[Afghan News] January 12, 2013

[یاسمینه]

Obama: US war in Afghanistan winding down
By MATTHEW DALY | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the war in Afghanistan winding down after 11 years, President Barack Obama says the time is right for U.S. forces to let Afghans do their own fighting.

In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama says U.S. forces will shift to a support role as Afghan soldiers take the lead in defending their country.

Obama met Friday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House and agreed that U.S. troops will go home in larger numbers starting this spring — several months ahead of schedule. He says "America's war in Afghanistan will be over" by the end of 2014.

In the Republican address, freshman Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska says that with the "fiscal cliff" averted, Congress and the president must focus on cutting "out-of-control" government spending.


U.S. Library Of Congress Gives 'Digitized Treasures' To Afghanistan
January 12, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The U.S. Library of Congress has given to Afghan libraries and universities what it calls “digitized treasures” from its archives relating to the culture and history of Afghanistan.

A collection presented to Afghan President Hamid Karzai during his Washington visit includes digital copies of manuscripts, rare books, maps, and photographs.

The Library of Congress said the project was made possible by a $2 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in support of the World Digital Library, which provides for viewing on the Internet images of documents and artifacts from countries around the world.

The Library of Congress said digitized versions of its Afghan treasures are being provided to the National Library of Afghanistan, Badakhsan University, Balkh University, Bamiyan University, Herat University, Kabul University, Kandahar University, and Nangarhar University.

Based on reporting by AP and loc.gov


U.S. needs significant military presence in Afghanistan
By Ahmad Majidyar, Special to CNN January 11th, 2013
Editor’s note: Ahmad Majidyar is a senior research associate at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The views expressed are the author’s own.

President Barack Obama will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai today at the White House to assess the progress of the war and discuss America’s future role in Afghanistan. The two leaders are expected to talk about a wide range of issues, particularly concerning security transition to the Afghan lead, reconciliation with the Taliban, and Afghanistan’s presidential elections slated for April 2014. At the top of the meeting agenda, however, will be a discussion over the nature, scope and obligations of a residual U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan after the foreign combat mission there ends next year. Three key issues are likely to be contentious in the talks: legal immunity for U.S. soldiers, transfer of detention facilities to the Afghan government, and Kabul’s request for advanced military equipment.

The immunity issue, which derailed negotiations for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq in late 2011, will be the most sensitive one. A postwar U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is inconceivable unless American soldiers are granted protection from local prosecution. Nonetheless, while Karzai might use the question of immunity as leverage to extract concessions from the White House, the issue is unlikely to be a deal breaker this time. Kabul will be more flexible than Baghdad in negotiating a SOFA with Washington because, unlike oil-rich Iraq, Afghanistan’s economy is almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. Moreover, the Afghan government requires U.S. and NATO help to fund, train, and equip its 350,000 security personnel for many years beyond 2014.

Another sticking point could be Karzai’s demand for transfer of all detainees held by the U.S. military at a facility in Bagram Air Base near Kabul. The U.S. has already handed over more than 3,000 terrorism suspects to the Afghan government since the two sides signed an agreement last March, but Karzai has recently accused U.S. forces of breaching the accord by still keeping some prisoners under custody. Washington believes the Afghans are not yet ready to take over the control of all prisoners, especially ones believed to be too dangerous or affiliated with al Qaeda.

The Afghan leader may also overplay his hand. He is said to be carrying with him an expensive shopping list to the White House, including requests for advanced weaponry to the Afghan Army, such as fighter jets, surveillance equipment and armored tanks. Pentagon officials have previously rejected such demands, arguing Afghanistan cannot afford, operate and sustain them.

Leaked reports suggest the White House is considering cutting troop numbers by 20,000 to 30,000 this year and keeping as few as 2,500 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, despite requests by military commanders in the field to maintain most of the remaining 68,000 U.S. troops through the next two fighting seasons and a larger post-2014 presence. Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday that a complete pullout by the end of next year is also an option. But while a steep drawdown and keeping a small or no residual force may be politically expedient for the Obama administration, it is a recipe for failure in Afghanistan.

First, without a significant military presence after 2014, Washington risks undoing the gains of the past decade and allowing al Qaeda and the Taliban to reconstitute in parts of Afghanistan. Terrorist groups have already returned to some Afghan areas vacated by withdrawing foreign troops. Residents of eastern Nuristan Province, for example, say about 70 percent of the province is under the de facto rule of the Taliban and foreign militant groups, including al Qaeda and Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT). More remote areas could fall into terrorists’ control if U.S. forces leave precipitously.

Second, a hasty pullout undermines the training and strengthening of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Over the past three years, the ANSF has made remarkable progress in size and quality and is now responsible for security of 75 percent of Afghanistan’s population. But it still remains heavily reliant on the coalition for enablers, such as logistics, air power, medevac, reconnaissance, route-clear equipment and intelligence. A Pentagon study released last month rated only one of 23 Afghan Army brigades as independent. Without coalition’s help, the ANSF’s operational capabilities will decline dramatically. NATO and other allied nations would also not provide sufficient numbers of advisors and mentors for the ANSF if they perceive ambivalence from Washington.

Third, without a post-2014 military presence, the CIA-led drone strikes into Pakistan’s tribal regions will most likely cease. With Washington-Islamabad ties at their nadir, the U.S. drone campaign against al Qaeda and its affiliates in South and North Waziristan is now entirely dependent on bases in Afghanistan. The Navy Seal helicopters tasked with killing bin Laden flew from a base in eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

Fourth, a significant post-2014 military presence is needed to send a clear message to friends and enemies in the region that the United States and its allies are not abandoning Afghanistan. The Taliban will not have an incentive to enter meaningful peace talks if they see allied forces on the run. With the ANSF not yet ready to defend against a Taliban return, warlords and minority ethnic leaders would decide to take things on their own hands. Many local strongmen have already begun rearming their militias in preparation for a potential civil war.

The United States has two vital interests in the AfPak region: preventing al Qaeda and its affiliates from reconstituting in Afghanistan and ensuring that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons do not fall into terrorists’ hands. These two objectives cannot be guaranteed without a significant military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014.


Obama to Karzai: US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 need immunity
Press TV January 12, 2013
US President Barack Obama has said that Afghanistan must grant US forces legal immunity if Kabul wants American troops to stay in the country beyond 2014.

The US president made the remarks at a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington on Friday.

"From my perspective at least, it will not be possible for us to have any kind of US troop presence post-2014 without assurances that our men and women, who are operating there, are in some way subject to the jurisdiction of another country," Obama said.

The Obama administration has been considering having a permanent force of between 3,000 to 9,000 US troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

However, the White House recently threatened to consider a zero option, which means Washington would not leave any American troops in Afghanistan unless Kabul grants them immunity.

During the press conference, Obama pledged that US-led NATO forces would hand the lead role in the fight against militants to Afghan forces in the next few months.

"And today we agreed that, as Afghan forces take the lead and as President Karzai announces the final phase of the transition, coalition forces will move to a support role this spring," Obama stated.

"Starting this spring our troops will have a different mission: training, advising and assisting Afghan forces," the US president added.

Karzai said he was pleased by the agreement, because according to its terms there would be no foreign forces in Afghan villages by spring.

"I'm very happy to hear from the president... [that] the Afghan forces will be fully responsible for providing security and protection to the Afghan people… and that the international forces [and] the American forces will be no longer present in Afghan villages,” Karzai stated.

Civilian casualties have long been a source of friction between the Afghan government and US-led foreign forces and have dramatically increased anti-US sentiments in Afghanistan.

The United States and its allies entered the war in Afghanistan in October 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but after more than 11 years, the foreign troops have still not been able to establish security in the country.

The foreign troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. However, there are still more than 100,000 US-led troops (67,000 US troops and 37,000 coalition forces) in the country.


Obama, Karzai Agree on Foreign Support Role
Dan Robinson VOA News January 11, 2013
WHITE HOUSE — U.S. President Barack Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan have committed to transitioning foreign forces into an advise and support role in the coming months.

The two presidents spent about four hours holding bilateral talks that included Afghan and U.S. delegations, a working lunch and a joint news conference.

Just before they addressed reporters, a joint written statement reaffirmed the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement signed in 2012, which among other things commits the United States to a presence in Afghanistan until 2024.

Afghan national security

Afghan national security forces are to assume the operational lead for security later this year. U.S. forces now numbering 66,000 would pull back patrols from Afghan villages and end most unilateral combat operations.

International forces would officially move into a training, advising, and support role. After final NATO and Afghan approval, a final stage of transition would begin.

Obama said their meeting came at a "critical moment" and that while challenges remain, the agreements reached show the transition is on track.

"But let me say it as plainly as I can: Starting this spring, our troops will have a different mission: training, advising, assisting Afghan forces. It will be a historic moment, and another step toward full Afghan sovereignty, something I know that President Karzai cares deeply about, as do the Afghan people," said Obama.

Obama will make specific decisions in the coming months regarding U.S. troop levels after 2014, based on recommendations from military commanders. He and Karzai downplayed the importance of troop numbers.

"Numbers are not going to make a difference to the situation in Afghanistan. It is the broader relationship that will make a difference to Afghanistan and beyond in the region," said Karzai.

Remaining issues

Obama said any post-2014 U.S. presence depends on resolving the question of immunity for U.S. forces. Karzai said once the issue is resolved in talks for a bilateral security agreement, he will argue to the Afghan people in favor of immunity.

Obama said both sides remain focused on ensuring that Afghan forces have the capacity to handle security, and on preventing "remnants of al-Qaida or other affiliates" from threatening the United States.

Asked about the huge costs of the war, the president recalled the al-Qaida attacks of September 11, 2001, saying everything U.S. forces have done over 11 years have been aimed at achieving a key objective.

"We achieved our central goal, which is - or have come very close to achieving our central goal - which is to incapacitate al-Qaida, to dismantle them, to make sure that they cannot attack us again," said Obama.

Continuing Taliban deliberations

Both leaders reiterated their commitment to ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, announcing they support the opening of an office in Doha, Qatar, to facilitate the process and involve other regional players, including Pakistan.

Obama said any reconciliation process will be impossible unless the Taliban renounce terrorism and recognize the Afghan Constitution, including its protections for women and minorities.

The two sides also agreed to place Afghan detainees under Afghan sovereignty and control, while the United States pledged to continue assisting the Afghan detention system.

The Afghan leader said his government continues the fight against corruption in his country, with some success. He said "corruption that is foreign in origin" is a problem that needs to be recognized.

Karzai said he looks forward to a well-organized, interference-free election in April 2014, saying he will be a "happily-retired president."


Whither Obama’s Afghanistan policy?
Foreign Policy By Mary Habeck Friday, January 11, 2013
Late last week key officials within the Obama administration announced a potential new limit for troops that will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 (when the vast majority of the current 40,000 will have been removed). That number-- 2,500-6,000 total -- is far less than the 30,000 that the administration stated just two years ago was the minimum necessary to carry out counter-terrorism tasks in the country.

What has happened to justify this radical shift in policy? I would argue that three key conclusions about Afghanistan have coalesced in the thinking of policy makers since 2010 and have pushed the administration to reconsider its vision for the war.

1. Afghanistan as Vietnam

Perhaps most importantly, administration officials have concluded that Afghanistan is Vietnam: an eternal, unwinnable war that will only drag them and the country down with it if they continue to invest in the conflict.

There are, however, significant differences between the two wars. First and foremost, unlike in Vietnam, there is a clear military and political way forward in Afghanistan. From its success in Iraq, the U.S. military learned how to fight and win these sorts of irregular conflicts. This comes as no surprise to historians, who know that the U.S. military has won every irregular war that it was fought except for Vietnam. This includes three guerrilla wars in the Philippines and a series of irregular fights in Latin America. Politically, the U.S. learned from President Kennedy's disastrous support for the overthrow of Diem and has supported (however reluctantly) a leader who is recognized as legitimate by most Afghans. And unlike Vietnam, Afghans generally do not want a strong, centralized government that will provide a multitude of services, but rather prefer one that provides general security and leaves local issues to local leaders. This makes a political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan far more likely
than it ever could be in Vietnam after 1963.

The second way that these wars differ radically is the stakes, which are far higher in Afghanistan than in Vietnam. Kennedy and Johnson, unlike Eisenhower, were convinced that Vietnam was an existential issue that had to be fought and won for the safety and security of the free world. Subsequent events would show that Vietnamese leaders were just as much nationalists as they were communists, and that they had no intention of working to undermine the free world. The war in Afghanistan, however, began with a devastating attack on the American homeland and the group that carried out this strike will return to their safe-haven to plot and plan further attacks as soon as we leave. Winning the war in Afghanistan is precisely about our own safety and preventing the death of Americans.

Two historians of Vietnam have aided and abetted in this dangerous analogy-building: Gordon Goldstein and Robert Caro. Goldstein's writing has pushed the President to conclude that LBJ's mistake in Vietnam was not withdrawing early -- regardless of the consequences in SE Asia and around the Cold War world -- and Robert Caro's work argues that LBJ's involvement in the war destroyed his domestic achievements. Both of these analogies have been accepted by at least some within this administration as object lessons for the current situation that can be, apparently, applied without critical thought about the dangers of analogies for decision making at the highest policy levels.

2. The Military Is Untrustworthy

Perhaps due to a seminal event in 2009 -- the leaking of McChrystal's strategy for fighting the war -- administration officials have concluded that, as with the army in Vietnam, today's military cannot be trusted. To save face in an unwinnable war, the military will always request more troops and more money. Beginning with the "surge" that year, every request for troops by the commanders who know the most about the situation in Afghanistan has been treated with skepticism and cut considerably by this administration. This was done without taking into consideration conditions on the ground, but perhaps it seemed necessary to demonstrate to the military that civilian control had to be respected.

The result, however, has been disastrous for Afghanistan, where the lack of sufficient troops prevented a full counter-insurgency from being implemented and the withdrawal of forces will allow the Taliban and al Qaeda to return unimpeded to the East and South of the country. Without more troops, the U.S. will not even be able to carry out the minimal strategy that this administration has itself argued is necessary to prevent another attack on the U.S.

3. A Shift in Objectives

Some part of this disregard for the advice of the military is due to vast changes in strategy. When President Obama was campaigning for office in 2008, he argued that the U.S. had to withdraw from Iraq and focus on winning the war in Afghanistan -- where the U.S. faced a real threat from al Qaeda. Once in office, he held two policy reviews to elaborate the right strategy for confronting al Qaeda and achieving success in Afghanistan. The path forward that he chose was a counterinsurgency that would defeat the Taliban and secure the population of the South and East of the country.

Not long afterward, a change in objectives for the war was announced: rather than defeating the Taliban, the administration supported a negotiated settlement with the group through a process called "reconciliation." In addition, the military objective later shifted from a full COIN to something called "CT Plus," which would focus solely on killing al Qaeda members and disrupting the ability of the group to plot and plan. CT Plus would require far fewer forces than a COIN (around 30,000 was seen as the minimum to stay after 2014).

What then has justified the proposed change from 30,000 to perhaps 2,500? Once again objectives have changed -- in this case from CT Plus to something even less: just holding one or two bases in the country. With so few troops, the U.S. will not be able to carry out CT missions, and if just two bases are held, much of the East and South will be out of reach for strikes on Taliban and al-Qa'ida leadership. This change in objectives in fact guarantees that Afghanistan will once again become a safe-haven for AQ and a base for the group to plot and plan and carry out attacks on the U.S.

Perhaps there is a Vietnam analogy that suits this situation, but one provided by the French and not the U.S. experience: Dien Bien Phu. Trapped in a mindset that believed only attrition could defeat the Viet Minh guerrilla army, the French chose to move several thousand troops to an isolated garrison with poor lines of communications at a place called Dien Bien Phu. The troops could not be easily reinforced or resupplied, and came under heavy artillery fire from the Viet Minh forces. Eventually the entire garrison was forced to surrender under humiliating circumstances and France withdrew from all of SE Asia.

Any force less than 15,000 risks precisely this outcome in the isolated battlefield of Afghanistan, which might explain why the administration has been talking about withdrawing completely and ceding the entire country -- as it has Syria, Mali, and Libya -- to al Qaeda.


The future of Afghanistan: 4 questions facing Obama and Karzai
CNN By Ashley Fantz January 12, 2013
More than 11 years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, there is some cause to celebrate and some reason to worry. But more than anything, maybe, there are questions.

Those questions were on display Friday as Presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai met in Washington to discuss the future of Afghanistan and the United States' role there.

Some celebration is justified. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is gasping for air. Before the United States invaded in 2001, the Taliban forbade women to even come out of their homes. Now women have more freedom -- more than 2 million girls are going to school. More than 300,000 Afghan children who live in the country are on Facebook.

But it's not all good news. Military and civilian deaths continue.

Contributing on the military side is the phenomenon dubbed "green-on-blue" or "insider" attacks. Of the more than 2,000 American deaths since the 2001 invasion, an increasing number have come at the hands of the Afghans they trusted and trained.

It's worse for Afghans. Afghan National Security Forces are victims of a greater number of these insider attacks, a Department of Defense spokesman told CNN Friday.

And consider some of the events of 2012: The year began with a video showing Marines urinating on dead Afghans. Published photos showed U.S. troops posing with corpses and U.S. soldiers burned Qurans at Bagram Air Force Base, apparently an act committed out of ignorance that it offended Islam. Protests ensued.

Then there's U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of rampaging through an Afghan village, murdering 17 Afghan civilians, including women and children.

On Friday, the two presidents agreed to accelerate the military transition in Afghanistan. Afghan forces will take the lead in combat missions throughout the country starting in spring, instead of midyear as was previously expected.

Even though Obama and Karzai agreed on some issues, others remain.

Who's in control?

First, Karzai isn't eligible to run for reelection in 2014. Because the country has a constitution and a working government, it's likely that at least some of the points he and Obama agree to could be carried out when he's out of power. But no one can say for sure, analysts note.

So far, who would run for president after Karzai is unclear, though some intriguing names have been bandied around.

On the ground, U.S. officials have said anywhere between zero to 9,000 U.S. forces could remain in Afghanistan past 2014.

Not only will they perhaps have to operate in the tense green-on-blue environment, U.S. trainers who are teaching Afghan military enlistees how to fight say they are under enormous pressure to meet numbers at the sacrifice of quality, experts say.

Gayle Lemmon, an American journalist who has spent years off and on in Afghanistan, most recently in December 2011, said a U.S. contractor who is training Afghan recruits complained to her that he doesn't have to thoroughly do his job.

"There has been a huge amount of pressure to put as many bodies in Afghani uniform as possible to meet 2013 deadlines," she said. "He thought he had OK people but he didn't have time to pick out who was best and train the ones who needed extra help."

The "overwhelming majority" of them are coming from "ordinary Afghans signing up for the military," experienced war correspondent Dexter Filkins has reported.

What's the tab?

This week, Karzai gave the Pentagon a wish list of hardware such as drones and helicopters that he said would help him continue to fight terrorists.

No dollar amount has been decided. Estimates range from $1 billion to $10 billion a year -- and that includes military expenses, hardware and training, the whole deal that Afghanistan couldn't afford on its own.

"These are really funny numbers because no one knows the extent of what the U.S. is willing to offer," Lemmon notes.

Whatever amount Obama administration floats will have to win approval from Congress.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann told CNN Friday that he thinks the total bill is going to depend on military presence. At a minimum, he figures, the United States will spend $5 billion in aid and military, not counting what would be spent for embassy costs.

Those numbers cannot be calculated in a vacuum, either. As a discussion at the Brookings Institute involving the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan noted, Afghanistan is facing a major economic downturn after 2014.

A lot of money that has gone into Afghanistan has been wasted, numerous reports have shown. In 2011, one nonpartisan group told Congress that the United States was wasting $12 million a day among contracts issued to support American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, CNN reported.

Even Karzai, prompted by a question from a reporter, said Friday "We have corruption."

Who is the U.S. talking with and why?

Last May, Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he gave a speech about the end of the war.

He said, "We're pursuing a negotiated peace" with the Taliban.

To be clear, al Qaeda and the Taliban are two different entities, though there are ties. Al Qaeda is a terrorist group created by Osama bin Laden. The Taliban has provided shelter and support to al Qaeda.

In its newest incarnation, the Taliban has new, and some younger-generation, members who say they want to find peace with the United States.

In short, this is a complicated topic, as Foreign Policy detailed in December.

Former Ambassador Neumann said it's wrong to call it a negotiation.

Instead, he said, it's "a group of multiple players we are only talking to. We are trying to see if there's negotiating room."

On the Afghan side, a November poll by the independent San Francisco-based group Asia Foundation found that more than half of Afghans felt that their country was moving in the right direction. That includes agreeing with the negotiation of government officials and those trying to work toward peace to talk with and find common ground with militants.

Will the U.S. public stay interested?

There were complaints during the U.S. presidential election that Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney did not talk enough about Afghanistan.

But polls have shown that most Americans are tired of the war. A CNN/ORC International poll in September showed that only 3% named Afghanistan as one of the most important issues facing the United States. Earlier in 2012, CNN polling indicated that only 25% of Americans favored the war, and 55% said the United States should remove all of its troops before 2014.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pushed back against that figure at the time, saying polls don't fight wars.

And this week he reiterated his opposition to taking the number of troops in Afghanistan down to a paltry sum, and said zero is out of the question for him. If the United States military doesn't have a strong presence there, the chances of talking -- or negotiating -- with the Taliban is diminished, he argued.

Neumann said he thinks the American public is disinterested in a war that has dragged on for so many years.

That's a hurtful thing to hear for military families who have endured so much.

Rebekah Sanderlin, a journalist and longtime military culture blogger, is disheartened by such talk. Her husband has done multiple tours in Afghanistan and is preparing to go back.

"It's offensive to me to hear that from people who haven't had skin in the game, that they are weary," she said. "We still have troops fighting, sacrificing time with their families. All of that is much harder when you don't feel like your country is behind you."


Pakistan Frees Wave of Taliban Prisoners
Pakistan has been freeing a wave of insurgents—and officials worry they’re headed straight for the Afghan border.
The Daily Beast By Ron Moreau Jan 11, 2013
Anwar ul-Haq Mujahid wasted no time before swinging back into action. Pakistani authorities released the Afghan insurgent commander from detention in mid-November, ostensibly to encourage peace in Afghanistan. Mujahid had been locked up since his arrest in 2009 on undisclosed charges—but as soon as he went free, Afghan diplomats say, he began making the rounds in Quetta and Peshawar, embracing senior Taliban leaders and pledging renewed violence against the Kabul government and its American protectors.

In the past three months, Pakistan has unleashed a human wave of former Taliban detainees. Afghan officials say they have no idea how many have been set free, since the Pakistani government seems to wait until weeks after the fact before announcing the releases. Complicating Afghanistan’s ability to keep track of them, almost all the former detainees are thought to have rejoined their families in the Taliban’s longtime sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.

The Pakistanis insist it’s all in the name of reconciling Afghanistan’s warring parties. After all, hasn’t the Kabul government’s High Peace Council called for Islamabad’s assistance in offering the insurgents a goodwill gesture? But Afghan officials worry that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may actually be freeing selected detainees for an unspoken reason: to fill gaps in the Taliban’s top ranks.

Take the ISI’s sudden, unannounced release of the insurgents’ sorely missed commander Sadar Ibrahim several weeks ago. Why now, after five years behind bars? As word spread that Ibrahim was out, Taliban leaders told The Daily Beast they could only speculate as to the ISI’s intentions behind releasing him, particularly since the impetus for Ibrahim’s arrest remains a mystery to them. For their part, Afghan officials are hazarding an explanation: the Taliban’s top military leader, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, has made serious enemies in the insurgency’s top ranks and is struggling to keep his post. “We are hearing that the recently released Sadar Ibrahim might replace Zakir,” says an Afghan diplomat.

In contrast to the abrasive and high-handed Zakir, Ibrahim is an admired figure among the insurgents. He joined the Taliban back in 1994, when Mullah Mohammed Omar was just beginning to assemble his own fighting force of madrassa students amid the rubble of the fallen Soviet-backed government. After the Taliban rolled into Kabul two years later, Ibrahim became one of the top commanders in the ongoing fight against the Northern Alliance, answering directly to Omar rather than to the Taliban’s defense minister, as lesser commanders did. And in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion, Ibrahim was one of the first to begin rallying the Taliban’s battered and demoralized fighters to regroup.

But now that he’s out, Afghan officials are wondering whether more ISI releases are imminent. Five lower-ranking Taliban members were freed at the same time as Ibrahim; altogether, the Afghan diplomat says, more than 25 have been released in the past three months. A senior Taliban official, who was jailed for a month in Pakistan two years ago, has tried to keep a running tally of the ISI’s Afghan detainees. When the releases began, he said, roughly 130 Afghan Taliban members remained behind bars in Pakistan, including some 70 administrators, ground commanders, and former officials from the toppled Taliban government.

“It’s like releasing deadly snakes back into the jungle.”

Among them was Mullah Omar’s longtime deputy and brother-in-law, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of several insurgent leaders captured during a February 2010 sweep. While Baradar remains in prison, his arrest seemed to mark the end of the ISI busts. Arrests did not resume even after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chairman of the Kabul government’s High Peace Council. Islamabad’s failure to go after the plotters wasn’t for lack of information: Afghan intelligence officials say the Pakistanis were given the home addresses of Afghans in Pakistan who were implicated in the suicide bombing. Nevertheless, the Pakistanis failed to follow up on the information, the officials say.

The ISI’s apparent hands-off policy is making the Afghan government frantic. “We have sufficient evidence that Taliban ministers are roaming in Karachi, Peshawar, and Quetta in luxury cars, even with bodyguards,” says an Afghan intelligence officer. “We have made video recordings of them and showed our American friends, but they never raise the subject with Pakistan.” Those who have killed U.S. or Afghan troops are greeted as heroes, according to Afghan intelligence sources and others. “From the Afghan border to the Karachi seaport, they get a red-carpet welcome, both from ordinary Pakistanis and from the country’s intelligence agencies,” says a European Union diplomat who keeps tabs on militants in the region.

Even before the arrests stopped altogether, most Afghan insurgents in Pakistan were free to come and go as they chose. Nevertheless, there were a few who were not so lucky. Some were picked up because the Americans gave Pakistani authorities no alternative. Others were detained as potential threats to Pakistan’s security because of their ties to sworn enemies of the state such as al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. An Afghan Taliban who spent two years in ISI jails, followed by two years in U.S. and Afghan detention centers, says there was a sharp difference in the questions his interrogators asked. The Pakistanis only wanted to know whether he had ever done anything to endanger their country. On the other hand, the Americans and the Afghans focused on trying to find Mullah Omar and al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden (who at the time had yet to be tracked down and killed) and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Another former detainee describes his year in ISI custody. The Pakistanis arrested him in a night raid in 2007, he says, and he spent the next nine or 10 months confined to one small room without a water closet. He says he was tortured mentally but not physically. Although he was not allowed to communicate directly with his family, some of his guards bent the rules by relaying messages via a phone number he gave them. The food was Pakistani cooking, far too spicy for Afghans like himself. “We had terrible stomach problems,” he recalls.

At first the interrogators questioned him once a week. He was asked most closely about a trip he had taken to the militant havens of North Waziristan—especially any meetings he might have had with al Qaeda operatives and other Arab jihadis. After a month, there were no more interrogations. His jailers told him to be patient. One of the interrogators finally explained what it was all about: the ISI was looking for a particular al Qaeda operative, an Egyptian who wore tribal clothes and spoke fluent Pashto. The ISI didn’t know the Egyptian’s face, but the detainee had met him. “When we learn his address or get a tip on him while he’s traveling, we’ll need you to recognize him,” the interrogator said. “And that’s it. We’re not charging you with serious crimes against the state. But you did talk to al Qaeda on your phone.”

His captivity dragged on. But early one morning a Pakistani intelligence agent woke him up, packed him into a car, and rushed him to a bus station a few kilometers away. “They asked me to keep watching for the al Qaeda guy, but as we reached the bus stand, they got word that he had changed his mind and wasn’t coming. So they brought me back to my lockup room.” They were still looking for the Egyptian when they finally let the detainee go.

There is little or no legal recourse for the ISI’s Afghan prisoners. “The Taliban can’t publicly complain about their men being jailed in Pakistan because they don’t officially exist there,” says a former detainee. “They’re all supposed to be staying on the Afghan side of the border.” About as close as they come to public criticism of Pakistan is the latest message attributed to Mullah Omar, urging all parties to the conflict—including unnamed “neighbors” of Afghanistan—to give humane treatment to Taliban prisoners.

Nevertheless, life for at least some of the ISI’s remaining Afghan detainees is said to have improved in the past year or so. An active member of the Taliban military council, the Quetta Shura, attributes the change to the unexplained death of the Taliban’s onetime defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, in a Karachi jail on March 5, 2010. After a delay of nearly two years, Pakistani authorities announced Obaidullah’s death this past February, sending photos of his dead body and burial place to his family, together with a letter saying he had suffered a heart attack. But enraged Taliban members blamed the death on Obaidullah’s jailers. In an effort to calm them, the ISI began allowing family visits.

The new policy’s reputed beneficiaries have included some of the Taliban’s most prominent leaders. One is Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who was finally freed in late December. In the last months of his captivity he’s said to have been allowed visits from his young son and his elderly father at his Karachi jail. (Whether he deserved such compassion is another question: as the Taliban’s justice minister in the late 1990s, he oversaw the stoning of adulterers and the amputations of thieves’ hands.) Another is no less than Mullah Baradar, who’s said to have been allowed to meet with his son and other family members for the first time since his arrest. Was there any truth to press reports this past August that he also met with Afghan government officials? Taliban sources steadfastly deny it.

Those Afghans who remain behind bars in Pakistan are generally optimistic, according to a former Taliban cabinet minister. Sooner or later they expect to go free, and when that day comes, they hope the Taliban hierarchy will reward them for their loyalty and personal sacrifice. Such postprison promotions are not unprecedented, says an Afghan intelligence official, citing a pair of former detainees who, by Taliban standards, did very well indeed. “Hajji Lala and Sayyid Allaudin Agha were in Pakistani jails for five years, but after their release, they became chiefs of military operations, one in the city of Kabul and the other in the Kandahar region,” says the official.

According to Afghan intelligence, Pakistan demands one thing above all before freeing a detainee: he has to understand that Afghanistan, not Pakistan, is the place for jihad. That message seems to come through loud and clear. “It’s true that many Taliban have spent years in Pakistani jails without charges, but they become even more extremist rather than more peace-loving,” says a former Taliban diplomat now living in Kabul. “Releasing them in Pakistan allows them to go back and resume killing innocent Afghans. It’s like releasing deadly snakes back into the jungle.”

The problem isn’t only those former prisoners who are sent out by Pakistani intelligence. “Releasing captured Taliban has never worked out well,” says an Afghan Intelligence officer—and that includes even detainees the Afghans have deemed ready to go free. “In 2009 the Afghan government released a Taliban deputy minister known as Shahid Khel,” the officer recalls. “The next day he was in Quetta, and by the third week he had opened a madrassa near Quetta and was sending fighters into Afghanistan.”

Somehow Pakistan continues to play both sides. When U.S. officials accuse Islamabad of supporting the Taliban, the Pakistanis say: “Then why do we have so many of their leaders behind bars?” Then they turn around and tell the Taliban “Make yourselves at home in our country, even though at times we may be forced to make a show of arresting some of you. You have to understand the pressure we’re getting from Washington.” And that’s the least of Pakistan’s duplicity toward the Taliban, says an Afghan intelligence officer. Even as the ISI has encouraged the insurgents, the Pakistani government has acquiesced to U.S. drone attacks in the tribal areas; captured as many as 1,000 al Qaeda operatives and fighters; and arrested hundreds of Taliban fighters and commanders, handing some over to the Afghan government and keeping Baradar and others under lock and key.

And yet the insurgents seem to be certain that Pakistan is on their side. An Afghan Taliban commander, having spent two years in Pakistan custody, contends that only a small number of Pakistani officials are against the Afghan Taliban. “Pakistan has a love-hate policy toward the Taliban,” the E.U. diplomat says. “They will never turn 100 percent against the Taliban, but they wouldn’t want them back in power again either.”

The Taliban can’t afford to antagonize the proprietors of the tribal areas where they are based and of their capital in exile, Quetta. And yet it seems clear that the ISI is committed to keeping Afghanistan destabilized no matter what the cost—no matter if that means betraying their Taliban proteges, or even if it might strengthen their own government’s sworn enemies in the Pakistani Taliban. The overriding priority is for Pakistan to remain the final decision maker in Afghanistan. “Until the Americans begin taking a realistic stance toward Pakistan, the dream of peace in Afghanistan will never come true,” the E.U. diplomat says. At this point, that may be impossible. And in that case the game is over. Pakistan has won.

Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent, and has been covering the region for the magazine for the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.


Afghanistan: The challenge of 'good' vs 'bad' militias
Gunmen in northern Afghanistan want the Karzai government to make their local unit an official part of the security force that will take over after US withdraws.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Peterson, Staff writer January 11, 2013
Kunduz, Afghanistan - As two Afghan farmers tell it, they are part of the "good" militia in their northern province: unofficial armed men who protect schools, families, and farms, and have chased Taliban insurgents away.

They are not part of the "bad" militia, they say, that since 2010 has especially traumatized parts of Kunduz Province by forcibly extracting "taxes" from villagers, and engaging in killings and rape – all in the name of fighting insurgents themselves.

Now these traditional gunmen want the Karzai government to make their local unit an official part of the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces that will take over after US combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014.

But as President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai meet today in Washington, such militias – both good and bad, and neither of them under government control – present a challenge to the future stability in Afghanistan.

Kunduz represents a blend of unofficial and official security forces in Afghanistan, where well-connected militia chiefs have been reluctant to disarm or cede influence. Here, the legacy of the decade-long fight against the Soviets in the 1980s has persisted, thwarting government efforts to extend its reach throughout the country.

Fighting back against the Taliban is second nature, says Abdul Wasi, a black-bearded, gray-turbaned farmer, though his militia would prefer it if the government trained them, paid them, and officially made them members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a program launched by Gen. David Petraeus and modeled after the Sons of Iraq to mobilize Sunnis in Iraq against Al Qaeda.

"Going 30 years back, we were involved with these guns," says Mr. Wasi. "Our families fought the Soviet Union, so that is our legacy. We can't sleep without guns."

They call themselves arbaki, after the proud and revered local militias that formed more than a century ago to fight the British in Afghanistan. But that is a term that has been used by nominally pro-government militias with both good and bad reputations.

"Yes, we are winning the war, meaning we pushed the insurgents out of our area," says Mohammed Yasir, a young man with a budding beard and a light-brown wool cap from a district near Khanabad. 'Good' v 'bad' militia

"If there was no arbaki, [the Taliban] would kill many people in one night," says Wasi. He joined the militia two years ago, when the Taliban shot at a vehicle he was riding in with a rocket-propelled grenade.

"They kill people with any connection to the government,” says Wasi, who, with half a dozen family members with government connections, has been a target. But, he claims: “The provincial capital is secure because of the arbaki."

These farmers' local militia "might be considered pure" because they operate apart from the much larger territory encompassed by a key commander who fought the Russians, says Gran Hewad, a political researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul who closely follows Kunduz affairs. The commander, Amir Mir Alam, controls a militia with a notorious reputation for violence and abuse of civilians.

Mr. Mir Alam has kept good relations with key people in Kabul and Kunduz, and in the past "disarmed only in name," says Mr. Hewad, interviewed in Kabul. Mir Alam was instrumental in recruiting a militia from 2009 in concert with Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security, to make up for manpower shortages in the province.

"Already there was insecurity; this was a new wave of insecurity in Kunduz," says Hewad about Mir Alam’s militia. "These are the proxy forces undermining the rule of law and national government.... They have fought people, looted, burned houses, abducted, and raped women – whatever crimes are known in Afghanistan are committed by them."

Mir Alam’s militia is "getting bigger, with the normal argument that the Americans are leaving and the Taliban are recruiting," says Hewad. "The government argues that the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] would be better after 2014. If they are not lying, they should disarm these people. If there is a political will, it is possible."

Hewad noted in a November blog post that militia numbers have been increasing in Kunduz and "provincial security forces seem incapable of controlling them."

Mir Alam, who after the Soviet withdrawal eventually became a commander in the Northern Alliance which fought the Taliban, "has been known as the major obstacle for implementation of the disarmament agenda," Hewad wrote.

"These militias have already become a big source of trouble for the local people," concluded Hewad. "If a real disarmament effort does not take place soon, before 2014, they can be considered a major threat to the security of the province after NATO's troop drawdown." Plagued with problems

Alarm bells have sounded before. A spring 2012 report called "From Arbaki to Local Police," by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and based on extensive field research, lamented that even the government's local police program – meant to absorb some militias – was plagued with problems.

Among them, on top of an illiteracy rate of more than 90 percent, were that a number of ALP had been in "illegal armed groups, arbakis, and the Taliban." According to the report, some local police recruits were "notorious for criminal acts," had "bad war records" and were "even serial killers. This makes people lose their confidence in the ALP and even in the government."

Militias in Kunduz are a step further down the accountability chain, and abuses have been widespread. The result has colored the view of locally-raised militias like that of farmers Mr. Yasir and Wasi. Before they took up guns as volunteers, they say, the principal at their local school was forced by Taliban threats to flee and the primary school – which doubled as a polling station during elections – was burned.

"We gathered up our guns and took them on, so now our presence has lowered insurgent activity," says Yasir. "Many times they were hurting people, so people got angry, many times they burned the school.... Now girls and boys go to school,"

Both men want the "illegal" militias to be disarmed, and "good" ones like theirs to be recognized for their work. They reckon there are 2,000 guns in their area, and 1,200 of those they consider to be arbaki. Officials have stated a figure of armed militiamen in Kunduz anywhere from several to ten thousand. "Every family has one gun," says Yasir.

"If the government trained the [good] militia, they could play a bigger role," says a veteran police trainer in Kunduz who asked not to be named for his safety.

"If they can get trained well, they can be very effective, because they are in all these areas," says the police trainer. He notes that two years ago, some districts were off-limits to government workers, though police and "good" militia deployments have since made them safer.

And yet this police trainer himself was forced to flee his home.

"I knew that one day a person would come and cause me trouble," he recalls. He brought all his family to Kunduz, the largest city in the province. "Sometimes I go back and walk on the land; other farmers are using it. This is common."

"The Mir Alam militia is much more problematic than a mafia – they are smuggling, kidnapping, and killing for more than business issues, but for tribes also," says Hewad of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

Yasir and Wasi say those incidents should not be confused with the informal efforts of their arbaki militia.

"Most of us are farmers and live on our farms, nobody pays us," says Wasi. "Commanders with big groups take taxes from farmers; we don't do that. This is the reason they have a bad image, and made a bad reputation for all arbaki."


Karzai Says Will Step Down In 2014
January 11, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has vowed to leave the presidential office at the end of his second term in 2014, and allow a successor to be elected.

Karzai, who has led the U.S.-backed Afghan government for more than a decade, made the pledge January 11 in Washington at a joint news conference with President Barack Obama.

Karzai said one of his “greatest” achievements would be a “proper, well-organized, interference-free election in which the Afghan people can elect their next president.”

Karzai said he envisioned himself being “very happily, a retired president.”

Karzai was selected to be interim president in 2002, after the fall of the Taliban regime.

He was elected president in 2004 and reelected in 2009, in votes marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud.


Exit, Minus Strategy
Barack Obama has clearly decided to cut his losses in Afghanistan. Will all hell break lose when he does?
Foreign Policy BY JAMES TRAUB JANUARY 11, 2013
President Barack Obama listened to his generals the first time around; now he knows better. The Obama of 2009, new to the job, unsure of his relationship to the military and perhaps slightly overawed by his superstar commanders, David Petraeus and Stanley MacChrystal, agreed to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in the name of a counterinsurgency campaign he didn't quite believe in. The Obama of 2013 is prepared to overrule the recommendation of his current commander, Gen. John Allen, and leave few -- if any -- troops behind after U.S. combat units pull out at the end of 2014. That's what's known as a learning curve.

America's obsession with terrorism has wrenched the relationship between civilian leadership and the military in several different directions. The attacks of 9/11 unleashed the ideologues around President George W. Bush -- and exposed his own fervent dreams -- while the uniformed military clung to the cautionary precepts inherited from the Vietnam War. It was Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld who acted as field marshal of the war in Iraq, operating through the compliant commander he chose, Tommy Franks. Having routed the Taliban on his own terms, Rumsfeld felt that he had every reason to ignore advice from service commanders who argued for more troops, much as he ignored advice from State Department officials who warned to prepare for the post-conflict setting. We know where that got us.

By the time Barack Obama took office, the situation was reversed. Obama was a cautionary figure with an ingrained skepticism about America's capacity to reshape the world, especially through the use of force. But by 2009, David Petraeus, mastermind of the 2007 "surge" in Iraq, had come to incarnate a new kind of hero-general, bold and brilliant and charismatic. Stanley MacChrystal, who replaced him as commander of forces in Afghanistan, had the ascetic appeal of a Jedi Knight. Both men, as Fred Kaplan writes in his new book The Insurgents, captured the public imagination and helped re-write the public understanding of military culture and military leadership. And both had come to be gripped by a master idea: counterinsurgency, or COIN. They were ideologues, just as Paul Wolfowitz and **** Cheney had been in the years before.

Obama never caught the bug, as Bush had. He tasked his vice president, Joe Biden, with punching holes in the optimistic counterinsurgency narrative. Over time, according to Bob Woodward in Obama's Wars, the president grew increasingly skeptical that the U.S. could remake Afghanistan in the few short years during which American troops would remain there, or even that it needed to. He wondered why the United States had to worry about the Taliban taking over Afghanistan when the real threat was al Qaeda. But both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that a Taliban victory would bring al Qaeda back to Afghanistan; and Obama ultimately agreed to a slightly diminished version of MacChrystal's middle option, which had called for 40,000 troops along with a big increase in civilian presence. He may have felt that he could not afford to substitute his judgment for that of America's military poster boys.

COIN has had its great experiment; and it has been found wanting. The massive program of development assistance and government reform which accompanied the military surge has done little either to reduce the corruption and incompetence of the Afghan state or to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan public. One recent study found that in the country's most fiercely contested provinces aid is negatively correlated with both stability and popular perceptions of the international presence. It never seemed plausible -- save, perhaps, to MacChrystal, who spoke of bringing "government-in-a-box" -- that the U.S. could significantly boost the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's government in three years; and White House officials have long since stopped speaking of political or economic reform as a crucial piece of their exit strategy.

Over the last year, as public support for the war effort has dropped as low as 23 percent, Obama has abandoned one piece after another of the strategy he once envisioned. A new "partnership" with Pakistan involving development assistance, security coordination, and regional diplomacy was to persuade Islamabad to close up the sanctuaries where insurgents trained and organized, and took refuge from U.S. forces. That, too, has turned out to be a pipe dream; it's a good day when Islamabad and Washington are even speaking to one another. The neologism "AfPak," meant to denote the inextricability of the two problems, has become an anachronism. Indeed, the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Obama created soon after taking office in order to forge "whole-of-government" solutions to this complex regional problem has probably outlived its usefulness. It was, after all, created for Richard Holbrooke, the late diplomat who fervently embraced this approach. The White House is said to
be thinking of replacing the office with a special envoy.

The exit strategy from Afghanistan increasingly looks like: exit, minus strategy. General Allen has been constantly ratcheting down the number of U.S. troops needed to remain after 2014 to carry out counterterror missions and continue training Afghan forces -- from 20,000 to 15,000 to three options at 3,000, 6,000, or 9,000 troops. But that still may be too much: Earlier this week, Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor, said that the president may leave no troops behind at all. That was a message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who's now in Washington trying to make case for a larger residual U.S. presence, but also to the Pentagon. General Allen is not David Petraeus. (David Petraeus is no longer David Petraeus, for that matter.) And Obama, who must think about many things which do not enter into his generals' ken, like public opinion and the budget deficit, will make up his own mind. He is saying, in effect, that he can live with failure.

Is that a bad thing? In a Washington Post op-ed last November, Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, the gung-ho generals of the Institute for the Study of War, predicted that, absent a remaining force of 40,000 troops, the United States will be unable to engage in serious counterterror operations, affect the Afghan political process as the country approaches a crucial election in 2014, or engage in meaningful nation-building.

That may be hyperbolic, but it certainly defines what's at stake. It is, for example, extremely unlikely that Afghan forces will be able to stand on their own once U.S. troops leave. Even the Pentagon's extremely rosy December 2012 progress report concedes that only one of the Afghan National Army's 23 brigades is ready to fight on its own. And a recent article in the New York Times reports that the people of Marja district in Helmand Province, brought back to bustling life after months of bloody battle by U.S. Marines, have already resigned themselves to the return of the Taliban once American forces pack up.

The Obama who hopes to pivot to Asia, and to nation-building-at-home, just may not care that much anymore. I imagine that the president and his team, now thoroughly cured of the military's can-do spirit of optimism, regard reports of Afghan military readiness with as much skepticism as most of the rest of us do. They would like to keep Afghan whole after 2014, but they are no longer prepared to pay the price that may be required to do so. They are hoping -- but it's just a hope -- that they can close the door on Afghanistan as they already have on Iraq, continuing to provide billions in development assistance, budgetary support, and military training while the Afghans sort out their security and political problems on their own. Drone warfare has seriously eroded al Qaeda's ranks in Pakistan, and the war on terror has moved on to Yemen and North Africa. Even the counterterror aspect of the Afghan war has thus lost some of its urgency.

And if the hopes for Afghan self-sufficiency prove baseless, as they very well might? U.S. failure in Vietnam was supposed to bring calamity in its wake -- but it didn't. If Afghanistan really is the Vietnam of our time, then Barack Obama, like Richard Nixon, has decided to cut his losses.


Heavy snowfall traps 80 including children in N. Afghanistan
By Mirwais Adeel - January 12 2013, 7:38 pm Khaama Press
According to reports at least 80 people including women and children have been trapped in Barfi Pass at Khost district of northern Baghlan province following heavy snow and are at risk of losing their lives.

The recent heavy snow fall has reportedly closed the main highways and roads of the central provinces of Afghanistan.

Waras district chief for central Bamiyan province of Afghanistan Mohammad Zaman Bahlul said at least four civilians who were trapped under the snow following avalanche breakout were taken out today and one of the passenger is in a critical health condition.

Mr. Bahlul further added the four passengers were trapped under the snow after their vehicle was hit by avalanche at Qawnaq highway between Bamiyan and Daikundi provinces.

In the meantime dozens of other passengers have been reportedly trapped in Qawnaq highway due to heavy snow fall which has blocked the roads and highway.

Provincial governor Habiba Surabi said the concerned officials were informed to prevent travelling while the roads are blocked however the passengers and drivers have ignored the notices.

She said all the roads and highways connecting Bamiyan province with the central provinces have been blocked following heavy snow fall last night.

Surabi also said that the cleaning work of the roads and highways have been contracted to private companies and will start their work soon after the snow fall stops.


Afghanistan Hero Gets Medal of Honor
By Luis Martinez | ABC OTUS News
A former Army staff sergeant who helped repel one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan will receive the Medal of Honor. Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha, 31, becomes only the fourth living recipient of the nation's highest award for valor from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House announced Friday that on Feb. 11 Romesha will receive the medal for his actions in repelling the deadly attack on Combat Outpost Keating on Oct. 3, 2009. At the time Romesha was serving as a Section Leader with Bravo Troop, 3d Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

The attack by hundreds of Taliban fighters on the remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan killed 8 American soldiers and left 22 others wounded. The attack was profiled in the book "The Outpost" by Jake Tapper, formerly of ABC News.

Romesha will become the 11 th veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be awarded the medal. Seven of them have been awarded posthumously.

Combat Outpost Keating was a small base in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, located at the bottom of a valley surrounded on all sides by steep mountain ridges. Plans to close the base had been delayed for months when the attack was launched by 300 Taliban fighters, hiding in the rugged terrain.

According to the citation accompanying his award, Romesha took out an enemy machine gun team and was injured by a rocket propelled grenade as he engaged a second one.

"Undeterred by his injuries, Staff Sergeant Romesha continued to fight," says the citation, "and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers. "

Now leading a five-man team, Romesha used a with a sniper rifle to fight back Taliban attackers, including three who had breached the outpost's perimeter.

"With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Romesha continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire, as he moved confidently about the battlefield engaging and destroying multiple enemy targets," says the citation.

Maintaining radio communication with the tactical operations center at the base, Romesha identified a main point of attackers and directed air support that killed "over 30 enemy fighters."

"After learning that other Soldiers at a distant battle position were still alive, Staff Sergeant Romesha and his team provided covering fire, allowing three of their wounded comrades to reach the aid station. " Romesha and his team then " pushed forward 100 meters under withering fire, to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. "

The citation says "Staff Sergeant Romesha's heroic actions throughout the day-long battle were critical in suppressing an enemy that had far greater numbers. His extraordinary efforts gave Bravo Troop the opportunity to regroup, reorganize and prepare for the counterattack that allowed the Troop to account for its personnel and secure Combat Outpost Keating."

After the battle, Outpost Keating was finally closed down.

Romesha enlisted in the Army in September 1999 and served until April 2011. Married and a father of three, he currently lives in Minot, North Dakota.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com