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Up to 12,000 US, allied troops for Afghanistan
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and its NATO allies revealed Friday they may keep as many as 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends next year, largely American forces tasked with hunting down remnants of al-Qaida and helping Afghan forces with their own security.
Patience with the 11-year-old war has grown thin in the U.S. and Europe, yet Washington and its allies feel they cannot pick up and leave without risking a repeat of what happened in Afghanistan after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989: Attention turned elsewhere, the Taliban grabbed power and al-Qaida found refuge.
In disclosing that he and his NATO counterparts were discussing a residual force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said most allied defense ministers assured him they are committed to remaining part of a U.S.-led coalition.
"I feel very confident that we are going to get a number of nations to make that contribution for the enduring presence," Panetta told a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels at the conclusion of a defense ministers meeting.
The U.S. and its allies have managed to stick together throughout the war, despite differing views. The Europeans have seen the military mission as mainly aimed at promoting stable governance; the Americans have viewed it as mainly combat. Some allies, including France, have already pulled out their combat troops.
The Obama administration has not said how many troops or diplomats it intends to keep in Afghanistan after 2014; it is in the early stages of negotiating a bilateral security agreement with Kabul that would set the legal parameters. There currently are 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, down from a 2010 peak of 100,000.
In addition to targeting terrorists, the post-2014 missions are expected to be defined as training and advising a still-developing Afghan army and police force and providing security for the U.S. and allied civilian and military presence, officials said.
The largely unspoken assumption on which the post-2014 plan is built is that Afghanistan's own forces will be strong enough to hold off the Taliban on their own starting in 2015 and to prevent the country's relapse into civil war. The worry is that if the Taliban regained power they would allow al-Qaida to return in large numbers, defeating the original purpose of the U.S. military action in 2001.
It's a touchy topic at this stage of a still-unfolding war, with Afghans fearful of being abandoned by their foreign partners and Washington and its NATO allies wary of committing too heavily to a corrupt Kabul government facing an uncertain future.
Budget pressures in the U.S. and Europe also complicate the outlook.
"There's no question in the current budget environment, with deep cuts in European defense spending and the kind of political gridlock that we see in the United States now with regards to our own budget, is putting at risk our ability to effectively act together," Panetta said. "As I prepare to step down as secretary of defense, I do fear that the alliance will soon be, if it is not already, stretched too thin."
Panetta is expected to retire as soon as his successor is confirmed. The Senate could vote on the confirmation of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as the next Pentagon chief as early as Wednesday. Panetta is leaving just as Gen. Joseph Dunford is settling in as the successor to Gen. John Allen as commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.
Another source of anxiety among the allies is Afghanistan's 2014 presidential election; President Hamid Karzai, who has run the country since U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001, is not running and there is no obvious successor.
Just last week President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address that by this time next year 34,000 U.S. troops will have left, with the rest of the combat force to depart by the end of 2014, along with their counterparts from NATO and other partner countries. Obama did not say how many troops he was willing to commit to a post-2014 mission in Afghanistan, but he is believed to be weighing options that range from about 3,000 to about 9,000.
At the Brussels meeting, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere caused an initial stir by telling reporters that Panetta had said the U.S. would keep 8,000 to 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014. Panetta denied that, saying he was talking about a combined U.S. and NATO force of 8,000 to 12,000, and de Maiziere later said his own comments to reporters were "misleading."
Panetta said officials are planning to leave troops in all sectors of the country as well as in Kabul. Currently, Italy is leading the allied security presence in western Afghanistan, Germany in the north and the U.S. in the east and the south.
The Obama administration also is considering a plan to underwrite the cost of maintaining an Afghan security force of 352,000 for the next five years as part of an effort to maintain security and help convince Afghans that they will not be abandoned.
Last May, NATO agreed that the Afghan force would be reduced to about 230,000 after 2014. A force of that size would cost about $4.1 billion a year, compared to $6.5 billion this year for the bigger force of 352,000. The U.S. pays about $5.7 billion of that $6.5 billion bill.
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Associated Press writers Don Melvin and Julie Pace contributed to this report. Baldor reported from Brussels.
NATO Plan Tries to Avoid Sweeping Cuts in Afghan Troops
New York Times By THOM SHANKER February 21, 2013
BRUSSELS - NATO defense ministers are seriously considering a new proposal to sustain Afghanistan’s security forces at 352,000 troops through 2018, senior alliance officials said Thursday. The expensive effort is viewed as a way to help guarantee the country’s stability — and, just as much, to illustrate continued foreign support after the NATO allies end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year.
The fiscal package that NATO leaders endorsed last spring would have reduced the Afghan National Security Forces to fewer than 240,000 troops after December 2014, when the NATO mission expires. That reduction was based on planning work indicating that the larger current force level was too expensive for Afghanistan and the allies to keep up, and might not be required. Some specialists even argued that the foreign money pouring into Afghanistan to support so large a force was helping fuel rampant official corruption.
Recruiting, training, equipping and operating Afghanistan’s army and national police forces at their present level will cost about $6.5 billion for the current American fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Afghanistan pays $500 million of that total, its international partners add $300 million, and the United States provides the remaining $5.7 billion.
Senior NATO officials said Thursday that the allies were examining a new assistance package to Afghanistan that would last at least five years and keep the security forces at the higher troop level.
The alliance is “strongly considering” the proposal, said one senior NATO official, although many of its provisions are not yet settled, including how the cost would be shared. That official and others who described the closed-door deliberations did so on standard diplomatic rules of anonymity.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined his counterparts at the alliance’s headquarters here on Thursday to open a two-day conference, their first since President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that the United States would draw down its forces in Afghanistan by 34,000 troops within a year.
NATO officials acknowledged that the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan were pointing to the approaching end of the coalition combat mission as proof that the United States and its allies were abandoning Afghanistan, repeating a cycle of intervention and withdrawal. Alliance officials worry that ordinary Afghan citizens and even some Afghan leaders could adopt the same view. So NATO is discussing expanded financial aid and the continued presence of a small contingent of American and allied troops after 2014 as concrete proof of continued foreign support for Afghanistan, officials said.
“The will and the endurance and the commitment of the coalition equals the confidence and hope on the part of the Afghans,” said one NATO official.
“There is a post-2014 mission,” the official added. “There is a train-advise-and-assist mission. And we are going to use that as an insurance policy, to ensure that the success we’ve had over the past 12 years will continue.”
One thing NATO forces are trying to achieve as they hand off security responsibilities to Afghan forces is to diminish the insurgents’ ability to depict foreign forces as invaders and occupiers.
“The Afghans will be in the lead across the nation this spring,” the official said. “At that point, we now will have Afghans fighting Afghans. It’s pretty hard to talk about the coalition as occupiers at that point.”
NATO officials who have been briefed on the current military plans say that even with the new withdrawal timeline set by Mr. Obama, the bulk of American forces now in Afghanistan will stay there through the summer fighting season and then withdraw in late autumn and early winter.
“The commanders on the ground believe they have the flexibility to do this mission and absorb the drawdown,” one NATO official said. “This drawdown can be done without interfering with our campaign objectives.”
Senior NATO officials also said Thursday that Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the commander of United States Air Force units in Europe and Africa, was emerging as Mr. Obama’s likely nominee to be the alliance’s supreme military commander, customarily an American. Gen. John R. Allen, of the Marine Corps, had been in line for the post, but he announced his retirement recently.
General Breedlove is the Air Force’s top officer for the European Command and for the Africa Command, and thus is well known at NATO. He was commissioned into the Air Force in 1977 from the R.O.T.C. program at Georgia Tech. According to his official biography, he has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings.
Local Taliban leader killed in eastern Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader has been killed in an operation in Afghanistan's eastern province of Logar, the NATO-led coalition forces confirmed on Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces confirmed today the death of a Taliban leader, Habib, during an operation in Charkh district, Logar province, Wednesday," said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release.
Habib was responsible for weapons facilitation in Charkh district in the province 60 km south of capital Kabul, the release said, adding "He also was instrumental in planning attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. The security force engaged the insurgent with a precision strike and killed him,"
On Thursday, a Taliban Improvised Explosive Device (IED) expert named Zekeria was killed during a joint security raid in Chahar Darah district, Kunduz province 250 km north of Kabul, according to the release.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
Pakistan asks Afghanistan to hand over senior Taliban leader
By Sayed Jawad - 22 Feb 2013, 10:19 am Khaama Press
Pakistan on Thursday asked the Afghan government to hand over senior Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who was captured by Afghan security forces.
Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Khan speaking during a weekly media briefing said, “We hope that he would be handed over to Pakistan as soon as possible because he has the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands.”
He said said Pakistan hoped that all those elements, which were engaged in anti-Pakistan activities and had taken refuge in Afghanistan, “will be captured, arrested and handed over to Pakistan”.
Former deputy commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Bajaur Maulvi Mohammad Faqir was reportedly captured by Afghan security forces in eastern Afghanistan earlier this week.
At least four other suspected militants accompany Maulavi Moahmmad Faqir were also arrested by Afghan security forces while they entered eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.
He is believed to have direct links with the al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and has led the Taliban group insurgency in Bajaur for a ong period of time and is accused of two attacks in June and July 2011 — one on a Pakistani paramilitary post and the other on villages in Bajaur.
According to reports Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul officially conveyed the information about Maulvi Faqir’s arrest to Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in a telephonic conversation on Wednesday night.
U.S. drone strikes up sharply in Afghanistan
Their use rose 72% last year compared with 2011, and the trend is likely to continue as troops withdraw. But while the aircraft reduce risks to U.S. forces, mistakes are deadly for civilians.
Los Angeles Times By Shashank Bengali and David S. Cloud February 21, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - One morning recently, a teenager named Bacha Zarina was collecting firewood on her family's small farm in eastern Afghanistan. About 30 yards away, as family members recall, two Taliban commanders stood outside a house.
A missile screamed down from the sky, killing the two men instantly. Two chunks of shrapnel flew at Bacha Zarina and lodged in her left side.
Her family raced her to the nearest hospital, a half-hour's drive away, but she died en route, an accidental victim of the rapidly escalating U.S.-led campaign of drone strikes in Afghanistan. She was 14 or 15 years old.
The U.S. military launched 506 strikes from unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan last year, according to Pentagon data, a 72% increase from 2011 and a sign that American commanders may begin to rely more heavily on remote-controlled air power to kill Taliban insurgents as they reduce the number of troops on the ground.
Though drone strikes represented a fraction of all U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan last year, their use is on the rise even as American troops have pulled back from ground and air operations and pushed Afghan soldiers and police into the lead. In 2011, drone strikes accounted for 5% of U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan; in 2012, the figure rose to 12%.
Military spokesmen in Kabul and at the Pentagon declined to explain the increase. But officers familiar with the operation said it was due in part to the growing number of armed Reaper and Predator drones in Afghanistan and better availability of live video feeds beamed directly to troops on the ground.
The increase has coincided with a shift by the Obama administration toward a new strategy in Afghanistan that relies on a smaller military footprint to go after the Taliban and remaining Al Qaeda fighters.
The use of armed drones is likely to accelerate as most of the 66,000 U.S. troops in the country are due to withdraw by the end of 2014. The remotely piloted long-range aircraft, which kill targets with virtually no risk to American lives, carry an unmistakable attraction for military commanders.
"With fewer troops, and even with fewer manned aircraft flying overhead, it's harder to get traditional support in combat missions," said Joshua Foust, a Washington-based analyst who has advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "Drones provide a good way to do that without importing a bunch of pilots and the support infrastructure they'd need to remain based there."
The strategy isn't without risk: Drone strikes can kill civilians, as underscored by the Sept. 23 incident that claimed Bacha Zarina's life.
After Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the former coalition commander, issued an order limiting airstrikes in populated areas last year, U.S. and NATO forces reduced civilian casualties in air attacks by 42% in 2012, according to United Nations figures.
But after an airstrike this month that reportedly killed 10 civilians in addition to four Taliban leaders, Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned his forces from requesting coalition airstrikes in residential areas, a decree that also would apply to drones.
Defenders of drones say they are more accurate and less prone to causing civilian casualties than manned aircraft, because they can watch a potential target longer and often use smaller munitions.
When civilians are inadvertently killed, it is sometimes because they are close to a location where an airstrike is carried out, one U.S. officer said. But there also are instances when troops on the ground mistakenly call for an airstrike against a target where only civilians are present.
The U.S. military has acknowledged multiple times that it has accidentally killed civilians in drone strikes, including in 2010 when 24 Afghans were killed in Oruzgan province after being mistaken for insurgents, based on drone camera images. They were later determined to be noncombatants.
Last year, five coalition drone strikes killed 16 civilians and injured three, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, which documented just one such incident in 2011. It wasn't immediately clear whether those were strikes from U.S. drones; Britain's Royal Air Force also flies armed Reaper drones in Afghanistan, although the vast majority of the coalition's unmanned aircraft belong to the U.S.
Many of the recent strikes have hit eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents retain control of many villages. In Marawara district of Kunar province, where Bacha Zarina lived, the two Taliban commanders killed in the Sept. 23 strike led a group of hard-line fighters who had banned cigarettes and shaving for men, littered the area with roadside bombs, and threatened to kill Afghans who worked for the U.S. military at an outpost an hour's drive away, villagers said.
Bacha Zarina's older brother Saidaa, who, like many Afghans, has just one name, said in a telephone interview that the U.S. military at first denied that the airstrike had killed a civilian, citing the accuracy of drones. After Afghan officials vouched for the family's story, the Americans paid Bacha Zarina's father about $2,000 in compensation.
"Do mistakes happen? Yes," said the U.S. officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss drone operations. "But they also happen with an F-16, maybe more so."
Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We have always made safeguarding civilians a top priority in all operations. These strict guidelines apply to all of our weapons platforms."
The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure this month from Congress to disclose details and legal underpinnings for drone strikes, especially a 2011 attack that killed Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen and a leader of the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said U.S. drone strikes worldwide had killed 4,700 people, the first public estimate of the death toll by a U.S. official since the attacks began early in the George W. Bush administration.
"Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda," Graham told the Easley Rotary Club in South Carolina, according to news reports.
The increase in Afghan drone strikes also has coincided with a greater U.S. military focus in the region on deterring Iran, which has put more demands on the Navy fighters flying off two U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. In the past, one of the carriers had focused on air operations over Afghanistan.
The U.S. military drone strikes in Afghanistan are separate from the CIA drone campaigns against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen. In Afghanistan, analysts say, drones often are used to back up ground forces or for killing insurgents who are spotted trying to plant roadside bombs.
But another strike last year demonstrated that U.S. forces are also using drones for targeted killings, much as the CIA is in Pakistan and Yemen.
In late July, according to officials in the eastern province of Nuristan, a teacher and another Afghan civilian were traveling in a sport utility vehicle along a rocky road toward the Taliban-held village of Waygal. Three senior Taliban leaders and a junior operative stopped the car and demanded a ride, said Shamsuddin Aselzai, the head of the provincial council, who is from that village.
Minutes later, Aselzai said, a drone strike destroyed the SUV, killing the three Taliban leaders and the teacher, Abdul Qayum, a 48-year-old father of four. The other civilian and the junior Talib were injured but survived.
Since then, Taliban leaders in Waygal have gone almost into hiding, Aselzai said, fearful of the next drone attack.
"They are afraid, otherwise they wouldn't hide even for a second," Aselzai said by phone. He called Qayum's death a tragedy and a mistake, but said the drone strikes were "very useful."
"The Taliban are destroying our country," he said, "and we need to take some serious steps."
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
david.cloud@latimes.com
Bengali reported from Kabul and Cloud from Washington. Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.
One NATO soldier killed in S. Afghan blast
KABUL, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- A soldier with the NATO-led coalition forces was killed Friday in explosion in southern Afghanistan, the coalition forces confirmed.
"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan today," the ISAF said in a statement.
The statement gave neither the nationality of the victim nor the details about the incident under the ISAF policy.
The causalities among the foreign troops have sharply declined over the past couple of months as the Afghan government forces are taking the lead in providing security.
They took full security responsibilities from U.S. and NATO forces in areas where more than 75 percent of the country's 30 million population lives, parts of a process which will run through 2014 when Afghanistan takes over the full leadership of its own security duties.
The Friday's death brings to nine the number of foreign forces killed in Afghanistan since beginning of this year.
Currently about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with nearly 66,000 of them Americans are deployed in the country to halt the Taliban attempt from returning to power.
Taliban vow to keep targeting Afghan officials
Associated Press BY PATRICK QUINN Thursday February 21, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban vowed Thursday to target government employees and other Afghan civilians they consider linked to the U.S.-led coalition despite a warning from the United Nations that such killings may violate international law.
Zabiullah Mujahid rejected an annual report issued by the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan that accused the Taliban of targeting civilians and blamed the insurgency for the overwhelming majority of deaths in its war against President Hamid Karzai's government and the foreign military coalition.
"Regretfully the report published by the head of the UNAMA in Kabul, about the civilian casualties in the country, does not bear impartiality," Mujahid said in the email, written in English.
The report, issued earlier in the week, found that 2,754 civilians were killed in 2012, a 12 percent decrease from 3,131 in the same period a year earlier. It was the first time in six years that the civilian death toll dropped.
It said the Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for 81 percent of the civilian casualties last year. It said so-called anti-government elements killed 2,179 civilians and wounded 3,952 — a 9 percent increase in such casualties from 2011.
Of those, 698 were killed in targeted attacks, often against government employees. That was up from 512 in 2011.
"Now within that proportion, the killing of civilian government employees went up by 700 percent," Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for UNAMA, said in presenting the report on Tuesday.
Chief U.N. envoy Jan Kubis welcomed the decline in casualties but warned militants who target civilians will face justice.
Mujahid retorted that the Taliban do not consider many of these people to be civilians.
"No Afghan can accept that the above mentioned people are civilian. We have pledged in the beginning of our yearly operations that these people are criminals. They are directly involved in the protraction of our country's invasion and legally we do not find any difficulty in their elimination, rather we consider it our obligation," Mujahid said.
He also denied that the Taliban were specifically targeting civilians with homemade bombs.
"The obvious thing is that our enemy is exhausted with our mine tactics and has suffered serious losses and you want to defame our effective resource," Mujahid said.
The U.N. said the number of civilian casualties from roadside bombs was growing even as fewer bystanders were hurt in ground engagements in the troubled south and east of the country.
Although casualties overall dropped, the number of Afghan civilians killed and wounded in the last half of 2012 rose sharply compared with the same period in 2011 as insurgents took advantage of warmer weather to carry out more attacks.
That increase suggests that the country is likely to face continued violence as the Taliban and other militants fight for control following the impending withdrawal of U.S. and coalition combat forces at the end of 2014.
In violence around Afghanistan, a German soldier was wounded and two Afghan policemen were killed in a pre-dawn operation against insurgents in the Khawaj Ghaltan neighborhood of the eastern city of Kunduz. Four insurgents were also killed, said Sarwar Husseini, the spokesman for the provincial police chief.
He said the firefight between Afghan police special forces and the insurgents lasted four hours. The German, who was mentoring the police was slightly wounded, Husseini said, adding that neither he nor any other foreign troops took part in the operation.
Also in the southern city of Kandahar a police officer was killed and two were wounded in a hand grenade attack, said Javeed Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
U.S. and coalition military forces have already taken a back seat in the conflict with Afghan security forces taking the lead for security in more than 90 percent of the country.
The Afghan lead in fighting has already become apparent in the casualty figures.
So far this year only eight members of the coalition have been killed, including three Americans.
U.S. troop deaths declined overall from 404 in 2011 to 295 in 2012. More than 2,000 U.S. troops and nearly 1,100 coalition troops have died here since the U.S. invasion in late 2001. Last year many of those deaths were at the hands of the Afghan forces they were partnered with or training. Deaths from so-called insider attacks — Afghan police and troops killing foreign allies — surged to 61 in 45 attacks last year compared with 2011, when 35 coalition troops were killed in 21 attacks
By comparison, more than 1,200 Afghan soldiers died in 2012 compared to more than 550 in 2011, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
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Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed from Kabul.
NATO Defense Ministers Discussing Ukraine, Afghanistan
February 22, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
NATO defense ministers are meeting for a second day in Brussels to discuss continued financial support for Afghan government forces after the planned 2014 drawdown of NATO-led troops and ways of boosting cooperation with Ukraine.
Ahead of the meeting on February 22, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said ministers from would discuss “how we can best tailor our cooperation” to support Ukraine's program for reforming and modernizing its armed forces.
Rasmussen also said the session would review ways “to reinforce democracy and the rule of law that would benefit the people of Ukraine."
NATO defense ministers are also said to be considering plans to help Afghanistan maintain a security force of around 350,000 troops until at least 2018.
Last year, ministers had agreed to fund a smaller Afghan force of 230,000 troops.
NATO-led combat forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and there are concerns Afghan forces could struggle to maintain security against Taliban militants.
Funding an expanded Afghan force would cost NATO countries billions of dollars more.
Asked about the proposal, Rasmussen suggested the amount would still be less than cost of keeping NATO forces in Afghanistan.
With reporting by AP, and dpa
Freed Taliban fighters return to insurgency, frustrating peace efforts in Afghanistan
Associated Press February 21, 2013
ISLAMABAD - At least half the Afghan Taliban recently freed from Pakistani prisons have rejoined the insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official says, throwing into question the value of such goodwill gestures that the Afghan government requested to restart a flagging peace process.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could talk freely confirmed that “some” newly freed Taliban have returned to the battlefield.
The development underscores the difficulties in reaching a political deal with the Taliban before the end of 2014, when NATO and U.S. troops are scheduled to have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Taliban released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have also gone underground.
Despite some recent signs from the Taliban that they are willing to share power and want to avoid a civil war, the militants may well be playing for time until 2014. That’s also when the Afghans are scheduled to elect a new president to succeed Hamid Karzai, whom the insurgents consider an American puppet.
The Taliban have long refused to speak directly with Karzai or his government. They have said they will negotiate only with the United States, which has held secret talks with them in the Gulf state of Qatar. But at Karzai’s insistence, the U.S. has since sought to have the insurgents speak directly with the Afghan government. Western officials privately say that the talks have so far gone no further.
At the request of the Afghan High Peace Council late last year, Pakistan freed 24 prisoners to coax a reluctant Taliban leadership to talk peace directly with Karzai’s government, according to Ismail Qasemyar, a senior peace council official.
The freed prisoners are all Afghan Taliban, who are battling NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Many of these fighters use neighboring Pakistan as a home base, particularly in winter months.
The release of the prisoners appears to have backfired, however, with the intelligence official saying about half of them have returned to the Taliban. The outcome is further testing an already troubled relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and drawing U.S. complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to keep track of the freed Taliban.
Frustrated by the criticism, Islamabad said it doesn’t have the resources to track the prisoners and that no request was made to follow the freed Taliban or to hand them over to the Afghan government. Afghan authorities have also released Taliban prisoners from their own jails, occasionally over the objections of the U.S. military, and have since lost track of many of them.
When Pakistan has arrested Afghan Taliban fighters in recent years, it has often come in response to pressure from the United States or with American assistance. The Pakistani military is far more interested in carrying out offensives against Pakistani Taliban, who have declared war on the state of Pakistan and are responsible for tens of thousands of Pakistani deaths as well as the deaths of about 4,000 Pakistani soldiers.
But among the Afghan Taliban prisoners that Pakistan recently released at the request of the Afghan government were several it would have preferred to keep in jail, the Pakistani intelligence official said Monday.
Pakistan, for example, wanted to keep Anwar-ul-Haq Mujahed in prison, said Pakistan and Afghan officials. Mujahed was an insurgent commander responsible for most of the more spectacular attacks against U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. But the High Peace Council insisted he be freed.
One peace council member said Mujahed’s release was demanded by Hajji Din Mohammed, former provincial governor and a peace council member. Mohammed’s links to Mujahed date back to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when he served as a senior lieutenant in the U.S.-financed Hezb-e-Islami Khalis group run by Mujahed’s father, Younus Khalis.
Mohammed delayed the Afghan Peace Council’s Nov. 14 departure from Pakistan until Mujahed was released. At the time the U.S. also objected to his release, said a senior American official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could speak freely. On Dec. 1, two weeks after he was freed, a coordinated Taliban assault took place on a U.S. base in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. There was no claim of responsibility from Mujahed.
In a series of interviews in the Afghan capital, members of the High Peace Council as well as Karzai’s government confirmed Pakistan’s reluctance to release some prisoners including Mujahed. They also said the releases were unconditional.
“It was a risk we felt was worth taking,” said Amin Arsala, a senior adviser to Karzai.
Senior Peace Council member Qasemyar said the council made no demands of Pakistan or the freed prisoners prior to their release.
Other Afghan council members and the Pakistani intelligence official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College in Britain, questioned the value of Karzai’s goodwill gestures because his second and final term as president ends in 2014, which coincides with the end of the troop drawdown. That, he said, leaves little incentive for the Taliban to open talks with the Afghan president.
“I was never very optimistic about these Afghan government moves given the categorical statement of every Taliban-linked person with whom I have spoken that the Taliban leadership would never negotiate a settlement with Karzai, but would always try first to do a deal with the U.S.,” he told the AP.
Lieven added that “unless the Taliban high command actually ordered a released Taliban figure to negotiate with Karzai,” which has not happened, then “the first thing I would expect them to do would be to rejoin the insurgency precisely in order to show that they are not traitors and haven’t been turned.”
The Pakistani intelligence official said more Taliban will be freed eventually and that the Afghan authorities will be given prior notice, in keeping with an agreement reached at a meeting earlier this month between Karzai, Pakistan President Asif Zardari and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Qasemyar said the council wanted time to notify the families of prisoners.
“We want to let them know that we worked for the release of their family members so that we can create some goodwill and in the hope that they will convince their relatives to work for peace,” said Qasemyar.
Another contentious issue is the Afghan demand for the release of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s former deputy chief. Karzai and the High Peace Council have made several requests for his release, but the United States has asked Pakistan not to release Baradar, said U.S. and Afghan officials.
“He won’t be released anytime soon,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Washington wants to keep track of Baradar if he is ever released.
A further indication that some of the freed prisoners have returned to the Taliban was the fact that the insurgents issued a statement last month on behalf of the former Taliban Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who was released from a Pakistani jail in December.
“We, the prisoners freed by Pakistan,” the statement said, “have decided amongst ourselves that we will only decide on our future course of action when the rest of the prisoners are freed and after consultation with them.”
More than 100 Afghan Taliban fighters remain in Pakistani custody.
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Kathy Gannon is The AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be followed at www.twitter.com/kathygannon
Herat Court Sentences Child Kidnappers to Death
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 21 February 2013
A preliminary court in Herat sentenced to death Wednesday two men for kidnapping and later killing the eight-year-old son of a Herat businessman.
Police had arrested 12 suspects, two of whom were found guilty of murder. The court also sentenced an accomplice to 20 years. Five others, including two women, received six to 16 years. Two suspects were found not guilty and released.
The defense attorney rejected the sentences and said that under pressure from popular demonstrations, the police and the courts have even imprisoned the relatives of the accused. He urged the police to further investigate the case and announced that his clients would appeal their sentences.
"Unfortunately, the preliminary court has completely ignored the justifications to my clients," said Ahmad Navid Ziaratjahi, the attorney.
The boy's father urged the government to carry out the sentences without delay, fearing that outside influence could change the outcome.
"What the people, especially the people of Herat, want from the president is to practically hang them (the accused) to death as soon as possible. Because there are other powers behind the case trying to reshape it," said Naseer Ahmad Noroozi, Ali Sina's father.
Ali Sina, the eight-year-old boy who was kidnapped with assistance from his father's bodyguard late December last year, was killed by the kidnappers late January even though they received the ransom.
According to Mr. Noroozi, the kidnappers had initially asked for $400,000 for his son's release, an amount which was negotiated down to $90,000. But the kidnappers killed and then buried Ali Sina to cover their tracks and conceal their identities.
The incident sparked mass demonstrations in Herat against increasing kidnapping incidents. Herat's provincial police chief was also transferred elsewhere.
Security Transition Driving Troop Casualties Up: MoD
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Thursday, 21 February 2013
The Ministry of National Defense said Thursday that the increase in Afghan troop casualties across country is because Afghan forces are involved in more security operations.
The counterinsurgency missions were once completely led by international forces, especially US troops, but Afghans are increasingly leading missions - and sustaining casualties.
"The war is becoming more Afghan-led. Eighty-four percent of the missions are executed by Afghan forces, and more than 50,000 international troops have left the country. The theater of war has expanded for Afghans," said General Zahir Azimi, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense.
Reports suggest that US troop casualties have hit a four-year low, with only one casualty in the past month; on the other hand, 1,100 Afghan troops were killed over the past six months, an average of more than 180 a month. About 460 of those killed over the past six months have been national army soldiers, with the rest mainly comprised of police forces.
According to the ministry, more than 80 percent of the Afghan troop casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by the armed opposition, an issue that analysts say could have disastrous outcomes if not addressed.
But Azimi said IED deaths could be reduced.
"Good leadership and facilities and proper equipment from our side to fight the IEDs could lead to a decrease in casualties," he said.
Other factors that have led to the increase in casualties include shortage of local forces in remote villages, lack of intelligence and surveillance capabilities, shortage of artillery and the troops' skill levels.
"If these challenges are not addressed, many parts (of the country) will be taken out of the hands of the security forces. The Taliban will replace them, and this will be dangerous," said General Abdulhadi Khalid, former deputy minister for security at the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Man Murders Wife With Razor
TOLOnews.com By Milad Sakandari Thursday, 21 February 2013
A man has murdered his wife with a razor blade after prolonged domestic quarrels arising from financial difficulties, Kabul Police officials said Thursday.
"This heart-wrenching and tragic incident took place in Zone 7 of Kabul city. The people of the area informed us, and the police reached the area within a short time and arrested the man before he managed to escape," General Mohammad Zahir, chief of Kabul's Criminal Investigation Department, told TOLOnews.
The suspect said his alleged crime was rooted in domestic difficulties and poverty.
"I haven't had a good job. People harassed me, and my wife would send me to get food and groceries when I came home," said the man.
"So, I took her to the second floor and killed her with a razor blade."
A recent UN report said that a large number of cases of violence against women go ignored. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recently reported a twofold increase in cases of violence against women in the country.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and its NATO allies revealed Friday they may keep as many as 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends next year, largely American forces tasked with hunting down remnants of al-Qaida and helping Afghan forces with their own security.
Patience with the 11-year-old war has grown thin in the U.S. and Europe, yet Washington and its allies feel they cannot pick up and leave without risking a repeat of what happened in Afghanistan after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989: Attention turned elsewhere, the Taliban grabbed power and al-Qaida found refuge.
In disclosing that he and his NATO counterparts were discussing a residual force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said most allied defense ministers assured him they are committed to remaining part of a U.S.-led coalition.
"I feel very confident that we are going to get a number of nations to make that contribution for the enduring presence," Panetta told a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels at the conclusion of a defense ministers meeting.
The U.S. and its allies have managed to stick together throughout the war, despite differing views. The Europeans have seen the military mission as mainly aimed at promoting stable governance; the Americans have viewed it as mainly combat. Some allies, including France, have already pulled out their combat troops.
The Obama administration has not said how many troops or diplomats it intends to keep in Afghanistan after 2014; it is in the early stages of negotiating a bilateral security agreement with Kabul that would set the legal parameters. There currently are 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, down from a 2010 peak of 100,000.
In addition to targeting terrorists, the post-2014 missions are expected to be defined as training and advising a still-developing Afghan army and police force and providing security for the U.S. and allied civilian and military presence, officials said.
The largely unspoken assumption on which the post-2014 plan is built is that Afghanistan's own forces will be strong enough to hold off the Taliban on their own starting in 2015 and to prevent the country's relapse into civil war. The worry is that if the Taliban regained power they would allow al-Qaida to return in large numbers, defeating the original purpose of the U.S. military action in 2001.
It's a touchy topic at this stage of a still-unfolding war, with Afghans fearful of being abandoned by their foreign partners and Washington and its NATO allies wary of committing too heavily to a corrupt Kabul government facing an uncertain future.
Budget pressures in the U.S. and Europe also complicate the outlook.
"There's no question in the current budget environment, with deep cuts in European defense spending and the kind of political gridlock that we see in the United States now with regards to our own budget, is putting at risk our ability to effectively act together," Panetta said. "As I prepare to step down as secretary of defense, I do fear that the alliance will soon be, if it is not already, stretched too thin."
Panetta is expected to retire as soon as his successor is confirmed. The Senate could vote on the confirmation of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as the next Pentagon chief as early as Wednesday. Panetta is leaving just as Gen. Joseph Dunford is settling in as the successor to Gen. John Allen as commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.
Another source of anxiety among the allies is Afghanistan's 2014 presidential election; President Hamid Karzai, who has run the country since U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001, is not running and there is no obvious successor.
Just last week President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union address that by this time next year 34,000 U.S. troops will have left, with the rest of the combat force to depart by the end of 2014, along with their counterparts from NATO and other partner countries. Obama did not say how many troops he was willing to commit to a post-2014 mission in Afghanistan, but he is believed to be weighing options that range from about 3,000 to about 9,000.
At the Brussels meeting, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere caused an initial stir by telling reporters that Panetta had said the U.S. would keep 8,000 to 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014. Panetta denied that, saying he was talking about a combined U.S. and NATO force of 8,000 to 12,000, and de Maiziere later said his own comments to reporters were "misleading."
Panetta said officials are planning to leave troops in all sectors of the country as well as in Kabul. Currently, Italy is leading the allied security presence in western Afghanistan, Germany in the north and the U.S. in the east and the south.
The Obama administration also is considering a plan to underwrite the cost of maintaining an Afghan security force of 352,000 for the next five years as part of an effort to maintain security and help convince Afghans that they will not be abandoned.
Last May, NATO agreed that the Afghan force would be reduced to about 230,000 after 2014. A force of that size would cost about $4.1 billion a year, compared to $6.5 billion this year for the bigger force of 352,000. The U.S. pays about $5.7 billion of that $6.5 billion bill.
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Associated Press writers Don Melvin and Julie Pace contributed to this report. Baldor reported from Brussels.
NATO Plan Tries to Avoid Sweeping Cuts in Afghan Troops
New York Times By THOM SHANKER February 21, 2013
BRUSSELS - NATO defense ministers are seriously considering a new proposal to sustain Afghanistan’s security forces at 352,000 troops through 2018, senior alliance officials said Thursday. The expensive effort is viewed as a way to help guarantee the country’s stability — and, just as much, to illustrate continued foreign support after the NATO allies end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year.
The fiscal package that NATO leaders endorsed last spring would have reduced the Afghan National Security Forces to fewer than 240,000 troops after December 2014, when the NATO mission expires. That reduction was based on planning work indicating that the larger current force level was too expensive for Afghanistan and the allies to keep up, and might not be required. Some specialists even argued that the foreign money pouring into Afghanistan to support so large a force was helping fuel rampant official corruption.
Recruiting, training, equipping and operating Afghanistan’s army and national police forces at their present level will cost about $6.5 billion for the current American fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Afghanistan pays $500 million of that total, its international partners add $300 million, and the United States provides the remaining $5.7 billion.
Senior NATO officials said Thursday that the allies were examining a new assistance package to Afghanistan that would last at least five years and keep the security forces at the higher troop level.
The alliance is “strongly considering” the proposal, said one senior NATO official, although many of its provisions are not yet settled, including how the cost would be shared. That official and others who described the closed-door deliberations did so on standard diplomatic rules of anonymity.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined his counterparts at the alliance’s headquarters here on Thursday to open a two-day conference, their first since President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that the United States would draw down its forces in Afghanistan by 34,000 troops within a year.
NATO officials acknowledged that the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan were pointing to the approaching end of the coalition combat mission as proof that the United States and its allies were abandoning Afghanistan, repeating a cycle of intervention and withdrawal. Alliance officials worry that ordinary Afghan citizens and even some Afghan leaders could adopt the same view. So NATO is discussing expanded financial aid and the continued presence of a small contingent of American and allied troops after 2014 as concrete proof of continued foreign support for Afghanistan, officials said.
“The will and the endurance and the commitment of the coalition equals the confidence and hope on the part of the Afghans,” said one NATO official.
“There is a post-2014 mission,” the official added. “There is a train-advise-and-assist mission. And we are going to use that as an insurance policy, to ensure that the success we’ve had over the past 12 years will continue.”
One thing NATO forces are trying to achieve as they hand off security responsibilities to Afghan forces is to diminish the insurgents’ ability to depict foreign forces as invaders and occupiers.
“The Afghans will be in the lead across the nation this spring,” the official said. “At that point, we now will have Afghans fighting Afghans. It’s pretty hard to talk about the coalition as occupiers at that point.”
NATO officials who have been briefed on the current military plans say that even with the new withdrawal timeline set by Mr. Obama, the bulk of American forces now in Afghanistan will stay there through the summer fighting season and then withdraw in late autumn and early winter.
“The commanders on the ground believe they have the flexibility to do this mission and absorb the drawdown,” one NATO official said. “This drawdown can be done without interfering with our campaign objectives.”
Senior NATO officials also said Thursday that Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the commander of United States Air Force units in Europe and Africa, was emerging as Mr. Obama’s likely nominee to be the alliance’s supreme military commander, customarily an American. Gen. John R. Allen, of the Marine Corps, had been in line for the post, but he announced his retirement recently.
General Breedlove is the Air Force’s top officer for the European Command and for the Africa Command, and thus is well known at NATO. He was commissioned into the Air Force in 1977 from the R.O.T.C. program at Georgia Tech. According to his official biography, he has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings.
Local Taliban leader killed in eastern Afghanistan
KABUL, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader has been killed in an operation in Afghanistan's eastern province of Logar, the NATO-led coalition forces confirmed on Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces confirmed today the death of a Taliban leader, Habib, during an operation in Charkh district, Logar province, Wednesday," said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release.
Habib was responsible for weapons facilitation in Charkh district in the province 60 km south of capital Kabul, the release said, adding "He also was instrumental in planning attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. The security force engaged the insurgent with a precision strike and killed him,"
On Thursday, a Taliban Improvised Explosive Device (IED) expert named Zekeria was killed during a joint security raid in Chahar Darah district, Kunduz province 250 km north of Kabul, according to the release.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
Pakistan asks Afghanistan to hand over senior Taliban leader
By Sayed Jawad - 22 Feb 2013, 10:19 am Khaama Press
Pakistan on Thursday asked the Afghan government to hand over senior Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad who was captured by Afghan security forces.
Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Khan speaking during a weekly media briefing said, “We hope that he would be handed over to Pakistan as soon as possible because he has the blood of many innocent Pakistanis on his hands.”
He said said Pakistan hoped that all those elements, which were engaged in anti-Pakistan activities and had taken refuge in Afghanistan, “will be captured, arrested and handed over to Pakistan”.
Former deputy commander of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Bajaur Maulvi Mohammad Faqir was reportedly captured by Afghan security forces in eastern Afghanistan earlier this week.
At least four other suspected militants accompany Maulavi Moahmmad Faqir were also arrested by Afghan security forces while they entered eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.
He is believed to have direct links with the al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and has led the Taliban group insurgency in Bajaur for a ong period of time and is accused of two attacks in June and July 2011 — one on a Pakistani paramilitary post and the other on villages in Bajaur.
According to reports Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul officially conveyed the information about Maulvi Faqir’s arrest to Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar in a telephonic conversation on Wednesday night.
U.S. drone strikes up sharply in Afghanistan
Their use rose 72% last year compared with 2011, and the trend is likely to continue as troops withdraw. But while the aircraft reduce risks to U.S. forces, mistakes are deadly for civilians.
Los Angeles Times By Shashank Bengali and David S. Cloud February 21, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - One morning recently, a teenager named Bacha Zarina was collecting firewood on her family's small farm in eastern Afghanistan. About 30 yards away, as family members recall, two Taliban commanders stood outside a house.
A missile screamed down from the sky, killing the two men instantly. Two chunks of shrapnel flew at Bacha Zarina and lodged in her left side.
Her family raced her to the nearest hospital, a half-hour's drive away, but she died en route, an accidental victim of the rapidly escalating U.S.-led campaign of drone strikes in Afghanistan. She was 14 or 15 years old.
The U.S. military launched 506 strikes from unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan last year, according to Pentagon data, a 72% increase from 2011 and a sign that American commanders may begin to rely more heavily on remote-controlled air power to kill Taliban insurgents as they reduce the number of troops on the ground.
Though drone strikes represented a fraction of all U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan last year, their use is on the rise even as American troops have pulled back from ground and air operations and pushed Afghan soldiers and police into the lead. In 2011, drone strikes accounted for 5% of U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan; in 2012, the figure rose to 12%.
Military spokesmen in Kabul and at the Pentagon declined to explain the increase. But officers familiar with the operation said it was due in part to the growing number of armed Reaper and Predator drones in Afghanistan and better availability of live video feeds beamed directly to troops on the ground.
The increase has coincided with a shift by the Obama administration toward a new strategy in Afghanistan that relies on a smaller military footprint to go after the Taliban and remaining Al Qaeda fighters.
The use of armed drones is likely to accelerate as most of the 66,000 U.S. troops in the country are due to withdraw by the end of 2014. The remotely piloted long-range aircraft, which kill targets with virtually no risk to American lives, carry an unmistakable attraction for military commanders.
"With fewer troops, and even with fewer manned aircraft flying overhead, it's harder to get traditional support in combat missions," said Joshua Foust, a Washington-based analyst who has advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "Drones provide a good way to do that without importing a bunch of pilots and the support infrastructure they'd need to remain based there."
The strategy isn't without risk: Drone strikes can kill civilians, as underscored by the Sept. 23 incident that claimed Bacha Zarina's life.
After Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the former coalition commander, issued an order limiting airstrikes in populated areas last year, U.S. and NATO forces reduced civilian casualties in air attacks by 42% in 2012, according to United Nations figures.
But after an airstrike this month that reportedly killed 10 civilians in addition to four Taliban leaders, Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned his forces from requesting coalition airstrikes in residential areas, a decree that also would apply to drones.
Defenders of drones say they are more accurate and less prone to causing civilian casualties than manned aircraft, because they can watch a potential target longer and often use smaller munitions.
When civilians are inadvertently killed, it is sometimes because they are close to a location where an airstrike is carried out, one U.S. officer said. But there also are instances when troops on the ground mistakenly call for an airstrike against a target where only civilians are present.
The U.S. military has acknowledged multiple times that it has accidentally killed civilians in drone strikes, including in 2010 when 24 Afghans were killed in Oruzgan province after being mistaken for insurgents, based on drone camera images. They were later determined to be noncombatants.
Last year, five coalition drone strikes killed 16 civilians and injured three, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, which documented just one such incident in 2011. It wasn't immediately clear whether those were strikes from U.S. drones; Britain's Royal Air Force also flies armed Reaper drones in Afghanistan, although the vast majority of the coalition's unmanned aircraft belong to the U.S.
Many of the recent strikes have hit eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents retain control of many villages. In Marawara district of Kunar province, where Bacha Zarina lived, the two Taliban commanders killed in the Sept. 23 strike led a group of hard-line fighters who had banned cigarettes and shaving for men, littered the area with roadside bombs, and threatened to kill Afghans who worked for the U.S. military at an outpost an hour's drive away, villagers said.
Bacha Zarina's older brother Saidaa, who, like many Afghans, has just one name, said in a telephone interview that the U.S. military at first denied that the airstrike had killed a civilian, citing the accuracy of drones. After Afghan officials vouched for the family's story, the Americans paid Bacha Zarina's father about $2,000 in compensation.
"Do mistakes happen? Yes," said the U.S. officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss drone operations. "But they also happen with an F-16, maybe more so."
Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We have always made safeguarding civilians a top priority in all operations. These strict guidelines apply to all of our weapons platforms."
The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure this month from Congress to disclose details and legal underpinnings for drone strikes, especially a 2011 attack that killed Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen and a leader of the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said U.S. drone strikes worldwide had killed 4,700 people, the first public estimate of the death toll by a U.S. official since the attacks began early in the George W. Bush administration.
"Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda," Graham told the Easley Rotary Club in South Carolina, according to news reports.
The increase in Afghan drone strikes also has coincided with a greater U.S. military focus in the region on deterring Iran, which has put more demands on the Navy fighters flying off two U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. In the past, one of the carriers had focused on air operations over Afghanistan.
The U.S. military drone strikes in Afghanistan are separate from the CIA drone campaigns against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen. In Afghanistan, analysts say, drones often are used to back up ground forces or for killing insurgents who are spotted trying to plant roadside bombs.
But another strike last year demonstrated that U.S. forces are also using drones for targeted killings, much as the CIA is in Pakistan and Yemen.
In late July, according to officials in the eastern province of Nuristan, a teacher and another Afghan civilian were traveling in a sport utility vehicle along a rocky road toward the Taliban-held village of Waygal. Three senior Taliban leaders and a junior operative stopped the car and demanded a ride, said Shamsuddin Aselzai, the head of the provincial council, who is from that village.
Minutes later, Aselzai said, a drone strike destroyed the SUV, killing the three Taliban leaders and the teacher, Abdul Qayum, a 48-year-old father of four. The other civilian and the junior Talib were injured but survived.
Since then, Taliban leaders in Waygal have gone almost into hiding, Aselzai said, fearful of the next drone attack.
"They are afraid, otherwise they wouldn't hide even for a second," Aselzai said by phone. He called Qayum's death a tragedy and a mistake, but said the drone strikes were "very useful."
"The Taliban are destroying our country," he said, "and we need to take some serious steps."
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
david.cloud@latimes.com
Bengali reported from Kabul and Cloud from Washington. Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.
One NATO soldier killed in S. Afghan blast
KABUL, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- A soldier with the NATO-led coalition forces was killed Friday in explosion in southern Afghanistan, the coalition forces confirmed.
"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died following an improvised explosive device attack in southern Afghanistan today," the ISAF said in a statement.
The statement gave neither the nationality of the victim nor the details about the incident under the ISAF policy.
The causalities among the foreign troops have sharply declined over the past couple of months as the Afghan government forces are taking the lead in providing security.
They took full security responsibilities from U.S. and NATO forces in areas where more than 75 percent of the country's 30 million population lives, parts of a process which will run through 2014 when Afghanistan takes over the full leadership of its own security duties.
The Friday's death brings to nine the number of foreign forces killed in Afghanistan since beginning of this year.
Currently about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with nearly 66,000 of them Americans are deployed in the country to halt the Taliban attempt from returning to power.
Taliban vow to keep targeting Afghan officials
Associated Press BY PATRICK QUINN Thursday February 21, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban vowed Thursday to target government employees and other Afghan civilians they consider linked to the U.S.-led coalition despite a warning from the United Nations that such killings may violate international law.
Zabiullah Mujahid rejected an annual report issued by the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan that accused the Taliban of targeting civilians and blamed the insurgency for the overwhelming majority of deaths in its war against President Hamid Karzai's government and the foreign military coalition.
"Regretfully the report published by the head of the UNAMA in Kabul, about the civilian casualties in the country, does not bear impartiality," Mujahid said in the email, written in English.
The report, issued earlier in the week, found that 2,754 civilians were killed in 2012, a 12 percent decrease from 3,131 in the same period a year earlier. It was the first time in six years that the civilian death toll dropped.
It said the Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for 81 percent of the civilian casualties last year. It said so-called anti-government elements killed 2,179 civilians and wounded 3,952 — a 9 percent increase in such casualties from 2011.
Of those, 698 were killed in targeted attacks, often against government employees. That was up from 512 in 2011.
"Now within that proportion, the killing of civilian government employees went up by 700 percent," Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for UNAMA, said in presenting the report on Tuesday.
Chief U.N. envoy Jan Kubis welcomed the decline in casualties but warned militants who target civilians will face justice.
Mujahid retorted that the Taliban do not consider many of these people to be civilians.
"No Afghan can accept that the above mentioned people are civilian. We have pledged in the beginning of our yearly operations that these people are criminals. They are directly involved in the protraction of our country's invasion and legally we do not find any difficulty in their elimination, rather we consider it our obligation," Mujahid said.
He also denied that the Taliban were specifically targeting civilians with homemade bombs.
"The obvious thing is that our enemy is exhausted with our mine tactics and has suffered serious losses and you want to defame our effective resource," Mujahid said.
The U.N. said the number of civilian casualties from roadside bombs was growing even as fewer bystanders were hurt in ground engagements in the troubled south and east of the country.
Although casualties overall dropped, the number of Afghan civilians killed and wounded in the last half of 2012 rose sharply compared with the same period in 2011 as insurgents took advantage of warmer weather to carry out more attacks.
That increase suggests that the country is likely to face continued violence as the Taliban and other militants fight for control following the impending withdrawal of U.S. and coalition combat forces at the end of 2014.
In violence around Afghanistan, a German soldier was wounded and two Afghan policemen were killed in a pre-dawn operation against insurgents in the Khawaj Ghaltan neighborhood of the eastern city of Kunduz. Four insurgents were also killed, said Sarwar Husseini, the spokesman for the provincial police chief.
He said the firefight between Afghan police special forces and the insurgents lasted four hours. The German, who was mentoring the police was slightly wounded, Husseini said, adding that neither he nor any other foreign troops took part in the operation.
Also in the southern city of Kandahar a police officer was killed and two were wounded in a hand grenade attack, said Javeed Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
U.S. and coalition military forces have already taken a back seat in the conflict with Afghan security forces taking the lead for security in more than 90 percent of the country.
The Afghan lead in fighting has already become apparent in the casualty figures.
So far this year only eight members of the coalition have been killed, including three Americans.
U.S. troop deaths declined overall from 404 in 2011 to 295 in 2012. More than 2,000 U.S. troops and nearly 1,100 coalition troops have died here since the U.S. invasion in late 2001. Last year many of those deaths were at the hands of the Afghan forces they were partnered with or training. Deaths from so-called insider attacks — Afghan police and troops killing foreign allies — surged to 61 in 45 attacks last year compared with 2011, when 35 coalition troops were killed in 21 attacks
By comparison, more than 1,200 Afghan soldiers died in 2012 compared to more than 550 in 2011, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
___
Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed from Kabul.
NATO Defense Ministers Discussing Ukraine, Afghanistan
February 22, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
NATO defense ministers are meeting for a second day in Brussels to discuss continued financial support for Afghan government forces after the planned 2014 drawdown of NATO-led troops and ways of boosting cooperation with Ukraine.
Ahead of the meeting on February 22, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said ministers from would discuss “how we can best tailor our cooperation” to support Ukraine's program for reforming and modernizing its armed forces.
Rasmussen also said the session would review ways “to reinforce democracy and the rule of law that would benefit the people of Ukraine."
NATO defense ministers are also said to be considering plans to help Afghanistan maintain a security force of around 350,000 troops until at least 2018.
Last year, ministers had agreed to fund a smaller Afghan force of 230,000 troops.
NATO-led combat forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and there are concerns Afghan forces could struggle to maintain security against Taliban militants.
Funding an expanded Afghan force would cost NATO countries billions of dollars more.
Asked about the proposal, Rasmussen suggested the amount would still be less than cost of keeping NATO forces in Afghanistan.
With reporting by AP, and dpa
Freed Taliban fighters return to insurgency, frustrating peace efforts in Afghanistan
Associated Press February 21, 2013
ISLAMABAD - At least half the Afghan Taliban recently freed from Pakistani prisons have rejoined the insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official says, throwing into question the value of such goodwill gestures that the Afghan government requested to restart a flagging peace process.
A senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could talk freely confirmed that “some” newly freed Taliban have returned to the battlefield.
The development underscores the difficulties in reaching a political deal with the Taliban before the end of 2014, when NATO and U.S. troops are scheduled to have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Taliban released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay have also gone underground.
Despite some recent signs from the Taliban that they are willing to share power and want to avoid a civil war, the militants may well be playing for time until 2014. That’s also when the Afghans are scheduled to elect a new president to succeed Hamid Karzai, whom the insurgents consider an American puppet.
The Taliban have long refused to speak directly with Karzai or his government. They have said they will negotiate only with the United States, which has held secret talks with them in the Gulf state of Qatar. But at Karzai’s insistence, the U.S. has since sought to have the insurgents speak directly with the Afghan government. Western officials privately say that the talks have so far gone no further.
At the request of the Afghan High Peace Council late last year, Pakistan freed 24 prisoners to coax a reluctant Taliban leadership to talk peace directly with Karzai’s government, according to Ismail Qasemyar, a senior peace council official.
The freed prisoners are all Afghan Taliban, who are battling NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Many of these fighters use neighboring Pakistan as a home base, particularly in winter months.
The release of the prisoners appears to have backfired, however, with the intelligence official saying about half of them have returned to the Taliban. The outcome is further testing an already troubled relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and drawing U.S. complaints that Pakistan has not done enough to keep track of the freed Taliban.
Frustrated by the criticism, Islamabad said it doesn’t have the resources to track the prisoners and that no request was made to follow the freed Taliban or to hand them over to the Afghan government. Afghan authorities have also released Taliban prisoners from their own jails, occasionally over the objections of the U.S. military, and have since lost track of many of them.
When Pakistan has arrested Afghan Taliban fighters in recent years, it has often come in response to pressure from the United States or with American assistance. The Pakistani military is far more interested in carrying out offensives against Pakistani Taliban, who have declared war on the state of Pakistan and are responsible for tens of thousands of Pakistani deaths as well as the deaths of about 4,000 Pakistani soldiers.
But among the Afghan Taliban prisoners that Pakistan recently released at the request of the Afghan government were several it would have preferred to keep in jail, the Pakistani intelligence official said Monday.
Pakistan, for example, wanted to keep Anwar-ul-Haq Mujahed in prison, said Pakistan and Afghan officials. Mujahed was an insurgent commander responsible for most of the more spectacular attacks against U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. But the High Peace Council insisted he be freed.
One peace council member said Mujahed’s release was demanded by Hajji Din Mohammed, former provincial governor and a peace council member. Mohammed’s links to Mujahed date back to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when he served as a senior lieutenant in the U.S.-financed Hezb-e-Islami Khalis group run by Mujahed’s father, Younus Khalis.
Mohammed delayed the Afghan Peace Council’s Nov. 14 departure from Pakistan until Mujahed was released. At the time the U.S. also objected to his release, said a senior American official who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could speak freely. On Dec. 1, two weeks after he was freed, a coordinated Taliban assault took place on a U.S. base in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. There was no claim of responsibility from Mujahed.
In a series of interviews in the Afghan capital, members of the High Peace Council as well as Karzai’s government confirmed Pakistan’s reluctance to release some prisoners including Mujahed. They also said the releases were unconditional.
“It was a risk we felt was worth taking,” said Amin Arsala, a senior adviser to Karzai.
Senior Peace Council member Qasemyar said the council made no demands of Pakistan or the freed prisoners prior to their release.
Other Afghan council members and the Pakistani intelligence official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College in Britain, questioned the value of Karzai’s goodwill gestures because his second and final term as president ends in 2014, which coincides with the end of the troop drawdown. That, he said, leaves little incentive for the Taliban to open talks with the Afghan president.
“I was never very optimistic about these Afghan government moves given the categorical statement of every Taliban-linked person with whom I have spoken that the Taliban leadership would never negotiate a settlement with Karzai, but would always try first to do a deal with the U.S.,” he told the AP.
Lieven added that “unless the Taliban high command actually ordered a released Taliban figure to negotiate with Karzai,” which has not happened, then “the first thing I would expect them to do would be to rejoin the insurgency precisely in order to show that they are not traitors and haven’t been turned.”
The Pakistani intelligence official said more Taliban will be freed eventually and that the Afghan authorities will be given prior notice, in keeping with an agreement reached at a meeting earlier this month between Karzai, Pakistan President Asif Zardari and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Qasemyar said the council wanted time to notify the families of prisoners.
“We want to let them know that we worked for the release of their family members so that we can create some goodwill and in the hope that they will convince their relatives to work for peace,” said Qasemyar.
Another contentious issue is the Afghan demand for the release of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s former deputy chief. Karzai and the High Peace Council have made several requests for his release, but the United States has asked Pakistan not to release Baradar, said U.S. and Afghan officials.
“He won’t be released anytime soon,” the Pakistani intelligence official said. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Washington wants to keep track of Baradar if he is ever released.
A further indication that some of the freed prisoners have returned to the Taliban was the fact that the insurgents issued a statement last month on behalf of the former Taliban Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who was released from a Pakistani jail in December.
“We, the prisoners freed by Pakistan,” the statement said, “have decided amongst ourselves that we will only decide on our future course of action when the rest of the prisoners are freed and after consultation with them.”
More than 100 Afghan Taliban fighters remain in Pakistani custody.
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Kathy Gannon is The AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be followed at www.twitter.com/kathygannon
Herat Court Sentences Child Kidnappers to Death
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 21 February 2013
A preliminary court in Herat sentenced to death Wednesday two men for kidnapping and later killing the eight-year-old son of a Herat businessman.
Police had arrested 12 suspects, two of whom were found guilty of murder. The court also sentenced an accomplice to 20 years. Five others, including two women, received six to 16 years. Two suspects were found not guilty and released.
The defense attorney rejected the sentences and said that under pressure from popular demonstrations, the police and the courts have even imprisoned the relatives of the accused. He urged the police to further investigate the case and announced that his clients would appeal their sentences.
"Unfortunately, the preliminary court has completely ignored the justifications to my clients," said Ahmad Navid Ziaratjahi, the attorney.
The boy's father urged the government to carry out the sentences without delay, fearing that outside influence could change the outcome.
"What the people, especially the people of Herat, want from the president is to practically hang them (the accused) to death as soon as possible. Because there are other powers behind the case trying to reshape it," said Naseer Ahmad Noroozi, Ali Sina's father.
Ali Sina, the eight-year-old boy who was kidnapped with assistance from his father's bodyguard late December last year, was killed by the kidnappers late January even though they received the ransom.
According to Mr. Noroozi, the kidnappers had initially asked for $400,000 for his son's release, an amount which was negotiated down to $90,000. But the kidnappers killed and then buried Ali Sina to cover their tracks and conceal their identities.
The incident sparked mass demonstrations in Herat against increasing kidnapping incidents. Herat's provincial police chief was also transferred elsewhere.
Security Transition Driving Troop Casualties Up: MoD
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Thursday, 21 February 2013
The Ministry of National Defense said Thursday that the increase in Afghan troop casualties across country is because Afghan forces are involved in more security operations.
The counterinsurgency missions were once completely led by international forces, especially US troops, but Afghans are increasingly leading missions - and sustaining casualties.
"The war is becoming more Afghan-led. Eighty-four percent of the missions are executed by Afghan forces, and more than 50,000 international troops have left the country. The theater of war has expanded for Afghans," said General Zahir Azimi, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense.
Reports suggest that US troop casualties have hit a four-year low, with only one casualty in the past month; on the other hand, 1,100 Afghan troops were killed over the past six months, an average of more than 180 a month. About 460 of those killed over the past six months have been national army soldiers, with the rest mainly comprised of police forces.
According to the ministry, more than 80 percent of the Afghan troop casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by the armed opposition, an issue that analysts say could have disastrous outcomes if not addressed.
But Azimi said IED deaths could be reduced.
"Good leadership and facilities and proper equipment from our side to fight the IEDs could lead to a decrease in casualties," he said.
Other factors that have led to the increase in casualties include shortage of local forces in remote villages, lack of intelligence and surveillance capabilities, shortage of artillery and the troops' skill levels.
"If these challenges are not addressed, many parts (of the country) will be taken out of the hands of the security forces. The Taliban will replace them, and this will be dangerous," said General Abdulhadi Khalid, former deputy minister for security at the Ministry of Interior Affairs.
Man Murders Wife With Razor
TOLOnews.com By Milad Sakandari Thursday, 21 February 2013
A man has murdered his wife with a razor blade after prolonged domestic quarrels arising from financial difficulties, Kabul Police officials said Thursday.
"This heart-wrenching and tragic incident took place in Zone 7 of Kabul city. The people of the area informed us, and the police reached the area within a short time and arrested the man before he managed to escape," General Mohammad Zahir, chief of Kabul's Criminal Investigation Department, told TOLOnews.
The suspect said his alleged crime was rooted in domestic difficulties and poverty.
"I haven't had a good job. People harassed me, and my wife would send me to get food and groceries when I came home," said the man.
"So, I took her to the second floor and killed her with a razor blade."
A recent UN report said that a large number of cases of violence against women go ignored. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recently reported a twofold increase in cases of violence against women in the country.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com