan and planned the attack with the Quetta Council," Saleh said.
He did not provide details on where he received this information from.
He criticised the government for the practice of pardoning prisoners, and asking on what guarantee the Taliban prisoners were released.
"I support the Afghan government's call on Pakistan to provide information over the attack. I also urge the government to find out about the roots of the attack inside of the country," he said.
This comes as President Hamid Karzai met with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari in Turkey for peace and trade talks, and is understood talked about the investigation with him.
According to some reports, a suicide bomber in his early 20s was to meet with Asadullah Khalid for peace talks but he was looking suspicious and scared. He was ordered to change his clothes, which he did, but the bomb was hidden in his underwear and the personnel monitoring him in the dressing room with a camera missed this.
Experts have criticised this method of search and have suggested that there may be a possible insider in the NDS.
Q&A: What does the future hold for Afghanistan?
CNN By Kyle Almond December 13, 2012
Program note: At 7 p.m. ET Thursday, Erin Burnett will be live from Kabul with an exclusive interview of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who talks about the future of Afghanistan and the ongoing fight against al Qaeda.
America's longest war is expected to conclude by the end of next year, when the United States plans to withdraw all its combat troops from Afghanistan.
But many challenges remain.
Insurgents are still a "resilient and determined" threat, according to a Pentagon report released this week. Afghan security forces must be fully trained to take over for U.S. troops. And the two countries have to come to an agreement over what kind of troop presence the U.S. will have in 2014.
"How this war winds down is very important to Afghanistan, to the United States and so many other countries," said CNN's Erin Burnett, who has been in Afghanistan this week talking to U.S. officials, troops and Afghan civilians. "People paid for this with their lives. People have died, people have spent a decade of their lives fighting this war away from home. And of course, the U.S. has spent about $650 billion on the war alone."
Burnett talked to CNN.com on Thursday about her trip and what she's been hearing from various people about the transition and their hopes for Afghanistan's future. Here is an edited version of the conversation:
CNN.com: You talked with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday. What's he saying about the war effort? Has the U.S. accomplished its mission?
Erin Burnett: Panetta points out the success in bringing down key members of core al Qaeda, and he believes he has made real progress on fighting al Qaeda and terrorism in Afghanistan. But he acknowledges that insurgents are still a problem, and he acknowledges that al Qaeda and terrorists have now spread and they're in other places. He specifically mentioned to me Yemen, Somalia and Mali. And he still thinks that al Qaeda is the single biggest threat to the American homeland.
CNN.com: What does that mean for U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the 2014 drawdown?
Burnett: Both Panetta and (Army Maj. Gen. Robert) Abrams, the regional commander in Kandahar, are very wary of discussing troop count. ... Some of it's going to come down to the treatment of U.S. troops' indemnity, which Panetta told me he's sure won't be a problem but the deputy foreign minister here in Afghanistan said was a serious issue that is on the table.
We're a long way away from having the details set in an agreement that the United States would actually sign. I got the sense that the overall agreement is something that's going to take a significant amount of time.
CNN.com: Are Afghan forces going to be prepared by 2014?
Burnett: In Kabul, traffic is a really huge problem, and they now have Afghan National Police doing the traffic control. Traffic control is something we in America take for granted, but you can see there's still a long way to go for them in terms of learning basic protocols.
And that kind of fits in with the recent Pentagon report that said only one in 23 brigades of the Afghan National Security Forces are actually ready to do their job from A to Z -- from dealing with things like electricity to (medical evacuations), whatever it is to operate a war.
The deputy foreign minister I talked to said, "Look that's not really fair, we're trying to train brigades on one thing at a time." But you had issues like that.
I talked to a U.S. sergeant in Kandahar who works at a forward operating base and his job has now become training Afghans. I asked him what his relationship was with them. And he said he had to trust them completely and they were like his brothers. This is a guy who's served four tours, missed three Christmases, put a lot of time in. And he really was loyal to them.
When I asked him explicitly, saying, "A lot of the coverage is pretty negative on how this training's coming, what have you seen?" he was very positive and he gave some examples on the communication they have with each other and their units and what significant progress he feels they have made. He really felt a sense of accomplishment and achievement, and you have to hope that his version of things ends up being the real version.
CNN.com: What's the general feeling among the Afghan people? Are they glad the U.S. is making plans to leave?
Burnett: I'm hearing two totally different stories.
Some people we've spoken to here sort of take it for granted that there's going to be a civil war when the United States leaves. It happened before when the Soviet Union left. One female member of parliament I talked to, she wasn't totally in that camp, but she was extremely afraid of it, saying: "I hope that it won't and I have to have confidence that we're going to be able to overcome it. But yes, I have that fear."
And then there are others who really try to be more optimistic. We were at a bazaar today, and we asked a whole bunch of people whether they thought it was a good thing that the United States was leaving. Many said they were glad, and they basically said we're glad because it's time we take this on ourselves. There was a real sense of pride that they could do it. These weren't people in the military. These were regular people on the street.
CNN.com: What else has stood out to you during your trip?
Burnett: During the Taliban, basically there were thousands of girls going to school in Afghanistan. Now you have millions of girls going to school. So there's been real progress on women's rights. Obviously, there remain a lot of problems -- honor killings, forced marriages, domestic violence -- but there has been real progress.
There are women's rights activists who are really afraid that when the U.S. leaves, a lot of the progress will be rolled back.
The female member of parliament I talked to, she is worried but hopeful. She has two daughters, 13 and 14. They really want to stay in their country, and they say, in their own experience, that there's been such a change in what girls can do. One of them wants to be president. One of them wants to be a space engineer. It was a pretty cool and inspiring thing to see, but it sort of brought home the risks and what's at stake here. ...
This was the most meaningful to me: the hopes that they have and the fact that they want to stay in their country and they want to fight for its future. If you have that going for you, then I think that's probably the best sign of hope that there is.
Fear spurs new drive for talks with Afghan Taliban
McClatchy Newspapers By Saeed Shah Thursday, December 13, 2012
ISLAMABAD - For the last decade, the United States and Afghanistan have viewed Pakistan as part of the problem as they worked to subdue the Afghan insurgency. Yet suddenly the three countries are working together for an Afghan peace, with Pakistan handling one of the trickiest aspects of the effort: bringing the Taliban to the talks.
From villain, Pakistan has emerged as the key to working out a deal, an amazing transformation for a country that was long seen as the Taliban’s main foreign backer when they were in power in Afghanistan, and whose territory, willingly or unwillingly, provided a haven when U.S. and NATO drove the Taliban from power in 2001.
Driving the new collaborative spirit after years of acrimony, diplomats say, was one thing: fear that chaos will follow the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. .Such anarchy could cost thousands more lives in Afghanistan, make a mockery of the U.S.-led coalition’s claims of success, threaten the security of Pakistan and allow international terrorists, including al Qaida, to find sanctuary there again. Other countries also are involved heavily in the diplomatic push for peace negotiations, especially Turkey and the United Kingdom. Last month, Pakistan took the first step in trying to build confidence, freeing 18 low-ranking Taliban prisoners last month whose release the extremists had sought.
Pakistan had been ready to cooperate a year ago, said diplomats who, like other officials quoted here, spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. But that was impossible after relations between Washington and Islamabad nearly broke down in the wake of a “friendly fire” incident in November last year in which American aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers manning a border post. Ties between Pakistan and the United States were repaired only this summer.
Pakistan has called for a political settlement with the Taliban for years, an arrangement that would give them a share of power in Afghanistan. But the Afghan government until now hasn’t been willing to trust Pakistan, suspecting that the Pakistanis wanted a return of the Taliban government, and the United States has pursued a policy that saw negotiations as something that could come only after decisive gains on the battlefield.
But that attitude has changed as it’s become clear that the surge of troops President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan in 2009 failed to change the course of the war. With thousands of troops having returned home and tens of thousands more to follow soon, a cease-fire now wouldn’t be so painful for the United States.
The new cooperative effort, which McClatchy revealed last weekend, envisions a cease-fire in the second half of next year. It also contemplates the Taliban holding public posts that would essentially hand them control of parts of Afghanistan.
For Pakistan, a peace accord is vital because it has a ferocious extremism problem of its own, including a Pakistani version of the Taliban. Islamabad thinks that once the Afghan Taliban and its allied Haqqani network are politically accommodated in Afghanistan, they’ll abandon Pakistani territory. That would allow Pakistan to move against its own militants.
The two stripes of militants often share the same geographical space along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, making that region an ungovernable threat to the whole of Pakistan.
The growth of the extremist menace in Pakistan and its apparent close cooperation with the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network has made Islamabad reassess the Afghan Islamist movement it once favored.
Aftab Sherpao, a former Pakistani interior minister, said, “Pakistan doesn’t want a totally Taliban government. They want an all-inclusive government. If that doesn’t happen, there will be trouble.”
Pakistan wants not only the Taliban to be enticed back to Afghanistan, but also for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees it’s accommodated since the 1980s to go home. Around 3 million Afghans live in Pakistan, of whom about 1.7 million are registered, the largest such displaced population in the world.
Pakistan also is concerned about the trends it sees in Afghanistan: a deteriorating security environment, an economy that’s drying up and deep internal political divisions. If that downward spiral continues, millions more refugees might flood into Pakistan, rather than those already there returning home, officials fear. Worse, chaos across the border would provide a sanctuary for Pakistani extremists. Pakistani militants already are using the eastern Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar to stage attacks in Pakistan.
So a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, not a rerun of the 1990s Taliban-run Afghanistan, is in the interests of Pakistan.
“Afghanistan is nobody’s strategic depth,” a Pakistani official said, referring to the old Pakistani military doctrine that wanted to keep Afghanistan as a client state. “Everybody has tried to determine Afghanistan’s future and failed.”
So far, the Taliban haven’t agreed even to consider talks with the regime of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, seeing its officials as “puppets.” Instead, it wants talks with the United States. A lot of persuasion will be needed to get them to start a dialogue with Kabul, the Pakistani official said.
Pakistan, he added, can only “try to persuade them to come to the table.”
“We cannot force them,” he said. Copyright 2012 McClatchy Newspapers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.
Afghanistan, Pakistan Draft Plan for Talks With Taliban
By Eltaf Najafizada - Dec 14, 2012 10:56 AM BLOOMBERG
Afghanistan and Pakistan are pursuing a new peace initiative that would permit members of the Taliban to be removed from the United Nations terrorist list to join negotiations and hold Afghan government posts.
The five-step blueprint, entitled “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015,” was initiated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in coordination with Pakistan and formally presented to Pakistani officials last month by Salahuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, Azizullah Din Mohammad, a senior council member, said in a phone interview yesterday.
The draft plan, first reported by McClatchy Newspapers, says Taliban who join the Afghan government or take part in national, parliamentary or provincial elections must sever any ties to al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and respect the Afghan Constitution, said a U.S. official familiar with the proposals.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic communications, the official said the plan almost certainly would give the ultra-conservative Islamic movement de facto control of Pashtun-dominated areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. That, the official said, would have troubling implications for women’s rights, the education of girls and efforts to crack down on opium poppy growing.
The plan calls for Pakistan, rather than the U.S., to arrange direct talks in Saudi Arabia between Taliban representatives and the Afghan government next year after an Afghan cease-fire is in place.
“It diminishes the U.S. role in coordinating the talks, but it does not mean we won’t respect U.S. peace efforts at all,” said Din Mohammad, a former warlord who fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s and participated in talks on the plan last month in Pakistan.
Direct Talks
The U.S. continues to support an Afghan-led peace process and welcomes initiatives through which Afghans sit down with other Afghans in pursuit of that goal, said a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In order to facilitate direct talks, the blueprint calls for Pakistan to release more Taliban prisoners by the first half of 2013, while the two countries and the U.S. push the United Nations to remove Taliban leaders willing to engage in peace talks from the terrorism list, an official of the peace council said on condition of anonymity. They then would be given safe passage to participate in negotiations, the official said.
Travel Waivers
In June 2011, the UN Security Council split the international sanctions regime for al-Qaeda and the Taliban to encourage the Taliban to join reconciliation efforts. There now is one blacklist of individuals and organizations accused of links to al-Qaeda and a second -- with 132 names -- for those linked to the Taliban.
The Afghans have asked the council to streamline its procedures to allow individuals on the Taliban list to travel for peace talks. Although it’s sometimes honored in the breach, the existing process for granting waivers is extremely cumbersome, and a move to facilitate temporary exemptions, to which all 15 council members must agree, will come up for a decision on Dec. 17.
The Afghan government has long considered Pakistan a hindrance to peace because the Taliban and other militant Islamist groups have bases there and receive financing from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere through Pakistani channels. Karzai said an assassination attempt last week on Asadullah Khalid, the director of the Afghan intelligence service was planned in Pakistan, though not by the Taliban.
Positive Role
Nevertheless, members of the Afghan peace council said Pakistan also can play a positive role.
“Because it backs insurgents, that’s why the country can also encourage them for peace,” Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, another senior member of the peace council, said in a phone interview yesterday. “No country, including the U.S., can help Afghanistan with its peace plans except Pakistan.”
“The Taliban leadership and Taliban sanctuaries are all based in Pakistan, and they know very well how to put forward our peace efforts and bring them to the negotiating table,” he said. “We must not forget Pakistan’s effective role, and without their help we cannot achieve peace.”
The U.S. is due to withdraw the majority of its combat troops by the end of 2014. Afghan and U.S. officials have accused Pakistan of allowing Taliban militants and allied guerrillas groups sanctuary on its soil in a bit to ensure it has a pivotal role in determining Afghanistan’s future.
Vulnerable Borders
“Pakistan now feels more secure as it’s got a leading role in Afghanistan’s end game,” Talat Masood, a retired army lieutenant general and security analyst in Islamabad, said of the talks plan. “Pakistan’s main concern was that if it’s left out in this peace process, a future set-up in Kabul will be a hostile one, making its western borders vulnerable.”
Pakistan has realized that it should not limit its outreach in Afghanistan to the Pashtun population, Masood said. “That’s a game changer which has also softened up opposition within the Karzai regime for Pakistan.”
Pakistan has made a “welcome shift” toward implementing what the blueprint proposes, Din Mohammad said. “Pakistan did not ignore our enduring peace plan, but instead they promised they would help implement our plan and they freed several Taliban prisoners last month in order to endorse our plan.”
“If the plan succeeds, then we will have a permanent peace. And if it is not implemented, the country’s 2014 situation will be the worst ever,” he said.
Turkey Talks
Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari have discussed the plan in Ankara, Turkey, this week, and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, visiting Afghanistan, said Karzai had accepted an invitation from President Barack Obama to visit Washington during the week of Jan. 7.
The next Afghan-Pakistani meeting “will be held in the near future by the two countries’ officials, including our Islamic and religious scholars, and that may be held in Kabul,” Din Mohammad said.
“It’s not clear whether this power-sharing offer will attract hard-line Taliban to start negotiations,” said Masood in a phone interview today. “This is an attempt to split moderate Taliban from the hardliners -- and it might work.”
To contact the reporter on this story: John Walcott in Washington atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
UK Envoy Accepts Foreign Aid Abetted Afghan Graft
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Thursday, 13 December 2012
UK Ambassador to Afghanistan Richard Stagg has accepted the involvement of the international community in the expansion of corruption in Afghanistan, although he was clear that ultimate responsibility lies with the Afghan government.
"In some cases we should take some of the blame ourselves as having not spent our own money in a very sensible way," Stagg said in an exclusive interview with TOLOnews.
"But overall addressing the problem of corruption is an issue of the government of Afghanistan. It's about setting up the right procedures, the right systems and the right controls to ensure that the use of public money is transparent," he added.
His comments come after Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview with US media outlet NBC last week that Nato and other foreign donors had to take some responsibility for the country's rampant corruption.
Stagg went on the reiterate the push of the international community for the Afghan government to do more to curb the graft.
"We do these things on very important issues. We raise it very regularly with the government," he said.
"We want them to take very firm action on the Kabul Bank which is a very visible symbol of the problem and we want them to give a very high priority to creating systems in government which make corruption less likely and more difficult."
Corruption has plagued the Afghan government at the highest level, recently recognised as one of the three worst countries in the world in an international survey of public sector corruption released by Transparency International.
On the matter of Pakistan, Stagg pointed to the history between the two countries as one that had previously been amicable.
Pakistan was a friend and benefactor to Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s but the public perception is now unfortunately one of hostility, Stagg said, mainly because of their support of the militant Taliban.
"Pakistan, which 20 years ago perhaps was seen as a benefactor which had taken in large number of refugees and helped Afghanistan during the period of Soviet occupation, is now viewed so negatively by so many people here. I think its correct that by supporting the Taliban they have generated a good deal of hostility in public opinion in Afghanistan," Stagg said.
Ghazni Development Still a Dream: MP
TOLOnews.com By Azim Arash Thursday, 13 December 2012
Afghan lawmakers from central Ghazni province on Thursday said that the government of Afghanistan has lost multiple opportunities and chances to rehabilitate the province ahead of the worldwide attention it will receive in 2013.
Ghazni MP Mohammad Ali Akhlaqi said at a cultural and social workshop launched by the Ustan Ghulam Jailani Jalali Foundation in Kabul that the government failed to prepare the province to be the Islamic civilization capital for 2013, as selected by UNESCO.
"Unfortunately, since 2007 the government has failed to prepare Ghazni as the capital of Islamic Civilization for the year 2013. What was expected is not done and government is losing time and chances," Akhlaqi said.
Meanwhile, United Nations representative in Kabul Talaat Baig urged the Afghan government and international community to fully cooperate in rehabilitation of the city.
"The ethnic makeup is another advantage of Ghazni, with a population of various ethnicities. We and can call it mini Afghanistan. The United Nations will try to do its best to help coordinate the development of the city,"
Security, poor economy, and a lack of education and modernisation are the main challenges ahead of the rehabilitation of Ghazni province.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com