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Afghanistan Insider Attack Leaves 2 U.S. Soldiers Dead
KABUL, March 11 (Reuters) - Two American soldiers were killed in a so-called insider attack when a person in an Afghan military uniform turned his weapon on U.S. and Afghan forces at a joint base in the restive east of the country, coalition forces said on Monday.
Three policemen and two Afghan army officers were also killed in the attack, said a senior police official.
The attack took place as a deadline expired for U.S. special forces to quit the eastern province of Wardak, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused them and Afghans working for them of overseeing torture and killings in the area.
An Afghan interior ministry official said the attack occurred in Jalriz district of Wardak. It was not immediately clear if it was directed at U.S. special forces.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who left Afghanistan early on Monday after a three-day visit, raised the sensitive issue of Wardak when he met Karzai.
U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses in Wardak.
Hagel sounded hopeful that a deal could be reached on their continued deployment, but acknowledged no breakthroughs were made in his talks with Karzai.
Afghans are divided over their expulsion, saying the departure of the U.S. special forces could leave a vacuum for insurgents to fill, which would pose a security risk for nearby Kabul.
Incidents involving Afghan security forces turning their weapons on the NATO-led forces who train them and fight Taliban insurgents have increased sharply over the past year.
The insider, or green-on-blue, attacks have seriously eroded trust between coalition and Afghan forces, who are under mounting pressure to contain the insurgency before most foreign troops leave by the end of next year. (Reporting by Jeremy Laurence and Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Two local Taliban leaders detained in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Two local Taliban leaders and three suspected insurgents have been arrested in operations in different Afghan provinces, in the latest raids part of the counter- insurgency campaign in the war-hit country, the coalition forces said Monday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader and detained one other insurgent during an operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district, Helmand province, today," said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release.
The leader is accused of coordinating ambushes against Afghan and coalition forces and is believed to have a history of directing subordinate fighters to engage in attacks utilizing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rocket-propelled grenades and various other types of weaponry, it added.
The security force also seized a stockpile of IED-making materials as a result of the operation in the province, 555 km south of Afghan capital of Kabul.
In neighboring Kandahar province, 450 km south of Kabul, the joint forces arrested a Taliban leader and detained one other insurgent Monday morning.
"The leader is believed to be an IED specialist with a cell of fighters under his command."
Earlier in the day, they also arrested an insurgent in charges of having links with a Taliban leader in Baraki Barak district, Logar province, 60 km south of Kabul.
"The leader is alleged to be responsible for directing insurgent activity in Baraki Barak. He is also an influential figure in the Taliban network there, ordering IED operations in addition to direct and indirect fire attacks."
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan forces in partnership with ISAF troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by bombings.
On Saturday, Taliban carried out two suicide bombings in Kabul and eastern Khost province killing one policeman and 20 civilians, including a woman and eight children.
Karzai Inflames U.S. Tensions
Afghan President's Claim Taliban Kill 'in Service to America' Clouds Hagel Visit
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM And YAROSLAV TROFIMOV March 10, 2013
KABUL - America's fraught ties with Afghanistan suffered a jarring blow Sunday, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai said during a visit by the new U.S. defense secretary that the Taliban were killing Afghan civilians "in service to America."
The remarks, in a televised speech hours before Mr. Karzai's meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, capped a series of confrontations between the Afghan president and the U.S. over his demands to assert Afghan sovereignty and curtail American military operations.
Mr. Karzai met Mr. Hagel a day after suspected Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 18 people at the Ministry of Defense in Kabul and in the eastern province of Khost.
In his address, Mr. Karzai said the U.S. doesn't want to leave the country after the NATO coalition's mandate expires at the end of 2014 because it covets Afghan resources and is talking with Taliban leaders behind his back.
"Taliban are every day in talks with America, but in Kabul and Khost they set off bombs to show strength to America," Mr. Karzai said. "The bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost yesterday were not a show of power to America, but were in service to America It was in the service of foreigners not withdrawing from Afghanistan."
U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who took command of coalition forces last month, called Mr. Karzai's charges "categorically false."
"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would ever be to our advantage," he said.
Mr. Karzai's remarks blindsided American officials who had hoped to use Mr. Hagel's two-day visit, his first overseas trip as defense secretary, to shore up fragile relations with the Afghan president as the U.S. ends its longest foreign war.
Though most of the 66,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan are slated to go home next year, the U.S. hopes to leave behind an advisory and counterterrorism force that would support the Afghan government after 2014.
American defense officials now have to assess how much damage Mr. Karzai's allegations will have on their plans, already threatened by discord over whether to grant immunity from prosecution to U.S. troops and by the Afghan leader's refusal to negotiate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The war against the Taliban has claimed the lives of 2,179 American service members since 2001, says the casualty tracking website icasualties.org. While the U.S. has held talks with the Taliban in the past, contacts were stalled by the Taliban's refusal to negotiate directly with Kabul.
Mr. Karzai's speech on Sunday sparked some frank exchanges during Mr. Karzai's dinner at the presidential palace with Mr. Hagel, Gen. Dunford and other officials from both nations, U.S. officials said. Mr. Hagel "struck the right balance between expressing support for Afghanistan and strongly pushing back on wildly inaccurate claims," one U.S. official said.
After the dinner, Mr. Hagel offered a muted public response to Mr. Karzai's comments that came in contrast to the forceful defense from Gen. Dunford. "I told the president it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban," Mr. Hagel told reporters.
The defense secretary suggested that the Afghan president might have been baiting America to cultivate support from anti-Western forces in the politically fractured country. Mr. Karzai's term expires next year, and the field of potential successors is wide open, ranging from his brother and other allies to bitter political foes. "I was once a politician, so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under, so I would hope that, again, we can move forward—and I have confidence that we will," Mr. Hagel said.
The Afghan president's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said the Afghan leader used the occasion to complain about civilian casualties of U.S. operations and the detentions of Afghan citizens.
In particular, Mr. Faizi said, Mr. Karzai raised the issue of an engineering student who, he said, had been seized illegally at Kandahar University by an Afghan militia working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Karzai mentioned in his speech that he was up until as late as midnight on Saturday to win the student's release; on Sunday, he issued a decree banning foreign forces from entering universities and detaining Afghan students.
The CIA declined to comment on the matter.
"Such incidents, if they continue, are a clear breach of Afghan national sovereignty, and will create anger among the people," Mr. Faizi said. "Any kind of bilateral relations should be based on respect of sovereignty of the two nations."
Mr. Karzai gained power following the U.S. ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, and initially enjoyed close ties with the U.S., holding weekly videoconference calls with President George W. Bush.
These relations deteriorated during the 2009 Afghan presidential elections, after which Mr. Karzai accused some Obama administration officials of scheming to oust him.
In previous statements, Mr. Karzai also alleged that the U.S. was secretly flying insurgents into northern Afghanistan in helicopters, as part of a plan to destabilize the country, and once even threatened to join the Taliban himself.
Mr. Karzai and Mr. Hagel have a strained personal history. In 2008, Mr. Hagel joined fellow Senators Joe Biden and John Kerry for a turbulent dinner in which they pressed the Afghan president to seriously tackle corruption in his government. When Mr. Karzai dismissed the concerns as unfounded, Mr. Biden stormed out of the meeting, throwing down his napkin.
Mr. Hagel's restrained comments on the Afghan president Sunday suggested that U.S. leaders recognize that they need Mr. Karzai's cooperation to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops and equipment. Military analysts said Mr. Karzai might be trying to challenge Mr. Hagel, who has orders from President Barack Obama to quickly end the war.
"President Karzai has a history of testing new [coalition] commanders to see what the response is to his demands," said Kimberly Kagan, founder of the Institute for the Study of War who has consulted with the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have envisaged that NATO allies would make up a large part of the residual force after 2014. Mr. Karzai, however, on Sunday reiterated his opposition to any deal with NATO as a whole, saying nations wanting to keep troops here would need to negotiate directly with Kabul.
"If you want to stay beyond 2014, all of you separately need to sign agreements with the Afghan people," Mr. Karzai said Sunday. "Limited numbers, in a location we chose and under our conditions and framework, with respect for our laws, our sovereignty, our traditions and culture."
Few, if any, Western allies would consider contributing troops outside the NATO framework, diplomats say. "They want us out, that is for sure," a Western official said. "They feel that we are part of the problem."
Despite these tensions, Gen. Dunford defended U.S.-Afghan relations, especially between military leaders of the two countries, as dynamic partnerships that can be the "shock absorbers" through turbulent times. "We don't have a broken relationship," he said. "We don't have a lack of trust. We have a relationship that can actually absorb this tension as we work through difficult issues."
But Mr. Karzai's Sunday speech was only one such shock to the relationship. It followed the U.S.'s abrupt cancellation of its planned handover of the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram Air Field, and Mr. Karzai's demand that U.S. Special Operations forces leave the strategic province of Wardak near Kabul.
Following Mr. Karzai's speech, Mr. Hagel also canceled a planned joint news conference with the Afghan leader at the presidential palace. U.S. officials said this was because of security concerns that rippled across Kabul in the wake of Saturday's bombings.
U.S. bases in the capital were on heightened alert. Mr. Hagel previously canceled scheduled visits to the Ministry of Defense—site of Saturday's Kabul bombing—and the Interior Ministry. Instead, he met with the two ministers at alternative locations in the city. —Habib Khan Totakhil, Julian Barnes and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
Afghanistan: Should we stay or should we go?
Jean MacKenzie March 11, 2013 13:08 GlobalPost
Analysis: As Karzai insinuates Washington-Taliban collusion, fault lines deepen in an already troubled relationship.
BUZZARDS BAY, Mass. — Afghan President Hamid Karzai certainly knows how to ruin a party. As newly anointed US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made his maiden voyage to Kabul last week, Afghanistan's president all but accused the United States of being in cahoots with the Taliban.
At a televised press conference in Kabul on Sunday, Karzai condemned Saturday's suicide bombings in Kabul and Khost that killed at least 19 people. The Taliban claimed “credit” for the attacks, saying it had wanted to send a message to the defense secretary.
But Karzai was not content with diplomatic niceties. Instead he lashed out at his US allies, saying they and the Taliban were jointly trying to paint a black picture of what would happen in Afghanistan once the US forces withdraw.
The US combat mission in Afghanistan is winding down, with the last troops scheduled to leave by the end of 2014.
“Yesterday’s bombings in Kabul and Khost didn’t aim to show Taliban’s strength — indeed, they served America,” said Karzai. “By those bombings they served the 2014 negative slogan … These bombings aimed to prolong the presence of the American forces in Afghanistan.”
The Afghan president also accused the US of holding secret talks with the Taliban behind his back, something both Washington and the Taliban have repeatedly denied.
US Marine General Joseph Dunford, who heads the coalition forces in Afghanistan, called Karzai's charges "categorically false."
"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would ever be to our advantage," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hagel himself was a bit more muted, while giving no ground on Karzai’s somewhat bizarre accusations.
"I was once a politician,” said the former Nebraska senator, “so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under, so I would hope that, again, we can move forward — and I have confidence that we will."
Karzai’s latest tantrum could be a reaction to the US cancellation of a promised handover of Bagram Prison that was supposed to take place on Saturday.
He had been demanding full control of detention centers in Afghanistan for years. During his summit in Washington with President Barack Obama in January, he touted the handover agreement as one of his proudest accomplishments:
“Concerning Afghan sovereignty, we agreed on the complete return of detention centers and detainees to Afghan sovereignty, and that this will be implemented soon after my return to Afghanistan,” said Karzai in a televised press conference. “We also discussed all aspects of transition to Afghan governance and security.”
But problems have persisted ahead of the handover. The US is expected to make sure Karzai does not release detainees Washington deems to be a continuing danger; Karzai is expected to try to avoid interference from his major ally in what he describes as an important issue of Afghan sovereignty.
Last week, he told a joint session of the Afghan parliament that as soon as he had full control of the prison, he would begin to release detainees.
“We know many innocent people are being held there. We would free them, despite criticism,” he said.
Karzai refused to agree to the Americans’ demands that they be allowed a virtual veto over the release of prisoners. The White House has been fighting with Congress over the handover, and did not want Karzai’s words to spark another round of correspondence similar to the one between Obama and Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in February.
“I am particularly concerned about the disposition of detainees who continue to represent an enduring and continuous threat both to our US forces on the ground in Afghanistan as well as to US national security,” McKeon wrote. He emphasized it would be “completely unacceptable” for the US to fail to maintain custody of such prisoners.
The US government insists these are just “minor hiccups” in the agreement over the prisoner handover, but Karzai’s intemperate outburst on Sunday might throw a spanner in the works.
All of this has cast a long shadow over Hagel’s visit, and is expected to further complicate discussions over the size and shape of any residual US force to be left in Afghanistan after 2014.
In January, White House officials indicated it was considering a “zero option” but military sources reportedly have advised keeping a significant number of troops in country.
Gen. James Mattis, of the US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week he envisioned an overall force of 20,000 in Afghanistan post-2014, of which more than half — 13,600 — would come from the US.
This is not the first time the notoriously volatile Karzai has gone off the rails.
In years past, he has alternately threatened to declare war on NATO, vowed to join the Taliban, and blamed the US for the corruption that permeates his administration.
Whenever challenged, the Afghan president’s first reaction seems to be to point the finger right back at his accusers.
In February, Karzai ordered US Special Forces to leave Maidan Wardak, a province that serves as the gateway to Kabul, amid accusations that Afghan forces trained by the US, and perhaps American forces themselves, had been involved in torture and abuse of Afghans.
This came after a United Nations report documenting widespread torture and abuse within Afghan prisons by Afghan authorities.
Karzai may have reason to feel a bit insecure in his relationship with the US at the moment. He does not enjoy the same warm and indulgent connection with the Obama administration as he seemed to have with the team around George W. Bush, which virtually installed him as the leader of Afghanistan in 2001.
In a now famous dinner in Kabul in February 2008, three US senators tried to persuade Karzai to tackle corruption within his government. The Afghan president denied corruption was a serious problem, prompting the head of the delegation to throw down his napkin, say “this dinner is over,” and stride from the room, accompanied by his colleagues.
The napkin thrower is now the vice president, Joe Biden; his companions on the trip were Massachsuetts Sen. John Kerry, now secretary of state, and Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, now defense secretary.
Karzai’s push-pull tactics are likely to inflame an already divisive debate within the US about the continued American presence in Afghanistan.
After 12 years of blood and sacrifice, in which more than 2,000 US soldiers have died and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent with little clear effect, the American people are tired of the war. President Barack Obama has staked much of his reputation on bringing the troops home and extricating the US from the seemingly endless conflict.
Karzai’s accusations that the US is intent on prolonging its presence in Afghanistan appear wildly at odds with what some see as a mad rush for the door.
And while the Afghan president may complain about getting the US troops out of his country, many Afghans worry about what will happen once the foreign forces leave. Officials in both countries pay much lip service to the battle readiness of Afghan security forces, but even the Pentagon reportedly has doubts the Afghans will be able to step into the breach when the foreign troops clear out.
On Monday, a fresh insider attack by an individual in an Afghan army uniform in the Wardak province killed two US troops and a number of Afghans.
Still, in addition to security concerns, there is fear of economic collapse. Much of Afghanistan’s economy relies on international aid, and investors are wary of the post-withdrawal environment.
For now, all sides seem intent on smoothing things over and trying to move forward. But a very long and perilous road stretches between now and the end of 2014.
Revolving door of generals takes Afghanistan command
Leadership post unstable at heart of war on terror
The Washington Times By Rowan Scarborough Sunday, March 10, 2013
When Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford took command of the war in Afghanistan on Feb. 10, he succeeded a line of hard-luck officers who had succumbed to scandal or felt the White House’s sting over requests for more troops.
President Obama has changed top commanders in Afghanistan — which he says is the heart of the war on terrorism — five times in less than five years. Retired officers say this is some kind of record for hiring and firing or shifting four-star officers in a major theater of war.
In contrast, the Iraq War required four, four-star commanders, starting in 2004, over 71/2 years. The last commander served only a year because his job was to oversee the U.S. troop exit, which was completed in December 2011.
“We’re trying to do too many missions with too few forces in Afghanistan,” retired Gen. Ronald Griffith, a former vice chief of the Army, told The Washington Times. “I guess the way you deal with that, if you’re in Washington, is you either change the commander or you change the strategy.”
Retired ArmyGen. Barry McCaffrey, who led a division that ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, called the rapid turnover of generals “a huge mistake.” Compounding the problem, he said, is that other allied nations leave their commanders in Afghanistan for even a shorter time, sometimes just six months.
“We should have kept a team of senior people together in Afghanistan for five years at a time,” Gen. McCaffrey told The Times. “What kind of medium-complexity business would continually shuffle the leadership? All this turnover at the top had a detrimental effect on the broad direction of the war.”
The parade of generals in and out of Kabul began in 2009, when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced the firing of ArmyGen. David D. McKiernan after one year.
The stated reason: Mr. Gates wanted new thinking on counter-Taliban operations that he did not see in the conventional Army background of Gen. McKiernan, a big player in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His Army colleagues said the general was in disfavor for wanting more boots on the ground at a time when Mr. Obama wanted to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“David McKiernan, in my judgment, told them what he needed to do the job with,” Gen. Griffith said. “And it probably made them uncomfortable.”
CNN reported that Gen. McKiernan said at his retirement ceremony: “I was dismayed, disappointed and more than a little embarrassed.”
The search for stability
Next: ArmyGen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a career special operations warrior who hunted down al Qaeda leaders in Iraq. With Gen. McChrystal came a new war strategy and, like Gen. McKiernan, a request for more troops, something Mr. Obama partially met.
Gen. McChrystal lasted only a year. He allowed a Rolling Stone reporter to be embedded with him and his staff, and the ensuing article quoted them as making disparaging remarks about the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Gen. McChrystal was fired.
Analysts said at the time that the command in Afghanistan needed stability with its next leader. The command did not get that stability.
In a scramble, the White House turned to ArmyGen. David H. Petraeus. As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama criticized Gen. Petraeus for defending the 2007 surge of U.S. troops into Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus remained in Kabul for a year to implement a complex strategy that had American troops working side by side with Afghans to take back the villages.
In a surprise move, as the presidential election moved closer, Mr. Obama installed Gen. Petraeus, a charismatic leader coveted by some Republicans as a candidate, into the lower-profile job of CIA director.
“I have no knowledge he had ever had any political goals,” Gen. Griffith said. “He would have denied he had any political goals. I’m not sure the Obama administration did not see it otherwise.”
Said a Petraeus friend: “Petraeus should have been left in place. They wanted him off the stage.”
Gen. Petraeus last year resigned as CIA director over an extramarital affair.
In Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus was succeeded by Marine Gen. John Allen, deputy chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Persian Gulf area.
If the NATO command thought this choice would bring a dose of stability, it was wrong again: The White House surprised Washington by saying that his command would be cut short by a move to Brussels as NATO’s supreme commander.
Gen. Allen, however, got caught up in the Petraeus scandal over an exchange of emails with a married Florida socialite, Jill Kelley, and he opted not to take the NATO job. Fox News reported that the White House pushed him into retirement.
Gen. Dunford relieved Gen. Allen of the Afghanistan command on Feb. 10, after having served as assistant Marine commandant.
‘Withdrawal strategy’ decision
It was another head-scratcher in the military retirement community: Gen. Dunford, an Iraq veteran, never served in the 11-year-old Afghanistan War, and there were plenty of other generals who had.
The Times reported that the Army had endorsed Gen. David Rodriguez, who ran day-to-day operations in Afghanistan, to succeed Gen. Allen, but the White House preferred Gen. Dunford.
Retired generals speculate that the Obama administration settled on Gen. Dunford because it believed it would have an easier time in pressing for further troop cuts in Afghanistan with him as the top commander.
In a nine-page analysis of Afghanistan, Gen. McCaffrey said the early planned shift of Gen. Allen to NATO and the passing-over of Gen. Rodriguez have meaning.
“This is a ‘withdrawal strategy’ personnel decision,” he wrote.
The president has announced that 34,000 troops will leave Afghanistan this year after the Taliban “fighting season” ends in the fall, leaving about 30,000 troops.
Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, U.S. Central Command chief, has recommended that 13,600 troops stay after 2014, when most international troops are expected to leave the country.
The high turnover rate in leadership in Kabul perhaps explains why the blogosphere explodes with conspiracy theories when four-stars are replaced at other commands.
There is no exact science for replacing the chiefs of the so-called geographic combatant commands, such as Central, Pacific and European.
Unlike the service chiefs, who serve for four years, and the Joint Chiefs chairman, who normally stays for two, two-year terms, the four-star combatant commanders typically preside two or three years.
The timings of their departures can depend on who is queued up behind them, awaiting their turn at a prestigious “joint” command. At some point, a sitting four-star has to make way for a budding four-star.
When the Pentagon announced that Gen. Rodriguez would replace Army Gen. Carter Ham as head of U.S. Africa Command, bloggers announced that Gen. Ham was sacked over the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that left an ambassador and three other Americans dead.
But reliable sources told The Times that there is no truth in the theory. The White House needed to find a joint posting for Gen. Rodriguez, a highly respected combat leader, after denying him the command in Afghanistan.
To boot, Gen. Ham is a White House favorite: He led the major in-house 2010 study that resulted in an Obama goal — lifting the ban on open gays in the ranks.
The same conspiracy theories enwrapped Gen. Mattis, a blunt-speaking warrior who led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The conjecture is that he is being ousted from U.S. Central Command for his hawkish views on striking Iran to disable its quest for nuclear weapons.
When Gen. Mattis is relieved by Army Gen. Lloyd Austin on March 27, he will have stayed in place two years, six months — about the average for CentCom.
Army Lt. Col. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told The Times that Gen. Mattis denies any rift with the White House over Iran.
“CoCom commanders serve at the whim of the president and the secretary of defense,” Col. Taylor said. “There is no right, wrong, early, late. There’s no set time line for when somebody takes over and somebody leaves. Now, if somebody took over a CoCom and three months later was removed, that would be a little strange.”
Afghan Says Force Backed by the C.I.A. Beat Him
New York Times By TAIMOOR SHAH and AZAM AHMED March 10, 2013
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The 29-year-old engineering student was standing outside his classroom here on Saturday morning when he said two pickup trucks full of armed men pulled up. The men, said to be members of a C.I.A.-backed Afghan strike force, grabbed him, tied his hands behind his back, draped a black hood over his head and drove him to an undisclosed location where, the student says, he was beaten and whipped.
The student’s daylong detention was cited by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at a news conference in Kabul, the capital, on Sunday as part of his justification for a ban announced later in the day on foreign forces from entering any Afghan school or university. He said other students had also been detained at the behest of American-controlled Afghan forces.
The complaint was part of barrage of public criticism that Mr. Karzai leveled at his American military allies during a visit to Afghanistan by the new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel.
The details of the episode were confirmed by Afghan officials here and in an interview with the student on Sunday, but they have not been confirmed or denied by the United States.
The student, Abdul Qayum, said the pickup trucks arrived at Kandahar University around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. As the men arrested him, he said, his classmates began yelling and throwing rocks, and demanded an explanation. The men fired shots to disperse the crowd.
Several students went to the provincial governor’s office to complain. “This behavior really made us sad and angry,” said the school’s chancellor, Hazrat Mir Totakhail. “This is an academic place, not a military barracks where you can enter with force and without contacting the authorities first.”
Mr. Qayum, who lives in a village that the Taliban frequently visit, said he was interrogated for hours at what Mr. Karzai called an American prison. The captors asked if he knew any Taliban commanders. They asked specifically about his neighbor, a farmer, and whether he could bring the man to them.
“I told them that just because the Taliban are coming in our village, seeking food and shelter and sitting with people, it doesn’t mean I am working for them,” Mr. Qayum said. “I told them if they find any sort of evidence that I am involved in any activities, big or small, then you are allowed to punish me.”
They punished him anyway, he said, punching him repeatedly and whipping his legs and back with a cable. He said they placed a blanket over his head and sat on him, making him feel like he was suffocating. For a moment, he said, when the blindfold was removed and the interrogators snapped a photograph of him, he believes he saw a foreigner.
The American-led military coalition here said it had no involvement in any such event. The C.I.A. could not be reached for comment.
The C.I.A. has trained several local forces to conduct counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, though details about these groups are scant. Afghan officials identified the group that took Mr. Qayum as the Kandahar Strike Force, which operates out of a compound north of Kandahar that was once the home of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader. The Kandahar Strike Force was once thought to be under the control of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother, who was assassinated in 2011 and was said to be on the C.I.A.’s payroll.
Mr. Qayum said he was taken around 10 p.m. to the provincial governor’s compound, where he met with officials, including the governor and the head of the National Directorate of Security. He later spoke to President Karzai in a phone call.
“He told me that I understand you are innocent and he says no one will harm you and go and continue your studies,” Mr. Qayum said. “I didn’t expect that he would talk to me.”
The episode seems to have struck a nerve with Mr. Karzai, a Kandahar native. He told a crowd of journalists at the presidential palace on Sunday that “something horrible happened,” adding that he worked until midnight to free Mr. Qayum.
“I found the student, and I talked to him last night,” Mr. Karzai said. “I took him out of the foreigners’ prison and told him that he was free.”
Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Azam Ahmed from Kabul, Afghanistan.
US Air Force stops reporting data on Afghanistan drone strikes
Reuters By David Alexander 10/03/2013
WASHINGTON - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.
The debate over the use of drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere was triggered in part by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA.
The Air Force Times said air force chiefs had started posting the drone data last October in an attempt to provide more detail on the use of drones in Afghanistan.
The University of Missouri's journalism school is the oldest in the country and now among the first to experiment with the new -- and controversial – drone technology. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.
The newspaper said the statistics were provided for November through January, but the February summary released on March 7 had a blank spot where the drone data had previously been listed.
"A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the air power provided" in Afghanistan, Central Command said in its statement.
"Protecting civilians remains at the very core of AFCENT's (Air Force Central Command's) mission," it said. "The use of all AFCENT aerial weapons are tightly restricted, meticulously planned, carefully supervised and coordinated, and applied by only qualified and authorized personnel."
The statement said the decision to stop reporting the drone strikes was taken with the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.
Brennan was sworn into office on Friday following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously.
Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens in the United States.
Karzai Insists Bagram Handover Will Happen This Week
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
President Hamid Karzai said the full transfer of Bagram prison from US to Afghan authority will be completed this week after the two countries failed again to meet the latest deadline set for March 9.
Karzai's office released a statement Sunday morning after the president met with the top US commander in Afghanistan Gen Joseph Dunford Saturday evening, saying that the handover will definitely happen this week.
"President Hamid Karzai and Nato/Isaf Commander Gen. Dunford agreed that the full transfer of Bagram prison, initially set for Saturday, March 9 will now take place during this week, allowing time for some of the remaining technical details concerning the handover to be resolved," the statement said.
It is understood that the latest stumbling block to the handover was Karzai objecting to the US still controlling aspects of prisoner releases.
Some political leaders have welcomed the US reluctance to give full authority to Afghan government in light of Karzai's partiality to releasing Taliban.
"One of Karzai's goals is to have no Taliban in prisons and have them released," Fazlurrahman Oria, National Coalition party member, told TOLOnews.
Hamidullah Farouqi, member of the Right and Justice party, said there are fears that such prisoner release plans would be swayed by personal interests.
"We should have doubts that these reactions [of releasing prisoners] are based on personal tastes and seeking political interests. Unfortunately, such reactions would be very dangerous," he said.
Gen Dunford has agreed to work with the Afghan government on the final details including the legal aspects required for the complete handover to take place this current week, Karzai's office said.
These details are believed to include the matter of prisoner release and detainment of foreign prisoners captured in Afghan-coalition operations.
The initial Bagram transfer agreement was signed one year ago and had a September 2012 deadline.
Karzai has repeatedly decried the US reluctance as an affront to Afghanistan's sovereignty. He stressed this point again in Sunday's statement, saying that all efforts must be made to make sure the handover happens this week so that Afghanistan's sovereignty can come into full exercise.
The agreement has come to the fore during the visit of newly-appointed US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel who arrived in Afghanistan on Friday.
Karzai had announced in a speech to Parliament last Wednesday that the full handover would happen Saturday, but on Saturday it was delayed over the disagreements.
Sources close to the matter told TOLOnews that President Hamid Karzai disagreed with five points in the memorandum of understanding, likely to be those related to foreign inmates and the US controlling the release of prisoners.
""We continue to work out the details on the transfer of the Detention Facility in Parwan to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."
"We respect Afghan sovereignty. We intend to proceed with the transfer once we have reached full agreement," US Forces spokesperson Col. Thomas Collins told TOLOnews Saturday.
As U.S. troops prepare to leave, they rush to teach Afghans to hunt for roadside bombs
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price Monday, March 11, 2013
QALAT, Afghanistan - Improvised bombs have killed more American troops in Afghanistan than anything else since the war here began 11 years ago, and they’ll remain a favored insurgent weapon against Afghan soldiers, police and civilians after U.S. forces end their combat mission next year.
That’s why U.S. advisers across Afghanistan are rushing to train hundreds of Afghan engineers to take over the crucial but often unsung task of running routine patrols to sweep the roads of bombs before large numbers of American soldiers start leaving this fall.
“Our conflict right now with the Taliban is only IEDs (improvised explosive devices), because they can’t fight us any other way, so to protect our troops we really need to be good at defeating bombs," said Capt. Muhammed Fahim, who commands one of the front-line Afghan engineer units that will perform “route clearance,” as the job is called.
Fahim’s, unit, part of the 2nd Brigade of the Afghan 205th Corps, works out of Camp Eagle, a major Afghan army base in Zabul province in the restive southeast corner of the country. They’ve already done some independent operations on their own but need more training. He says their skills now are about 40 percent of what they will need to operate on their own, but that within a few months they’ll be ready.
U.S. advisers are helping train two dozen such Afghan units, each with about 80 soldiers. Several units with other roles also are being trained in the job.
Half of the 24 of the Afghan route clearance companies already are running independent operations, four more will be by the end of March, and the rest should be ready in the next three months, said Lt. Col. Torrey DiCiro, who helps oversee Afghan army training for a multi-service task force led by the 555th Engineer Brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash.
The 555th’s task force is responsible for most of the current route clearing in Afghanistan. It’s training Afghan engineer units not only in that specialty but also in more traditional military engineering roles such as building bases, bridges and roads. The task force also is responsible for tearing down U.S. and NATO bases, or retooling them for handover to the Afghans as the coalition troops begin their drawdown.
The Afghan engineers face challenges the Americans don’t. For one, the Afghans won’t have the equipment the Americans do – massive bomb-resistant trucks and high-technology aids, such as ground-piercing radar or television cameras on giant arms to peer into culverts under roads, a popular place to plant large bombs.
They’ll also do the work despite an anemic supply chain and a disdain for maintenance and repair that often leaves them short of vehicles.
What they do have, their U.S. advisers say, is a kind of IED street smarts, a better chance at coaxing information from local residents, and the guts to hunt mines and bombs on foot with their eyes and simple metal detectors.
Several U.S. soldiers helping train the Afghans say those factors actually make the Afghans better at finding IEDs than their U.S. and NATO counterparts.
“The differences are pretty big in the way we’re equipped, but they do it all by eye and they can really pick out stuff,” said Sgt. Michael McCully of Pensacola, Fla., who is with the 870th Engineer Company of the Florida National Guard. The 870th and a sister unit, the Laurinburg, N.C.-based 151st Engineer Company of the North Carolina National Guard, clears bombs in Zabul province.
Col. Nicholas Katers, commander of the 555th Engineer Brigade, said he hears similar reports from U.S. advisers working with Afghans across the country.
“They don’t have the equipment we have, that’s true, but they have better skills at visual detection than we have, and they know the turf, and they know when something doesn’t look right,” Katers said. “And it’s their country, their culture, so they have better sources of information among the locals than we do.”
The Afghan soldiers say that before the U.S. and NATO forces leave, they need every minute of training they can get for the work, which is a perilous combination of menial day labor and a high-stakes chess match with the insurgents. The explosives and triggers are sometimes booby-trapped to foil any attempt to disarm them, and they come in an almost endless variety, with new types cropping up routinely.
“We’ve got some experience in this, and we deal with IEDs by our own ways, but I think we need more specialized training to learn the scientific way to deal with bombs,” said Asadullah, a stocky staff sergeant in Fahim’s unit who like many Afghans goes by one name.
At his side, a lanky, bearded soldier nodded agreement.
“The hardest part of this is all the different kinds of bombs,” said the soldier, Sgt. Subhanullah, who also uses just one name. “There are many types and every day that number is increasing, and we need more equipment, definitely, but the training is very important. We need all that we can get before the Americans leave.”
In various missions, he has helped destroy 20 improvised bombs. The only way to do the work, he says, is complete focus.
“In that time I am working with the bomb I am thinking only about that,” he said. “My feeling is only to eliminate it and save myself and my friends, but we are humans, so yes, in that time I am afraid.”
Among areas where the Afghans need improvement is how best to deal with bombs once they’re located, Staff Sgt. Brett McLamb, a North Carolina National Guard soldier from Newton Grove, N.C., said as he watched a group of Afghan engineers on a training patrol walk down a muddy road planted with various kinds of dummy bombs.
U.S. advisers fear that after the Afghan engineers begin operating on their own they’ll ignore their training and resort to previous methods, like simply cutting the wires used by insurgents to trigger the bombs and leaving the bombs in place. That lets the insurgents recover and reuse the bombs.
Or, the Americans fear, they’ll just shoot the bombs from a distance, rather than try to recover evidence that might lead to the bomb makers.
Advisers say the Afghans are good at executing missions but struggle with planning them. Paperwork to make sure parts and fuel are ordered properly often is wanting, the advisers say.
Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is a common one among Afghan security forces: broken trucks, often because of a disdain for routine maintenance.
“Really, if it wasn’t for maintenance problems, they’d be pretty close to being ready right now,” said Capt. Kevin Quigley, 25, of Germantown, Md., an adviser with the 3rd Infantry Division who works with Afghan troops at Camp Eagle.
Fahim’s route clearance company is still months from finishing its training, and it shows.
During one training session recently at Camp Eagle, an Afghan engineer found a buried simulated bomb trigger, then accidentally lay atop it when dropping down to dig around it, setting off an alarm that indicated that if the bomb had been real, it would have exploded. Another trying to mark the location of a trigger dropped a marker right on top of it, setting that one off.
Still, several U.S. advisers said the Afghans will be able to do the job soon. The next phase, which will start in a couple of weeks, will be working in the field – with real bombs.
“I think it’s going to be a good thing and I think they’re definitely ready for that part,” McCully said.
As for how good the Afghans will get, McCully said the goal is not perfection, but good enough.
“Maybe that’s not the best thing in the world,” he said, “but we’re only going to be here a finite time.”
The Afghans, meanwhile, are keenly aware that the gulf between perfect and simply good can be fatal.
“If we get perfect training and all the equipment that we need, we will be successful,” said Sgt. First Class Amenullah, a soldier in Fahim’s unit. “Otherwise it will be impossible to keep doing this."
Election Law Should Be Parliament's Priority: Political Leaders
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 10 March 2013
As Parliament returned from its winter break, political parties demanded Saturday that it put the approval of the election law and the independent commission law at the top of its agenda.
Only 13 months out from a crucial presidential election, the political leaders said any further delay will only further weaken the political process.
The head of the National Front is concerned that the government lacks the determination to have a transparent election.
"The delay in the approval of the two laws will create challenges for the election. The parliament should pay attention in this regard and not delay them anymore," National Front leader Ahmad Zia Massoud said.
The head of the National Coalition Dr Abdullah Abdullah believes that a transparent election will go a long way in helping the country's challenges and asked Parliament to take the laws seriously.
"I hope that once the parliament appoints the administrative board it starts working on these laws. They should select the board as soon as possible and not waste much time," Abdullah said.
The current parliamentary administrative board said that parliament will look at the laws after the new board is selected.
"The negotiations [of the government and the political parties] on the election law have been completed in all the parliamentary committees. These committees will have a joint meeting and then send it to a general session," parliament deputy secretary Abdul Sattar Khawasi said.
The passing of the election law has been fraught as parliament and senate disagree on the nature of an independent election commission, namely whether or not two foreign observers can be part of the Electoral Complaints Commission.
Iranian Sentenced to Death in Badghis for Spying
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
An Iranian citizen has been sentenced to death in the preliminary court of north-western Badghis province after being charged with spying for Iranian military, officials said Sunday.
According to the head of Badghis preliminary court, the accused entered Afghanistan illegally in February through Herat province and later went to Badghis, allegedly at the behest of the Iranian Consulate in Herat to provide them with confidential information on the Afghan and international military based in Badghis.
The man, nicknamed Mohammad Mohammadi, is a member of the intelligence of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, according to the Badghis attorney general.
The court heard from the prosecution that Mohammadi was sent to Badghis to work as a laborer. However, six days after arriving in Badghis, he was detained near the province's joint army post of Afghan National Army and Spanish forces in the Moqor district.
"This man confessed his crime while being investigated. we have enough proof," head of Badghis preliminary court Ferdaws Ahmad Fayez said. "We found on him two SIM cards, one is from Afghanistan and one from Iran. He has called Iran a several times."
Fayez said there is a sufficient amount of documents and proof that indicate Mohammadi has been sending military information from the area to Iranian officials.
"In accordance with articles of law, we sentenced this man to the highest punishment of execution," Fayez said.
The decision will need to be passed through the supreme court before an execution is carried out.
Second Vote to Select Parliament’s First Vice Speaker Fails
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
Lawmakers failed for a second day in a row to elect a first vice speaker of the lower house after no single candidate received enough votes to be appointed.
In the second day of polling for parliament's new administrative board, the vote for first vice speaker was between Abdul Hafiz Mansour and Obaidullah Klimzai. The process started about 9:00am and continued until 1:00pm, but neither candidate received sufficient votes.
Mansour received 87 votes and Klimzai 62 votes.
"Unfortunately we cannot select the candidates for the posts, so we will go to a new round," speaker of the house Abdulraouf Ibrahimi said Sunday.
MPs approved Urfanullah Urfan as the new deputy secretary of the house with 110 votes in favour.
On Saturday, the lawmakers first sitting session after the winter break, the vote for first vice speaker was between Mirwais Yasini and Abdulzahir Qadeer.
Qadeer received 90 votes and Yasini 99 votes - both insufficient numbers to be elected.
On Monday, in the next vote, two other MPs will be nominated for the position of first and second vice speakers.
The administrative board also includes a second vice speaker, a secretary and a deputy secretary.
Govt Restarts Expansion of Macrorayan Flats
TOLOnews.com By Zabiullah Jahanmal Sunday, 10 March 2013
The Council of Ministers has approved a government plan to expand the apartment blocks of Macroryan 4 neighbourhood up to the area of Kabul International Airport, the Ministry of Urban Development Affairs said Sunday.
The new blocks, said to include 15-storey buildings, will cost around half the current Macroryan apartment prices, and sold with an included option for purchase with long-term installments, officials said.
"We will try to construct these blocks above nine stories. All will have included heating and cooling systems," said engineer Ahmad Nawaz Bakhtiar, head of Housing Construction Enterprise at the Urban Development Ministry.
"They will be provided to people with prices up to US$500 per square meters, which is half of the market price," he added.
The new Macroryan blocks will be constructed in several phases, the housing construction officials said, adding that one of the key issues they are currently dealing with is acquiring people's properties who already have homes across the area.
"This project is in its preliminary stage. We will endeavor first to complete the acquisition of people's properties, following which we will do the design and construction," Bakhtiar said.
According to the housing construction enterprise, acquisitions will get underway in the next six months.
The new apartments will also include special blocks for diplomats as well, ministry officials added.
The project of expanding Macrorayan 4 began during the Soviet era but stopped after the collapse of President Najibullah's regime in 1992.
Afghan Investigators Use Torture in Interrogation: Lawyers
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
Lawyers representing political detainees in Afghanistan on Sunday warned that many of the country's prisons lack properly trained investigators who regularly question detainees using torture methods and some detainees are kept in prison without any judicial process – in itself, a form of torture.
Abdul Qawi Afzali, deputy head of Legal Aid Afghanistan and member of a group of lawyers representing detainees, said that some of the investigators do not even understand the definition of torture.
"There is still no clear definition of torture. These accused are tortured once detained; many are kept for up to four years with no clear fate. This issue is an example of torture," he said.
Lalgol Lal, also a member of the lawyers' representing detainees and head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, said that "the accused are not interrogated by trained people and the capacity of investigators is very low."
"We are ready to help the government over the matter," he added.
Afghanistan's prison chief rejected the comments as baseless.
"There is no such thing as torture at any organisations related to the Ministry of Interior Affairs. This is a true lie," Amir Mohammad Jamshid told TOLOnews.
However, an agreement has already been drafted for five government organistaions to cooperate with an investigation into the treatment of detainees.
The Attorney General and the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Centers were to sign an agreement on the matter, but it has been delayed.
"This agreement required the inclusion of the Ministries of Interior and Justice, as well as the head of the National Directorate of Security. Therefore a delegation has been formed to work on the matter and have all five organisations sign the agreement," said Rahmatullah Nazari, Deputy Attorney General.
The comments come amid efforts by the Afghan government to have full authority for the US-controlled Bagram prison handed over to Afghan forces.
It is understood there are about 24,000 prisoners in Afghanistan. The number includes those who have completed their sentences but who remained detained with no clear timeframe on their imprisonment.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
KABUL, March 11 (Reuters) - Two American soldiers were killed in a so-called insider attack when a person in an Afghan military uniform turned his weapon on U.S. and Afghan forces at a joint base in the restive east of the country, coalition forces said on Monday.
Three policemen and two Afghan army officers were also killed in the attack, said a senior police official.
The attack took place as a deadline expired for U.S. special forces to quit the eastern province of Wardak, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused them and Afghans working for them of overseeing torture and killings in the area.
An Afghan interior ministry official said the attack occurred in Jalriz district of Wardak. It was not immediately clear if it was directed at U.S. special forces.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who left Afghanistan early on Monday after a three-day visit, raised the sensitive issue of Wardak when he met Karzai.
U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses in Wardak.
Hagel sounded hopeful that a deal could be reached on their continued deployment, but acknowledged no breakthroughs were made in his talks with Karzai.
Afghans are divided over their expulsion, saying the departure of the U.S. special forces could leave a vacuum for insurgents to fill, which would pose a security risk for nearby Kabul.
Incidents involving Afghan security forces turning their weapons on the NATO-led forces who train them and fight Taliban insurgents have increased sharply over the past year.
The insider, or green-on-blue, attacks have seriously eroded trust between coalition and Afghan forces, who are under mounting pressure to contain the insurgency before most foreign troops leave by the end of next year. (Reporting by Jeremy Laurence and Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Two local Taliban leaders detained in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Two local Taliban leaders and three suspected insurgents have been arrested in operations in different Afghan provinces, in the latest raids part of the counter- insurgency campaign in the war-hit country, the coalition forces said Monday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader and detained one other insurgent during an operation in Nawah-ye Barakzai district, Helmand province, today," said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a press release.
The leader is accused of coordinating ambushes against Afghan and coalition forces and is believed to have a history of directing subordinate fighters to engage in attacks utilizing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rocket-propelled grenades and various other types of weaponry, it added.
The security force also seized a stockpile of IED-making materials as a result of the operation in the province, 555 km south of Afghan capital of Kabul.
In neighboring Kandahar province, 450 km south of Kabul, the joint forces arrested a Taliban leader and detained one other insurgent Monday morning.
"The leader is believed to be an IED specialist with a cell of fighters under his command."
Earlier in the day, they also arrested an insurgent in charges of having links with a Taliban leader in Baraki Barak district, Logar province, 60 km south of Kabul.
"The leader is alleged to be responsible for directing insurgent activity in Baraki Barak. He is also an influential figure in the Taliban network there, ordering IED operations in addition to direct and indirect fire attacks."
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, has yet to make comments.
The Afghan forces in partnership with ISAF troops have intensified operations against Taliban and other militant groups recently. But the insurgent groups responded by bombings.
On Saturday, Taliban carried out two suicide bombings in Kabul and eastern Khost province killing one policeman and 20 civilians, including a woman and eight children.
Karzai Inflames U.S. Tensions
Afghan President's Claim Taliban Kill 'in Service to America' Clouds Hagel Visit
Wall Street Journal By DION NISSENBAUM And YAROSLAV TROFIMOV March 10, 2013
KABUL - America's fraught ties with Afghanistan suffered a jarring blow Sunday, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai said during a visit by the new U.S. defense secretary that the Taliban were killing Afghan civilians "in service to America."
The remarks, in a televised speech hours before Mr. Karzai's meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, capped a series of confrontations between the Afghan president and the U.S. over his demands to assert Afghan sovereignty and curtail American military operations.
Mr. Karzai met Mr. Hagel a day after suspected Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 18 people at the Ministry of Defense in Kabul and in the eastern province of Khost.
In his address, Mr. Karzai said the U.S. doesn't want to leave the country after the NATO coalition's mandate expires at the end of 2014 because it covets Afghan resources and is talking with Taliban leaders behind his back.
"Taliban are every day in talks with America, but in Kabul and Khost they set off bombs to show strength to America," Mr. Karzai said. "The bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost yesterday were not a show of power to America, but were in service to America It was in the service of foreigners not withdrawing from Afghanistan."
U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who took command of coalition forces last month, called Mr. Karzai's charges "categorically false."
"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would ever be to our advantage," he said.
Mr. Karzai's remarks blindsided American officials who had hoped to use Mr. Hagel's two-day visit, his first overseas trip as defense secretary, to shore up fragile relations with the Afghan president as the U.S. ends its longest foreign war.
Though most of the 66,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan are slated to go home next year, the U.S. hopes to leave behind an advisory and counterterrorism force that would support the Afghan government after 2014.
American defense officials now have to assess how much damage Mr. Karzai's allegations will have on their plans, already threatened by discord over whether to grant immunity from prosecution to U.S. troops and by the Afghan leader's refusal to negotiate with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The war against the Taliban has claimed the lives of 2,179 American service members since 2001, says the casualty tracking website icasualties.org. While the U.S. has held talks with the Taliban in the past, contacts were stalled by the Taliban's refusal to negotiate directly with Kabul.
Mr. Karzai's speech on Sunday sparked some frank exchanges during Mr. Karzai's dinner at the presidential palace with Mr. Hagel, Gen. Dunford and other officials from both nations, U.S. officials said. Mr. Hagel "struck the right balance between expressing support for Afghanistan and strongly pushing back on wildly inaccurate claims," one U.S. official said.
After the dinner, Mr. Hagel offered a muted public response to Mr. Karzai's comments that came in contrast to the forceful defense from Gen. Dunford. "I told the president it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban," Mr. Hagel told reporters.
The defense secretary suggested that the Afghan president might have been baiting America to cultivate support from anti-Western forces in the politically fractured country. Mr. Karzai's term expires next year, and the field of potential successors is wide open, ranging from his brother and other allies to bitter political foes. "I was once a politician, so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under, so I would hope that, again, we can move forward—and I have confidence that we will," Mr. Hagel said.
The Afghan president's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said the Afghan leader used the occasion to complain about civilian casualties of U.S. operations and the detentions of Afghan citizens.
In particular, Mr. Faizi said, Mr. Karzai raised the issue of an engineering student who, he said, had been seized illegally at Kandahar University by an Afghan militia working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Karzai mentioned in his speech that he was up until as late as midnight on Saturday to win the student's release; on Sunday, he issued a decree banning foreign forces from entering universities and detaining Afghan students.
The CIA declined to comment on the matter.
"Such incidents, if they continue, are a clear breach of Afghan national sovereignty, and will create anger among the people," Mr. Faizi said. "Any kind of bilateral relations should be based on respect of sovereignty of the two nations."
Mr. Karzai gained power following the U.S. ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, and initially enjoyed close ties with the U.S., holding weekly videoconference calls with President George W. Bush.
These relations deteriorated during the 2009 Afghan presidential elections, after which Mr. Karzai accused some Obama administration officials of scheming to oust him.
In previous statements, Mr. Karzai also alleged that the U.S. was secretly flying insurgents into northern Afghanistan in helicopters, as part of a plan to destabilize the country, and once even threatened to join the Taliban himself.
Mr. Karzai and Mr. Hagel have a strained personal history. In 2008, Mr. Hagel joined fellow Senators Joe Biden and John Kerry for a turbulent dinner in which they pressed the Afghan president to seriously tackle corruption in his government. When Mr. Karzai dismissed the concerns as unfounded, Mr. Biden stormed out of the meeting, throwing down his napkin.
Mr. Hagel's restrained comments on the Afghan president Sunday suggested that U.S. leaders recognize that they need Mr. Karzai's cooperation to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops and equipment. Military analysts said Mr. Karzai might be trying to challenge Mr. Hagel, who has orders from President Barack Obama to quickly end the war.
"President Karzai has a history of testing new [coalition] commanders to see what the response is to his demands," said Kimberly Kagan, founder of the Institute for the Study of War who has consulted with the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials have envisaged that NATO allies would make up a large part of the residual force after 2014. Mr. Karzai, however, on Sunday reiterated his opposition to any deal with NATO as a whole, saying nations wanting to keep troops here would need to negotiate directly with Kabul.
"If you want to stay beyond 2014, all of you separately need to sign agreements with the Afghan people," Mr. Karzai said Sunday. "Limited numbers, in a location we chose and under our conditions and framework, with respect for our laws, our sovereignty, our traditions and culture."
Few, if any, Western allies would consider contributing troops outside the NATO framework, diplomats say. "They want us out, that is for sure," a Western official said. "They feel that we are part of the problem."
Despite these tensions, Gen. Dunford defended U.S.-Afghan relations, especially between military leaders of the two countries, as dynamic partnerships that can be the "shock absorbers" through turbulent times. "We don't have a broken relationship," he said. "We don't have a lack of trust. We have a relationship that can actually absorb this tension as we work through difficult issues."
But Mr. Karzai's Sunday speech was only one such shock to the relationship. It followed the U.S.'s abrupt cancellation of its planned handover of the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram Air Field, and Mr. Karzai's demand that U.S. Special Operations forces leave the strategic province of Wardak near Kabul.
Following Mr. Karzai's speech, Mr. Hagel also canceled a planned joint news conference with the Afghan leader at the presidential palace. U.S. officials said this was because of security concerns that rippled across Kabul in the wake of Saturday's bombings.
U.S. bases in the capital were on heightened alert. Mr. Hagel previously canceled scheduled visits to the Ministry of Defense—site of Saturday's Kabul bombing—and the Interior Ministry. Instead, he met with the two ministers at alternative locations in the city. —Habib Khan Totakhil, Julian Barnes and Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
Afghanistan: Should we stay or should we go?
Jean MacKenzie March 11, 2013 13:08 GlobalPost
Analysis: As Karzai insinuates Washington-Taliban collusion, fault lines deepen in an already troubled relationship.
BUZZARDS BAY, Mass. — Afghan President Hamid Karzai certainly knows how to ruin a party. As newly anointed US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made his maiden voyage to Kabul last week, Afghanistan's president all but accused the United States of being in cahoots with the Taliban.
At a televised press conference in Kabul on Sunday, Karzai condemned Saturday's suicide bombings in Kabul and Khost that killed at least 19 people. The Taliban claimed “credit” for the attacks, saying it had wanted to send a message to the defense secretary.
But Karzai was not content with diplomatic niceties. Instead he lashed out at his US allies, saying they and the Taliban were jointly trying to paint a black picture of what would happen in Afghanistan once the US forces withdraw.
The US combat mission in Afghanistan is winding down, with the last troops scheduled to leave by the end of 2014.
“Yesterday’s bombings in Kabul and Khost didn’t aim to show Taliban’s strength — indeed, they served America,” said Karzai. “By those bombings they served the 2014 negative slogan … These bombings aimed to prolong the presence of the American forces in Afghanistan.”
The Afghan president also accused the US of holding secret talks with the Taliban behind his back, something both Washington and the Taliban have repeatedly denied.
US Marine General Joseph Dunford, who heads the coalition forces in Afghanistan, called Karzai's charges "categorically false."
"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would ever be to our advantage," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hagel himself was a bit more muted, while giving no ground on Karzai’s somewhat bizarre accusations.
"I was once a politician,” said the former Nebraska senator, “so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under, so I would hope that, again, we can move forward — and I have confidence that we will."
Karzai’s latest tantrum could be a reaction to the US cancellation of a promised handover of Bagram Prison that was supposed to take place on Saturday.
He had been demanding full control of detention centers in Afghanistan for years. During his summit in Washington with President Barack Obama in January, he touted the handover agreement as one of his proudest accomplishments:
“Concerning Afghan sovereignty, we agreed on the complete return of detention centers and detainees to Afghan sovereignty, and that this will be implemented soon after my return to Afghanistan,” said Karzai in a televised press conference. “We also discussed all aspects of transition to Afghan governance and security.”
But problems have persisted ahead of the handover. The US is expected to make sure Karzai does not release detainees Washington deems to be a continuing danger; Karzai is expected to try to avoid interference from his major ally in what he describes as an important issue of Afghan sovereignty.
Last week, he told a joint session of the Afghan parliament that as soon as he had full control of the prison, he would begin to release detainees.
“We know many innocent people are being held there. We would free them, despite criticism,” he said.
Karzai refused to agree to the Americans’ demands that they be allowed a virtual veto over the release of prisoners. The White House has been fighting with Congress over the handover, and did not want Karzai’s words to spark another round of correspondence similar to the one between Obama and Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in February.
“I am particularly concerned about the disposition of detainees who continue to represent an enduring and continuous threat both to our US forces on the ground in Afghanistan as well as to US national security,” McKeon wrote. He emphasized it would be “completely unacceptable” for the US to fail to maintain custody of such prisoners.
The US government insists these are just “minor hiccups” in the agreement over the prisoner handover, but Karzai’s intemperate outburst on Sunday might throw a spanner in the works.
All of this has cast a long shadow over Hagel’s visit, and is expected to further complicate discussions over the size and shape of any residual US force to be left in Afghanistan after 2014.
In January, White House officials indicated it was considering a “zero option” but military sources reportedly have advised keeping a significant number of troops in country.
Gen. James Mattis, of the US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week he envisioned an overall force of 20,000 in Afghanistan post-2014, of which more than half — 13,600 — would come from the US.
This is not the first time the notoriously volatile Karzai has gone off the rails.
In years past, he has alternately threatened to declare war on NATO, vowed to join the Taliban, and blamed the US for the corruption that permeates his administration.
Whenever challenged, the Afghan president’s first reaction seems to be to point the finger right back at his accusers.
In February, Karzai ordered US Special Forces to leave Maidan Wardak, a province that serves as the gateway to Kabul, amid accusations that Afghan forces trained by the US, and perhaps American forces themselves, had been involved in torture and abuse of Afghans.
This came after a United Nations report documenting widespread torture and abuse within Afghan prisons by Afghan authorities.
Karzai may have reason to feel a bit insecure in his relationship with the US at the moment. He does not enjoy the same warm and indulgent connection with the Obama administration as he seemed to have with the team around George W. Bush, which virtually installed him as the leader of Afghanistan in 2001.
In a now famous dinner in Kabul in February 2008, three US senators tried to persuade Karzai to tackle corruption within his government. The Afghan president denied corruption was a serious problem, prompting the head of the delegation to throw down his napkin, say “this dinner is over,” and stride from the room, accompanied by his colleagues.
The napkin thrower is now the vice president, Joe Biden; his companions on the trip were Massachsuetts Sen. John Kerry, now secretary of state, and Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, now defense secretary.
Karzai’s push-pull tactics are likely to inflame an already divisive debate within the US about the continued American presence in Afghanistan.
After 12 years of blood and sacrifice, in which more than 2,000 US soldiers have died and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent with little clear effect, the American people are tired of the war. President Barack Obama has staked much of his reputation on bringing the troops home and extricating the US from the seemingly endless conflict.
Karzai’s accusations that the US is intent on prolonging its presence in Afghanistan appear wildly at odds with what some see as a mad rush for the door.
And while the Afghan president may complain about getting the US troops out of his country, many Afghans worry about what will happen once the foreign forces leave. Officials in both countries pay much lip service to the battle readiness of Afghan security forces, but even the Pentagon reportedly has doubts the Afghans will be able to step into the breach when the foreign troops clear out.
On Monday, a fresh insider attack by an individual in an Afghan army uniform in the Wardak province killed two US troops and a number of Afghans.
Still, in addition to security concerns, there is fear of economic collapse. Much of Afghanistan’s economy relies on international aid, and investors are wary of the post-withdrawal environment.
For now, all sides seem intent on smoothing things over and trying to move forward. But a very long and perilous road stretches between now and the end of 2014.
Revolving door of generals takes Afghanistan command
Leadership post unstable at heart of war on terror
The Washington Times By Rowan Scarborough Sunday, March 10, 2013
When Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford took command of the war in Afghanistan on Feb. 10, he succeeded a line of hard-luck officers who had succumbed to scandal or felt the White House’s sting over requests for more troops.
President Obama has changed top commanders in Afghanistan — which he says is the heart of the war on terrorism — five times in less than five years. Retired officers say this is some kind of record for hiring and firing or shifting four-star officers in a major theater of war.
In contrast, the Iraq War required four, four-star commanders, starting in 2004, over 71/2 years. The last commander served only a year because his job was to oversee the U.S. troop exit, which was completed in December 2011.
“We’re trying to do too many missions with too few forces in Afghanistan,” retired Gen. Ronald Griffith, a former vice chief of the Army, told The Washington Times. “I guess the way you deal with that, if you’re in Washington, is you either change the commander or you change the strategy.”
Retired ArmyGen. Barry McCaffrey, who led a division that ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, called the rapid turnover of generals “a huge mistake.” Compounding the problem, he said, is that other allied nations leave their commanders in Afghanistan for even a shorter time, sometimes just six months.
“We should have kept a team of senior people together in Afghanistan for five years at a time,” Gen. McCaffrey told The Times. “What kind of medium-complexity business would continually shuffle the leadership? All this turnover at the top had a detrimental effect on the broad direction of the war.”
The parade of generals in and out of Kabul began in 2009, when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced the firing of ArmyGen. David D. McKiernan after one year.
The stated reason: Mr. Gates wanted new thinking on counter-Taliban operations that he did not see in the conventional Army background of Gen. McKiernan, a big player in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His Army colleagues said the general was in disfavor for wanting more boots on the ground at a time when Mr. Obama wanted to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“David McKiernan, in my judgment, told them what he needed to do the job with,” Gen. Griffith said. “And it probably made them uncomfortable.”
CNN reported that Gen. McKiernan said at his retirement ceremony: “I was dismayed, disappointed and more than a little embarrassed.”
The search for stability
Next: ArmyGen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a career special operations warrior who hunted down al Qaeda leaders in Iraq. With Gen. McChrystal came a new war strategy and, like Gen. McKiernan, a request for more troops, something Mr. Obama partially met.
Gen. McChrystal lasted only a year. He allowed a Rolling Stone reporter to be embedded with him and his staff, and the ensuing article quoted them as making disparaging remarks about the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Gen. McChrystal was fired.
Analysts said at the time that the command in Afghanistan needed stability with its next leader. The command did not get that stability.
In a scramble, the White House turned to ArmyGen. David H. Petraeus. As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama criticized Gen. Petraeus for defending the 2007 surge of U.S. troops into Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus remained in Kabul for a year to implement a complex strategy that had American troops working side by side with Afghans to take back the villages.
In a surprise move, as the presidential election moved closer, Mr. Obama installed Gen. Petraeus, a charismatic leader coveted by some Republicans as a candidate, into the lower-profile job of CIA director.
“I have no knowledge he had ever had any political goals,” Gen. Griffith said. “He would have denied he had any political goals. I’m not sure the Obama administration did not see it otherwise.”
Said a Petraeus friend: “Petraeus should have been left in place. They wanted him off the stage.”
Gen. Petraeus last year resigned as CIA director over an extramarital affair.
In Afghanistan, Gen. Petraeus was succeeded by Marine Gen. John Allen, deputy chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Persian Gulf area.
If the NATO command thought this choice would bring a dose of stability, it was wrong again: The White House surprised Washington by saying that his command would be cut short by a move to Brussels as NATO’s supreme commander.
Gen. Allen, however, got caught up in the Petraeus scandal over an exchange of emails with a married Florida socialite, Jill Kelley, and he opted not to take the NATO job. Fox News reported that the White House pushed him into retirement.
Gen. Dunford relieved Gen. Allen of the Afghanistan command on Feb. 10, after having served as assistant Marine commandant.
‘Withdrawal strategy’ decision
It was another head-scratcher in the military retirement community: Gen. Dunford, an Iraq veteran, never served in the 11-year-old Afghanistan War, and there were plenty of other generals who had.
The Times reported that the Army had endorsed Gen. David Rodriguez, who ran day-to-day operations in Afghanistan, to succeed Gen. Allen, but the White House preferred Gen. Dunford.
Retired generals speculate that the Obama administration settled on Gen. Dunford because it believed it would have an easier time in pressing for further troop cuts in Afghanistan with him as the top commander.
In a nine-page analysis of Afghanistan, Gen. McCaffrey said the early planned shift of Gen. Allen to NATO and the passing-over of Gen. Rodriguez have meaning.
“This is a ‘withdrawal strategy’ personnel decision,” he wrote.
The president has announced that 34,000 troops will leave Afghanistan this year after the Taliban “fighting season” ends in the fall, leaving about 30,000 troops.
Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, U.S. Central Command chief, has recommended that 13,600 troops stay after 2014, when most international troops are expected to leave the country.
The high turnover rate in leadership in Kabul perhaps explains why the blogosphere explodes with conspiracy theories when four-stars are replaced at other commands.
There is no exact science for replacing the chiefs of the so-called geographic combatant commands, such as Central, Pacific and European.
Unlike the service chiefs, who serve for four years, and the Joint Chiefs chairman, who normally stays for two, two-year terms, the four-star combatant commanders typically preside two or three years.
The timings of their departures can depend on who is queued up behind them, awaiting their turn at a prestigious “joint” command. At some point, a sitting four-star has to make way for a budding four-star.
When the Pentagon announced that Gen. Rodriguez would replace Army Gen. Carter Ham as head of U.S. Africa Command, bloggers announced that Gen. Ham was sacked over the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that left an ambassador and three other Americans dead.
But reliable sources told The Times that there is no truth in the theory. The White House needed to find a joint posting for Gen. Rodriguez, a highly respected combat leader, after denying him the command in Afghanistan.
To boot, Gen. Ham is a White House favorite: He led the major in-house 2010 study that resulted in an Obama goal — lifting the ban on open gays in the ranks.
The same conspiracy theories enwrapped Gen. Mattis, a blunt-speaking warrior who led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The conjecture is that he is being ousted from U.S. Central Command for his hawkish views on striking Iran to disable its quest for nuclear weapons.
When Gen. Mattis is relieved by Army Gen. Lloyd Austin on March 27, he will have stayed in place two years, six months — about the average for CentCom.
Army Lt. Col. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told The Times that Gen. Mattis denies any rift with the White House over Iran.
“CoCom commanders serve at the whim of the president and the secretary of defense,” Col. Taylor said. “There is no right, wrong, early, late. There’s no set time line for when somebody takes over and somebody leaves. Now, if somebody took over a CoCom and three months later was removed, that would be a little strange.”
Afghan Says Force Backed by the C.I.A. Beat Him
New York Times By TAIMOOR SHAH and AZAM AHMED March 10, 2013
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The 29-year-old engineering student was standing outside his classroom here on Saturday morning when he said two pickup trucks full of armed men pulled up. The men, said to be members of a C.I.A.-backed Afghan strike force, grabbed him, tied his hands behind his back, draped a black hood over his head and drove him to an undisclosed location where, the student says, he was beaten and whipped.
The student’s daylong detention was cited by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at a news conference in Kabul, the capital, on Sunday as part of his justification for a ban announced later in the day on foreign forces from entering any Afghan school or university. He said other students had also been detained at the behest of American-controlled Afghan forces.
The complaint was part of barrage of public criticism that Mr. Karzai leveled at his American military allies during a visit to Afghanistan by the new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel.
The details of the episode were confirmed by Afghan officials here and in an interview with the student on Sunday, but they have not been confirmed or denied by the United States.
The student, Abdul Qayum, said the pickup trucks arrived at Kandahar University around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. As the men arrested him, he said, his classmates began yelling and throwing rocks, and demanded an explanation. The men fired shots to disperse the crowd.
Several students went to the provincial governor’s office to complain. “This behavior really made us sad and angry,” said the school’s chancellor, Hazrat Mir Totakhail. “This is an academic place, not a military barracks where you can enter with force and without contacting the authorities first.”
Mr. Qayum, who lives in a village that the Taliban frequently visit, said he was interrogated for hours at what Mr. Karzai called an American prison. The captors asked if he knew any Taliban commanders. They asked specifically about his neighbor, a farmer, and whether he could bring the man to them.
“I told them that just because the Taliban are coming in our village, seeking food and shelter and sitting with people, it doesn’t mean I am working for them,” Mr. Qayum said. “I told them if they find any sort of evidence that I am involved in any activities, big or small, then you are allowed to punish me.”
They punished him anyway, he said, punching him repeatedly and whipping his legs and back with a cable. He said they placed a blanket over his head and sat on him, making him feel like he was suffocating. For a moment, he said, when the blindfold was removed and the interrogators snapped a photograph of him, he believes he saw a foreigner.
The American-led military coalition here said it had no involvement in any such event. The C.I.A. could not be reached for comment.
The C.I.A. has trained several local forces to conduct counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, though details about these groups are scant. Afghan officials identified the group that took Mr. Qayum as the Kandahar Strike Force, which operates out of a compound north of Kandahar that was once the home of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader. The Kandahar Strike Force was once thought to be under the control of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother, who was assassinated in 2011 and was said to be on the C.I.A.’s payroll.
Mr. Qayum said he was taken around 10 p.m. to the provincial governor’s compound, where he met with officials, including the governor and the head of the National Directorate of Security. He later spoke to President Karzai in a phone call.
“He told me that I understand you are innocent and he says no one will harm you and go and continue your studies,” Mr. Qayum said. “I didn’t expect that he would talk to me.”
The episode seems to have struck a nerve with Mr. Karzai, a Kandahar native. He told a crowd of journalists at the presidential palace on Sunday that “something horrible happened,” adding that he worked until midnight to free Mr. Qayum.
“I found the student, and I talked to him last night,” Mr. Karzai said. “I took him out of the foreigners’ prison and told him that he was free.”
Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Azam Ahmed from Kabul, Afghanistan.
US Air Force stops reporting data on Afghanistan drone strikes
Reuters By David Alexander 10/03/2013
WASHINGTON - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.
The debate over the use of drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere was triggered in part by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to nominate his chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, an architect of the drone campaign, as the new director of the CIA.
The Air Force Times said air force chiefs had started posting the drone data last October in an attempt to provide more detail on the use of drones in Afghanistan.
The University of Missouri's journalism school is the oldest in the country and now among the first to experiment with the new -- and controversial – drone technology. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.
The newspaper said the statistics were provided for November through January, but the February summary released on March 7 had a blank spot where the drone data had previously been listed.
"A variety of multi-role platforms provide ground commanders in Afghanistan with close air support capabilities, and it was determined that presenting the weapons release data as a whole better reflects the air power provided" in Afghanistan, Central Command said in its statement.
"Protecting civilians remains at the very core of AFCENT's (Air Force Central Command's) mission," it said. "The use of all AFCENT aerial weapons are tightly restricted, meticulously planned, carefully supervised and coordinated, and applied by only qualified and authorized personnel."
The statement said the decision to stop reporting the drone strikes was taken with the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.
Brennan was sworn into office on Friday following a protracted confirmation battle that saw Senator Rand Paul attempt to block a vote on the nomination with a technical maneuver called a filibuster, in which he tried to prevent a vote by talking continuously.
Paul held the Senate floor for more than 12 hours while talking mainly about drones, expressing concern that Obama's administration might use the aircraft to target U.S. citizens in the United States.
Karzai Insists Bagram Handover Will Happen This Week
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
President Hamid Karzai said the full transfer of Bagram prison from US to Afghan authority will be completed this week after the two countries failed again to meet the latest deadline set for March 9.
Karzai's office released a statement Sunday morning after the president met with the top US commander in Afghanistan Gen Joseph Dunford Saturday evening, saying that the handover will definitely happen this week.
"President Hamid Karzai and Nato/Isaf Commander Gen. Dunford agreed that the full transfer of Bagram prison, initially set for Saturday, March 9 will now take place during this week, allowing time for some of the remaining technical details concerning the handover to be resolved," the statement said.
It is understood that the latest stumbling block to the handover was Karzai objecting to the US still controlling aspects of prisoner releases.
Some political leaders have welcomed the US reluctance to give full authority to Afghan government in light of Karzai's partiality to releasing Taliban.
"One of Karzai's goals is to have no Taliban in prisons and have them released," Fazlurrahman Oria, National Coalition party member, told TOLOnews.
Hamidullah Farouqi, member of the Right and Justice party, said there are fears that such prisoner release plans would be swayed by personal interests.
"We should have doubts that these reactions [of releasing prisoners] are based on personal tastes and seeking political interests. Unfortunately, such reactions would be very dangerous," he said.
Gen Dunford has agreed to work with the Afghan government on the final details including the legal aspects required for the complete handover to take place this current week, Karzai's office said.
These details are believed to include the matter of prisoner release and detainment of foreign prisoners captured in Afghan-coalition operations.
The initial Bagram transfer agreement was signed one year ago and had a September 2012 deadline.
Karzai has repeatedly decried the US reluctance as an affront to Afghanistan's sovereignty. He stressed this point again in Sunday's statement, saying that all efforts must be made to make sure the handover happens this week so that Afghanistan's sovereignty can come into full exercise.
The agreement has come to the fore during the visit of newly-appointed US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel who arrived in Afghanistan on Friday.
Karzai had announced in a speech to Parliament last Wednesday that the full handover would happen Saturday, but on Saturday it was delayed over the disagreements.
Sources close to the matter told TOLOnews that President Hamid Karzai disagreed with five points in the memorandum of understanding, likely to be those related to foreign inmates and the US controlling the release of prisoners.
""We continue to work out the details on the transfer of the Detention Facility in Parwan to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."
"We respect Afghan sovereignty. We intend to proceed with the transfer once we have reached full agreement," US Forces spokesperson Col. Thomas Collins told TOLOnews Saturday.
As U.S. troops prepare to leave, they rush to teach Afghans to hunt for roadside bombs
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price Monday, March 11, 2013
QALAT, Afghanistan - Improvised bombs have killed more American troops in Afghanistan than anything else since the war here began 11 years ago, and they’ll remain a favored insurgent weapon against Afghan soldiers, police and civilians after U.S. forces end their combat mission next year.
That’s why U.S. advisers across Afghanistan are rushing to train hundreds of Afghan engineers to take over the crucial but often unsung task of running routine patrols to sweep the roads of bombs before large numbers of American soldiers start leaving this fall.
“Our conflict right now with the Taliban is only IEDs (improvised explosive devices), because they can’t fight us any other way, so to protect our troops we really need to be good at defeating bombs," said Capt. Muhammed Fahim, who commands one of the front-line Afghan engineer units that will perform “route clearance,” as the job is called.
Fahim’s, unit, part of the 2nd Brigade of the Afghan 205th Corps, works out of Camp Eagle, a major Afghan army base in Zabul province in the restive southeast corner of the country. They’ve already done some independent operations on their own but need more training. He says their skills now are about 40 percent of what they will need to operate on their own, but that within a few months they’ll be ready.
U.S. advisers are helping train two dozen such Afghan units, each with about 80 soldiers. Several units with other roles also are being trained in the job.
Half of the 24 of the Afghan route clearance companies already are running independent operations, four more will be by the end of March, and the rest should be ready in the next three months, said Lt. Col. Torrey DiCiro, who helps oversee Afghan army training for a multi-service task force led by the 555th Engineer Brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash.
The 555th’s task force is responsible for most of the current route clearing in Afghanistan. It’s training Afghan engineer units not only in that specialty but also in more traditional military engineering roles such as building bases, bridges and roads. The task force also is responsible for tearing down U.S. and NATO bases, or retooling them for handover to the Afghans as the coalition troops begin their drawdown.
The Afghan engineers face challenges the Americans don’t. For one, the Afghans won’t have the equipment the Americans do – massive bomb-resistant trucks and high-technology aids, such as ground-piercing radar or television cameras on giant arms to peer into culverts under roads, a popular place to plant large bombs.
They’ll also do the work despite an anemic supply chain and a disdain for maintenance and repair that often leaves them short of vehicles.
What they do have, their U.S. advisers say, is a kind of IED street smarts, a better chance at coaxing information from local residents, and the guts to hunt mines and bombs on foot with their eyes and simple metal detectors.
Several U.S. soldiers helping train the Afghans say those factors actually make the Afghans better at finding IEDs than their U.S. and NATO counterparts.
“The differences are pretty big in the way we’re equipped, but they do it all by eye and they can really pick out stuff,” said Sgt. Michael McCully of Pensacola, Fla., who is with the 870th Engineer Company of the Florida National Guard. The 870th and a sister unit, the Laurinburg, N.C.-based 151st Engineer Company of the North Carolina National Guard, clears bombs in Zabul province.
Col. Nicholas Katers, commander of the 555th Engineer Brigade, said he hears similar reports from U.S. advisers working with Afghans across the country.
“They don’t have the equipment we have, that’s true, but they have better skills at visual detection than we have, and they know the turf, and they know when something doesn’t look right,” Katers said. “And it’s their country, their culture, so they have better sources of information among the locals than we do.”
The Afghan soldiers say that before the U.S. and NATO forces leave, they need every minute of training they can get for the work, which is a perilous combination of menial day labor and a high-stakes chess match with the insurgents. The explosives and triggers are sometimes booby-trapped to foil any attempt to disarm them, and they come in an almost endless variety, with new types cropping up routinely.
“We’ve got some experience in this, and we deal with IEDs by our own ways, but I think we need more specialized training to learn the scientific way to deal with bombs,” said Asadullah, a stocky staff sergeant in Fahim’s unit who like many Afghans goes by one name.
At his side, a lanky, bearded soldier nodded agreement.
“The hardest part of this is all the different kinds of bombs,” said the soldier, Sgt. Subhanullah, who also uses just one name. “There are many types and every day that number is increasing, and we need more equipment, definitely, but the training is very important. We need all that we can get before the Americans leave.”
In various missions, he has helped destroy 20 improvised bombs. The only way to do the work, he says, is complete focus.
“In that time I am working with the bomb I am thinking only about that,” he said. “My feeling is only to eliminate it and save myself and my friends, but we are humans, so yes, in that time I am afraid.”
Among areas where the Afghans need improvement is how best to deal with bombs once they’re located, Staff Sgt. Brett McLamb, a North Carolina National Guard soldier from Newton Grove, N.C., said as he watched a group of Afghan engineers on a training patrol walk down a muddy road planted with various kinds of dummy bombs.
U.S. advisers fear that after the Afghan engineers begin operating on their own they’ll ignore their training and resort to previous methods, like simply cutting the wires used by insurgents to trigger the bombs and leaving the bombs in place. That lets the insurgents recover and reuse the bombs.
Or, the Americans fear, they’ll just shoot the bombs from a distance, rather than try to recover evidence that might lead to the bomb makers.
Advisers say the Afghans are good at executing missions but struggle with planning them. Paperwork to make sure parts and fuel are ordered properly often is wanting, the advisers say.
Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is a common one among Afghan security forces: broken trucks, often because of a disdain for routine maintenance.
“Really, if it wasn’t for maintenance problems, they’d be pretty close to being ready right now,” said Capt. Kevin Quigley, 25, of Germantown, Md., an adviser with the 3rd Infantry Division who works with Afghan troops at Camp Eagle.
Fahim’s route clearance company is still months from finishing its training, and it shows.
During one training session recently at Camp Eagle, an Afghan engineer found a buried simulated bomb trigger, then accidentally lay atop it when dropping down to dig around it, setting off an alarm that indicated that if the bomb had been real, it would have exploded. Another trying to mark the location of a trigger dropped a marker right on top of it, setting that one off.
Still, several U.S. advisers said the Afghans will be able to do the job soon. The next phase, which will start in a couple of weeks, will be working in the field – with real bombs.
“I think it’s going to be a good thing and I think they’re definitely ready for that part,” McCully said.
As for how good the Afghans will get, McCully said the goal is not perfection, but good enough.
“Maybe that’s not the best thing in the world,” he said, “but we’re only going to be here a finite time.”
The Afghans, meanwhile, are keenly aware that the gulf between perfect and simply good can be fatal.
“If we get perfect training and all the equipment that we need, we will be successful,” said Sgt. First Class Amenullah, a soldier in Fahim’s unit. “Otherwise it will be impossible to keep doing this."
Election Law Should Be Parliament's Priority: Political Leaders
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 10 March 2013
As Parliament returned from its winter break, political parties demanded Saturday that it put the approval of the election law and the independent commission law at the top of its agenda.
Only 13 months out from a crucial presidential election, the political leaders said any further delay will only further weaken the political process.
The head of the National Front is concerned that the government lacks the determination to have a transparent election.
"The delay in the approval of the two laws will create challenges for the election. The parliament should pay attention in this regard and not delay them anymore," National Front leader Ahmad Zia Massoud said.
The head of the National Coalition Dr Abdullah Abdullah believes that a transparent election will go a long way in helping the country's challenges and asked Parliament to take the laws seriously.
"I hope that once the parliament appoints the administrative board it starts working on these laws. They should select the board as soon as possible and not waste much time," Abdullah said.
The current parliamentary administrative board said that parliament will look at the laws after the new board is selected.
"The negotiations [of the government and the political parties] on the election law have been completed in all the parliamentary committees. These committees will have a joint meeting and then send it to a general session," parliament deputy secretary Abdul Sattar Khawasi said.
The passing of the election law has been fraught as parliament and senate disagree on the nature of an independent election commission, namely whether or not two foreign observers can be part of the Electoral Complaints Commission.
Iranian Sentenced to Death in Badghis for Spying
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
An Iranian citizen has been sentenced to death in the preliminary court of north-western Badghis province after being charged with spying for Iranian military, officials said Sunday.
According to the head of Badghis preliminary court, the accused entered Afghanistan illegally in February through Herat province and later went to Badghis, allegedly at the behest of the Iranian Consulate in Herat to provide them with confidential information on the Afghan and international military based in Badghis.
The man, nicknamed Mohammad Mohammadi, is a member of the intelligence of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, according to the Badghis attorney general.
The court heard from the prosecution that Mohammadi was sent to Badghis to work as a laborer. However, six days after arriving in Badghis, he was detained near the province's joint army post of Afghan National Army and Spanish forces in the Moqor district.
"This man confessed his crime while being investigated. we have enough proof," head of Badghis preliminary court Ferdaws Ahmad Fayez said. "We found on him two SIM cards, one is from Afghanistan and one from Iran. He has called Iran a several times."
Fayez said there is a sufficient amount of documents and proof that indicate Mohammadi has been sending military information from the area to Iranian officials.
"In accordance with articles of law, we sentenced this man to the highest punishment of execution," Fayez said.
The decision will need to be passed through the supreme court before an execution is carried out.
Second Vote to Select Parliament’s First Vice Speaker Fails
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
Lawmakers failed for a second day in a row to elect a first vice speaker of the lower house after no single candidate received enough votes to be appointed.
In the second day of polling for parliament's new administrative board, the vote for first vice speaker was between Abdul Hafiz Mansour and Obaidullah Klimzai. The process started about 9:00am and continued until 1:00pm, but neither candidate received sufficient votes.
Mansour received 87 votes and Klimzai 62 votes.
"Unfortunately we cannot select the candidates for the posts, so we will go to a new round," speaker of the house Abdulraouf Ibrahimi said Sunday.
MPs approved Urfanullah Urfan as the new deputy secretary of the house with 110 votes in favour.
On Saturday, the lawmakers first sitting session after the winter break, the vote for first vice speaker was between Mirwais Yasini and Abdulzahir Qadeer.
Qadeer received 90 votes and Yasini 99 votes - both insufficient numbers to be elected.
On Monday, in the next vote, two other MPs will be nominated for the position of first and second vice speakers.
The administrative board also includes a second vice speaker, a secretary and a deputy secretary.
Govt Restarts Expansion of Macrorayan Flats
TOLOnews.com By Zabiullah Jahanmal Sunday, 10 March 2013
The Council of Ministers has approved a government plan to expand the apartment blocks of Macroryan 4 neighbourhood up to the area of Kabul International Airport, the Ministry of Urban Development Affairs said Sunday.
The new blocks, said to include 15-storey buildings, will cost around half the current Macroryan apartment prices, and sold with an included option for purchase with long-term installments, officials said.
"We will try to construct these blocks above nine stories. All will have included heating and cooling systems," said engineer Ahmad Nawaz Bakhtiar, head of Housing Construction Enterprise at the Urban Development Ministry.
"They will be provided to people with prices up to US$500 per square meters, which is half of the market price," he added.
The new Macroryan blocks will be constructed in several phases, the housing construction officials said, adding that one of the key issues they are currently dealing with is acquiring people's properties who already have homes across the area.
"This project is in its preliminary stage. We will endeavor first to complete the acquisition of people's properties, following which we will do the design and construction," Bakhtiar said.
According to the housing construction enterprise, acquisitions will get underway in the next six months.
The new apartments will also include special blocks for diplomats as well, ministry officials added.
The project of expanding Macrorayan 4 began during the Soviet era but stopped after the collapse of President Najibullah's regime in 1992.
Afghan Investigators Use Torture in Interrogation: Lawyers
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 10 March 2013
Lawyers representing political detainees in Afghanistan on Sunday warned that many of the country's prisons lack properly trained investigators who regularly question detainees using torture methods and some detainees are kept in prison without any judicial process – in itself, a form of torture.
Abdul Qawi Afzali, deputy head of Legal Aid Afghanistan and member of a group of lawyers representing detainees, said that some of the investigators do not even understand the definition of torture.
"There is still no clear definition of torture. These accused are tortured once detained; many are kept for up to four years with no clear fate. This issue is an example of torture," he said.
Lalgol Lal, also a member of the lawyers' representing detainees and head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, said that "the accused are not interrogated by trained people and the capacity of investigators is very low."
"We are ready to help the government over the matter," he added.
Afghanistan's prison chief rejected the comments as baseless.
"There is no such thing as torture at any organisations related to the Ministry of Interior Affairs. This is a true lie," Amir Mohammad Jamshid told TOLOnews.
However, an agreement has already been drafted for five government organistaions to cooperate with an investigation into the treatment of detainees.
The Attorney General and the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Centers were to sign an agreement on the matter, but it has been delayed.
"This agreement required the inclusion of the Ministries of Interior and Justice, as well as the head of the National Directorate of Security. Therefore a delegation has been formed to work on the matter and have all five organisations sign the agreement," said Rahmatullah Nazari, Deputy Attorney General.
The comments come amid efforts by the Afghan government to have full authority for the US-controlled Bagram prison handed over to Afghan forces.
It is understood there are about 24,000 prisoners in Afghanistan. The number includes those who have completed their sentences but who remained detained with no clear timeframe on their imprisonment.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com