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Six bombers attack Afghan spy agency, kill two
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - Six suicide bombers launched a coordinated attack on Afghanistan's spy agency in Kabul on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding 30, Afghan officials said.
The attack started at around noon (0730 GMT) when a suicide attacker detonated a large car bomb near a gate of one of the National Directorate of Security's (NDS) buildings, the Kabul police chief's office said in a statement.
Soon after, five men wearing vests packed with explosives and carrying grenades and automatic rifles attempted to storm the compound, but they were shot dead by security forces.
"Six terrorists, armed with assault rifles, grenades, suicide vests planned a complex attack on one of NDS's units," said the security agency's spokesman, Safiqullah Tahiri.
The minivan the group of five men had arrived in was packed with a type of liquid explosive security forces had not encountered before, Tahiri said.
Two of the agency's guards were killed in the blast, which wounded 30 people, security and health officials said.
The bombers managed to breach the heavily barricaded centre of Kabul, home to several Afghan ministries and Western embassies.
"At the heart of Kabul there was a martyrdom attack on Kabul's spy agency by a car loaded with explosives," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, referring to a suicide attack.
The security agency's chief, Asadullah Khalid, survived an assassination attempt last month in an attack that threatened to derail an already fragile peace process between the government and the Taliban.
Violence across the country has been increasing over the last year, sparking concern over how the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces will be able to manage once foreign troops withdraw by 2014. (Additional reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Dylan Welch; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Young Afghan musicians to tour US
Afghan street kids, orphans to perform at Carnegie Hall as music struggles to revive
By Denis d. Gray, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Not so long ago Fakira roamed the mean streets of the Afghan capital, hawking magazines for 13 U.S. cents apiece to support her poverty-stricken family. Next month, the 15-year-old cellist appears in America's most prestigious concert halls, performing alongside other former street children and orphans of Afghanistan's decades of violence.
"Suddenly my whole life changed, and now I am going to America," she says, recounting her chance encounter with a rather improbable school that's reviving music, both Western classical and Afghan, in a country where the Taliban had made even listening to it a crime — and where a generation of musicians vanished through killings, old age or exile.
The teenager, who uses only one name like many Afghans, will be playing in the Afghan Youth Orchestra, which on Feb. 3 begins a 12-day U.S. tour that includes concerts at Washington's Kennedy Center — President Barack Obama has been invited — New York's Carnegie Hall and the New England Conservatory in Boston.
"Most reports about Afghanistan are about suicide bombings, killings, destruction, corruption, (depicting) Afghanistan as a place where hope has died," says Ahmad Sarmast, who leads the youth orchestra. He says the young musicians will try "to show a different Afghanistan, an Afghanistan where hope is alive and the people are striving to bring about changes. The kids are the symbol of hope. "
The orchestra is the centerpiece of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which Sarmast founded 2½ years ago. By all accounts, the music institute is proving a success story in a country where failed development projects — through poor planning, corruption or militant violence — are more the norm.
Its 141 students, half of them former street kids or orphans ages 10 to 22, study free of charge in a well-ordered, two-story building stocked with mint-condition instruments, new computers, a distance learning center and the country's first instrument repair shop. Rising nearby are concert and rehearsal halls scheduled for completion this summer.
A cacophony of sounds echoes down the school's first-floor corridor hour after hour. In one practice room, four girls practice scales on oboes under portraits of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, whose "Ode to Joy" theme emerges from a trumpeter down the hallway. The rubah, sitar and sarod — traditional Afghan string instruments — and the tabla drum are being played in other rooms.
The 48-member touring company, which also includes three smaller ensembles, will perform both Afghan pieces and specially adapted Western classics when they will be joined by members of two American youth orchestras. One program item, titled "Four Seasons in Afghanistan," fuses Antonio Vivaldi's popular concertos with Afghan melodies played on traditional instruments. It's the handiwork of William Harvey, of Indianapolis, Indiana, a violinist and graduate of New York's eminent Julliard School who serves as the institute's principal conductor.
Urbane and articulate, Sarmast has also been able to attract seven resident foreign teachers, visiting artists and hefty funding and donations from foreign governments, private sponsors and the World Bank, which provided $2 million and is exploring how the institute can be used as a template for other vocational schools in the country.
Son of a famous Afghan composer and conductor, Sarmast sought asylum in Australia after the Taliban swept into power and perpetrated what he calls "nothing less than musical genocide." Obtaining a doctorate in musicology, he returned home after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled the Islamist group to "give back to my society."
"It was my strong belief in the power of music in bringing about social changes," he says. "A strong belief in the healing power of music, especially for a country like Afghanistan which is recovering from 30 years of civil war, where the people are badly traumatized, especially the children."
For some at the institute, Sarmast's words ring true.
"When I return to the orphanage and there is no trumpet, I miss my mother," says Meena Zamani, a 10-year-old orphan just beginning to master the instrument. "Playing takes away all my sadness."
Fakira remembers watching students in neat, clean uniforms going off to school while she and her two brothers scoured the streets for money to help their jobless father, mother and five other siblings. She was finally offered some schooling at an orphanage that took in the poorest of children and where the institute was spotting for the musically talented.
It was love at first sound when Fakira heard the "soft, comforting" tones of the cello.
"When I pick up and play my cello, the hard times, the bad feelings vanish — I forget," she says. Now, like other former street children, she receives a monthly stipend of $27 to compensate for lost family income, studies English and other subjects offered by the institute and looks forward to seeing the White House and the bright lights of New York City.
But she and her fellow students also express anxiety, wedged as they are between the tragic past and an Afghanistan that could again descend into chaos after the departure of U.S. and other NATO forces in 2014.
"I am not sure about my future as a musician in Afghanistan. But I love music so that's why I came here," says 22-year-old Shabeer Aharad, practicing the oboe in preparation for the American journey and heaping praise on his school and teachers.
Other efforts to bring back a rich musical tradition, including a onetime budding Western classical scene in Kabul, have not proved so successful.
The ragged instruments at the country's only university music department include one beat-up drum and a decrepit cello, with even music stands lacking. There are very few seasoned Afghan instructors and only two foreigners.
One is retired, 64-year-old Faith Rynders, who volunteered to come to Kabul University from Bemidji, Minnesota, hoping her career as a pianist and voice teacher could prove useful in building a new generation of musicians.
Despite the hurdles she faces, it has.
In an almost bare room, pierced through with bitter winter cold, one of her students slowly places his hands on a piano keyboard. "The fingers get so stiff," says 22-year-old Fawad Sultani by way of apology. Then the lean, handsome pianist unfurls the rapid runs and yearning themes of Frederic Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor.
Rynders stands at a distance, smiling. "I'm very proud of him," she says.
Marine faces charges for urinating on corpses
By MICHAEL BIESECKER | Associated Press
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A U.S. Marine was set to face court martial Wednesday for urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and then posing for photos with the corpses.
Staff Sgt. Edward W. Deptola is accused of the desecration of remains and posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties. He also is accused of failing to properly supervise junior Marines and not reporting the misconduct.
Deptola and another Marine based at Camp LeJeune, N.C., were charged last year after video surfaced showing four Marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three dead Afghans in July 2011. In the video, one of the Marines looked down at the bodies and quipped, "Have a good day, buddy."
Staff Sgt. Joseph W. Chamblin pleaded guilty to similar charges last month. Chamblin was sentenced to 30 days confinement, reduced in rank, fined and ordered to forfeit part of his pay for six months. Three other Marines were given administrative punishments for their roles in the matter.
The urination video surfaced amid a string of embarrassing episodes for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. American troops were caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, posing for photos with insurgents' bloodied remains and an alleged massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a soldier.
The Marine Corps said the urination took place during a counterinsurgency operation in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, located in the south of the country.
After the video garnered international attention on YouTube, senior military officials sternly condemned the behavior of the Marines involved.
The United States now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. and its NATO allies agreed in November 2010 that they would withdraw all their combat troops by the end of 2014, but they haven't decided on the scope of future missions in the country and the size of any residual force remaining after that.
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Follow AP writer Michael Biesecker at www.twitter.com/mbieseck
America Prepares to Fold in Afghanistan But Must Stay
Jan 16, 2013 4:45 AM EST The Daily Beast
As America prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan after so many lives lost and billions spent, John Kael Weston urges Obama to reconsider—to keep a real presence of U.S. troops that will maintain our painful gains there.
There is a popular new TV show in Kabul. It’s called 2014. Guests surmise how bad things could get after NATO departs. The program epitomizes the mood I found after three weeks in Afghanistan, confirmed and reconfirmed by numerous conversations in Herat, Kandahar, and Kunduz. Afghans described “a dark horizon” ahead. More important, they question why the United States is abandoning them. Most believed that with the U.S. alongside—meaning some thousand troops, not tens of thousands—their country stands a chance. The show, they said, fit Afghans’ dark humor, irony, and stoicism. Their overall mood matched wintertime Kabul’s gray, pockmarked setting, inverted polluted cold air, and trapped below the Hindu Kush’s snowy peaks.
No Afghan I spoke with knew the name of the American ambassador, and one said that whenever the four-star NATO commander addressed them, it was “only bad news regarding more civilian casualties.” American silence made things worse. Property prices in Kabul already had dropped 40 percent. Gun prices had increased in multiples. Afghans were hunkering down, and several mentioned another civil war.
U.S. and coalition investments in Afghanistan have been significant, colored in reds and green. Thousands dead, even more wounded, with billions disbursed. The Longest War in American History. Americans are tired. NATO is tired. So are the Afghans, even more than we are. Their costs have been greater. Their bravery far less heralded—no autobiographical war books scribed by Pashtun warrior-poets on Amazon.com or in Hollywood scripts.
The fundamental question before President Obama and his team persists. How to ensure U.S. national security is not undermined as we “responsibly” draw down? After spending almost three years in Afghanistan (mainly in Khost and Helmand), I am convinced a baseline troop presence is necessary ... for a long time. Think decades, not years. Think Korea or Germany.
SEALs and drones will not be enough in this high-stakes game, though a seductive image from Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a mirage. Talk of zero troops in Afghanistan might be a short-term and perhaps effective negotiating ploy. A sustained message from the White House along these lines, however, would amount to national security malfeasance. I can hear the late, great Richard Holbrooke lecturing from beyond the grave, thundering with conviction and cause:
How could the mighty United States of America get this historic endgame so wrong?!
The post-Holbrooke policy void needs to be filled with another driven statesman born with Machiavellian instincts and enjoying welcome access to the commander in chief. (Afghan politicos knife-fight over tea and with a smile, the same warlords we reempowered due to lackadaisical and naive U.S. policies.) Where are the worthy? And when will President Obama make the call? Wars do not end on their own, or by the calloused hands of our military led by generals. Politicians start them and end them.
NATO’s most monstrous bases should go away, but not our hard-won foothold.
Last week’s collegial but meandering press conference by Presidents Obama and Karzai is sure to reinforce fears about U.S. abandonment. Afghans remember the precedent. While those reclining in Washington parlors fixate on how quickly troops will depart, Kabulis said final numbers mattered less than American endurance, a sustained strategic presence.
But it seems we’re about to fold—caught up in the most recent version of the region’s Great Game for so long. I’m from the American West. I play poker. Our current strategy makes no sense, even if the chips were plastic and not counted out in lives and limb. The United States appears ready to concede its hand before seeing all the cards on the table ... and underneath, how many pistols with itchy trigger fingers might be pointed our way? Now is not the time to walk away, or run.
In the recent head of state visit, the White House appeared focused more on Karzai’s psychology than on the psychology of millions of Afghans, who hedge their lives daily. There’s plenty of well-earned distrust between sides. It is a dangerous dance for ordinary Afghans as both leaders deliberate. Other governments, American friends and enemies or some quasi-version, are doing the same. Neither wartime president spoke directly to the Afghan people or region, while the American people did hear the administration’s nation-building-at-home mantra.
Until Afghans see U.S. troops staying put, they won’t believe it. And it is in our interest for Marines and soldiers to remain, however few and refocused their mission. Equally, Americans need to see Afghans out front, doing more with less, and fast. Twelve years after 9/11, economic concerns still dominate the homefront. The warfront remains distant as others’ kids dodge the roadside bombs.
But it is not too late to correct our course. We can do a lot with a little, provided we stay long enough. NATO’s most monstrous bases should go away, but not our hard-won foothold. Afghanistan’s east has long been home to the greatest threat—the turf of the Haqqanis and friends—and remains our strategic over-watch platform into a nuclear, unstable Pakistan. We must keep our eyes and resources focused there. And Kandahar will always be the Taliban’s spiritual home. Best to keep “enemies” and inevitable negotiating partners close.
SEAL Team 6 did not launch their successful Osama bin Laden mission from the Indian Ocean but rather from eastern Jalalabad. And let’s not forget on May 1, 2010, an inept would-be terrorist trained in northwest Pakistan tried to kill New Yorkers in Times Square by blowing up a Nissan Pathfinder. He failed. Smoke billowed, but a bomb did not detonate. If he had succeeded, today’s debate would be different. Indeed, America’s commander in chief might still be holding a magnifying glass along the Durand Line, not just ordering more predator drone strikes.
The early February arrival of the war-wise Marine general, Joseph Dunford, as the new top NATO commander (along with his State Department political adviser Carter Malkasian, an American icon among Pashtuns in Helmand; he speaks the native tongue) provides us with an opportunity to reassure Afghans: while America’s longest war is ending—as it should—we are not leaving. Dunford and the able U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham should consider a joint appearance on Kabul television.
Even better, they might travel together to key places throughout the country, speaking with thick American accents about an enduring partnership. A political-military message not lost in translation behind Washington podiums will help reverse the self-fulfilling mindset that the Americans are abandoning Afghanistan, again, the next civil war inevitable. The ambassador-commander road show should in turn elicit renewed commitments from Afghans to fight hardest—but not alone.
Before departing Afghanistan the day after this past Christmas, I flew to Herat, a bustling city on the Iranian border, as well as to Kunduz and Kandahar. An Afghan entrepreneur (in construction) and a young law professor sat next to me. The businessman said the Taliban were weak, but America’s public message was weaker still.
The professor noted his Herat University students did not want U.S. troops to stay longer than necessary. Waiting for NATO military convoys to pass on roads got old a long time ago, but a complete 2014 departure guaranteed failure and bloodshed.
Days later, in the Kabul Airport, first built by the Soviets and later remodeled with Japanese funds, I noticed two 20-something travelers from China, official documents in hand, in front of me at passport control. They were dressed like Americans from L.A. (baseball caps, hoodies, one even without socks despite the December temperatures). I do not know what brought them to Afghanistan—perhaps the massive copper mine, Mes Aynak, that Beijing holds rights to?—but they appeared to be repeat visitors with well-used People’s Republic of China passports.
In the lobby, I joined a group of turban-wearing elders, who reminded me of Khost. Well, several said they were from that province on their Hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Half were friendly, the others not very. One of the oldest used his right hand to motion circlelike in the air, a helicopter, the left shaped in the form of a gun. (He came from Sabari, perhaps the Haqqanis’ favorite district.) His pantomime meant: U.S. helos, down. Through my own hand signals, I reminded him about the value of Stinger missiles provided by the U.S.A. during the Soviet occupation. He switched subjects, and invited me to convert to Islam on the spot.
The charismatic student, a big smile under long black bangs, said that Americans could leave “only after I graduate from university.”
As we walked into the Safi Airways plane, the last language I heard was Russian. White-haired men in heavy parkas carried passports marked “Ukraine.”
Before landing in Dubai, while over Iranian territory, I kept thinking about an Afghan student in Khost in 2008. A teacher proudly introduced her as “my top one.” The charismatic student, a big smile under long black bangs, said that Americans could leave “only after I graduate from university.”
Her graduation date, if she made it to college at all, will fall well beyond 2014.
It won’t take many troops but several billion U.S. dollars annually to reinforce long-term U.S. national security interests, and probably prevent a civil war—not to mention increase this girl’s odds. She too endures Afghanistan, daily, still hopeful I’d like to think, a world away from D.C.’s beltway full of deciders.
IEC Opposes Karzai's Comments on Old Voter Cards
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Abrahimkhil Tuesday, 15 January 2013
There will be no transparency in the 2014 presidential election if the old voter cards are reused, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said Tuesday in response to President Hamid Karzai saying new cards will not be issued.
IEC chief Fazel Ahmad Manawe on Tuesday said that the transparency of the election will be undermined if the old voter cards are reused - meaning a new registration will not take place - and suggested Karzai did not understand the ramifications of using the old registration.
"The things we do aim to guarantee the transparency of elections, but anyone who wants to interfere in our internal affairs will undermine transparency and they will lose out. I think the second option [for new voter cards] was not fully explained to the president," Manawe said, adding the IEC is working on another option.
"Unfortunately the old voting cards doesn't guarantee the transparency of elections," he added.
Karzai said Monday at a press conference that new voting cards will require more money that the government does not have.
"If we cancel these cards, and we are unable to make new cards or no one will give money for [new cards], and then we end up with no cards and no election, then I will be blamed," Karzai said.
"We will correct what we have in our hands. This is the decision of Afghanistan's cabinet. When we don't have money we have to use that equipment which we have in our hands," he added.
Manawe urged the government, political parties and civil society organisations to help the IEC achieve its aims.
The presidential election is scheduled for April 5 2014.
No Jirga for Decision on US Forces: Political Parties
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Tuesday, 15 January 2013
A number of political leaders have opposed President Hamid Karzai's plan for a Loya Jirga of tribal elders to decide on the question of US forces immunity from Afghanistan's legal jurisdiction after 2014.
Some political parties and coalition groups said that the continued presence of US troops is essential for Afghanistan's stability after Nato withdraws in 2014 and it should not be up to the tribal elders to decide on a matter which the presence of US forces hinges on.
"Legal immunity is not a big enough issue to sacrifice all the achievements and opportunities ahead for," board member of Right and Justice party Asef Ashna said.
National Coalition spokesman Fazlurrahman Oria told TOLOnews, "A traditional Jirga [on this matter] has no place in the country's constitution, and not all its decisions may be implemented."
The exemption of US forces from prosecution under Afghan law is one of Washington's conditions for its troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014.
However, some parliament members disagree with the US demand for immunity and believe that the Afghan people are similarly against it.
"US troops should not have legal immunity and should be punishable under Afghan law for any crime they may commit," MP Kamal Nasser Osooli said.
"The Afghan people do not agree on us giving US forces immunity from Afghan law," said another MP Alemi Balkhi.
US President Barack Obama warned Karzai during their meeting in Washington last week that if Kabul does not allow the US troops immunity from prosecution in Afghanistan, then American forces will completely withdraw.
There are fears that such a move will leave a security vacuum after 2014 similar to that which Iraq faced when the US withdrew over the same issue.
All international forces currently in Afghanistan are exempt from prosecution under Afghan law. In case of any crime committed, troops are disciplined according to the laws of their own countries.
Taliban key commander killed in southern Afghan town
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Security forces raided Taliban hideout in the southern Uruzgan province, 370 km south of Kabul, and killed a key Taliban commander on Tuesday night, a local official Farid Ayel said Wednesday.
"Acting upon intelligence report, the security forces on Tuesday night stormed a house in Chora district where commander Mullah Zainullah was present and killed him on the spot," provincial police spokesman Ayel told Xinhua.
The commander was active in Chora district and adjoin areas and his death is a major setback to the Taliban militants, the official added.
Taliban militants are yet to comment.
Afghan army has deficiences but it's getting there, says Nato general
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, the deputy Nato commander in Europe, has conceded that the Afghan army has “deficiencies and gaps” but said they are now “stepping up to the plate”.
Telegraph.co.uk By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent 15 Jan 2013
Gen Shirreff admitted soldiers were often 'exasperated' with their Afghan counterparts.
"Yes, there are problems," he said "There is at the same time a degree of exasperation which I wouldn’t in any way want to minimise."
But he said that security is improving and that insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces are not “deflecting us from our task”.
Gen Shirreff insisted that the Afghans are “increasingly taking on the responsibility” in the country.
“You only have to look back two or three years to see how far they’ve come,” Gen Shirreff told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One. “
Look at what they’re doing now on the ground. It’s a fact that Afghan brigades are routinely planning and executing operations independently or with advisors on the ground.
“That doesn’t mean to say they are completely there. I completely acknowledge that there remain deficiencies and gaps in terms of combat support, issues with administration, issues with leadership and command. But all these are areas that can be put right.”
Gen Shirreff appeared to accept a recent report issued by the Pentagon which said that only one out of every 23 Afghan brigades is able to work independently of American or Nato forces.
“That’s an important report and I’m not in any way going to minimise that report. But the fact remains across the board increasingly Afghan brigades are capable of operating on their own,” he said.
Gen Shirreff said that “security is without question getting better”.
However the general described so-called “green on blue” insider attacks by Afghans as a “grim and insidious business”.
“I don't in any way minimise the threat of insider attacks, but it's not deflecting us from our task, and it's not having any major detrimental effect on our operational impact," he said.
“I come back [from Afghanistan] optimistic. The situation is moving in exactly the right direction.”
12 insurgents captured in E. Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have detained one dozen insurgents in different operations in eastern Afghan provinces, the ISAF forces said Wednesday.
"Afghan and coalition forces detained 12 insurgents and cleared one improvised explosive device (IED) during operations in eastern Afghanistan throughout the past 24 hours," the ISAF's Regional Command-East (RC-East) said in a statement.
The suspects were detained in Paktia, 100 km south of capital Kabul and neighboring Paktika province, according to the statement.
The joint forces found and safely cleared the IED in Bak district, Khost province 150 km southeast of Kabul.
"The detained suspects were transferred to bases for questioning," the statement said, adding "operations in RC-East are ongoing."
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001, has yet to make comments.
Bulgaria begins troops withdrawal from Afghanistan
SOFIA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Bulgarian government on Wednesday said it had decided to withdraw some 40 percent of the country's 600-member contingent in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed in Afghanistan within the first half of 2013.
The withdrawal of Bulgarian medical team from the city of Herat has begun on Dec. 31, 2012, and the country's contingent based in Kabul and the team of instructors will be pulled out starting from 1 March and 31 March respectively.
Bulgaria's 358-member contingent guarding Kandahar Airport will return home at the end of 2014, and only adviser teams will stay in Afghanistan after 2015, the government said in a press release.
Bulgaria, which joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004, has been participating in the NATO-led ISAF mission since 2002.
Afghan Deputies Trade Blows Over Impeachment Of Ministers
January 15, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Two Afghan lawmakers have traded blows during a parliamentary session in Kabul.
A verbal dispute between Kandahar deputy Mohammad Naim Lalai and Herat deputy Farhad Majidi on January 15 escalated into a physical fight that lasted several minutes.
The scuffle erupted as lawmakers were deliberating over whether to impeach 11 Afghan ministers.
Impeachment proceedings were brought against the ministers last year after their ministries spent less than 50 percent of their allocated budgets.
The budgets were for expenditure from March 2011 to March 2012. But the issue has proved divisive.
Some lawmakers have called for all current ministers heading those ministries to be impeached. Others have said only those who were ministers during the period in question should be punished.
Officials said an investigation has been launched into the incident on January 15.
Based on reporting by ToloNews and Radio Free Afghanistan
Victory in Aghanistan? Not without U.S. troops
White House talk of 3,000 personnel — or none — by the end of 2014 ignores the reality of the situation there.
By Max Boot January 15, 2013 Los Angeles Times
During the Vietnam War, Sen. George Aiken, a Vermont Republican, was famous for suggesting that we declare victory and go home. (What he actually said is a little more nuanced, but that was the popular perception.)
President Obama seems to be pursuing a version of this strategy in Afghanistan. At least that is the inference one can draw from his claims of success at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday in which the two leaders unveiled an acceleration of the timetable for U.S. troops to step back from combat.
While Obama conceded that we had "probably not ... achieved everything that some might have imagined us achieving in the best of scenarios," he nevertheless tried to put a smiley face on the war effort. "Did we achieve our central goal? And have we been able, I think, to shape a strong relationship with a responsible Afghan government that is willing to cooperate with us to make sure that it is not a launching pad for future attacks against the United States? We have achieved that goal. We are in the process of achieving that goal."
There is actually an important difference between the last two sentences. Which is it: Have we achieved the goal or are we in the process? If the latter, then that would argue for a continued U.S. commitment to Afghanistan; if the former, then it suggests our mission is complete.
The reality is that, though the U.S. is arguably making progress, we are a long way from our ultimate objective defined in the U.S.-Afghan security partnership agreement signed by Obama and Karzai in May: "sustainable self-reliance in security, governance, economic and social development."
Yes, there has been substantial success in routing the Taliban out of its strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, as I have seen for myself on repeated trips to southern Afghanistan. After years of increased violence , enemy-initiated attacks fell 7% from January to November 2012 compared with the same period a year earlier. And as Obama said, the Afghan government is more or less cooperating with us, despite considerable friction over the handling of detainees, government corruption and other difficult issues.
But recent security gains remain incomplete. Commanders have never had the resources to launch a "clear and hold" campaign in the east as they did in the south. As a result, Haqqani sanctuaries remain intact an hour's drive from Kabul.
And even maintaining the incomplete and tenuous gains of the last few years will be impossible unless Afghanistan continues to receive substantial U.S. assistance. The Defense Department's Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan concedes that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate on its own. The Afghan forces, though fighting hard and taking considerable casualties, still need American "enablers" such as artillery, air support, medevac, logistics and intelligence. Afghanistan will not even have a functioning air force until 2017 at the earliest.
Delivering all that support, and maintaining a separate special operations capacity to hit top-level terrorist targets, will require a substantial presence of American troops. Afghanistan is a big country. Personnel based in Kabul cannot effectively assist Afghan units in Kandahar or Khost or hit terrorist targets there. There must be at least a handful of bases outside the capital area, and each one will need to be defended and supplied. Quick-reaction forces and medical facilities must be on call in the event of trouble.
How substantial a presence?
Retired Lt. Gen. Jim Dubik, a former commander of the training mission in Iraq, estimates in a recent report for the Institute for the Study of War that 23,000 to 28,000 troops would be needed. Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan, estimated in a December 2010 report for the Center for a New American Security that 25,000 to 35,000 troops would be needed. (Barno has since said that we could get by with substantially fewer, but he has given no reasons why his earlier analysis doesn't hold.)
That is a far cry from the figures now leaking out of the Obama administration. Rumor has it that the administration would like to pull out perhaps half of the 66,000 troops this year and almost all the rest in 2014, leaving behind as few as 3,000 personnel. Or maybe none at all: Talk of a "zero option" has been getting louder from the White House.
Obama has a perfect right to decide that the costs of victory in Afghanistan are too high. But if so, he should level with us instead of insulting our intelligence by claiming that we have already won a war that shows no sign of ending any time soon.
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a contributing writer to Opinion and the author, most recently, of "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present."
Qatar aims for Afghan peace process by 2014
Reuters By Regan Doherty 15/01/2013
DOHA - Qatar aims to see a peace process in Afghanistan by the time NATO combat operations end in 2014, Qatar's prime minister said on Tuesday as the Afghan Taliban movement prepared to open an office in the Qatari capital.
With the focus in Afghanistan shifting from a military push by NATO troops to potential talks on a peaceful settlement, U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan counterpart Hamed Karzai said last week they supported the opening of a Taliban office in Doha.
Obama is seeking an orderly way out of the war, which was triggered by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by an al Qaeda network harboured by the Taliban.
The planned office is one of a series of gestures, including the possible transfer to Qatar of Taliban detainees from the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, aimed at injecting momentum into the tentative reconciliation efforts.
Qatar, a long-time Gulf Arab peace broker in Afghanistan's war, said preparations were under way to open the Taliban's office as soon as possible to facilitate talks.
"The U.S. and others will withdraw in 2014, and I think it's an important core ideal that at least there is a political process in place, to have stability," Qatari premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told a news conference with his Libyan counterpart in Doha.
"Our aim is to help our Afghan brothers and find a solution accepted by all, or most, parties," he added.
A senior European diplomat told Reuters last week that several Taliban representatives were already on the ground in Doha but a formal office had not yet been opened.
DISCREET
Qatar, which hosts a number of Taliban officials, has played a central role in discreet discussions between U.S. officials and representatives of the shadowy militant group, which remains a formidable enemy in Afghanistan even as U.S. and NATO troops begin to withdraw.
Progress towards negotiations has not been smooth.
The Taliban announced a year ago that they would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting willingness to engage in talks that could bring them positions in the Afghan government or control over much of their historical southern heartland.
But in March they rowed back on the plan, citing what they said were inconsistencies in the U.S. negotiating position.
The reference to the office in the joint statement by Obama and Karzai suggested the idea had fresh momentum.
Meeting in Washington last week, the two leaders agreed to speed up a handover of combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghan forces, raising the prospect of an accelerated U.S. withdrawal from the country.
Karzai and U.S. officials have said repeatedly that any peace process must be Afghan-led. The Afghan president has been angered in the past when he felt excluded by foreign efforts to set up some kind of negotiations.
(Reporting By Regan Doherty; Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Tom Pfeiffer)
Major Afghanistan Streets Renamed “Bad Monkey” and “Hillbilly Hameed” by Apple Maps
By Will Oremus Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013 The Slate
Apple Maps has been justly ridiculed for putting an Irish airport in the middle of a farm, twisting the Brooklyn Bridge to rubble, and nearly getting some tourists killed in a remote Australian national park. But this weekend, the Wall Street Journal’s Afghanistan bureau chief noticed a longstanding and seemingly inexplicable blooper that had flown under the radar.
“So is one of Kabul’s main streets really called Bad Monkey, as the new Apple Maps on my iPad claim?” Yaroslav Trofimov tweeted on Sunday. A screenshot appended to his tweet showed what he meant: The major street that runs past the Babur Gardens is clearly labeled “Bad Monkey.”
Kabul resident and blogger Una Moore saw Trofimov’s tweet and replied, “I’m guessing Apple based its map of Kabul on old OSM edits, which included plenty of prank names. Jalalabad is probably the same.” Indeed, Trofimov poked around a bit more and found a main Jalalabad thoroughfare that Apple Maps had dubbed “Hillbilly Hameed.” Another Kabul street bore the moniker “MoJo Way.”
A quick check of Google Maps reveals that none of these streets are in fact named quite as entertainingly as Apple Maps seems to believe. In a blog post on UN Dispatch, Moore explains how it must have happened. Her post is worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt:
Apple had copied old open source maps of Afghanistan’s cities in their entirety from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the site sometimes described as the “Wikipedia of maps,” without checking the veracity of the information they contained. Essentially, it had lifted the earliest rough drafts of the maps. The old maps were created by a small group of Afghan university students and mapping enthusiasts who assigned prankish fake names to streets that lacked official names or were subjects of naming disputes due to decades of overlapping conflicts.
Over time, OpenStreetMap has fixed those humorous errors, according to Moore's reporting—but Apple hasn’t bothered. Search “Bad Monkey, Kabul, Afghanistan” on Apple Maps and you’ll find that they still haven’t. Long live Hillbilly Hameed!
Afghanistan transition: One city is a ticking time bomb
Why Jalalabad could determine the success of stability after the US withdraws from Afghanistan.
GlobalPost
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The evening prayer had just finished when an imam at a mosque in this city in eastern Afghanistan turned his attention to politics.
Over a loudspeaker, he told worshippers that people who fight for Islam and die as martyrs are rewarded in paradise. Americans are "pigs" and "brutal animals," he said.
For years Jalalabad has been relatively untouched by the war raging elsewhere in the country. On the surface it is still a thriving commercial center where visitors come to take weekend breaks, eat fish and enjoy the mild winter weather.
But now there is a darker undercurrent to life here. Anti-NATO sentiment is easily found alongside anxiety over what will happen when the foreign troops leave.
The violence that is prevalent in other parts of the country has also begun to bleed into the streets — adding to an atmosphere that feels like the calm before the storm.
"This is a revolution," said Haji Nazer Gul, a local shopkeeper and father of nine. "One kilometer from the city the government does not have control."
If Jalalabad is ever lost, US hopes for a stable post-occupation Afghanistan will surely have been dealt a fatal blow.
The city lies a short distance from the Khyber Pass and the Pakistan border. As the capital of Nangarhar province, it is the most important economic and political hub in the east of the country and a place that resonates with deep historical symbolism.
In 1842, William Brydon, an assistant surgeon of the British East India Company Army, arrived here slumped on his dying horse — a rare survivor in a catastrophic retreat by the British Empire at the end of the first Anglo-Afghan war.
Then in the communist era, Jalalabad was the site of a major battle between the government and the mujahedeen after the Soviets withdrew. Osama bin Laden took part in the fighting, which ended in failure for the guerrillas.
The former Al Qaeda leader later lived here for a brief period in the 1990s and took refuge in the nearby Tora Bora mountains, following the 2001 US-led invasion.
During a recent visit by GlobalPost, Afghan soldiers could be seen trying to remove a bomb from the main highway connecting Kabul to Jalalabad. The device was made out of a gas cylinder with an accompanying detonation cord.
Rasul Ullah Rafiee, the deputy leader of the local branch of Jamiat Eslah, an Islamist civil society group active across the country, claims “everyone is worried” security will deteriorate further.
"Without the Americans the [Afghan] army is nothing,” he said, before adding that the Taliban are already “in power indirectly.”
US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed last week to speed up the transition process. Afghan forces will now take the lead in combat operations this spring, rather than in the summer as originally planned.
Still no decision has been made on whether any US troops will stay beyond the end of 2014 — the deadline for withdrawal.
According to a number of residents interviewed for this article, kidnappings have become common in Jalalabad and wealthy businessmen are often the targets. Rafiee blamed the abductions on criminals rather than insurgents, but acknowledged the militants are openly active in many rural areas.
He listed the names of five districts in Nangarhar that are notorious for being unsafe.
"The lives of the people in these places are very bad. I do not just mean those who work with the government, I mean all of them. They cannot go out of their houses at night even at prayer time," he said.
The Taliban's presence in Jalalabad itself is less obvious. However, guerrillas appear to be operating inside the city, quietly influencing events from the shadows.
Music shops selling the latest recordings of Pashtun singers from both sides of the border used to be a common sight here. Today they are difficult to find because, since 2010, the owners have been threatened and driven out.
High-profile attacks also occasionally take place. The most recent of these happened last month when a group of militants carried out a coordinated assault on Jalalabad airport, where US and Afghan troops are stationed.
Support for the insurgents arises from a mixture of ideology, pragmatism and disillusionment. The governor of Nangarhar province is Gul Agha Sherzai, a former warlord, and local officials are widely perceived as corrupt.
Many of the rebels in this part of the country were once followers of Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis, a leader of the anti-Soviet resistance who died in 2006 having also opposed the current occupation.
His son, Anwar ul-Haq Mujahid, was freed from jail in Pakistan last November in an apparent attempt by Islamabad to help facilitate peace talks with the Taliban.
"Here is a man who spent years in jail without proof against him," said Mohammed Asif Samim, a local poet and writer. “Everyone is happy about this news, but not America.”
He told GlobalPost both the US and the Afghan people must share the blame for the uncertain situation now facing the country.
“America did not ask us to enter and they will not ask us to leave,” he said. “They just care about their own interests.”
Fazelminallah Qazizai reported from Jalalabad and Chris Sands reported from Kabul.
MPs Trade Blows over Ministers Impeachment
TOLOnews.com By Azim Arash Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Parliament descended into a brawl in Tuesday's sitting session apparently over the question of whether to impeach 11 ministers whose ministries failed to spend more than 50 percent of their development budgets in 1390.
A verbal disagreement between Kandahar MP Mohammad Naim Lalai and Herat MP Farhad Majidi led to the two men trading physical blows as more lawmakers attempted to stop the fight.
"Each Tuesday we discuss the agenda of the next week's sessions but misbehaviour from several MPs resulted in a physical clash," Majidi told TOLOnews, while sporting a bandaid beneath his left eye.
Some MPs said the exchange grew heated in a discussion of whether to impeach the 11 ministers overseeing portfolios that did not spend more than 50 percent of their allocated development budget in 1390 (March 2011-March 2012).
The disagreement stems from whether to impeach four ministers who were only appointed in 1391 and who were not in charge of the poorly-managed ministerial budgets at the time.
Some lawmakers say all 11 should to be impeached because the ministers still have to explain the ministry's activities in 1390, while others say only the seven ministers in power in 1390 should be held accountable.
The administrative affairs office said a delegation will investigate Tuesday's incident.
"Discussion over the next week's agenda resulted in physical clash between the MPs. We will investigate the issue," Parliamentary Secretary Farhad Azimi said.
One MP said he believes a lack of strong management led to the clash.
"Weak management caused the physical clash between the lawmakers," head of the parliamentary Defense Committee Humayoun Humayoun told TOLOnews.
Prisoners Killed in Shooting at Ghazni Jail
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Tuesday, 15 January 2013
At least two prisoners have been killed and 10 more injured at Ghazni's central jail after police guards fired on prisoners to quell a spontaneous protest, local officials said.
The injured have been taken for treatment to a nearby hospital, according to officials.
The protest began Tuesday morning when police started collecting prisoners' teapots after a visitor to the prison brought in a suspicious-looking teapot, provincial deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told TOLOnews.
Several prisoners reacted to the teapot confiscations by yelling and throwing rocks at the police guards who fired shots to stop the protest.
"The police started collecting all the teapots. The prisoners started protesting and clashed with the police," Ahmadi said.
"The police fired on the prisoners to quell the protest. One of the prisoners died instantly and the second died in the central hospital of Ghazni," he added.
The security officials told TOLOnews that initial investigations revealed there were drugs in the suspect teapot and the man who brought it in has been arrested.
There are around 400 prisoners at the jail which is not yet under full control of the police, according to Ahmadi.
Most of the Taliban prisoners inside have access to mobile phones and the internet, Ahmadi said.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Mirwais Harooni
KABUL (Reuters) - Six suicide bombers launched a coordinated attack on Afghanistan's spy agency in Kabul on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding 30, Afghan officials said.
The attack started at around noon (0730 GMT) when a suicide attacker detonated a large car bomb near a gate of one of the National Directorate of Security's (NDS) buildings, the Kabul police chief's office said in a statement.
Soon after, five men wearing vests packed with explosives and carrying grenades and automatic rifles attempted to storm the compound, but they were shot dead by security forces.
"Six terrorists, armed with assault rifles, grenades, suicide vests planned a complex attack on one of NDS's units," said the security agency's spokesman, Safiqullah Tahiri.
The minivan the group of five men had arrived in was packed with a type of liquid explosive security forces had not encountered before, Tahiri said.
Two of the agency's guards were killed in the blast, which wounded 30 people, security and health officials said.
The bombers managed to breach the heavily barricaded centre of Kabul, home to several Afghan ministries and Western embassies.
"At the heart of Kabul there was a martyrdom attack on Kabul's spy agency by a car loaded with explosives," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, referring to a suicide attack.
The security agency's chief, Asadullah Khalid, survived an assassination attempt last month in an attack that threatened to derail an already fragile peace process between the government and the Taliban.
Violence across the country has been increasing over the last year, sparking concern over how the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces will be able to manage once foreign troops withdraw by 2014. (Additional reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Dylan Welch; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Young Afghan musicians to tour US
Afghan street kids, orphans to perform at Carnegie Hall as music struggles to revive
By Denis d. Gray, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Not so long ago Fakira roamed the mean streets of the Afghan capital, hawking magazines for 13 U.S. cents apiece to support her poverty-stricken family. Next month, the 15-year-old cellist appears in America's most prestigious concert halls, performing alongside other former street children and orphans of Afghanistan's decades of violence.
"Suddenly my whole life changed, and now I am going to America," she says, recounting her chance encounter with a rather improbable school that's reviving music, both Western classical and Afghan, in a country where the Taliban had made even listening to it a crime — and where a generation of musicians vanished through killings, old age or exile.
The teenager, who uses only one name like many Afghans, will be playing in the Afghan Youth Orchestra, which on Feb. 3 begins a 12-day U.S. tour that includes concerts at Washington's Kennedy Center — President Barack Obama has been invited — New York's Carnegie Hall and the New England Conservatory in Boston.
"Most reports about Afghanistan are about suicide bombings, killings, destruction, corruption, (depicting) Afghanistan as a place where hope has died," says Ahmad Sarmast, who leads the youth orchestra. He says the young musicians will try "to show a different Afghanistan, an Afghanistan where hope is alive and the people are striving to bring about changes. The kids are the symbol of hope. "
The orchestra is the centerpiece of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which Sarmast founded 2½ years ago. By all accounts, the music institute is proving a success story in a country where failed development projects — through poor planning, corruption or militant violence — are more the norm.
Its 141 students, half of them former street kids or orphans ages 10 to 22, study free of charge in a well-ordered, two-story building stocked with mint-condition instruments, new computers, a distance learning center and the country's first instrument repair shop. Rising nearby are concert and rehearsal halls scheduled for completion this summer.
A cacophony of sounds echoes down the school's first-floor corridor hour after hour. In one practice room, four girls practice scales on oboes under portraits of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, whose "Ode to Joy" theme emerges from a trumpeter down the hallway. The rubah, sitar and sarod — traditional Afghan string instruments — and the tabla drum are being played in other rooms.
The 48-member touring company, which also includes three smaller ensembles, will perform both Afghan pieces and specially adapted Western classics when they will be joined by members of two American youth orchestras. One program item, titled "Four Seasons in Afghanistan," fuses Antonio Vivaldi's popular concertos with Afghan melodies played on traditional instruments. It's the handiwork of William Harvey, of Indianapolis, Indiana, a violinist and graduate of New York's eminent Julliard School who serves as the institute's principal conductor.
Urbane and articulate, Sarmast has also been able to attract seven resident foreign teachers, visiting artists and hefty funding and donations from foreign governments, private sponsors and the World Bank, which provided $2 million and is exploring how the institute can be used as a template for other vocational schools in the country.
Son of a famous Afghan composer and conductor, Sarmast sought asylum in Australia after the Taliban swept into power and perpetrated what he calls "nothing less than musical genocide." Obtaining a doctorate in musicology, he returned home after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion toppled the Islamist group to "give back to my society."
"It was my strong belief in the power of music in bringing about social changes," he says. "A strong belief in the healing power of music, especially for a country like Afghanistan which is recovering from 30 years of civil war, where the people are badly traumatized, especially the children."
For some at the institute, Sarmast's words ring true.
"When I return to the orphanage and there is no trumpet, I miss my mother," says Meena Zamani, a 10-year-old orphan just beginning to master the instrument. "Playing takes away all my sadness."
Fakira remembers watching students in neat, clean uniforms going off to school while she and her two brothers scoured the streets for money to help their jobless father, mother and five other siblings. She was finally offered some schooling at an orphanage that took in the poorest of children and where the institute was spotting for the musically talented.
It was love at first sound when Fakira heard the "soft, comforting" tones of the cello.
"When I pick up and play my cello, the hard times, the bad feelings vanish — I forget," she says. Now, like other former street children, she receives a monthly stipend of $27 to compensate for lost family income, studies English and other subjects offered by the institute and looks forward to seeing the White House and the bright lights of New York City.
But she and her fellow students also express anxiety, wedged as they are between the tragic past and an Afghanistan that could again descend into chaos after the departure of U.S. and other NATO forces in 2014.
"I am not sure about my future as a musician in Afghanistan. But I love music so that's why I came here," says 22-year-old Shabeer Aharad, practicing the oboe in preparation for the American journey and heaping praise on his school and teachers.
Other efforts to bring back a rich musical tradition, including a onetime budding Western classical scene in Kabul, have not proved so successful.
The ragged instruments at the country's only university music department include one beat-up drum and a decrepit cello, with even music stands lacking. There are very few seasoned Afghan instructors and only two foreigners.
One is retired, 64-year-old Faith Rynders, who volunteered to come to Kabul University from Bemidji, Minnesota, hoping her career as a pianist and voice teacher could prove useful in building a new generation of musicians.
Despite the hurdles she faces, it has.
In an almost bare room, pierced through with bitter winter cold, one of her students slowly places his hands on a piano keyboard. "The fingers get so stiff," says 22-year-old Fawad Sultani by way of apology. Then the lean, handsome pianist unfurls the rapid runs and yearning themes of Frederic Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor.
Rynders stands at a distance, smiling. "I'm very proud of him," she says.
Marine faces charges for urinating on corpses
By MICHAEL BIESECKER | Associated Press
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A U.S. Marine was set to face court martial Wednesday for urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and then posing for photos with the corpses.
Staff Sgt. Edward W. Deptola is accused of the desecration of remains and posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties. He also is accused of failing to properly supervise junior Marines and not reporting the misconduct.
Deptola and another Marine based at Camp LeJeune, N.C., were charged last year after video surfaced showing four Marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three dead Afghans in July 2011. In the video, one of the Marines looked down at the bodies and quipped, "Have a good day, buddy."
Staff Sgt. Joseph W. Chamblin pleaded guilty to similar charges last month. Chamblin was sentenced to 30 days confinement, reduced in rank, fined and ordered to forfeit part of his pay for six months. Three other Marines were given administrative punishments for their roles in the matter.
The urination video surfaced amid a string of embarrassing episodes for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. American troops were caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, posing for photos with insurgents' bloodied remains and an alleged massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a soldier.
The Marine Corps said the urination took place during a counterinsurgency operation in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, located in the south of the country.
After the video garnered international attention on YouTube, senior military officials sternly condemned the behavior of the Marines involved.
The United States now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. and its NATO allies agreed in November 2010 that they would withdraw all their combat troops by the end of 2014, but they haven't decided on the scope of future missions in the country and the size of any residual force remaining after that.
___
Follow AP writer Michael Biesecker at www.twitter.com/mbieseck
America Prepares to Fold in Afghanistan But Must Stay
Jan 16, 2013 4:45 AM EST The Daily Beast
As America prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan after so many lives lost and billions spent, John Kael Weston urges Obama to reconsider—to keep a real presence of U.S. troops that will maintain our painful gains there.
There is a popular new TV show in Kabul. It’s called 2014. Guests surmise how bad things could get after NATO departs. The program epitomizes the mood I found after three weeks in Afghanistan, confirmed and reconfirmed by numerous conversations in Herat, Kandahar, and Kunduz. Afghans described “a dark horizon” ahead. More important, they question why the United States is abandoning them. Most believed that with the U.S. alongside—meaning some thousand troops, not tens of thousands—their country stands a chance. The show, they said, fit Afghans’ dark humor, irony, and stoicism. Their overall mood matched wintertime Kabul’s gray, pockmarked setting, inverted polluted cold air, and trapped below the Hindu Kush’s snowy peaks.
No Afghan I spoke with knew the name of the American ambassador, and one said that whenever the four-star NATO commander addressed them, it was “only bad news regarding more civilian casualties.” American silence made things worse. Property prices in Kabul already had dropped 40 percent. Gun prices had increased in multiples. Afghans were hunkering down, and several mentioned another civil war.
U.S. and coalition investments in Afghanistan have been significant, colored in reds and green. Thousands dead, even more wounded, with billions disbursed. The Longest War in American History. Americans are tired. NATO is tired. So are the Afghans, even more than we are. Their costs have been greater. Their bravery far less heralded—no autobiographical war books scribed by Pashtun warrior-poets on Amazon.com or in Hollywood scripts.
The fundamental question before President Obama and his team persists. How to ensure U.S. national security is not undermined as we “responsibly” draw down? After spending almost three years in Afghanistan (mainly in Khost and Helmand), I am convinced a baseline troop presence is necessary ... for a long time. Think decades, not years. Think Korea or Germany.
SEALs and drones will not be enough in this high-stakes game, though a seductive image from Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a mirage. Talk of zero troops in Afghanistan might be a short-term and perhaps effective negotiating ploy. A sustained message from the White House along these lines, however, would amount to national security malfeasance. I can hear the late, great Richard Holbrooke lecturing from beyond the grave, thundering with conviction and cause:
How could the mighty United States of America get this historic endgame so wrong?!
The post-Holbrooke policy void needs to be filled with another driven statesman born with Machiavellian instincts and enjoying welcome access to the commander in chief. (Afghan politicos knife-fight over tea and with a smile, the same warlords we reempowered due to lackadaisical and naive U.S. policies.) Where are the worthy? And when will President Obama make the call? Wars do not end on their own, or by the calloused hands of our military led by generals. Politicians start them and end them.
NATO’s most monstrous bases should go away, but not our hard-won foothold.
Last week’s collegial but meandering press conference by Presidents Obama and Karzai is sure to reinforce fears about U.S. abandonment. Afghans remember the precedent. While those reclining in Washington parlors fixate on how quickly troops will depart, Kabulis said final numbers mattered less than American endurance, a sustained strategic presence.
But it seems we’re about to fold—caught up in the most recent version of the region’s Great Game for so long. I’m from the American West. I play poker. Our current strategy makes no sense, even if the chips were plastic and not counted out in lives and limb. The United States appears ready to concede its hand before seeing all the cards on the table ... and underneath, how many pistols with itchy trigger fingers might be pointed our way? Now is not the time to walk away, or run.
In the recent head of state visit, the White House appeared focused more on Karzai’s psychology than on the psychology of millions of Afghans, who hedge their lives daily. There’s plenty of well-earned distrust between sides. It is a dangerous dance for ordinary Afghans as both leaders deliberate. Other governments, American friends and enemies or some quasi-version, are doing the same. Neither wartime president spoke directly to the Afghan people or region, while the American people did hear the administration’s nation-building-at-home mantra.
Until Afghans see U.S. troops staying put, they won’t believe it. And it is in our interest for Marines and soldiers to remain, however few and refocused their mission. Equally, Americans need to see Afghans out front, doing more with less, and fast. Twelve years after 9/11, economic concerns still dominate the homefront. The warfront remains distant as others’ kids dodge the roadside bombs.
But it is not too late to correct our course. We can do a lot with a little, provided we stay long enough. NATO’s most monstrous bases should go away, but not our hard-won foothold. Afghanistan’s east has long been home to the greatest threat—the turf of the Haqqanis and friends—and remains our strategic over-watch platform into a nuclear, unstable Pakistan. We must keep our eyes and resources focused there. And Kandahar will always be the Taliban’s spiritual home. Best to keep “enemies” and inevitable negotiating partners close.
SEAL Team 6 did not launch their successful Osama bin Laden mission from the Indian Ocean but rather from eastern Jalalabad. And let’s not forget on May 1, 2010, an inept would-be terrorist trained in northwest Pakistan tried to kill New Yorkers in Times Square by blowing up a Nissan Pathfinder. He failed. Smoke billowed, but a bomb did not detonate. If he had succeeded, today’s debate would be different. Indeed, America’s commander in chief might still be holding a magnifying glass along the Durand Line, not just ordering more predator drone strikes.
The early February arrival of the war-wise Marine general, Joseph Dunford, as the new top NATO commander (along with his State Department political adviser Carter Malkasian, an American icon among Pashtuns in Helmand; he speaks the native tongue) provides us with an opportunity to reassure Afghans: while America’s longest war is ending—as it should—we are not leaving. Dunford and the able U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham should consider a joint appearance on Kabul television.
Even better, they might travel together to key places throughout the country, speaking with thick American accents about an enduring partnership. A political-military message not lost in translation behind Washington podiums will help reverse the self-fulfilling mindset that the Americans are abandoning Afghanistan, again, the next civil war inevitable. The ambassador-commander road show should in turn elicit renewed commitments from Afghans to fight hardest—but not alone.
Before departing Afghanistan the day after this past Christmas, I flew to Herat, a bustling city on the Iranian border, as well as to Kunduz and Kandahar. An Afghan entrepreneur (in construction) and a young law professor sat next to me. The businessman said the Taliban were weak, but America’s public message was weaker still.
The professor noted his Herat University students did not want U.S. troops to stay longer than necessary. Waiting for NATO military convoys to pass on roads got old a long time ago, but a complete 2014 departure guaranteed failure and bloodshed.
Days later, in the Kabul Airport, first built by the Soviets and later remodeled with Japanese funds, I noticed two 20-something travelers from China, official documents in hand, in front of me at passport control. They were dressed like Americans from L.A. (baseball caps, hoodies, one even without socks despite the December temperatures). I do not know what brought them to Afghanistan—perhaps the massive copper mine, Mes Aynak, that Beijing holds rights to?—but they appeared to be repeat visitors with well-used People’s Republic of China passports.
In the lobby, I joined a group of turban-wearing elders, who reminded me of Khost. Well, several said they were from that province on their Hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Half were friendly, the others not very. One of the oldest used his right hand to motion circlelike in the air, a helicopter, the left shaped in the form of a gun. (He came from Sabari, perhaps the Haqqanis’ favorite district.) His pantomime meant: U.S. helos, down. Through my own hand signals, I reminded him about the value of Stinger missiles provided by the U.S.A. during the Soviet occupation. He switched subjects, and invited me to convert to Islam on the spot.
The charismatic student, a big smile under long black bangs, said that Americans could leave “only after I graduate from university.”
As we walked into the Safi Airways plane, the last language I heard was Russian. White-haired men in heavy parkas carried passports marked “Ukraine.”
Before landing in Dubai, while over Iranian territory, I kept thinking about an Afghan student in Khost in 2008. A teacher proudly introduced her as “my top one.” The charismatic student, a big smile under long black bangs, said that Americans could leave “only after I graduate from university.”
Her graduation date, if she made it to college at all, will fall well beyond 2014.
It won’t take many troops but several billion U.S. dollars annually to reinforce long-term U.S. national security interests, and probably prevent a civil war—not to mention increase this girl’s odds. She too endures Afghanistan, daily, still hopeful I’d like to think, a world away from D.C.’s beltway full of deciders.
IEC Opposes Karzai's Comments on Old Voter Cards
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Abrahimkhil Tuesday, 15 January 2013
There will be no transparency in the 2014 presidential election if the old voter cards are reused, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said Tuesday in response to President Hamid Karzai saying new cards will not be issued.
IEC chief Fazel Ahmad Manawe on Tuesday said that the transparency of the election will be undermined if the old voter cards are reused - meaning a new registration will not take place - and suggested Karzai did not understand the ramifications of using the old registration.
"The things we do aim to guarantee the transparency of elections, but anyone who wants to interfere in our internal affairs will undermine transparency and they will lose out. I think the second option [for new voter cards] was not fully explained to the president," Manawe said, adding the IEC is working on another option.
"Unfortunately the old voting cards doesn't guarantee the transparency of elections," he added.
Karzai said Monday at a press conference that new voting cards will require more money that the government does not have.
"If we cancel these cards, and we are unable to make new cards or no one will give money for [new cards], and then we end up with no cards and no election, then I will be blamed," Karzai said.
"We will correct what we have in our hands. This is the decision of Afghanistan's cabinet. When we don't have money we have to use that equipment which we have in our hands," he added.
Manawe urged the government, political parties and civil society organisations to help the IEC achieve its aims.
The presidential election is scheduled for April 5 2014.
No Jirga for Decision on US Forces: Political Parties
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Tuesday, 15 January 2013
A number of political leaders have opposed President Hamid Karzai's plan for a Loya Jirga of tribal elders to decide on the question of US forces immunity from Afghanistan's legal jurisdiction after 2014.
Some political parties and coalition groups said that the continued presence of US troops is essential for Afghanistan's stability after Nato withdraws in 2014 and it should not be up to the tribal elders to decide on a matter which the presence of US forces hinges on.
"Legal immunity is not a big enough issue to sacrifice all the achievements and opportunities ahead for," board member of Right and Justice party Asef Ashna said.
National Coalition spokesman Fazlurrahman Oria told TOLOnews, "A traditional Jirga [on this matter] has no place in the country's constitution, and not all its decisions may be implemented."
The exemption of US forces from prosecution under Afghan law is one of Washington's conditions for its troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014.
However, some parliament members disagree with the US demand for immunity and believe that the Afghan people are similarly against it.
"US troops should not have legal immunity and should be punishable under Afghan law for any crime they may commit," MP Kamal Nasser Osooli said.
"The Afghan people do not agree on us giving US forces immunity from Afghan law," said another MP Alemi Balkhi.
US President Barack Obama warned Karzai during their meeting in Washington last week that if Kabul does not allow the US troops immunity from prosecution in Afghanistan, then American forces will completely withdraw.
There are fears that such a move will leave a security vacuum after 2014 similar to that which Iraq faced when the US withdrew over the same issue.
All international forces currently in Afghanistan are exempt from prosecution under Afghan law. In case of any crime committed, troops are disciplined according to the laws of their own countries.
Taliban key commander killed in southern Afghan town
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Security forces raided Taliban hideout in the southern Uruzgan province, 370 km south of Kabul, and killed a key Taliban commander on Tuesday night, a local official Farid Ayel said Wednesday.
"Acting upon intelligence report, the security forces on Tuesday night stormed a house in Chora district where commander Mullah Zainullah was present and killed him on the spot," provincial police spokesman Ayel told Xinhua.
The commander was active in Chora district and adjoin areas and his death is a major setback to the Taliban militants, the official added.
Taliban militants are yet to comment.
Afghan army has deficiences but it's getting there, says Nato general
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, the deputy Nato commander in Europe, has conceded that the Afghan army has “deficiencies and gaps” but said they are now “stepping up to the plate”.
Telegraph.co.uk By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent 15 Jan 2013
Gen Shirreff admitted soldiers were often 'exasperated' with their Afghan counterparts.
"Yes, there are problems," he said "There is at the same time a degree of exasperation which I wouldn’t in any way want to minimise."
But he said that security is improving and that insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces are not “deflecting us from our task”.
Gen Shirreff insisted that the Afghans are “increasingly taking on the responsibility” in the country.
“You only have to look back two or three years to see how far they’ve come,” Gen Shirreff told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One. “
Look at what they’re doing now on the ground. It’s a fact that Afghan brigades are routinely planning and executing operations independently or with advisors on the ground.
“That doesn’t mean to say they are completely there. I completely acknowledge that there remain deficiencies and gaps in terms of combat support, issues with administration, issues with leadership and command. But all these are areas that can be put right.”
Gen Shirreff appeared to accept a recent report issued by the Pentagon which said that only one out of every 23 Afghan brigades is able to work independently of American or Nato forces.
“That’s an important report and I’m not in any way going to minimise that report. But the fact remains across the board increasingly Afghan brigades are capable of operating on their own,” he said.
Gen Shirreff said that “security is without question getting better”.
However the general described so-called “green on blue” insider attacks by Afghans as a “grim and insidious business”.
“I don't in any way minimise the threat of insider attacks, but it's not deflecting us from our task, and it's not having any major detrimental effect on our operational impact," he said.
“I come back [from Afghanistan] optimistic. The situation is moving in exactly the right direction.”
12 insurgents captured in E. Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops have detained one dozen insurgents in different operations in eastern Afghan provinces, the ISAF forces said Wednesday.
"Afghan and coalition forces detained 12 insurgents and cleared one improvised explosive device (IED) during operations in eastern Afghanistan throughout the past 24 hours," the ISAF's Regional Command-East (RC-East) said in a statement.
The suspects were detained in Paktia, 100 km south of capital Kabul and neighboring Paktika province, according to the statement.
The joint forces found and safely cleared the IED in Bak district, Khost province 150 km southeast of Kabul.
"The detained suspects were transferred to bases for questioning," the statement said, adding "operations in RC-East are ongoing."
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001, has yet to make comments.
Bulgaria begins troops withdrawal from Afghanistan
SOFIA, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Bulgarian government on Wednesday said it had decided to withdraw some 40 percent of the country's 600-member contingent in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed in Afghanistan within the first half of 2013.
The withdrawal of Bulgarian medical team from the city of Herat has begun on Dec. 31, 2012, and the country's contingent based in Kabul and the team of instructors will be pulled out starting from 1 March and 31 March respectively.
Bulgaria's 358-member contingent guarding Kandahar Airport will return home at the end of 2014, and only adviser teams will stay in Afghanistan after 2015, the government said in a press release.
Bulgaria, which joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004, has been participating in the NATO-led ISAF mission since 2002.
Afghan Deputies Trade Blows Over Impeachment Of Ministers
January 15, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Two Afghan lawmakers have traded blows during a parliamentary session in Kabul.
A verbal dispute between Kandahar deputy Mohammad Naim Lalai and Herat deputy Farhad Majidi on January 15 escalated into a physical fight that lasted several minutes.
The scuffle erupted as lawmakers were deliberating over whether to impeach 11 Afghan ministers.
Impeachment proceedings were brought against the ministers last year after their ministries spent less than 50 percent of their allocated budgets.
The budgets were for expenditure from March 2011 to March 2012. But the issue has proved divisive.
Some lawmakers have called for all current ministers heading those ministries to be impeached. Others have said only those who were ministers during the period in question should be punished.
Officials said an investigation has been launched into the incident on January 15.
Based on reporting by ToloNews and Radio Free Afghanistan
Victory in Aghanistan? Not without U.S. troops
White House talk of 3,000 personnel — or none — by the end of 2014 ignores the reality of the situation there.
By Max Boot January 15, 2013 Los Angeles Times
During the Vietnam War, Sen. George Aiken, a Vermont Republican, was famous for suggesting that we declare victory and go home. (What he actually said is a little more nuanced, but that was the popular perception.)
President Obama seems to be pursuing a version of this strategy in Afghanistan. At least that is the inference one can draw from his claims of success at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday in which the two leaders unveiled an acceleration of the timetable for U.S. troops to step back from combat.
While Obama conceded that we had "probably not ... achieved everything that some might have imagined us achieving in the best of scenarios," he nevertheless tried to put a smiley face on the war effort. "Did we achieve our central goal? And have we been able, I think, to shape a strong relationship with a responsible Afghan government that is willing to cooperate with us to make sure that it is not a launching pad for future attacks against the United States? We have achieved that goal. We are in the process of achieving that goal."
There is actually an important difference between the last two sentences. Which is it: Have we achieved the goal or are we in the process? If the latter, then that would argue for a continued U.S. commitment to Afghanistan; if the former, then it suggests our mission is complete.
The reality is that, though the U.S. is arguably making progress, we are a long way from our ultimate objective defined in the U.S.-Afghan security partnership agreement signed by Obama and Karzai in May: "sustainable self-reliance in security, governance, economic and social development."
Yes, there has been substantial success in routing the Taliban out of its strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, as I have seen for myself on repeated trips to southern Afghanistan. After years of increased violence , enemy-initiated attacks fell 7% from January to November 2012 compared with the same period a year earlier. And as Obama said, the Afghan government is more or less cooperating with us, despite considerable friction over the handling of detainees, government corruption and other difficult issues.
But recent security gains remain incomplete. Commanders have never had the resources to launch a "clear and hold" campaign in the east as they did in the south. As a result, Haqqani sanctuaries remain intact an hour's drive from Kabul.
And even maintaining the incomplete and tenuous gains of the last few years will be impossible unless Afghanistan continues to receive substantial U.S. assistance. The Defense Department's Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan concedes that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades is able to operate on its own. The Afghan forces, though fighting hard and taking considerable casualties, still need American "enablers" such as artillery, air support, medevac, logistics and intelligence. Afghanistan will not even have a functioning air force until 2017 at the earliest.
Delivering all that support, and maintaining a separate special operations capacity to hit top-level terrorist targets, will require a substantial presence of American troops. Afghanistan is a big country. Personnel based in Kabul cannot effectively assist Afghan units in Kandahar or Khost or hit terrorist targets there. There must be at least a handful of bases outside the capital area, and each one will need to be defended and supplied. Quick-reaction forces and medical facilities must be on call in the event of trouble.
How substantial a presence?
Retired Lt. Gen. Jim Dubik, a former commander of the training mission in Iraq, estimates in a recent report for the Institute for the Study of War that 23,000 to 28,000 troops would be needed. Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan, estimated in a December 2010 report for the Center for a New American Security that 25,000 to 35,000 troops would be needed. (Barno has since said that we could get by with substantially fewer, but he has given no reasons why his earlier analysis doesn't hold.)
That is a far cry from the figures now leaking out of the Obama administration. Rumor has it that the administration would like to pull out perhaps half of the 66,000 troops this year and almost all the rest in 2014, leaving behind as few as 3,000 personnel. Or maybe none at all: Talk of a "zero option" has been getting louder from the White House.
Obama has a perfect right to decide that the costs of victory in Afghanistan are too high. But if so, he should level with us instead of insulting our intelligence by claiming that we have already won a war that shows no sign of ending any time soon.
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a contributing writer to Opinion and the author, most recently, of "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present."
Qatar aims for Afghan peace process by 2014
Reuters By Regan Doherty 15/01/2013
DOHA - Qatar aims to see a peace process in Afghanistan by the time NATO combat operations end in 2014, Qatar's prime minister said on Tuesday as the Afghan Taliban movement prepared to open an office in the Qatari capital.
With the focus in Afghanistan shifting from a military push by NATO troops to potential talks on a peaceful settlement, U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan counterpart Hamed Karzai said last week they supported the opening of a Taliban office in Doha.
Obama is seeking an orderly way out of the war, which was triggered by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by an al Qaeda network harboured by the Taliban.
The planned office is one of a series of gestures, including the possible transfer to Qatar of Taliban detainees from the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, aimed at injecting momentum into the tentative reconciliation efforts.
Qatar, a long-time Gulf Arab peace broker in Afghanistan's war, said preparations were under way to open the Taliban's office as soon as possible to facilitate talks.
"The U.S. and others will withdraw in 2014, and I think it's an important core ideal that at least there is a political process in place, to have stability," Qatari premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told a news conference with his Libyan counterpart in Doha.
"Our aim is to help our Afghan brothers and find a solution accepted by all, or most, parties," he added.
A senior European diplomat told Reuters last week that several Taliban representatives were already on the ground in Doha but a formal office had not yet been opened.
DISCREET
Qatar, which hosts a number of Taliban officials, has played a central role in discreet discussions between U.S. officials and representatives of the shadowy militant group, which remains a formidable enemy in Afghanistan even as U.S. and NATO troops begin to withdraw.
Progress towards negotiations has not been smooth.
The Taliban announced a year ago that they would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting willingness to engage in talks that could bring them positions in the Afghan government or control over much of their historical southern heartland.
But in March they rowed back on the plan, citing what they said were inconsistencies in the U.S. negotiating position.
The reference to the office in the joint statement by Obama and Karzai suggested the idea had fresh momentum.
Meeting in Washington last week, the two leaders agreed to speed up a handover of combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghan forces, raising the prospect of an accelerated U.S. withdrawal from the country.
Karzai and U.S. officials have said repeatedly that any peace process must be Afghan-led. The Afghan president has been angered in the past when he felt excluded by foreign efforts to set up some kind of negotiations.
(Reporting By Regan Doherty; Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Tom Pfeiffer)
Major Afghanistan Streets Renamed “Bad Monkey” and “Hillbilly Hameed” by Apple Maps
By Will Oremus Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013 The Slate
Apple Maps has been justly ridiculed for putting an Irish airport in the middle of a farm, twisting the Brooklyn Bridge to rubble, and nearly getting some tourists killed in a remote Australian national park. But this weekend, the Wall Street Journal’s Afghanistan bureau chief noticed a longstanding and seemingly inexplicable blooper that had flown under the radar.
“So is one of Kabul’s main streets really called Bad Monkey, as the new Apple Maps on my iPad claim?” Yaroslav Trofimov tweeted on Sunday. A screenshot appended to his tweet showed what he meant: The major street that runs past the Babur Gardens is clearly labeled “Bad Monkey.”
Kabul resident and blogger Una Moore saw Trofimov’s tweet and replied, “I’m guessing Apple based its map of Kabul on old OSM edits, which included plenty of prank names. Jalalabad is probably the same.” Indeed, Trofimov poked around a bit more and found a main Jalalabad thoroughfare that Apple Maps had dubbed “Hillbilly Hameed.” Another Kabul street bore the moniker “MoJo Way.”
A quick check of Google Maps reveals that none of these streets are in fact named quite as entertainingly as Apple Maps seems to believe. In a blog post on UN Dispatch, Moore explains how it must have happened. Her post is worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt:
Apple had copied old open source maps of Afghanistan’s cities in their entirety from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the site sometimes described as the “Wikipedia of maps,” without checking the veracity of the information they contained. Essentially, it had lifted the earliest rough drafts of the maps. The old maps were created by a small group of Afghan university students and mapping enthusiasts who assigned prankish fake names to streets that lacked official names or were subjects of naming disputes due to decades of overlapping conflicts.
Over time, OpenStreetMap has fixed those humorous errors, according to Moore's reporting—but Apple hasn’t bothered. Search “Bad Monkey, Kabul, Afghanistan” on Apple Maps and you’ll find that they still haven’t. Long live Hillbilly Hameed!
Afghanistan transition: One city is a ticking time bomb
Why Jalalabad could determine the success of stability after the US withdraws from Afghanistan.
GlobalPost
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The evening prayer had just finished when an imam at a mosque in this city in eastern Afghanistan turned his attention to politics.
Over a loudspeaker, he told worshippers that people who fight for Islam and die as martyrs are rewarded in paradise. Americans are "pigs" and "brutal animals," he said.
For years Jalalabad has been relatively untouched by the war raging elsewhere in the country. On the surface it is still a thriving commercial center where visitors come to take weekend breaks, eat fish and enjoy the mild winter weather.
But now there is a darker undercurrent to life here. Anti-NATO sentiment is easily found alongside anxiety over what will happen when the foreign troops leave.
The violence that is prevalent in other parts of the country has also begun to bleed into the streets — adding to an atmosphere that feels like the calm before the storm.
"This is a revolution," said Haji Nazer Gul, a local shopkeeper and father of nine. "One kilometer from the city the government does not have control."
If Jalalabad is ever lost, US hopes for a stable post-occupation Afghanistan will surely have been dealt a fatal blow.
The city lies a short distance from the Khyber Pass and the Pakistan border. As the capital of Nangarhar province, it is the most important economic and political hub in the east of the country and a place that resonates with deep historical symbolism.
In 1842, William Brydon, an assistant surgeon of the British East India Company Army, arrived here slumped on his dying horse — a rare survivor in a catastrophic retreat by the British Empire at the end of the first Anglo-Afghan war.
Then in the communist era, Jalalabad was the site of a major battle between the government and the mujahedeen after the Soviets withdrew. Osama bin Laden took part in the fighting, which ended in failure for the guerrillas.
The former Al Qaeda leader later lived here for a brief period in the 1990s and took refuge in the nearby Tora Bora mountains, following the 2001 US-led invasion.
During a recent visit by GlobalPost, Afghan soldiers could be seen trying to remove a bomb from the main highway connecting Kabul to Jalalabad. The device was made out of a gas cylinder with an accompanying detonation cord.
Rasul Ullah Rafiee, the deputy leader of the local branch of Jamiat Eslah, an Islamist civil society group active across the country, claims “everyone is worried” security will deteriorate further.
"Without the Americans the [Afghan] army is nothing,” he said, before adding that the Taliban are already “in power indirectly.”
US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed last week to speed up the transition process. Afghan forces will now take the lead in combat operations this spring, rather than in the summer as originally planned.
Still no decision has been made on whether any US troops will stay beyond the end of 2014 — the deadline for withdrawal.
According to a number of residents interviewed for this article, kidnappings have become common in Jalalabad and wealthy businessmen are often the targets. Rafiee blamed the abductions on criminals rather than insurgents, but acknowledged the militants are openly active in many rural areas.
He listed the names of five districts in Nangarhar that are notorious for being unsafe.
"The lives of the people in these places are very bad. I do not just mean those who work with the government, I mean all of them. They cannot go out of their houses at night even at prayer time," he said.
The Taliban's presence in Jalalabad itself is less obvious. However, guerrillas appear to be operating inside the city, quietly influencing events from the shadows.
Music shops selling the latest recordings of Pashtun singers from both sides of the border used to be a common sight here. Today they are difficult to find because, since 2010, the owners have been threatened and driven out.
High-profile attacks also occasionally take place. The most recent of these happened last month when a group of militants carried out a coordinated assault on Jalalabad airport, where US and Afghan troops are stationed.
Support for the insurgents arises from a mixture of ideology, pragmatism and disillusionment. The governor of Nangarhar province is Gul Agha Sherzai, a former warlord, and local officials are widely perceived as corrupt.
Many of the rebels in this part of the country were once followers of Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis, a leader of the anti-Soviet resistance who died in 2006 having also opposed the current occupation.
His son, Anwar ul-Haq Mujahid, was freed from jail in Pakistan last November in an apparent attempt by Islamabad to help facilitate peace talks with the Taliban.
"Here is a man who spent years in jail without proof against him," said Mohammed Asif Samim, a local poet and writer. “Everyone is happy about this news, but not America.”
He told GlobalPost both the US and the Afghan people must share the blame for the uncertain situation now facing the country.
“America did not ask us to enter and they will not ask us to leave,” he said. “They just care about their own interests.”
Fazelminallah Qazizai reported from Jalalabad and Chris Sands reported from Kabul.
MPs Trade Blows over Ministers Impeachment
TOLOnews.com By Azim Arash Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Parliament descended into a brawl in Tuesday's sitting session apparently over the question of whether to impeach 11 ministers whose ministries failed to spend more than 50 percent of their development budgets in 1390.
A verbal disagreement between Kandahar MP Mohammad Naim Lalai and Herat MP Farhad Majidi led to the two men trading physical blows as more lawmakers attempted to stop the fight.
"Each Tuesday we discuss the agenda of the next week's sessions but misbehaviour from several MPs resulted in a physical clash," Majidi told TOLOnews, while sporting a bandaid beneath his left eye.
Some MPs said the exchange grew heated in a discussion of whether to impeach the 11 ministers overseeing portfolios that did not spend more than 50 percent of their allocated development budget in 1390 (March 2011-March 2012).
The disagreement stems from whether to impeach four ministers who were only appointed in 1391 and who were not in charge of the poorly-managed ministerial budgets at the time.
Some lawmakers say all 11 should to be impeached because the ministers still have to explain the ministry's activities in 1390, while others say only the seven ministers in power in 1390 should be held accountable.
The administrative affairs office said a delegation will investigate Tuesday's incident.
"Discussion over the next week's agenda resulted in physical clash between the MPs. We will investigate the issue," Parliamentary Secretary Farhad Azimi said.
One MP said he believes a lack of strong management led to the clash.
"Weak management caused the physical clash between the lawmakers," head of the parliamentary Defense Committee Humayoun Humayoun told TOLOnews.
Prisoners Killed in Shooting at Ghazni Jail
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari Tuesday, 15 January 2013
At least two prisoners have been killed and 10 more injured at Ghazni's central jail after police guards fired on prisoners to quell a spontaneous protest, local officials said.
The injured have been taken for treatment to a nearby hospital, according to officials.
The protest began Tuesday morning when police started collecting prisoners' teapots after a visitor to the prison brought in a suspicious-looking teapot, provincial deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told TOLOnews.
Several prisoners reacted to the teapot confiscations by yelling and throwing rocks at the police guards who fired shots to stop the protest.
"The police started collecting all the teapots. The prisoners started protesting and clashed with the police," Ahmadi said.
"The police fired on the prisoners to quell the protest. One of the prisoners died instantly and the second died in the central hospital of Ghazni," he added.
The security officials told TOLOnews that initial investigations revealed there were drugs in the suspect teapot and the man who brought it in has been arrested.
There are around 400 prisoners at the jail which is not yet under full control of the police, according to Ahmadi.
Most of the Taliban prisoners inside have access to mobile phones and the internet, Ahmadi said.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com