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NATO Commander Confirms Compliance With Karzai Directive On Air Support
February 17, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan says the alliance will comply with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's desire to ban Afghan security forces from seeking NATO air support when battling insurgents in villages.
U.S. General Joseph Dunford, who took charge of the U.S.-led NATO force a week ago, told reporters in Kabul on February 17 that the organization was “prepared to provide support in line with the president's intent."
On February 16, Karzai said he would issue a decree that "none of the Afghan military forces, under any condition can call in foreigners’ air support during the military operations on our villages.”
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Karzai Orders Cameras Be Put In Interrogation Facilities
February 17, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered in a decree that cameras be placed in all interrogation facilities to prevent torture.
Karzai said in a decree released by his office late on February 16 that, "Relevant authorities are required to equip the intelligence and investigating agencies... with modern equipment [and] devices... and videotape the interrogation process."
The decree follows a government investigation into a UN report about prisoner abuse, which found detainees were tortured at the time of arrest and during interrogations.
The UN report revealed that 326 of 635 prisoners interviewed across the country said they had been abused, including 80 minors.
Based on reporting by AFP and CNN
Pakistanis train Taliban militants in western Afghanistan
By Sayed Jawad - 16 Feb 2013, 8:07 pm Khaama Press
According to local authorities in western Badghis province of Afghanistan, Pakistani citizens are busy with training Taliban militants in this province in a bid to enable them to fight with the Afghan and coalition security forces.
The officials further added Pakistani nationals have increased their illegal presence in various parts of Badghis province which can create a major security threat for the Afghan government.
This comes as local authorities have concerned regarding growing number of Taliban militants in various districts of Badghis province.
In the meantime provincial governor spokesman Sharafuddin Majidi confirming the report said various Pakistani nationals have been enrolled with the Taliban militants in this province.
Mr. Majidi quoted by Radio Free Europe (RFE) said Pakistani militants are currently engaged with planting roadside improvised explosive device and plotting other insurgency activities in Badghis province districts.
Safia Aimaq Afghan lawmaker representing Badghsi province in Afghan house of representatives also confirmed the presence of Pakistani militants cooperating with the local Taliban fighters in this province and called it a major threat for the Afghan government.
She criticized the government for the lack of good governance coordination among the security institutions which have paved the way for the infiltration of Taliban militants, both local and Pakistanis in various districts of Badghis province.
According to Safia Aimaq major parts of Badghis province is currently under the control of Taliban militants and warned that Taliban militants will easily enter the center of Badghis province if the government does not take necessary actions.
Meanwhile local residents in Badghis province said only Qala-e-Naw area located in the center of Badghis province is safe security wise while other regions are unsafe and local residents can not commute freely.
The comments by local authorities are followed by a number of insurgency attacks by militants on Afghan security forces check posts which took place recently in this province.
5 militants killed, 15 detained in Afghanistan within day: gov't
KABUL, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Up to five militants have been killed and 15 detained in different operations within the last 24 hours, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) supporting by the army and NDS or intelligence agency conducted six cleanup operations in Nangarhar, Khost, Wardak, Logar and Helmand provinces, killing five armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 15 others," the ministry said in a statement.
The ANP also seized weapons and defused an explosive-packed motorcycle and five anti-vehicle mines in the raids, it added.
The Afghan security forces in partnership with the NATO-led coalition troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by armed attacks and bombings.
On Saturday, two NDS members were killed and four were wounded when a bomb hit a security patrol in the country northern province of Jawzjan.
35 armed Taliban lay down arms in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Thirty five armed Taliban militants gave up fighting after 10 years and handed over their weapons to authorities in the western Herat province on Sunday, police said.
"Today 35 dissident brothers including four mine makers under Mullah Nasim, who fought against government over the past 10 years gave up fighting and handed in their weapons including several anti-vehicle and anti-personal mines to police," provincial police chief Rahmatullah Safi said in his speech at a ceremony to welcome the former militants.
With joining these people to the peace process, the security will be further improved in Herat province, he further said.
The former Taliban militants, according to the police officer were active in the eastern and southern parts of Herat over the past 10 years.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
More than 3,500 Taliban fighters, according to officials have laid down their arms and joined the government-backed peace process over the past one year, a claim rebuffed by the armed outfit as baseless.
Afghanistan's future: 5 burning questions
CNN By Kyle Almond February 16, 2013
In his State of the Union address, President Obama reaffirmed that the country's war in Afghanistan would be over by the end of 2014.
He also laid out more specifics.
Of the approximately 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now, more than half -- 34,000 -- will come home in the next year, Obama said.
At the same time, Afghan troops will assume most of the responsibility for combat missions.
"This spring, our forces will move into a support role, while Afghan security forces take the lead," Obama said.
It was previously expected that Afghan forces would take the lead in combat missions by the middle of this year. But a U.S. official told CNN that the military transition has accelerated and that Afghans will lead all security operations by March.
What does this news mean for Afghanistan and America's longest war? Here are some key questions that will be asked in the coming months:
1. Are the Afghan troops up to the task?
There are certainly doubts.
A Pentagon review in December claimed that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades was capable of functioning on its own.
Meanwhile, literacy rates are low, desertion rates are high, and many deserters have joined the insurgency. There also have been a troubling number of "green-on-blue" attacks: Afghan troops attacking their American comrades.
But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has spoken positively about the progress Afghans have made in growing their army, reducing violence and becoming more self-sufficient. Afghan forces now lead nearly 90% of operations across the country.
"We're on the right path to give (Afghanistan) the opportunity to govern itself," Panetta said earlier this month.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he welcomes the U.S. troop withdrawal and insists his army can defend the country against the Taliban.
"It is exactly our job to deal with it, and we are capable of dealing with it," Karzai said during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
What the army needs now, Karzai says, is more equipment and firepower. He came to the Pentagon last month with a wish list asking for more helicopters, drones and other hardware, according to a senior defense official.
"We need an air force. We need air mobility," Karzai told Amanpour. "We need proper mechanized forces. We need, you know, armored vehicles and tanks and all that."
2. What presence will the U.S. have after 2014?
The plan is to withdraw all combat troops but keep a residual force in the country to help train Afghans and carry out counterterrorism operations when needed.
The size of that force is still being discussed.
Gen. John Allen, the former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, recommended between 6,000 and 15,000 troops. But that figure was lowered to a range between 2,500 and 9,000, according to a defense official.
There might not be any U.S. troops at all if the United States cannot come to an agreement over immunity with Afghanistan. There was no American presence in Iraq at the end of that war because the Iraqi government refused to extend legal protections to U.S. troops.
Karzai, who's in favor of a residual force, said he would put the immunity decision in the hands of Afghan elders, and he expressed confidence that he could persuade the elders to see things his way.
Leaving no U.S. troops at all would be a major misstep, said Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst. He said the U.S. has abandoned Afghanistan already, in 1989, and the decision left America with little understanding of the power vacuum that led to the Taliban's rise in the first place.
"The current public discussion of zero U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan ... will encourage those hardliner elements of the Taliban who have no interest in a negotiated settlement and believe they can simply wait the Americans out," Bergen wrote in an op-ed for CNN.com. "It also discourages the many millions of Afghans who see a longtime U.S. presence as the best guarantor that the Taliban won't come back in any meaningful way."
3. What's at stake?
The main fear among the Afghan people is that the country could revert to another civil war once the United States withdraws its combat troops. The Taliban are still "resilient and determined," according to a recent Pentagon report, and insurgents continue to carry out attacks and pose a major security threat.
"Some people we've spoken to sort of take it for granted that there's going to be a civil war when the United States leaves," said CNN's Erin Burnett on a recent trip to Afghanistan. "It happened before when the Soviet Union left (in 1989)."
For all the violence Afghanistan has seen in the past decade, it has also seen major advancements in human rights and quality of life.
"During the Taliban, basically there were thousands of girls going to school in Afghanistan. Now you have millions of girls going to school," Burnett said. "So there's been real progress on women's rights. Obviously there remain a lot of problems -- honor killings, forced marriages, domestic violence -- but there has been real progress."
Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, once America's top commander in Afghanistan, said the Afghan people are "terrified."
"They're terrified because they think they have something to lose," McChrystal said. "There has been progress made. There is a better life. There are girls in school. There are things that are better than they were and opportunities potentially ahead.
"But they're afraid that if we completely abandon them in 2014, as they perceive we did in 1989, (things) would all go back."
And in Washington, there are worries that the wrong move could put the United States right back where it started, with nothing to show for a bloody conflict that started in 2001.
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-California, expressed concern last week that a hasty withdrawal could be "needlessly fraught with risk."
"Since the president took the commendable step of deploying a surge to Afghanistan in 2009, we have known that our hard-fought gains are fragile and reversible," McKeon said. "That isn't my assessment, but the consistent opinion of experts both military and civilian."
4. Who will lead after Karzai?
Afghanistan's only president of this century won't be in charge for much longer.
Elections are scheduled for April 2014, and Karzai has reached the term limit set by his country's constitution. He told Amanpour it's "absolutely time to go."
"A new president will come to this country. A new government will come to this country. And I'll be a happily retired civil servant," he said.
So while Afghanistan oversees a major military transition, it also will have to make a political transition.
Who will lead the country during this critical moment in its history? Will the vote go smoothly, without violence and without controversy? There were reports of ballot tampering and other violations in the last one.
The answers might be just as important to Afghanistan's security as the readiness of its troops.
"The single biggest challenge for us is the political transition, the elections of 2014," said Saad Mohseni, the media mogul behind Afghanistan's Tolo Television. "(If) we have credible elections, I think we'll be OK for the next five, six years. (If) we don't, there is a real danger that we'll see instability, especially in 2014 as the U.S. troops withdraw."
5. What part will the Taliban play?
Despite the ongoing insurgency, Karzai seems eager to resume stalled peace talks with the Taliban and include them in the political process.
The Taliban pulled out of talks last year, but Karzai said last month they "are very much conveying to us that they want to have peace talks. They're also people. They're also families. They also suffer, like the rest of Afghans are suffering."
Javid Ahmad, a Kabul native now with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, believes revitalized peace talks are essential to Afghanistan's future and to the legacy of America's war.
"If withdrawing responsibly in 2014 is indeed high on President Obama's agenda, then he has little choice but to prioritize and accelerate the peace talks, negotiate a cease-fire between all sides, and reach a settlement that ensures that the Taliban lay down their weapons," Ahmad wrote in a recent column.
But will the Taliban be willing to cooperate? And if they enter negotiations, how much of an influence would they have on an Afghan society that has seen so many changes in the past decade?
"There have to be some red lines," said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan's deputy foreign minister for political affairs. "Some of the achievements that we've had in the last 10 years can't be negotiated."
Karzai sounded confident that most of the Taliban would acknowledge this.
"I think there is now a critical mass in Afghanistan of the educated, of the Afghan people who want a future of progress and stability," he said. "And I think also that the Taliban recognize that this corner has been turned, the majority of them. Some may be there among them who would not -- who would remain, you know, in the darkest of the mindset possible. But those are a few."
CNN's Chris Lawrence, Mike Mount and Jake Tapper contributed to this report.
Afghan forces discover drugs in southern province
LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police has seized nearly 1,250 kg of drugs in the country's southern province of Helmand, in the latest raid against narcotics and drug trafficking in the war-hit country, police said on Sunday.
"Afghan Special Counter-Narcotic Police supporting by national police found and seized over 1,000 hashish and 240 kg dry opium in Khanshin and Garmser districts over the past two days," the provincial police chief Gen. Nabi Ilham told reporters here.
He said a tractor, two vehicles and a motorcycle were also confiscated in the raids, adding no person was detained during the seizure in the province 555 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.
The insurgency-hit Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw element for making heroin.
An estimated 3,700 tons of opium was produced in 154,000 hectare of land in Afghanistan in 2012 with nearly 90 percent of cultivation taking place in southern and western provinces, according to assessments of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics.
Little Hope Amid Push for Afghans on Peace
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DECLAN WALSH February 16, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suddenly, the effort to strike a deal with the Taliban is very publicly back on the front burner.
Frozen for months last year as another fighting season raged in Afghanistan, and as election-year politics consumed American attention, diplomats and political leaders from eight countries are now mounting the most concerted campaign to date to bring the Afghan government and its Taliban foes together to negotiate a peace deal.
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for fast-track peace talks. Weeks earlier in Washington, Mr. Karzai met with President Obama and committed publicly to have his representatives meet a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, to start the process.
Yet so far the energized reach for peace has achieved little, officials say, except to cement a growing consensus that regional stability demands some sort of political settlement with the Taliban, after a war that cost tens of thousands of Afghan and Western lives and nearly a trillion dollars failed to put down the insurgency.
Interviews with more than two dozen officials involved in the effort suggest a fast-spinning process that has yet to gain real traction and seems to have little chance of achieving even its most limited goal: bringing the Afghan government and Taliban leadership together at the table before the bulk of the American fighting force leaves Afghanistan in 2014.
“The year 2014 has begun to be seen as a magical date, both inside and outside Afghanistan,” said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser. “It’s difficult to find what is realistic and what is illusion.”
That is not least because the major players — Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban — have fundamentally different visions of how to achieve a post-2014 peace, according to accounts of setbacks in the process.
For the Afghans, the simple act of considering what a peace deal might look like has inflamed factional differences that are still raw two decades after the country’s civil war.
The Afghan High Peace Council, which Mr. Karzai has empowered to negotiate for his government, has put forward a document called “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015.” While many Afghan leaders say they have not seen the proposal, first reported by McClatchy in December, those who have view it as outlining a striking number of potential concessions to the Taliban and to Pakistan. They include provisions for the Taliban’s becoming a political party and anticipation that some of the most important government positions could be open to them, including provincial governorships, police chief jobs and cabinet positions.
Some Western commentators as well as Afghans view this as returning to the past or opening the door to a division of the country. Senior members of the powerful Tajik and Hazara factions, both of which suffered greatly under Taliban rule, charged that they had been left out of the deliberations. When they are asked about striking a peace deal, they make veiled references to a renewal of ethnic strife.
“The president is acting on an ethnic basis,” said Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq, a powerful ethnic Hazara leader from northern Afghanistan. “He is trying to win the hearts of a group of Taliban so they back him in the election.”
Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun, the ethnic group predominant in the Taliban. Mr. Spanta, the national security adviser, countered that any realistic attempt to end a war involves compromise. “I think peace in a country after 33 or 34 years has a price — a very heavy price,” he said. “But we are paying a heavy price every day with our lives.”
One factor fueling the peace drive is that Pakistan, long considered the Taliban’s silent sponsor, professes to have had a change of heart. For more than a year, Pakistani generals and ministers have assiduously courted their traditional rivals in Afghanistan, particularly from non-Pashtun ethnic groups, as part of a strategy that, they say, favors an inclusive democratic settlement after 2014 — even one that does not include the Taliban’s full return to power.
But Pakistan’s biggest public gesture so far — the release of 26 Taliban prisoners from Pakistani jails, intended as a trust-building measure to help the peace process — has been shadowed by the old mistrust and accusations of double-crossing.
The Pakistanis refused Afghan demands to release the prisoners into Afghan custody, arguing it would scare the Taliban away. “The moment we hand them over, it would be the end of the process,” said a senior Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Instead, the Taliban prisoners were allowed to roam free, prompting fears from some Afghan and some American officials that they would simply return to the fight — at least two already have, according to one Western official. At Chequers, the Pakistanis agreed to give the Afghans one-week notice of all future prisoner releases.
“Pakistan is serious about facilitating the peace process,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and political commentator, citing growing fears that chaos in Afghanistan after 2014 would further destabilize his country.
But Mr. Masood added that the military was also hedging its bets by maintaining some Taliban links. “They want to retain a certain level of leverage in talks,” he said. “That’s the crucial nuance.”
Hopes for Pakistani cooperation dimmed further on Friday when Pakistan’s most senior cleric pulled out of a meeting planned for March with Afghan clerics in Kabul, after disagreements over the role of the Taliban. But Afghan clerics appeared to believe that the meeting would go forward, illustrating the tentative and equivocal nature of the peace effort. “We want them to invite the Afghan Taliban to the talks. Without them, peace is not possible in Afghanistan,” said Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council.
Afghan senior clerics said they remained hopeful that the talks would be held and that a majority of Pakistani clerics would attend.
The most immediate obstacle to talks is an apparent standoff between Mr. Karzai and the Taliban. The insurgents refuse to deal with Mr. Karzai, whom they have branded as an American “puppet.” The president, in turn, recently reiterated his demand that the Taliban must recognize the legitimacy of his government and speak to the High Peace Council, which he has appointed to negotiate with the insurgency and which has representatives from many Afghan factions.
Mr. Karzai, forever fearful of being sidelined by a Western-dominated talks process, has effectively banned the kind of informal discussions with Taliban leaders that have raised hopes over the past few months, including Afghan-centric conferences in France and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and, earlier, in Germany and Japan — even though those talks appeared helpful in easing tensions between longtime enemies.
Pressure from Mr. Karzai forced the United Nations to abandon a planned “Track Two” meeting, an unofficial diplomacy session involving Taliban representatives and Afghan political leaders, due to take place in Turkmenistan this month, diplomats in Kabul and Islamabad said.
Within the Taliban, a fierce debate is under way between commanders who support talks and those who have never given up on seeking military victory, instead biding time until the Americans are mostly gone, Taliban watchers say. The group’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, widely presumed to be sequestered at his hide-out inside Pakistan, has been silent on the subject. Even if he were to support a deal, it is unclear whether his movement is sufficiently united to stick to it.
The Americans have quietly pledged not to move forward without the Afghan government’s benediction, so previous efforts to build confidence with the Taliban by releasing some of their prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp are on hold, although the Americans retain the right to consider a prisoner release for strategic reasons of their own. An American soldier is being held by the Taliban, and there has been talk of a prisoner exchange to free him.
In Afghanistan, the fighting has continued in some places through the winter, and the start of the main spring fighting season is just weeks away.
“We are stuck here, trying to work out how to take it forward,” said a senior Western official in Kabul, discussing the talks process. But even Western diplomats hold different views on how best to advance, depending on whether they are based in Kabul or Islamabad, reflecting the different outlooks in two capitals that are barely an hour apart by airplane.
As the snows begin to melt in the high passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan, senior Afghan officials say they will be watching the Taliban’s moves closely to see if attacks this year slow down, remain the same or accelerate. In the absence of more concrete progress, that means that the pace of peace will, at least for now, most likely be determined by the forces of the war.
Kabul vendors of stolen U.S. goods fret about future
Washington Post By Richard Leiby February 16, 2013
If a case of soap is pilfered from a U.S. military base here or pinched from a NATO shipping container, it will probably, sooner or later, end up for sale in the Bush Market, a sort of thieves’ outlet mall in central Kabul.
Named after George W. Bush, the U.S. president who launched the war in Afghanistan, the bazaar has flourished for more than eight years, thanks to the long presence of foreign troops that provided war booty aplenty. But in the Obama era, with its steady withdrawal of U.S. forces, the good times are ending in the sprawling hive of vendors who hawk mountains of Pop-tarts and enough Head & Shoulders shampoo to combat the dandruff of untold army divisions.
In a way, the market serves as a microeconomic barometer of the concerns of Afghans across class lines when 2014 ends — and with it, the U.S.-led coalition’s combat mission. President Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union address Tuesday of the accelerated pullout of 34,000 troops in the coming year has only heightened many merchants’ worries about what happens after Western forces finally step on their air hose of cash and material support.
“My business once was good,” lamented a shop owner named Sabor, standing next to a shelf packed with Stridex acne pads and Just for Men hair dye. “But it has become a depression.”
Several vendors said sales have already fallen by 50 percent since last year as the “surge” troops that began arriving in 2009 have departed. The amount of military goods available to be pilfered has dropped, they said, and prices have gone up. Also, fewer foreign development workers come to shop for familiar Western brands.
“If Obama had announced, ‘I don’t want to withdraw the soldiers,’ business would grow,” said Sabor, 47, who goes by one name and is among the Afghans who oppose a pullout, despite President Hamid Karzai’s fervid argument — repeated last week — that it is long overdue.
Sabor credited the 11-year U.S. presence with bringing his war-ravaged country increased security, opportunities for girls and women, and a functional government.
“Some people say that Americans should leave this country, but it is a loss for us,” he said.
Others in the bazaar, like 20-year-old Samiullah, clad in a T-shirt sporting a fake U.S. Army logo, said they trust their fates to a power higher than the American greenback.
“God is kind, and if Obama doesn’t give us bread, God will give us bread,” he said.
Five-finger discounts
A warren of some 600 shops and stalls, Bush Market also exemplifies in miniature the massive corruption that has flourished with the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in military and development aid to Afghanistan, where skimming Yankee dollars is common from the very top social rungs on down.
Most shopkeepers expressed ignorance about the origin of their goods. But as one longtime merchant explained, Afghans who get military-base jobs are ingenious when it comes to obtaining five-finger discounts on bulk items.
Trash trucks leave U.S. installations with crates of supplies concealed under tarps, said the merchant, who declined to be identified.
“My neighbor got very rich doing this,” he noted.
The market is rarely subject to raids by Afghan authorities, unless U.S. forces suspect that something sensitive has ended up there. Vendors said the last time they remember seeing U.S. troops accompanying Afghan security forces was about two years ago.
The U.S. military did not respond to a request for comment about the market’s inventory. But the problem of looted on-base goods, as well as diverted shipments, has not escaped official notice.
Last May, Army Maj. Gen. Richard Longo, who directed the U.S. forces’ anti-corruption task force here, visited the market on the invitation of Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper.
“I’m certainly not going to deny that pilferage is going on,” he told the paper, observing that merchants bagged customer purchases in plastic sacks made for the U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange Service.
Many of the stalls stock military-style goods, but Chinese-made knockoffs of official watches, boots, T-shirts and backpacks seem to outnumber the genuine articles. There are rows of knives and brass knuckles of the sort you’d find in a U.S. military-surplus store.
The market has a historical antecedent: Kabul residents recall the “Brezhnev Market” of the Soviet occupation era, where black-market and discarded military materiel — including weapons — were sold and traded.
A visitor to the Bush Market this week found on offer the U.S. military rations known as Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, stamped with warnings that resale is illegal. But no matter: Nearby, men unloaded boxes of Clif energy bars still bearing labels identifying them as meant for delivery to base exchanges.
‘30 million thieves’
“People bring supplies, we don’t know from where,” said Sahli Mohammad, 59, whose shop featured an ample stock of the bars, which cost $1 retail in the United States and about 40 cents here.
“Afghanistan has 30 million thieves,” said Mohammad with a wry smile, referencing one estimate of his country’s population, “and 200,000 international outsiders who are also corrupt.”
In this muddy and cold capital, where towering blast barriers and sandbagged sentry posts are punctuated by open-air butcher shops arrayed with grisly, dangling carcasses, stores in the Bush Market provide a Sam’s Club kind of relief for American eyes, a weird oasis of trademarked plenty.
But the variety seems to depend on what fell off the truck that week: An army of miniature bottles of Frank’s RedHot sauce, mounds of 43-ounce pouches of StarKist tuna, towers of Myoplex protein drinks, a forlorn complement of Borden EggNog.
They may be stolen, but that doesn’t mean everything is a bargain. A pack of Wrigley’s 5 gum fetches $2, more than in the States.
Merchant and weightlifter Rahmatullah Khan, 21, was proud to note that his store’s stock of MET-Rx, a bodybuilding supplement favored by soldiers, came directly from the Bagram Air Field and other military installations throughout Afghanistan.
His shop was dim — Kabul had been hit with yet another electrical blackout — which suited Khan’s assessment of the future.
“We’re Afghans, we want to keep our country for ourselves,” he said. “But nowadays we don’t have jobs, we don’t have money. What will we do when the Americans leave?”
It was a question for which he had no answer.
Former Azizi Bank Director Bids for New Kabul Bank
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie and Qasem Foushanji Saturday, 16 February 2013
Only one company filed an offer for New Kabul Bank by today's deadline, the Ministry of Finance said Saturday, despite claiming earlier in the week that as many as eight companies were interested in the sale.
The bidding company, MTZ, is owned by three partners including former Azizi Bank vice-chairman Ali Akbar Zhowandai.
The Finance Ministry had said that five Afghan and three foreign companies were interested in the bid, but only MTZ submitted a letter of bid with a suggested business plan for the bank.
In a phone interview with TOLOnews, Zhowandai said he no longer has any ties to Azizi Bank where he was vice-chairman until two years ago.
"I don't even have an Azizi bank account," he said Saturday.
MTZs business is primarily in oil and petroleum and most of the trade is done with US-based companies, he added.
Head of Treasury Department Mohammad Aqa Kohestani said that MTZs offer will be examined by a number of officials from the Ministry of Finance, the central bank Da Afghanistan Bank, the Ministry of Justice, New Kabul Bank officials, and a banking expert.
He added that final negotiations will be conducted March 13 and, following government approval, the sale will be announced April 7.
"Today, we see which companies have handed over their offers to us. Five companies were ready and the deadline for them is 3:00 pm today," Kohestani said at a press conference, adding that they have forfeited the chance to bid by not submitting an offer.
Afghanistan International Bank (AIB) was among the other four, officials said.
Afghan Senators Attend Govt Training in India
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Saturday, 16 February 2013
Most of Afghanistan's senators have travelled to India for an eight-day training programme on improving skills related to governance.
The move has been criticised by the former head of the Parliament's international relations committee Mir Ahmad Joyenda who described it as "ridiculous" and potentially damaging to ties with neighbouring Pakistan.
Joyenda, now chairman for the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society, said the visit was "exceptional" and may be interpreted by others as a sign of Afghanistan's dependency on India – to the detriment of other diplomatic relationships.
"There has been no such thing in the history of the parliament. It's so ridiculous that 90 senators of a country would travel to another country for training," he told TOLOnews.
"This act will boost tensions and invoke negative competition from Pakistan against Afghanistan," he added.
All of the Afghan senators were invited to attend the programme, however only 12 are understood to not have attended.
"The visit was decided by both countries. It's believed to be very important for exchanging parliamentary experiences between both sides. There is training within the programme on the process of approving laws, budgets, and other parliamentarian tasks," Senator Hafez Abdulqayyoum told TOLOnews.
It is believed India has covered all the expenses for the programme. Other analysts have remarked that it would be better if trainers visited India and the training was brought to Afghanistan.
Teenage Radio Worker Killed by Family: Officials
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 16 February 2013
A 19-year-old girl has been killed allegedly after ill-treatment and beating at the hands of her family in northern Parwan province, local officials said.
Samani Dunia Zakiri, who was buried Friday, worked in a private radio station in the province, but had not been allowed to attend work for at least a month, a local official told TOLOnews on the condition of anonymity.
"There were signs of beatings on her body. Her family had not let her to go to work in the past month," the source told TOLOnews.
But the family of the girl claim she died Thursday night from a stroke.
Parwan director of women's affairs Shah Jahan Yazdan Parast said that the women's department has started investigations into the girl's death.
"We are in talks with officials in the provincial hospital and we are waiting for the medical reports," Yazdan Parast said.
The local police have not commented yet on the incident.
Zakiri's death happened the same day that scores of protestors marched on Parliament in Kabul to protest against domestic violence and the government inaction to pursue perpetrators of such crimes.
Austrian Foreign Minister Visits Afghanistan for First Time
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 16 February 2013
Austria's foreign minister visited Afghanistan for the first time on Saturday and assured Afghan leaders of his country's assistance for the transitional years ahead.
Michael Spindelegger is also the first Austrian foreign minister to visit Afghanistan in around 50 years. He said his visit comes amid efforts to better understand the needs of Afghans to make sure Austria is getting its assistance right.
"We've also been discussing about refugees coming from Afghanistan every year to Austria, and we agreed to start with negotiations immediately just to see what we could do more to keep Afghan people in Afghanistan, from not going outside and asking in Europe, especially in Austria, for a new life," he said Saturday in Kabul.
Pledging financial support, Spindelegger said Austria will support training for Afghan police forces, the peace process, and the upcoming elections. He is also looking into more economic cooperation between the two nations.
"We are going to spend from 2013 on, every year, 6 million euros (US$8m) just to help police forces in the country, which are really in the position to bring security to the people of Afghanistan. We are very proud of this wonderful cooperation with Afghanistan," he said at the press conference.
"The new starting point we would like to have with Afghanistan is more economic ties. So we will start to see what we could do in this cooperation," he added.
Afghan foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul said at the press briefing that Austria's assistance in the past ten years has been very effective.
"Over the past decade, Austria has helped a lot in sectors of military, education, and reconstruction. This country has now assured another 18 million euros in aid to Afghanistan. We have had good discussions based on our bilateral relations which have been very beneficial to our country," he said.
France Interior Minister Pledges Support Post-2014
TOLOnews.com By Hazim Arash Saturday, 16 February 2013
France will support the Afghan National Security Forces in the years after 2014, the French Interior Minister said Saturday during his two-day visit to Kabul.
Manuel Valls said that France is ready to help strengthen the Afghan security forces in its fight on four defence fronts: drugs, public order, criminal activity, and insecurity from insurgents.
A consultative French military forces team will come to train Afghan forces in Kabul, paving the way for Afghan soldiers to also receive further training in Paris.
"We promise our aids especially in four sections. We will help in fighting against narcotics, [training] public order police, criminal police and the improvement of the security section," Valls said in a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart.
Afghan Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang welcomed France's pledge to support Afghanistan after 2014.
French troops were deployed in Afghanistan for 11 years until the end of 2012.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
February 17, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan says the alliance will comply with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's desire to ban Afghan security forces from seeking NATO air support when battling insurgents in villages.
U.S. General Joseph Dunford, who took charge of the U.S.-led NATO force a week ago, told reporters in Kabul on February 17 that the organization was “prepared to provide support in line with the president's intent."
On February 16, Karzai said he would issue a decree that "none of the Afghan military forces, under any condition can call in foreigners’ air support during the military operations on our villages.”
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Karzai Orders Cameras Be Put In Interrogation Facilities
February 17, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered in a decree that cameras be placed in all interrogation facilities to prevent torture.
Karzai said in a decree released by his office late on February 16 that, "Relevant authorities are required to equip the intelligence and investigating agencies... with modern equipment [and] devices... and videotape the interrogation process."
The decree follows a government investigation into a UN report about prisoner abuse, which found detainees were tortured at the time of arrest and during interrogations.
The UN report revealed that 326 of 635 prisoners interviewed across the country said they had been abused, including 80 minors.
Based on reporting by AFP and CNN
Pakistanis train Taliban militants in western Afghanistan
By Sayed Jawad - 16 Feb 2013, 8:07 pm Khaama Press
According to local authorities in western Badghis province of Afghanistan, Pakistani citizens are busy with training Taliban militants in this province in a bid to enable them to fight with the Afghan and coalition security forces.
The officials further added Pakistani nationals have increased their illegal presence in various parts of Badghis province which can create a major security threat for the Afghan government.
This comes as local authorities have concerned regarding growing number of Taliban militants in various districts of Badghis province.
In the meantime provincial governor spokesman Sharafuddin Majidi confirming the report said various Pakistani nationals have been enrolled with the Taliban militants in this province.
Mr. Majidi quoted by Radio Free Europe (RFE) said Pakistani militants are currently engaged with planting roadside improvised explosive device and plotting other insurgency activities in Badghis province districts.
Safia Aimaq Afghan lawmaker representing Badghsi province in Afghan house of representatives also confirmed the presence of Pakistani militants cooperating with the local Taliban fighters in this province and called it a major threat for the Afghan government.
She criticized the government for the lack of good governance coordination among the security institutions which have paved the way for the infiltration of Taliban militants, both local and Pakistanis in various districts of Badghis province.
According to Safia Aimaq major parts of Badghis province is currently under the control of Taliban militants and warned that Taliban militants will easily enter the center of Badghis province if the government does not take necessary actions.
Meanwhile local residents in Badghis province said only Qala-e-Naw area located in the center of Badghis province is safe security wise while other regions are unsafe and local residents can not commute freely.
The comments by local authorities are followed by a number of insurgency attacks by militants on Afghan security forces check posts which took place recently in this province.
5 militants killed, 15 detained in Afghanistan within day: gov't
KABUL, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Up to five militants have been killed and 15 detained in different operations within the last 24 hours, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) supporting by the army and NDS or intelligence agency conducted six cleanup operations in Nangarhar, Khost, Wardak, Logar and Helmand provinces, killing five armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 15 others," the ministry said in a statement.
The ANP also seized weapons and defused an explosive-packed motorcycle and five anti-vehicle mines in the raids, it added.
The Afghan security forces in partnership with the NATO-led coalition troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by armed attacks and bombings.
On Saturday, two NDS members were killed and four were wounded when a bomb hit a security patrol in the country northern province of Jawzjan.
35 armed Taliban lay down arms in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Thirty five armed Taliban militants gave up fighting after 10 years and handed over their weapons to authorities in the western Herat province on Sunday, police said.
"Today 35 dissident brothers including four mine makers under Mullah Nasim, who fought against government over the past 10 years gave up fighting and handed in their weapons including several anti-vehicle and anti-personal mines to police," provincial police chief Rahmatullah Safi said in his speech at a ceremony to welcome the former militants.
With joining these people to the peace process, the security will be further improved in Herat province, he further said.
The former Taliban militants, according to the police officer were active in the eastern and southern parts of Herat over the past 10 years.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
More than 3,500 Taliban fighters, according to officials have laid down their arms and joined the government-backed peace process over the past one year, a claim rebuffed by the armed outfit as baseless.
Afghanistan's future: 5 burning questions
CNN By Kyle Almond February 16, 2013
In his State of the Union address, President Obama reaffirmed that the country's war in Afghanistan would be over by the end of 2014.
He also laid out more specifics.
Of the approximately 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now, more than half -- 34,000 -- will come home in the next year, Obama said.
At the same time, Afghan troops will assume most of the responsibility for combat missions.
"This spring, our forces will move into a support role, while Afghan security forces take the lead," Obama said.
It was previously expected that Afghan forces would take the lead in combat missions by the middle of this year. But a U.S. official told CNN that the military transition has accelerated and that Afghans will lead all security operations by March.
What does this news mean for Afghanistan and America's longest war? Here are some key questions that will be asked in the coming months:
1. Are the Afghan troops up to the task?
There are certainly doubts.
A Pentagon review in December claimed that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades was capable of functioning on its own.
Meanwhile, literacy rates are low, desertion rates are high, and many deserters have joined the insurgency. There also have been a troubling number of "green-on-blue" attacks: Afghan troops attacking their American comrades.
But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has spoken positively about the progress Afghans have made in growing their army, reducing violence and becoming more self-sufficient. Afghan forces now lead nearly 90% of operations across the country.
"We're on the right path to give (Afghanistan) the opportunity to govern itself," Panetta said earlier this month.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he welcomes the U.S. troop withdrawal and insists his army can defend the country against the Taliban.
"It is exactly our job to deal with it, and we are capable of dealing with it," Karzai said during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
What the army needs now, Karzai says, is more equipment and firepower. He came to the Pentagon last month with a wish list asking for more helicopters, drones and other hardware, according to a senior defense official.
"We need an air force. We need air mobility," Karzai told Amanpour. "We need proper mechanized forces. We need, you know, armored vehicles and tanks and all that."
2. What presence will the U.S. have after 2014?
The plan is to withdraw all combat troops but keep a residual force in the country to help train Afghans and carry out counterterrorism operations when needed.
The size of that force is still being discussed.
Gen. John Allen, the former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, recommended between 6,000 and 15,000 troops. But that figure was lowered to a range between 2,500 and 9,000, according to a defense official.
There might not be any U.S. troops at all if the United States cannot come to an agreement over immunity with Afghanistan. There was no American presence in Iraq at the end of that war because the Iraqi government refused to extend legal protections to U.S. troops.
Karzai, who's in favor of a residual force, said he would put the immunity decision in the hands of Afghan elders, and he expressed confidence that he could persuade the elders to see things his way.
Leaving no U.S. troops at all would be a major misstep, said Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst. He said the U.S. has abandoned Afghanistan already, in 1989, and the decision left America with little understanding of the power vacuum that led to the Taliban's rise in the first place.
"The current public discussion of zero U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan ... will encourage those hardliner elements of the Taliban who have no interest in a negotiated settlement and believe they can simply wait the Americans out," Bergen wrote in an op-ed for CNN.com. "It also discourages the many millions of Afghans who see a longtime U.S. presence as the best guarantor that the Taliban won't come back in any meaningful way."
3. What's at stake?
The main fear among the Afghan people is that the country could revert to another civil war once the United States withdraws its combat troops. The Taliban are still "resilient and determined," according to a recent Pentagon report, and insurgents continue to carry out attacks and pose a major security threat.
"Some people we've spoken to sort of take it for granted that there's going to be a civil war when the United States leaves," said CNN's Erin Burnett on a recent trip to Afghanistan. "It happened before when the Soviet Union left (in 1989)."
For all the violence Afghanistan has seen in the past decade, it has also seen major advancements in human rights and quality of life.
"During the Taliban, basically there were thousands of girls going to school in Afghanistan. Now you have millions of girls going to school," Burnett said. "So there's been real progress on women's rights. Obviously there remain a lot of problems -- honor killings, forced marriages, domestic violence -- but there has been real progress."
Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, once America's top commander in Afghanistan, said the Afghan people are "terrified."
"They're terrified because they think they have something to lose," McChrystal said. "There has been progress made. There is a better life. There are girls in school. There are things that are better than they were and opportunities potentially ahead.
"But they're afraid that if we completely abandon them in 2014, as they perceive we did in 1989, (things) would all go back."
And in Washington, there are worries that the wrong move could put the United States right back where it started, with nothing to show for a bloody conflict that started in 2001.
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-California, expressed concern last week that a hasty withdrawal could be "needlessly fraught with risk."
"Since the president took the commendable step of deploying a surge to Afghanistan in 2009, we have known that our hard-fought gains are fragile and reversible," McKeon said. "That isn't my assessment, but the consistent opinion of experts both military and civilian."
4. Who will lead after Karzai?
Afghanistan's only president of this century won't be in charge for much longer.
Elections are scheduled for April 2014, and Karzai has reached the term limit set by his country's constitution. He told Amanpour it's "absolutely time to go."
"A new president will come to this country. A new government will come to this country. And I'll be a happily retired civil servant," he said.
So while Afghanistan oversees a major military transition, it also will have to make a political transition.
Who will lead the country during this critical moment in its history? Will the vote go smoothly, without violence and without controversy? There were reports of ballot tampering and other violations in the last one.
The answers might be just as important to Afghanistan's security as the readiness of its troops.
"The single biggest challenge for us is the political transition, the elections of 2014," said Saad Mohseni, the media mogul behind Afghanistan's Tolo Television. "(If) we have credible elections, I think we'll be OK for the next five, six years. (If) we don't, there is a real danger that we'll see instability, especially in 2014 as the U.S. troops withdraw."
5. What part will the Taliban play?
Despite the ongoing insurgency, Karzai seems eager to resume stalled peace talks with the Taliban and include them in the political process.
The Taliban pulled out of talks last year, but Karzai said last month they "are very much conveying to us that they want to have peace talks. They're also people. They're also families. They also suffer, like the rest of Afghans are suffering."
Javid Ahmad, a Kabul native now with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, believes revitalized peace talks are essential to Afghanistan's future and to the legacy of America's war.
"If withdrawing responsibly in 2014 is indeed high on President Obama's agenda, then he has little choice but to prioritize and accelerate the peace talks, negotiate a cease-fire between all sides, and reach a settlement that ensures that the Taliban lay down their weapons," Ahmad wrote in a recent column.
But will the Taliban be willing to cooperate? And if they enter negotiations, how much of an influence would they have on an Afghan society that has seen so many changes in the past decade?
"There have to be some red lines," said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan's deputy foreign minister for political affairs. "Some of the achievements that we've had in the last 10 years can't be negotiated."
Karzai sounded confident that most of the Taliban would acknowledge this.
"I think there is now a critical mass in Afghanistan of the educated, of the Afghan people who want a future of progress and stability," he said. "And I think also that the Taliban recognize that this corner has been turned, the majority of them. Some may be there among them who would not -- who would remain, you know, in the darkest of the mindset possible. But those are a few."
CNN's Chris Lawrence, Mike Mount and Jake Tapper contributed to this report.
Afghan forces discover drugs in southern province
LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police has seized nearly 1,250 kg of drugs in the country's southern province of Helmand, in the latest raid against narcotics and drug trafficking in the war-hit country, police said on Sunday.
"Afghan Special Counter-Narcotic Police supporting by national police found and seized over 1,000 hashish and 240 kg dry opium in Khanshin and Garmser districts over the past two days," the provincial police chief Gen. Nabi Ilham told reporters here.
He said a tractor, two vehicles and a motorcycle were also confiscated in the raids, adding no person was detained during the seizure in the province 555 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.
The insurgency-hit Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw element for making heroin.
An estimated 3,700 tons of opium was produced in 154,000 hectare of land in Afghanistan in 2012 with nearly 90 percent of cultivation taking place in southern and western provinces, according to assessments of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics.
Little Hope Amid Push for Afghans on Peace
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DECLAN WALSH February 16, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suddenly, the effort to strike a deal with the Taliban is very publicly back on the front burner.
Frozen for months last year as another fighting season raged in Afghanistan, and as election-year politics consumed American attention, diplomats and political leaders from eight countries are now mounting the most concerted campaign to date to bring the Afghan government and its Taliban foes together to negotiate a peace deal.
The latest push came early this month at Chequers, the country residence of the British prime minister, David Cameron, who joined President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in calling for fast-track peace talks. Weeks earlier in Washington, Mr. Karzai met with President Obama and committed publicly to have his representatives meet a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar, to start the process.
Yet so far the energized reach for peace has achieved little, officials say, except to cement a growing consensus that regional stability demands some sort of political settlement with the Taliban, after a war that cost tens of thousands of Afghan and Western lives and nearly a trillion dollars failed to put down the insurgency.
Interviews with more than two dozen officials involved in the effort suggest a fast-spinning process that has yet to gain real traction and seems to have little chance of achieving even its most limited goal: bringing the Afghan government and Taliban leadership together at the table before the bulk of the American fighting force leaves Afghanistan in 2014.
“The year 2014 has begun to be seen as a magical date, both inside and outside Afghanistan,” said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan national security adviser. “It’s difficult to find what is realistic and what is illusion.”
That is not least because the major players — Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban — have fundamentally different visions of how to achieve a post-2014 peace, according to accounts of setbacks in the process.
For the Afghans, the simple act of considering what a peace deal might look like has inflamed factional differences that are still raw two decades after the country’s civil war.
The Afghan High Peace Council, which Mr. Karzai has empowered to negotiate for his government, has put forward a document called “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015.” While many Afghan leaders say they have not seen the proposal, first reported by McClatchy in December, those who have view it as outlining a striking number of potential concessions to the Taliban and to Pakistan. They include provisions for the Taliban’s becoming a political party and anticipation that some of the most important government positions could be open to them, including provincial governorships, police chief jobs and cabinet positions.
Some Western commentators as well as Afghans view this as returning to the past or opening the door to a division of the country. Senior members of the powerful Tajik and Hazara factions, both of which suffered greatly under Taliban rule, charged that they had been left out of the deliberations. When they are asked about striking a peace deal, they make veiled references to a renewal of ethnic strife.
“The president is acting on an ethnic basis,” said Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq, a powerful ethnic Hazara leader from northern Afghanistan. “He is trying to win the hearts of a group of Taliban so they back him in the election.”
Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun, the ethnic group predominant in the Taliban. Mr. Spanta, the national security adviser, countered that any realistic attempt to end a war involves compromise. “I think peace in a country after 33 or 34 years has a price — a very heavy price,” he said. “But we are paying a heavy price every day with our lives.”
One factor fueling the peace drive is that Pakistan, long considered the Taliban’s silent sponsor, professes to have had a change of heart. For more than a year, Pakistani generals and ministers have assiduously courted their traditional rivals in Afghanistan, particularly from non-Pashtun ethnic groups, as part of a strategy that, they say, favors an inclusive democratic settlement after 2014 — even one that does not include the Taliban’s full return to power.
But Pakistan’s biggest public gesture so far — the release of 26 Taliban prisoners from Pakistani jails, intended as a trust-building measure to help the peace process — has been shadowed by the old mistrust and accusations of double-crossing.
The Pakistanis refused Afghan demands to release the prisoners into Afghan custody, arguing it would scare the Taliban away. “The moment we hand them over, it would be the end of the process,” said a senior Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Instead, the Taliban prisoners were allowed to roam free, prompting fears from some Afghan and some American officials that they would simply return to the fight — at least two already have, according to one Western official. At Chequers, the Pakistanis agreed to give the Afghans one-week notice of all future prisoner releases.
“Pakistan is serious about facilitating the peace process,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and political commentator, citing growing fears that chaos in Afghanistan after 2014 would further destabilize his country.
But Mr. Masood added that the military was also hedging its bets by maintaining some Taliban links. “They want to retain a certain level of leverage in talks,” he said. “That’s the crucial nuance.”
Hopes for Pakistani cooperation dimmed further on Friday when Pakistan’s most senior cleric pulled out of a meeting planned for March with Afghan clerics in Kabul, after disagreements over the role of the Taliban. But Afghan clerics appeared to believe that the meeting would go forward, illustrating the tentative and equivocal nature of the peace effort. “We want them to invite the Afghan Taliban to the talks. Without them, peace is not possible in Afghanistan,” said Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council.
Afghan senior clerics said they remained hopeful that the talks would be held and that a majority of Pakistani clerics would attend.
The most immediate obstacle to talks is an apparent standoff between Mr. Karzai and the Taliban. The insurgents refuse to deal with Mr. Karzai, whom they have branded as an American “puppet.” The president, in turn, recently reiterated his demand that the Taliban must recognize the legitimacy of his government and speak to the High Peace Council, which he has appointed to negotiate with the insurgency and which has representatives from many Afghan factions.
Mr. Karzai, forever fearful of being sidelined by a Western-dominated talks process, has effectively banned the kind of informal discussions with Taliban leaders that have raised hopes over the past few months, including Afghan-centric conferences in France and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and, earlier, in Germany and Japan — even though those talks appeared helpful in easing tensions between longtime enemies.
Pressure from Mr. Karzai forced the United Nations to abandon a planned “Track Two” meeting, an unofficial diplomacy session involving Taliban representatives and Afghan political leaders, due to take place in Turkmenistan this month, diplomats in Kabul and Islamabad said.
Within the Taliban, a fierce debate is under way between commanders who support talks and those who have never given up on seeking military victory, instead biding time until the Americans are mostly gone, Taliban watchers say. The group’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, widely presumed to be sequestered at his hide-out inside Pakistan, has been silent on the subject. Even if he were to support a deal, it is unclear whether his movement is sufficiently united to stick to it.
The Americans have quietly pledged not to move forward without the Afghan government’s benediction, so previous efforts to build confidence with the Taliban by releasing some of their prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp are on hold, although the Americans retain the right to consider a prisoner release for strategic reasons of their own. An American soldier is being held by the Taliban, and there has been talk of a prisoner exchange to free him.
In Afghanistan, the fighting has continued in some places through the winter, and the start of the main spring fighting season is just weeks away.
“We are stuck here, trying to work out how to take it forward,” said a senior Western official in Kabul, discussing the talks process. But even Western diplomats hold different views on how best to advance, depending on whether they are based in Kabul or Islamabad, reflecting the different outlooks in two capitals that are barely an hour apart by airplane.
As the snows begin to melt in the high passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan, senior Afghan officials say they will be watching the Taliban’s moves closely to see if attacks this year slow down, remain the same or accelerate. In the absence of more concrete progress, that means that the pace of peace will, at least for now, most likely be determined by the forces of the war.
Kabul vendors of stolen U.S. goods fret about future
Washington Post By Richard Leiby February 16, 2013
If a case of soap is pilfered from a U.S. military base here or pinched from a NATO shipping container, it will probably, sooner or later, end up for sale in the Bush Market, a sort of thieves’ outlet mall in central Kabul.
Named after George W. Bush, the U.S. president who launched the war in Afghanistan, the bazaar has flourished for more than eight years, thanks to the long presence of foreign troops that provided war booty aplenty. But in the Obama era, with its steady withdrawal of U.S. forces, the good times are ending in the sprawling hive of vendors who hawk mountains of Pop-tarts and enough Head & Shoulders shampoo to combat the dandruff of untold army divisions.
In a way, the market serves as a microeconomic barometer of the concerns of Afghans across class lines when 2014 ends — and with it, the U.S.-led coalition’s combat mission. President Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union address Tuesday of the accelerated pullout of 34,000 troops in the coming year has only heightened many merchants’ worries about what happens after Western forces finally step on their air hose of cash and material support.
“My business once was good,” lamented a shop owner named Sabor, standing next to a shelf packed with Stridex acne pads and Just for Men hair dye. “But it has become a depression.”
Several vendors said sales have already fallen by 50 percent since last year as the “surge” troops that began arriving in 2009 have departed. The amount of military goods available to be pilfered has dropped, they said, and prices have gone up. Also, fewer foreign development workers come to shop for familiar Western brands.
“If Obama had announced, ‘I don’t want to withdraw the soldiers,’ business would grow,” said Sabor, 47, who goes by one name and is among the Afghans who oppose a pullout, despite President Hamid Karzai’s fervid argument — repeated last week — that it is long overdue.
Sabor credited the 11-year U.S. presence with bringing his war-ravaged country increased security, opportunities for girls and women, and a functional government.
“Some people say that Americans should leave this country, but it is a loss for us,” he said.
Others in the bazaar, like 20-year-old Samiullah, clad in a T-shirt sporting a fake U.S. Army logo, said they trust their fates to a power higher than the American greenback.
“God is kind, and if Obama doesn’t give us bread, God will give us bread,” he said.
Five-finger discounts
A warren of some 600 shops and stalls, Bush Market also exemplifies in miniature the massive corruption that has flourished with the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in military and development aid to Afghanistan, where skimming Yankee dollars is common from the very top social rungs on down.
Most shopkeepers expressed ignorance about the origin of their goods. But as one longtime merchant explained, Afghans who get military-base jobs are ingenious when it comes to obtaining five-finger discounts on bulk items.
Trash trucks leave U.S. installations with crates of supplies concealed under tarps, said the merchant, who declined to be identified.
“My neighbor got very rich doing this,” he noted.
The market is rarely subject to raids by Afghan authorities, unless U.S. forces suspect that something sensitive has ended up there. Vendors said the last time they remember seeing U.S. troops accompanying Afghan security forces was about two years ago.
The U.S. military did not respond to a request for comment about the market’s inventory. But the problem of looted on-base goods, as well as diverted shipments, has not escaped official notice.
Last May, Army Maj. Gen. Richard Longo, who directed the U.S. forces’ anti-corruption task force here, visited the market on the invitation of Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper.
“I’m certainly not going to deny that pilferage is going on,” he told the paper, observing that merchants bagged customer purchases in plastic sacks made for the U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange Service.
Many of the stalls stock military-style goods, but Chinese-made knockoffs of official watches, boots, T-shirts and backpacks seem to outnumber the genuine articles. There are rows of knives and brass knuckles of the sort you’d find in a U.S. military-surplus store.
The market has a historical antecedent: Kabul residents recall the “Brezhnev Market” of the Soviet occupation era, where black-market and discarded military materiel — including weapons — were sold and traded.
A visitor to the Bush Market this week found on offer the U.S. military rations known as Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, stamped with warnings that resale is illegal. But no matter: Nearby, men unloaded boxes of Clif energy bars still bearing labels identifying them as meant for delivery to base exchanges.
‘30 million thieves’
“People bring supplies, we don’t know from where,” said Sahli Mohammad, 59, whose shop featured an ample stock of the bars, which cost $1 retail in the United States and about 40 cents here.
“Afghanistan has 30 million thieves,” said Mohammad with a wry smile, referencing one estimate of his country’s population, “and 200,000 international outsiders who are also corrupt.”
In this muddy and cold capital, where towering blast barriers and sandbagged sentry posts are punctuated by open-air butcher shops arrayed with grisly, dangling carcasses, stores in the Bush Market provide a Sam’s Club kind of relief for American eyes, a weird oasis of trademarked plenty.
But the variety seems to depend on what fell off the truck that week: An army of miniature bottles of Frank’s RedHot sauce, mounds of 43-ounce pouches of StarKist tuna, towers of Myoplex protein drinks, a forlorn complement of Borden EggNog.
They may be stolen, but that doesn’t mean everything is a bargain. A pack of Wrigley’s 5 gum fetches $2, more than in the States.
Merchant and weightlifter Rahmatullah Khan, 21, was proud to note that his store’s stock of MET-Rx, a bodybuilding supplement favored by soldiers, came directly from the Bagram Air Field and other military installations throughout Afghanistan.
His shop was dim — Kabul had been hit with yet another electrical blackout — which suited Khan’s assessment of the future.
“We’re Afghans, we want to keep our country for ourselves,” he said. “But nowadays we don’t have jobs, we don’t have money. What will we do when the Americans leave?”
It was a question for which he had no answer.
Former Azizi Bank Director Bids for New Kabul Bank
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie and Qasem Foushanji Saturday, 16 February 2013
Only one company filed an offer for New Kabul Bank by today's deadline, the Ministry of Finance said Saturday, despite claiming earlier in the week that as many as eight companies were interested in the sale.
The bidding company, MTZ, is owned by three partners including former Azizi Bank vice-chairman Ali Akbar Zhowandai.
The Finance Ministry had said that five Afghan and three foreign companies were interested in the bid, but only MTZ submitted a letter of bid with a suggested business plan for the bank.
In a phone interview with TOLOnews, Zhowandai said he no longer has any ties to Azizi Bank where he was vice-chairman until two years ago.
"I don't even have an Azizi bank account," he said Saturday.
MTZs business is primarily in oil and petroleum and most of the trade is done with US-based companies, he added.
Head of Treasury Department Mohammad Aqa Kohestani said that MTZs offer will be examined by a number of officials from the Ministry of Finance, the central bank Da Afghanistan Bank, the Ministry of Justice, New Kabul Bank officials, and a banking expert.
He added that final negotiations will be conducted March 13 and, following government approval, the sale will be announced April 7.
"Today, we see which companies have handed over their offers to us. Five companies were ready and the deadline for them is 3:00 pm today," Kohestani said at a press conference, adding that they have forfeited the chance to bid by not submitting an offer.
Afghanistan International Bank (AIB) was among the other four, officials said.
Afghan Senators Attend Govt Training in India
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Saturday, 16 February 2013
Most of Afghanistan's senators have travelled to India for an eight-day training programme on improving skills related to governance.
The move has been criticised by the former head of the Parliament's international relations committee Mir Ahmad Joyenda who described it as "ridiculous" and potentially damaging to ties with neighbouring Pakistan.
Joyenda, now chairman for the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society, said the visit was "exceptional" and may be interpreted by others as a sign of Afghanistan's dependency on India – to the detriment of other diplomatic relationships.
"There has been no such thing in the history of the parliament. It's so ridiculous that 90 senators of a country would travel to another country for training," he told TOLOnews.
"This act will boost tensions and invoke negative competition from Pakistan against Afghanistan," he added.
All of the Afghan senators were invited to attend the programme, however only 12 are understood to not have attended.
"The visit was decided by both countries. It's believed to be very important for exchanging parliamentary experiences between both sides. There is training within the programme on the process of approving laws, budgets, and other parliamentarian tasks," Senator Hafez Abdulqayyoum told TOLOnews.
It is believed India has covered all the expenses for the programme. Other analysts have remarked that it would be better if trainers visited India and the training was brought to Afghanistan.
Teenage Radio Worker Killed by Family: Officials
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 16 February 2013
A 19-year-old girl has been killed allegedly after ill-treatment and beating at the hands of her family in northern Parwan province, local officials said.
Samani Dunia Zakiri, who was buried Friday, worked in a private radio station in the province, but had not been allowed to attend work for at least a month, a local official told TOLOnews on the condition of anonymity.
"There were signs of beatings on her body. Her family had not let her to go to work in the past month," the source told TOLOnews.
But the family of the girl claim she died Thursday night from a stroke.
Parwan director of women's affairs Shah Jahan Yazdan Parast said that the women's department has started investigations into the girl's death.
"We are in talks with officials in the provincial hospital and we are waiting for the medical reports," Yazdan Parast said.
The local police have not commented yet on the incident.
Zakiri's death happened the same day that scores of protestors marched on Parliament in Kabul to protest against domestic violence and the government inaction to pursue perpetrators of such crimes.
Austrian Foreign Minister Visits Afghanistan for First Time
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 16 February 2013
Austria's foreign minister visited Afghanistan for the first time on Saturday and assured Afghan leaders of his country's assistance for the transitional years ahead.
Michael Spindelegger is also the first Austrian foreign minister to visit Afghanistan in around 50 years. He said his visit comes amid efforts to better understand the needs of Afghans to make sure Austria is getting its assistance right.
"We've also been discussing about refugees coming from Afghanistan every year to Austria, and we agreed to start with negotiations immediately just to see what we could do more to keep Afghan people in Afghanistan, from not going outside and asking in Europe, especially in Austria, for a new life," he said Saturday in Kabul.
Pledging financial support, Spindelegger said Austria will support training for Afghan police forces, the peace process, and the upcoming elections. He is also looking into more economic cooperation between the two nations.
"We are going to spend from 2013 on, every year, 6 million euros (US$8m) just to help police forces in the country, which are really in the position to bring security to the people of Afghanistan. We are very proud of this wonderful cooperation with Afghanistan," he said at the press conference.
"The new starting point we would like to have with Afghanistan is more economic ties. So we will start to see what we could do in this cooperation," he added.
Afghan foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul said at the press briefing that Austria's assistance in the past ten years has been very effective.
"Over the past decade, Austria has helped a lot in sectors of military, education, and reconstruction. This country has now assured another 18 million euros in aid to Afghanistan. We have had good discussions based on our bilateral relations which have been very beneficial to our country," he said.
France Interior Minister Pledges Support Post-2014
TOLOnews.com By Hazim Arash Saturday, 16 February 2013
France will support the Afghan National Security Forces in the years after 2014, the French Interior Minister said Saturday during his two-day visit to Kabul.
Manuel Valls said that France is ready to help strengthen the Afghan security forces in its fight on four defence fronts: drugs, public order, criminal activity, and insecurity from insurgents.
A consultative French military forces team will come to train Afghan forces in Kabul, paving the way for Afghan soldiers to also receive further training in Paris.
"We promise our aids especially in four sections. We will help in fighting against narcotics, [training] public order police, criminal police and the improvement of the security section," Valls said in a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart.
Afghan Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang welcomed France's pledge to support Afghanistan after 2014.
French troops were deployed in Afghanistan for 11 years until the end of 2012.
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