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Afghan court jails 20 men in landmark bank fraud case
By Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan court gave jail terms on Tuesday to 20 of 22 men convicted in a multi-million dollar bank fraud case seen as a test of Afghanistan's commitment to fighting corruption.
The collapse of Kabulbank in 2010 triggered a financial crisis, civil disorder and a run on deposits, worrying foreign donors and embarrassing the U.S. and Afghan governments, which had touted its credentials as a modern lender integral to developing a tiny economy crippled by war and mismanagement.
The two former heads of the bank, founder Sher Khan Fernod and former Chief Executive Haji Khalil Ferozi, convicted of taking $810 million of the $935 million stolen, were both sent to jail for five years.
The case was viewed as a crucial barometer of Afghanistan's commitment to stabilizing the economy, less than two years before the withdrawal of most foreign troops and a winding down of billions of dollars in foreign aid. It appears to be the first major bank fraud trial in Afghan history.
Brothers of President Hamid Karzai and his first vice-president, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who were both shareholders, were spared jail sentences in the rulings thanks to a presidential decree a year ago that granted immunity from prosecution to those who returned funds.
"Ferozi and Fernod have been sentenced for five years each in jail for the theft of Kabulbank assets valued at $531 million and $279 million respectively," said Judge Shamsul Rahman Shams, head of a special court set up for the Kabulbank investigation.
Those sentences were condemned as "relatively light" by the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee "given the extent of the fraud and sentences handed down to others who appear to have had little or no involvement in the fraud", a statement said.
The remaining 18 men, four of whom are Indian nationals, received prison terms of four or five years.
A Western official in Kabul heralded the trial as a step in the right direction for the fledgling judicial system in Afghanistan, one of the world's most corrupt countries.
"There's no precedent for anything like this. They did it, and that's pretty good," he said on condition of anonymity.
All those convicted now face two more appeal trials if they decide to go through that process, which entails additional charges that could increase or decrease their jail sentences.
According to the Afghan judicial system, if convicted of the charges against them, which include money laundering and embezzlement, they could face more than 20 years behind bars.
The government was forced to bail out the country's then biggest bank after it collapsed. It was later relaunched as the state-run New Kabul Bank.
In addition to jail time, Ferozi and Fernod are required by law to return the money to the government, said Shams, who has said that no one, regardless of political or business connections, would be spared in the investigation.
Returning the money could pose difficulties, said the Western official. "Now how they go ahead and make that happen is another priority. It's almost like a moral obligation. If you took the money, you've got to give it back. How do you enforce that? I'm not sure," he told reporters.
Last year, Karzai's brother, Mahmoud, said he had paid back $22 million and the vice-president's brother, Haji Hasseen, said he returned $18 million. Both had denied wrongdoing.
Contrary to popular assumption that most of the money ended up in Dubai, as little as 10 percent was smuggled overseas and channelled into luxury villas.
The rest was invested in Afghanistan, including in an oil storage facility, a television station, a gas firm and property developments, some of which the government had agreed to buy.
(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Louise Ireland)
NATO chief backs larger Afghan force through 2018
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's president got reassurance Tuesday that NATO intends to backstop his troubled nation's security long beyond 2014, after NATO's chief endorsed keeping Afghanistan's security forces at the current strength for years to come.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told The Associated Press that keeping the Afghan force larger for longer is more cost effective, and it would be more acceptable to Afghans than foreign soldiers.
He spoke after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday.
"From the political point of view, it is better to give the defense ... an Afghan face, and from an economic point of view, it's less expensive to finance Afghan security forces than to send foreign troops," he said Tuesday as he toured a NATO base in Helmand province.
Fogh Rasmussen was commenting on a proposal favored by the Afghan government — and debated by NATO ministers in Brussels last month — to keep 352,000 Afghans in uniform through 2018. NATO is due to turn over security duties to local forces next year and pull out most of its troops. Fogh Rasmussen said most troops in Helmand have already traded combat patrols for advising the Afghans as they do the fighting.
The Afghan army has grown to 184,676 soldiers and the country's police force numbers 146,339 officers, just short of the planned 352,000 total, according to figures shared by NATO this week.
NATO had planned to shrink that combined force to 230,000 next year, but U.S. military and Afghan officials have both suggested keeping the Afghan security forces at their higher "surge" numbers to deal with an expected Taliban onslaught as foreign forces leave.
The "surge" refers to a temporary U.S.-led increase in troops in 2010, aimed at dealing a decisive blow to insurgents, and also to a parallel increase in numbers of Afghan security forces trained and armed by NATO.
The concern for Afghans is that after the NATO drawdown, their green troops could be overrun, and the country plunged back into civil war. Americans worry that the Taliban would use the chaos to regain power, defeating the original purpose of the U.S. military action in 2001.
Cash-strapped NATO members, including the U.S., must figure out who would cover the increased expense for maintaining the Afghan forces at the higher level — from $4.1 billion annually for the 230,000 troops NATO had planned on, to an estimated $4.8 billion to maintain the surge-level forces.
Fogh Rasmussen says he expects NATO members to make a decision "in a matter of months," likely by summer, as part of their calculations on how many NATO troops to deploy after 2014. U.S. and NATO officials are discussing leaving a residual force of between 8,000 to 12,000 foreign troops to advise and train Afghans after NATO combat operations end.
The White House backs the plan for the Afghan forces, but it must first get through the domestic financial fallout of the automatic spending cuts that kicked in on March 1, dictating mandatory across-the-board reductions in the U.S. federal budget, including defense and foreign aid.
The NATO chief said he and Karzai also discussed signing a long-term security agreement between Afghanistan and NATO, after the U.S. and Afghanistan complete their bilateral security negotiations, possibly by November.
"Once that is concluded, it could serve as a template for a NATO training mission," he said. Fogh Rasmussen added he thought it would be possible to have one agreement covering all nations taking part in the training mission, rather than each nation negotiating with Afghanistan separately. The agreements map out the legal status of foreign forces on Afghan soil.
The NATO chief would not be drawn on Karzai's recent demand that U.S. special operations troops leave Wardak province, following his claims that Afghans linked to U.S. commandos had carried out extrajudicial killings, renditions and torture there. U.S. officials privately denied the charges, while asking Afghan officials to share any evidence they had of such incidents. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the Afghan investigation into the allegations is still ongoing.
Fogh Rasmussen would say only that he expected NATO special operations troops to be a key part of the future mission, especially after his visit with European special forces trainers and their Afghan counterparts at the base in Lashkar Gah.
"No doubt that Afghan special operations forces will be the bedrock of Afghan security in the future, so obviously they will also need our continued training, advice and assistance," he said.
4 insurgents killed, 8 detained in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Up to four insurgents have been killed and eight others detained in different operations carried out by Afghan forces and the NATO-led coalition troops, in the latest raids against insurgency in the war-hit country, the coalition forces said on Tuesday.
"An Afghan and coalition force killed four insurgents and wounded three others during a security operation in Ghaziabad district, Kunar province, yesterday," the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a press release.
Earlier Tuesday, a Taliban facilitator along with two other insurgents were captured in Kandahar city, the capital of southern Kandahar province 450 km south of Kabul, the release said.
"The insurgent is believed responsible for directing multiple suicide attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Kandahar province. He has also been involved in the death of Afghan civilians," the release added.
In addition, the joint forces arrested a Taliban facilitator and detained four other insurgents during an operation in Kandahar 's Panjwai district on Monday, it said.
The Taliban, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan and ISAF troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by bombings.
On Monday, four Afghan border policemen and a civilian were injured when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off in Khost city, capital of eastern Khost province 150 km southeast of Kabul.
German defense minister arrives in Afghanistan on surprise visit
By Sadaf Shinwari - 05 Mar 2013, 3:58 pm Khaama Press
German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere following an unannounced visit on Tuesday arrived to Afghanistan to visit German troops.
During his visit to Afghanistan defense minister Thomas de Maiziere headed to the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command North base at Mazar-i-Sharif, since February commanded by German Brigadier General Jörg Vollmer.
De Maiziere has visited Afghanistan for ten times during the past two years since he has been appointed as German defense minister.
His visit to Afghanistan comes amid his weekend remarks to prepare a plan for the German withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the country has 4,350 soldiers.
This comes as the lower house of parliament of Germany Bundestag recently voted to lower the mandate limit from 5,350 soldiers to 3,300 beginning in February of 2014 and change its role to training and consulting Afghan national security forces.
Former soldier sentenced for smuggling $1M in cash
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — Authorities say a former soldier helped smuggle $1 million from Afghanistan, then spent her share on items such as personal surgeries and a tractor-trailer.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker says 30-year-old Tonya Long of Fayetteville was sentenced Monday in federal court in Elizabeth City to five years behind bars and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.
Long was convicted of bulk cash smuggling and aiding and abetting the same crime in what authorities called a double-billing kickback scheme.
Court records show the Fort Bragg-based soldier was in Afghanistan from January 2008 to April 2009. She inspected troops' personal property before it loaded into containers for shipment to the United States.
Authorities say Long concealed the money in videocassette recorders. They say she worked with an unnamed co-conspirator.
Afghan president lashes out at Pakistan
Associated Press By HEIDI VOGT and KIMBERLY DOZIER 04/03/2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out once again at his supposed ally, Pakistan, saying Monday that a statement by a Pakistani cleric endorsing suicide bombings in Afghanistan shows the neighboring country is not sincere in efforts to fight terrorism.
"Afghanistan wants a real struggle against terrorism and wants the Pakistani government to realize that both our nations are burning in the same fire," the Afghan leader said, speaking at a press conference with visiting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"The Pakistani government has an essential and important role in putting out this fire," Karzai added.
Karzai made the comment in response to a question about a statement last week by the head of the Pakistani clerics' council who had been scheduled to travel to Afghanistan for a meeting of the two countries' religious leaders.
The cleric, Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, said in a television interview that suicide attacks in Afghanistan are lawful because NATO troops are invaders that have occupied the country.
Karzai noted that Ashrafi was appointed to the delegation by the Pakistani government, implying that the government in Islamabad was backing his views.
"We see that practical steps are not being taken to fight terrorism," Karzai said, and added that a series of recent attacks in Pakistan show that the neighboring country is falling into chaos.
Ashrafi told The Associated Press that his comments had been taken out of context and that he considered suicide bombings un-Islamic.
He said that he was asked in an interview about his views on suicide bombings in Afghanistan and said that it was natural that people would fight back when their homes were occupied but that didn't necessarily mean suicide bombings.
Ashrafi said Karzai's statement on Monday had shut the door to the Pakistani clerics taking part in the planned conference of religious leaders.
"It will not happen until Karzai and the Afghan government apologize," Ashrafi said over the telephone from Cairo.
A spokesman for the Pakistan's foreign affairs ministry noted Ashrafi's denial in a statement, and said that comments by private individuals should not be seen as reflecting the views of the Pakistan government.
"Pakistan and the Ulema of this country have repeatedly condemned suicide attacks and consider them repugnant to the teachings of our glorious religion," the foreign ministry statement said.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been tense friends. Afghanistan has been deeply suspicious of the motives of a government that long backed the Taliban regime and has since seemed unable or unwilling to go after militant leaders taking refuge inside its borders. The killing of al-Qaida chief, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan only strengthened Afghan wariness of the neighboring country
"The situation is getting out of control for everyone now. This is not to the benefit of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the region," Karzai said.
Fogh Rasmussen also condemned the cleric's statement and called on Pakistan to do more to rein in the extremist militants along its borders.
"Nothing can justify terrorist attacks," Fogh Rasmussen said. "We have repeatedly urged the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military to step up the fight against terrorism and extremism in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We need a positive engagement of Pakistan if we are to ensure long-term peace."
Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Karzai Calls on Pakistan to Reconsider Suicide Attacks
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Monday, 04 March 2013
President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to realise it faces the same foe as Afghanistan, saying Monday that it is essential in the fight against terrorism and urged it to oppose suicide attacks.
In a joint press conference with Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Karzai said that the comments of Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council, permitting suicide attacks in Afghanistan as a weapon against the "occupation" of the Nato-led foreign armies showed Pakistan was insincere in its efforts to wipe out terrorism.
Ashrafi was appointed by the Pakistan government to lead a delegation to meet with Afghan clerics to discuss the legitimacy of suicide bombing under Islam and other religious matters.
"Afghanistan wishes to really fight terrorism. Afghanistan is benevolent towards the Pakistan people. We wish that the Pakistan government should join with us in realising that both nations burn in the same flame and Pakistan's role is important to stifle that flame," Karzai said in Kabul.
"We are so sad about the recent speech by the Pakistani side over legitimising suicide attacks. Though we have reached some realisations [of Paksitan's viewpoint], we hope that the situation changes and they return to rationality," he added.
Karzai also commented that anyone who supports or encourages terrorism should face international sanctions – "blacklisted", repeating a statement made by Afghanistan's from the National Security Council deputy on Sunday.
"All Muslims especially the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are victims of terrorism. Those who support and encourage the terrorists to kill the children of the people should be blacklisted. This is a disrespect to humanity to call the attacks that kill children and women legitimate," he said.
Ashrafi has faced a massive backlash since his Friday comments to TOLOnews which were responding to questions of whether he supports suicide bombing or views it as legitimate.
He has since backed away from the comments saying he was quoted out of context. However, Ashrafi clearly states in the Friday interview that if Muslims do not have the atomic bomb, they can sacrifice their lives for Allah instead as long as there are foreign forces occupying Afghanistan.
Nato Secretary General Rasmussen on Monday joined the chorus condemning Ashrafi's statement.
"I strongly condemn the statements that suicide attacks are legitimate. Nothing can justify terrorists attacks," he said at the joint press conference. "We have repeatedly urged the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military to step up the fight against terrorism and extremism in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We need a positive engagement of Pakistan if we are to ensure long-term peace and stability, not only in Afghanistan but in the region."
"I think the time has come for the Pakistani leadership, military as well as the political leadership, to realise that it is in their self interest to ensure a peaceful development in Afghanistan," he added.
NATO expects decision on post-2014 Afghan force by mid-year
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman March 4, 2013
KABUL - NATO expects a decision by the middle of this year on the size of a training force to be kept in Afghanistan once most foreign troops leave in 2014, alliance Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday.
The Pentagon has said a NATO-led training force of between 8,000 and 12,000 was under consideration.
Questions remain over how well Afghan security forces being built up by NATO will be able to tackle Islamist Taliban insurgents in the face of intensifying violence and how Western states can justify financial support for a force that has been saddled with accusations of torture by the United Nations.
"It takes some time to stand up a new training mission, of course, and we will need the clarification within the next few months," Rasmussen told Reuters after talks with President Hamid Karzai in the Afghan capital Kabul.
"I would expect it (the size of the force) to be finalized very soon because we also need to start planning," he said.
Many Afghans eagerly await a firm decision on the number of foreign troops who will stay in their country once NATO's military operation officially ends at the end of next year.
"President Karzai assured me today that Afghanistan wants a NATO-led training mission to stay, to train, to give advice, to assist the Afghan security forces after 2014," Rasmussen said of the training mission, which is called "Resolute Support".
An earlier suggestion of a "zero option" by White House officials - a complete U.S. withdrawal after 2014 - spooked some Afghan lawmakers, who warned this could lead to full civil war.
But troop numbers are also politically sensitive in many NATO countries where voters have tired of the increasingly unpopular and costly 12-year war against Taliban insurgents.
U.S. President Barack Obama said last month that 34,000 troops, about half of the U.S. force now in Afghanistan, would withdraw by early 2014. At its peak, there were around 130,000 foreign troops in the country, most of them American.
The United States and its NATO allies are helping increase the size of the Afghan security forces to a targeted 352,000, a number they are fast approaching. Rasmussen said they now provide security for about 87 percent of the population.
NATO and its allies, which fund Afghan security forces, had planned to trim their number to 230,000 after 2015, but Rasmussen said the Western alliance is now considering "keeping the high level a bit longer than expected".
When Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade-long war, financial aid dried up and the Afghan government collapsed, leading to fighting between warlords and a civil war paving the way to the 1996 rise to power of the radical Taliban.
Western military intervention toppled the Taliban in 2001 following al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States.
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Mark Heinrich)
U.S. consolidates Afghan bases with eye toward pulling out
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price March 4, 2013
FORWARD OPERATING BASE APACHE, Afghanistan - At FOB Apache, U.S. military engineers are frantically finishing a second chow hall and a new recreational building four times bigger than the old one. The gym will be expanded soon to more than double its current size, and dozens of new tents and rows of gleaming white containerized housing units are sprouting to prepare for an influx of troops who’ll raise the base’s population from several hundred to a few thousand.
Here, amid the shriek of electric saws and sharp scent of fresh plywood, the U.S. and NATO drawdown looks more like a frenzied buildup.
It’s deceptive. The building boom at FOB Apache is a quirk of the planned pullout of more than half the U.S. and NATO forces this year. It’s one of the largest of a handful of construction projects under way across Afghanistan, aimed at fine-tuning where troops and their equipment are based in preparation for their final departure next year.
FOB Apache is taking in troops from about half a dozen smaller, front-line bases elsewhere in Zabul province – which is in the restive southwest corner of the country – so that those bases can be torn down or handed over to the Afghan government. It’s adjacent to a major Afghan army base, Camp Eagle, which makes it easier for U.S. troops at Apache to perform their new main roles as advisers and trainers to the Afghans.
"As the Afghans take the lead, we’ve got to have someplace to move into behind them," said Lt. Col. Andrew S. Ring, who oversees construction for the 555th Engineer Brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash.
A multi-service task force of more than 5,000 active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops led by the 555th is responsible for most of the build-it-so-we-can-leave projects. Those include FOB Apache, a few smaller but similar bases and the massive Camp John Pratt near Mazar-i-Sharif, in the far north, which will be the staging area for some U.S. and NATO equipment to exit via Uzbekistan. From there, shipments can move by rail through Central Asia to ports. The rest of the equipment is expected to leave through Pakistani ports and by air.
The deconstruction of bases is about to accelerate, said Col. Nicholas Katers, the 555th’s commander.
Afghanistan held about 800 U.S. and NATO facilities in late 2011, according to figures supplied by NATO. More than 600 of them had been shut down or handed over to the Afghans by the beginning of this year. Nearly all of those were tiny bases suitable for a few dozen troops or fewer. Some were simply checkpoints.
Now the hard part is beginning, Katers said. His task force is about to begin closing or transferring 15 to 20 bases that once held hundreds or thousands of troops each. That will be significantly trickier than tearing down the smaller bases. The engineers don’t know quite what to expect.
"We do know it’s going to be difficult, because we’ve been in some of these bases a long time; 10 years," Katers said.
They’re in a race with time. The engineers need to finish most of the tear-downs and refits this year, as the drawdown – which is expected to accelerate in the fall as the fighting season ends – will leave little manpower for the mission by next year.
"Summer and fall will be critical,” Katers said, noting that if the drawdown occurs as scheduled, fewer than half the current 66,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan next year. And they’ll be needed primarily for advising and training Afghan troops, not building and decommissioning bases.
When tearing down bases on private property, the goal is to return to the land as much as possible to its previous state, Katers said. But even bases that are being turned over to Afghanistan for official use require U.S. engineers to modify them. That may mean tearing out wiring designed for U.S. electricity standards and removing things such as expensive-to-operate water and latrine systems that the cash-strapped Afghan government won’t be able to maintain.
The building boom at FOB Apache and similar projects elsewhere are all about holding down costs and making it easier for the expansions to be torn down in just a few months. That means that designs meant to last five to 10 years are gone. For Apache now, the standard is good enough to last a season. The housing is mainly tents on wooden decks, which will be cheap and easy to remove. Showers and latrines are in trailers.
Apache has grown so fast that it’s burst beyond its walls, leaving older guard towers in the middle of the base rather than on the perimeter. Its population of 800 to 900 in December grew to a few thousand starting in January, said Army Capt. Tyjuan Campbell, who oversees base operations and is akin to the mayor of a small town.
Expanding a base so quickly in the middle of a pullout has presented odd challenges, said Campbell, who’s with the 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Ga. One issue has been drawdown-related rules that make it hard to bring in more contractors to help get the second dining hall running and maintain the additional generators needed to operate a large camp.
And even with creative thinking by the managers of the lone chow hall, who expanded seating and went to 24-hour service for sandwiches to ease the crush, there are long lines for every meal.
Members of the 181st Engineer Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, which is part of the 555th’s task force, arrived four months ago to take on what was supposed to be three weeks of work. Campbell begged them to stay, and they’re still at it, said Staff Sgt. Ricky Wolff, of Beverly, Mass.
Among other projects, they renovated building shells for several unit headquarters, more than doubled the size of the fire station and built a second residential area, with dozens of tents. They built a camp for interpreters and have nearly completed the recreation center. Still to be done: a major addition to the helicopter pad and floor platforms for another neighborhood of tents, to house hundreds more soldiers.
Supplies and equipment are hard to find this far from the larger bases, and the engineers of the 181st have resorted to a military tradition: scrounging. They root through an unmonitored supply dump where materiel had been building up for years and they’ve even dug through the trash to find electrical and plumbing parts they need, Wolff said.
So much of what’s going up is simple and basic that the guys in the unit, who include master carpenters and master electricians from civilian life, were happy to get the job of building the recreation facility, which also is in a tent but requires a fair amount of interior construction.
Wolff, who’s on his sixth deployment, was involved in similar projects during the drawdown in Iraq.
"In a strange way, it’s kind of nice to be around for the last hurrah," he said.
Few Illusions as Afghan Exit Nears
New York Times By JUDY DEMPSEY Letter from Europe March 4, 2013
BERLIN - Over the next 12 months, President Barack Obama will withdraw more than 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, halving the American contingent.
By the end of 2014, when NATO’s combat mission ends and its new training mission begins, diplomats say that the United States is planning to have no more than 10,000 troops available for Afghanistan.
About 5,000 will focus on counterterrorism operations. The remainder are expected to join the NATO training mission. The size of that mission, yet to be finalized, is expected to be between 8,000 and 12,000 troops.
“This is the planning assumption, but no decision has been taken,” said Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokeswoman.
The number of U.S. troops that will be earmarked for Afghanistan after 2014 shows how much the United States needs to save money and how urgently it wishes to close this particular chapter.
Mr. Obama confirmed the U.S. intention to pull out, and soon, during his State of the Union address. “By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” he said. Victory was not mentioned, nor was an end to fighting in Afghanistan.
The Europeans, especially Germany, with 4,400 troops in Afghanistan, fear that they will be much more vulnerable to attacks by insurgents without a strong U.S. presence.
Until now, the United States has been providing its European allies with logistics and intelligence, air protection and evacuation for the wounded. Thomas de Maizière, the German defense minister, has repeatedly asked the United States what support would be available during the transition from the combat to the training mission.
“The administration’s game is to rush the transition,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It is a reflection of the U.S.’s different priorities and different strategies. The Europeans should understand that.”
For the Europeans, the illusion that they and the United States would go into the Afghan combat mission together and leave together has been broken.
“The Americans are throwing down the gauntlet to the Europeans,” said Markus Kaim, defense expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
As the United States rapidly draws down, another illusion is waiting to be shattered. It is the ability of the Afghan National Army, or A.N.A., to take over the security of the country by the end of 2014.
NATO continues to heap praise on the abilities of the Afghan forces because that would justify ending NATO’s combat role and because it believes that Afghanistan must be responsible for its own security.
“The Afghan security forces have reached their overall recruiting target,” a NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They are leading 80 percent of operations and are taking the lead for the security of 87 percent of the population.”
A recent report to Congress by the U.S. Defense Department paints a different picture. It stated that the rate of attrition in the A.N.A. was very high, the level of retention was very low, and the logistic capabilities were inadequate.
Between October 2011 and September 2012, the A.N.A. lost 27 percent of its fighting force, according to the report. The “attrition rate is higher than desirable for the Afghan Army,” the NATO official acknowledged.
The retention rate, which refers to those soldiers who have completed their three-year enlistment and who then choose to remain, is even lower. “On average, the A.N.A. is only retaining 7 percent of its forces,” according to the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent nonprofit policy research organization that monitors developments in the country.
Given the problems of attrition, retention and training, NATO defense ministers last month agreed to increase the A.N.A. to 352,000, up from 240,000, through 2018.
This is “an investment that would be worth making because it would allow us greater flexibility as we take down our troops,” Leon E. Panetta said last month in Brussels before stepping down as U.S. defense secretary. He did not say which countries would pay for the extra forces, given that most NATO countries are cutting their military budgets.
The A.N.A.’s difficulties have implications for human rights conditions and the rule of law.
Indeed, both Americans and Europeans in 2001 once spoke about building democracy in Afghanistan. Not anymore. That illusion has given way to trying to make the country stable. “The goals set for Afghanistan proved impossible,” Mr. Cordesman said. No European leader has disagreed.
Judy Dempsey is editor in chief of Strategic Europe at Carnegie Europe.
Dam and other Afghanistan projects being scaled back as U.S. picks up pace of withdrawal
Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Tuesday, March 5, 2013
When U.S. Marines surged into southern Afghanistan in 2010, one of their top priorities was to secure a towering dam on the Helmand River so the U.S. Agency for International Development could begin a construction project to provide much-needed electricity to Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city.
Simply reaching the outskirts of the Kajaki Dam was perilous. More than 50 American troops were killed in combat operations to evict the Taliban from areas along a 30-mile road leading to the structure.
Now that Marines and Afghan soldiers have seized the dam and the surrounding areas, USAID has decided not to complete the most critical part of the $266 million project. Instead, the agency intends to hand over to the Afghan government the challenging task of installing a large hydropower turbine.
The dam is one of many reconstruction projects, once deemed essential, that are being scaled back rapidly and redesigned in the waning days of America’s long war in Afghanistan as troop reductions, declining budgets and public fatigue force a realignment of priorities. But USAID’s decision to walk away from the turbine installation — one of the most important and symbolic development efforts associated with President Obama’s troop surge — is drawing unique scrutiny.
Several civilian experts who have served in southern Afghanistan contend that the Afghan government lacks the ability to manage thecomplex project, jeopardizing a vital initiative to increase electricity production, which they deem crucial to the region’s long-term stability.
The Kajaki Dam was built by U.S. engineers in the 1950s, and it has long been regarded by Afghans as a manifestation of American ingenuity and assistance. Should the Afghan-led installation fail, the civilian experts fear that the structure will come to represent American abandonment and weakness.
Military officers who lost comrades in the area see it in far more personal terms. “A lot of blood and treasure were wasted just to spike the ball at the 10-yard line,” said a senior Marine officer involved in the campaign to secure the dam, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
USAID officials insist that the U.S. government is not abandoning the turbine project. The agency, they noted, will still pay for the installation, estimated to cost $70 million. But instead of having a U.S. contractor perform the work, USAID intends to give the money directly to the Afghan state-run electricity company, which will be responsible for hiring experts and managing the construction.
Larry Sampler, a senior USAID official responsible for Afghanistan programs, said the agency believes that the Afghan electricity company, known by the acronym DABS, has developed the skills to take charge of the project. “We’re confident that DABS will be able to meet a timeline comparable to any Western contractor,” Sampler said.
At this stage of the war, he said, “everything we do should be done with an eye to getting the Afghans into the driver’s seat as fast as possible.”
Concern about security in the area and pressure from Afghan President Hamid Karzai also prompted the shift, according to U.S. officials involved in Afghanistan matters.
Obama’s decision to withdraw 34,000 troops over the next 11 months means there will be few, if any, Marines in the area around the dam after this summer. Security responsibility will fall to Afghan soldiers, police officers and government-hired security guards, raising the risks for foreign construction workers at the dam.
Karzai has long demanded that USAID channel more development assistance through his government instead of relying on foreign contractors. He specifically raised the Kajaki Dam during a visit in January with senior members of the Obama administration in Washington.
“It’s not AID’s preferred choice,” said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But Karzai has been adamant.”
The dam, located along the headwaters of the Helmand River, about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar, was built in the early 1950s by the U.S. construction firm Morrison-Knudsen. In 1975, USAID installed two generators in the dam’s spillway, but they fell into disrepair after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
By the time U.S. experts returned to the dam in 2002, it was barely running. The chief engineer cobbled together spare parts from scrap metal and used barbed wire to splice electrical lines.
Instead of installing the new turbine in the early years of the war, when the area was relatively safe, USAID waited. The agency eventually hired a state-owned Chinese firm to install the turbine, but the Chinese did not start work in earnest until 2007. By then it was too dangerous to move the parts up the 30-mile road to the dam, which USAID officials dubbed “Hell’s Canyon.”
In September 2008, before the Marines arrived, 4,000 British troops were reassigned to Kajaki to escort a convoy of trucks bearing turbine parts. After the British left, security deteriorated along the road, preventing delivery of the cement needed to install the turbine. The Chinese contractors soon departed.
In 2011, once the Marines started combat operations along the road, USAID awarded a $266 million contract to Black & Veatch, a large construction firm based in Overland Park, Kan. USAID now plans to reduce the contract, but the firm will continue work to install new power lines and substations between the dam and Kandahar, which has been a focus of U.S. military operations. American commanders have argued that increasing the electricity supply in Kandahar will build support for the Afghan government among the population.
Some civilian experts and military officers question USAID’s assessment that the Afghan electricity company is up to the challenge. In an audit last year, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted that DABS lacked the “technical and operational capacity to properly install and manage” a far-less-complicated electricity-distribution project in Kandahar.
The inspector general, John F. Sopko, warned in a speech last month that providing development funds directly to the Afghan government means less accountability for how that money is spent.
“I fear many of our programs will be exposed to increased risk of theft and misuse,” he said.
But concerns about inefficiency, the senior U.S. official said, must be subordinated to the more pressing imperative from the White House to wind down the war and transfer responsibility to the Afghans.
“This decision serves our interests,” the official said. “It allows us to draw back.”
Julie Tate contributed to this report.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan court gave jail terms on Tuesday to 20 of 22 men convicted in a multi-million dollar bank fraud case seen as a test of Afghanistan's commitment to fighting corruption.
The collapse of Kabulbank in 2010 triggered a financial crisis, civil disorder and a run on deposits, worrying foreign donors and embarrassing the U.S. and Afghan governments, which had touted its credentials as a modern lender integral to developing a tiny economy crippled by war and mismanagement.
The two former heads of the bank, founder Sher Khan Fernod and former Chief Executive Haji Khalil Ferozi, convicted of taking $810 million of the $935 million stolen, were both sent to jail for five years.
The case was viewed as a crucial barometer of Afghanistan's commitment to stabilizing the economy, less than two years before the withdrawal of most foreign troops and a winding down of billions of dollars in foreign aid. It appears to be the first major bank fraud trial in Afghan history.
Brothers of President Hamid Karzai and his first vice-president, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who were both shareholders, were spared jail sentences in the rulings thanks to a presidential decree a year ago that granted immunity from prosecution to those who returned funds.
"Ferozi and Fernod have been sentenced for five years each in jail for the theft of Kabulbank assets valued at $531 million and $279 million respectively," said Judge Shamsul Rahman Shams, head of a special court set up for the Kabulbank investigation.
Those sentences were condemned as "relatively light" by the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee "given the extent of the fraud and sentences handed down to others who appear to have had little or no involvement in the fraud", a statement said.
The remaining 18 men, four of whom are Indian nationals, received prison terms of four or five years.
A Western official in Kabul heralded the trial as a step in the right direction for the fledgling judicial system in Afghanistan, one of the world's most corrupt countries.
"There's no precedent for anything like this. They did it, and that's pretty good," he said on condition of anonymity.
All those convicted now face two more appeal trials if they decide to go through that process, which entails additional charges that could increase or decrease their jail sentences.
According to the Afghan judicial system, if convicted of the charges against them, which include money laundering and embezzlement, they could face more than 20 years behind bars.
The government was forced to bail out the country's then biggest bank after it collapsed. It was later relaunched as the state-run New Kabul Bank.
In addition to jail time, Ferozi and Fernod are required by law to return the money to the government, said Shams, who has said that no one, regardless of political or business connections, would be spared in the investigation.
Returning the money could pose difficulties, said the Western official. "Now how they go ahead and make that happen is another priority. It's almost like a moral obligation. If you took the money, you've got to give it back. How do you enforce that? I'm not sure," he told reporters.
Last year, Karzai's brother, Mahmoud, said he had paid back $22 million and the vice-president's brother, Haji Hasseen, said he returned $18 million. Both had denied wrongdoing.
Contrary to popular assumption that most of the money ended up in Dubai, as little as 10 percent was smuggled overseas and channelled into luxury villas.
The rest was invested in Afghanistan, including in an oil storage facility, a television station, a gas firm and property developments, some of which the government had agreed to buy.
(Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Louise Ireland)
NATO chief backs larger Afghan force through 2018
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's president got reassurance Tuesday that NATO intends to backstop his troubled nation's security long beyond 2014, after NATO's chief endorsed keeping Afghanistan's security forces at the current strength for years to come.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told The Associated Press that keeping the Afghan force larger for longer is more cost effective, and it would be more acceptable to Afghans than foreign soldiers.
He spoke after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday.
"From the political point of view, it is better to give the defense ... an Afghan face, and from an economic point of view, it's less expensive to finance Afghan security forces than to send foreign troops," he said Tuesday as he toured a NATO base in Helmand province.
Fogh Rasmussen was commenting on a proposal favored by the Afghan government — and debated by NATO ministers in Brussels last month — to keep 352,000 Afghans in uniform through 2018. NATO is due to turn over security duties to local forces next year and pull out most of its troops. Fogh Rasmussen said most troops in Helmand have already traded combat patrols for advising the Afghans as they do the fighting.
The Afghan army has grown to 184,676 soldiers and the country's police force numbers 146,339 officers, just short of the planned 352,000 total, according to figures shared by NATO this week.
NATO had planned to shrink that combined force to 230,000 next year, but U.S. military and Afghan officials have both suggested keeping the Afghan security forces at their higher "surge" numbers to deal with an expected Taliban onslaught as foreign forces leave.
The "surge" refers to a temporary U.S.-led increase in troops in 2010, aimed at dealing a decisive blow to insurgents, and also to a parallel increase in numbers of Afghan security forces trained and armed by NATO.
The concern for Afghans is that after the NATO drawdown, their green troops could be overrun, and the country plunged back into civil war. Americans worry that the Taliban would use the chaos to regain power, defeating the original purpose of the U.S. military action in 2001.
Cash-strapped NATO members, including the U.S., must figure out who would cover the increased expense for maintaining the Afghan forces at the higher level — from $4.1 billion annually for the 230,000 troops NATO had planned on, to an estimated $4.8 billion to maintain the surge-level forces.
Fogh Rasmussen says he expects NATO members to make a decision "in a matter of months," likely by summer, as part of their calculations on how many NATO troops to deploy after 2014. U.S. and NATO officials are discussing leaving a residual force of between 8,000 to 12,000 foreign troops to advise and train Afghans after NATO combat operations end.
The White House backs the plan for the Afghan forces, but it must first get through the domestic financial fallout of the automatic spending cuts that kicked in on March 1, dictating mandatory across-the-board reductions in the U.S. federal budget, including defense and foreign aid.
The NATO chief said he and Karzai also discussed signing a long-term security agreement between Afghanistan and NATO, after the U.S. and Afghanistan complete their bilateral security negotiations, possibly by November.
"Once that is concluded, it could serve as a template for a NATO training mission," he said. Fogh Rasmussen added he thought it would be possible to have one agreement covering all nations taking part in the training mission, rather than each nation negotiating with Afghanistan separately. The agreements map out the legal status of foreign forces on Afghan soil.
The NATO chief would not be drawn on Karzai's recent demand that U.S. special operations troops leave Wardak province, following his claims that Afghans linked to U.S. commandos had carried out extrajudicial killings, renditions and torture there. U.S. officials privately denied the charges, while asking Afghan officials to share any evidence they had of such incidents. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the Afghan investigation into the allegations is still ongoing.
Fogh Rasmussen would say only that he expected NATO special operations troops to be a key part of the future mission, especially after his visit with European special forces trainers and their Afghan counterparts at the base in Lashkar Gah.
"No doubt that Afghan special operations forces will be the bedrock of Afghan security in the future, so obviously they will also need our continued training, advice and assistance," he said.
4 insurgents killed, 8 detained in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Up to four insurgents have been killed and eight others detained in different operations carried out by Afghan forces and the NATO-led coalition troops, in the latest raids against insurgency in the war-hit country, the coalition forces said on Tuesday.
"An Afghan and coalition force killed four insurgents and wounded three others during a security operation in Ghaziabad district, Kunar province, yesterday," the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a press release.
Earlier Tuesday, a Taliban facilitator along with two other insurgents were captured in Kandahar city, the capital of southern Kandahar province 450 km south of Kabul, the release said.
"The insurgent is believed responsible for directing multiple suicide attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Kandahar province. He has also been involved in the death of Afghan civilians," the release added.
In addition, the joint forces arrested a Taliban facilitator and detained four other insurgents during an operation in Kandahar 's Panjwai district on Monday, it said.
The Taliban, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan and ISAF troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by bombings.
On Monday, four Afghan border policemen and a civilian were injured when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off in Khost city, capital of eastern Khost province 150 km southeast of Kabul.
German defense minister arrives in Afghanistan on surprise visit
By Sadaf Shinwari - 05 Mar 2013, 3:58 pm Khaama Press
German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere following an unannounced visit on Tuesday arrived to Afghanistan to visit German troops.
During his visit to Afghanistan defense minister Thomas de Maiziere headed to the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command North base at Mazar-i-Sharif, since February commanded by German Brigadier General Jörg Vollmer.
De Maiziere has visited Afghanistan for ten times during the past two years since he has been appointed as German defense minister.
His visit to Afghanistan comes amid his weekend remarks to prepare a plan for the German withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the country has 4,350 soldiers.
This comes as the lower house of parliament of Germany Bundestag recently voted to lower the mandate limit from 5,350 soldiers to 3,300 beginning in February of 2014 and change its role to training and consulting Afghan national security forces.
Former soldier sentenced for smuggling $1M in cash
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — Authorities say a former soldier helped smuggle $1 million from Afghanistan, then spent her share on items such as personal surgeries and a tractor-trailer.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker says 30-year-old Tonya Long of Fayetteville was sentenced Monday in federal court in Elizabeth City to five years behind bars and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.
Long was convicted of bulk cash smuggling and aiding and abetting the same crime in what authorities called a double-billing kickback scheme.
Court records show the Fort Bragg-based soldier was in Afghanistan from January 2008 to April 2009. She inspected troops' personal property before it loaded into containers for shipment to the United States.
Authorities say Long concealed the money in videocassette recorders. They say she worked with an unnamed co-conspirator.
Afghan president lashes out at Pakistan
Associated Press By HEIDI VOGT and KIMBERLY DOZIER 04/03/2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out once again at his supposed ally, Pakistan, saying Monday that a statement by a Pakistani cleric endorsing suicide bombings in Afghanistan shows the neighboring country is not sincere in efforts to fight terrorism.
"Afghanistan wants a real struggle against terrorism and wants the Pakistani government to realize that both our nations are burning in the same fire," the Afghan leader said, speaking at a press conference with visiting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"The Pakistani government has an essential and important role in putting out this fire," Karzai added.
Karzai made the comment in response to a question about a statement last week by the head of the Pakistani clerics' council who had been scheduled to travel to Afghanistan for a meeting of the two countries' religious leaders.
The cleric, Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, said in a television interview that suicide attacks in Afghanistan are lawful because NATO troops are invaders that have occupied the country.
Karzai noted that Ashrafi was appointed to the delegation by the Pakistani government, implying that the government in Islamabad was backing his views.
"We see that practical steps are not being taken to fight terrorism," Karzai said, and added that a series of recent attacks in Pakistan show that the neighboring country is falling into chaos.
Ashrafi told The Associated Press that his comments had been taken out of context and that he considered suicide bombings un-Islamic.
He said that he was asked in an interview about his views on suicide bombings in Afghanistan and said that it was natural that people would fight back when their homes were occupied but that didn't necessarily mean suicide bombings.
Ashrafi said Karzai's statement on Monday had shut the door to the Pakistani clerics taking part in the planned conference of religious leaders.
"It will not happen until Karzai and the Afghan government apologize," Ashrafi said over the telephone from Cairo.
A spokesman for the Pakistan's foreign affairs ministry noted Ashrafi's denial in a statement, and said that comments by private individuals should not be seen as reflecting the views of the Pakistan government.
"Pakistan and the Ulema of this country have repeatedly condemned suicide attacks and consider them repugnant to the teachings of our glorious religion," the foreign ministry statement said.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been tense friends. Afghanistan has been deeply suspicious of the motives of a government that long backed the Taliban regime and has since seemed unable or unwilling to go after militant leaders taking refuge inside its borders. The killing of al-Qaida chief, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan only strengthened Afghan wariness of the neighboring country
"The situation is getting out of control for everyone now. This is not to the benefit of Afghanistan, Pakistan or the region," Karzai said.
Fogh Rasmussen also condemned the cleric's statement and called on Pakistan to do more to rein in the extremist militants along its borders.
"Nothing can justify terrorist attacks," Fogh Rasmussen said. "We have repeatedly urged the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military to step up the fight against terrorism and extremism in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We need a positive engagement of Pakistan if we are to ensure long-term peace."
Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Karzai Calls on Pakistan to Reconsider Suicide Attacks
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Monday, 04 March 2013
President Hamid Karzai called on Pakistan to realise it faces the same foe as Afghanistan, saying Monday that it is essential in the fight against terrorism and urged it to oppose suicide attacks.
In a joint press conference with Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Karzai said that the comments of Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council, permitting suicide attacks in Afghanistan as a weapon against the "occupation" of the Nato-led foreign armies showed Pakistan was insincere in its efforts to wipe out terrorism.
Ashrafi was appointed by the Pakistan government to lead a delegation to meet with Afghan clerics to discuss the legitimacy of suicide bombing under Islam and other religious matters.
"Afghanistan wishes to really fight terrorism. Afghanistan is benevolent towards the Pakistan people. We wish that the Pakistan government should join with us in realising that both nations burn in the same flame and Pakistan's role is important to stifle that flame," Karzai said in Kabul.
"We are so sad about the recent speech by the Pakistani side over legitimising suicide attacks. Though we have reached some realisations [of Paksitan's viewpoint], we hope that the situation changes and they return to rationality," he added.
Karzai also commented that anyone who supports or encourages terrorism should face international sanctions – "blacklisted", repeating a statement made by Afghanistan's from the National Security Council deputy on Sunday.
"All Muslims especially the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are victims of terrorism. Those who support and encourage the terrorists to kill the children of the people should be blacklisted. This is a disrespect to humanity to call the attacks that kill children and women legitimate," he said.
Ashrafi has faced a massive backlash since his Friday comments to TOLOnews which were responding to questions of whether he supports suicide bombing or views it as legitimate.
He has since backed away from the comments saying he was quoted out of context. However, Ashrafi clearly states in the Friday interview that if Muslims do not have the atomic bomb, they can sacrifice their lives for Allah instead as long as there are foreign forces occupying Afghanistan.
Nato Secretary General Rasmussen on Monday joined the chorus condemning Ashrafi's statement.
"I strongly condemn the statements that suicide attacks are legitimate. Nothing can justify terrorists attacks," he said at the joint press conference. "We have repeatedly urged the Pakistani government and the Pakistani military to step up the fight against terrorism and extremism in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We need a positive engagement of Pakistan if we are to ensure long-term peace and stability, not only in Afghanistan but in the region."
"I think the time has come for the Pakistani leadership, military as well as the political leadership, to realise that it is in their self interest to ensure a peaceful development in Afghanistan," he added.
NATO expects decision on post-2014 Afghan force by mid-year
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman March 4, 2013
KABUL - NATO expects a decision by the middle of this year on the size of a training force to be kept in Afghanistan once most foreign troops leave in 2014, alliance Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday.
The Pentagon has said a NATO-led training force of between 8,000 and 12,000 was under consideration.
Questions remain over how well Afghan security forces being built up by NATO will be able to tackle Islamist Taliban insurgents in the face of intensifying violence and how Western states can justify financial support for a force that has been saddled with accusations of torture by the United Nations.
"It takes some time to stand up a new training mission, of course, and we will need the clarification within the next few months," Rasmussen told Reuters after talks with President Hamid Karzai in the Afghan capital Kabul.
"I would expect it (the size of the force) to be finalized very soon because we also need to start planning," he said.
Many Afghans eagerly await a firm decision on the number of foreign troops who will stay in their country once NATO's military operation officially ends at the end of next year.
"President Karzai assured me today that Afghanistan wants a NATO-led training mission to stay, to train, to give advice, to assist the Afghan security forces after 2014," Rasmussen said of the training mission, which is called "Resolute Support".
An earlier suggestion of a "zero option" by White House officials - a complete U.S. withdrawal after 2014 - spooked some Afghan lawmakers, who warned this could lead to full civil war.
But troop numbers are also politically sensitive in many NATO countries where voters have tired of the increasingly unpopular and costly 12-year war against Taliban insurgents.
U.S. President Barack Obama said last month that 34,000 troops, about half of the U.S. force now in Afghanistan, would withdraw by early 2014. At its peak, there were around 130,000 foreign troops in the country, most of them American.
The United States and its NATO allies are helping increase the size of the Afghan security forces to a targeted 352,000, a number they are fast approaching. Rasmussen said they now provide security for about 87 percent of the population.
NATO and its allies, which fund Afghan security forces, had planned to trim their number to 230,000 after 2015, but Rasmussen said the Western alliance is now considering "keeping the high level a bit longer than expected".
When Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade-long war, financial aid dried up and the Afghan government collapsed, leading to fighting between warlords and a civil war paving the way to the 1996 rise to power of the radical Taliban.
Western military intervention toppled the Taliban in 2001 following al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States.
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Mark Heinrich)
U.S. consolidates Afghan bases with eye toward pulling out
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price March 4, 2013
FORWARD OPERATING BASE APACHE, Afghanistan - At FOB Apache, U.S. military engineers are frantically finishing a second chow hall and a new recreational building four times bigger than the old one. The gym will be expanded soon to more than double its current size, and dozens of new tents and rows of gleaming white containerized housing units are sprouting to prepare for an influx of troops who’ll raise the base’s population from several hundred to a few thousand.
Here, amid the shriek of electric saws and sharp scent of fresh plywood, the U.S. and NATO drawdown looks more like a frenzied buildup.
It’s deceptive. The building boom at FOB Apache is a quirk of the planned pullout of more than half the U.S. and NATO forces this year. It’s one of the largest of a handful of construction projects under way across Afghanistan, aimed at fine-tuning where troops and their equipment are based in preparation for their final departure next year.
FOB Apache is taking in troops from about half a dozen smaller, front-line bases elsewhere in Zabul province – which is in the restive southwest corner of the country – so that those bases can be torn down or handed over to the Afghan government. It’s adjacent to a major Afghan army base, Camp Eagle, which makes it easier for U.S. troops at Apache to perform their new main roles as advisers and trainers to the Afghans.
"As the Afghans take the lead, we’ve got to have someplace to move into behind them," said Lt. Col. Andrew S. Ring, who oversees construction for the 555th Engineer Brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash.
A multi-service task force of more than 5,000 active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops led by the 555th is responsible for most of the build-it-so-we-can-leave projects. Those include FOB Apache, a few smaller but similar bases and the massive Camp John Pratt near Mazar-i-Sharif, in the far north, which will be the staging area for some U.S. and NATO equipment to exit via Uzbekistan. From there, shipments can move by rail through Central Asia to ports. The rest of the equipment is expected to leave through Pakistani ports and by air.
The deconstruction of bases is about to accelerate, said Col. Nicholas Katers, the 555th’s commander.
Afghanistan held about 800 U.S. and NATO facilities in late 2011, according to figures supplied by NATO. More than 600 of them had been shut down or handed over to the Afghans by the beginning of this year. Nearly all of those were tiny bases suitable for a few dozen troops or fewer. Some were simply checkpoints.
Now the hard part is beginning, Katers said. His task force is about to begin closing or transferring 15 to 20 bases that once held hundreds or thousands of troops each. That will be significantly trickier than tearing down the smaller bases. The engineers don’t know quite what to expect.
"We do know it’s going to be difficult, because we’ve been in some of these bases a long time; 10 years," Katers said.
They’re in a race with time. The engineers need to finish most of the tear-downs and refits this year, as the drawdown – which is expected to accelerate in the fall as the fighting season ends – will leave little manpower for the mission by next year.
"Summer and fall will be critical,” Katers said, noting that if the drawdown occurs as scheduled, fewer than half the current 66,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan next year. And they’ll be needed primarily for advising and training Afghan troops, not building and decommissioning bases.
When tearing down bases on private property, the goal is to return to the land as much as possible to its previous state, Katers said. But even bases that are being turned over to Afghanistan for official use require U.S. engineers to modify them. That may mean tearing out wiring designed for U.S. electricity standards and removing things such as expensive-to-operate water and latrine systems that the cash-strapped Afghan government won’t be able to maintain.
The building boom at FOB Apache and similar projects elsewhere are all about holding down costs and making it easier for the expansions to be torn down in just a few months. That means that designs meant to last five to 10 years are gone. For Apache now, the standard is good enough to last a season. The housing is mainly tents on wooden decks, which will be cheap and easy to remove. Showers and latrines are in trailers.
Apache has grown so fast that it’s burst beyond its walls, leaving older guard towers in the middle of the base rather than on the perimeter. Its population of 800 to 900 in December grew to a few thousand starting in January, said Army Capt. Tyjuan Campbell, who oversees base operations and is akin to the mayor of a small town.
Expanding a base so quickly in the middle of a pullout has presented odd challenges, said Campbell, who’s with the 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Ga. One issue has been drawdown-related rules that make it hard to bring in more contractors to help get the second dining hall running and maintain the additional generators needed to operate a large camp.
And even with creative thinking by the managers of the lone chow hall, who expanded seating and went to 24-hour service for sandwiches to ease the crush, there are long lines for every meal.
Members of the 181st Engineer Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, which is part of the 555th’s task force, arrived four months ago to take on what was supposed to be three weeks of work. Campbell begged them to stay, and they’re still at it, said Staff Sgt. Ricky Wolff, of Beverly, Mass.
Among other projects, they renovated building shells for several unit headquarters, more than doubled the size of the fire station and built a second residential area, with dozens of tents. They built a camp for interpreters and have nearly completed the recreation center. Still to be done: a major addition to the helicopter pad and floor platforms for another neighborhood of tents, to house hundreds more soldiers.
Supplies and equipment are hard to find this far from the larger bases, and the engineers of the 181st have resorted to a military tradition: scrounging. They root through an unmonitored supply dump where materiel had been building up for years and they’ve even dug through the trash to find electrical and plumbing parts they need, Wolff said.
So much of what’s going up is simple and basic that the guys in the unit, who include master carpenters and master electricians from civilian life, were happy to get the job of building the recreation facility, which also is in a tent but requires a fair amount of interior construction.
Wolff, who’s on his sixth deployment, was involved in similar projects during the drawdown in Iraq.
"In a strange way, it’s kind of nice to be around for the last hurrah," he said.
Few Illusions as Afghan Exit Nears
New York Times By JUDY DEMPSEY Letter from Europe March 4, 2013
BERLIN - Over the next 12 months, President Barack Obama will withdraw more than 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, halving the American contingent.
By the end of 2014, when NATO’s combat mission ends and its new training mission begins, diplomats say that the United States is planning to have no more than 10,000 troops available for Afghanistan.
About 5,000 will focus on counterterrorism operations. The remainder are expected to join the NATO training mission. The size of that mission, yet to be finalized, is expected to be between 8,000 and 12,000 troops.
“This is the planning assumption, but no decision has been taken,” said Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokeswoman.
The number of U.S. troops that will be earmarked for Afghanistan after 2014 shows how much the United States needs to save money and how urgently it wishes to close this particular chapter.
Mr. Obama confirmed the U.S. intention to pull out, and soon, during his State of the Union address. “By the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” he said. Victory was not mentioned, nor was an end to fighting in Afghanistan.
The Europeans, especially Germany, with 4,400 troops in Afghanistan, fear that they will be much more vulnerable to attacks by insurgents without a strong U.S. presence.
Until now, the United States has been providing its European allies with logistics and intelligence, air protection and evacuation for the wounded. Thomas de Maizière, the German defense minister, has repeatedly asked the United States what support would be available during the transition from the combat to the training mission.
“The administration’s game is to rush the transition,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It is a reflection of the U.S.’s different priorities and different strategies. The Europeans should understand that.”
For the Europeans, the illusion that they and the United States would go into the Afghan combat mission together and leave together has been broken.
“The Americans are throwing down the gauntlet to the Europeans,” said Markus Kaim, defense expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
As the United States rapidly draws down, another illusion is waiting to be shattered. It is the ability of the Afghan National Army, or A.N.A., to take over the security of the country by the end of 2014.
NATO continues to heap praise on the abilities of the Afghan forces because that would justify ending NATO’s combat role and because it believes that Afghanistan must be responsible for its own security.
“The Afghan security forces have reached their overall recruiting target,” a NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They are leading 80 percent of operations and are taking the lead for the security of 87 percent of the population.”
A recent report to Congress by the U.S. Defense Department paints a different picture. It stated that the rate of attrition in the A.N.A. was very high, the level of retention was very low, and the logistic capabilities were inadequate.
Between October 2011 and September 2012, the A.N.A. lost 27 percent of its fighting force, according to the report. The “attrition rate is higher than desirable for the Afghan Army,” the NATO official acknowledged.
The retention rate, which refers to those soldiers who have completed their three-year enlistment and who then choose to remain, is even lower. “On average, the A.N.A. is only retaining 7 percent of its forces,” according to the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent nonprofit policy research organization that monitors developments in the country.
Given the problems of attrition, retention and training, NATO defense ministers last month agreed to increase the A.N.A. to 352,000, up from 240,000, through 2018.
This is “an investment that would be worth making because it would allow us greater flexibility as we take down our troops,” Leon E. Panetta said last month in Brussels before stepping down as U.S. defense secretary. He did not say which countries would pay for the extra forces, given that most NATO countries are cutting their military budgets.
The A.N.A.’s difficulties have implications for human rights conditions and the rule of law.
Indeed, both Americans and Europeans in 2001 once spoke about building democracy in Afghanistan. Not anymore. That illusion has given way to trying to make the country stable. “The goals set for Afghanistan proved impossible,” Mr. Cordesman said. No European leader has disagreed.
Judy Dempsey is editor in chief of Strategic Europe at Carnegie Europe.
Dam and other Afghanistan projects being scaled back as U.S. picks up pace of withdrawal
Washington Post By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Tuesday, March 5, 2013
When U.S. Marines surged into southern Afghanistan in 2010, one of their top priorities was to secure a towering dam on the Helmand River so the U.S. Agency for International Development could begin a construction project to provide much-needed electricity to Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city.
Simply reaching the outskirts of the Kajaki Dam was perilous. More than 50 American troops were killed in combat operations to evict the Taliban from areas along a 30-mile road leading to the structure.
Now that Marines and Afghan soldiers have seized the dam and the surrounding areas, USAID has decided not to complete the most critical part of the $266 million project. Instead, the agency intends to hand over to the Afghan government the challenging task of installing a large hydropower turbine.
The dam is one of many reconstruction projects, once deemed essential, that are being scaled back rapidly and redesigned in the waning days of America’s long war in Afghanistan as troop reductions, declining budgets and public fatigue force a realignment of priorities. But USAID’s decision to walk away from the turbine installation — one of the most important and symbolic development efforts associated with President Obama’s troop surge — is drawing unique scrutiny.
Several civilian experts who have served in southern Afghanistan contend that the Afghan government lacks the ability to manage thecomplex project, jeopardizing a vital initiative to increase electricity production, which they deem crucial to the region’s long-term stability.
The Kajaki Dam was built by U.S. engineers in the 1950s, and it has long been regarded by Afghans as a manifestation of American ingenuity and assistance. Should the Afghan-led installation fail, the civilian experts fear that the structure will come to represent American abandonment and weakness.
Military officers who lost comrades in the area see it in far more personal terms. “A lot of blood and treasure were wasted just to spike the ball at the 10-yard line,” said a senior Marine officer involved in the campaign to secure the dam, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
USAID officials insist that the U.S. government is not abandoning the turbine project. The agency, they noted, will still pay for the installation, estimated to cost $70 million. But instead of having a U.S. contractor perform the work, USAID intends to give the money directly to the Afghan state-run electricity company, which will be responsible for hiring experts and managing the construction.
Larry Sampler, a senior USAID official responsible for Afghanistan programs, said the agency believes that the Afghan electricity company, known by the acronym DABS, has developed the skills to take charge of the project. “We’re confident that DABS will be able to meet a timeline comparable to any Western contractor,” Sampler said.
At this stage of the war, he said, “everything we do should be done with an eye to getting the Afghans into the driver’s seat as fast as possible.”
Concern about security in the area and pressure from Afghan President Hamid Karzai also prompted the shift, according to U.S. officials involved in Afghanistan matters.
Obama’s decision to withdraw 34,000 troops over the next 11 months means there will be few, if any, Marines in the area around the dam after this summer. Security responsibility will fall to Afghan soldiers, police officers and government-hired security guards, raising the risks for foreign construction workers at the dam.
Karzai has long demanded that USAID channel more development assistance through his government instead of relying on foreign contractors. He specifically raised the Kajaki Dam during a visit in January with senior members of the Obama administration in Washington.
“It’s not AID’s preferred choice,” said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But Karzai has been adamant.”
The dam, located along the headwaters of the Helmand River, about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar, was built in the early 1950s by the U.S. construction firm Morrison-Knudsen. In 1975, USAID installed two generators in the dam’s spillway, but they fell into disrepair after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
By the time U.S. experts returned to the dam in 2002, it was barely running. The chief engineer cobbled together spare parts from scrap metal and used barbed wire to splice electrical lines.
Instead of installing the new turbine in the early years of the war, when the area was relatively safe, USAID waited. The agency eventually hired a state-owned Chinese firm to install the turbine, but the Chinese did not start work in earnest until 2007. By then it was too dangerous to move the parts up the 30-mile road to the dam, which USAID officials dubbed “Hell’s Canyon.”
In September 2008, before the Marines arrived, 4,000 British troops were reassigned to Kajaki to escort a convoy of trucks bearing turbine parts. After the British left, security deteriorated along the road, preventing delivery of the cement needed to install the turbine. The Chinese contractors soon departed.
In 2011, once the Marines started combat operations along the road, USAID awarded a $266 million contract to Black & Veatch, a large construction firm based in Overland Park, Kan. USAID now plans to reduce the contract, but the firm will continue work to install new power lines and substations between the dam and Kandahar, which has been a focus of U.S. military operations. American commanders have argued that increasing the electricity supply in Kandahar will build support for the Afghan government among the population.
Some civilian experts and military officers question USAID’s assessment that the Afghan electricity company is up to the challenge. In an audit last year, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted that DABS lacked the “technical and operational capacity to properly install and manage” a far-less-complicated electricity-distribution project in Kandahar.
The inspector general, John F. Sopko, warned in a speech last month that providing development funds directly to the Afghan government means less accountability for how that money is spent.
“I fear many of our programs will be exposed to increased risk of theft and misuse,” he said.
But concerns about inefficiency, the senior U.S. official said, must be subordinated to the more pressing imperative from the White House to wind down the war and transfer responsibility to the Afghans.
“This decision serves our interests,” the official said. “It allows us to draw back.”
Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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