[Afghan News] March 12, 2013

[یاسمینه]

5 US Troops Killed in Afghan Helicopter Crash
VOA News March 12, 2013
U.S. officials say five American members of the NATO-led coalition force died when their helicopter crashed in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.

Local officials said there were no survivors of the crash, which took place Monday during a heavy rainstorm. Those authorities say there was no enemy activity in the area at the time.

NATO earlier reported Monday's crash but did not specify the nationalities of the victims.

The cause of the crash is being investigated.

That brings to seven the total number of U.S. forces killed Monday. NATO officials say two U.S. soldiers were killed and seven others wounded in an apparent insider attack in Wardak province, in the eastern part of the country.

Authorities say a shooter dressed in either an Afghan military or police uniform opened fire, killing the Americans as well as several Afghan soldiers.

Outside Kabul, U.S. troops shot and killed two Afghan civilians after their vehicle approached a U.S. convoy. A U.S. military official said the Afghans failed to heed instructions to stop as it came close to the convoy.

Monday's violence came as U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left Afghanistan following a first visit that was marred by a contentious speech by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a series of security threats that forced the cancellation of a scheduled news conference with the president Sunday.

Authorities did not elaborate on the security issues, but on Saturday two suicide bombings -- one in Kabul and the other in Khost - killed 19 people. The bombing in Kabul targeted the Afghan Defense Ministry as Hagel was visiting the capital.

In a speech early Sunday, President Karzai accused the Taliban of being "at the service of America" by using attacks like the ones on Saturday to frighten Afghans into wanting foreign forces to remain in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline.

In comments to reporters travelling with him, Hagel said he spoke "clearly and directly" to Mr. Karzai, saying it was not true that the United States was working unilaterally with the Taliban. He said that any prospect for peace or political settlements "has to be led by the Afghans."

Afghanistan analyst Vikash Yadav of Hobart and Smith Colleges in the United States says that Karzai is likely trying to establish himself as a leader independent of any foreign influence, to improve his bargaining position with the Taliban.

"I think he's really trying to improve his bargaining position and make sure that the bargaining is not being done by foreign forces or anyone else. And also, leave his legacy as a major leader and one who is not just a puppet of the United States," he said.

The Karzai government also alleged that U.S.-led forces working alongside Afghans were abusing and arresting university students.

Hagel's trip to Afghanistan took place in the middle of a struggle between Afghanistan and the United States over control of detention facilities and the pace for foreign troop withdrawal. A ceremony to transfer U.S. control of a main detention facility to Afghanistan Saturday also was cancelled as a deal struck between the two governments broke down.

Last month, Hagel's predecessor, Leon Panetta, said that NATO allies were considering leaving between 8,000 and 12,000 international troops in Afghanistan after 2014. Currently, there are about 100,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan.


Karzai Bets on Vilifying U.S. to Shed His Image as a Lackey
By ALISSA J. RUBIN March 12, 2013 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The longest shadow in Afghan politics is cast by a traffic post that used to stand in Ariana Square outside the presidential palace: the Taliban hanged Najibullah, the last president of the Communist government, from it shortly after they marched into Kabul in 1996.

That history, and the reality that every modern Afghan leader has been ousted or executed, has surely not escaped President Hamid Karzai as he faces what is expected to be his final year in office, and with the American military pullout well under way.

Seeking a nobler ending than his predecessors after his long tenure in the palace, Mr. Karzai is taking a gamble: intensifying his vilification of his American allies at a critical moment in their Afghan endgame, risking their support for him in order to save himself politically.

Even as his government is negotiating the terms for a lasting American military presence, in just the past two weeks he has ordered Special Operations forces out of a critical province, railed against C.I.A. plots, rejected American terms for handing over detainees and, most recently, even equated the United States and the Taliban as complementary forces working to undermine the government.

Interviews with tribal elders, business leaders, political analysts and diplomats here paint an image of a leader who is desperately trying to shake his widely held image as an American lackey by appealing to nationalist sentiments and invoking Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

Many, however, believe that Mr. Karzai may not fully appreciate the risks he is taking in betting that the United States will commit billions of dollars in military and economic support for years to come despite growing differences with him, the budgetary and economic challenges at home and battle fatigue after a long war.

“Karzai, very confident of the Americans’ need to stay indefinitely and with much invested already, believes he has a lot of leverage and can push back as much as he wants because he’s gotten his own way in the past,” said Saad Mohseni, an Afghan businessman who is close to many in Mr. Karzai’s team and runs the Moby Group, an international media company that includes Tolo, Afghanistan’s most popular television network.

“The second thing is his legacy: with only 12 months to go, he has this task to change the narrative. Rather than being the person who was installed through the Bonn process,” Mr. Mohseni said, referring to a 2001 conference that set up a post-Taliban government, “he wants to be remembered as the guy who kicked out the ‘foreigners’ — in this case, the Americans.”

American and other Western officials in Afghanistan have bent over backward to reassure the Afghan public — and Mr. Karzai — that they will not abandon them as the Russians did. That retreat, in the early 1990s, led to the collapse of the government and the army and, ultimately, to civil war.

Indicators from the White House, though, have not been as sure. President Obama has yet to decide how many troops might stay on after combat units leave at the end of 2014. Many numbers have been floated, but nothing has been determined.

“At what point does dealing with him become such a political pain that people in Washington, in Congress, say, ‘Let’s rethink the map on this a little bit,’ ” said one Western official in Kabul. “I don’t think Karzai fully understands this — understands the advancement of U.S. feeling on this,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the continuing negotiations.

Many Afghan observers say that Mr. Karzai is trying to keep himself politically potent during the last year of his term by playing to at least three Afghan constituencies: his ethnic Pashtun base; ethnic Tajik and Hazara leaders in his government; and, notably, the Taliban, who have rejected negotiations with him.

In past speeches, Mr. Karzai has sometimes adopted a yearning tone as he has expressed a desire to be the Afghan leader who could unite the country’s factions, including bringing the Taliban in from the battlefield.

And in his recent banning of American commandos from Wardak Province, a Taliban stronghold, some Afghan observers see an attempt to reach out to the insurgents by proving that he has the power to halt military action against them. Others believe he is trying to tap into Afghans’ frustrations with giant foreign military vehicles on their roads, heavily armed foreign soldiers on foot patrols in their fields and night raids on their homes.

But since his words have had only limited effect on the Americans, they increasingly ring hollow to many Afghans. At the same time, the reality on the ground has changed: increasingly, the war is being fought — and in some cases abuses are being carried out — by Afghan forces that are seen as acting in Mr. Karzai’s name despite having been mostly trained by Americans.

That leaves Mr. Karzai casting about for new ways to prove that he is not, as the Taliban insist, “America’s chief puppet.”

“President Karzai would like to portray himself as a national hero,” said Malek Sitez, an adviser to the Civil Society and Human Rights Network of Afghanistan. “He is kind of taking an antiforeigners policy, and many ordinary people in Afghanistan like this. But he does not understand how he, and his government, is totally dependent on the international community economically, and he doesn’t understand the impact of his speeches on the relationship.”

Still, Mr. Sitez added, if Mr. Karzai cannot be remembered as a hero, “he would like to be remembered as a victim of a crowd of international strategies.”

“He doesn’t want to be remembered as a defeated politician,” Mr. Sitez said. “So he wants to remind people that he’s a nationalist — he kicked out foreigners.”

Many here see an echo in the last chapter of Najibullah’s rule, when, after the Russians decided to withdraw, the president took an increasingly nationalist stand and even told the Russians to go and just leave the financing for the military. That is very much the message Mr. Karzai has sent to the Americans and the world, Mr. Sitez said.

For Afghans at a more grass-roots level, there is little faith in either the Afghan government or the Americans.

“Now Karzai is trying to deceive people that he sympathizes with the Afghan people, and also he is trying to show the Taliban that ‘now I am independent from the Americans,’ ” said Hajji-Abdul Majeed Khan, a tribal elder from Arghistan, a district in Kandahar Province where Mr. Karzai has had support.

“I don’t think that Karzai and Americans have disputes at all — they both are playing a double game to throw dust in people’s eyes and bring another stooge government to Afghanistan,” he added.

One elder in Khost Province, in southeastern Afghanistan, suggested that Mr. Karzai’s negative comments were much more personal than universal. “All Afghans do not share his views and ideas,” said the elder, Yusuf Entezar. “Let’s not forget that for a long time there has been a lot of disagreement between Karzai and the Americans on one hand. And he has failed to strengthen the rule of law, and now he is trying to find some accomplishments he can show to people.”

Many Afghans who hold government or tribal authority have also come to rely on the development projects and security provided by American soldiers and civilians.

“This is political talk,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the head of the Kandahar provincial council and one of the few allies of Mr. Karzai’s who was willing to speak to a reporter about the president’s comments. “These kind of remarks being made by Karzai make people worry about the future of Afghanistan.”

He added: “People are still hopeful for a better future in Afghanistan, but we need the world community, and we are a fragile country and vulnerable. So the relationship that has been built with the world community should not be broken.”

Any American complaints at Mr. Karzai’s latest remarks, in which he all but claimed collusion between the Taliban and the Americans, pale next to the Taliban’s reaction.

They issued a searing response late Monday in which they dismissed Mr. Karzai as an abject hypocrite, eating food and wearing clothes paid for with American dollars.

Nationalism “neither rescued Najibullah nor will it rescue Karzai; the Afghan nation is one of the nations of the world that knows its puppets and its heroes,” said the Taliban statement, which was written by a man identified as Qari Habib.

“Hamid Karzai, at the end of his tenure, has resorted to the same hypocrisy as Dr. Najibullah,” the statement continued. “We offer him free advice: Do not take this road, because this road leads to Ariana Square.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan; Sangar Rahimi from Kabul; and Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost, Afghanistan.


To Hell With Karzai
by Leslie H. Gelb Mar 12, 2013 4:45 AM EDT The Newsweek/Daily Beast
The Afghan president sticks his verbal bayonet in Hagel’s and America’s eyes, and what do we do, again? Nothing! writes Leslie H. Gelb.

Hamid Karzai is beating up on the United States to score domestic political points once again, this time on the occasion of Chuck Hagel’s maiden visit as Defense secretary to that sad country. Yet the Obama team and America’s foreign-policy cognoscenti can’t seem to draw the obvious conclusions—stop letting these Karzai guys play us for suckers and speed up our exit, and stop wasting American lives and dollars. Digest his latest mal mot in the wake of new suicide bombings in Kabul and Khost: “Those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of the Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan.” Disgusting! (Rand Paul, where are you when we need you to express practical outrage?)

This clown is proclaiming that we are colluding with the enemy to prolong our stay in Afghanistan. And yet I already hear my foreign-policy colleagues’ familiar excuses for these rhetorical knives. “You know old Hamid,” they’ll say. “He’s just doing this for the home audience, trying to score a few harmless points. Forget about it; the Afghan people are with us.” Think about that response. These excuses are tired, because we’ve been pardoning hateful stuff like this for more than 10 years now. And when have we heard any of those Afghan people coming to our defense? It would be foolish to think for a moment that this problem is limited to Karzai. Because he’s no fool himself. He says this smelly stuff because he truly believes it will go down well with his fellow Afghans. He reckons he gains popularity by accusing Washington of working with the Taliban so U.S. troops can stay in their country and extend the suffering of the Afghan people. Really, think about this.

Maybe Karzai’s message actually is meant for the non-Pashtun Afghans, so they’ll worry about Americans’ collusion with the Pashtun-heavy Taliban, and he’ll somehow build support for next year’s elections. This explanation makes even less sense. The non-Pashtuns, who make up around 60 percent of the Afghan people, are the most pro-American in the country. If anything, the non-Pashtuns would like to see Americans fighting in and for their country, against their Pashtun enemies, for the next century. To Northern Afghans, we’re the best guarantee against a Pashtun takeover—the last thing the non-Pashtuns want.

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of Karzai’s baloney, his family’s corruption, the corruption of the Afghan political and economic elite, the grotesque waste, the thievery, the drugs, not to mention their own collaboration with the Taliban. The only ones I truly feel for are the Afghan women and those armed forces that continue to fight for a free society that may never come. I wish we could evacuate all of those who wish to flee their mistreatment and enslavement. The Afghan leaders for whom we’ve been fighting and dying these last 12 years aren’t going to change. We can keep funding the Afghan security forces, and they might get better, but their utterly selfish and drug-dealing political leaders won’t change. You would think they’d want to do better for their fellow countrymen and women, and save themselves. After all, there are 30 million Afghans and only about 20,000 Taliban fighters. But they have spent more than a decade robbing and killing each other, and have proven to be far better at exploiting their fellow Afghans than fighting the Taliban.

Now consider the message Karzai is sending by torpedoing the planned press conference with Hagel. Hagel pretended the joint appearance couldn’t be held for “security” reasons, but after all America has sacrificed for this tribe of thieves, why on earth would he make this lame excuse? Frankly, were I Hagel, I would have held the press conference and said, “Karzai’s failure to show up today endangers the American commitment to Afghanistan. How can he expect us to fight, and die, and pay the bills with this kind of behavior?”

“Mr. Secretary,” some journalist would have said, “are you threatening to withdraw U.S. forces?”

“I’m threatening nothing,” Hagel would respond. “I’m just saying the obvious. The American people won’t stand for this while our men and women are sacrificing themselves for the Afghan people.”

Then, if I were Hagel, I’d come back home and propose to President Obama that he call two emergency meetings: one of the allies fighting on our side, the other of all Afghanistan’s neighbors. To our fighting allies, I’d say: let’s expedite the withdrawal process. Instead of keeping 12,000 U.S. and NATO troops here through the end of 2014, let’s cut that in half, and step up the training and arming of Afghan forces. And let’s leave the decision on when to withdraw the remaining troops until the results of the second meeting, with states bordering Afghanistan. In that conference, I’d tell the neighbors that we’re heading homeward. We’re open to slowing down that process and continuing to provide economic and military aid to Afghan forces—but if and only if your countries step in and pick up the main burden.

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of Karzai’s baloney, his family’s corruption, the corruption of the Afghan political and economic elite, the grotesque waste, the thievery, the drugs, not to mention their own collaboration with the Taliban.

You might well ask: why should they do this? The answer is plain and simple, and something Washington should have realized long ago. These neighbors have far more to win and lose from a stable Afghanistan than we do, and they know this. They most of all fear an Afghan implosion, with refugees spilling into their territories, drugs pouring into their countries, and Taliban extremists spreading religious insurrection. The neighbors don't have to do anything about these fears so long as the United States is there fighting their war for them. Let’s make clear that this freebie is coming to an end. As long as they take the lead, we’ll stay in some numbers and help get and keep things organized. But if they don’t, let’s get the hell out—as we eventually did in Iraq.

Karzai won’t be allowed to run for another presidential term, but it’d be idiotic to count on his successor’s doing better in fighting the Taliban or halting corruption and waste. In other words, let’s not delude ourselves into believing things will get better after Hamid, nor that an excess of Afghans are worrying about Americans fighting in and for their country.

Numerous senators and Washington columnists almost totally lost their equipoise over the droning down of my great fellow American Anwar al-Awlaki. Perhaps some of them might dredge up some outrage over the message behind what Karzai did to the United States yesterday.


Hamid Karzai Welcomes Chuck Hagel to Kabul—His Own Way
TIME By Mujib Mashal March 11, 2013
Kabul - If Chuck Hagel had hoped to have a smooth first visit to Afghanistan as the newly minted U.S. Secretary of Defense, he should have known better. Hamid Karzai has a long memory—and the Afghan president is known to hold grudges.

This is what Karzai would have remembered Hagel saying to him ten years ago. “If you leave an impression that everything is going wellthe next time you come back, your credibility will be in question,” then Senator Hagel told the visiting Afghan leader at the end of an embarrassing grilling at the Senate Foreign Relations committee in 2003. Sitting heads of state usually don’t testify to the U.S. Senate—the testimony occurred because of a mistake by Karzai’s Ambassador to Washington. President George W. Bush issued a public apology to Karzai over his treatment. Karzai then fired the ambassador.

Ten years later, it is a crucial time of transition for Afghanistan, with Karzai preoccupied with his legacy. Who should show up but Hagel. And the Afghan president has apparently returned the favor he received in Washington a decade ago. Ahead of their talks, Karzai went on another of his now usual anti-U.S. tirades. He accused the Americans of double-speak, bordering on collusion with the Taliban. “The Taliban talk to the United States every day, but they detonate bombs in Kabul and Khost to show their force to the Americans,” Karzai said. “No, these bombs that went off in Khost and Kabul yesterday, this wasn’t showing force to Americain reality, it was a service to the foreigners so their presence remains in Afghanistan.”

A palace official clarified later that Karzai’s comment was targeted at the Taliban for prolonging violence—and not at the U.S., as understood by many reporters. Of course, the Afghan president has a history of tirades— and making life tough for recently appointed US officials on their first visit to Afghanistan. He did it to Richard Holbrooke—Obama’s special adviser for Afghanistan–and to General David Petraeus after he took over as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan from General Stanley McChrystal, perhaps Karzai’s favorite military man of the past 10 years. In the first meeting between Karzai and Petraeus, the discussion got heated when the U.S. general pushed hard for launching the Afghan local police, a semi-official militia to fill the security void in volatile areas.

Some who have known Karzai for years have come to believe the Afghan president actually derives pleasure from his tirades. “It’s almost as if he walks into the office in the morning hoping for material to chide the US over – he would be disappointed otherwise,” a former official said. According to the official, Karzai remembers being ignored by State Department desk officers when he was a lowly political campaigner against the Taliban in the late 1990s. As a result, he enjoys hassling them now.

Karzai had other potential reasons for tweaking the Americans: two missed deadlines that have humiliated him. The first was for the transfer of a major U.S.-controlled prison to the Afghan government; the second, the pullout of US special forces out of eastern Wardak province. In January last year, Karzai demanded the main prison in Parwan be handed over to his government within a month (despite his national security team in private expressing concern about their capacity to take in the prisoners). It’s been over a year since the deadline passed. Last week, despite Karzai’s announcement in parliament that the handover was imminent, the transfer scheduled for Saturday was cancelled at the last minute. The president was not pleased.

Meanwhile, Karzai last month gave the U.S. Special forces in Wardak two weeks to pullout after reports emerged of abuses by elements associated with the Americans there. That deadline also passed on March 11 with no indication of a U.S. withdrawal from the province. “By demanding the US special forces pull out of Wardak, Karzai is essentially putting a huge question mark on the nature of the U.S. presence after 2014,” a former senior official said. It is widely believed that the special forces are central to how the US envisions its long term presence in Afghanistan – a light footprint, relying on small strike forces to go after terrorist cells. By publicly threatening to derail U.S. post-2014 plans, Karzai is in fact bargaining for more authority over the fate of the upcoming elections and, by extension, the political future of the country.

He is also playing on Afghan public sentiment. Many of his countrymen believe that the U.S. and other foreigners will never really leave Afghanistan because they want to exploit the country’s mineral resources. In the same speech in which he virtually equated the U.S. and the Taliban, Karzai hammered the point, in case people missed it. Said the Afghan President: “Some countries – including the United States – have already written thatsince you and I are allies, I want such and such of your underground resources, you shouldn’t give it to anyone else.”

The tirades have often been a tactical move by Karzai to pressure Washington during tough negotiations, according to officials and analysts. However, they have not paid off all the time. Indeed, the shrillness may also be evidence of Karzai’s paranoia over the divergence between the US civilian and military approaches toward the Taliban. A faction in the Obama Administration apparently advocates keeping the door open to a settlement with the Taliban. But, says a U.S. official privy to the discussion around the peace talks, “but our military is in the business of fighting them while we work on the political settlement.” Any settlement between the U.S. and the Taliban, without Karzai and his 10-year old administration taking the lead, would severely affect the president’s legacy. He is particularly concerned about that with his final constitutional term running out in about a year.

Many sources close to the Afghan president say he genuinely believes the Americans are following a “hidden agenda” in the region—and that he is out of the information loop. “The United States says the Taliban is not my enemy and I don’t have any war against them, but they harass people in our country in the name of the Taliban every day,” he said in the speech. “We are awarethe foreigners as well as the patriots among the Taliban come to us and inform us that there is a deal in the making among [Taliban] leaders and the Americans. Be careful. In Europe and Gulf countries there are talks between Taliban and the foreigners.”

The U.S. official is adamant there have been no direct talks with the Taliban since January 2012. He says some European and Arab countries, as well as other “freelance” intermediaries, meet with Taliban representatives in Doha and pass messages.

There is no guarantee that the tirades will lead to the prison being handed over or the Special Forces pulling out of Wardak. In the end, it may simply be the Afghan president trying to recast his position to ensure his public standing—and the longevity of his legacy, whatever it is in the end. “Karzai’s slogans sounded just like the Taliban’s,” a former senior official in the Karzai government said about the speech. “The Taliban also say the foreigners are invaders, barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night. The Taliban also say the foreigners are here to [exploit] the mineral wealth. By bringing his message closer to the Taliban’s, Karzai hopes to do away with their justification for their war.” For now, the Afghan President had better hope that Secretary of Defense Hagel does not have a long memory—or hold grudges.


Afghan Leaders Accuse Karzai of Personal Aims in US-Taliban Claim
TOLOnews.com Monday, 11 March 2013
Afghan political leaders have condemned President Hamid Karzai's statement indicating he believes that the US and the Taliban are in talks "daily", accusing him of not speaking for the country but rather for himself.

Karzai on Sunday said at a public gathering that "the senior leaders of the Taliban and the Americans are engaged in talks in Europe and the Gulf state [of Qatar] every day", and further suggested that the US was supporting an environment of fear around the post-2014 years in order to remain in Afghanistan.

Anif Atmar, head of the political committee of the Right and Justice party, called on the government to ensure the international community knows it is not a statement supported by the country's leaders.

"This charge of accusing our international colleagues without any documents or evidence, it is not only not fair but also is not for the good of our nation," he told TOLOnews. "We honestly ask our government leadership to deal with our international colleagues with compromise, not with accusations and brawls on any point that we have problem with."

"These accusations don't benefit us," he added.

Ahmad Zia Massoud, head of the National Front, said Karzai's comments ignored the reality of what the US has invested in Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately, the president is stimulating people's views to turn against the US and put Afghanistan once more in political and economic isolation, but the US has spent millions of dollars in the past 11 year in Afghanistan and its troops have been killed fighting against terrorism in the country," he said.

Malik Stez, an international affairs analyst, said Karzai was making a show of force as president for the sake of his legacy.

"I think the president wants to paint himself as a hero who arose among the people and he aims to show that he is not a defeated politician, but such actions are not useful in the last moments of Karzai's political play."

Afghan MPs have also weighed in on the matter, with Mohammad Naem Lalai Hamidzai saying Karzai spoke for himself and not for the country.

"These comments are for his personal benefit, not for the resolution of political issues. All the salaries of the Army, the Police and other civilians are being paid for the US and Nato, so these comments are for inciting people's feelings," he said.

MP Mohammad Nazir Ahmadzai called for Karzai to retract his statement.

"Some of the comments of the president are not for the benefit of our country and nation. He should revise his comments," he told TOLOnews.

The reaction comes after US leaders also rejected Karzai's statement, with US Ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham describing them as "inconceivable" and US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel saying they didn't make sense.

"I told the president it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban and trying to negotiate anything. The fact is, any prospect for peace or political settlements - that has to be led by the Afghans," Hagel said.


The complexity of Karzai
CNN By Mike Mount March 11th, 2013
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not in an enviable position.

The man who has led the country for nearly 10 years is a difficult politician to deal with for the most part.

Beyond his seemingly outrageous comments toward the United States, he has also been called corrupt and often impossible to predict.

In his latest eyebrow-raiser following a bomb blast in Kabul that killed at least nine people, Karzai said on Sunday there are "ongoing daily talks between Taliban, American and foreigners in Europe and in the Gulf states."

The comment effectively claimed the United States was trying to foment continued violence inside Afghanistan.

The top commander of U.S. and allied forces, Gen. Joseph Dunford, quickly denounced the remark.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years. We have shed too much blood over the past 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 be to our advantage," he said.

It cannot be denied Karzai has timing. He made the comment as the new U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, made his first visit to Afghanistan.

Hagel met with Karzai and assured him the United States was not engaged in a deal with the Taliban to continue violence inside Afghanistan.

In fact, Hagel seemed to understand why Karzai made the statement.

"I know these are difficult issues for President Karzai and the Afghan people," Hagel said after a meeting with him.

"I was once a politician, so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under. I would hope, again, that we can move forward and I have confidence that we can and will deal with these issues," Hagel said.

He may not have been far off base.

"A lot of times, he has to say these things because he is playing to his domestic base, especially the Pashtuns in the East and the South who are his constituency and who are concerned that he is only acting at the request of the international community," says Javid Ahmad, program coordinator at the Washington-based policy analysis group German Marshall Fund.

"He (Karzai) has to give that internal audience the message that he's still president and still in charge, especially now that he has to ensure his legacy," Ahmad said.

But amid the continued drumbeat against the United States and NATO allies, Karzai's comments continue to chip away at allied support.

"It is unfortunate that President Karzai chose to make remarks that are so unfounded," says Kimberly Kagan, who leads the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

"It is possible for American's to overreact to those comments, which President Karzai aims at an international audience, at our senior leaders as well as a huge domestic audience, when he is engaged in negotiation with us over really important issues," Kagan said.

The Karzai government is in the middle of discussions to gain full access to the main detention facility at Bagram Air Base as well as a bi-lateral agreement on keeping a security agreement with Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal of U.S. forces.

In another recent decree, Karzai prevented Afghan troops from calling in NATO air support under "any circumstances" which reflects his bigger problem, according to Mark Jacobson, a former NATO adviser in Afghanistan.

"Karzai, rather than seeking a "mature" discussion of the issues, acted reflexively and issued a decree barring Afghan forces from asking "for the foreigners" planes for carrying out operations on our homes and villages," Jacobson wrote in an opinion piece for CNN.com.

"His unfair and irresponsible characterization that "foreigners" are the threat to the Afghan population, and that it is "foreigners" who wage war on Afghan homes, threatens to weaken the coalition that has helped build Afghanistan's capacity to secure its future," according to Jacobson.

And to muddy the waters a bit more, it is not entirely clear where Karzai's comments come from.

"He has opted to act this way, to take the NATO allies to task, because he believes western officials and Americans don't take him seriously and they fail to listen to him during private meetings," Ahmad said.

But Ahmad says the Karzai aides that he has spoken with say the Afghan leader will often say publicly exactly what his advisers tell him without thinking it through.

"Strategic communication is very important. But when he surrounds himself with such an unholy alliance of people, it's really hard to gauge where his comments are really coming from," Ahmad said.

Regardless of what Karzai thinks and says, the United States cannot ignore him.

"It is vital to continue having a relationship with Afghanistan precisely because it is vital to ensure there is no return of al Qaeda, there is a stable government and that the region of Afghanistan and Pakistan and Central Asia does not become a bout of civil war or instability," says Kagan.

"The relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan is essential, but we have to recognize the uncertainty," Kagan said.


AP Analysis: Karzai hits US anew _ but ties remain
By ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer Mar 11, 2013
WASHINGTON - The troubled U.S. alliance with Afghan President Hamid Karzai hit a new low with his startling accusation that America is colluding with Taliban insurgents to keep Afghanistan weak. But with President Barack Obama committed to two more years of U.S. combat, Karzai appears to believe he can have it both ways - gain favor at home with anti-American rhetoric and still enjoy foreign military protection.

And he is probably right.

The Obama administration believes that it must stay the course, gradually handing off security responsibility to Afghan forces and then ending the combat mission in December 2014. Departing sooner would risk a collapse of the government, a return to power for the Taliban and perhaps a boost for al-Qaida.

Just last month, Obama announced that he would bring home 34,000 U.S. troops in the coming year, leaving about 32,000 for a final withdrawal in 2014. He is expected to announce soon a post-2014 military mission for several thousand American troops, even though he has said that by then "our war in Afghanistan will be over."

"Beyond 2014, America's commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will endure," he said Feb. 12, though the nature of that commitment will shift to training Afghan forces and pursuing remnants of al-Qaida and its affiliates.

But the latest string of Karzai moves - coupled with the resumption of deadly Afghan army and police attacks on their supposed American partners - could raise new questions about the wisdom of prolonging a war that has cost the U.S. more than 2,000 lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, with no decisive end in sight.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., called Karzai's comments "despicable" and "beyond disgusting." He said they show that "it is time to bring our troops home."

In his eight years as president, Karzai has often upset the Americans by questioning their motives. In June 2011, for example, he likened the Americans to occupiers, saying they were not in Afghanistan to help Afghans but were present "for their own purposes, for their own goals, and they're using our soil for that." Karl Eikenberry, the American ambassador in Kabul at the time, called the remarks hurtful and inappropriate.

A year earlier, Karzai threatened to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform. He also accused Americans of conspiring against him in the 2009 elections.

Nick Mills, a Boston University professor who wrote a 2007 book on Karzai, said Monday the Afghan president's latest broadside, alleging U.S. collusion with the Taliban, might have been his way of testing the new U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel.

"But when Karzai resorts to these wild, irrational outbursts it may be simply that he's been driven to irrationality by the pressures of the job," Mills said. "I have said for some time that he was never the strong leader Afghanistan needed, and these outbursts underscore his weakness. I think he operates in panic mode at times."

Karzai's term ends next year, and he has said he won't run in the election scheduled for spring 2014.

Far fewer U.S. troops are dying in Afghanistan this year, but the war remains costly and the Taliban have proven a resilient force. Hagel saw proof of this on his weekend visit. There were suicide bombings and, on Monday, a machine-gun attack by an Afghan national police officer that killed two Americans and two Afghans and wounded nearly two dozen others.

Last Friday an Afghan believed to be a soldier opened fire at a U.S. base, killing an American civilian contractor.

Hagel's visit to the war zone - his first since becoming Pentagon chief last month - also brought to the fore a dispute with Karzai over the planned transfer of a U.S.-run detention center to Afghan control. The transfer, scheduled for Saturday, was canceled at the last minute, apparently because of American fears that many of the prisoners would be released as soon as the Afghans were given control.

Hagel also had to wrestle with Karzai's demand that all U.S. special operations forces leave Wardak province by Sunday. Karzai had expressed outrage at what he called the abuse of Afghan civilians in Wardak by special operations units under U.S. control. The Monday machine gun attack was at a base in Wardak.

On Sunday, prior to a scheduled news conference with Hagel in Kabul - canceled, officials said, because of security concerns - Karzai asserted that two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday were evidence that the Taliban and the Americans were working in concert.

"The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents," he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.

That brought a rebuke from the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, James Cunningham, who called it "inconceivable" that the U.S. would endanger Afghanistan.

David Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2003-05 and now is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said Karzai is genuinely frustrated by his reliance on foreign forces. But the Afghan leader also seems "clueless," Barno said, as to how his words sound to Westerners.

"After 12 years of (war) and hundreds of billions of dollars and over 2,000 Americans who have died in Afghanistan, to suggest things that are as offensive as he did over the weekend is extremely difficult for Americans to hear," Barno said.

EDITOR'S NOTE - Robert Burns has covered national security issues for The Associated Press from Washington since 1990.


US in Afghanistan: Why throw more good money after bad?
That two more US troops were killed by an Afghan soldier today is a reminder that the Afghanistan 'surge,' which ended last year, accomplished few of its objectives.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff writer March 11, 2013
The news today of two more US soldiers killed by an Afghan soldier armed and trained with American resources is a reminder that the US war there has gone off the rails.

For more than a decade now, the US public has been told the US was transforming Afghanistan from a place that once hosted Al Qaeda into a stable and more or less pro-American country that wouldn't harbor terrorists. That hasn’t ever really been true, but lately, with the United States preparing to leave and Afghans well aware of that fact, American efforts there have begun to take on a particularly futile hue.

Remember “the surge” masterminded by Gen. David Petraeus?

That came quietly to end last year, with little change in the political facts on the ground.

The two soldiers killed this morning, along with two Afghan officers and three cops, were murdered on a US base in Wardak – the troubled province on Kabul’s eastern flank. President Hamid Karzai recently ordered US Special Forces out of Wardak after accusing them of torture and murder in the province.

The orders – from the man the US installed as Afghan president all those years ago ¬– came amid a string of anti-US rhetoric from him in recent months. Today was the deadline for those US troops whose job is to train Afghan soldiers and work with them to track down insurgents, to depart the province.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s pleading with Mr. Karzai on a visit yesterday to relent on Wardak apparently fell on deaf ears.

Or maybe Karzai didn’t hear him over his own insults against the US. Karzai blamed the US for conspiring with the Taliban to conduct two suicide bombings that claimed 19 lives on Sunday.

“The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that [the Taliban] are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014,” Karzai said in a nationally televised speech. “They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents." Making sense

While Karzai’s near-constant stream of anti-American jabs might seem a strange case of biting the hand that feeds him, his comments make domestic political sense.

The US military presence is unpopular among Afghans, and since Karzai and everyone else knows the US is leaving, he needs to make his own arrangements for his long-term political and financial survival.

With the gravy train pulling into the station he’s going to have to wheel and deal with the Taliban, Pakistan, private armies established thanks to US convoy protection contracts, opium lords, and prominent members of Afghanistan’s various ethnic groups, including his own Pashtuns.

Oh, and elected local politicians, too.

So with everyone in Afghanistan setting the table for the departure of most US troops by the end of next year – and perhaps all of them since there isn’t yet a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Afghanistan that would grant US soldiers immunity from Afghan prosecution, a necessary condition of a continued US military presence – hard questions need to be asked about what’s being bought with the blood of US soldiers in the interim. Squander

There will be lots of talk in the coming months of not squandering all those lives already lost, all those billions of dollars sprinkled across Afghanistan.

But how many more lives and how much money will be required to ratify all that's already been lost? Will a few hundred more American dead change anything? Almost certainly not. Afghanistan’s president doesn’t seem to like the US, many of its soldiers seem happy to turn their guns on the US troops training them, and corruption is rampant.

Former Monitor South Asia bureau chief Ben Arnoldy wrote last week about Badakshan, considered one of the safest provinces in the country, noting that it’s also a hive of intrigue and backstabbing between local police and officials over control of drug-trafficking routes into Tajikistan.

Violence is rising there for much the same reason that violence rose on the streets of Chicago during Prohibition, though there might be even less distance between the Afghan gangsters and the government than there was between Al Capone and City Hall.

If Badakhshan has been one of those “safe” provinces where the transformative, nation-building magic of the US-led coalition was supposed to do its work all these years, imagine what it’s like in Wardak.


Angry over detentions, Afghan villagers threaten uprising if US special forces don’t leave
Associated Press March 11 , 2013
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan - An Afghan policeman gunned down two U.S. special forces on Monday in Wardak province, less than 24 hours after President Hamid Karzai’s deadline expired for them to leave the area where residents have grown increasingly hostile toward the Americans.

Despite Karzai’s orders, the American special operations forces remain in the province where dozens of villagers accuse them and their Afghan partners of intimidation through unprovoked beatings, mass arrests and forced detentions. The shootout, which also killed two Afghan policemen, only deepens the distrust.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says it has found no evidence to support the claims of abuse. But infuriated by the villagers’ allegations, Karzai two weeks ago ordered U.S. special operations forces to withdraw by midnight Sunday from Wardak province, 45 kilometers (27 miles) south of the capital, Kabul.

Most international forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Wardak, like the rest of the country, is slated to be eventually handed over to Afghan forces, but U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, indicated on Sunday that the troops were not leaving Wardak province just yet.

“The only issue is the timeline and the methodology, and we’re still working on that,” Dunford said.

Wardak has a stubborn insurgency on the doorstep of the capital Kabul and its location has led some U.S. military officials to warn that a premature withdrawal of U.S. special operations forces would open a “six-lane highway” into Kabul for the Taliban. But Afghan security forces disagree, saying they don’t think insurgents can capture the provincial capital.

On Monday, an Afghan policeman stood up in the back of a pickup truck, grabbed a machine gun and started firing at U.S. special forces and other Afghan policemen at a police compound in Wardak’s Jalrez district, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Maidan Shahr, said the province’s Deputy Police Chief Abdul Razaq Koraishi.

Two U.S. special operations forces and two Afghan policemen were killed and four others were wounded in the gunfight before the assailant was gunned down, Koraishi said.

A U.S. defense official in Washington and a coalition official in Afghanistan said 10 Americans — both special operators and regular soldiers who worked in a combined team — and at least 12 Afghans were wounded in the attack. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the attack with reporters.

It is not known whether the assailant was targeting the Afghan policemen along with the U.S. special operations forces and whether they were killed by the assailant’s bullets or during the crossfire. It’s also unclear whether the incident was directly related to the simmering tensions between villagers in Wardak who are unhappy with the U.S. special operations forces and their Afghan partners.

Afghan police Sgt. Agha Mirza summed up the hostility toward U.S. special forces that others also expressed to The Associated Press during a series of interviews Sunday in the province.

“They are always disturbing the people,” Mirza said, standing with his rifle slung over his shoulder at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Wardak’s capital, Maidan Shahr. “If they disturb me, I have a gun.”

Grizzled and gray, Mohammed Nabi told the AP that his eldest son was picked up by U.S. special operations forces more than three months ago. No one has told his family where he is or why he was arrested.

“If they don’t go, we will go,” Nabi said. “We will leave this place. I will set up a tent anywhere.”

He said dozens of families have already moved out of his home village of Deh Afghanan because of alleged mistreatment by the special forces and their Afghan partners. He alleged that both “beat people and make our lives miserable.”

“This is no life for us or for our children,” he said.

Nabi said he and about 80 other Afghan men were detained two weeks ago following Friday prayers at the Kar Ka Mubarak mosque in Deh Afghanan, a few kilometers (miles) southeast of Maidan Shahr.

“For two hours, we stood in the snow,” Nabi said. “One old man wanted to go the bathroom and they said: ‘Go in your pants.’”

His brother nodded in agreement, and other men started shouting about their own experiences.

A carpenter sanding wood at a nearby workshop said he was stopped on his motorcycle as he was on his way to work in neighboring Dah Do village and detained for five hours.

“It was 3 p.m. They stopped me and said I was a spy for the Taliban,” said Abdullah, who uses only one name.

He wiped away a few tears, calling them tears of “shame because I was beaten and couldn’t do anything.” Abdullah said an Afghan soldier with the U.S. special forces slammed the butt of his rifle into his neck, causing a hairline fracture of one of his vertebrae.

Tucked into the corner of a walled compound in Maidan Shahr, men from a half dozen nearby villages, including some from Jalrez district, gathered in a chilly room to recount a litany of allegations of abuses by U.S. special operations forces and the Afghan soldiers who accompany them.

An elderly Habib Noor lifted his long gray tunic to show bandages where he said he was beaten by two special forces and their Afghan translator, Zikrya. He spoke softly, his head bent toward the floor.

“I can’t tell you the bad words he used against me,” he said, referring to one of the U.S. soldiers. “I am too ashamed to tell you the words.”

Noor leaned against a wall, wrapping his frail, lanky frame in a blanket against the icy wind that whistled through the cement block building. Inside the grimy room, several men showed letters they had written to Karzai. Their letters were endorsed by other villagers, police and even intelligence officials attesting to the innocence of the men whom they said had been picked up by U.S. special forces.

Last week, they showed the same documents to an Afghan and a U.S. general who listened to their stories and took the documents, they said. Neither the U.S. military nor the Afghan government answered the AP’s request for an interview about the allegations.

Nabi’s brother, Ishaq, who had been picked up along with Nabi’s son, Mohammed Hassan, retrieved a tattered piece of paper from an inside pocket. He unfolded it carefully and pointed to signatures accompanied by their thumb prints and a government seal from local authorities.

On the other side, was a long letter addressed to Karzai. It told of his and Hassan’s arrest in Deh Afghanan by Afghan and U.S. special operations forces. The letter, dated more than two months ago, asks Karzai to help locate Hassan, who worked for eight years as a gardener for the municipality.

“We aren’t even asking that they release him. If he has done something, then let them put him on trial,” Nabi said about his son. “But we just want to know where he is, to see him, and if he is dead, then give us his body so we can bury him.”

Most of the men in the room were fathers and uncles with gray beards, but there was a sprinkling of younger men, brothers, including some who claimed that they too had been picked up and later released. They all showed pictures of missing relatives and recounted how they searched for them by going to local government officials, knocking on the doors of U.S. military compounds and petitioning the International Committee for the Red Cross.

The AP interviewed dozens of other people who told similar stories. Most, however, made a distinction between special forces and conventional American troops, with whom they said they had no quarrel.

Mullah Mohmmed Kadeem, a village councilor, warned that if the special forces stayed, there would be an “uprising” in Wardak.

“People won’t accept it. We will protest until they leave,” he said.

Naimatullah, who claimed his two brothers were in the custody of U.S. special forces, said the United States humiliated Karzai by ignoring his deadline for the troop withdrawal.

“If they don’t go when the president tells them to go, it shows everything is with the Americans and Karzai is just like a child,” he said. “He is the president of Afghanistan and if he can’t tell them to leave, how can he help us find our family members? What can we do?”

Associated Press Writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report. Kathy Gannon is the AP’s special regional correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon


Local Taliban leader killed in E. Afghanistan
KABUL, March 12 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader had been killed in an operation carried out by Afghan forces and the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in eastern province of Nangarhar, the ISAF forces confirmed Tuesday.

"An Afghan and coalition security force killed Taliban leader, Hamza, during an operation in Khugyani district, Nangarhar province, yesterday," said the ISAF in a press release.

The killed leader was specialized in improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, and also had a history of involvement in small arms and suicide attacks in the province 120 km east of Afghan capital of Kabul, the release said, adding "Hamza was responsible for coordinating and conducting attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in Khugyani district."

The Taliban has been waging an insurgency since its regime was toppled by a U.S-led invasion in late 2001. The insurgent group has yet to confirm the death of their leader.

In a separate development, the Taliban earlier in the day ran over a village in Wardoj district in northern Badakhshan province, forcing more than 2,000 villagers to evict their houses and leave the village, a provincial government spokesman said.

"Taliban raided the Yakhshira village Tuesday morning. I do confirm forced displacement of up to 287 families or more than 2, 000 people," Abdul Maruf Rasikh told Xinhua, adding security forces rolled out an operation to clear the village from militants in coming days.

Earlier this month, Taliban ambushed an army convoy in Wardoj in the province 315 km northeast of Kabul, killing 16 army soldiers.


After Afghan Raid, Focus on Captors
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV March 11, 2013
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A daylight raid on one of Afghanistan's top universities over the weekend is focusing attention on the secretive paramilitary unit that allegedly carried it out—a group of Afghan operatives founded with the input of President Hamid Karzai and mentored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, according to people familiar with it.

Now, the so-called Kandahar Strike Force has become a focus of President Karzai's anger as he pushes to curb U.S. influence in Afghanistan and assert control over groups he says operate outside his government's writ.

On Saturday morning, gunmen piloting two trucks rolled into Kandahar University, saying they were agents of Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.

"Suicide bombers are on campus trying to blow themselves up. Lie down on the ground!" the men yelled, according to witnesses and university officials. As students sprawled on the dirt and asphalt, the men fired rifles in the air.

The men seized Abdul Qayum—a 29-year-old engineering student who was among students planting flowers on the university lawn—hooded him and drove him away, Mr. Qayum and others said. He was taken to a place where he was beaten, suffocated with a blanket and interrogated about Taliban activities in his home village, Mr. Qayum said in an interview. He didn't know where he was or who had detained him, he said.

But Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for President Karzai, said the gunmen who had snatched Mr. Qayum were "a local team working for the CIA." Mr. Faizi added that the student had been driven to a base tucked behind a hill crest on the edge of Kandahar city that houses a CIA facility.

The base—which occupies the former home of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and parts of which are known as Camp Gecko and Camp Maholic—hosts U.S. Special Operations Forces that conduct night raids, alongside a CIA facility, U.S. officials have previously acknowledged. The Afghan paramilitary unit working out of the base has previously been identified by U.S. and Afghan officials as the Kandahar Strike Force.

Afghanistan's spy agency, the NDS, keeps a liaison officer at the camp but isn't otherwise involved with what goes on there, Mr. Faizi said. Of the student's alleged captors, Mr. Faizi added: "This group is not an official group."

It wasn't possible to verify the identity of Mr. Qayum's captors or to locate the Kandahar Strike Force or its members. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Saturday's incident. A spokesman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said that "ISAF didn't do this mission."

Asked about the student's allegations of mistreatment at a CIA facility, a U.S. official disputed the account. The official wouldn't provide further detail.

On Sunday, hours after Mr. Qayum was freed, Mr. Karzai issued a fiery rebuke to the U.S., saying Mr. Qayum had been the captive of a "foreign militia." He also issued a decree barring future raids on university campuses.

"Karzai has been trying to exert government control over all these guys with guns," said Graeme Smith, Kabul-based senior analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank. "Politically, he should be concerned about the idea of a third force emerging that is neither the Taliban nor the government."

The Kandahar Strike Force, which operates across south Afghanistan, isn't the only such well-equipped local paramilitary unit said to have been fostered by the CIA and Special Operations Forces to hunt down the Taliban. In the eastern province of Paktika, the CIA worked for years with the so-called Afghan Security Guard of Commander Aziz, who was known for parading the bodies of killed Taliban fighters on the hood of his car, military officials involved in its operation have said.

In Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan and the Karzai family's home, the roots of the Strike Force go back to a private militia of President Karzai's late brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the provincial council who was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2011. President Karzai himself selected and introduced the unit's first recruits back in 2002, according to U.S. diplomatic cables posted on the WikiLeaks site. It isn't clear if Mr. Karzai has responded publicly to that assertion.

The force gained wider attention in 2009, after a clash between its leaders and the regular Afghan police resulted in the shooting death of a provincial police chief. President Karzai intervened. Several prominent members of the Kandahar Strike Force, including its commander at the time, were arrested and imprisoned in Kabul.

After Mr. Qayum was taken on Saturday, students started throwing rocks and blocked the entrances to the campus, protesting against the raid, according to Kandahar University's vice-chancellor for student affairs, Abdul Tawab Balakarzai. "We were very angry," Mr. Balakarzai said. "These people who came to the college did not treat him as a human."

The gunmen had identified themselves as NDS members, so Mr. Balakarzai said he called the main NDS office in Kandahar. The NDS denied any knowledge of the raid, he said.

The site outside Kandahar has gained notoriety among locals. Prisoners taken in Special Operations Forces raids across southern Afghanistan are taken there for interrogation and processing, U.S. officials have said. Ahmadullah, an Afghan electrician who says he worked at Camp Gecko for four years, says he saw prisoners kept in tiny cells as loud rock music and bright lights deprived them of sleep.

Mr. Qayum, a third-year student with a trimmed beard, said he was handled by Afghans and kept blindfolded—except for a brief moment when he was photographed, he says, by a bearded man who he said didn't speak and didn't look like an Afghan.

Mr. Qayum said interrogators wrapped his face in a blanket, depriving him of air, and then one of them sat on his head. He says he was also beaten on the soles of his feet and his back.

At first, Mr. Qayum said, interrogators wanted to know whether he was involved in manufacturing improvised explosive devices. Then, he said, the questions turned to what he knew about a man named Hajji Mohammad, from Mr. Qayum's home village in the Gereshk district of Helmand province, a Taliban hotbed.

"Sometimes, the Taliban come to our village, and to our houses," Mr. Qayum said. "But this man is just a farmer. And me, in my three years, I have never been absent from university—I do not have time for such activity."

After Mr. Qayum was taken away, Mr. Balakarzai, the vice-chancellor, phoned provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa, a professor of agriculture who founded the university when Kandahar was under Communist rule in the 1980s. In an interview, Gov. Wesa said he called the acting NDS director in Kabul to urge him to press his American counterparts to free the student.

"This guy may have been a criminal, and may not have been—we don't know. But the academic environment should not be disturbed this way," Gov. Wesa said. He said he also didn't know whether the force that had taken Mr. Qayum to Camp Gecko worked with the CIA or Special Operations. "We don't know who these people are, we don't know the internal structure of the compound, we don't know who works for whom," the governor said.

Soon, Mr. Karzai also got involved. By the evening, Mr. Qayum was dropped off at the Kandahar NDS headquarters. From there, he was brought to Gov. Wesa's office, to take a congratulatory phone call from the Afghan president.

"He said that such things will never happen again, and that I should focus on my studies," Mr. Qayum said, recounting his conversation with Mr. Karzai.

The following morning, Mr. Karzai made one of his harshest speeches yet against the U.S., starting out by saying that he had been kept awake until midnight by Mr. Qayum's case, and then accusing the U.S. of colluding with the Taliban to perpetuate foreign presence. The speech, just ahead of a meeting with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, brought new chill to U.S.-Afghan relations.

In Kandahar on Monday, Mr. Qayum returned to his studies but said he was uneasy. "I am afraid they will come after me again," he said. "But I know I am lucky. They didn't do to me the bad things that I've heard them do to other people." —Siobhan Gorman contributed to this article.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com


Karzai: Anti-terror war failure harms Pakistan & Afghanistan
By Mirwais Adeel - 12 Mar 2013, 3:53 pm Khaama Press
Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Tuesday warned that terrorism will harm both Afghanistan and Pakistan if Islamabad does not seriously cooperate fighting terrorism in the region.

During his visit to southern Helmand province of Afghanistan, president Karzai said Pakistan should know that lack of Islamabad’s cooperation in fighting terrorism will harm the two nations.

Karzai arrived in Helmand province along with a delegation of high level government officials during an unannounced visit.

While speaking among the senior government officials, university students and local tribal elders president Karzai once again emphasized that the recent attacks by Taliban is to serve United States of America.

He also said to step up efforts in a bid to reconcile with the Afghan Taliban militants.

In parts of his speech president Karzai insisted for complete hand over of US-run Bagram prison to Afghanistan and said the prison will be handed over by next week.


Russia's Top Drug Cop Warns On Afghan Opiates
March 11, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The head of Russia's Federal Service for Narcotics Control has told a UN commission that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has grown by 18 percent.

Viktor Ivanov told a session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna on March 11 that Afghan land under cultivation rose from 131,000 hectares to 154,000 hectares in 2012.

Ivanov said he expected Afghan heroin production to increase after the majority of international forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.

Ivanov said since foreign forces started their operation in Afghanistan in 2001 more than 1 million people worldwide have died from Afghan heroin.

He added that the illegal Afghan drug trade over those nearly 12 years has been worth some $1 trillion.

Based on reporting by Interfax and ITAR-TASS


2 Afghan Sisters, Swept Up in a Suicide Wave
New York Times By AZAM AHMED March 11, 2013
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - On the surface, the Gul sisters seemed to have it all: they were young, beautiful, educated and well off, testing the bounds of conservative Afghan traditions with fitted jeans, makeup and cellphones.

But Nabila Gul, 17, a bright and spunky high school student, pushed it too far. She fell in love.

Her older sister, Fareba, 25, alarmed at the potential shame and consequences of Nabila’s pursuit of a young man outside of family channels, tried to intervene. Their argument that November day ended in grief: side-by-side coffins, both girls dead within hours of each other after consuming rat poison stolen from their father’s grain closet.

Interviews with family members and government and hospital officials here reveal a tragedy of miscalculation: Under pressure from her older sister to halt communication with the boy, Nabila tried to eat just enough poison to scare her family but not kill herself. But she misjudged. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Fareba followed by taking her own life on the doorstep of the city’s most holy shrine.

The sisters’ deaths shattered their family and have struck a chilling chord for the residents of Mazar-i-Sharif, a city increasingly marked by the despair of its young women. For many, the deaths have come to symbolize a larger crisis: an intensifying wave of suicide attempts.

Although the government says it does not collect data on these cases, the city’s main hospital says it has been overwhelmed, with three or four such patients coming in every day, up from about one or two a month a decade ago.

The number of attempts has grown with such speed that the head of investigations for the police, Col. Salahudin Sultan, says he can no longer follow up on them.

“We don’t have the time or resources to investigate these,” he explained. “We would hardly get anything else done.”

As for the questions of why, and why here, there seem to be as many theories as there are cases. Most explanations focus on Mazar’s status in Afghanistan as an affluent cross-cultural hub, relatively more liberal and exposed to European influences. While Afghan girls here regularly are exposed to the social norms of the West through television serials and the Web, the fact is that they live in Afghanistan’s conservative and male-dominated society. The clash is cruel, and can be heartbreaking.

“Most of the girls don’t die, but they all take poison or at least threaten to kill themselves,” said Dr. Khowaja Noor Mohammad, the head of internal medicine at Mazar-i-Sharif Regional Hospital. “This is their cry for help.”

The doctor who tried to save the Gul sisters, Dr. Khaled, produced a patient ledger for the past two months. As he pored through the list, he uttered the names of several young women who had attempted suicide: Fatima, Mariam, Zulfiya, Zar Gul, Basbibi.

“There are probably 200 cases in here of attempted suicide,” said Dr. Khaled, who goes by a single name, waving the ledger in the air. “In the last 12 hours, we had three.”

Perhaps no case is more emblematic, or more discussed, than the deaths of the Gul sisters.

The two came from an educated, progressive family. Mohammed Gul, their father, is a prosecutor. Nabila was on the cusp of graduating from high school, and planned to attend college in the city. Fareba was already attending college and hoped to follow her father’s footsteps into the legal profession. The young women were determinedly modern, and would not have seemed out of place in many Western cities.

Nabila was impetuous, with a quick temper and a strong sense of self. She often challenged what Fareba told her, rejecting the deference held for elders in Afghan society. Fareba, a softhearted woman who often wept after small arguments, confided to a close friend that she felt Nabila did not respect her.

Their last fight, the morning of Nov. 26, involved a boy Nabila said she was in love with. Fareba thought the relationship was inappropriate, and urged her sister against it. Nabila refused, and the two began shouting.

Their mother heard the fight, and ran in to break it up, slapping Nabila twice across her face for talking back to her older sister, according to people close to the family. The younger girl ran off in tears.

An hour later, Nabila’s mother discovered her on the floor of her room, white foam dripping from the corners of her mouth.

At the hospital, doctors tried desperately to cleanse the rat poison from her system as family members surrounded the bed, begging Nabila to recover.

The mother shot an angry glance at Fareba and said: “If Nabila dies, it will be your fault,” according to a doctor in the room at the time.

Mohammed Gul sat quietly, holding his daughter’s hand. She went in and out of consciousness. She said that she had not meant to take so much poison, and that she regretted it now.

At 2:30 p.m., Nabila died. On the way home from the hospital, her father suffered a heart attack, and was admitted as a patient.

At the house, people began to gather. The Guls’ eldest son, Abdul Wahid, played host to the mourners who crowded into the pale green parlor of the house. But he was worried about Fareba, the sister he was closest to. She was not answering calls or texts.

At 4 p.m., his phone rang. It was Fareba. Her voice hoarse and slow, she said she was at the Hazrat Ali shrine, a stunning mosque of cerulean tile in a sea of white marble. Stuck at the house with the visitors, Abdul Wahid asked his uncle, Malim Faiz Mohammad, to get her.

When he arrived at the mosque, Mr. Mohammad spotted a crowd near the entrance to the shrine. He found his niece lying on the cold marble in the center of the crowd. Strands of foam leaked from a corner of her mouth.

He rushed her to the hospital. Doctors put Fareba in a room down the hall from her father, who was still recovering. Neither knew the other was there.

No one else knew of Fareba’s whereabouts, either. With the family preoccupied preparing Nabila’s body for burial, the uncle said, he decided then to keep the matter to himself, not wanting to upend an already fragile household.

The doctors worked on Fareba for more than an hour. Her uncle stood by silently as they performed the same procedure that had failed to revive her sister hours earlier. At 5:30 in the evening, the doctors pronounced Fareba dead.

“Dying this way just doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Mohammad said in an interview. “I wish they would have died in an accident.”

He took Fareba’s body back to the house, but hid it in a separate room off the side of the compound where no one would see it. He still could not bring himself to tell them the bad news.

The truth came out the next day.

Early the next morning, Mohammed Gul woke in the hospital. He sat for a while in the sun-washed room, gathering his belongings, still unable to grasp Nabila’s death. He needed to talk to Fareba about what had happened, he thought.

Back home, he was escorted to the courtyard, where coffins sat side by side.

“Why are there two coffins?” he asked his brother. “Who is in the second one?”

The sisters are buried together in a nondescript graveyard a few miles from the family home, their graves marked with two wooden poles and a mound of stones. A band of Tajik children roams the cemetery, turning the muddy slopes into a playground.

Mohammed Gul rarely eats, and suffers continued bouts of sickness. His wife, devastated, rarely leaves their cold, concrete house. Reminders of the loss spring from everyday rituals like sitting down at the kitchen table, with two chairs now empty.

The parents seek comfort in small ways. At night, Mr. Gul and his wife sleep in the girls’ room, he on Fareba’s bed, his wife on Nabila’s. They have given away the sisters’ belongings, as is customary, except for a pair of dresses. On bad days, the parents clutch the clothing to their faces.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 11, 2013

A picture caption with an earlier version of this article reversed the given name and surname of the father of the Gul sisters. He is Mohammed Gul, not Gul Mohammed.


Traders Strike as Chamber Asks Karzai to Address Problems
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Monday, 11 March 2013
The Afghan Chamber of Commerce (ACCI) Monday called on President Hamid Karzai to attend to the problems faced by Afghan merchants who have started to go on strike in protest against their ongoing trade challenges.

Afghan traders are striking by refusing to allow their commercial goods to be transported for export to the cities.

ACCI officials said that the president must respond to the merchants and help personally solve their problems which have been plaguing the goods trade for some time.

Many merchants participated in the strike, refusing to allow their commercial goods into cities by halting their freight cars at customs.

"We ask the president to take a decision to resolve merchants problems because we have seen during the past 15 days no high ranking officials have taken any step to solve the issue," ACCI Finance and Administrative Assistant Tawfiq Daware told TOLOnews.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry officials said that they have talked about the merchants' problems with the minister to take to the Council of Ministers in order for a decision to be made on helping traders.


MPs Elect Second Vice Speaker, Fail to Elect First
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Monday, 11 March 2013
Afghan lawmakers have elected the second vice speaker of the lower house, but failed for a third day in a row to elect a first vice speaker.

In Monday's 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.

Lawmaker Mansour received 69 confidence votes and Klimzai 105. Klimzai needed two more votes to win the first vice speaker position.

In Sunday's vote, the scales were tipped in the opposite direction: Mansour received 87 votes and Klimzai 62 votes.

However, the MPs approved Saleh Mohammad Saljoqi as the second vice speaker with 108 votes.

On Tuesday, the lawmakers will start again voting for the first vice speaker and also for the second deputy secretary.

Some of the MPs have accused the other lawmakers of not voting for a first vice speaker as a kind of delay tactic.

"There are some groups that they are thinking about their own benefit and don't want to elect the first vice speaker," MP Asadullah Sahadati told TOLOnews.

"The MPs should elect a person that can do a good job as the first vice speaker of the house and they shouldn't worry about it. Everyone can be nominated for the post," MP Abdul Jabar Qahraman said.

The lawmakers first vote was on Saturday after they reconvened following the winter break.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com