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Police say Afghan policewoman kills US adviser
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said.
Kabul's Deputy Police Chief Mohammad Daoud Amin said it has not been determined whether the killing was intentional or accidental and that an investigation is under way. He declined to elaborate on the circumstances of the killing or give more details.
It was also not known whether the victim was a U.S. military or civilian adviser. The NATO military command said it was looking into reports of the shooting but had no independent information.
More than 50 international troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or police this year, and a number of other assaults — insider attacks as they are known — are still under investigations. NATO forces, due to mostly withdraw from the country by 2014, have speeded up efforts to train and advise Afghan military and police units before the pullout.
The surge in insider attacks is throwing doubt on the capability of the Afghan security forces to take over from international troops and has further undermined public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries.
More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces also have died this year in attacks by their own colleagues. Taliban militants claim such attacks reflect a growing popular opposition to both foreign military presence and the Kabul government.
American Adviser Killed in Afghan 'Insider' Attack
VOA News December 24, 2012
Afghan and NATO officials say a female Afghan police officer has killed an American adviser in the Afghan capital, in the first known "insider" attack by a woman.
The coalition says a woman wearing a police uniform shot and killed a contracted civilian employee of NATO on Monday inside Kabul's heavily guarded police headquarters. Afghan officials say the policewoman drew a pistol and shot the American once at close range.
The woman was arrested after the incident and was being interrogated by police.
Media reports say the suspect is a police officer named Nargis who works in the Legal and Gender Equality Department at the Interior Ministry.
NATO spokesman Canadian Brigadier General John Madower said a joint Afghan-NATO investigation was taking place and that this was a "very sad occasion."
The shooting is the latest in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on a member of the Western coalition working with Afghan forces. At least 60 coalition members have been killed this year. NATO has attributed the majority of insider attacks to personal disputes. NATO has said Taliban infiltrators were responsible for about 25 percent of the attacks.
Coalition spokesman Madower told reporters in Kabul on Monday that "these are events that we are familiar with, we work very, very closely with our Afghan partners, there are events that affect both ISAF and our Afghan national security force brothers and we continue to work to mitigate them as much as possible."
The attack took place just hours after a local Afghan police commander shot five of his colleagues at a checkpoint in the northern province of Jawzjan. Afghan officials said the police office ran away to join the Taliban.
Also Monday, NATO said a coalition service member was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No other details were given.
Russia, India sign weapons deals worth billions
By By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | Associated Press
NEW DELHI (AP) — Russia and India signed weapons deals worth billions of dollars Monday as President Vladimir Putin sought to further boost ties with an old ally.
Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed cooperation between their countries as officials signed a $1.6 billion deal for 42 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets that will be license-built in India from Russian components and a $1.3 billion contract for the delivery of 71 Mil Mi-17 military helicopters.
"We agreed to further strengthen the traditions of close cooperation in the military and technical areas," Putin said after the signing.
Singh said the talks included discussions on the security situation in the region, including Afghanistan.
"India and Russia share the objective of a stable, united, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan, free from extremism," Singh told reporters after the talks.
Russia and India have shared close ties since the Cold War, when Moscow was a key ally and the principal arms supplier to New Delhi.
The ties slackened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but grew stronger again after Putin came to power in 2000, seeking to revive Moscow's global clout and restore ties with old allies.
While the volume of Russian-Indian trade has risen sixfold since 2000 and is expected to reach $10 billion this year, the growth has slowed in recent years. And even though India remains the No. 1 customer for Russia's arms industries, Moscow has recently lost several multibillion-dollar contracts to Western weapons makers.
Russia has maintained its strong positions in the Indian market with $30 billion worth of arms contracts with India signed in 2000-2010 that envisaged supplies of hundreds of fighter jets, missiles, tanks and other weapons, a large part of which were license-produced in India. The countries have cooperated on building an advanced fighter plane and a new transport aircraft, and have jointly developed a supersonic cruise missile for the Indian Navy.
But the military cooperation has hit snags in recent years, as New Delhi shops increasingly for Western weapons. The Indians also haven't been always happy with the quality of Russian weapons and their rising prices.
In one notable example, in 2004 Russia signed a $1 billion contract to refurbish a Soviet-built aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy. While the deal called for the ship to be commissioned in 2008, it is still in a Russian shipyard and the contract price has reportedly soared to $2.3 billion. The target date for the carrier's completion was moved back again this year after it suffered major engine problems in sea trials. Russian officials now promise to hand it over to India in the end of 2013.
India has also demanded that Russia pay fines for failing to meet terms under a 2006 contract for building three frigates for its navy, the third of which is yet to be commissioned.
Russia recently has suffered major defeats in competition with Western rivals in the Indian arms market.
Last year, Russia lost a tender to supply the Indian Air Force with 126 new fighter jets worth nearly $11 billion to France's Dassault Rafale. And last month, Boeing won India's order for a batch of heavy-lift helicopters worth $1.4 billion.
Russia has sought to downplay recent defeats of its arms traders, saying that other weapons deals with India are under preparation.
As part of its cooperation with India, Russia also has built the first reactor at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant and is building a second unit there. The project has been delayed by protests by anti-nuclear groups and local residents.
The head of the Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told reporters Monday that the reactors in Kudankulam are the safest in the world, adding that studies have shown that they would have withstood a disaster like an earthquake and tsunami that caused multiple meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan last year. Kiriyenko said Rosatom plans to build more reactors in India.
Putin's visit was scheduled for late October, but was delayed as the Russian leader suspended foreign travel for about two months. The Kremlin acknowledged that he was suffering from a muscle pulled during judo training. Putin resumed active travel earlier this month, making several foreign trips.
Blast rocks religious school in Afghan's Badakhshan province, wounds 13
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- A blast ripped through a Medressah or religious school in Badakshan province 315 km northeast of Kabul on Monday, injuring 13 Taliban or seminarians, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh said.
"The blast took place inside a Medressah (religious school) in Shinoi village of Yawan district today as a result 13 Taliban ( seminarians) were injured six of them in critical condition," Rasikh told Xinhua.
He also said "it might be gas cylinder blast", adding investigation has been initiated to identify the reason for the incident.
It is the first time that a blast has rocked Medressah or religious school and injuring Taliban or seminarians in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan where government interests including schools and teachers attacked.
Steep U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan brings substantial risks
Washington Post By Max Boot Opinion Dec 24, 2012
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming book, “Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present.”
The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014, concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul. The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms.
Consider one simple fact: Kandahar, the city where the Taliban movement started, is 310 miles southwest of Kabul. Imagine that intelligence analysts have identified a “high-value target” — say, a terrorist facilitator with links to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban — in Kandahar. How would the U.S. military capture or kill him without a secure base in Kandahar?
This scenario is, on some level, fanciful, because the lack of a U.S. presence on the ground around Kandahar would make it very difficult to generate useful intelligence. How would the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency run agents or even operate drones? Even assuming that the intelligence could be garnered, it would be exceedingly hard to act on the information.
A SEAL or Delta Force team typically reaches its target by helicopter. But Kandahar is a two-hour helicopter flight from Kabul and a fully loaded Blackhawk would need to refuel to make the round trip. Assuming there is no U.S. base in Kandahar, this would require aerial refueling, which is difficult and costly and would not necessarily be available 24-7. Given the long flight time, there is a good chance that by the time the commandos arrived, the target would have moved on.
It is doubtful that such a force would be dispatched in the first place, however, because commanders would be reluctant to send special operators into high-risk situations without having quick-reaction forces standing by to rescue them in the event of trouble. U.S. generals would not feel comfortable entrusting the lives of these elite operators to local Afghan army forces, especially in light of the well-advertised problem of Taliban infiltrators, so they would probably not order the mission in the first place.
That would leave only one way to attack a terrorist kingpin in Kandahar: from the air, with either an armed Predator or a manned aircraft such as an F-16. Yet the ability to keep either kind of aerial platform over Kandahar would be severely limited by the need to fly 600 miles round-trip from Bagram simply to arrive on station. So there would probably be a considerable time lag simply to drop a bomb, which again raises the risk of missing the target.
Relying on air power carries other risks, such as the potential for collateral damage, which can create more enemies than missions eliminate. Aerial attacks on wedding parties and the like were especially common in Afghanistan before the troop surge started in 2009. Without forward air controllers to call in air strikes, the possibility of errors goes up.
Another problem with air power is that it precludes the possibility of interrogating suspects and examining their computers and paperwork — one of the best sources of intelligence about terrorist machinations. The Joint Special Operations Command, composed of the top-tier special operators, has become such an effective man-hunting machine precisely because it has become so proficient at “sensitive site exploitation” and interrogation of detainees, sometimes leading to fresh missions being launched the night before a detainee’s confederates are even aware that he has been taken into custody. That will become impossible under the planned drawdown.
All in all, limiting the U.S. presence to 6,000 or so troops in Bagram and Kabul would be a major counterterrorism setback. It would also have a deleterious impact on the combat effectiveness of the Afghan army and police.
The Afghan National Security Forces, now 352,000 strong, have made considerable strides, but they remain heavily reliant on U.S. help for air support, logistics, intelligence, route clearance and other key “enablers.” The Defense Department’s new Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan noted that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate without coalition help. The report also “anticipates that the [Afghan army] will continue to require assistance with logistics and acquisition processes beyond December 2014.”
Afghanistan is not expected to have a functioning air force before 2017, so Afghan forces will remain especially dependent on U.S. help for air support and aerial medevac. But it is doubtful that U.S. commanders would call in airstrikes without having U.S. advisers embedded with Afghan units — and under the rumored plan, no such advisers will be available. Afghan security forces will be on their own to face an entrenched insurgency, which has been degraded by the surge but remains a major threat in southern and eastern Afghanistan, thanks in no small measure to its havens in Pakistan.
It is hard to imagine how anyone in the Obama administration could conclude that a force of just 6,000 personnel would be sufficient after 2014 when, even with 68,000 troops today, the United States cannot prevent the Taliban and Haqqanis from operating openly an hour’s drive from Kabul. Such a precipitous drawdown vastly increases the risk of a Taliban takeover.
Installation of 3rd turbine in Kajaki dam to start soon
By Sayed Jawad Khaama Press December 24, 2012
Officials in Helmand water and electricity department said the installation work of the third turbine in Kajaki electricity dam will start in the near future.
The government of Afghanistan and international community five years back decided to complete the project work which started nearly 50 years ago.
NATO troops transported the turbine and other required materials in Kakaji district however the installation work was delayed due to security issues.
Provincial water and electricity department chief Ahlullah Abidi said the survey work, installation of pillars and transfer of electricity line from Kajaki to Lashkargah and Kandahar city has already started.
He said, “The installation and assembly work will start in December. Practical work on transfer of electricity network has already started however the work will be totally completed in the next two years. Contract of Greshk electricity system has also completed and the work will start in this month. The total contract values will around $75 milion.”
Mr. Abidi further added the equipments and other materials for the installation of the third turbine has also arrived in Kajaki electricity dam.
This comes as Afghan presidential palace, water and energy ministry and other related departments have for several times vowed to start the installation work of third turbine in Kajaki water dam however no practical step has been taken so far and residents in Helmand and Kandahar provinces are still facing lack of electricity.
However provincial water and electricity department officials are saying that there are no security issues in Kajaki district to prevent the installation of the third turbine.
Kajaki electricity dam currently has the capability of producing 33 MW of electricity and by completion of this project the production will increase to 51 MW.
The officials also added the overall cost for the installation and rehabilitation of Kajaki electricity dam will be $180 million which will be paid by United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Taliban say they don’t want monopoly on power in Afghanistan, pledge rights for women
Associated Press Dec 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban representatives at a conference did not insist on total power in Afghanistan and pledged to grant rights to women that the militant Islamist group itself brutally suppressed in the past, according to a Taliban statement received Sunday.
The pledges emerged from a rare meeting last week involving Taliban and Kabul government representatives.
The less strident substance and tone came in a speech delivered at a conference in France. The French hosts described it as a discussion among Afghans rather than peace negotiations.
It was hard to determine whether the softer line taken by the Taliban representatives reflected a real shift in policy or a salvo in the propaganda war for the hearts and minds of Afghans.
The speech said that a new constitution would protect civil and political rights of all citizens. It promised that women would be allowed to choose husbands, own property, attend school and seek work, rights denied them during Taliban rule, which ended with the 2001 U.S. invasion. The speech was emailed from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
“We are not looking to monopolize power. We want an all-Afghan inclusive government,” the speech said. It was delivered by two Taliban officials, Mawlawi Shahbuddin Dilawar and Muhammad Naeem during the conference on Thursday and Friday.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government welcomed such talks but did not expect them to bridge the gap between the warring sides.
The United States started to embrace the idea of peace talks after President Barack Obama took office, but discussions stalled in recent years, despite the formation of an Afghan government council tasked with reaching out to the Taliban and the establishment of a Taliban political office in Qatar.
“The peace initiative is a process, and one or two or three meetings are not going to solve the problems. But we are hopeful for the future,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai said. He said the government’s preconditions for the talks with the Taliban have not changed: a cease-fire, recognition of the Afghan constitution, cutting ties with international terrorists and agreeing to respect the rights of Afghan citizens including women and children.
The Taliban speech reiterated the group’s own longtime policies, declaring that the current constitution was “illegitimate because it is written under the shadow of (U.S.) B-52 aircraft” and that the Taliban remained the legitimate government of the country, a reference to the U.S.-led campaign that drove the Taliban from power.
It also called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and said a 2014 national election was “not beneficial for solving the Afghan quandary” because it would take place while the country was still under foreign occupation.
Most NATO forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by 2014. The Kabul government and its international backers hope that a peace deal can be brokered with the Taliban and other militant groups before the pullout. NATO still has more than 100,000 troops, including 66,000 U.S. soldiers, on the ground. Washington is now determining the size of a scaled down force the United States will keep in Afghanistan after 2014.
“The occupation must be ended as a first step, which is the desire of the entire nation, because this is the mother of all these tragedies,” the speech said.
The conference was also attended by the Hezb-e-Islami group, which is allied with the Taliban, and political opponents of President Hamid Karzai, whom the Taliban regard as a puppet of Washington.
Afghan students leave home to find a safe place to go to school
The Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Dec 24, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - The first time insurgents burned down Hazratullah’s school, he helped rebuild it with donated carpets and salvaged chalkboards. But when Taliban fighters returned with guns and gasoline, torching his makeshift seventh-grade classroom, Hazratullah decided it was time to leave.
“We knew then that if we wanted to go to school, we would have to move,” said the 14-year-old, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
He and his three cousins packed clothes and blankets. Then their parents drove them to a refuge they had heard rumors about — a place for children whose schools had been shuttered or destroyed by the Taliban. Ten miles outside this eastern Afghan city, they found the Pashtunistan School: a haven from insurgents, a chance for Hazratullah to finish seventh grade.
But Hazratullah’s new school is also a monument to one of his government’s greatest failures — its inability to protect students and teachers in vast stretches of territory that have been effectively ceded back to the Taliban. On its campus, 350 boys from across Afghanistan swap stories about Taliban fighters beating their teachers and setting their classrooms on fire.
Afghan officials acknowledge that with poor security in much of the country, the only way to educate a large portion of the population is to pluck children out of Taliban-dominated districts and move them to safer areas.
There are two Afghanistans, they say: one where public education can be protected, and another where it cannot. That acknowledgment reflects a stark shift from the years of U.S.-funded efforts to rebuild and reopen schools in traditional insurgent strongholds.
The new reality is reflected in a NATO talking point intended to convey how concentrated violence in Afghanistan has become and how much of the country enjoys relative peace.
“Eighty percent of the enemy attacks take place in areas where only 20 percent of the Afghan population lives,” NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently told reporters.
But what of that less fortunate 20 percent, a figure that includes millions of children?
With the Taliban burning schoolhouses and threatening students in much of the south and east, educators here have rechanneled their ambition. Part of the problem, Afghan officials say, is that the United States built many schools in places where security could not be maintained. More than 90 percent of Afghanistan’s 500 shuttered schools are in four provinces in the country’s volatile southeast.
“The reality is that in some areas, the lack of security means there is no access to education,” said Farooq Wardak, the Afghan minister of education. “Either we can move those students to safer places, or they will remain uneducated and easy for the Taliban to absorb.”
‘They beat our teachers’
Although there are exponentially more children enrolled in school than there were when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, opposition to public education in many districts appears intractable.
The Taliban’s antipathy toward the education of girls is well known. But boys’ schools, too, are in the Taliban’s crosshairs, because they are viewed as an extension of the government and, ultimately, of the West. Classes organized and funded by the Karzai administration are viewed as an affront to the Taliban in places the group effectively controls.
Each student at the Pashtunistan School has his own story about the Taliban encroaching on classrooms, or crossfire making the trip to school impossible.
“They beat our teachers with sticks,” said Abdul Karim, from Nurestan province.
“They threatened to behead us if we kept going,” said Noorgullah, from Konar province.
“They burned it to the ground,” said Nakibullah, from Paktia province.
The boys sleep side by side in rooms adorned with class schedules and pictures of their native provinces. Compared with those places, life here feels easy and safe.
When the boys return home for rare visits, they leave their textbooks at school, for fear of being caught by the Taliban.
About half of all schools are closed in Zabul province, where the NATO troop drawdown has been particularly rapid. About a third of schools are closed in Helmand and a quarter in Kandahar, according to the Afghan government’s tally. In several districts where families have sent sons to Pashtunistan, the insurgency isn’t the biggest problem. There simply aren’t enough trained teachers to maintain a school.
A number of the shuttered schools were built by foreign powers, shiny tributes to a new Afghanistan. Only a few years ago, Western officials proclaimed that public education would reach even the country’s darkest and most dangerous corners.
“The enemies, they don’t want to let innocent students get educated,” said Sharifullah Naseri, Zabul’s provincial spokesman.
Some Western-funded schools never opened because of security concerns. Others were closed by the insurgency days after being inaugurated. Some schools survived for years, like Hazratullah’s, but collapsed as security grew weaker.
“Wherever I drive, I see schools built by the U.S. that were closed or never finished,” said Tamim Nuristani, the governor of Nurestan province, from which more than two dozen of Pashtunistan’s students hail.
Experiment in safer areas
The Pashtunistan School sits on a few acres of farmland 50 miles from Pakistan. It was built three decades ago, amid insurgency against the Soviets, as a haven for ethnic Pashtun children from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. It was named for the autonomous Pashtun nation that many here strive to one day create and was seen as a place where students could be educated with their fellow tribesmen.
The Afghan government is experimenting with boarding schools in several of the country’s largest cities, where stability has been maintained largely because of NATO’s urban-centric security strategy. There are several boarding schools in Kabul. Others are set to open in the capitals of Helmand and Ghazni provinces, which are safe enough to operate schools, although many rural districts in those provinces are under Taliban control. The Education Ministry hopes to open more boarding schools in coming years.
“These are places where education can be maintained and monitored, where the government is in control,” Wardak said.
But that leaves dozens of school districts in areas where the Taliban wields more power than Western or Afghan forces — a dilemma for the Education Ministry.
In recent months, the insurgency’s closure of schools has prompted anti-Taliban uprisings in a number of provinces, a development that U.S. and Afghan officials see as a positive sign.
In parts of the country where the Taliban remains in control, insurgents often inspect the curricula and handpick teachers but allow schools to remain open. The insurgency’s inconsistent approach to education, many Afghan officials and analysts argue, speaks to its fragmentation.
But for children living in districts where insurgents have demolished schools or threatened teachers, that lack of consistency doesn’t mean much.
“We have no plans to return home,” Hazratullah said. “Here, there are classrooms. There are teachers. At home, there is nothing.”
Official: Navy SEAL died of apparent suicide
By By KIMBERLY DOZIER and PAULINE JELINEK | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military officials are investigating the apparent suicide of a Navy SEAL commander in Afghanistan.
Cmdr. Job W. Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pa., died Saturday of a gunshot wound to the head while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan, a U.S. military official said Monday on condition of anonymity because the death is still under investigation.
The official said Price failed to show up for an appointment and was found when others went to check on him.
Price was from Virginia Beach, Va.-based SEAL Team 4, which is part of the mission to train Afghan local police to stave off the Taliban in remote parts of Afghanistan.
It was not immediately known when Price started his tour of duty in Afghanistan, though he had been in command of the team of 25 to 30 men since June 2011, the official said. He said Price had no immediately known professional or work problems other than the stresses of deployment, which can be tremendous for troops.
"The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate," said Capt. Robert Smith, Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, which manages all Virginia-based Navy SEAL teams. "We extend our condolences, thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and NSW community during this time of grieving."
"As we mourn the loss and honor the memory of our fallen teammate, those he served with will continue to carry out the mission," Smith added Sunday.
Price is survived by a wife and a daughter.
His body is to be returned to the United States early Tuesday.
In Afghan Taliban’s birthplace, U.S. troops step back
Associated Press By Patrick Quinn Sunday, December 23, 2012
FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, Afghanistan - President Obama will decide in the coming weeks how many American troops to send home from Afghanistan next year. A major factor in his decision will be the question of how successful U.S. troops have been in preparing the Afghans to secure their country at bases such as this one, located in one of the country’s most violent areas — the birthplace of the Taliban.
There have been calls in Congress for Mr. Obama to increase the size of a planned drawdown of U.S. forces before the end of summer 2013, when the Afghan military is supposed to take the lead in security across the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as well, has suggested he wants the drawdown accelerated.
“We are working to make this transition of security happen sooner. We want all the foreign forces to come out of the villages and go to their bases so the Afghan forces can carry out security,” Mr. Karzai said last week.
But too large a pullout too soon could undermine the fight against the Taliban insurgency if Afghan forces are not fully prepared. It is widely thought that Gen. John Allen, the top military commander in Afghanistan, and his senior staff want to keep a large force in place for the summer fighting season before international forces move into an entirely backup and training role behind the Afghan forces by the start of autumn — an event known as “Milestone 13.”
Mr. Obama is expected to decide on the size of the withdrawal after meeting with Mr. Karzai in Washington in early January. Their talks also will be key to determining what the U.S. military’s role will be in Afghanistan after December 2014, when the foreign combat mission is set to end and almost all international troops are scheduled to leave. The U.S. currently has 66,000 thousand troops in Afghanistan out of an international force totaling about 102,000.
The work of training Afghan army units being done at this dusty base in the Zhari district of Kandahar province and at other bases scattered around the country will help shape Mr. Obama’s decision.
U.S. and Afghan officers here say the district is a success story: Violence has not gone up more than two months after the American presence here was brought down from around 3,500 troops to around 300, with Afghan forces taking the lead in more areas.
But the situation remains tenuous. Residents say Taliban fighters remain in control of large parts of the district.
Zhari is where Taliban leader Mullah Omar was born, where he founded the movement that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s and has battled U.S. and Afghan forces for the past 11 years. Three years ago, Taliban forces controlled the district, and it has been one of the three most violent areas of Kandahar, the province that is the Taliban‘s traditional heartland.
U.S soldiers had a hard fight in Zhari when they moved into the south in large force as part of the surge in American troops early in the Obama administration. The district has rich farmland that produces pomegranates and grapes used for raisins, and the fields, covered in dirt mounds, formed natural trenches the Taliban could fight from. Food, which was abundant, was easily coerced by the Taliban from villagers.
Lt. Col. Tim Davis, commander of Combined Task Force Buffalo, said that “the density of mines was impressive” when his task force arrived and that it required “an entire combat operation just to put a road in.”
The commander of international forces in Kandahar and three other southern provinces, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams, told reporters recently that progress in Zhari had been “astounding.” Afghan forces are already in the lead of security duties in many parts of the district, he said. Across the south, the Afghans carry out 400 to 500 daily patrols without coalition assistance.
Afghan military officers in Zhari contend they can now handle the fight without much help from the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.
“Zhari is about 70 percent safe now,” said Col. Abdul Rahimi, operations officer of the Afghan army’s 3rd Brigade 205th Corps at Pasab base, though he acknowledged that the neighboring Maiwand district remains a problem. The number of Taliban fighters was down to around 100 in Zhari and Maiwand, compared with some 900 two years ago, he said.
“The enemy is not able right now to fight against the government, nor can it take over if ISAF leaves,” Col. Rahimi said.
Residents in Zhari, however, give a different picture. Some said the government has control of the main highway but not much else.
“Government claims that they control most of the area are just a dream not related to any reality,” Allahnoor Taraki, a 38-year-old farmer, said.
Mohammed Salim Danghar, a taxi driver, said the province remains hotly contested. While the government has improved its position, he said, “we all know that most of the area is controlled by the Taliban.”
The American drawdown in Zhari is a model of plans for the pullback elsewhere.
Here, large American combat units have been replaced by smaller teams made up of about 18 soldiers each. The teams are embedded with Afghan units, advising them on tactics, leadership and strategy — but not fighting.
In Zhari, attacks “have not only decreased, but significantly decreased,” Col. Davis said.
“The challenge is when we start pulling back,” he said. The key to a successful transition will be “to see if the local security forces can take up the slack.”
The U.S. military plans to repeat that process elsewhere in the south and east by creating 400 such teams. At the same time, eight of the 14 U.S. brigades in Afghanistan will be reduced in size to between 1,400 and 1,900 personnel, down from 3,500, to act as support for the teams. That role change alone will mean a reduction of between 13,000 and 17,000 NATO troops.
The U.S. military has not made public its recommendations to Mr. Obama about the size or timing of next year’s drawdown. Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said recently that NATO and the Afghan government intend to begin the final phase of transition by the middle to latter part of 2013 — suggesting he prefers a later start to the drawdown, as opposed to earlier in 2013.
The top contender for Mr. Panetta’s job, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, is thought to support a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops.
British Prime Minister David Cameron already has announced that about 3,800 of his country’s troops will leave by the end of 2013, leaving 5,000 to stay into 2014.
The Afghan army now numbers about 350,000 and has taken the lead on security in areas that are home to 76 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 30 million. Still, despite their progress, only one of Afghanistan’s 23 brigades around the country can operate on its own without coalition help of some kind, the U.S. Defense Department said in its most recent semiannual report to Congress.
Attacks by insurgents around the country have not decreased, but the violence has been pushed out of most population centers, the report said. Civilian and NATO casualties have fallen. But Afghan forces are taking an increasing toll. More than 300 Afghan soldiers and policemen are dying each month, according to Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, who said that figure represented an increase, though he did not provide comparative numbers.
“We still face challenges in southern Afghanistan,” Gen. Abrams acknowledged in his headquarters at Kandahar Air Field.
In Kandahar currency market, the money trail proves elusive
Reuters By Matthew Green December 23, 2012
Beneath the din of shouted exchange rates, trilling mobiles and the clink-clink of tea glasses ricocheting around Kandahar’s money market, there is a barely-audible backbeat: the electric purr of counting machines gobbling dollars, Afghanis and rupees.
In dozens of cramped shops crowding the galleries of the echoey exchange, a clannish brotherhood of currency dealers oils the wheels of Afghanistan’s cash-based economy, sending funds across borders, swapping foreign bills or taking deposits in the manner of conventional banks.
With no map to guide them, a small circle of U.S. and European law enforcement and intelligence officials have ventured into this bewildering financial landscape, hoping to chart the ever-shifting pathways that keep the Taliban flush with cash.
It doesn’t take much time wandering around the currency bazaar in the city of Kandahar, the movement’s spiritual home, to appreciate that the line between what NATO calls “Threat Finance” and the core business of many Afghan money men will be difficult to draw.
Perched cross-legged on cushions, or overseeing glass cabinets engorged with neatly-stacked blocks of cash, the merchants operate a centuries-old system known as hawala, from the Arabic word for ‘transfer’. Equipped with little more than calculators, mobile phones, hand-written ledgers and an inexhaustible supply of rubber bands (used to restrain bulging wads of notes), the dealers handle transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
In the past six months, the U.S. Treasury Department has designated at least four Afghan hawala dealers as suspected Taliban financiers, slapping freeze orders on any assets they may hold in the United States. (Perhaps the most notable is Haji Khairullah Barakzai, featured in a Reuters special report published today on U.S. attempts to shut down his businesses). Though hawala merchants – known as hawaladars – are not likely to have any assets in American banks, the designations aim to ruin their reputations in the eyes of their customers. A sudden stampede to withdraw deposits can rapidly drive a dealer into bankruptcy.
Arrayed in the towering turbans and flowing dress favoured by any respectable Kandahari, the hawaladars make their profits through commissions on money transfers and via fluctuating exchange rates. They may hold relatively little cash at any one time, often in a safe at the back of their shop. Their most valuable assets, however, are their reputations.
Hawaladars are expert keepers of secrets. Businesses are primarily family concerns, while inter-marriage between big hawala clans cement ties of trust. Penetrating such networks is virtually impossible for outsiders. It is no surprise then that even when account books are seized in raids, investigators often struggle to discern precisely who is sending what money on behalf of whom.
The case of Haji Agha Jan, a hawaldar in the Kandahar exchange, embodies the uncertainties.
A wiry middle-aged man with soft eyes and a shoulder-shrugging resilience to misfortune, Jan tells a persuasive tale. One night in October last year, he heard sounds outside his house. Instinctively, he reached for his pistol, before rapidly realising he was outgunned – a squad of Afghan police and U.S. troops had come knocking. The visitors bound his wrists with plastic cuffs and slipped a hood over his head. According to Jan’s account, he was soon en route to the nearby military base at Kandahar Airfield along with his son, who was also arrested.
Jan says his interrogators were obsessed with the contents of his books – ledgers stretching back years with hundreds of names, amounts and phone numbers scrawled in black ball-point. (Recipients who cannot read or write sign their signatures with thumbprints dabbed in blue ink).
Questions came by day and night. Jan could only tell the time by glancing at his captors’ watches or when guards shouted reminders of Islamic prayer hours through the door of his one-man cell.
“I told them, ‘Yes, I am sending money through hawala, but not Taliban money’,” Jan said, speaking in his uncomfortably-quiet shop on the first-floor of the Kandahar exchange. Fearing he will be arrested again, customers rarely call.
“It doesn’t have ‘Taliban’ written on the money’,” Jan said, chewing on green tobacco and occasionally availing himself of a spittoon.
His son was released first, then Jan himself was freed after 25 days in detention, his captors presumably satisfied that he was not channelling cash to the insurgents.
Indeed, Jan produced a copy of a hand-written Taliban death threat issued some months before his arrest. The movement had declared him a marked man due to his friendship with a police chief from Kakrez, one of the rural districts in Kandahar Province. Jan had later discovered a landmine buried outside his home, which he summoned police to defuse.
Jan maintains that coalition forces still owe him monies including 2.3 million Pakistani rupees ($24,000) seized during his arrest, and four gold necklaces. (ISAF, the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said it could neither confirm nor deny that Jan had been held).
Was Jan telling the whole truth? Investigators freely admit the difficulty of tracing flows through the hawala system, where book-keeping systems – though thorough – are not designed for the ready comprehension of inquisitive strangers. Nonetheless, the U.S. Treasury is sufficiently satisfied with its evidence to make some definitive declarations about certain hawaladars, including Khairullah, was sanctioned on June 29, along with his business partner, Haji Abdul Sattar Barakzai.
What can be said with some certainty is that licit and illicit commerce in Afghanistan are so intimately entwined that the distinction can often seem almost meaningless.
Edwina Thompson, a researcher who conducted extensive interviews with hawaldars in 2005, points out that the trade plays a vital role in facilitating economic development in Afghanistan, where few people trust banks. Kandahar’s exchange is also central to the mechanics of the heroin trade.
(Thompson’s 2011 book, Trust is the Coin of the Realm, is the most authoritative account of the hawala system in Afghanistan; some of her research can be found in a report on Afghanistan’s opium industry by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime).
Afghan drug cartels run a sophisticated system of agricultural credit and payment to poppy farmers that could not function without the hawaladars in Kandahar, the largest city in the south.
Thompson found that hawaladars in Kandahar experienced a huge influx of funds for advance payments from traffickers to farmers during the poppy cultivation months of October to December.
She discovered a similar surge in payments from the end of April to June when opium harvested from the poppy crop was ready for purchase. One in four hawaladar in Kandahar might be considered significant facilitators of drug payments, Thompson estimated, handling up to $810 million of opium-related funds in 2005. She made similar findings in neighbouring Helmand Province, the epicentre of the drug industry in Afghanistan, which supplies an estimated 90 per cent of a global market for heroin and other opiates worth some $68 billion a year, according to U.N. estimates.
Individual transactions can be substantial. A report released by Congress in 2009 reported that U.N. officials in Kabul had inspected records of drug-related transactions involving $1 million and had seen evidence of a $15 million hawala transfer.
Pakistan launders much of the money. Unlike in Afghanistan, where hawala is – in theory – regulated, the entire system is officially outlawed in Pakistan. In practise, Pakistani hawaladars are central to the country’s vast informal sector and handle billions of dollars a year while police turn a blind eye.
U.S. officials are particularly suspicious of certain hawala shops in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, which has long served as a rear base for members of the Taliban’s high command.
In November, the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Rahat, an Afghan hawala shop, saying the Taliban had deposited $500,000 in its Quetta office. Its owner, a hawaladar named Haji Mohammed Qasim, had been arrested in Afghanistan on September 15. (He was also sanctioned, along with his Quetta branch manager, Musa Kalim).
While Afghanistan’s hawala network might seem like one of the more exotic branches of the financial system, its tendrils ultimately terminate in the more familiar hubs of London and New York. Recent U.S. investigations into allegations of money-laundering against banks such as Standard Chartered and HSBC raise the question of whether the real rewards from an ever-more globalised illicit economy may be reaped by tie-wearing lenders in the West.
Afghan Currency Market Does Not Finance Taliban: Market Leaders
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Sunday, 23 December 2012
Afghan currency market officials strongly rejected a recent Reuters report alleging that some businessmen are serving as Taliban financiers.
Speaking to TOLOnews on Sunday, Head of the Kabul Currency Exchange Market Najibullah Akhtari denied any kind of involvement, saying he has not witnessed such activity in Kabul.
"We don't have such currency dealers in Kabul. We haven't witnessed such activities so far," he said.
However, Afghan Central Bank Director Noorullah Delawari confirmed the involvement of Haji Khairullah in financing the Taliban.
"We were informed about this by the UN. They told us that he's involved in money laundering. We have sent letter to the presidential palace in this regard," Delawri told TOLOnews.
Reuters recently published a report about the involvement Afghan currency dealer, Haji Khairullah, as the main Taliban financier. Khairullah is on the US Treasury Department's sanctions list. His assets and property are seized and he is banned to travel outside the country.
But the Reuters report suggests that Khairullah fled to Quetta after the sanctions.
The US treasury Department believes Haji Khairullah as the biggest Taliban financier and the architect of an underground network that converts opium money into cash.
Five National and International Companies Bid for New Kabul Bank
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Sunday, 23 December 2012
Three national and two international companies have bid for New Kabul Bank, Ministry of Finance said Sunday.
The ministry did not name the companies but said the process of reviewing the offers of these companies will start by February 16 next year.
The deadline for bidding on New Kabul Bank was specified as January 13, 2013, but New Year's holidays as well as requests from a number of international companies caused it to be postponed to February 16, the ministry said.
According to the law, bidding time should be 21 days, but since this is an international bidding, there is a three-month timeframe for it, the ministry's spokesman added.
Talking of a number of other companies that have expressed interest to procure the bank, Spokesman Wahid Tawhidi added: "There are a few other companies, too, that have shown readiness for procurement of the bank, but they are still processing their offers. The number of bidding companies might exceed five by the end of bidding time."
According to Tawhidi, New Kabul Bank is a large entity and the government is open to several companies jointly procuring it. But the ministry will come to an agreement with only one bidding company, he added.
The troubled Kabul Bank was bailed out by the government after a $900 million scandal involving high-ranking government officials and their families.
Kabul Bank was hailed as a success story in Afghanistan's banking sector until the scandal.
Electronic ID Card Distribution to Start Within a Month: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Hazim Arash Sunday, 23 December 2012
The long-awaited distribution of electronic ID cards will start next month, officials said Sunday, but complained the process is still grossly underfunded.
Officials said that the new ID cards are expected to be distributed over a period of three years, a process that will cost $121 million and employ thousands of people.
"The registration process starts next month. We are fully prepared to distribute electronic ID cards to an estimated 30 million people," said Masoom Farhad, head of the Computerized ID Card Distribution Department at the Ministry of Interior.
But Farhad said only $5 million has been allocated for his department in the 1392 (2013-14) budget, which is not enough.
"For next year, only $5 million has been allocated for distribution of ID cards, while nearly $121 million is required to distribute ID cards for 28 million people," he added.
Some of the current election challenges and a lack of precise demographic stats are expected to be tackled after the distribution of these ID cards.
Parliament Asks Karzai to Fill Vacant High-Level Posts
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 23 December 2012
Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, Wolesi Jirga, asked President Karzai Saturday to make nominations for attorney general and chief justice.
Attorney General Mohammda Ishaq Aloko has been acting as caretaker after parliament gave him a vote of no-confidence around two years ago; Chief Justice Abdulsalam Azimi has also been serving as caretaker after his tenure ended around the same time.
Parliament said that the continued functioning of these two high-ranking officials is in violation of the law, asking the president to respect the Constitution.
"We ask the president that, pursuant to implementing the Constitution, he seriously respect the will of the people, the parliament and its members and introduce the attorney general and chief justice for confirmation as required by the Constitution," said Speaker Abdulraouf Ibrahimi.
But the outspoken Kabul MP Ramazan Bashardost accused the speaker of having close personal ties with the president, and called on the parliament to withhold budget allocations to attorney general's office and the Supreme Court.
"The Constitution gives us two provisions: article 69, under which we can impeach the president, and article 98 under which, if the attorney general and the Supreme Court are illegal, we can deny their budget allocation this year," said Bashardost.
The parliament's vote of no-confidence to Attorney General Aloko was over accusations of vote rigging and setting up the controversial special court upon orders of the president to mediate electoral complaints after the 2010 parliamentary elections.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said.
Kabul's Deputy Police Chief Mohammad Daoud Amin said it has not been determined whether the killing was intentional or accidental and that an investigation is under way. He declined to elaborate on the circumstances of the killing or give more details.
It was also not known whether the victim was a U.S. military or civilian adviser. The NATO military command said it was looking into reports of the shooting but had no independent information.
More than 50 international troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or police this year, and a number of other assaults — insider attacks as they are known — are still under investigations. NATO forces, due to mostly withdraw from the country by 2014, have speeded up efforts to train and advise Afghan military and police units before the pullout.
The surge in insider attacks is throwing doubt on the capability of the Afghan security forces to take over from international troops and has further undermined public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries.
More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces also have died this year in attacks by their own colleagues. Taliban militants claim such attacks reflect a growing popular opposition to both foreign military presence and the Kabul government.
American Adviser Killed in Afghan 'Insider' Attack
VOA News December 24, 2012
Afghan and NATO officials say a female Afghan police officer has killed an American adviser in the Afghan capital, in the first known "insider" attack by a woman.
The coalition says a woman wearing a police uniform shot and killed a contracted civilian employee of NATO on Monday inside Kabul's heavily guarded police headquarters. Afghan officials say the policewoman drew a pistol and shot the American once at close range.
The woman was arrested after the incident and was being interrogated by police.
Media reports say the suspect is a police officer named Nargis who works in the Legal and Gender Equality Department at the Interior Ministry.
NATO spokesman Canadian Brigadier General John Madower said a joint Afghan-NATO investigation was taking place and that this was a "very sad occasion."
The shooting is the latest in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on a member of the Western coalition working with Afghan forces. At least 60 coalition members have been killed this year. NATO has attributed the majority of insider attacks to personal disputes. NATO has said Taliban infiltrators were responsible for about 25 percent of the attacks.
Coalition spokesman Madower told reporters in Kabul on Monday that "these are events that we are familiar with, we work very, very closely with our Afghan partners, there are events that affect both ISAF and our Afghan national security force brothers and we continue to work to mitigate them as much as possible."
The attack took place just hours after a local Afghan police commander shot five of his colleagues at a checkpoint in the northern province of Jawzjan. Afghan officials said the police office ran away to join the Taliban.
Also Monday, NATO said a coalition service member was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. No other details were given.
Russia, India sign weapons deals worth billions
By By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | Associated Press
NEW DELHI (AP) — Russia and India signed weapons deals worth billions of dollars Monday as President Vladimir Putin sought to further boost ties with an old ally.
Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed cooperation between their countries as officials signed a $1.6 billion deal for 42 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets that will be license-built in India from Russian components and a $1.3 billion contract for the delivery of 71 Mil Mi-17 military helicopters.
"We agreed to further strengthen the traditions of close cooperation in the military and technical areas," Putin said after the signing.
Singh said the talks included discussions on the security situation in the region, including Afghanistan.
"India and Russia share the objective of a stable, united, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan, free from extremism," Singh told reporters after the talks.
Russia and India have shared close ties since the Cold War, when Moscow was a key ally and the principal arms supplier to New Delhi.
The ties slackened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but grew stronger again after Putin came to power in 2000, seeking to revive Moscow's global clout and restore ties with old allies.
While the volume of Russian-Indian trade has risen sixfold since 2000 and is expected to reach $10 billion this year, the growth has slowed in recent years. And even though India remains the No. 1 customer for Russia's arms industries, Moscow has recently lost several multibillion-dollar contracts to Western weapons makers.
Russia has maintained its strong positions in the Indian market with $30 billion worth of arms contracts with India signed in 2000-2010 that envisaged supplies of hundreds of fighter jets, missiles, tanks and other weapons, a large part of which were license-produced in India. The countries have cooperated on building an advanced fighter plane and a new transport aircraft, and have jointly developed a supersonic cruise missile for the Indian Navy.
But the military cooperation has hit snags in recent years, as New Delhi shops increasingly for Western weapons. The Indians also haven't been always happy with the quality of Russian weapons and their rising prices.
In one notable example, in 2004 Russia signed a $1 billion contract to refurbish a Soviet-built aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy. While the deal called for the ship to be commissioned in 2008, it is still in a Russian shipyard and the contract price has reportedly soared to $2.3 billion. The target date for the carrier's completion was moved back again this year after it suffered major engine problems in sea trials. Russian officials now promise to hand it over to India in the end of 2013.
India has also demanded that Russia pay fines for failing to meet terms under a 2006 contract for building three frigates for its navy, the third of which is yet to be commissioned.
Russia recently has suffered major defeats in competition with Western rivals in the Indian arms market.
Last year, Russia lost a tender to supply the Indian Air Force with 126 new fighter jets worth nearly $11 billion to France's Dassault Rafale. And last month, Boeing won India's order for a batch of heavy-lift helicopters worth $1.4 billion.
Russia has sought to downplay recent defeats of its arms traders, saying that other weapons deals with India are under preparation.
As part of its cooperation with India, Russia also has built the first reactor at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant and is building a second unit there. The project has been delayed by protests by anti-nuclear groups and local residents.
The head of the Russian nuclear corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told reporters Monday that the reactors in Kudankulam are the safest in the world, adding that studies have shown that they would have withstood a disaster like an earthquake and tsunami that caused multiple meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan last year. Kiriyenko said Rosatom plans to build more reactors in India.
Putin's visit was scheduled for late October, but was delayed as the Russian leader suspended foreign travel for about two months. The Kremlin acknowledged that he was suffering from a muscle pulled during judo training. Putin resumed active travel earlier this month, making several foreign trips.
Blast rocks religious school in Afghan's Badakhshan province, wounds 13
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- A blast ripped through a Medressah or religious school in Badakshan province 315 km northeast of Kabul on Monday, injuring 13 Taliban or seminarians, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh said.
"The blast took place inside a Medressah (religious school) in Shinoi village of Yawan district today as a result 13 Taliban ( seminarians) were injured six of them in critical condition," Rasikh told Xinhua.
He also said "it might be gas cylinder blast", adding investigation has been initiated to identify the reason for the incident.
It is the first time that a blast has rocked Medressah or religious school and injuring Taliban or seminarians in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan where government interests including schools and teachers attacked.
Steep U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan brings substantial risks
Washington Post By Max Boot Opinion Dec 24, 2012
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming book, “Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present.”
The Obama administration appears determined to vacate Afghanistan as fast as possible. If the latest leaks are to be believed, officials are willing to leave as few as 6,000 U.S. troops behind after 2014, concentrated at the Bagram air base and a few other installations around Kabul. The mind boggles at what this would mean in military terms.
Consider one simple fact: Kandahar, the city where the Taliban movement started, is 310 miles southwest of Kabul. Imagine that intelligence analysts have identified a “high-value target” — say, a terrorist facilitator with links to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban — in Kandahar. How would the U.S. military capture or kill him without a secure base in Kandahar?
This scenario is, on some level, fanciful, because the lack of a U.S. presence on the ground around Kandahar would make it very difficult to generate useful intelligence. How would the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency run agents or even operate drones? Even assuming that the intelligence could be garnered, it would be exceedingly hard to act on the information.
A SEAL or Delta Force team typically reaches its target by helicopter. But Kandahar is a two-hour helicopter flight from Kabul and a fully loaded Blackhawk would need to refuel to make the round trip. Assuming there is no U.S. base in Kandahar, this would require aerial refueling, which is difficult and costly and would not necessarily be available 24-7. Given the long flight time, there is a good chance that by the time the commandos arrived, the target would have moved on.
It is doubtful that such a force would be dispatched in the first place, however, because commanders would be reluctant to send special operators into high-risk situations without having quick-reaction forces standing by to rescue them in the event of trouble. U.S. generals would not feel comfortable entrusting the lives of these elite operators to local Afghan army forces, especially in light of the well-advertised problem of Taliban infiltrators, so they would probably not order the mission in the first place.
That would leave only one way to attack a terrorist kingpin in Kandahar: from the air, with either an armed Predator or a manned aircraft such as an F-16. Yet the ability to keep either kind of aerial platform over Kandahar would be severely limited by the need to fly 600 miles round-trip from Bagram simply to arrive on station. So there would probably be a considerable time lag simply to drop a bomb, which again raises the risk of missing the target.
Relying on air power carries other risks, such as the potential for collateral damage, which can create more enemies than missions eliminate. Aerial attacks on wedding parties and the like were especially common in Afghanistan before the troop surge started in 2009. Without forward air controllers to call in air strikes, the possibility of errors goes up.
Another problem with air power is that it precludes the possibility of interrogating suspects and examining their computers and paperwork — one of the best sources of intelligence about terrorist machinations. The Joint Special Operations Command, composed of the top-tier special operators, has become such an effective man-hunting machine precisely because it has become so proficient at “sensitive site exploitation” and interrogation of detainees, sometimes leading to fresh missions being launched the night before a detainee’s confederates are even aware that he has been taken into custody. That will become impossible under the planned drawdown.
All in all, limiting the U.S. presence to 6,000 or so troops in Bagram and Kabul would be a major counterterrorism setback. It would also have a deleterious impact on the combat effectiveness of the Afghan army and police.
The Afghan National Security Forces, now 352,000 strong, have made considerable strides, but they remain heavily reliant on U.S. help for air support, logistics, intelligence, route clearance and other key “enablers.” The Defense Department’s new Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan noted that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate without coalition help. The report also “anticipates that the [Afghan army] will continue to require assistance with logistics and acquisition processes beyond December 2014.”
Afghanistan is not expected to have a functioning air force before 2017, so Afghan forces will remain especially dependent on U.S. help for air support and aerial medevac. But it is doubtful that U.S. commanders would call in airstrikes without having U.S. advisers embedded with Afghan units — and under the rumored plan, no such advisers will be available. Afghan security forces will be on their own to face an entrenched insurgency, which has been degraded by the surge but remains a major threat in southern and eastern Afghanistan, thanks in no small measure to its havens in Pakistan.
It is hard to imagine how anyone in the Obama administration could conclude that a force of just 6,000 personnel would be sufficient after 2014 when, even with 68,000 troops today, the United States cannot prevent the Taliban and Haqqanis from operating openly an hour’s drive from Kabul. Such a precipitous drawdown vastly increases the risk of a Taliban takeover.
Installation of 3rd turbine in Kajaki dam to start soon
By Sayed Jawad Khaama Press December 24, 2012
Officials in Helmand water and electricity department said the installation work of the third turbine in Kajaki electricity dam will start in the near future.
The government of Afghanistan and international community five years back decided to complete the project work which started nearly 50 years ago.
NATO troops transported the turbine and other required materials in Kakaji district however the installation work was delayed due to security issues.
Provincial water and electricity department chief Ahlullah Abidi said the survey work, installation of pillars and transfer of electricity line from Kajaki to Lashkargah and Kandahar city has already started.
He said, “The installation and assembly work will start in December. Practical work on transfer of electricity network has already started however the work will be totally completed in the next two years. Contract of Greshk electricity system has also completed and the work will start in this month. The total contract values will around $75 milion.”
Mr. Abidi further added the equipments and other materials for the installation of the third turbine has also arrived in Kajaki electricity dam.
This comes as Afghan presidential palace, water and energy ministry and other related departments have for several times vowed to start the installation work of third turbine in Kajaki water dam however no practical step has been taken so far and residents in Helmand and Kandahar provinces are still facing lack of electricity.
However provincial water and electricity department officials are saying that there are no security issues in Kajaki district to prevent the installation of the third turbine.
Kajaki electricity dam currently has the capability of producing 33 MW of electricity and by completion of this project the production will increase to 51 MW.
The officials also added the overall cost for the installation and rehabilitation of Kajaki electricity dam will be $180 million which will be paid by United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Taliban say they don’t want monopoly on power in Afghanistan, pledge rights for women
Associated Press Dec 23, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban representatives at a conference did not insist on total power in Afghanistan and pledged to grant rights to women that the militant Islamist group itself brutally suppressed in the past, according to a Taliban statement received Sunday.
The pledges emerged from a rare meeting last week involving Taliban and Kabul government representatives.
The less strident substance and tone came in a speech delivered at a conference in France. The French hosts described it as a discussion among Afghans rather than peace negotiations.
It was hard to determine whether the softer line taken by the Taliban representatives reflected a real shift in policy or a salvo in the propaganda war for the hearts and minds of Afghans.
The speech said that a new constitution would protect civil and political rights of all citizens. It promised that women would be allowed to choose husbands, own property, attend school and seek work, rights denied them during Taliban rule, which ended with the 2001 U.S. invasion. The speech was emailed from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
“We are not looking to monopolize power. We want an all-Afghan inclusive government,” the speech said. It was delivered by two Taliban officials, Mawlawi Shahbuddin Dilawar and Muhammad Naeem during the conference on Thursday and Friday.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government welcomed such talks but did not expect them to bridge the gap between the warring sides.
The United States started to embrace the idea of peace talks after President Barack Obama took office, but discussions stalled in recent years, despite the formation of an Afghan government council tasked with reaching out to the Taliban and the establishment of a Taliban political office in Qatar.
“The peace initiative is a process, and one or two or three meetings are not going to solve the problems. But we are hopeful for the future,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai said. He said the government’s preconditions for the talks with the Taliban have not changed: a cease-fire, recognition of the Afghan constitution, cutting ties with international terrorists and agreeing to respect the rights of Afghan citizens including women and children.
The Taliban speech reiterated the group’s own longtime policies, declaring that the current constitution was “illegitimate because it is written under the shadow of (U.S.) B-52 aircraft” and that the Taliban remained the legitimate government of the country, a reference to the U.S.-led campaign that drove the Taliban from power.
It also called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and said a 2014 national election was “not beneficial for solving the Afghan quandary” because it would take place while the country was still under foreign occupation.
Most NATO forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by 2014. The Kabul government and its international backers hope that a peace deal can be brokered with the Taliban and other militant groups before the pullout. NATO still has more than 100,000 troops, including 66,000 U.S. soldiers, on the ground. Washington is now determining the size of a scaled down force the United States will keep in Afghanistan after 2014.
“The occupation must be ended as a first step, which is the desire of the entire nation, because this is the mother of all these tragedies,” the speech said.
The conference was also attended by the Hezb-e-Islami group, which is allied with the Taliban, and political opponents of President Hamid Karzai, whom the Taliban regard as a puppet of Washington.
Afghan students leave home to find a safe place to go to school
The Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Dec 24, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - The first time insurgents burned down Hazratullah’s school, he helped rebuild it with donated carpets and salvaged chalkboards. But when Taliban fighters returned with guns and gasoline, torching his makeshift seventh-grade classroom, Hazratullah decided it was time to leave.
“We knew then that if we wanted to go to school, we would have to move,” said the 14-year-old, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
He and his three cousins packed clothes and blankets. Then their parents drove them to a refuge they had heard rumors about — a place for children whose schools had been shuttered or destroyed by the Taliban. Ten miles outside this eastern Afghan city, they found the Pashtunistan School: a haven from insurgents, a chance for Hazratullah to finish seventh grade.
But Hazratullah’s new school is also a monument to one of his government’s greatest failures — its inability to protect students and teachers in vast stretches of territory that have been effectively ceded back to the Taliban. On its campus, 350 boys from across Afghanistan swap stories about Taliban fighters beating their teachers and setting their classrooms on fire.
Afghan officials acknowledge that with poor security in much of the country, the only way to educate a large portion of the population is to pluck children out of Taliban-dominated districts and move them to safer areas.
There are two Afghanistans, they say: one where public education can be protected, and another where it cannot. That acknowledgment reflects a stark shift from the years of U.S.-funded efforts to rebuild and reopen schools in traditional insurgent strongholds.
The new reality is reflected in a NATO talking point intended to convey how concentrated violence in Afghanistan has become and how much of the country enjoys relative peace.
“Eighty percent of the enemy attacks take place in areas where only 20 percent of the Afghan population lives,” NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently told reporters.
But what of that less fortunate 20 percent, a figure that includes millions of children?
With the Taliban burning schoolhouses and threatening students in much of the south and east, educators here have rechanneled their ambition. Part of the problem, Afghan officials say, is that the United States built many schools in places where security could not be maintained. More than 90 percent of Afghanistan’s 500 shuttered schools are in four provinces in the country’s volatile southeast.
“The reality is that in some areas, the lack of security means there is no access to education,” said Farooq Wardak, the Afghan minister of education. “Either we can move those students to safer places, or they will remain uneducated and easy for the Taliban to absorb.”
‘They beat our teachers’
Although there are exponentially more children enrolled in school than there were when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, opposition to public education in many districts appears intractable.
The Taliban’s antipathy toward the education of girls is well known. But boys’ schools, too, are in the Taliban’s crosshairs, because they are viewed as an extension of the government and, ultimately, of the West. Classes organized and funded by the Karzai administration are viewed as an affront to the Taliban in places the group effectively controls.
Each student at the Pashtunistan School has his own story about the Taliban encroaching on classrooms, or crossfire making the trip to school impossible.
“They beat our teachers with sticks,” said Abdul Karim, from Nurestan province.
“They threatened to behead us if we kept going,” said Noorgullah, from Konar province.
“They burned it to the ground,” said Nakibullah, from Paktia province.
The boys sleep side by side in rooms adorned with class schedules and pictures of their native provinces. Compared with those places, life here feels easy and safe.
When the boys return home for rare visits, they leave their textbooks at school, for fear of being caught by the Taliban.
About half of all schools are closed in Zabul province, where the NATO troop drawdown has been particularly rapid. About a third of schools are closed in Helmand and a quarter in Kandahar, according to the Afghan government’s tally. In several districts where families have sent sons to Pashtunistan, the insurgency isn’t the biggest problem. There simply aren’t enough trained teachers to maintain a school.
A number of the shuttered schools were built by foreign powers, shiny tributes to a new Afghanistan. Only a few years ago, Western officials proclaimed that public education would reach even the country’s darkest and most dangerous corners.
“The enemies, they don’t want to let innocent students get educated,” said Sharifullah Naseri, Zabul’s provincial spokesman.
Some Western-funded schools never opened because of security concerns. Others were closed by the insurgency days after being inaugurated. Some schools survived for years, like Hazratullah’s, but collapsed as security grew weaker.
“Wherever I drive, I see schools built by the U.S. that were closed or never finished,” said Tamim Nuristani, the governor of Nurestan province, from which more than two dozen of Pashtunistan’s students hail.
Experiment in safer areas
The Pashtunistan School sits on a few acres of farmland 50 miles from Pakistan. It was built three decades ago, amid insurgency against the Soviets, as a haven for ethnic Pashtun children from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. It was named for the autonomous Pashtun nation that many here strive to one day create and was seen as a place where students could be educated with their fellow tribesmen.
The Afghan government is experimenting with boarding schools in several of the country’s largest cities, where stability has been maintained largely because of NATO’s urban-centric security strategy. There are several boarding schools in Kabul. Others are set to open in the capitals of Helmand and Ghazni provinces, which are safe enough to operate schools, although many rural districts in those provinces are under Taliban control. The Education Ministry hopes to open more boarding schools in coming years.
“These are places where education can be maintained and monitored, where the government is in control,” Wardak said.
But that leaves dozens of school districts in areas where the Taliban wields more power than Western or Afghan forces — a dilemma for the Education Ministry.
In recent months, the insurgency’s closure of schools has prompted anti-Taliban uprisings in a number of provinces, a development that U.S. and Afghan officials see as a positive sign.
In parts of the country where the Taliban remains in control, insurgents often inspect the curricula and handpick teachers but allow schools to remain open. The insurgency’s inconsistent approach to education, many Afghan officials and analysts argue, speaks to its fragmentation.
But for children living in districts where insurgents have demolished schools or threatened teachers, that lack of consistency doesn’t mean much.
“We have no plans to return home,” Hazratullah said. “Here, there are classrooms. There are teachers. At home, there is nothing.”
Official: Navy SEAL died of apparent suicide
By By KIMBERLY DOZIER and PAULINE JELINEK | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military officials are investigating the apparent suicide of a Navy SEAL commander in Afghanistan.
Cmdr. Job W. Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pa., died Saturday of a gunshot wound to the head while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan, a U.S. military official said Monday on condition of anonymity because the death is still under investigation.
The official said Price failed to show up for an appointment and was found when others went to check on him.
Price was from Virginia Beach, Va.-based SEAL Team 4, which is part of the mission to train Afghan local police to stave off the Taliban in remote parts of Afghanistan.
It was not immediately known when Price started his tour of duty in Afghanistan, though he had been in command of the team of 25 to 30 men since June 2011, the official said. He said Price had no immediately known professional or work problems other than the stresses of deployment, which can be tremendous for troops.
"The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate," said Capt. Robert Smith, Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, which manages all Virginia-based Navy SEAL teams. "We extend our condolences, thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and NSW community during this time of grieving."
"As we mourn the loss and honor the memory of our fallen teammate, those he served with will continue to carry out the mission," Smith added Sunday.
Price is survived by a wife and a daughter.
His body is to be returned to the United States early Tuesday.
In Afghan Taliban’s birthplace, U.S. troops step back
Associated Press By Patrick Quinn Sunday, December 23, 2012
FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, Afghanistan - President Obama will decide in the coming weeks how many American troops to send home from Afghanistan next year. A major factor in his decision will be the question of how successful U.S. troops have been in preparing the Afghans to secure their country at bases such as this one, located in one of the country’s most violent areas — the birthplace of the Taliban.
There have been calls in Congress for Mr. Obama to increase the size of a planned drawdown of U.S. forces before the end of summer 2013, when the Afghan military is supposed to take the lead in security across the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as well, has suggested he wants the drawdown accelerated.
“We are working to make this transition of security happen sooner. We want all the foreign forces to come out of the villages and go to their bases so the Afghan forces can carry out security,” Mr. Karzai said last week.
But too large a pullout too soon could undermine the fight against the Taliban insurgency if Afghan forces are not fully prepared. It is widely thought that Gen. John Allen, the top military commander in Afghanistan, and his senior staff want to keep a large force in place for the summer fighting season before international forces move into an entirely backup and training role behind the Afghan forces by the start of autumn — an event known as “Milestone 13.”
Mr. Obama is expected to decide on the size of the withdrawal after meeting with Mr. Karzai in Washington in early January. Their talks also will be key to determining what the U.S. military’s role will be in Afghanistan after December 2014, when the foreign combat mission is set to end and almost all international troops are scheduled to leave. The U.S. currently has 66,000 thousand troops in Afghanistan out of an international force totaling about 102,000.
The work of training Afghan army units being done at this dusty base in the Zhari district of Kandahar province and at other bases scattered around the country will help shape Mr. Obama’s decision.
U.S. and Afghan officers here say the district is a success story: Violence has not gone up more than two months after the American presence here was brought down from around 3,500 troops to around 300, with Afghan forces taking the lead in more areas.
But the situation remains tenuous. Residents say Taliban fighters remain in control of large parts of the district.
Zhari is where Taliban leader Mullah Omar was born, where he founded the movement that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s and has battled U.S. and Afghan forces for the past 11 years. Three years ago, Taliban forces controlled the district, and it has been one of the three most violent areas of Kandahar, the province that is the Taliban‘s traditional heartland.
U.S soldiers had a hard fight in Zhari when they moved into the south in large force as part of the surge in American troops early in the Obama administration. The district has rich farmland that produces pomegranates and grapes used for raisins, and the fields, covered in dirt mounds, formed natural trenches the Taliban could fight from. Food, which was abundant, was easily coerced by the Taliban from villagers.
Lt. Col. Tim Davis, commander of Combined Task Force Buffalo, said that “the density of mines was impressive” when his task force arrived and that it required “an entire combat operation just to put a road in.”
The commander of international forces in Kandahar and three other southern provinces, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams, told reporters recently that progress in Zhari had been “astounding.” Afghan forces are already in the lead of security duties in many parts of the district, he said. Across the south, the Afghans carry out 400 to 500 daily patrols without coalition assistance.
Afghan military officers in Zhari contend they can now handle the fight without much help from the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.
“Zhari is about 70 percent safe now,” said Col. Abdul Rahimi, operations officer of the Afghan army’s 3rd Brigade 205th Corps at Pasab base, though he acknowledged that the neighboring Maiwand district remains a problem. The number of Taliban fighters was down to around 100 in Zhari and Maiwand, compared with some 900 two years ago, he said.
“The enemy is not able right now to fight against the government, nor can it take over if ISAF leaves,” Col. Rahimi said.
Residents in Zhari, however, give a different picture. Some said the government has control of the main highway but not much else.
“Government claims that they control most of the area are just a dream not related to any reality,” Allahnoor Taraki, a 38-year-old farmer, said.
Mohammed Salim Danghar, a taxi driver, said the province remains hotly contested. While the government has improved its position, he said, “we all know that most of the area is controlled by the Taliban.”
The American drawdown in Zhari is a model of plans for the pullback elsewhere.
Here, large American combat units have been replaced by smaller teams made up of about 18 soldiers each. The teams are embedded with Afghan units, advising them on tactics, leadership and strategy — but not fighting.
In Zhari, attacks “have not only decreased, but significantly decreased,” Col. Davis said.
“The challenge is when we start pulling back,” he said. The key to a successful transition will be “to see if the local security forces can take up the slack.”
The U.S. military plans to repeat that process elsewhere in the south and east by creating 400 such teams. At the same time, eight of the 14 U.S. brigades in Afghanistan will be reduced in size to between 1,400 and 1,900 personnel, down from 3,500, to act as support for the teams. That role change alone will mean a reduction of between 13,000 and 17,000 NATO troops.
The U.S. military has not made public its recommendations to Mr. Obama about the size or timing of next year’s drawdown. Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said recently that NATO and the Afghan government intend to begin the final phase of transition by the middle to latter part of 2013 — suggesting he prefers a later start to the drawdown, as opposed to earlier in 2013.
The top contender for Mr. Panetta’s job, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, is thought to support a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops.
British Prime Minister David Cameron already has announced that about 3,800 of his country’s troops will leave by the end of 2013, leaving 5,000 to stay into 2014.
The Afghan army now numbers about 350,000 and has taken the lead on security in areas that are home to 76 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 30 million. Still, despite their progress, only one of Afghanistan’s 23 brigades around the country can operate on its own without coalition help of some kind, the U.S. Defense Department said in its most recent semiannual report to Congress.
Attacks by insurgents around the country have not decreased, but the violence has been pushed out of most population centers, the report said. Civilian and NATO casualties have fallen. But Afghan forces are taking an increasing toll. More than 300 Afghan soldiers and policemen are dying each month, according to Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, who said that figure represented an increase, though he did not provide comparative numbers.
“We still face challenges in southern Afghanistan,” Gen. Abrams acknowledged in his headquarters at Kandahar Air Field.
In Kandahar currency market, the money trail proves elusive
Reuters By Matthew Green December 23, 2012
Beneath the din of shouted exchange rates, trilling mobiles and the clink-clink of tea glasses ricocheting around Kandahar’s money market, there is a barely-audible backbeat: the electric purr of counting machines gobbling dollars, Afghanis and rupees.
In dozens of cramped shops crowding the galleries of the echoey exchange, a clannish brotherhood of currency dealers oils the wheels of Afghanistan’s cash-based economy, sending funds across borders, swapping foreign bills or taking deposits in the manner of conventional banks.
With no map to guide them, a small circle of U.S. and European law enforcement and intelligence officials have ventured into this bewildering financial landscape, hoping to chart the ever-shifting pathways that keep the Taliban flush with cash.
It doesn’t take much time wandering around the currency bazaar in the city of Kandahar, the movement’s spiritual home, to appreciate that the line between what NATO calls “Threat Finance” and the core business of many Afghan money men will be difficult to draw.
Perched cross-legged on cushions, or overseeing glass cabinets engorged with neatly-stacked blocks of cash, the merchants operate a centuries-old system known as hawala, from the Arabic word for ‘transfer’. Equipped with little more than calculators, mobile phones, hand-written ledgers and an inexhaustible supply of rubber bands (used to restrain bulging wads of notes), the dealers handle transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
In the past six months, the U.S. Treasury Department has designated at least four Afghan hawala dealers as suspected Taliban financiers, slapping freeze orders on any assets they may hold in the United States. (Perhaps the most notable is Haji Khairullah Barakzai, featured in a Reuters special report published today on U.S. attempts to shut down his businesses). Though hawala merchants – known as hawaladars – are not likely to have any assets in American banks, the designations aim to ruin their reputations in the eyes of their customers. A sudden stampede to withdraw deposits can rapidly drive a dealer into bankruptcy.
Arrayed in the towering turbans and flowing dress favoured by any respectable Kandahari, the hawaladars make their profits through commissions on money transfers and via fluctuating exchange rates. They may hold relatively little cash at any one time, often in a safe at the back of their shop. Their most valuable assets, however, are their reputations.
Hawaladars are expert keepers of secrets. Businesses are primarily family concerns, while inter-marriage between big hawala clans cement ties of trust. Penetrating such networks is virtually impossible for outsiders. It is no surprise then that even when account books are seized in raids, investigators often struggle to discern precisely who is sending what money on behalf of whom.
The case of Haji Agha Jan, a hawaldar in the Kandahar exchange, embodies the uncertainties.
A wiry middle-aged man with soft eyes and a shoulder-shrugging resilience to misfortune, Jan tells a persuasive tale. One night in October last year, he heard sounds outside his house. Instinctively, he reached for his pistol, before rapidly realising he was outgunned – a squad of Afghan police and U.S. troops had come knocking. The visitors bound his wrists with plastic cuffs and slipped a hood over his head. According to Jan’s account, he was soon en route to the nearby military base at Kandahar Airfield along with his son, who was also arrested.
Jan says his interrogators were obsessed with the contents of his books – ledgers stretching back years with hundreds of names, amounts and phone numbers scrawled in black ball-point. (Recipients who cannot read or write sign their signatures with thumbprints dabbed in blue ink).
Questions came by day and night. Jan could only tell the time by glancing at his captors’ watches or when guards shouted reminders of Islamic prayer hours through the door of his one-man cell.
“I told them, ‘Yes, I am sending money through hawala, but not Taliban money’,” Jan said, speaking in his uncomfortably-quiet shop on the first-floor of the Kandahar exchange. Fearing he will be arrested again, customers rarely call.
“It doesn’t have ‘Taliban’ written on the money’,” Jan said, chewing on green tobacco and occasionally availing himself of a spittoon.
His son was released first, then Jan himself was freed after 25 days in detention, his captors presumably satisfied that he was not channelling cash to the insurgents.
Indeed, Jan produced a copy of a hand-written Taliban death threat issued some months before his arrest. The movement had declared him a marked man due to his friendship with a police chief from Kakrez, one of the rural districts in Kandahar Province. Jan had later discovered a landmine buried outside his home, which he summoned police to defuse.
Jan maintains that coalition forces still owe him monies including 2.3 million Pakistani rupees ($24,000) seized during his arrest, and four gold necklaces. (ISAF, the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said it could neither confirm nor deny that Jan had been held).
Was Jan telling the whole truth? Investigators freely admit the difficulty of tracing flows through the hawala system, where book-keeping systems – though thorough – are not designed for the ready comprehension of inquisitive strangers. Nonetheless, the U.S. Treasury is sufficiently satisfied with its evidence to make some definitive declarations about certain hawaladars, including Khairullah, was sanctioned on June 29, along with his business partner, Haji Abdul Sattar Barakzai.
What can be said with some certainty is that licit and illicit commerce in Afghanistan are so intimately entwined that the distinction can often seem almost meaningless.
Edwina Thompson, a researcher who conducted extensive interviews with hawaldars in 2005, points out that the trade plays a vital role in facilitating economic development in Afghanistan, where few people trust banks. Kandahar’s exchange is also central to the mechanics of the heroin trade.
(Thompson’s 2011 book, Trust is the Coin of the Realm, is the most authoritative account of the hawala system in Afghanistan; some of her research can be found in a report on Afghanistan’s opium industry by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime).
Afghan drug cartels run a sophisticated system of agricultural credit and payment to poppy farmers that could not function without the hawaladars in Kandahar, the largest city in the south.
Thompson found that hawaladars in Kandahar experienced a huge influx of funds for advance payments from traffickers to farmers during the poppy cultivation months of October to December.
She discovered a similar surge in payments from the end of April to June when opium harvested from the poppy crop was ready for purchase. One in four hawaladar in Kandahar might be considered significant facilitators of drug payments, Thompson estimated, handling up to $810 million of opium-related funds in 2005. She made similar findings in neighbouring Helmand Province, the epicentre of the drug industry in Afghanistan, which supplies an estimated 90 per cent of a global market for heroin and other opiates worth some $68 billion a year, according to U.N. estimates.
Individual transactions can be substantial. A report released by Congress in 2009 reported that U.N. officials in Kabul had inspected records of drug-related transactions involving $1 million and had seen evidence of a $15 million hawala transfer.
Pakistan launders much of the money. Unlike in Afghanistan, where hawala is – in theory – regulated, the entire system is officially outlawed in Pakistan. In practise, Pakistani hawaladars are central to the country’s vast informal sector and handle billions of dollars a year while police turn a blind eye.
U.S. officials are particularly suspicious of certain hawala shops in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, which has long served as a rear base for members of the Taliban’s high command.
In November, the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Rahat, an Afghan hawala shop, saying the Taliban had deposited $500,000 in its Quetta office. Its owner, a hawaladar named Haji Mohammed Qasim, had been arrested in Afghanistan on September 15. (He was also sanctioned, along with his Quetta branch manager, Musa Kalim).
While Afghanistan’s hawala network might seem like one of the more exotic branches of the financial system, its tendrils ultimately terminate in the more familiar hubs of London and New York. Recent U.S. investigations into allegations of money-laundering against banks such as Standard Chartered and HSBC raise the question of whether the real rewards from an ever-more globalised illicit economy may be reaped by tie-wearing lenders in the West.
Afghan Currency Market Does Not Finance Taliban: Market Leaders
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Sunday, 23 December 2012
Afghan currency market officials strongly rejected a recent Reuters report alleging that some businessmen are serving as Taliban financiers.
Speaking to TOLOnews on Sunday, Head of the Kabul Currency Exchange Market Najibullah Akhtari denied any kind of involvement, saying he has not witnessed such activity in Kabul.
"We don't have such currency dealers in Kabul. We haven't witnessed such activities so far," he said.
However, Afghan Central Bank Director Noorullah Delawari confirmed the involvement of Haji Khairullah in financing the Taliban.
"We were informed about this by the UN. They told us that he's involved in money laundering. We have sent letter to the presidential palace in this regard," Delawri told TOLOnews.
Reuters recently published a report about the involvement Afghan currency dealer, Haji Khairullah, as the main Taliban financier. Khairullah is on the US Treasury Department's sanctions list. His assets and property are seized and he is banned to travel outside the country.
But the Reuters report suggests that Khairullah fled to Quetta after the sanctions.
The US treasury Department believes Haji Khairullah as the biggest Taliban financier and the architect of an underground network that converts opium money into cash.
Five National and International Companies Bid for New Kabul Bank
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Sunday, 23 December 2012
Three national and two international companies have bid for New Kabul Bank, Ministry of Finance said Sunday.
The ministry did not name the companies but said the process of reviewing the offers of these companies will start by February 16 next year.
The deadline for bidding on New Kabul Bank was specified as January 13, 2013, but New Year's holidays as well as requests from a number of international companies caused it to be postponed to February 16, the ministry said.
According to the law, bidding time should be 21 days, but since this is an international bidding, there is a three-month timeframe for it, the ministry's spokesman added.
Talking of a number of other companies that have expressed interest to procure the bank, Spokesman Wahid Tawhidi added: "There are a few other companies, too, that have shown readiness for procurement of the bank, but they are still processing their offers. The number of bidding companies might exceed five by the end of bidding time."
According to Tawhidi, New Kabul Bank is a large entity and the government is open to several companies jointly procuring it. But the ministry will come to an agreement with only one bidding company, he added.
The troubled Kabul Bank was bailed out by the government after a $900 million scandal involving high-ranking government officials and their families.
Kabul Bank was hailed as a success story in Afghanistan's banking sector until the scandal.
Electronic ID Card Distribution to Start Within a Month: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Hazim Arash Sunday, 23 December 2012
The long-awaited distribution of electronic ID cards will start next month, officials said Sunday, but complained the process is still grossly underfunded.
Officials said that the new ID cards are expected to be distributed over a period of three years, a process that will cost $121 million and employ thousands of people.
"The registration process starts next month. We are fully prepared to distribute electronic ID cards to an estimated 30 million people," said Masoom Farhad, head of the Computerized ID Card Distribution Department at the Ministry of Interior.
But Farhad said only $5 million has been allocated for his department in the 1392 (2013-14) budget, which is not enough.
"For next year, only $5 million has been allocated for distribution of ID cards, while nearly $121 million is required to distribute ID cards for 28 million people," he added.
Some of the current election challenges and a lack of precise demographic stats are expected to be tackled after the distribution of these ID cards.
Parliament Asks Karzai to Fill Vacant High-Level Posts
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 23 December 2012
Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, Wolesi Jirga, asked President Karzai Saturday to make nominations for attorney general and chief justice.
Attorney General Mohammda Ishaq Aloko has been acting as caretaker after parliament gave him a vote of no-confidence around two years ago; Chief Justice Abdulsalam Azimi has also been serving as caretaker after his tenure ended around the same time.
Parliament said that the continued functioning of these two high-ranking officials is in violation of the law, asking the president to respect the Constitution.
"We ask the president that, pursuant to implementing the Constitution, he seriously respect the will of the people, the parliament and its members and introduce the attorney general and chief justice for confirmation as required by the Constitution," said Speaker Abdulraouf Ibrahimi.
But the outspoken Kabul MP Ramazan Bashardost accused the speaker of having close personal ties with the president, and called on the parliament to withhold budget allocations to attorney general's office and the Supreme Court.
"The Constitution gives us two provisions: article 69, under which we can impeach the president, and article 98 under which, if the attorney general and the Supreme Court are illegal, we can deny their budget allocation this year," said Bashardost.
The parliament's vote of no-confidence to Attorney General Aloko was over accusations of vote rigging and setting up the controversial special court upon orders of the president to mediate electoral complaints after the 2010 parliamentary elections.
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