[Afghan News] December 19, 2012

[یاسمینه]

4,000 British troops to pull out of Afghanistan next year
David Cameron's decision to speed up withdrawal endorsed by Barack Obama as Nato prepares for pull-out deadline
The Guardian By Nick Hopkins and Patrick Wintour Tuesday 18 December 2012
Britain will withdraw at least 4,000 troops from Afghanistan next year as Nato begins a sharp pull-out from the country before its 2014 withdrawal deadline, David Cameron is expected to announce on Wednesday.

The prime minister made the decision at a meeting of the National Security Council after hearing the latest military assessments from the chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards.

The scale of the withdrawal is understood to be in step with the advice of commanders in Helmand province, where British troops have been based since 2006, and has been endorsed by Barack Obama.

Cameron and Obama spoke on Tuesday, the second time they have discussed Afghanistan since the president was re-elected. Obama has yet to declare how many American troops will withdraw next year, though an announcement is expected within days. "The prime minister made the decision at the NSC and there were no dissenting voices," a source said.

Cameron's announcement will end months of speculation about the number of British troops remaining in Helmand next year and will fire the starting gun for other Nato countries also looking to leave Afghanistan after more than a decade of conflict. The UK has 9,000 troops based in three districts of Helmand province, including its capital, Lashkar Gah, and it is thought next year's withdrawal will see troops coming back from the spring – the start of the fighting season.

Halving the size of the force next autumn is a risk and will put extra pressure on Afghan security forces, but despite concerns over recruitment and infiltration by the Taliban, British commanders believe they are up to the task and "the time has come to let go".

UK forces will continue to mentor and advise the Afghans, rather than offering frontline combat support, but by the end of next year no British troops are likely to be leading combat operations. However, special forces units will continue to work with their Afghan counterparts.

Though sources said there was no disagreement between Cameron and senior officers, the military has changed its advice about troop levels over the last nine months. Earlier this year, commanders were still saying that the UK, and other Nato allies, had to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan for as long as possible. In an interview with the Guardian in September, the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said this advice had changed during the course of a gruelling year in which more than 50 Nato troops – including at least 12 Britons – were killed by Afghan colleagues in so-called "green on blue attacks".

"I think that the message I am getting clearly from the military is that it might be possible to draw down further troops in 2013," Hammond said. "Whereas six months ago the message coming from them was that we really need to hold on to everything we have got for as long as we possibly can, I think they are seeing potentially more flexibility in the situation. Talking to senior commanders you get a clear sense that their view of force levels is evolving in light of their experiences."

Officials at the Treasury are also keen to see the UK wind up its operations in Afghanistan. The chancellor, George Osborne, is said to have been a strident voice calling for more personnel to come home sooner, arguing the country can ill afford to continue a campaign that has cost it more than £4bn this year.

More than 50 British bases and checkpoints have been closed across Helmand in recent months, and plans are already in place to bring back kit and equipment in 20,000 metal containers.

On Monday, Richards warned that Nato could not "cut and run" from Afghanistan and bemoaned the lack of recognition sometimes given to British achievements in Helmand, the most violent province in Afghanistan. "With our partners we have been more successful than many, regrettably, recognise," he said in a speech. "I have recently returned from a visit there and, I can tell you, we are meeting the tasks laid on us. I look forward to 2013 seeing us increasingly transition to an Afghan lead as we move from mentoring battalions to supporting brigades. The Afghan army now enjoys the support and trust of 84% of the country. That is a fantastic achievement, by them and Isaf [the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force]. It recognises the integral part they are playing in turning the destiny of a country away from violence and on to a path of peace."

He also urged diplomats to make progress in talks with the Taliban. "Now, surely, the time is ripe to take risk in order to find that elusive political solution 10 years of military effort and sacrifice has sought to create the conditions for. But in order to pull this off, it is vital that Afghan confidence in the west's long-term commitment to their country is retained." "Why should the Taliban reconcile, if they thought we were cutting and running?"

All Nato combat operations will finish by the end of 2014, when the whole of Afghanistan will have "transitioned" to control by local forces. Since 2001, 438 British soldiers and civilians have been killed in Afghanistan.


Karzai welcomes British pullout from Afghanistan
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan president says he welcomes the withdrawal of nearly half of Great Britain's troops from Afghanistan next year. Hamid Karzai says his forces are ready to take on defense of the country.

A statement from the president's office on Thursday said the partial pull-out is an "appropriate" move as NATO forces hand over the war against the Taliban to the Afghan military.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Wednesday that about 3,800 British troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2013, leaving some 5,000 into 2014.

The majority of NATO forces, including those of the United States, will depart by the end of 2014.


Pullout of NATO forces could badly hit Afghan construction industry
Xinhua By Farid Behbud, Chen Xin Dec. 18, 2012
KABUL - The construction industry in Afghanistan would be badly hit with the impending withdrawal of NATO-led coalition forces from the war-ravaged country and the continued threat from militant groups.

"The construction business hasn't been very well recently. It' s going to get worse after the military's announcement of a two- year security transition," Akram Shah, 38, a construction company owner, said.

Construction firms have complained that the road and building construction market had suffered a slump over the past few years.

On Pul-i-Charkhi road, a highway linking the capital Kabul to eastern provinces, the construction companies have parked road- building equipment to attract customers and clinch contracts.

"The violence and fighting are not the only obstacles. The administrative corruption and the extortion by officials have also affected our business," Shah told Xinhua.

The transition of security control from 100,000-strong NATO-led troops, most of them Americans, to Afghan forces is due to complete by the end of 2014.

"Without adequate security, no one dares to invest in any field, particularly in the construction industry. No construction company will have the courage to send workers and machineries to a construction site where security is lax and there is constant threat to the lives of workers and the construction company's equipment," Shah said.

Shah said most of his customers were foreign forces and foreign companies that mostly rent his equipment. He set up his company nearly 11 years ago.

"After all the foreigners would pull out, who will rent our machines?" Shah asked.

The Taliban, who ruled the country before they were ousted by a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, renewed armed insurgency, staging ambush and suicide attacks, killing combatants as well as civilians.

In May this year, the Taliban launched annual spring offensive against Afghan and NATO forces.

They also warned local constriction and logistic firms not to make a deal with foreigners and the government.

The militants have frequently attacked the local companies over the past decade. In one incident, up to 24 workers were killed and 59 wounded when three suicide bombers struck a construction site in Barmal district of Paktika province in early 2011.

"Why would we stay here now that we can do business somewhere else? If the threat persists, I and my stockholders would decide to move our assets to neighboring countries or even to Dubai," Shah said.

However, the Afghan government has recently announced that the Afghan army and police will take over full control of security from foreign forces by the end of 2013, a year ahead of schedule.

"There is no need to worry over the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a gathering of Afghan ambassadors and diplomats in his fortified palace on Saturday, adding the pullout of foreign troops from Afghanistan would not worsen the security situation in the country, rather it would help in stabilizing the country.

Not all construction dealers share Shah's negative assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

"Some American troops will stay after 2014 to help us secure the country. The government is now negotiating a security pact with the Americans," Aman with Hajji Sarwar Construction Company said.

"I know that the business is not as good as two years ago. I think it will take the construction industry time to recover. But without doubt, the uncertainty would end the moment the local security forces can prove that they are capable of providing security to the country," said Aman, 41, who like many Afghans, goes only by one name.

According to Karzai, even if the NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan, international financial support for the war-ravaged country will continue to pour in.

During an international aid conference in Japan in July, the donor countries pledged more than 16 billion U.S. dollars in development aid for Afghanistan through 2015.

The U.S. and its NATO allies also promised almost the same amount to support Afghan army and police after the pullout of their troops.

"I don't want to see another civil war and stifle here as we saw after the withdrawal of the Russian forces in 1990s," Karzai said.


Bomb blast kills 6 Taliban in S. Afghanistan
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Six Taliban militants were killed as their explosive device went off accidentally in Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Wednesday, spokesman for provincial administration Ahmad Zirak said.

"A group of Taliban rebels were busy planting mine on a road in Gereshk district Wednesday morning but the device exploded accidentally, killing six insurgents including a group commander Mullah Mohammad Shah on the spot," Zirat told Xinhua.

Taliban militants fighting the government and largely relying on suicide and roadside bombings are yet to comment.


Afghan, Taliban Leaders to Meet in Paris
Ayaz Gul VOA News December 19, 2012
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan peace negotiators and leaders are set to meet with the Taliban and other rebel groups in France on Thursday to discuss ways to end the conflict in Afghanistan as NATO troops prepare to withdraw in 2014. .

France is hosting the Afghan conference -- only days after completing its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The meeting will be at an undisclosed location near Paris, and media coverage is not permitted.

This will be the first time that officials of the Taliban rebel movement, members of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and senior leaders from the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance will sit across a table from one another to discuss their country’s future.

The Peace Council, established in September 2010 by President Hamid Karzai, is attempting to open talks with Taliban insurgents to persuade them to end the violence and join the political reconciliation process.

Fugitive Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami group, which is fighting NATO-led coalition forces alongside the Taliban, is attending this week’s meeting in France. Its delegation is led by Ghairat Baheer, Hikmatyar's son-in-law.

Baheer says his group and the Taliban have agreed to take part in the two-day discussions because they admire the French government for withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan.

“We believe that in the presence of the foreign troops in Afghanistan, there would not be any peaceful solution to the [Afghan] conflict. So this meeting is of great significance. It is taking place in a very critical and important time, and we are trying to exploit that situation, he said. "This is an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned negotiation. The French are only facilitators. They are not participating in our discussions, and I hope something positive will come out of it.”

Beheer says the United States is not involved in the meeting, which is organized by the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank.

Taliban officials say there would only be speeches at the event, and that no political commitments or peace negotiations will take place with representatives of the Afghan Peace Council.

Speaking to reporters in Kabul on Tuesday, Mr. Karzai reiterated his support for the Afghan dialogue.

The Afghan president said his country has “a desire for peace and every real and right initiative," whether it is from the United Nations or Afghan elders, whom he says, have been welcomed and supported by his government.

Support for political reconciliation has grown in the country because, Afghan leaders say, the nation is tired of fighting. Afghan activists say it is possible to reconcile with the Taliban without compromising on basic women's and human rights.

Afghan peace activist Nargis Nehan says there are parliamentarians and members of the government who were against women’s rights and used violence to claim power during the country's civil war in the 1990s.

“We have managed to reconcile with them, and today we see some of them as our ministers, as our parliamentarians. Of course, many of them have not been brought to justice; we are not happy about them. But we believe that if we have reconciliation and political settlement together with justice, we will be able to actually reconcile with them [i.e., the Taliban] and bring them on board,” Nehan said.

The Taliban imposed strict Islamic law in Afghanistan until they were routed by a U.S.-led invasion 11 years ago.


Panetta Cites Turning Point in Afghanistan
Luis Ramirez VOA News December 18, 2012
PENTAGON — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the war in Afghanistan has reached a turning point.

Speaking a few days after a trip to Afganistan, Panetta sounded optimistic Tuesday at a luncheon with members of the National Press Club in Washington.

*I had a chance to sit down with all of our military commanders throughout the region, throughout the country. I also went to Kandahar and met with our military commanders there and had the opportunity to meet with Afghan leaders as well. All of them believe that we have fundamentally turned the tide in that effort after years in which we lacked the right strategy and the necessary resources to try to achieve the mission we are embarked on,” Panetta said.

Panetta said the U.S. and its allies have reversed a five year trend of growing violence and noted that Taliban insurgents in the past year have been unable to regain any of the territory they lost.

Panetta said he expects insurgents to keep up their attacks to try to gain attention as allied forces withdraw ahead of a 2014 deadline.

A Pentagon report to Congress this month said insurgent attacks increased slightly this year.

On the U.S. budget impasse, Panetta had a warning for U.S. lawmakers who are working to reach a deal to avert a so-called fiscal cliff. He said a failure to reach agreement and the spending decisions are among the greatest threats facing the U.S. military today.

The U.S. defense department faces more losses than any other U.S. government agency if lawmakers do not reach a deal and automatic spending cuts of nearly 10 percent go into effect.


Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank in Washington says the cuts - totaling nearly $500 billion in a period of ten years - would be indiscriminate and could result in the loss of 80,000 jobs at the Department of Defense (DOD).

"Things like training, things like maintenance of equipment, things like DOD civilian personnel - these are civilians who work for DOD - they all are also going to be cut by 10 percent as well,” Harrison said.

In his remarks Tuesday, Panetta said lawmaker's failure to reach an agreement will weaken the United States in the minds of both its allies and its potential adversaries, and undermine the work and sacrifices that its troops are making.


Karzai's stealth bid to fix the elections
Foreign Policy (blog) By Jeffrey E Stern Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Early last month, while the United States was in its own pre-election haze, Americans giddily re-tweeting whatever incremental shift Nate Silver's model had just spat out, CNN personalities with their Magic Wall, nightly groping at some Ohio precinct, over in Kabul, Karzai was making his move. With the West's gaze averted, he quietly set in motion his plan to control Afghanistan's next election.

Through the ministry of justice, Karzai pushed a draft amendment to the country's election law that would add sweeping new restrictions to candidate eligibility for the Afghan presidency. The law now sits in Parliament awaiting debate, but if it passes, it would disqualify anyone who has a disability -- physical or psychological, anyone who can't speak and write in both Dari and Pashtu, anyone who doesn't have ten years of work experience in the administration, anyone who doesn't have a university degree, anyone who can't pay one million Afs (the equivalent of $20,000), and anyone who can't come up with 100,000 signatures cumulatively from at least twenty different provinces.

A contrast, to be sure, with the comparatively modest 35 years of age and a citizen required of U.S. presidential candidates. But is it a necessary one? After all, superficially the law would seem to weed out warlords, as well as especially ethnocentric candidates, for whom the inability to speak one of the languages that half the country speaks may indicate undue animus towards them, and for whom signatures from twenty provinces would seem to demand at least some appeal beyond just an ethnic powerbase which, in the fractious ethnic politics of the country, could be enough to propel a candidate into a run off election. Besides,

"Afghanistan is very unsettled," as Ambassador Ronald Neumann, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, told me. "It is not clear whether a brokered election coming out of agreement among power brokers would be more or less destabilizing than a contentious fight among multiple candidates with highly partisan ethnic or tribal political bases."

And perhaps that's what's going on here; perhaps Karzai knows better than anyone how to promote a peaceful transition, and, in furtherance of that goal, what kind of people should be disqualified.

Or perhaps he knows exactly which people he wants to disqualify. The timing, after all, is curious. Eighteen months before an election is awfully late to introduce laws that restrict who can stand for them. And when you look at the names that began to circulate in the rumors about the upcoming elections, an explanation emerges: he had to wait that long because he had to see who might run before designing laws to disqualify them.

Haneef Atmar, the highly regarded bureaucrat who served ably in three different ministries, lost a leg while fighting in Jalalabad in ‘88. The disability provision would disqualify him-and many others, given that Afghanistan has the world's second highest proportion of disabled people (behind only Cambodia) and has its most heavily mined capitol city. Yunos Quanooni, who came in second behind Karzai in the 2004 elections, and is a former Minister and speaker of the parliament, was disabled by a car bomb in 1993. Also disqualified. Zalmay Khalizad, an American of Afghan extraction who has served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and to the UN (and therefore whose candidacy would require an awkward -- though not unprecedented -- citizenship change) has no lack of expertise in government, but does not have the requisite ten years in Afghanistan's. And the list goes on. Is Karzai's law tailor-made to disqualify specific challengers?

That is, of course, is the most conspiratorial analysis. It's famously difficult to decipher Karzai's political calculus, but if he is trying to assure maximal control over his successor, how better than to cast doubt over who will be eligible to run? That would be vintage Karzai. In earlier cycles, it was the date of the election he delayed announcing and then moved up, which kneecapped opponents who hadn't been able to plan for the elections without knowing when they would be, and now only had two months to campaign. Indeed, today, potential candidates, and those who might support them, are sitting on their hands. No one wants to cast his or her lot without knowing who will actually be eligible. Every day the qualifications for office requirements to run are unknown, candidates without Karzai's blessing see their chances fade. There will simply not be enough time for an alternative to make himself (or, more improbably, herself) known to the Afghan electorate before the election.

Though Karzai's intentions are not apparent, the practical effects the law would have are clear. The "ten years in government administration" probably won't include Taliban or pre-Taliban government experience, which means what the law is really saying is that candidates must have been in government between 2001 and 2014-all the years Karzai was in charge. In practice, the clause is a lazy euphemism for "must have worked for Karzai."

Or, take the university degree requirement. At first blush, an apparent assurance that the president will not hail from the country's deep stable of power-hungry warlords. And yet in practice, it would be better at eliminating regular Afghans from the field than especially violent ones. A college education was a luxury unavailable to most who remained in the country during the thirty years of on again, off again war, so the requirement would reduce the field of homegrown candidates in favor of émigrés to Western countries who returned after the worst of the fighting-a species Afghans have historically had a hard time trusting. Nor would the degree requirement even be all that effective at preventing warlords from running, since they could sue for exception given their military rank, or their knowledge of Sharia, as many have before in order to qualify for ministerial posts or Parliamentary seats. Some actually have essentially honorary university degrees, granted by Iran or Pakistan as part of the patronage r
elationships those countries have with their clients in Afghanistan.

Then there is the filing fee. The average income in Afghanistan is about $1,000 a year; the filing fee is twenty times that. It would virtually guarantee that all the candidates either be from the country's small financial urban elite, or have external backing. Or, have Karzai's. By way of comparison, there is no filing fee for an American presidential candidate, and other developing or post-conflict countries that do have filing fees have very small ones, designed to insure some accountability from those who run for office-not eliminate everyone who isn't already wealthy.

And every single one of these stipulations, by the way, militates against the participation of women, because they all depend on access. Work experience, financial resources, education level, and even the mobility required to get signatures in twenty-five different provinces for the requisite 100,000 signatures, raise a bar still difficult for women in Afghanistan to clear.

So how should the international community respond? Does it matter whether these are the cynical machinations of a despot desperate to hold on to as much power as possible after he leaves office? To install a seat warmer loyal to him for five years so that he can run again in 2019 (though constitution sets a limit of two consecutive terms, it does not mention a limit on non-consecutive terms)? Or are these the considered steps of a leader who knows better than anyone how to prevent the kind of violence possible when a presidential election comes along to inflame ethnic tensions, at exactly the same time the troops that might quell them are pulling out?

Certainly, the law is anathema to real representative democracy, and potentially, to the legitimacy of a post-Karzai president who will already, regardless of who he is and to which ethnic group he belongs, have a severe mandate problem in large parts of the country.

Fortunately, the law is still pending. At weakening the field, though, its effect is not contingent on its ratification, since no one can start a campaigning in earnest without knowing whether they'll be able to run. Meanwhile, the United States has begun negations with the Karzai government about the terms of the U.S. military withdrawal, with particular tension over immunity for the U.S. troops that remain. We need to think seriously, though, about what it is those troops that stay behind will be protecting. And how do we balance the tension between one man's idea of how to maintain stability, and a people's right-a right which comprised part of the justification for this nation sacrificing no shortage of blood and treasure-to choose their leader, from a field of candidates unfiltered by one man notorious for cronyism?

Jeffrey E Stern--www.JeffreyEstern.com--is a writer and development worker whose reporting from Afghanistan, Kashmir, and elsewhere has appeared in Esquire, Time,newsweek.com/The Daily Beast, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications.


Civilian analysts gained Petraeus’s ear while he was commander in Afghanistan
The Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Dec 19, 2012
Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits?

Zero dollars.

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain “completely independent,” the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the entree granted the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some U.S. officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

Fred Kagan, speaking in an interview with his wife, acknowledged the arrangement was “strange and uncomfortable” at times. “We were going around speaking our minds, trying to force people to think about things in different ways and not being accountable to the heads” of various departments in the headquarters, he said.

The extent of the couple’s involvement in Petraeus’s headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said. More than a dozen senior military officers and civilian officials were interviewed for this article; most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Petraeus, through a former aide, declined to comment for this article.

As war-zone volunteers, the Kagans were not bound by stringent rules that apply to military personnel and private contractors. They could raise concerns directly with Petraeus, instead of going through subordinate officers, and were free to speak their minds without repercussion.

Some military officers and civilian U.S. government employees in Kabul praised the couple’s contributions — one general noted that “they did the work of 20 intelligence analysts.” Others expressed deep unease about their activities in the headquarters, particularly because of their affiliations and advocacy in Washington.

Fred Kagan, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was one of the intellectual architects of President George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and has sided with the Republican Party on many national security issues. Kim Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War, which favors an aggressive U.S. foreign policy. The Kagans supported President Obama’s decision to order a surge in Afghanistan, but they later broke with the White House on the subject of troop reductions. Both argue against any significant drawdown in forces there next year.

Petraeus’s successor, Gen. John R. Allen, allowed the Kagans to stay at the headquarters for his first few months on the job last year and permitted them to return for two additional short visits. After the couple’s most recent trip in September, they provided a briefing on the war and other foreign policy matters to the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

The Kagans said they continued to receive salaries from their think tanks while in Afghanistan. Kim Kagan’s institute is funded in part by large defense contractors. During Petraeus’s tenure in Kabul, she sent out a letter soliciting contributions so the organization could continue its military work, according to two people who saw the letter.

On Aug. 8, 2011, a month after he relinquished command in Afghanistan to take over at the CIA, Petraeus spoke at the institute’s first “President’s Circle” dinner, where he accepted an award from Kim Kagan. To join the President’s Circle, individuals must contribute at least $10,000 a year. The private event, held at the Newseum in Washington, also drew executives from defense contractors who fund the institute.

“What the Kagans do is they grade my work on a daily basis,” Petraeus said, prompting chortles from the audience. “There’s some suspicion that there’s a hand up my back, and it makes my lips talk, and it’s operated by one of the Doctors Kagan.”

Stumping for troop surges

Before the Iraq war hit rock bottom, the Kagans were little-known academics with doctorates in military history from Yale University who taught at West Point. He specialized in the Soviets, she in the ancient Greeks and Romans.

In 2005, Fred Kagan jumped to the American Enterprise Institute and joined the fractious debate over the Iraq war, arguing against the Bush administration’s planned troop withdrawals. The following year, as sectarian violence engulfed the country, he convened a strategy session at the institute aimed at developing a way to win the war. His follow-on research, conducted with his wife and retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, provided the strategic underpinning for the troop surge Bush approved in January 2007.

After Obama was elected, he made clear that his strategic priority was Afghanistan. The Kagans soon shifted focus. In March 2009, they co-wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that called for sending more forces to Afghanistan.

When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal assumed command of the war that summer, he invited several national security experts to help draft an assessment of the conflict for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The 14-member group included experts from several Washington think tanks. Among them were the Kagans.

The members, who were not paid by the military, stayed in Kabul for six weeks in an advisory role modeled after a similar team Petraeus convened in 2007 to evaluate the war in Iraq.

The Afghan assessment struck an alarming tone that helped McChrystal make his case for a troop surge, which Obama eventually authorized.

The Kagans should have been thrilled, but they soon grew concerned. They thought McChrystal’s headquarters was not providing enough information to them about the state of the war. The military began to slow-roll their requests to visit Afghanistan. In early 2010, they wrote an e-mail to McChrystal, copying Petraeus, that said they “were coming to the conclusion that the campaign was off track and that it was not going to be successful,” Fred Kagan said.

To some senior staff members in McChrystal’s headquarters, the e-mail read like a threat: Invite us to visit or we will publish a piece saying the war is lost.

Worried about the consequences of losing the Kagans, McChrystal authorized the trip, according to the staff members.

Fred Kagan said the message was not intended to pressure McChrystal, though he acknowledged, “I imagine that Stan didn’t appreciate receiving an e-mail like that.”

Indeed, McChrystal did not, according to the staff members. After an initial meeting in the headquarters, McChrystal asked his aides to leave the room and he proceeded to voice his displeasure to the Kagans.

After their trip, which lasted about two weeks, the Kagans penned a piece for the Wall Street Journal. “Military progress is steadily improving dynamics on the ground,” they wrote.

“We obviously came away with . . . a more nuanced view that persuaded us that we were incorrect in the assessment that we had gone in with,” Fred Kagan said in the interview.

Wielding the op-ed pen

When the couple returned to Kabul in late June 2010, they planned to stay for eight days. McChrystal had just been fired by Obama, and Petraeus was heading over to take charge of the war. They expected to meet with Petraeus, who had become a good friend, and then stick to their agenda of touring bases in the south.

The Defense Department permits independent analysts to observe combat operations, but the practice became far more common when Petraeus became the top commander in Iraq. He has said that conversations with outside specialists helped to shape his strategic thinking.

The take-home benefit was equally significant: When the opinion makers returned home, they inevitably wrote op-eds, gave speeches and testified before Congress, generally imparting a favorable message about progress under Petraeus, all of which helped him sell the war effort and expand his popularity.

Other commanders soon caught on. By the time the Kagans arrived in Kabul in June 2010, it was commonplace for think-tankers and big-name columnists to make seven-to-10-day visits once or twice a year. Two analysts from the Council on Foreign Relations, Max Boot and Stephen Biddle, were in Afghanistan at the same time at the invitation of Petraeus.

Petraeus asked the four to remain for a month to six weeks. Boot and Biddle couldn’t stay that long, but the Kagans were game, even though they had packed for only a short trip.

Petraeus called them his “directed telescopes” and urged them to focus on the challenge of tackling corruption and building an effective government in Afghanistan, a task they addressed with gusto.

“Petraeus relied on the Kagans for a fresh set of eyes . . . because he didn’t have the same nuanced understanding of Afghanistan that he had of Iraq,” a former aide to Petraeus said.

When the Kagans told Petraeus they had planned a vacation in August, he urged them to go ahead. But, Kim Kagan said, “he demanded that we return.”

Higher security clearance

When they returned in September 2010, the Kagans’ writ no longer resembled the traditional think-tank visit or an assessment mission intended to inform an incoming commander.

They were given desks in the office of the Strategic Initiatives Group, the commander’s in-house think tank, which typically is staffed with military officers and civilian government employees. The general’s staff helped upgrade their security clearances from “Secret” to “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” the highest-level of U.S. government classification.

The new clearances allowed the Kagans to visit “the pit,” the high-security lower level of the Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Center on the headquarters. There, they could read transcripts of Taliban phone and radio conversations monitored by the National Security Agency.

“They’d spend hours in there,” said one former senior civilian official at the headquarters. “They talked about how much they loved reading intel.”

Their immersion occurred at an opportune time. Petraeus was fond of speaking about the importance of using troops to protect Afghan communities from insurgents, but he recognized that summer that the Obama White House wanted to narrow the scope of the war. As a consequence, the general decided to emphasize attacking insurgent strongholds — and so did the Kagans.

They focused on the Haqqani network, which U.S. officials believe is supported by Pakistan’s intelligence service. Haqqani fighters have conducted numerous high-profile attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets in Kabul and other major cities.

The Kagans believed U.S. commanders needed to shift their focus from protecting key towns and cities to striking Haqqani encampments and smuggling routes, according to several current and former military and civilian officials familiar the issue.

In the late summer of 2010, they shared their views with field officers during a trip to the east. “They implied to brigade commanders that Petraeus would prefer them to devote their resources to killing Haqqanis,” said Doug Ollivant, a former senior adviser to the two-star general in charge of eastern Afghanistan.

But Petraeus had not yet issued new directives to his three-star subordinate or the two-star in the east. “It created huge confusion,” a senior military officer said. “Everyone knew the Kagans were close to Petraeus, so everyone assumed they were speaking for the boss.”

While the Kagans refused to discuss their work in detail — they said it was privileged and confidential — Fred Kagan insisted that they were careful to note before every meeting “that we were not speaking for Petraeus.”

“We did have a number of occasions where we sparred with local staffs,” Fred Kagan said. He said he and his wife wanted to facilitate conversations about vital tactical issues, exposing field commanders “to different ideas and different ways of looking at the problem.”

“Some people agreed with us,” he said, “and some people didn’t.”

Refusing remuneration

The Kagans are prolific contributors to debates about national security policy, cranking out a stream of op-eds and convening panel discussions at their respective institutions. But once they began working for Petraeus, they ceased writing and commenting in public.

“When we were in Afghanistan . . . we were not playing the Washington game,” Fred Kagan said. “We were not thinking about anything .  . . except how to defeat the enemy.”

He insisted he and his wife will never write a book about their work for Petraeus. “It is important to preserve the confidence and the integrity of the command climate,” Kim Kagan said.

Although they functioned as members of Petraeus’s staff, they said they did not want to be paid. “There are actual patriots in the world,” Fred Kagan said. “It was very important to me not to be seen to be profiting from the war.”

Military officials said the Defense Department travel rules permit civilian experts to provide services to the military without direct compensation. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, Col. John Robinson, said that the military was still examining to what extent Petraeus’s arrangement with the Kagans “satisfied regulations regarding civilian services to government organizations.”

The Kagans’ volunteerism was an open secret at the headquarters, and it bred suspicion. Some officers questioned whether they funneled confidential information to Republican politicians — the Kagans said they did not. Others worried that the couple was serving as in-house spies for Petraeus.

A colonel who worked for Petraeus said the Kagans “did great work,” but “the situation was very, very weird. It’s not how you run a headquarters.”

Allen, who succeeded Petraeus in July 2011, did not want to continue his predecessor’s arrangement with the Kagans, but he also did not want to upset them. Allen allowed them to stay for a few months. Two subsequent visits were kept to less thana month, according to a senior official in the Allen headquarters.

‘Special occasion’

For Kim Kagan, spending so many months away from research and advocacy work in Washington could have annoyed many donors to the Institute for the Study of War. But her major backers appear to have been pleased that she cultivated such close ties with Petraeus, who went from Kabul to head the CIA before resigning this fall over his affair with Broadwell.

At the August 2011 dinner honoring Petraeus, Kagan thanked executives from two defense contractors who sit on her institute’s corporate council, DynCorp International and CACI International. The event was sponsored by General Dynamics. All three firms have business interests in the Afghan war.

Kagan told the audience that their funding allowed her to assist Petraeus. “The ability to have a 15-month deployment essentially in the service of those who needed some help — and the ability to go at a moment’s notice — that’s something you all have sponsored,” she said.

She called her work for him “an extraordinary and special occasion.”

After accepting the award, Petraeus heaped praise on the institute.

“Thanks to all of you for supporting an organization that General Keane very accurately described as filling a niche — a very, very important one,” he said. “It’s now a deployable organization. We’re going to start issuing them combat service stripes.”


Insight: Once a symbol of new Afghanistan, can policewomen survive?
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman Tue Dec 18, 2012
KABUL - Shortly after Friba joined the Afghan National Police, she gave herself the nickname "dragon" and vowed to bring law and order to her tormented homeland.

Five years later, she is tired of rebuffing the sexual advances of male colleagues, worries the budget for the female force will shrink and fears the government will abandon them.

Women in the police force were held up as a showcase for Afghan-Western efforts to promote rights in the new Afghanistan, born from the optimism that swept the country after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Images of gun-wielding Afghan policewomen have been broadcast across the globe, even inspiring a television program popular with young Afghan women.

But going from the burqa to the olive green uniform has not been easy.

In Reuters interviews with 12 policewomen in districts across the Afghan capital, complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and bitter frustration were prevalent.

President Hamid Karzai's goal is for 5,000 women to join the Afghan National Police (ANP) by the end of 2014, when most foreign troops will leave the country.

But government neglect, poor recruitment and a lack of interest on the part of authorities and the male-dominated society mean there are only 1,850 female police officers on the beat, or about 1.25 percent of the entire force.

And it looks to get worse.

Friba, who asked that her second name not be used, says it all when she runs a manicured finger across her throat: "Once foreigners leave we won't even be able to go to the market. We'll be back in burqas. The Taliban are coming back and we all know it."

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have improved significantly since the Taliban were ousted. Women have won back basic rights in voting, education and work since Taliban rule, when they were not allowed out of their homes without a male escort and could be publicly stoned to death for adultery.

But problems persist in the deeply conservative Muslim society scarred by decades of conflict. The United Nations said this month that despite progress, there was a dramatic under reporting of cases of violence against women.

Some female lawmakers and rights groups blame Karzai's government for a waning interest in women's rights as it seeks peace talks with the Taliban, accusations his administration deny.

"We have largely failed in our campaign to create a female police force," said a senior Afghan security official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

"Mullahs are against it, and the women are seen as not up to the job," he added, referring to Muslim preachers.

Almost a third of the members of the female force work in Kabul, performing duties such as conducting security checks on women at the airport and checking biometric data.

"CONSTANTLY HARASSED"

Friba sat in a city police station room decorated with posters of policemen clutching weapons to talk to Reuters.

"I am the dragon and I can defend myself, but most of the girls are constantly harassed," she said.

"Just yesterday my colleague put his hands on one of the girl's breasts. She was embarrassed and giggled while he squeezed them. Then she turned to us and burst into tears."

On the other side of Kabul, detective Lailoma, who also asked that her family name not be used, said several policewomen under her command had been raped by their male colleagues.

Dyed russet hair poking out from her black hijab, part of the female ANP uniform, Lailoma wrung her hands as she complained about male colleagues: "They want it to be like the time of the Taliban. They tell us every day we are bad women and should not be allowed to work here."

Male colleagues also taunt the women, she added, often preventing them from entering the kitchen, meaning they miss out on lunch.

On several occasions, male colleagues interrupted Reuters interviews in what the policewomen said were attempts to intimidate them into silence.

One male officer entered the room without knocking three times to retrieve pencils; another spent 20 minutes dusting off his hat, only to put it back on a shelf. The women switched subjects when the men came in.

Rana, a 31-year-old, heavy-set policewoman with curly hair, said policewomen were expected to perform sexual favors: "We're expected to do them to just stay in the force."

The raping of policewomen by their male counterparts "definitely takes place", said Colonel Sayed Omar Saboor, deputy director for gender and human rights at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.

"These men are largely illiterate and see the women as immoral."

Insecurity, opposition to women working out of the home and sexism deter many women from signing up, said Saboor.

But impoverished widows sometimes have no choice. A starting salary is about 10,500 afghanis a month ($210).

DIFFICULT

The Interior Ministry and foreign organizations responsible for training the women police - NATO, the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - say recruitment poses the main challenge to the force.

"It is just difficult. There is no real history of women in the police force, there is no precedent, even having an open space for women in employment is a challenge," UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan told Reuters.

A recruitment campaign of television adverts and posters has not produced the desired effect in a country where there are huge social and religious divides between the rural and urban populations. Even fewer join the national army, where some 350 women serve amongst 190,000.

"Much of the male leadership don't want to have anything to do with women in the ANP. Commanders want them out of their units," Saboor said, adding that having 2,500 female police officers could be realistic by end-2014.

Of those who join, few have prospects for promotion. They often find themselves in police stations without proper facilities for women, such as toilets or changing rooms which are vital for the many who hide the fact that they work from their families.

The sprawling Interior Ministry has only recently started work on installing toilets for women. "Ten years of this war have passed, and we're only now building them a toilet," Saboor said with a wry laugh.

For First Lieutenant Naderah Keshmiri, whose humble yet stern approach helps her pursue cases of violence against women, life as a policewoman means being undervalued.

"My male subordinates quickly became generals. But not me. Where's my promotion?" she asked in a UNDP-backed Family Response Unit, which she heads.

The UNDP has set up 33 of the units countrywide, which help increase female visibility in the ANP, with plans to more than double them by 2015.

A Western female police trainer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said policewomen are almost always passed over for promotion by their male commanders.

U.S. lawmakers are hoping to amend a defense bill by year-end to protect the rights of Afghan women during the security transition. They want to reduce physical and cultural barriers to women joining the security forces.

Ethnicity also plays a role: 55 percent of women in the ANP are ethnic Tajik, Afghanistan's second-largest ethnic group. Recruiting from the largest and most conservative ethnic group, the Pashtuns, is difficult.

The Taliban draw most of their support from the Pashtuns, who dominate the south of the country. Pashtun women make up only 15 percent of the force.

Hazaras, a largely Shi'ite minority who suffered enormous losses at the hands of the Taliban, are overrepresented amongst the women, making up 24 percent, according to figures from NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.

But many of the policewomen are wondering whether their force can survive.

Lowering her voice, Friba whispered: "As soon as the foreigners leave, they'll reduce our salaries. This will not happen to the men. Or perhaps they'll kick us out entirely."

(Editing by Michael Georgy and Robert Birsel)


Many insider attacks in Afghanistan stem from personal motives, data suggest
Washington Post By Ernesto Londoño Dec 19, 2012
The Taliban has billed a rash of insider attacks targeting international troops in Afghanistan as an effective battlefield strategy, but detailed data disclosed recently by the U.S. military suggest that the largest percentage of such incidents probably stemmed from personal motives rather than enemy infiltration.

Of the 79 insider attacks from May 2007 to September 2012, military investigators found that 38 percent were likely to have been triggered by personal motives; 6 percent were suspected cases of enemy infiltration; and 14 percent were attributed to co-option, in which insurgents persuaded a member of the security forces to help carry out an attack. The cause of 38 percent of the cases was unknown or still under investigation.

The data on attacks by Afghan security personnel or military interpreters were included in a Pentagon report to Congress on operations in Afghanistan that was released last week.

After a sharp uptick in the number of “green on blue” attacks in the summer, the U.S. military temporarily suspended joint patrols. At least 116 NATO troops have been killed in insider attacks since 2007, including 51 this year.

U.S. officials say they remain focused on enhancing training and security procedures to mitigate what they see as an enduring threat. As of Oct. 13, insider attacks accounted for 21 percent of NATO combat deaths in Afghanistan this year, an all-time high since the military started tracking such incidents in 2007.

“I would be very loath to say that it’s a problem that’s been solved,” a senior defense official said last week, briefing journalists on the Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, which is issued twice a year. “It’s a problem we will continue to address.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity per department protocol, said that regardless of the motive behind insider attacks, “they were all used by the Taliban as part of their narrative.”

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has developed several initiatives to combat the threat, increased its emphasis on cultural sensitivity and established a “guardian angel” system in which designated American troops watch over their comrades during meetings and patrols with Afghans.

An Oct. 12 Army draft handbook on the insider threat in Afghanistan summarized a handful of cases in which Afghans opened fire on their foreign allies, providing a rare window into the kind of situations that sparked attacks. The draft said many altercations occurred because foreign troops “lack empathy for Muslims and/or cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction” from Afghan troops.

One of the shootings cited occurred during an argument over the propriety of smoking during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, according to the draft manual, which was obtained by The Washington Post. While waiting outside a meeting of U.S. and Afghan security leaders, an American soldier asked an Afghan for a lighter so he could smoke.

“The [Afghan soldier] refused and rebuffed the U.S. service member for wanting to smoke during Ramadan,” a period in which Muslims fast and refrain from smoking during daylight hours, according to the draft. “The U.S. service member cursed the [Afghan soldier] and disparaged his religious beliefs,” the report said. As the argument escalated, the Afghan raised his weapon. Both the Afghan and the American fired shots, and both were wounded.

The 75-page manual, which the U.S.-led command in Afghanistan has not adopted or endorsed, contains several recommendations, including that foreign and Afghan troops should avoid discussion of religion, women, sex and human rights. The authors of the draft, which was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, also suggested that female foreign troops avoid wearing shorts around Afghan men.

Ahmad Shuja, an Afghan writer and analyst who heads the Washington-based Foundation for Afghanistan, said leaders of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan have done a good job of understanding and explaining the cultural differences that have created friction.

“That’s the easy part,” Shuja said. “The hard part is translating that knowledge down to the fighting unit: changing ISAF soldiers’ behavior and changing how an Afghan soldier perceives a cultural faux pas.”


Sri Lanka, Afghanistan to cooperate in defense, education
COLOMBO, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have agreed to cooperate in defense and education as well as open embassies in each other's capital as they step up bilateral relations, a top official said here on Wednesday.

The first Afghan Foreign Affairs Minister to visit Sri Lanka, Zalmai Rassoul held a joint press conference with his Sri Lankan counterpart G.L. Peiris ahead of a key meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Peiris told media that they were keen to work on several front as both countries are emerging from deep-rooted conflict.

"Among the areas that we discussed for close collaboration during the bilateral discussions that we had a few minutes ago were such areas as political cooperation, we have much in common in terms of core values and our basic ideology and vision for our nations the economic side of things is extremely important," he said.

Peiris spoke about the long tradition of education in Sri Lanka and the government's willingness to share their experience with Afghanistan.

"We have now signed two agreements which will constitute the building blocks for consolidating and strengthening this economic relationship. We also talked about collaboration in the services sector, development sector with a particular focus on education. We are happy to share with Afghanistan that reservoir of experience."

Both parties also agreed on defense cooperation and strengthening relations by opening embassies.

"The relation between Afghanistan and Sri Lanka is important for the wellbeing of the region. Our future is in the region," Rassoul insisted, adding that despite the violence Afghanistan was "moving towards development."


'Rush' to Contract Minerals Is Worrying: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Tuesday, 18 December 2012
The Natural Resources and Environment Committee of the Afghan parliament called on top officials from several ministries as well as a number of academics to discuss the problems with the law of mines and consult on resolving the "rush" over contracting the country's natural resources.

"One year of this government's tenure is left. Our question is, Would hurrying to contract our mines help us reach the goal or would this act – in this short time – increase the problems?" asked head of Natural Resources and Environment Committee Obaidullah Ramin.

The ministers of economy and commerce and industries shared the committee's concern over what it said is a rush to contract the country's mines.

"We still don't have enough knowledge of contracting the minerals, and in my opinion there should be no rush to hand them out," said Minister of Economy Abdulhadi Arghandiwal.

"Sometimes what we are told in the meetings is different from what is on the contracts, and I think this is not good at all. The value of the minerals should not fall victim to haste," said Minister of Commerce and Industries Anwarulhaq Ahadi.

However, the ministry of finance seemed to defend the current course.

"If procurement laws are enforced properly, I think the problems will be resolved and we will reach the necessary transparency in the contracts," said Shafiqullah Qarizada, deputy minister of finance for policy.

Afghanistan's mines and resources of oil and gas are said to be of the most important sources of revenue for the country after 2014, yet there are lingering concerns that rushing the contracting process might bring in less revenue.


Kabul Police Detain Kidnappers, Free Victims
TOLOnews.com By Azim Arash Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Police detained two groups of thieves in Kabul city and nine kidnappers in a special operation in the Paghman and Surobi districts of Kabul.

Police had freed a 17-year-old boy, Nezamuddin, from the kidnappers two days ago. He had been kidnapped from the city's Khushal Khan area, and his captors demanded $400,000, police said.

"Last Thursday, I was in the bazaar when, suddenly, three men forced me into a vehicle, telling me someone wanted to meet me," Nezamuddin said.

Police also freed an Indian doctor, his Afghan colleague and a driver who had been kidnapped from the Surobi district. Four men have been arrested in connection with the crime, said Gen. Ayub Salangi, Kabul police chief.


Taliban Attack Nuristan District, Injure Police Chief
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Several Taliban insurgents attacked the Du-Aab district of eastern Nuristan province on Monday, injuring the district police chief and four other police officers, local officials said.

"The Taliban have blocked the highway leading to the district and clashes continue. Several Taliban insurgents have been killed by security forces," Provincial Governor Mohammad Tamim Nuristani said.

He called on the central government to send more troops to the province to bolster local security forces.

There were no reports about the number of civilian casualties during the attacks, Nuristani said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said several Afghan security forces have been killed in the clashes.

Nuristan province borders Pakistan. Insurgents have previously attacked Du Ab and other districts, including Waigal and Barg-i-Matal.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com