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NATO says its troops shot dead two Afghan boys
Sat, Mar 2, 2013.
KABUL (Reuters) - NATO said on Saturday its forces had accidentally shot dead two Afghan boys, in the latest of a series of reports of civilian deaths at the hands of international troops.
The shooting in the southern province of Uruzgan could further strain the relationship between the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has demanded U.S. special forces leave another province over allegations of torture.
The two boys were shot dead when they were mistaken for insurgents during an operation in northwest Uruzgan on February 28, ISAF commander, U.S. General Joseph Dunford, said in a statement.
"I offer my personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed," Dunford said.
"The boys were killed when Coalition forces fired at what they thought were insurgent forces," he said, adding that a team of Afghan and ISAF investigators visited the village on Saturday and met local leaders.
The area, Lowar-e-Dowahom, was often patrolled by international troops, a spokesman for provincial governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada said.
"They saw two young children who were apparently listening to a radio and they shot them - it is not yet clear why," the spokesman said.
Australian forces deployed in Uruzgan said earlier there had been an "operational incident" in the province's northwest but gave no details except that no soldiers were harmed.
On February 13 a NATO air strike requested by Afghan forces killed 10 people - including five children and four women - in the eastern province of Kunar, prompting Karzai to ban his troops from requesting foreign air strikes.
Two weeks later he halted all special forces operations in the central province of Wardak after a series of allegations involving U.S. special forces soldiers and Afghan men said to be working with them.
(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni, Ismail Sameem and Dylan Welch; Editing by Andrew Roche)
5 militants killed in eastern Afghan drone strike
KUNAR, Afghanistan, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Up to five militants were killed Saturday in a drone strike carried out by the NATO-led coalition forces in eastern Afghan province of Kunar, the provincial governor said.
"Unmanned plane with the coalition forces launched an attack against a militants' hideout in Jeriin area of Ghazi Abad district at around 8 a.m. local time Saturday, killing five militants," Governor Seyyd Fazlullah Wahidi told Xinhua.
Meantime, local residents said that two local Taliban leaders named Dust Mohammad and Akhtar Mohammad were among the dead in the province 180 km east of Kabul.
On the other hand, the Taliban militant group fighting the Afghan and some 100,000 NATO-led forces confirmed the deaths.
A Taliban purported spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told local media via cell phone from undisclosed location that two Taliban members were killed and four wounded in the attack.
The Taliban has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001.
7 militants killed in Afghan raids
KABUL, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Seven militants have been killed and 19 others arrested in separate military operations, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
"Over the last 24 hours, the Afghan police supporting by army and coalition forces launched several cleanup operations in surrounding areas of Kandahar, Logar, Farah, Helmand and Paktika provinces, killing seven armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 19 others," the ministry said in a statement.
They also found and seized weapons and ammunition besides defusing two landmines, the statement added.
The statement did not disclose if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
Afghan support staffers for NATO seeking a lifeline
Their work aiding foreign troops has made them and their families the targets of insurgents. But the U.S. has been slow to approve special immigrant visas.
Los Angeles Times By Alexandra Zavis and Hashmat Baktash March 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - The two bullet-riddled bodies were found splayed on the road near a car. Both men — one an interpreter and the other a security guard — had worked at an international base outside Kabul.
They knew their lives were in danger, relatives said. The Taliban had threatened to kill them if they did not come up with money and stop helping NATO-led forces.
But the men were supporting large extended families.
Their recent deaths provided a chilling reminder of the dangers faced by thousands of Afghans who have served as interpreters, cultural advisors and other support staff to foreign troops and diplomats during the 11 years of war in Afghanistan.
Many have waited months, if not years, for special permission to move to the United States or other coalition countries. With the bulk of foreign forces due to depart in 2014, they fear they will be left behind.
"I'm a dead man walking," said Ghafar, an interpreter who has spent six years working with U.S. troops in Kabul, the capital, and in the dangerous eastern provinces. "I feel like I'm not living in this world. My soul is walking around."
Ghafar, 37, has accompanied U.S. forces on countless foot patrols, raids and interrogations. Along the way, suspected insurgents have called him an infidel and warned that they would come after him, threats he used to laugh off.
"I thought, 'The Taliban is over. They are history,'" he said. "'It's better to help the coalition forces to bring peace and stability.'"
Now he fears the job could cost him his life. He has no faith in the country's leaders and worries that security will collapse when foreign troops withdraw.
When he travels to and from work, Ghafar, who did not want his full name published for safety reasons, wears dark sunglasses and wraps a scarf around his face.
Despite holding down a job that has paid well at more than $900 a month, nearly four times what a soldier or policeman might earn, Ghafar long ago applied to immigrate to the United States. He said he and his wife would like to see their boys, ages 2 and two months, grow up in a safe and "more open society."
Ghafar initially applied for one of 50 "special immigrant" visas issued each year to the government's Afghan and Iraqi interpreters, but the program is oversubscribed. So he applied again through the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, which authorized 1,500 special visas a year — up to a limit of 7,500 — for Afghans whose service to the U.S. military or government put them at risk.
In response to this second application, which Ghafar filed in 2010, the U.S. government interviewed him in January. He is waiting to hear back.
U.S. officials acknowledged that the Afghan Allies program has been slow to get off the ground. Sixty-three of the visas were issued in the last fiscal year, according to figures released by the State Department. The numbers do not include spouses or children, whose visas do not count against the annual allotment.
In all, officials said more than 2,200 Afghans, including the relatives of applicants, have been granted special visas since fiscal 2007.
U.S. officials declined to specify how many applications they have received, but said a big push was underway to clear a backlog. More than 1,000 interviews were scheduled with applicants and their families in January. Additional staff has been hired to process the applications, and the numbers of visas issued so far this year already exceeds the total for 2012, said a U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Extra screening measures introduced in response to a "credible threat" caused some delays, a State Department official said.
Two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky in 2011 on federal terrorism charges and pleaded guilty to conspiring to send weapons, cash and explosives to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"We need to protect our borders and make sure qualified people are coming through, but we want to do it as quickly as possible because these people are under threat," the embassy official said.
Afghan interpreters and advisors have helped foreign forces understand the culture and establish relationships with community leaders, officials said.
They have braved roadside bombs, ambushes and other attacks aimed at foreign troops and have also been targeted repeatedly outside their jobs. Last year, insurgents killed at least 24 Afghan civilians working for the coalition, according to NATO figures.
Grieving relatives said the interpreter and security guard slain near Kabul, both in their early 30s, were sharing a ride to work in the guard's car when Taliban gunmen caught up with them. Family members said it is dangerous for them to remain in the district, but they don't have the means to leave.
The interpreter's brother, who is caring for the man's widow and three children, said he too works for the U.S. government. The day after his brother died, he applied for a special visa.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is leaving it up to the 50 coalition members to decide what provision they will make for Afghan employees and contractors when the combat mission ends next year.
Britain, the second largest troop contributor after the United States, does not have a resettlement program. It is "looking very carefully" at ways to support locally hired staff members as it draws down its forces, an embassy spokeswoman said.
Canada, which pulled out its combat troops in 2011, has relocated 750 former Afghan staff and family members. Canadian officials expect the number to grow to 800. Australia and France also have announced resettlement programs for at-risk staff.
On a recent day, an interpreter who adopted the American alias "Jack" while working with U.S. police mentors for four years, logged onto his computer to check the status of his visa application. He has been waiting nearly two years.
Jack thought the glowing reference letters from his supervisors in the southern province of Kandahar, heartland of the Taliban insurgency, would clear his way to America.
One U.S. officer said Jack "sacrifices his safety and well-being to better his country, America and the world." Another said the special visa program was designed for people like Jack, who has "risked much, including his life, to support U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan."
"These letters I received, do they have value or not?" Jack said, staring hopelessly at the papers spread out on his parents' living room floor. "I served the U.S. military, the U.S. people, at a bad time in Kandahar."
Jack said he has felt like a marked man since 2011, when at least 488 inmates, most presumed to be Taliban fighters, escaped from Kandahar's main prison.
One of his jobs was to help U.S. troops collect biometric data from the political prisoners. The prisoners spat at him, and some said, "We will get you."
Last year, the owner of a shop where Jack sometimes bought food told him that two men on motorcycles had threatened to shoot them both if they spotted him there again. He quit his job as an interpreter soon after and fled to Kabul. He rarely leaves his parents' home.
Jack doesn't trust Afghan security forces. In some cases, he said, "their right hand is with the Taliban and their left hand is with the government."
He doesn't even trust members of his own family, some of whom held government posts in Kandahar when the Taliban was in power.
"If the Americans leave this country," he said, "I will be the first target."
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Baktash is a special correspondent.
Afghanistan solution by sidelining Pakistan unacceptable: Fazl
By Meena Haseeb - 02 Mar 2013, 9:43 am Khaama Press
Chief fo the Jamiat-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that any solution to the Afghanistan problem without taking Pakistan on board will not be acceptable to the people.
JUI-F chief quoted by Pakistan’s The News International said he had clearly told the US ambassador that Pakistan was Afghanistan’s immediate neighbor which could not be changed.
The meeting with the US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson was held on Friday a day after the JUI-F hosted All Parties Conference (APC) which emphasized negotiations with the Taliban.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman said, any decision about the future of Afghanistan could not be taken by sidelining Pakistan, because such a decision would not be acceptable to the people of both the countries.
While pointing towards the mess created after the departure of Soviet Union from Afghanistan, he said, the US had also come to Afghanistan for establishing peace, but even after passage of 10 years the situation was uncertain.
“If the US accepts its mistakes and wants to rectify these mistakes, we welcome this development,” the JUI-F chief said.
U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan are at 5-year low
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price March 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - On the eve of the final "fighting season" before the major pullout of American troops from Afghanistan begins, U.S. deaths here have fallen to their lowest levels in five years.
The decline is ever steeper for international forces: The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force suffered its fewest number of troops killed in December, January and February in seven years.
U.S. deaths in those months this winter totaled 17, down from 57 the previous winter.
As of Friday, a Marine who died in Helmand province on Feb. 22 was the only U.S. service member to be killed in 43 days, the longest such stretch since the winter of 2006-07, according to records kept by iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The main reason for drop in deaths among the coalition troops, military leaders say, is that Afghan security forces have reached nearly full strength and increasingly are taking the lead in fighting insurgents. Also, measures taken to stop so-called insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police officers on their foreign allies apparently have been effective.
Such insider attacks reached a deadly crescendo last summer, and there were 47 attacks last year, which caused 62 deaths, according to the ISAF. But there have been just two such deaths in nearly four months: a British soldier who was killed in early January and an American civilian contractor whom an Afghan policewoman shot in December.
"There has certainly been an improvement in the past six months and we feel like those countermeasures have been effective, though it’s of course too early to make a final judgment," said German Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz, the spokesman for the international forces in Afghanistan.
Both the international forces and Afghan commanders took steps to mitigate the attacks, he said. One such step was stronger security, including stationing armed ISAF troops called “guardian angels" whenever foreign and Afghan troops mix.
Katz also said that better cultural training for international troops and Afghan security forces had led to better understanding. For example, ISAF soldiers now are taught not to ask their Afghan counterparts about their wives, which may anger conservative Afghans. The Afghans, meanwhile, are taught to expect such questions.
"The Afghan Ministry of Defense actually printed brochures where things like this are explained, where it says if ISAF soldiers ask you about your wife, they don’t mean to offend," Katz said.
The NATO-led foreign forces and Afghans also increased intelligence-gathering to identify security officers’ links to the Taliban, and the Afghans tightened their enlistment standards to do a better job of catching applicants with links to the insurgents.
The reduction in the number of international forces here also probably had an effect, Katz said.
"Compared to last summer, we have about 30,000 to 35,000 troops less, and just based on the numbers, you would assume the attacks would go down some," he said.
With the winter months ending, however, casualties are expected to rise as fighting intensifies in Afghanistan’s rural areas, as they have every year since the war began late in 2001.
Afghan forces inevitably will get the worst of it this year. The fall in casualties among U.S. and NATO troops, which started three years ago and has accelerated, comes at the expense of the Afghan security forces now doing much of the fighting. About 3,400 Afghan soldiers and national police officers were killed last year, a jump from about 1,950 the previous year, according to a tally in January by the Brookings Institution.
The trend of lower casualties among international forces is likely to continue this year as the NATO troops move increasingly into advisory and training roles.
U.S. troops in Afghanistan currently number about 66,000. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in February that more than 60,000 would remain through the fighting season. By November, though, the number will drop to about 50,000 and nearly half will be gone in a year. The U.S. combat mission is expected to finish up by the end of 2014.
The Afghan security forces are expected to take the lead in combat everywhere in the country by this spring, President Barack Obama said in January.
Nearly 2,200 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 17,000 wounded since fighting began here. More than 1,000 troops from other nations in the coalition have been killed.
The peak of 499 American deaths came in 2010, along with the peak in U.S. troops here, after Obama order a “surge” of about 30,000 troops that brought the total to about 100,000.
Casualties began dropping after that. Last year, the number of U.S. troops killed was 310.
More civilians are killed in the fighting than either ISAF or Afghan security forces. Last year, the toll was more than 2,700, according to a recent United Nations report. That was down slightly from the previous year, but there were more killings in the last half of the year compared with the same period in 2011. More women and girls fell victim last year, too, with a 20 percent jump, to 301 killed and 563 wounded.
Most of the civilian deaths were caused by insurgents, according to the report, which also said such killings by the international forces had dropped by nearly half last year.
Pakistani Ulema says suicide bombing permitted in Afghanistan
Khaama Press By Sayed Jawad 01 Mar 2013
Head of the Pakistan religious scholars (clerics) council says suicide attack in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir is permitted, and they boycotted Kabul-Islamabad religious scholars conference due to Afghanistan’s opposition to allow Taliban representatives in the summit.
Alama Tahir Ashrafi, chief of the Pakistan clerics council quoted by BBC persian said lack of a specific solution for the issue with the Afghan clerics – religious scholars is the other reason they boycotted the religious conference between the two nations.
Religious conference between Kabul and Islamabad was agreed between Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers during a summit around three months back.
The conference was due to be organized in 21 April this year to discuss the issue of suicide bombing and violence against the innocent civilians however it seems that the conference will not be organized after Pakistani religious scholars opposed with the conference.
Pakistani religious scholars chief said they have shared their conditions to attend the Islamic conference in capital Kabul and in response to a question to boycott the conference he said that Afghan religious scholars do not have specific program.
Mr. Ashrafi said Pakistani religious scholars insisted on five points in regards to the conference but their conditions including presence of Taliban representatives in the conference were altered by the Afghan religious scholars and therefore they prevented to attend the conference in Kabul.
In the meantime members of the Afghan clerics council said that such comments by Pakistani religious scholars are an excuse for not parcitipating in the conference in Kabul.
Afghan religious scholars also said that they have invited Taliban representatives to attend the conference. Maulavi Shahid a spokesman for the Afghan religious clerics council told BBC, “The reasons told by Pakistani religious scholars for not attending the regional conference were not satisfactory, since it was not decided to issue a Fatwa against the Taliban in the conference.”
He said Pakistani officials agreed three times to organize the conference in Kabul and with Pakistani religious scholars boycotting the conference means that Pakistan is refusing the bilateral agreements between the two nations.
New Afghan Challenge For U.S.: Shipping Stuff Out
NPR By Sean Carberry March 01, 2013
In addition to training and equipping Afghan soldiers, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have another critical mission: packing up more than 11 years worth of equipment and sending it home. The number of containers to move out is in the six figures, and some question whether everything can be shipped out by the end of 2014.
Forward Operating Base Frontenac sits amid jagged mountains in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province. It's an area that saw a lot of action during the U.S. troop surge, but more and more of the action now is about sending stuff back to the U.S., a mission the military calls retrograde. The 2-3 Field Artillery arrived here in January, and they now spend half their time on missions and half their time on retrograde. They have to clear out 25 percent of their containers, their excess ammo and nonessential equipment by April, when the fighting season begins.
"What we're doing here is we're working on retrograde of over 50 vehicles from our task force," says Capt. Michael Williams, the logistics officer. "These vehicles aren't being used in any of our missions, so we're working on pushing them out of the country. We've already sent quite a few down to KAF."
That's Kandahar Airfield, the main base and staging area in the province. From there, vehicles and containers are shipped out of the country, some by air, but most overland through Pakistan. That's one thing that makes the exit from Afghanistan so difficult.
When the U.S. military left Iraq, it had what it called a "catcher's mitt" — in other words, U.S. bases in Kuwait. They could store equipment there and move it out at a leisurely pace. But Pakistan isn't about to provide storage services, so everything has to ship out as quickly as possible.
All the vehicles here have to go through an inspection process that's overseen by Staff Sgt. Christopher Risiska.
"Me and my guy, Spc. Ramos, go through bumper to bumper on the vehicle, look for anything missing, anything damaged, any leaks," he says. "Pretty much a full workup of the whole entire vehicle, every operating system."
He says they give each vehicle a code on a scale of whether it's in perfect condition or pure junk. Most of the ones he has inspected can be reused with some minor repairs. He says one did have a ruined engine because the troops driving it were fleeing an area and drove into deep water that flooded the engine.
After the inspection, Williams says, they drive or tow the vehicles out.
"Our role is basically just getting it to the Kandahar Airfield so we can get it turned in and off our books," he says.
Williams says they have come across a few surprises and oddities in their two months of cleaning up the base.
"For example, one of these vehicles we have to either tow it or head it to KAF because it has no seat belts, so it's a safety issue to drive it down there," he says, laughing.
He says his unit never used the vehicle, nor did the prior unit. He says he's not sure how long it's been sitting on the base.
And, considering that for years units came and went with no pressure to clear out surplus equipment, it's now falling in the lap of units like his.
"We have, across most of Afghanistan, over 10 years of building these places up, and so many units have accumulated so much," Williams says.
We walk along the base, and he points out that there are hundreds of containers sitting around.
"When you actually go through these containers and look at them, there's junk in them," he says. "There's torn tents, there's one container full of busted bed frames."
We head over to a couple of containers lined up in the staging area.
"There's nothing of value in them for the most part," Williams says. "This one has some old dunnage — it's just empty ammo containers."
He moves to the next one over. "Let's go in this mystery container," he says. It clanks open and there's nothing but reverberation inside — it's empty.
They will fill it up with broken generators, bullet-riddled glass panels from armored vehicles and any other junk shipped from smaller bases that are closing. Then they will send it down the line to Kandahar. And once they meet their quota for this quarter, they will get new orders on what to clear out next.
Getting these containers and vehicles down to Kandahar is no easy task. It's a two- to four-hour drive, and that's assuming nothing breaks down along the way. Plus, IEDs and insurgent attacks are still a threat.
On a chilly morning, a cavalry troop assembles to deliver two vehicles and a truckload of equipment to Kandahar. But the convoy didn't even make it off the base before one of the vehicles to be turned in broke down.
They set off without it. Once they get to Kandahar, it can take several days to complete the paperwork before they can return to their base and prepare the next load.
Pakistani Ulema says suicide bombing permitted in Afghanistan
By Sayed Jawad - 01 Mar 2013, 9:51 pm Khaama Press
Head of the Pakistan religious scholars (clerics) council says suicide attack in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir is permitted, and they boycotted Kabul-Islamabad religious scholars conference due to Afghanistan’s opposition to allow Taliban representatives in the summit.
Alama Tahir Ashrafi, chief of the Pakistan clerics council quoted by BBC persian said lack of a specific solution for the issue with the Afghan clerics – religious scholars is the other reason they boycotted the religious conference between the two nations.
Religious conference between Kabul and Islamabad was agreed between Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers during a summit around three months back.
The conference was due to be organized in 21 April this year to discuss the issue of suicide bombing and violence against the innocent civilians however it seems that the conference will not be organized after Pakistani religious scholars opposed with the conference.
Pakistani religious scholars chief said they have shared their conditions to attend the Islamic conference in capital Kabul and in response to a question to boycott the conference he said that Afghan religious scholars do not have specific program.
Mr. Ashrafi said Pakistani religious scholars insisted on five points in regards to the conference but their conditions including presence of Taliban representatives in the conference were altered by the Afghan religious scholars and therefore they prevented to attend the conference in Kabul.
In the meantime members of the Afghan clerics council said that such comments by Pakistani religious scholars are an excuse for not participating in the conference in Kabul.
Afghan religious scholars also said that they have invited Taliban representatives to attend the conference.
Maulavi Shahid a spokesman for the Afghan religious clerics council told BBC, “The reasons told by Pakistani religious scholars for not attending the regional conference were not satisfactory, since it was not decided to issue a Fatwa against the Taliban in the conference.”
He said Pakistani officials agreed three times to organize the conference in Kabul and with Pakistani religious scholars boycotting the conference means that Pakistan is refusing the bilateral agreements between the two nations.
Five things Hagel should do now
Foreign Policy By Kori Schake Friday, March 1, 2013
The Congress has consented, allowing Chuck Hagel to become secretary of defense, but not without badly bruising him along the way. It must also be said, however, that he bruised himself during the confirmation process. The odds now are slim that he will become a strong and capable secretary. In order to boost the odds of his success, he quickly needs to send signals throughout the organization that he can command respect. Here are some suggestions:
Learn to salute. If the picture accompanying Dov's post is indicative, Hagel's lost the knack since the days when he owed salutes. A crisp salute is a small but totemic thing. It conveys that you understand the culture and the institution. Despite his prior service, there are grave doubts about whether Hagel actually gets it. Because people are watching carefully and taking measure of the new boss, small gestures early on set the tone for a secretary. Les Aspin famously dismissed the ceremonial guard outside his office (which was about respect, not protection), kept people waiting, and his transition team told the military that "there's a new sheriff in town," instead of co-opting Colin Powell's Joint Staff. The first day of Bill Perry's tenure he ran meetings on time that concluded with decisions and applicable guidance that helped people predict the secretary's future judgments, and you could feel the building relax after the erratic and undisciplined tenure of Les Aspin. After Hagel's bungling performance during confirmation, little gestures of competence would send a valuable message to the institution.
Treat it like a business. DOD is a $600 billion a year operation with a highly-valued brand, a platform on which other businesses rely, and a deadly serious purpose. The administration did Hagel no favors installing him as secretary just before its budget is submitted. After alienating so much of the Congress, he will have to defend a budget he didn't put together. Even someone much more substantive than he would have a difficult time quickly mastering that brief and disciplining the building to keep a common front as significant cuts are imposed. If he cannot do so, the damage will be irreparable. The administration has given the impression it cares more about social issues in the military than it does about the core business of winning the country's wars, and that makes it harder to manage the military on other issues. Putting the nuts and bolts of effective management at the center of his early efforts would send a calming signal and buy him the benefit of the doubt for later.
Repair relations with members of Congress. It is an often overlooked fact that Congress really runs American defense policy. The Senate has abrogated its responsibilities to authorize and appropriate money for the past three years, and 41 members of the Senate did not consent to his appointment; those are strong headwinds. He needs to win them over, otherwise he cannot make a success of his tenure. He needs them to give him money, latitude to reprogram, to enact policies, to side with him over the chiefs when they make end-runs to the Hill. All the time-honored tactics should be employed: breakfast every week with the Big Four appropriators and authorizers, travel with him to their districts and to places that give them campaign fodder, phone calls to share news before it breaks, jobs for members of their staffs, naming anything that needs naming after them. As the secretary with the greatest Senate opposition to his appointment in the history of his position, he needs to do it more, better, and faster than other secretaries have.
Get the chiefs out of the budget fight. One of the most interesting things about this round of budget squabbles is that the active involvement of the chiefs does not appear to have changed a single vote in Congress. They are impotent to affect attitudes on a major national security issue. The chiefs loudly telling Congress that the cuts will be destructive has been seen not as our protectors sounding the alarm, but as shameless pandering by an over-fed bureaucracy that is exposing itself for the president's benefit. It goes without saying that this is terrible for the military's standing in society. President Obama is importantly to blame for this. During the election he ridiculed Mitt Romney for wanting to increase defense spending, repeatedly insisting that his opponent "would throw money at the chiefs they don't even want!" That created a sense in the broader public that our defense is well-funded. As a result, the chiefs arguments now that the saying the sky is falling seem politicized. If the chiefs credibility is that low, the secretary should disengage them from the fight. He should instead become the lead advocate, making their arguments and shielding them from direct involvement while they engage privately with legislators.
Get out of Washington. Visiting the war zones, visiting bases, visiting troops engaged in training other militaries is part of the secretary's job -- outreach to his constituents and being close to their concerns. The importance of fights in Washington will seem paramount (as they always do), but Hagel is unlikely to be the difference between a policy being adopted or not. First, because he clearly shares the President's views. Second, because the administration has already made its major policy decisions. And third, because he's hardly the towering presence of a Hillary Clinton on Bob Gates that must be taken into account. That frees him up to get out of Washington and see how the rest of the country and the rest of the world view our choices -- two elements the discussion in Washington too often lacks. Plus, it will remind him of the everyday goodness of the young men and women who choose to put themselves in harm's way for our country. That cannot help but strengthen any secretary.
Local Taliban Leader Killed in Helmand
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 March 2013
A local Taliban leader has been killed in a joint Afghan and Nato troops operation in southern Helmand province, Isaf said Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces killed Taliban leader, Sadiq, and wounded another insurgent during an operation in Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province, Feb. 28," Isaf said in a statement.
According to Isaf, Sadiq was an experienced leader responsible for procuring and distributing small arms and improvised explosive devices (IED) to Taliban fighters. He was also involved with kidnapping government officials and Afghan National Security Force members, it said.
Another insurgent was killed during a joint operation on Thursday in Kishindeh district of northern Balkh province, the statement said.
On Friday, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban facilitator and detained three other insurgents during an operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district of Helmand, Isaf said.
The facilitator is alleged to be heavily involved in IED operations in the district, participating in multiple IED attacks and with a history of procuring and distributing IED parts to other insurgents, Isaf added.
Making Afghanistan Safe for the Energy Drink Market
EURASIANET.org By Yigal Schleifer March 1, 2013
As the United States winds down its military presence in Afghanistan, there are growing concerns in Washington about what a limited American role in the country might mean for security and for the viability of Afghanistan's still shaky governmental institutions.
One American agency, though, sees a bright future in Afghanistan -- for energy drink companies. In a report released this month by the Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, the USDA suggest that boom times may be ahead for foreign energy drink makers interested in entering the Afghan market. From the report:
Historically, Afghanistan has been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. Few Afghans drink coffee, but in recent years, many have developed a taste for energy drinks. Today, Afghans consume energy drinks everywhere and at all hours of the day: during the morning commute to work, in wedding halls, and at private dinners.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere – from street vendors to grocery stores to the finest restaurants. Exact sales figures and just how big the market is remains unknown. However, it is clear that the market for energy drinks is growing rapidly, and that a large number of new brands are competing for customers.
In a fascinating article from last December, RFE/RL offers more on the subject of how Afghanistan went from a "lightly caffeinated" society to a very heavily caffeinated one, reporting that even Taliban fighters are getting into the habit, imbibing energy drinks in order help them on the battlefield. But, as RFE/RL reports, some are calling for a ban on the drinks, both on religious and food safety grounds:
In Afghanistan, there is little government regulation and no national standards for imported drinks, food, or medicines. That has meant the Afghan market has been flooded by outdated, low-quality energy drinks deemed unfit for sale in other countries.
Abdullah, an assistant shopkeeper, says Afghan distributors for foreign beverage companies sell expired products for discounted prices and that some shopkeepers readily buy the inferior products and sell them for a quick profit.
"Some of the drinks are past their expiry dates or have gone bad. They pose a health risk to people and shouldn't be sold. Only those that are legal, with expiry dates, and in good condition should be sold," he says. "The Public Health Ministry must regulate the market and take the necessary steps to stop this."
Despite the risks and controversy, business appears to be booming. Habib Rahman, a shopkeeper in Kabul, says energy drinks are outselling popular soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
"Most Afghans like energy drinks. They think it gives them energy and can get rid of tiredness," Rahman says. "It mostly started with young employed Afghans in urban areas buying the drinks, but now it has spread to all sectors of society."
As the US and NATO ease out of their more than a decade-long experiment in nation building in Afghanistan, the emergence of a hyperactive energy drink sector does bring up an interesting question: is Red Bull the new taste of freedom?
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Sat, Mar 2, 2013.
KABUL (Reuters) - NATO said on Saturday its forces had accidentally shot dead two Afghan boys, in the latest of a series of reports of civilian deaths at the hands of international troops.
The shooting in the southern province of Uruzgan could further strain the relationship between the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has demanded U.S. special forces leave another province over allegations of torture.
The two boys were shot dead when they were mistaken for insurgents during an operation in northwest Uruzgan on February 28, ISAF commander, U.S. General Joseph Dunford, said in a statement.
"I offer my personal apology and condolences to the family of the boys who were killed," Dunford said.
"The boys were killed when Coalition forces fired at what they thought were insurgent forces," he said, adding that a team of Afghan and ISAF investigators visited the village on Saturday and met local leaders.
The area, Lowar-e-Dowahom, was often patrolled by international troops, a spokesman for provincial governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada said.
"They saw two young children who were apparently listening to a radio and they shot them - it is not yet clear why," the spokesman said.
Australian forces deployed in Uruzgan said earlier there had been an "operational incident" in the province's northwest but gave no details except that no soldiers were harmed.
On February 13 a NATO air strike requested by Afghan forces killed 10 people - including five children and four women - in the eastern province of Kunar, prompting Karzai to ban his troops from requesting foreign air strikes.
Two weeks later he halted all special forces operations in the central province of Wardak after a series of allegations involving U.S. special forces soldiers and Afghan men said to be working with them.
(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni, Ismail Sameem and Dylan Welch; Editing by Andrew Roche)
5 militants killed in eastern Afghan drone strike
KUNAR, Afghanistan, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Up to five militants were killed Saturday in a drone strike carried out by the NATO-led coalition forces in eastern Afghan province of Kunar, the provincial governor said.
"Unmanned plane with the coalition forces launched an attack against a militants' hideout in Jeriin area of Ghazi Abad district at around 8 a.m. local time Saturday, killing five militants," Governor Seyyd Fazlullah Wahidi told Xinhua.
Meantime, local residents said that two local Taliban leaders named Dust Mohammad and Akhtar Mohammad were among the dead in the province 180 km east of Kabul.
On the other hand, the Taliban militant group fighting the Afghan and some 100,000 NATO-led forces confirmed the deaths.
A Taliban purported spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told local media via cell phone from undisclosed location that two Taliban members were killed and four wounded in the attack.
The Taliban has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001.
7 militants killed in Afghan raids
KABUL, March 2 (Xinhua) -- Seven militants have been killed and 19 others arrested in separate military operations, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
"Over the last 24 hours, the Afghan police supporting by army and coalition forces launched several cleanup operations in surrounding areas of Kandahar, Logar, Farah, Helmand and Paktika provinces, killing seven armed Taliban insurgents and detaining 19 others," the ministry said in a statement.
They also found and seized weapons and ammunition besides defusing two landmines, the statement added.
The statement did not disclose if there were any casualties on the side of security forces.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
Afghan support staffers for NATO seeking a lifeline
Their work aiding foreign troops has made them and their families the targets of insurgents. But the U.S. has been slow to approve special immigrant visas.
Los Angeles Times By Alexandra Zavis and Hashmat Baktash March 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - The two bullet-riddled bodies were found splayed on the road near a car. Both men — one an interpreter and the other a security guard — had worked at an international base outside Kabul.
They knew their lives were in danger, relatives said. The Taliban had threatened to kill them if they did not come up with money and stop helping NATO-led forces.
But the men were supporting large extended families.
Their recent deaths provided a chilling reminder of the dangers faced by thousands of Afghans who have served as interpreters, cultural advisors and other support staff to foreign troops and diplomats during the 11 years of war in Afghanistan.
Many have waited months, if not years, for special permission to move to the United States or other coalition countries. With the bulk of foreign forces due to depart in 2014, they fear they will be left behind.
"I'm a dead man walking," said Ghafar, an interpreter who has spent six years working with U.S. troops in Kabul, the capital, and in the dangerous eastern provinces. "I feel like I'm not living in this world. My soul is walking around."
Ghafar, 37, has accompanied U.S. forces on countless foot patrols, raids and interrogations. Along the way, suspected insurgents have called him an infidel and warned that they would come after him, threats he used to laugh off.
"I thought, 'The Taliban is over. They are history,'" he said. "'It's better to help the coalition forces to bring peace and stability.'"
Now he fears the job could cost him his life. He has no faith in the country's leaders and worries that security will collapse when foreign troops withdraw.
When he travels to and from work, Ghafar, who did not want his full name published for safety reasons, wears dark sunglasses and wraps a scarf around his face.
Despite holding down a job that has paid well at more than $900 a month, nearly four times what a soldier or policeman might earn, Ghafar long ago applied to immigrate to the United States. He said he and his wife would like to see their boys, ages 2 and two months, grow up in a safe and "more open society."
Ghafar initially applied for one of 50 "special immigrant" visas issued each year to the government's Afghan and Iraqi interpreters, but the program is oversubscribed. So he applied again through the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, which authorized 1,500 special visas a year — up to a limit of 7,500 — for Afghans whose service to the U.S. military or government put them at risk.
In response to this second application, which Ghafar filed in 2010, the U.S. government interviewed him in January. He is waiting to hear back.
U.S. officials acknowledged that the Afghan Allies program has been slow to get off the ground. Sixty-three of the visas were issued in the last fiscal year, according to figures released by the State Department. The numbers do not include spouses or children, whose visas do not count against the annual allotment.
In all, officials said more than 2,200 Afghans, including the relatives of applicants, have been granted special visas since fiscal 2007.
U.S. officials declined to specify how many applications they have received, but said a big push was underway to clear a backlog. More than 1,000 interviews were scheduled with applicants and their families in January. Additional staff has been hired to process the applications, and the numbers of visas issued so far this year already exceeds the total for 2012, said a U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Extra screening measures introduced in response to a "credible threat" caused some delays, a State Department official said.
Two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky in 2011 on federal terrorism charges and pleaded guilty to conspiring to send weapons, cash and explosives to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"We need to protect our borders and make sure qualified people are coming through, but we want to do it as quickly as possible because these people are under threat," the embassy official said.
Afghan interpreters and advisors have helped foreign forces understand the culture and establish relationships with community leaders, officials said.
They have braved roadside bombs, ambushes and other attacks aimed at foreign troops and have also been targeted repeatedly outside their jobs. Last year, insurgents killed at least 24 Afghan civilians working for the coalition, according to NATO figures.
Grieving relatives said the interpreter and security guard slain near Kabul, both in their early 30s, were sharing a ride to work in the guard's car when Taliban gunmen caught up with them. Family members said it is dangerous for them to remain in the district, but they don't have the means to leave.
The interpreter's brother, who is caring for the man's widow and three children, said he too works for the U.S. government. The day after his brother died, he applied for a special visa.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is leaving it up to the 50 coalition members to decide what provision they will make for Afghan employees and contractors when the combat mission ends next year.
Britain, the second largest troop contributor after the United States, does not have a resettlement program. It is "looking very carefully" at ways to support locally hired staff members as it draws down its forces, an embassy spokeswoman said.
Canada, which pulled out its combat troops in 2011, has relocated 750 former Afghan staff and family members. Canadian officials expect the number to grow to 800. Australia and France also have announced resettlement programs for at-risk staff.
On a recent day, an interpreter who adopted the American alias "Jack" while working with U.S. police mentors for four years, logged onto his computer to check the status of his visa application. He has been waiting nearly two years.
Jack thought the glowing reference letters from his supervisors in the southern province of Kandahar, heartland of the Taliban insurgency, would clear his way to America.
One U.S. officer said Jack "sacrifices his safety and well-being to better his country, America and the world." Another said the special visa program was designed for people like Jack, who has "risked much, including his life, to support U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan."
"These letters I received, do they have value or not?" Jack said, staring hopelessly at the papers spread out on his parents' living room floor. "I served the U.S. military, the U.S. people, at a bad time in Kandahar."
Jack said he has felt like a marked man since 2011, when at least 488 inmates, most presumed to be Taliban fighters, escaped from Kandahar's main prison.
One of his jobs was to help U.S. troops collect biometric data from the political prisoners. The prisoners spat at him, and some said, "We will get you."
Last year, the owner of a shop where Jack sometimes bought food told him that two men on motorcycles had threatened to shoot them both if they spotted him there again. He quit his job as an interpreter soon after and fled to Kabul. He rarely leaves his parents' home.
Jack doesn't trust Afghan security forces. In some cases, he said, "their right hand is with the Taliban and their left hand is with the government."
He doesn't even trust members of his own family, some of whom held government posts in Kandahar when the Taliban was in power.
"If the Americans leave this country," he said, "I will be the first target."
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Baktash is a special correspondent.
Afghanistan solution by sidelining Pakistan unacceptable: Fazl
By Meena Haseeb - 02 Mar 2013, 9:43 am Khaama Press
Chief fo the Jamiat-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that any solution to the Afghanistan problem without taking Pakistan on board will not be acceptable to the people.
JUI-F chief quoted by Pakistan’s The News International said he had clearly told the US ambassador that Pakistan was Afghanistan’s immediate neighbor which could not be changed.
The meeting with the US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson was held on Friday a day after the JUI-F hosted All Parties Conference (APC) which emphasized negotiations with the Taliban.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman said, any decision about the future of Afghanistan could not be taken by sidelining Pakistan, because such a decision would not be acceptable to the people of both the countries.
While pointing towards the mess created after the departure of Soviet Union from Afghanistan, he said, the US had also come to Afghanistan for establishing peace, but even after passage of 10 years the situation was uncertain.
“If the US accepts its mistakes and wants to rectify these mistakes, we welcome this development,” the JUI-F chief said.
U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan are at 5-year low
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price March 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - On the eve of the final "fighting season" before the major pullout of American troops from Afghanistan begins, U.S. deaths here have fallen to their lowest levels in five years.
The decline is ever steeper for international forces: The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force suffered its fewest number of troops killed in December, January and February in seven years.
U.S. deaths in those months this winter totaled 17, down from 57 the previous winter.
As of Friday, a Marine who died in Helmand province on Feb. 22 was the only U.S. service member to be killed in 43 days, the longest such stretch since the winter of 2006-07, according to records kept by iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The main reason for drop in deaths among the coalition troops, military leaders say, is that Afghan security forces have reached nearly full strength and increasingly are taking the lead in fighting insurgents. Also, measures taken to stop so-called insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police officers on their foreign allies apparently have been effective.
Such insider attacks reached a deadly crescendo last summer, and there were 47 attacks last year, which caused 62 deaths, according to the ISAF. But there have been just two such deaths in nearly four months: a British soldier who was killed in early January and an American civilian contractor whom an Afghan policewoman shot in December.
"There has certainly been an improvement in the past six months and we feel like those countermeasures have been effective, though it’s of course too early to make a final judgment," said German Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz, the spokesman for the international forces in Afghanistan.
Both the international forces and Afghan commanders took steps to mitigate the attacks, he said. One such step was stronger security, including stationing armed ISAF troops called “guardian angels" whenever foreign and Afghan troops mix.
Katz also said that better cultural training for international troops and Afghan security forces had led to better understanding. For example, ISAF soldiers now are taught not to ask their Afghan counterparts about their wives, which may anger conservative Afghans. The Afghans, meanwhile, are taught to expect such questions.
"The Afghan Ministry of Defense actually printed brochures where things like this are explained, where it says if ISAF soldiers ask you about your wife, they don’t mean to offend," Katz said.
The NATO-led foreign forces and Afghans also increased intelligence-gathering to identify security officers’ links to the Taliban, and the Afghans tightened their enlistment standards to do a better job of catching applicants with links to the insurgents.
The reduction in the number of international forces here also probably had an effect, Katz said.
"Compared to last summer, we have about 30,000 to 35,000 troops less, and just based on the numbers, you would assume the attacks would go down some," he said.
With the winter months ending, however, casualties are expected to rise as fighting intensifies in Afghanistan’s rural areas, as they have every year since the war began late in 2001.
Afghan forces inevitably will get the worst of it this year. The fall in casualties among U.S. and NATO troops, which started three years ago and has accelerated, comes at the expense of the Afghan security forces now doing much of the fighting. About 3,400 Afghan soldiers and national police officers were killed last year, a jump from about 1,950 the previous year, according to a tally in January by the Brookings Institution.
The trend of lower casualties among international forces is likely to continue this year as the NATO troops move increasingly into advisory and training roles.
U.S. troops in Afghanistan currently number about 66,000. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in February that more than 60,000 would remain through the fighting season. By November, though, the number will drop to about 50,000 and nearly half will be gone in a year. The U.S. combat mission is expected to finish up by the end of 2014.
The Afghan security forces are expected to take the lead in combat everywhere in the country by this spring, President Barack Obama said in January.
Nearly 2,200 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 17,000 wounded since fighting began here. More than 1,000 troops from other nations in the coalition have been killed.
The peak of 499 American deaths came in 2010, along with the peak in U.S. troops here, after Obama order a “surge” of about 30,000 troops that brought the total to about 100,000.
Casualties began dropping after that. Last year, the number of U.S. troops killed was 310.
More civilians are killed in the fighting than either ISAF or Afghan security forces. Last year, the toll was more than 2,700, according to a recent United Nations report. That was down slightly from the previous year, but there were more killings in the last half of the year compared with the same period in 2011. More women and girls fell victim last year, too, with a 20 percent jump, to 301 killed and 563 wounded.
Most of the civilian deaths were caused by insurgents, according to the report, which also said such killings by the international forces had dropped by nearly half last year.
Pakistani Ulema says suicide bombing permitted in Afghanistan
Khaama Press By Sayed Jawad 01 Mar 2013
Head of the Pakistan religious scholars (clerics) council says suicide attack in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir is permitted, and they boycotted Kabul-Islamabad religious scholars conference due to Afghanistan’s opposition to allow Taliban representatives in the summit.
Alama Tahir Ashrafi, chief of the Pakistan clerics council quoted by BBC persian said lack of a specific solution for the issue with the Afghan clerics – religious scholars is the other reason they boycotted the religious conference between the two nations.
Religious conference between Kabul and Islamabad was agreed between Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers during a summit around three months back.
The conference was due to be organized in 21 April this year to discuss the issue of suicide bombing and violence against the innocent civilians however it seems that the conference will not be organized after Pakistani religious scholars opposed with the conference.
Pakistani religious scholars chief said they have shared their conditions to attend the Islamic conference in capital Kabul and in response to a question to boycott the conference he said that Afghan religious scholars do not have specific program.
Mr. Ashrafi said Pakistani religious scholars insisted on five points in regards to the conference but their conditions including presence of Taliban representatives in the conference were altered by the Afghan religious scholars and therefore they prevented to attend the conference in Kabul.
In the meantime members of the Afghan clerics council said that such comments by Pakistani religious scholars are an excuse for not parcitipating in the conference in Kabul.
Afghan religious scholars also said that they have invited Taliban representatives to attend the conference. Maulavi Shahid a spokesman for the Afghan religious clerics council told BBC, “The reasons told by Pakistani religious scholars for not attending the regional conference were not satisfactory, since it was not decided to issue a Fatwa against the Taliban in the conference.”
He said Pakistani officials agreed three times to organize the conference in Kabul and with Pakistani religious scholars boycotting the conference means that Pakistan is refusing the bilateral agreements between the two nations.
New Afghan Challenge For U.S.: Shipping Stuff Out
NPR By Sean Carberry March 01, 2013
In addition to training and equipping Afghan soldiers, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have another critical mission: packing up more than 11 years worth of equipment and sending it home. The number of containers to move out is in the six figures, and some question whether everything can be shipped out by the end of 2014.
Forward Operating Base Frontenac sits amid jagged mountains in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province. It's an area that saw a lot of action during the U.S. troop surge, but more and more of the action now is about sending stuff back to the U.S., a mission the military calls retrograde. The 2-3 Field Artillery arrived here in January, and they now spend half their time on missions and half their time on retrograde. They have to clear out 25 percent of their containers, their excess ammo and nonessential equipment by April, when the fighting season begins.
"What we're doing here is we're working on retrograde of over 50 vehicles from our task force," says Capt. Michael Williams, the logistics officer. "These vehicles aren't being used in any of our missions, so we're working on pushing them out of the country. We've already sent quite a few down to KAF."
That's Kandahar Airfield, the main base and staging area in the province. From there, vehicles and containers are shipped out of the country, some by air, but most overland through Pakistan. That's one thing that makes the exit from Afghanistan so difficult.
When the U.S. military left Iraq, it had what it called a "catcher's mitt" — in other words, U.S. bases in Kuwait. They could store equipment there and move it out at a leisurely pace. But Pakistan isn't about to provide storage services, so everything has to ship out as quickly as possible.
All the vehicles here have to go through an inspection process that's overseen by Staff Sgt. Christopher Risiska.
"Me and my guy, Spc. Ramos, go through bumper to bumper on the vehicle, look for anything missing, anything damaged, any leaks," he says. "Pretty much a full workup of the whole entire vehicle, every operating system."
He says they give each vehicle a code on a scale of whether it's in perfect condition or pure junk. Most of the ones he has inspected can be reused with some minor repairs. He says one did have a ruined engine because the troops driving it were fleeing an area and drove into deep water that flooded the engine.
After the inspection, Williams says, they drive or tow the vehicles out.
"Our role is basically just getting it to the Kandahar Airfield so we can get it turned in and off our books," he says.
Williams says they have come across a few surprises and oddities in their two months of cleaning up the base.
"For example, one of these vehicles we have to either tow it or head it to KAF because it has no seat belts, so it's a safety issue to drive it down there," he says, laughing.
He says his unit never used the vehicle, nor did the prior unit. He says he's not sure how long it's been sitting on the base.
And, considering that for years units came and went with no pressure to clear out surplus equipment, it's now falling in the lap of units like his.
"We have, across most of Afghanistan, over 10 years of building these places up, and so many units have accumulated so much," Williams says.
We walk along the base, and he points out that there are hundreds of containers sitting around.
"When you actually go through these containers and look at them, there's junk in them," he says. "There's torn tents, there's one container full of busted bed frames."
We head over to a couple of containers lined up in the staging area.
"There's nothing of value in them for the most part," Williams says. "This one has some old dunnage — it's just empty ammo containers."
He moves to the next one over. "Let's go in this mystery container," he says. It clanks open and there's nothing but reverberation inside — it's empty.
They will fill it up with broken generators, bullet-riddled glass panels from armored vehicles and any other junk shipped from smaller bases that are closing. Then they will send it down the line to Kandahar. And once they meet their quota for this quarter, they will get new orders on what to clear out next.
Getting these containers and vehicles down to Kandahar is no easy task. It's a two- to four-hour drive, and that's assuming nothing breaks down along the way. Plus, IEDs and insurgent attacks are still a threat.
On a chilly morning, a cavalry troop assembles to deliver two vehicles and a truckload of equipment to Kandahar. But the convoy didn't even make it off the base before one of the vehicles to be turned in broke down.
They set off without it. Once they get to Kandahar, it can take several days to complete the paperwork before they can return to their base and prepare the next load.
Pakistani Ulema says suicide bombing permitted in Afghanistan
By Sayed Jawad - 01 Mar 2013, 9:51 pm Khaama Press
Head of the Pakistan religious scholars (clerics) council says suicide attack in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir is permitted, and they boycotted Kabul-Islamabad religious scholars conference due to Afghanistan’s opposition to allow Taliban representatives in the summit.
Alama Tahir Ashrafi, chief of the Pakistan clerics council quoted by BBC persian said lack of a specific solution for the issue with the Afghan clerics – religious scholars is the other reason they boycotted the religious conference between the two nations.
Religious conference between Kabul and Islamabad was agreed between Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers during a summit around three months back.
The conference was due to be organized in 21 April this year to discuss the issue of suicide bombing and violence against the innocent civilians however it seems that the conference will not be organized after Pakistani religious scholars opposed with the conference.
Pakistani religious scholars chief said they have shared their conditions to attend the Islamic conference in capital Kabul and in response to a question to boycott the conference he said that Afghan religious scholars do not have specific program.
Mr. Ashrafi said Pakistani religious scholars insisted on five points in regards to the conference but their conditions including presence of Taliban representatives in the conference were altered by the Afghan religious scholars and therefore they prevented to attend the conference in Kabul.
In the meantime members of the Afghan clerics council said that such comments by Pakistani religious scholars are an excuse for not participating in the conference in Kabul.
Afghan religious scholars also said that they have invited Taliban representatives to attend the conference.
Maulavi Shahid a spokesman for the Afghan religious clerics council told BBC, “The reasons told by Pakistani religious scholars for not attending the regional conference were not satisfactory, since it was not decided to issue a Fatwa against the Taliban in the conference.”
He said Pakistani officials agreed three times to organize the conference in Kabul and with Pakistani religious scholars boycotting the conference means that Pakistan is refusing the bilateral agreements between the two nations.
Five things Hagel should do now
Foreign Policy By Kori Schake Friday, March 1, 2013
The Congress has consented, allowing Chuck Hagel to become secretary of defense, but not without badly bruising him along the way. It must also be said, however, that he bruised himself during the confirmation process. The odds now are slim that he will become a strong and capable secretary. In order to boost the odds of his success, he quickly needs to send signals throughout the organization that he can command respect. Here are some suggestions:
Learn to salute. If the picture accompanying Dov's post is indicative, Hagel's lost the knack since the days when he owed salutes. A crisp salute is a small but totemic thing. It conveys that you understand the culture and the institution. Despite his prior service, there are grave doubts about whether Hagel actually gets it. Because people are watching carefully and taking measure of the new boss, small gestures early on set the tone for a secretary. Les Aspin famously dismissed the ceremonial guard outside his office (which was about respect, not protection), kept people waiting, and his transition team told the military that "there's a new sheriff in town," instead of co-opting Colin Powell's Joint Staff. The first day of Bill Perry's tenure he ran meetings on time that concluded with decisions and applicable guidance that helped people predict the secretary's future judgments, and you could feel the building relax after the erratic and undisciplined tenure of Les Aspin. After Hagel's bungling performance during confirmation, little gestures of competence would send a valuable message to the institution.
Treat it like a business. DOD is a $600 billion a year operation with a highly-valued brand, a platform on which other businesses rely, and a deadly serious purpose. The administration did Hagel no favors installing him as secretary just before its budget is submitted. After alienating so much of the Congress, he will have to defend a budget he didn't put together. Even someone much more substantive than he would have a difficult time quickly mastering that brief and disciplining the building to keep a common front as significant cuts are imposed. If he cannot do so, the damage will be irreparable. The administration has given the impression it cares more about social issues in the military than it does about the core business of winning the country's wars, and that makes it harder to manage the military on other issues. Putting the nuts and bolts of effective management at the center of his early efforts would send a calming signal and buy him the benefit of the doubt for later.
Repair relations with members of Congress. It is an often overlooked fact that Congress really runs American defense policy. The Senate has abrogated its responsibilities to authorize and appropriate money for the past three years, and 41 members of the Senate did not consent to his appointment; those are strong headwinds. He needs to win them over, otherwise he cannot make a success of his tenure. He needs them to give him money, latitude to reprogram, to enact policies, to side with him over the chiefs when they make end-runs to the Hill. All the time-honored tactics should be employed: breakfast every week with the Big Four appropriators and authorizers, travel with him to their districts and to places that give them campaign fodder, phone calls to share news before it breaks, jobs for members of their staffs, naming anything that needs naming after them. As the secretary with the greatest Senate opposition to his appointment in the history of his position, he needs to do it more, better, and faster than other secretaries have.
Get the chiefs out of the budget fight. One of the most interesting things about this round of budget squabbles is that the active involvement of the chiefs does not appear to have changed a single vote in Congress. They are impotent to affect attitudes on a major national security issue. The chiefs loudly telling Congress that the cuts will be destructive has been seen not as our protectors sounding the alarm, but as shameless pandering by an over-fed bureaucracy that is exposing itself for the president's benefit. It goes without saying that this is terrible for the military's standing in society. President Obama is importantly to blame for this. During the election he ridiculed Mitt Romney for wanting to increase defense spending, repeatedly insisting that his opponent "would throw money at the chiefs they don't even want!" That created a sense in the broader public that our defense is well-funded. As a result, the chiefs arguments now that the saying the sky is falling seem politicized. If the chiefs credibility is that low, the secretary should disengage them from the fight. He should instead become the lead advocate, making their arguments and shielding them from direct involvement while they engage privately with legislators.
Get out of Washington. Visiting the war zones, visiting bases, visiting troops engaged in training other militaries is part of the secretary's job -- outreach to his constituents and being close to their concerns. The importance of fights in Washington will seem paramount (as they always do), but Hagel is unlikely to be the difference between a policy being adopted or not. First, because he clearly shares the President's views. Second, because the administration has already made its major policy decisions. And third, because he's hardly the towering presence of a Hillary Clinton on Bob Gates that must be taken into account. That frees him up to get out of Washington and see how the rest of the country and the rest of the world view our choices -- two elements the discussion in Washington too often lacks. Plus, it will remind him of the everyday goodness of the young men and women who choose to put themselves in harm's way for our country. That cannot help but strengthen any secretary.
Local Taliban Leader Killed in Helmand
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 March 2013
A local Taliban leader has been killed in a joint Afghan and Nato troops operation in southern Helmand province, Isaf said Friday.
"Afghan and coalition forces killed Taliban leader, Sadiq, and wounded another insurgent during an operation in Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand province, Feb. 28," Isaf said in a statement.
According to Isaf, Sadiq was an experienced leader responsible for procuring and distributing small arms and improvised explosive devices (IED) to Taliban fighters. He was also involved with kidnapping government officials and Afghan National Security Force members, it said.
Another insurgent was killed during a joint operation on Thursday in Kishindeh district of northern Balkh province, the statement said.
On Friday, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban facilitator and detained three other insurgents during an operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district of Helmand, Isaf said.
The facilitator is alleged to be heavily involved in IED operations in the district, participating in multiple IED attacks and with a history of procuring and distributing IED parts to other insurgents, Isaf added.
Making Afghanistan Safe for the Energy Drink Market
EURASIANET.org By Yigal Schleifer March 1, 2013
As the United States winds down its military presence in Afghanistan, there are growing concerns in Washington about what a limited American role in the country might mean for security and for the viability of Afghanistan's still shaky governmental institutions.
One American agency, though, sees a bright future in Afghanistan -- for energy drink companies. In a report released this month by the Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, the USDA suggest that boom times may be ahead for foreign energy drink makers interested in entering the Afghan market. From the report:
Historically, Afghanistan has been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. Few Afghans drink coffee, but in recent years, many have developed a taste for energy drinks. Today, Afghans consume energy drinks everywhere and at all hours of the day: during the morning commute to work, in wedding halls, and at private dinners.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere – from street vendors to grocery stores to the finest restaurants. Exact sales figures and just how big the market is remains unknown. However, it is clear that the market for energy drinks is growing rapidly, and that a large number of new brands are competing for customers.
In a fascinating article from last December, RFE/RL offers more on the subject of how Afghanistan went from a "lightly caffeinated" society to a very heavily caffeinated one, reporting that even Taliban fighters are getting into the habit, imbibing energy drinks in order help them on the battlefield. But, as RFE/RL reports, some are calling for a ban on the drinks, both on religious and food safety grounds:
In Afghanistan, there is little government regulation and no national standards for imported drinks, food, or medicines. That has meant the Afghan market has been flooded by outdated, low-quality energy drinks deemed unfit for sale in other countries.
Abdullah, an assistant shopkeeper, says Afghan distributors for foreign beverage companies sell expired products for discounted prices and that some shopkeepers readily buy the inferior products and sell them for a quick profit.
"Some of the drinks are past their expiry dates or have gone bad. They pose a health risk to people and shouldn't be sold. Only those that are legal, with expiry dates, and in good condition should be sold," he says. "The Public Health Ministry must regulate the market and take the necessary steps to stop this."
Despite the risks and controversy, business appears to be booming. Habib Rahman, a shopkeeper in Kabul, says energy drinks are outselling popular soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
"Most Afghans like energy drinks. They think it gives them energy and can get rid of tiredness," Rahman says. "It mostly started with young employed Afghans in urban areas buying the drinks, but now it has spread to all sectors of society."
As the US and NATO ease out of their more than a decade-long experiment in nation building in Afghanistan, the emergence of a hyperactive energy drink sector does bring up an interesting question: is Red Bull the new taste of freedom?
www.afghanistannewscenter.com