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Pakistan, Afghan forces in high-stakes clash along border
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An Afghan border policeman was killed and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire along the border late on Wednesday, officials from both countries said, a clash likely to unsettle already strained ties between the neighbours.
A senior Afghan official said hundreds of additional Afghan troops were sent to a disputed border gate after the exchange of fire, which lasted for more than two hours.
The stakes are high. The United States wants Pakistan to help Kabul lure the Taliban to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of NATO combat troops by the end of 2014.
But it doesn't take much to strain relations which have been marred by distrust for decades.
A Pakistani military source said the shooting was sparked by an attack on a Pakistani checkpost. The senior Afghan official said trouble started after Pakistani troops attempted to fortify the border gate.
Two Afghan border policemen were wounded.
Afghanistan has grown increasingly frustrated with Pakistan over efforts to pursue an Afghan peace process involving the Taliban, suggesting that Islamabad is intent on keep Afghanistan unstable.
Afghan officials say Pakistan has a long history of supporting Afghanistan's Taliban and other insurgent factions. Pakistan has in turn accused Afghanistan of giving safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border.
The latest tensions are focused on Pakistan's building of a military gate which Afghan officials say is inside Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered his top officials to take immediate action to remove the gate and other "Pakistani military installations near the Durand Line".
The Durand Line is the 1893 British-mandated border between the two countries. It is recognised by Pakistan, but not by Afghanistan.
Afghanistan maintains that activity by either side along the Durand Line must be approved by both countries.
(Reporting by Sheree Sardar in ISLAMABAD and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Afghan police kill 6 militants
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan police raided Taliban hideouts in Ghazni province 125 km south of Kabul late Wednesday night, leaving six militants dead, provincial police chief Zarawar Zahid said Thursday.
"The operation was launched in Zana Khan District late last night and lasted for a while during which six rebels had been killed," Zahid told Xinhua.
He also added that the killed militants were involved in organizing terrorist activities and killing three police including a senior officer couple of days ago.
Meantime, Taliban militants fighting the government have yet to make comment.
Bomb Kills Several Afghan Police Officers
May 2, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Local officials say eight police officers have been killed in a roadside bomb attack in the eastern Afghan province of Logar.
Deputy police chief Rais Khan Sadeq told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan the policemen were on a joint patrol with NATO-led forces on May 2 when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militant group was responsible for the attack near the provincial capital, Puli Alam.
It comes days after Taliban insurgents announced the start of a spring offensive.
On May 1, a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is trying to negotiate with the Taliban, was ambushed and killed in the Helmand Province along with two bodyguards.
Three British soldiers were also killed in that province on the same day when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
With reporting by AFP
CIA buys trouble in Afghanistan
How can cash payoffs to a corrupt leader further U.S. interests there?
Los Angles Times By Sarah Chayes Op-Ed May 2, 2013
In a time when the whetted and arbitrary deficit-reduction knife is cutting bone out of critical U.S. government programs, the image of shopping bags stuffed with CIA cash handed off on a monthly basis to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — who reigns over one of the most corrupt governments on the planet — has outraged many Americans.
The New York Times, which revealed the years of payoffs this week, noted that "there is little evidence the payments bought the influence the CIA sought."
In fact, regular cash handouts of this type may do the opposite. They may well have enabled Karzai's frequent and theatrical outbursts against U.S. officials and policies, not to mention his collusion with some of his country's most corrupt and abusive officials. Such payoffs signal to Karzai — or other leaders like him — that he enjoys the unwavering support of the CIA, no matter what he does or says, and embolden him to thumb his nose at the United States whenever he feels like it.
Karzai's relationship with the CIA is believed to long predate the tense days in late 2001 when CIA officers joined him and his followers in the mountains north of Kandahar as the Taliban regime was falling. In a 2003 conversation, the most renowned commander of anti-Soviet resistance fighters in southern Afghanistan, where I lived at the time, told me that in the late 1980s Karzai introduced him to CIA officials so he could obtain some of the all-important Stinger missiles that helped the Afghan fighters neutralize Soviet helicopters. U.S. support of the anti-Soviet resistance was covert. Very few Afghans had direct contact with the CIA. Most received U.S. money or military equipment by way of Pakistani intermediaries. Karzai, according to this commander, was one of the early exceptions.
Given this long relationship with the CIA, Karzai may believe that the agency somehow represents the true voice of the U.S. government. Indeed, the competing and often contradictory exhortations and demands transmitted by ambassadors and special envoys who come and go, the successive commanders of international forces with their different approaches, the congressional delegations who troop through his office, even secretaries of State or Defense, must start to sound like a lot of cacophonous noise to the man on the receiving end. Amid the din, CIA money can ring a clear note.
The tendency to read CIA signals as conveying the "real" intent of the U.S. government is not limited to Afghan leaders. In his book "The Arab Center," for example, former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher describes a tense episode in 2004 when Jordan was promoting a broad-based Arab initiative to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process.
A meeting between President George W. Bush and King Abdullah II was hanging in the balance, with the king awaiting the result of fraught negotiations between Muasher and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice over the contents of a letter of intent from Bush to Abdullah. A full day of talks resulted in a mutually agreeable formulation.
But in the meantime, a CIA official had been speaking back channel with Jordan's intelligence chief, waiting on the West Coast with the king; the CIA official urged the delegation to fly home to Jordan, and it did. In the end, the king and his advisors concluded that it was the CIA, not the national security advisor, that really counted in the U.S. government, and the Middle East peace process remained stalled.
In Karzai's case, CIA payments, against a backdrop of jangling dissonance, may allow him to choose which messages to take seriously — usually the ones he likes. Or to play some U.S. actors off against others, as he recently did by subjecting Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to public humiliation while courting Secretary of State John Kerry.
Many Afghans I know had assumed for years that the CIA was doling out cash to Karzai. Even so, the U.S. media expose has made waves, providing evidence for what had only been suspected.
"No wonder he talks so badly against the United States," one friend said, summarizing the reactions he'd heard. "The cash, on top of everything else America has done for him, just proves how desperately you need him. It means he can do anything."
This can hardly be the only time the CIA has covertly paid off key foreign leaders, with little if any coordination with other U.S. decision-makers and little understanding of the repercussions. Such activities amount to an independent foreign policy, lacking connection to any concerted plan, and too often conflict with the U.S. government's wider priorities. It is time, in this as in other domains, to inject some accountability and oversight into CIA operations.
Sarah Chayes, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing writer to Opinion, lived in Afghanistan for most of the last decade and served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Secret Cash To Afghan Leader: Corruption Or Just Foreign Aid?
NPR By Sean Carberry May 01, 2013
After a report in this week, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged that the CIA has been secretly delivering bags of money to his office since the beginning of the war more than a decade ago.
The money is allegedly used to buy loyalty — that of Karzai and the people he doles the cash out to. and he's grateful for it.
But many politicians, pundits and people on the street aren't so happy about the secret stash.
Political analyst Bashir Bezhand is among them.
Speaking to a news anchor on Afghanistan's Tolo TV, Bezhand said it is a "scandal" and an "insult" to the people of Afghanistan. He said Karzai should answer publicly for what many consider a crime: receiving tens of millions of dollars in ghost money from the CIA, much of which has gone to family, cronies, politicians and warlords, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times.
The Fallout At Home
Several Afghan senators commented in the local media that Karzai has violated national sovereignty by accepting the cash.
But other senators, especially those appointed by Karzai, say it's not a big deal.
Sen. Najiba Hussaini says foreign aid forms the foundation of the current Afghan government. The ghost money is financial support to the presidential palace, she says, and such payments are made in mutual agreement between two parties.But most people on the street in Kabul don't see it that way.Mohammad Wali, a 20-year-old student, says it's wrong.
"It's harmful for Afghanistan, because this money is given to the warlords in secret, and it's not clear whether they spend money on weapons or building huge houses for themselves," Wali says.
Mohammad Rahman says the revelation doesn't surprise him. The 42-year-old shopkeeper sees it as more of the same.
"Before, it was leaked that Iran was making cash payments to Karzai," Rahman says. "This time, CIA's support was leaked."
Karzai has acknowledged receiving cash payments from Iran. Those payments reportedly stopped when Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. despite Iranian protests.
Return On The Investment
According to the presidential palace, the CIA money is being used for charitable purposes, but few believe that's the case.
"As a president, it's shameful for him to take money directly from an intelligence organization," says Atiqullah Baryalai, a former Afghan deputy defense minister.
He says Karzai was using the money to buy loyalty, not to serve the interests of the country. But Baryalai believes the CIA did get some return on its investment.
"In some extent [Karzai] kept quiet, or kept him on the track with America or CIA," Baryalai says.
But not quiet enough, apparently. Baryalai believes that Karzai's growing criticisms of U.S. and CIA activities in Afghanistan pushed the CIA to leak the story in order to punish the Afghan president. And several Afghan senators have said they find the timing of the story suspicious — that it's a conspiracy between the U.S. government and the media to influence the negotiations over a long-term security pact between Afghanistan and the U.S.
NPR's Sultan Faizy and Aimal Yaqubi contributed to this story.
Afghan spy chief quietly returns to US for medical treatment
Jonathan S. Landay and Jay Price | McClatchy Newspapers Thursday, May 2, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Afghanistan's top spy came home on April 2 after nearly four months of treatment at a U.S. military hospital for wounds from a Taliban assassination attempt, it was to lavish greetings that included roadside billboards and banners.
When he left this week for more surgery in Washington, D.C., intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid went so quietly hardly anyone in the government knew he was gone.
"I am not aware of that," said Haji Fahim, the chief spokesman for Khalid's own agency, the National Directorate of Security, on Thursday.
"I have not heard that," echoed Adela Raz, a deputy to President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman.
But a U.S. official, who declined to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Khalid had returned to the United States for further treatment of his injuries after his condition deteriorated. He declined to say where Khalid is being treated.
A Khalid deputy, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, told a Kabul TV station that Khalid indeed had returned to the United States on Monday.
Afghanistan surely needs heroes now, with the public's confidence buffeted by seemingly endless charges of corruption among its leaders and the uncertainty of 2014, which will bring both the end of the U.S.-led coalition's combat mission and an election to replace Karzai. Some were determined to give the country one in the form of Khalid.
Khalid is a close Karzai friend who has built a reputation as an outspoken and ruthless hunter of the Taliban and a fierce critic of alleged Pakistani military support for the insurgents. But he also has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking and torturing prisoners.
"Defender of the Country! You came in and stand tall once again to defend your beloved country. The country welcomes you and looks forward to see your feet stand strong once again," said one billboard, placed in a central Kabul square by a civil society group from Herat Province.
Not only did Khalid get a hero's welcome when he returned, Karzai held Khalid's job open for him, even though that meant leaving the national spy agency leaderless for months in the midst of a critical period of transition as Afghans move to take the full lead in their own security.
The security situation is rapidly getting even more complicated: Not only did the Taliban recently announced the start their annual spring offensive, but relations are worsening with neighboring Pakistan, where keeping tabs on Afghan insurgent sanctuaries is one of Khalid’s major tasks.
The tensions between the neighbors are being fueled by a series of border disputes which on Wednesday night erupted in a firefight between Afghan and Pakistani forces on the frontier between eastern Nangarhar province’s Goshta district and Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal agency.
The clash lasted for several hours, with one member of the Afghan border police reported killed and at least two wounded.
Karzai had last month criticized Pakistan for building a border post at the location without consulting Afghanistan, which has never recognized the frontier drawn by the subcontinent’s former British colonial rulers.
Khalid was nearly killed at an intelligence agency guest house in Kabul in December when a suicide bomber detonated explosives hidden in his underwear. The bomber was pretending to be a peace envoy from the Taliban. Karzai charged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, which denied the allegation.
Karzai, while on a diplomatic trip to Washington in January, made a point of visiting Khalid at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The spy chief is highly regarded by the Obama administration, despite the unsavory allegations against him, and other visitors included President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta.
It's again unclear when Khalid will return to his job, or if Karzai will replace him if his recovery is lengthy.
2nd anniversary of Bin Laden's death marked
BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The killing of Osama Bin Laden two years ago marked the end of an era for the United States. But Pakistan suffered tragic losses through terrorism during the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader. Our correspondent Danial Khan takes a look at how the security situation has improved in the last two years and how the Pakistan-US relationship has moved forward.
Two years since US Special Forces claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden, the town where he was allegedly found remains in the limelight.
A big question mark lurks over the garrison city of Abbotabad in northern Pakistan, how did the world number one terrorist, nestle in a compound, at a stone’s throw from the Pakistan military academy?
While US Navy Seals look at it as one of their most distinguished achievements, locals in Abbotabad still have doubts about it. "I live next to the house where they are saying Osama was living. I’ve lived here for over 20 years. I have never seen anyone who looked like Osama, it is a big lie." "I believe that Osama bin Laden was never in Abbotabad, he was not in Pakistan, if he was killed, then where is his body? It was an American stage show to insult Pakistan."
Since the search began for Osama Bin Laden, a deadly trend of homegrown terrorist attacks surfaced in Pakistan.
The Pak-US relationship hit rock bottom after American forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a military check post along Pak-afghan border.
Anti-American protests exacerbated on the streets of Pakistan. Many believe Pakistan became a victim of terror attacks, post 9/11, when it joined the US war on terror. Over 40,000 Pakistani civilians and soldiers lost their lives to terrorism, the economy lost $68 billion.
The deteriorating security situation has been intensified by US drone attacks in the north of the country. Allegedly used to target militants, they have attracted widespread condemnation across Pakistan for causing collateral damage.
As the world marks the second death anniversary of Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan remains tense ahead of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2014, fearing it will bring more trouble to the region.
In less than two weeks, Pakistan goes for general elections. Terrorists have already targeted major liberal political parties. Observers predict this current wave of terrorism my lead to a political turmoil that means terrorism in Pakistan has not ended with the end of Osama Bin Laden.
By CCTV correspondent Danial Khan
(Source: CNTV.cn)
Afghanistan's Karzai urges closure of Guantanamo
Associated PressBy JAN M. OLSEN | Associated Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pressed for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama mulls a renewed push before a reluctant U.S. Congress.
"I have from the very beginning been a very strong supporter for the closing down of the Guantanamo prison," Karzai told reporters during a brief visit to Denmark.
Obama's goal of closing down the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba has eluded him since he took office. In his first week, Obama signed an executive order for its closure, but Congress has used its budgetary power to block detainees from being moved to the United States.
Karzai said that Afghanistan had asked the U.S. administration for the release of Afghan prisoners being held in Guantanamo.
"We have been in contact with the U.S. for a couple of years about their release," Karzai said, but did not elaborate.
Karzai was speaking after a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt on the third leg of a regional visit that also took him to Finland and Estonia.
In Copenhagen, Karzai laid a wreath at a war memorial commemorating soldiers killed in action, including more than 40 Danish troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan since Denmark first contributed soldiers to the NATO-led mission in 2001.
Denmark's military force is situated mainly in the volatile southern Helmand province but is scheduled to pull out of combat operations in August, leaving 300 soldiers to train Afghan forces.
Kabul's Unlikely New Ally
Has Pakistan decided it's finally time to embrace Afghanistan?
Foreign Policy BY DANIEL SAGALYN MAY 1, 2013
The recent meeting of Afghan and Pakistani leaders with Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels marked a renewed effort by the Obama administration to get these two South Asian nations to resolve hostilities that have fueled the war in Afghanistan.
"It's fair to say that there's good feeling among all of us that we made progress," Kerry said after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's top military officer. "We will continue a very specific dialogue on both the political track as well as the security track.... [A]ll of us agreed we are committed to try to find stability and peace within both countries and the region itself."
The meeting came at a time when American officials believe that after years of supporting militants who were trying to undermine the Afghan government -- and as U.S. forces prepare to leave the region -- Pakistan has changed its approach to Kabul and has become more cooperative in seeking a political solution to the conflict raging next door, American officials say. However, even as they insist there is a new approach, those same officials acknowledge there has been no "measurable change" in support for the combatant groups U.S. and allied troops confront in Afghanistan.
Such a shift, if actually executed, would be significant. Pakistan's support for the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, and other Afghan Taliban militants -- whom it has sheltered, trained, and armed -- has perpetuated the insurgency in Afghanistan and angered the United States, which has spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of troops trying to stabilize the country since ousting the Taliban from power in 2001. Pakistan's support for these groups has been motivated by its fear that Afghanistan could become an ally of longtime enemy India and nurture separatist movements in the western part of its territory. Supporting the Taliban was seen as a means of keeping Indian influence in Afghanistan to a minimum.
"The growing regional pivot in Pakistan's foreign policy is a reflection of our democratic policymaking," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said last September at the United Nations General Assembly. "A brighter Afghan future will only be possible when the search for peace is Afghan-owned, Afghan-driven, and Afghan-led." Zardari -- who has led the Pakistan People's Party since his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007 -- said his nation would support Afghan efforts toward "reconciliation and peace."
Pakistan's government was dissolved in March ahead of national elections this month, but support for the regional shift is shared across the nation's major political parties. Among those embracing this view is the odds-on favorite to become the nation's next leader, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and his wing of the Pakistan Muslim League.
One U.S. official who deals with Pakistan notes that Hina Rabbani Khar -- until recently, the country's foreign minister -- has been saying, "This is for real, we really are turning a corner in the way we approach Afghanistan. It's a state in its own right, it's not just rubbish in our backyard."
American officials believe this rhetoric is sincere, signifying a genuine change in strategy. The Pakistanis "are going out on a limb publicly, they are really pumping this thing," the official said. "Fundamentally, the message is quite consistent and well coordinated between... the five or 10 senior most people in their hierarchy," including Kayani, who serves as the chief of army staff.
American officials say one concrete sign of Pakistan's new policy is its move late last year to free Afghan Taliban prisoners that Kabul's High Peace Council had asked to be released. U.S. representatives also stress that the Pakistani foreign minister has visited Kabul often and met with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, which is composed mostly of Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara political leaders who are close to India and fought the Pakistan-supported Taliban during the 1990s.
Pakistanis are also now cooperating more with Afghan and U.S. military officials on border security, one senior Defense Department official said in an interview. Pakistani leaders have "publicly and privately expressed support for the Doha political process," in which the Afghan Taliban would be allowed to open an office in Qatar in order to meet with Afghan and foreign officials, with the aim of negotiating a conclusion to the war, the defense official said. The United States has been pushing for this development for a couple of years.
"The number one factor" driving Pakistan's shift in policy, according to the senior defense official, is the "growth of domestic radicalization, militancy, and terrorism" in Pakistan. According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an independent think tank, nearly 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured since 2006 in violence stemming from terrorism, ethnic and sectarian strife, and the separatist insurgency in Baluchistan, as well as criminal activity.
"Pakistan's biggest fear is that if the [Afghan] Taliban come back into power through violence, through force, they will create trouble all around them, including in Pakistan," the official said. "They will not only provide safe haven to militants that are in Pakistan... but more ideological stimulus to these groups." This line of thinking had been simmering for a number of years but "has now crystallized in Pakistan across the civilian and military leadership, over the course of basically 2012."
Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution, says that although Pakistan has relied on the Afghan Taliban to advance its interests in Afghanistan for the past two decades, Pakistan's military leaders are now "uncertain about their [Afghan] proxies and whether they will turn against them, and whether the proxies have alliances with the people they are fighting in Pakistan, the Pakistan Taliban. Ideologically, there is no difference between them." Cohen says Pakistani officials "are nervous about their support for the [Afghan] Taliban bouncing back and hurting them in terms of their war against the Pakistani Taliban, which is now a full-scale war."
Pakistan's new army doctrine, which has not been publicly released, now recognizes that the military must also focus on the internal threat to the country's stability, according to Shuja Nawaz, who directs the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. For the first time, the doctrine tries to introduce to the senior ranks the notion that Pakistan is facing "multifaceted" threats and should be "no longer simply India-centric," he said.
"Our efforts must be directed towards stabilizing the internal front," said Kayani last August in a speech on the nation's independence day. "Today, extremism and terrorism present a grave challenge."
The U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan is another factor propelling Islamabad's new approach, according to the first U.S. official, who deals with Pakistan. The Pakistanis are concerned that the Afghan National Security Forces will not be able to provide stability "at least in some provinces," this official said. "And I believe the Pakistani leadership, when they say that they don't, they categorically do not want the Taliban to come back to power."
Some former U.S. officials are skeptical, though.
"What they are doing is marginal," said one former senior defense official, who noted that while there may be some improvement in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, "There are way too many things in play before you can say this is a concerted shift."
"There is no historical precedent" for Pakistan to change its entire approach toward Afghanistan, says Seth Jones, who advised U.S. special forces in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. Now a political scientist at RAND, Jones notes that Pakistan has backed militant organizations in Afghanistan since at least the 1980s, aiming to ensure a friendly country on its western flank.
Pakistan also appears to have continued to support violent extremists even after it launched the purported shift in approach. According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official now with Brookings, when the Haqqani network attacked Camp Bastion in Afghanistan last September, "one of the Afghan Taliban attackers was captured alive, and in his interrogation, he indicated the attack was planned in conjunction with the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency], and they facilitated their route to the target and helped them plan the attack on the facility."
Even U.S. officials who believe a significant shift is underway say it will be implemented only gradually.
The U.S. official who deals with Pakistan said that Washington has not "seen any measureable change" in Pakistani support for the Haqqani network. Nor did this official expect to see any decrease in support for the Haqqani network anytime soon. "I think that is part of Pakistan's hedging strategy," the official said. "They will want to see how things are playing out a little bit more across the border before they take action."
Another official said that the Pakistani government would not go after these militants because they do not threaten the Pakistani nation. But Pakistani officials realize that a lot of these groups can morph or are already playing multiple games, some of which are anti-state," according to this source.
Pakistani military officials deny they distinguish between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban.
"We do not discriminate, as a matter of state policy, between terrorist groups. So the concept of the good Taliban and the bad Taliban -- there is no such thing," one Pakistani defense official insisted in an interview. "How do you differentiate," the Pakistani official asked, between a Haqqani network fighter and somebody else who belongs to another Pakistani Taliban group?
The militants lack uniforms and "don't have distinctive patches where you could identify them," the official said. "And at 100 meters, 200 meters, a person who has an AK-47 and is shooting at you -- you don't really ask him to identify himself so that you may respond. You tend to shoot first and identify later."
The next test for the strategic pivot will be the May 11 parliamentary elections. The American official who handles Pakistan issues said, "I think the idea has been socialized enough and enjoys enough support across the spectrum that I don't think we'll see a big shift in that particular approach."
It appears that the party that is currently leading in the polls in Pakistan is likely to continue this "regional pivot."
"We want the peace process in Afghanistan to be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned," Tariq Fatemi, a foreign policy advisor to Nawaz Sharif, said in an interview. "We do not want to see any interference from any country in Afghan affairs. Afghanistan is a sovereign and independent country. We respect its sovereignty and we want Afghanistan to be treated as such by all the foreign powers." He added: "Mr. Nawaz Sharif knows very well what happened with the departure of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the civil war that ensued, the chaos that ensued. And we are frightened [by] that nightmarish situation."
As for the peace talks that have been launched by the U.S. and Afghan governments with the help of the Pakistani government, Fatemi said, "We think it's a step in the right direction."
A diamond in the rough
By Whitney Grespin Wednesday, May 1, 2013 Foreign Policy
As the United States continues to withdraw troops and materiel from Afghanistan, the rhetoric from President Hamid Karzai's administration wavers between being fairly pro-American and caustically anti-American, and speculation about reconciliatory negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups abound, it is difficult to remain optimistic about the durability of institutions America has helped build in Afghanistan. However, there is one institution that stands out amongst its peers as a clear success story.
Southwest of Kabul's beautiful Babur Gardens, home of the Mughal Empire founder's tomb, a nondescript maroon door is set back into cream blast walls. Although they look no different than the other concrete walls surrounding compounds along the main road to the battered Darul Aman palace, what happens inside those walls is changing the minds and lives of individuals from all over the country who have the opportunity to attend. Just over the hill from the center of Kabul and past the old city wall, the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) may be on the outskirts of the capital city, but it is quickly sinking roots into the town and making connections around the country.
It is changing the way that Afghans view and access higher education. Mrs. Sultana Hakimi, wife of Afghan ambassador to the United States Eklil Ahmad Hakimi, spoke of the importance of the university's activities when she observed that, "With such a dynamic society [in which] 60 percent is under the age of 20, Afghanistan will rely heavily on the emerging generations." These young Afghans have no small task ahead of them, even if they seek only to restore their country to a level of stability and security similar to that it last enjoyed in the mid twentieth century.
Since it opened in 2006 with an initial enrollment of 53 students, AUAF has had great success.
AUAF graduated its first class in 2011 and currently has just under a thousand undergraduate students, with the student body nearly doubling during seasonal classes that focus on adult education programs. These adult education programs focus on teaching the GIRoA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) ministry staff, which dovetails with other U.S Government efforts to build professional capacity across Afghanistan's administrative bodies.
The university's campus is housed in a series of buildings that was originally constructed as the American International School of Kabul from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, and the campus has long been the center of learning, including the brief period during which it served as the Soviet intelligence headquarters during their occupation of Afghanistan through the 1980s. The five-acre campus is currently near its maximum capacity of one thousand undergraduate students, and houses administrative offices, classrooms, science and information technology (IT) labs, a teleconferencing suite, athletic facilities, and a state-of-the-art library that receives Western publications a mere two weeks after their official release.
Across the road is another 80 acres-recently acquired by the university-which will accommodate a women's center and another IT center, as well as staff and faculty housing. The International Center for Afghan Women's Economic Development, the first center of its kind to facilitate both international and Afghan public and private sector efforts to advance the role of women in the economic stabilization of the country, is only the first of many new resources planned for student use on the new campus. It is slated to open just 13 months after groundbreaking, demonstrating an unheard of rate of construction for a complex of that size pretty much anywhere in the world, let alone in the middle of a conflict zone.
Said Jawad, former Afghan Ambassador to the United States and President of the Foundation for Afghanistan, remarked of the center that, "True economic prosperity and peace can only come from harnessing the myriad talents and courage of Afghan women... the lessons we have learned in the last decade teach us to avoid duplication of efforts but, rather, be force multipliers." Like many other supporters of the AUAF, the Foundation for Afghanistan stands ready to connect rural and urban women and their respective projects with the work of the university and its new women's center. The center will open on May 25, 2013, in conjunction with the graduation of AUAF's third undergraduate class and first cohort of business school students.
The Trials
Needless to say, the security situation in Kabul is a concern for the students, faculty, and staff of AUAF. In October 2011, a massive suicide car bomb was driven into a military shuttle bus just beyond the gates of the university. The attack took 13 American lives, as well as those of at least half a dozen bystanders. That event was the second largest single loss of American lives since the war began, behind only the tragic helicopter crash that killed 30 U.S. troops a few short months earlier.
As Matt Trevithick-who worked for two and a half years as the university's Media Relations Manager-remarked, "We don't forget where we are, [and we] provide the safest environment we can." Visitors are screened prior to entry through the main gate, and are vetted and searched thoroughly before proceeding through metal detectors to the campus grounds. Armed guards keep watch over the campus and quickly blend away into the sense of normalcy that blankets the university's goings-on.
Within the perimeter of the blast walls is a safe zone, and at the heart of the campus is a grass quad where students are free to act as they like and voice their own thoughts. Building a community in which students feel comfortable engaging in free discourse is important to the university's academic environment, and plays a foundational role in building a strong civil society that students will export outside the university's walls following their graduation.
Aspects of pedagogy and thought that are central to many Western educational experiences can prove to be revelatory to new students at AUAF. Given Afghanistan's highly hierarchical social structure where elders make almost all of the most important decisions, the idea that it is the young students' responsibility to take ownership of fixing the country's problems is often intriguing to them. As Trevithick observed, "We're always telling them to ‘Identify the problem, propose a solution, and try to fix it.' Amazingly, students will come up to staff and professors here later and let us know that they have never been told this before."
In addition to exporting knowledge to villages far from the capital city, the university offers a rare forum in which individuals from across the country can openly discuss events and debate ideas. As Trevithick explained, "We're the only school in Afghanistan that has the country's name in our name, and we have students from 33 of the 34 provinces. So, if there's an uprising in, say Ghazni, there's a good chance we have a student from that village that we can ask about it." In a country that is still in the nascent stages of redeveloping its national character, a place like AUAF is pivotal in building shared relationships and common identities.
The Promise
Former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, who was awarded an honorary degree of humane letters by the university at the Friends of AUAF gala in March of this year at Washington, D.C.'s Museum of Women in the Arts, has said that he is a "strong believer in the power of education to change our world... at its best, education is a great equalizer. It unites us."
The value of education that both Afghans and Americans share is important to remember at times like this, when rhetoric can easily overtake reality. As Mrs. Shamim Jawad, also an AUAF Board of Trustees member (and wife of Amb. Jawad) said of the university's role in advancing Afghan-American relations: "The people of Afghanistan will never forget your sacrifices and count on your continued support and friendship...Afghan people have come a long way in building a peaceful, pluralistic, and prosperous society, and are determined to finish the journey that we have started jointly with you a decade ago. I can assure you that Afghans will never return to the dark days of repression."
The marked success of the independent university blazes a trail for other private entities to assume the risk and reward of pursuing their own ventures. As there is a move from coalition-led projects to Afghan-led initiatives, so too is it time to transition from government-led efforts to private sector-provided services like tertiary education. The university has already proven to be innovative and successful in a number of valuable ways, and its outlook for the future is equally promising.
CBS reporter Lara Logan summed up the university's value at the Friends of AUAF gala succinctly when she remarked, "There's stuff born in those classrooms that can outlast a war." If there is anything that the people of Afghanistan need right now, it's the durability of an education that students can never thereafter be deprived of.
Mobile Afghanistan: How a National Telecom Network Delivers Social Goods
5/02/2013 Forbes
Editor’s Note: Karim Khoja has been chief executive officer of Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications provider, since January 2003. He is also an independent consultant and adviser to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, an international- development organization focused on Afghanistan.
Roshan is Afghanistan’s largest telecommunications provider. Nearly a decade ago we entered war-ravaged Afghanistan with the ambitious goal of harnessing the power of mobile technology to catalyze reconstruction and economic development. Thirty years of conflict had decimated infrastructure, created chronic security risks, encouraged corruption, and left most Afghans in abject poverty. Once renowned for its thriving cultural and literary traditions, Afghanistan was now 70 percent illiterate. Among the working population, few potential employees had the education and skills necessary to support a viable business enterprise. Despite these obstacles, we viewed Afghanistan as an untapped reservoir of human potential.
Roshan is part of a new generation of companies that are redefining the concept of a social enterprise in emerging markets. This approach derives from our majority investor, the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), which fosters entrepreneurship and builds economically sound enterprises in the developing world. We are pioneering a business model in Afghanistan that breaks down the traditional distinctions between profit and nonprofit and between social contribution and commercial success. Tapping the tremendous economic potential in emerging markets such as Afghanistan requires companies to jettison the old paradigms of corporate philanthropy and social responsibility, where social benefit is often disconnected from commercial operations and realities. If the goal is both social impact and profit, then they are inseparable.
Roshan began by making an investment that is the foundation of any successful enterprise: skilled employees. If we were to succeed in leveraging mobile technology to leapfrog decades of traditional infrastructure development in just a few years, Afghans would need the capacity to take on significant leadership roles. Each interviewee, many of whom barely knew how to turn on a computer, had a role to play in shaping this new landscape. Our role was to galvanize the entrepreneurial spirit of the Afghan people and supplement it with extensive training in technology and management. Today, 93 percent of Roshan employees and 52 percent of senior management are Afghan nationals.
Investing in the future of Afghanistan has been crucial to the success of our business. In 2003, most Afghans did not have access to a mobile phone. Today Roshan serves more than 6.5 million customers. Through our nationwide network we provide mobile telecom access to 21.5 million Afghans (71 percent of the population).
Connecting Afghans to one another and to the world through mobile technology has become the foundation for a new economy. Both directly and through the multiplier effect, Roshan has created more than 30,000 jobs in Afghanistan. New complementary businesses, from kiosks selling mobile-phone SIM cards to public call centers serving remote villages, are providing legitimate opportunities for economic development and the growth of a new middle class.
Mobile products and services are creating an ecosystem that supports public institutions and helps entrepreneurs build new businesses. Through M-Paisa, Roshan’s mobile-banking service, the Afghan National Police are now receiving their monthly salaries via mobile phone. Before mobile money, the intermediaries responsible for transferring the cash pocketed up to 30 percent of a police officer’s salary. Police officers now receive their rightful salaries. We believe that this motivates them to achieve the mandate of public safety and allows them to take pride in being part of a transparent government institution.
Mobile financial services also allow a talented village seamstress to obtain a microfinance loan, enabling her to purchase another sewing machine, employ other women in her village, and provide for her family instead of relying on aid or depriving her children of basic education. She has now broken the cycle of generational poverty in her family.
With the rise of “impact investing” in emerging markets, a model that was once considered audacious is beginning to catch on. To Roshan and other AKFED companies it is simply common sense and business as usual. Rather than hindering financial returns, social enterprise offers a huge competitive advantage in the unpredictable global economy. Instead of relying only on profits generated by wealthy consumers in developed nations, truly innovative companies are inventing new wealth and fostering human potential in rapidly growing emerging markets.
The metrics prove that impact investing works. As the largest communications provider in Afghanistan, Roshan generates 6 percent of the country’s GDP. Our social impact and profitability are mutually reinforcing. To date we have paid $350 million in taxes and invested $550 million in infrastructure. In addition to cell towers and transmission lines, Roshan has constructed and financed playgrounds, sports facilities, e-learning centers, and schools all over Afghanistan. In 2012, we built 57 wells that deliver clean drinking water to our customers in the most remote regions of the country. We also served half a million meals to children who work in the streets and are attending school part time. These activities deliver tangible change and improve the well-being of entire communities.
The telecom sector is developing products and services that link education, healthcare, business, aºnd technology to support Afghan youth as they develop into the leaders of the future. For example, partnerships with Vodafone, Cisco, and Netlink are bringing more and better technology to Afghanistan, amplifying the younger generation’s interest in technology and IT entrepreneurship by providing students with laptop computers and connecting medical professionals to teleconsultation networks that link rural hospitals to medical centers of excellence. As one of the few business success stories in Afghanistan, the telecom sector has attracted $2 billion in foreign direct investment for reconstruction.
As we approach our tenth anniversary in Afghanistan, our model will be put to an important test. With the partial withdrawal of foreign troops expected in 2014, the Afghan people are already capitalizing on this unique opportunity to define their country’s identity and future. We believe that Roshan’s model of meaningful social contribution combined with commercial success will continue to play a vital role in shaping the future of Afghanistan.
Helmand has become almost dull for Marines, with Afghans now leading combat
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price May 1, 2013
CAMP DWYER, Afghanistan - One statistic about the war in Afghanistan has stood out for weeks: the single U.S. Marine killed so far in 2013.
For years, the Marines have fought and died in Helmand, a hot, dusty province in Afghanistan’s south that’s earned a bloody place in corps lore, right beside the likes of Anbar province in Iraq. It’s been by far the deadliest province for the U.S-led coalition, where more than 900 international soldiers have been killed, including more than 350 Marines.
But the days of heavy combat and casualties in Helmand are over, at least for conventional American troops. And soon that might be true across Afghanistan. In the next few weeks, Afghan security forces are expected to reach one of the biggest milestones of the 11-year-old war: They’ll officially take the lead in the last remaining pockets of the country where they haven’t already.
The changes in Helmand are the most graphic example of what that means.
Marines are no longer walking the harrowing foot patrols that once were common in much of the province. Instead, they mainly work on large bases, teaching and mentoring Afghan security forces, and simply packing up to leave.
Some Marines are still exposed to risk, including those who run supply convoys and help clear the roads of bombs, and at least 30 have been wounded this year in the northern part of Helmand. But it’s the Afghan army and police that are doing the real fighting in the province – and taking the bulk of the casualties.
"I can’t think of a scenario where we’re out there right with them anymore," said Brig. Gen. George W. Smith, the deputy commander for the NATO regional command in Helmand who oversees the coalition’s work training and advising the Afghan army and police.
Mentoring or assistance on a combat operation, he said, is now done "one terrain feature" behind the Afghans, meaning the Marines hang back, observing, and ready with assistance such as a medevac helicopter if an Afghan soldier or police officer suffers a wound serious enough to put life or limb at risk.
None of this means the fighting has stopped or even slowed. Instead, the Afghans are now taking nearly all the casualties. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense declined to provide casualty figures for Helmand, but U.S. officers there said they thought the climb in Afghan losses roughly corresponded with the decline in coalition casualties.
In Helmand, the shift in who’s doing the fighting marks a huge change since the peak of fighting two and three years ago.
Once, there were more than 21,000 Marines in Helmand spread across nearly 300 bases, some of them outposts with fewer than half a dozen men. There were constant firefights, sometimes several a day. Now there are just more than 8,000 Marines, and they’re clustered mainly on a handful of large bases, behind elaborate layers of security.
Behind those walls, some Marines are frantically inventorying and packing up trucks and equipment to ship home while others are advising Afghans on advanced skills: how to train other troops, render medical assistance, plan operations and improve the Afghans’ notoriously unreliable supply chain.
No longer are the lessons taught out on patrol.
Typical was a recent day at Camp Shorabak _ the Afghan base adjacent to the Marines’ giant Camp Leatherneck _ which is home to the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps.
Outside one end of a building, Sgt. Matthew Nickelsen, a Marine from Dana Point, Calif., was teaching Afghan soldiers how to train other Afghans to operate the iconic U.S. M2 .50-caliber machine gun. A hundred yards away, other Marine and U.S. civilians were teaching another group how to use 60 mm mortars, a new addition to the Afghan arsenal that the NATO-led coalition hopes will make up for the Afghans’ lack of air support. The Afghans under training were expected take their skills back to their companies to instruct others.
The Marine advisers were working out of a military training center that the coalition wants to turn into a regional school to improve soldiers’ skills after they’ve gone through basic training and been in the ranks for a while.
It’s hoped that the school will become a model that’s replicated across the country, said the adviser group’s commander and the lone member of the British army assigned here, Maj. Joseph Power.
The Afghans are good at fighting and can be great, with the proper equipment and training, he said. But the attrition via desertion and casualties is staggering, and it’s crucial for the long-term health of the army that it shift to a modern cycle of fighting, leaving and then getting additional training, rather than just having basic training and then being permanently on duty.
"They don’t think about training a sustainable force, partly because they just don’t look at it that way, and partly because we’ve always been there to help keep them going," he said.
It took the United States about three decades to develop a similar approach, and the Afghans have only a couple of years.
The changes are particularly noticeable in the southern half of Helmand, where the Marines once had more than 200 bases. Now they’re clustered in about half a dozen larger bases mainly strung along a 100-mile stretch of the Helmand River.
As of early last week, not a single Marine had been killed or wounded in action in the southern half of Helmand this year, said Lt. Col. Carl E. Cooper Jr. of Ruston, La., the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C. The 3/9 is the lone remaining U.S. infantry battalion in the southern part of the province.
"The security here is provided in whole by the Afghans," Cooper said. "Our operations are to enable them in a few areas, but frankly it has become a rarity to be asked to support them in an operation."
Maxim magazine once put Camp Dwyer, the main Marine base in southern Helmand, on a list of the five most dangerous places in Afghanistan. Now it’s among the calmest. The base is so large it has a bus system to move Marines from their living quarters to work, chow and recreation. It’s surrounded by desert, and attacks are rare.
Having trained to fight and fight aggressively, many of the younger Marines on their first tour of duty are bored.
"I don’t think the word is exactly ‘useless,’ but there’s not much more we can do here," said Lance Cpl. Christian Cappucci, 20, of Townsend, Mass. "It’s unfortunate that there’s no combat. I wish I had seen it earlier."
His unit is tasked with security for Dwyer, which means he at least gets to go outside the base for patrols. They stick so close, though, there’s not much chance of action. Basically they just patrol the desert just outside the base, partnering with Afghan soldiers who stop passing cars on the two desert routes around the base.
Over near the Helmand River, a few kilometers away, there’s a tree line, and every time Cappucci sees it, he gets a feeling that the Taliban could be found there in the cover. But it’s out of bounds.
He eyes that tree line and wishes.
"It’s aggravating, because it’s right there, and you can almost reach out and touch it, but we can’t go there," he said.
Lt. Col. Cooper, the commander of 3/9, said he was aware of that sentiment. From the beginning of the deployment, he said, his officers have pushed the message that not being in combat means the Marines have reached the goal of helping the Afghans take responsibility for their own security.
"We push down the consistent message that this is what winning looks like," he said.
Eager young infantry Marines such as Cappucci may be glum, but elsewhere on the base, 1st Lt. James Atkinson, 26, of Boca Raton, Fla., was all but whistling while he worked at the overwhelming job of tracking all the Marine equipment that’s being collected and sent back to the United State.
It’s the challenge of a lifetime for a logistics guy, and Atkinson was bursting with cheer as he played his spreadsheets and a stream of Marines poked their heads in every couple of minutes with more questions about stuff to be shipped.
At one point, 25 percent of all the Marine Corps’ gear was in Afghanistan, but in the past year that’s been cut to around 9 percent.
Since October, Atkinson has helped whittled down the rows of massive armored trucks, generators, portable communications towers and other Marine gear in southern Helmand from about $390 million worth to about $180 million.
"It’s not sexy for the grunts," he said. "But for us in logistics, this is why we’re here."
Online correction: This version corrects the name of the Marine in the next to last graph to Atkinson, clarifies near the top that some Marines are still engaged in dangerous tasks and clarifies that the reference to no Marines killed or wounded in action in the southern half of Helmand province is for this year.
The Taliban spring offensive - civilians count the cost
No major offensive has accompanied the resumption of widescale fighting but it has not stopped civilian casualties rising markedly
Guardian.co.uk By John Wendle Wednesday 1 May 2013
Kabul - The Taliban's annual spring offensive was not marked with a big operation this year, as it did last year when the militants unleashed a string of attacks around Kabul and across Afghanistan. Instead, there has been an increasing trickle of military and civilian casualties.
On Tuesday, three British soldiers were killed in Helmand province, and six Afghan family members were killed or wounded in Uruzgan province, both by roadside bombs.
This year's offensive, dubbed Khalid bin Waleed after the victorious general and companion to the Prophet Mohammed and nicknamed "the drawn sword of God", will consist of "special military tactics" and "insider attacks" which will be carried out "in a systematic and coordinated manner", the Taliban announced.
"Similarly, collective martyrdom operations on bases of foreign invaders, their diplomatic centres and military airbases will be even further structured while every possible tactic will be utilised in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors," its statement added.
The spring offensive coincides with the melting of winter snows, which opens passes across the Hindu Kush, affording insurgents greater mobility. At the same time, ill-equipped fighters, many without suitable clothing for winter warfare, have less reason to stay indoors during the warmer months.
General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Defence, predicted more fighting this year. "I see two reasons for this. First, the Taliban have gathered many fighters and we also have many soldiers. Secondly, with the American army pulling out of a fighting role, our soldiers will have to fight the Taliban.
In response to the Taliban statement, Nato said: "The Afghan people should not fear Taliban threats. The Afghan National Security Forces have wisely used the winter months to prepare for taking over the security lead throughout Afghanistan by mid-2013."
Such statements and predictions do not bode well for Afghan civilians. Georgette Gagnon, director of human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan, said that the number of civilians killed and wounded had increased 18% compared to the first four months of 2012, with 682 civilians killed so far, compared to 550 in 2012. Gagnon added that the numbers for April are still preliminary and are likely to rise.
"The UN is very concerned because the fighting season has just begun and already civilian casualties are rising, compared to the same period last year," said Gagnon.
Roadside bombs: 'The deadliest weapon' in Afghan war
BBC News By Bilal Sarwary 1 May 2013
Kabul - The roadside bomb killed thousands in Afghanistan last year, stifled the economy and created a climate of fear - yet its capacity to wreak destruction and havoc only seems to be increasing.
The exact toll is difficult to calculate but the interior ministry says the majority of 1,800 Afghan national police killed last year, died as a result of roadside bombs.
In addition, about 900 Afghan National Army soldiers were killed by roadside bombs - averaging three soldiers a day, according to General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the defence ministry.
Over the last two years, the insurgents' focus on roadside bombs - also known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - has gained momentum.
They no longer want to take on Afghan and Nato forces face-to-face, says Haji Abdul Mutalib, district governor of Marjah in Helmand province.
Instead, they are packing TNT and plastic explosives - as well as metal and ball bearings - into their bombs to make them more powerful and more destructive, he says.
Due to increased investment by al-Qaeda, a growing number of Afghan insurgents now have the expertise to make such bombs.
But they are also outsourcing the job of bomb-making and planting the devices to young jobless men, according to intelligence sources in the south. And every target has a price - whether a police officer or a district governor.
Wedding buses
The growth in bomb use has also had the unlikely impact of straining relations with Pakistan.
The Afghan government complains the fertiliser used in bomb-making comes from Pakistani factories.
The structure of the bombs is basic but very effective, and difficult to detect.
Last month in Kandahar province, more than 1,000 roadside bombs were found in the Panjwai district. And, according to the regional police chief Abdul Raziq, there are thousands more.
Almost daily, Afghan forces are focused on finding and defusing these bombs. It is not unusual for them to be tipped off by farmers, shopkeepers, butchers or villagers who might find one under a bridge or in a field.
By laying bombs where ordinary people live and work, insurgents have ensured roadside bombs remain the biggest killer of civilians in Afghanistan.
Over the last year, entire families travelling together in a van, perhaps to a wedding, funeral or picnic, have been blown up, leaving 15 or so men, women and children dead.
The devices, often detonated through mobile phones or timers, may be powerful but they are not accurate.
'Most vulnerable'
The tactical advantages of roadside bombs are many.
They allow insurgents to block the country's main arteries, cutting off areas and causing serious food and medicine shortages.
One road, on the borders of the remote provinces of Daykundi and Uruzgan, usually used by thousands of people, has been closed for five weeks.
Insurgents have lined it with bombs to stop people travelling and supplies being delivered.
In other instances, construction projects have been cancelled.
And, in rural Afghanistan, these bombs have stopped children attending school, and at worst, killed some.
They are also laid on routes that insurgents know will be used by Afghan forces about to carry out operations or make arrests.
Stopping the spread of these bombs is proving hard. Without helicopters, the local and national police are the most vulnerable.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) use drones to detect insurgents, and security cameras on blimps are an aid, but the Afghan government does not have the same capability.
However, together with Nato, the government is targeting the Taliban commanders responsible - a side of the story that often goes unreported.
Earlier on Wednesday, in the same district in Helmand where three British soldiers were killed on Tuesday, a roadside bomb killed the head of the High Peace Council for Helmand Province, Raees Malim Shah, and two policemen.
They had gone to carry out an assessment of the security situation. Now, it means Afghan officials will no longer be able to go to that area.
The roadside bomb has, without doubt, been one of the deadliest weapons in this war, and it remains so.
Taliban abduct 28 Afghan local police officers in Faryab
Khaama Press 01 May 2013
According to local authorities in northern Faryab province of Afghanistan, Taliban militants abducted around 28 Afghan local police forces after attacking a number of security check posts in Ghormach district.
The officials further added, Taliban militants had abducted the Afghan local police officers from four security check posts on Tuesday evening.
In the meantime local tribal elders in Faryab province are saying that Taliban militants have abducted around 46 local police officers during the attack which continued for several hours however neither the Taliban militants nor Afghan security forces suffered any casualties.
Tribal elders also warned that Taliban militants have been deployed in various surrounding locations of Ghormach district after Afghan police and Afghan army were pulled out of the area.
In the meantime provincial governor Mohammadullah Batash confirmed the clashes and said that Afghan local police forces have pulled out of the area following the clashes.
He denied the reports regarding the abduction of Afghan local police forces by Taliban militants.
However he said that Karez-e-Deewana area is under the total control of the Taliban militants and efforts have been put in place to clear the area from the militants.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An Afghan border policeman was killed and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire along the border late on Wednesday, officials from both countries said, a clash likely to unsettle already strained ties between the neighbours.
A senior Afghan official said hundreds of additional Afghan troops were sent to a disputed border gate after the exchange of fire, which lasted for more than two hours.
The stakes are high. The United States wants Pakistan to help Kabul lure the Taliban to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of NATO combat troops by the end of 2014.
But it doesn't take much to strain relations which have been marred by distrust for decades.
A Pakistani military source said the shooting was sparked by an attack on a Pakistani checkpost. The senior Afghan official said trouble started after Pakistani troops attempted to fortify the border gate.
Two Afghan border policemen were wounded.
Afghanistan has grown increasingly frustrated with Pakistan over efforts to pursue an Afghan peace process involving the Taliban, suggesting that Islamabad is intent on keep Afghanistan unstable.
Afghan officials say Pakistan has a long history of supporting Afghanistan's Taliban and other insurgent factions. Pakistan has in turn accused Afghanistan of giving safe haven to militants on the Afghan side of the border.
The latest tensions are focused on Pakistan's building of a military gate which Afghan officials say is inside Afghanistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered his top officials to take immediate action to remove the gate and other "Pakistani military installations near the Durand Line".
The Durand Line is the 1893 British-mandated border between the two countries. It is recognised by Pakistan, but not by Afghanistan.
Afghanistan maintains that activity by either side along the Durand Line must be approved by both countries.
(Reporting by Sheree Sardar in ISLAMABAD and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Afghan police kill 6 militants
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan police raided Taliban hideouts in Ghazni province 125 km south of Kabul late Wednesday night, leaving six militants dead, provincial police chief Zarawar Zahid said Thursday.
"The operation was launched in Zana Khan District late last night and lasted for a while during which six rebels had been killed," Zahid told Xinhua.
He also added that the killed militants were involved in organizing terrorist activities and killing three police including a senior officer couple of days ago.
Meantime, Taliban militants fighting the government have yet to make comment.
Bomb Kills Several Afghan Police Officers
May 2, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Local officials say eight police officers have been killed in a roadside bomb attack in the eastern Afghan province of Logar.
Deputy police chief Rais Khan Sadeq told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan the policemen were on a joint patrol with NATO-led forces on May 2 when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militant group was responsible for the attack near the provincial capital, Puli Alam.
It comes days after Taliban insurgents announced the start of a spring offensive.
On May 1, a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is trying to negotiate with the Taliban, was ambushed and killed in the Helmand Province along with two bodyguards.
Three British soldiers were also killed in that province on the same day when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
With reporting by AFP
CIA buys trouble in Afghanistan
How can cash payoffs to a corrupt leader further U.S. interests there?
Los Angles Times By Sarah Chayes Op-Ed May 2, 2013
In a time when the whetted and arbitrary deficit-reduction knife is cutting bone out of critical U.S. government programs, the image of shopping bags stuffed with CIA cash handed off on a monthly basis to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — who reigns over one of the most corrupt governments on the planet — has outraged many Americans.
The New York Times, which revealed the years of payoffs this week, noted that "there is little evidence the payments bought the influence the CIA sought."
In fact, regular cash handouts of this type may do the opposite. They may well have enabled Karzai's frequent and theatrical outbursts against U.S. officials and policies, not to mention his collusion with some of his country's most corrupt and abusive officials. Such payoffs signal to Karzai — or other leaders like him — that he enjoys the unwavering support of the CIA, no matter what he does or says, and embolden him to thumb his nose at the United States whenever he feels like it.
Karzai's relationship with the CIA is believed to long predate the tense days in late 2001 when CIA officers joined him and his followers in the mountains north of Kandahar as the Taliban regime was falling. In a 2003 conversation, the most renowned commander of anti-Soviet resistance fighters in southern Afghanistan, where I lived at the time, told me that in the late 1980s Karzai introduced him to CIA officials so he could obtain some of the all-important Stinger missiles that helped the Afghan fighters neutralize Soviet helicopters. U.S. support of the anti-Soviet resistance was covert. Very few Afghans had direct contact with the CIA. Most received U.S. money or military equipment by way of Pakistani intermediaries. Karzai, according to this commander, was one of the early exceptions.
Given this long relationship with the CIA, Karzai may believe that the agency somehow represents the true voice of the U.S. government. Indeed, the competing and often contradictory exhortations and demands transmitted by ambassadors and special envoys who come and go, the successive commanders of international forces with their different approaches, the congressional delegations who troop through his office, even secretaries of State or Defense, must start to sound like a lot of cacophonous noise to the man on the receiving end. Amid the din, CIA money can ring a clear note.
The tendency to read CIA signals as conveying the "real" intent of the U.S. government is not limited to Afghan leaders. In his book "The Arab Center," for example, former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher describes a tense episode in 2004 when Jordan was promoting a broad-based Arab initiative to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process.
A meeting between President George W. Bush and King Abdullah II was hanging in the balance, with the king awaiting the result of fraught negotiations between Muasher and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice over the contents of a letter of intent from Bush to Abdullah. A full day of talks resulted in a mutually agreeable formulation.
But in the meantime, a CIA official had been speaking back channel with Jordan's intelligence chief, waiting on the West Coast with the king; the CIA official urged the delegation to fly home to Jordan, and it did. In the end, the king and his advisors concluded that it was the CIA, not the national security advisor, that really counted in the U.S. government, and the Middle East peace process remained stalled.
In Karzai's case, CIA payments, against a backdrop of jangling dissonance, may allow him to choose which messages to take seriously — usually the ones he likes. Or to play some U.S. actors off against others, as he recently did by subjecting Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to public humiliation while courting Secretary of State John Kerry.
Many Afghans I know had assumed for years that the CIA was doling out cash to Karzai. Even so, the U.S. media expose has made waves, providing evidence for what had only been suspected.
"No wonder he talks so badly against the United States," one friend said, summarizing the reactions he'd heard. "The cash, on top of everything else America has done for him, just proves how desperately you need him. It means he can do anything."
This can hardly be the only time the CIA has covertly paid off key foreign leaders, with little if any coordination with other U.S. decision-makers and little understanding of the repercussions. Such activities amount to an independent foreign policy, lacking connection to any concerted plan, and too often conflict with the U.S. government's wider priorities. It is time, in this as in other domains, to inject some accountability and oversight into CIA operations.
Sarah Chayes, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing writer to Opinion, lived in Afghanistan for most of the last decade and served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Secret Cash To Afghan Leader: Corruption Or Just Foreign Aid?
NPR By Sean Carberry May 01, 2013
After a report in this week, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has acknowledged that the CIA has been secretly delivering bags of money to his office since the beginning of the war more than a decade ago.
The money is allegedly used to buy loyalty — that of Karzai and the people he doles the cash out to. and he's grateful for it.
But many politicians, pundits and people on the street aren't so happy about the secret stash.
Political analyst Bashir Bezhand is among them.
Speaking to a news anchor on Afghanistan's Tolo TV, Bezhand said it is a "scandal" and an "insult" to the people of Afghanistan. He said Karzai should answer publicly for what many consider a crime: receiving tens of millions of dollars in ghost money from the CIA, much of which has gone to family, cronies, politicians and warlords, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times.
The Fallout At Home
Several Afghan senators commented in the local media that Karzai has violated national sovereignty by accepting the cash.
But other senators, especially those appointed by Karzai, say it's not a big deal.
Sen. Najiba Hussaini says foreign aid forms the foundation of the current Afghan government. The ghost money is financial support to the presidential palace, she says, and such payments are made in mutual agreement between two parties.But most people on the street in Kabul don't see it that way.Mohammad Wali, a 20-year-old student, says it's wrong.
"It's harmful for Afghanistan, because this money is given to the warlords in secret, and it's not clear whether they spend money on weapons or building huge houses for themselves," Wali says.
Mohammad Rahman says the revelation doesn't surprise him. The 42-year-old shopkeeper sees it as more of the same.
"Before, it was leaked that Iran was making cash payments to Karzai," Rahman says. "This time, CIA's support was leaked."
Karzai has acknowledged receiving cash payments from Iran. Those payments reportedly stopped when Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. despite Iranian protests.
Return On The Investment
According to the presidential palace, the CIA money is being used for charitable purposes, but few believe that's the case.
"As a president, it's shameful for him to take money directly from an intelligence organization," says Atiqullah Baryalai, a former Afghan deputy defense minister.
He says Karzai was using the money to buy loyalty, not to serve the interests of the country. But Baryalai believes the CIA did get some return on its investment.
"In some extent [Karzai] kept quiet, or kept him on the track with America or CIA," Baryalai says.
But not quiet enough, apparently. Baryalai believes that Karzai's growing criticisms of U.S. and CIA activities in Afghanistan pushed the CIA to leak the story in order to punish the Afghan president. And several Afghan senators have said they find the timing of the story suspicious — that it's a conspiracy between the U.S. government and the media to influence the negotiations over a long-term security pact between Afghanistan and the U.S.
NPR's Sultan Faizy and Aimal Yaqubi contributed to this story.
Afghan spy chief quietly returns to US for medical treatment
Jonathan S. Landay and Jay Price | McClatchy Newspapers Thursday, May 2, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — When Afghanistan's top spy came home on April 2 after nearly four months of treatment at a U.S. military hospital for wounds from a Taliban assassination attempt, it was to lavish greetings that included roadside billboards and banners.
When he left this week for more surgery in Washington, D.C., intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid went so quietly hardly anyone in the government knew he was gone.
"I am not aware of that," said Haji Fahim, the chief spokesman for Khalid's own agency, the National Directorate of Security, on Thursday.
"I have not heard that," echoed Adela Raz, a deputy to President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman.
But a U.S. official, who declined to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Khalid had returned to the United States for further treatment of his injuries after his condition deteriorated. He declined to say where Khalid is being treated.
A Khalid deputy, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, told a Kabul TV station that Khalid indeed had returned to the United States on Monday.
Afghanistan surely needs heroes now, with the public's confidence buffeted by seemingly endless charges of corruption among its leaders and the uncertainty of 2014, which will bring both the end of the U.S.-led coalition's combat mission and an election to replace Karzai. Some were determined to give the country one in the form of Khalid.
Khalid is a close Karzai friend who has built a reputation as an outspoken and ruthless hunter of the Taliban and a fierce critic of alleged Pakistani military support for the insurgents. But he also has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking and torturing prisoners.
"Defender of the Country! You came in and stand tall once again to defend your beloved country. The country welcomes you and looks forward to see your feet stand strong once again," said one billboard, placed in a central Kabul square by a civil society group from Herat Province.
Not only did Khalid get a hero's welcome when he returned, Karzai held Khalid's job open for him, even though that meant leaving the national spy agency leaderless for months in the midst of a critical period of transition as Afghans move to take the full lead in their own security.
The security situation is rapidly getting even more complicated: Not only did the Taliban recently announced the start their annual spring offensive, but relations are worsening with neighboring Pakistan, where keeping tabs on Afghan insurgent sanctuaries is one of Khalid’s major tasks.
The tensions between the neighbors are being fueled by a series of border disputes which on Wednesday night erupted in a firefight between Afghan and Pakistani forces on the frontier between eastern Nangarhar province’s Goshta district and Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal agency.
The clash lasted for several hours, with one member of the Afghan border police reported killed and at least two wounded.
Karzai had last month criticized Pakistan for building a border post at the location without consulting Afghanistan, which has never recognized the frontier drawn by the subcontinent’s former British colonial rulers.
Khalid was nearly killed at an intelligence agency guest house in Kabul in December when a suicide bomber detonated explosives hidden in his underwear. The bomber was pretending to be a peace envoy from the Taliban. Karzai charged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, which denied the allegation.
Karzai, while on a diplomatic trip to Washington in January, made a point of visiting Khalid at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The spy chief is highly regarded by the Obama administration, despite the unsavory allegations against him, and other visitors included President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta.
It's again unclear when Khalid will return to his job, or if Karzai will replace him if his recovery is lengthy.
2nd anniversary of Bin Laden's death marked
BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The killing of Osama Bin Laden two years ago marked the end of an era for the United States. But Pakistan suffered tragic losses through terrorism during the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader. Our correspondent Danial Khan takes a look at how the security situation has improved in the last two years and how the Pakistan-US relationship has moved forward.
Two years since US Special Forces claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden, the town where he was allegedly found remains in the limelight.
A big question mark lurks over the garrison city of Abbotabad in northern Pakistan, how did the world number one terrorist, nestle in a compound, at a stone’s throw from the Pakistan military academy?
While US Navy Seals look at it as one of their most distinguished achievements, locals in Abbotabad still have doubts about it. "I live next to the house where they are saying Osama was living. I’ve lived here for over 20 years. I have never seen anyone who looked like Osama, it is a big lie." "I believe that Osama bin Laden was never in Abbotabad, he was not in Pakistan, if he was killed, then where is his body? It was an American stage show to insult Pakistan."
Since the search began for Osama Bin Laden, a deadly trend of homegrown terrorist attacks surfaced in Pakistan.
The Pak-US relationship hit rock bottom after American forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a military check post along Pak-afghan border.
Anti-American protests exacerbated on the streets of Pakistan. Many believe Pakistan became a victim of terror attacks, post 9/11, when it joined the US war on terror. Over 40,000 Pakistani civilians and soldiers lost their lives to terrorism, the economy lost $68 billion.
The deteriorating security situation has been intensified by US drone attacks in the north of the country. Allegedly used to target militants, they have attracted widespread condemnation across Pakistan for causing collateral damage.
As the world marks the second death anniversary of Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan remains tense ahead of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2014, fearing it will bring more trouble to the region.
In less than two weeks, Pakistan goes for general elections. Terrorists have already targeted major liberal political parties. Observers predict this current wave of terrorism my lead to a political turmoil that means terrorism in Pakistan has not ended with the end of Osama Bin Laden.
By CCTV correspondent Danial Khan
(Source: CNTV.cn)
Afghanistan's Karzai urges closure of Guantanamo
Associated PressBy JAN M. OLSEN | Associated Press
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pressed for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama mulls a renewed push before a reluctant U.S. Congress.
"I have from the very beginning been a very strong supporter for the closing down of the Guantanamo prison," Karzai told reporters during a brief visit to Denmark.
Obama's goal of closing down the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba has eluded him since he took office. In his first week, Obama signed an executive order for its closure, but Congress has used its budgetary power to block detainees from being moved to the United States.
Karzai said that Afghanistan had asked the U.S. administration for the release of Afghan prisoners being held in Guantanamo.
"We have been in contact with the U.S. for a couple of years about their release," Karzai said, but did not elaborate.
Karzai was speaking after a meeting with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt on the third leg of a regional visit that also took him to Finland and Estonia.
In Copenhagen, Karzai laid a wreath at a war memorial commemorating soldiers killed in action, including more than 40 Danish troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan since Denmark first contributed soldiers to the NATO-led mission in 2001.
Denmark's military force is situated mainly in the volatile southern Helmand province but is scheduled to pull out of combat operations in August, leaving 300 soldiers to train Afghan forces.
Kabul's Unlikely New Ally
Has Pakistan decided it's finally time to embrace Afghanistan?
Foreign Policy BY DANIEL SAGALYN MAY 1, 2013
The recent meeting of Afghan and Pakistani leaders with Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels marked a renewed effort by the Obama administration to get these two South Asian nations to resolve hostilities that have fueled the war in Afghanistan.
"It's fair to say that there's good feeling among all of us that we made progress," Kerry said after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's top military officer. "We will continue a very specific dialogue on both the political track as well as the security track.... [A]ll of us agreed we are committed to try to find stability and peace within both countries and the region itself."
The meeting came at a time when American officials believe that after years of supporting militants who were trying to undermine the Afghan government -- and as U.S. forces prepare to leave the region -- Pakistan has changed its approach to Kabul and has become more cooperative in seeking a political solution to the conflict raging next door, American officials say. However, even as they insist there is a new approach, those same officials acknowledge there has been no "measurable change" in support for the combatant groups U.S. and allied troops confront in Afghanistan.
Such a shift, if actually executed, would be significant. Pakistan's support for the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, and other Afghan Taliban militants -- whom it has sheltered, trained, and armed -- has perpetuated the insurgency in Afghanistan and angered the United States, which has spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of troops trying to stabilize the country since ousting the Taliban from power in 2001. Pakistan's support for these groups has been motivated by its fear that Afghanistan could become an ally of longtime enemy India and nurture separatist movements in the western part of its territory. Supporting the Taliban was seen as a means of keeping Indian influence in Afghanistan to a minimum.
"The growing regional pivot in Pakistan's foreign policy is a reflection of our democratic policymaking," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said last September at the United Nations General Assembly. "A brighter Afghan future will only be possible when the search for peace is Afghan-owned, Afghan-driven, and Afghan-led." Zardari -- who has led the Pakistan People's Party since his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007 -- said his nation would support Afghan efforts toward "reconciliation and peace."
Pakistan's government was dissolved in March ahead of national elections this month, but support for the regional shift is shared across the nation's major political parties. Among those embracing this view is the odds-on favorite to become the nation's next leader, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and his wing of the Pakistan Muslim League.
One U.S. official who deals with Pakistan notes that Hina Rabbani Khar -- until recently, the country's foreign minister -- has been saying, "This is for real, we really are turning a corner in the way we approach Afghanistan. It's a state in its own right, it's not just rubbish in our backyard."
American officials believe this rhetoric is sincere, signifying a genuine change in strategy. The Pakistanis "are going out on a limb publicly, they are really pumping this thing," the official said. "Fundamentally, the message is quite consistent and well coordinated between... the five or 10 senior most people in their hierarchy," including Kayani, who serves as the chief of army staff.
American officials say one concrete sign of Pakistan's new policy is its move late last year to free Afghan Taliban prisoners that Kabul's High Peace Council had asked to be released. U.S. representatives also stress that the Pakistani foreign minister has visited Kabul often and met with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, which is composed mostly of Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara political leaders who are close to India and fought the Pakistan-supported Taliban during the 1990s.
Pakistanis are also now cooperating more with Afghan and U.S. military officials on border security, one senior Defense Department official said in an interview. Pakistani leaders have "publicly and privately expressed support for the Doha political process," in which the Afghan Taliban would be allowed to open an office in Qatar in order to meet with Afghan and foreign officials, with the aim of negotiating a conclusion to the war, the defense official said. The United States has been pushing for this development for a couple of years.
"The number one factor" driving Pakistan's shift in policy, according to the senior defense official, is the "growth of domestic radicalization, militancy, and terrorism" in Pakistan. According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an independent think tank, nearly 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured since 2006 in violence stemming from terrorism, ethnic and sectarian strife, and the separatist insurgency in Baluchistan, as well as criminal activity.
"Pakistan's biggest fear is that if the [Afghan] Taliban come back into power through violence, through force, they will create trouble all around them, including in Pakistan," the official said. "They will not only provide safe haven to militants that are in Pakistan... but more ideological stimulus to these groups." This line of thinking had been simmering for a number of years but "has now crystallized in Pakistan across the civilian and military leadership, over the course of basically 2012."
Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution, says that although Pakistan has relied on the Afghan Taliban to advance its interests in Afghanistan for the past two decades, Pakistan's military leaders are now "uncertain about their [Afghan] proxies and whether they will turn against them, and whether the proxies have alliances with the people they are fighting in Pakistan, the Pakistan Taliban. Ideologically, there is no difference between them." Cohen says Pakistani officials "are nervous about their support for the [Afghan] Taliban bouncing back and hurting them in terms of their war against the Pakistani Taliban, which is now a full-scale war."
Pakistan's new army doctrine, which has not been publicly released, now recognizes that the military must also focus on the internal threat to the country's stability, according to Shuja Nawaz, who directs the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. For the first time, the doctrine tries to introduce to the senior ranks the notion that Pakistan is facing "multifaceted" threats and should be "no longer simply India-centric," he said.
"Our efforts must be directed towards stabilizing the internal front," said Kayani last August in a speech on the nation's independence day. "Today, extremism and terrorism present a grave challenge."
The U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan is another factor propelling Islamabad's new approach, according to the first U.S. official, who deals with Pakistan. The Pakistanis are concerned that the Afghan National Security Forces will not be able to provide stability "at least in some provinces," this official said. "And I believe the Pakistani leadership, when they say that they don't, they categorically do not want the Taliban to come back to power."
Some former U.S. officials are skeptical, though.
"What they are doing is marginal," said one former senior defense official, who noted that while there may be some improvement in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, "There are way too many things in play before you can say this is a concerted shift."
"There is no historical precedent" for Pakistan to change its entire approach toward Afghanistan, says Seth Jones, who advised U.S. special forces in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. Now a political scientist at RAND, Jones notes that Pakistan has backed militant organizations in Afghanistan since at least the 1980s, aiming to ensure a friendly country on its western flank.
Pakistan also appears to have continued to support violent extremists even after it launched the purported shift in approach. According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official now with Brookings, when the Haqqani network attacked Camp Bastion in Afghanistan last September, "one of the Afghan Taliban attackers was captured alive, and in his interrogation, he indicated the attack was planned in conjunction with the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency], and they facilitated their route to the target and helped them plan the attack on the facility."
Even U.S. officials who believe a significant shift is underway say it will be implemented only gradually.
The U.S. official who deals with Pakistan said that Washington has not "seen any measureable change" in Pakistani support for the Haqqani network. Nor did this official expect to see any decrease in support for the Haqqani network anytime soon. "I think that is part of Pakistan's hedging strategy," the official said. "They will want to see how things are playing out a little bit more across the border before they take action."
Another official said that the Pakistani government would not go after these militants because they do not threaten the Pakistani nation. But Pakistani officials realize that a lot of these groups can morph or are already playing multiple games, some of which are anti-state," according to this source.
Pakistani military officials deny they distinguish between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban.
"We do not discriminate, as a matter of state policy, between terrorist groups. So the concept of the good Taliban and the bad Taliban -- there is no such thing," one Pakistani defense official insisted in an interview. "How do you differentiate," the Pakistani official asked, between a Haqqani network fighter and somebody else who belongs to another Pakistani Taliban group?
The militants lack uniforms and "don't have distinctive patches where you could identify them," the official said. "And at 100 meters, 200 meters, a person who has an AK-47 and is shooting at you -- you don't really ask him to identify himself so that you may respond. You tend to shoot first and identify later."
The next test for the strategic pivot will be the May 11 parliamentary elections. The American official who handles Pakistan issues said, "I think the idea has been socialized enough and enjoys enough support across the spectrum that I don't think we'll see a big shift in that particular approach."
It appears that the party that is currently leading in the polls in Pakistan is likely to continue this "regional pivot."
"We want the peace process in Afghanistan to be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned," Tariq Fatemi, a foreign policy advisor to Nawaz Sharif, said in an interview. "We do not want to see any interference from any country in Afghan affairs. Afghanistan is a sovereign and independent country. We respect its sovereignty and we want Afghanistan to be treated as such by all the foreign powers." He added: "Mr. Nawaz Sharif knows very well what happened with the departure of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the civil war that ensued, the chaos that ensued. And we are frightened [by] that nightmarish situation."
As for the peace talks that have been launched by the U.S. and Afghan governments with the help of the Pakistani government, Fatemi said, "We think it's a step in the right direction."
A diamond in the rough
By Whitney Grespin Wednesday, May 1, 2013 Foreign Policy
As the United States continues to withdraw troops and materiel from Afghanistan, the rhetoric from President Hamid Karzai's administration wavers between being fairly pro-American and caustically anti-American, and speculation about reconciliatory negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups abound, it is difficult to remain optimistic about the durability of institutions America has helped build in Afghanistan. However, there is one institution that stands out amongst its peers as a clear success story.
Southwest of Kabul's beautiful Babur Gardens, home of the Mughal Empire founder's tomb, a nondescript maroon door is set back into cream blast walls. Although they look no different than the other concrete walls surrounding compounds along the main road to the battered Darul Aman palace, what happens inside those walls is changing the minds and lives of individuals from all over the country who have the opportunity to attend. Just over the hill from the center of Kabul and past the old city wall, the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) may be on the outskirts of the capital city, but it is quickly sinking roots into the town and making connections around the country.
It is changing the way that Afghans view and access higher education. Mrs. Sultana Hakimi, wife of Afghan ambassador to the United States Eklil Ahmad Hakimi, spoke of the importance of the university's activities when she observed that, "With such a dynamic society [in which] 60 percent is under the age of 20, Afghanistan will rely heavily on the emerging generations." These young Afghans have no small task ahead of them, even if they seek only to restore their country to a level of stability and security similar to that it last enjoyed in the mid twentieth century.
Since it opened in 2006 with an initial enrollment of 53 students, AUAF has had great success.
AUAF graduated its first class in 2011 and currently has just under a thousand undergraduate students, with the student body nearly doubling during seasonal classes that focus on adult education programs. These adult education programs focus on teaching the GIRoA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) ministry staff, which dovetails with other U.S Government efforts to build professional capacity across Afghanistan's administrative bodies.
The university's campus is housed in a series of buildings that was originally constructed as the American International School of Kabul from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, and the campus has long been the center of learning, including the brief period during which it served as the Soviet intelligence headquarters during their occupation of Afghanistan through the 1980s. The five-acre campus is currently near its maximum capacity of one thousand undergraduate students, and houses administrative offices, classrooms, science and information technology (IT) labs, a teleconferencing suite, athletic facilities, and a state-of-the-art library that receives Western publications a mere two weeks after their official release.
Across the road is another 80 acres-recently acquired by the university-which will accommodate a women's center and another IT center, as well as staff and faculty housing. The International Center for Afghan Women's Economic Development, the first center of its kind to facilitate both international and Afghan public and private sector efforts to advance the role of women in the economic stabilization of the country, is only the first of many new resources planned for student use on the new campus. It is slated to open just 13 months after groundbreaking, demonstrating an unheard of rate of construction for a complex of that size pretty much anywhere in the world, let alone in the middle of a conflict zone.
Said Jawad, former Afghan Ambassador to the United States and President of the Foundation for Afghanistan, remarked of the center that, "True economic prosperity and peace can only come from harnessing the myriad talents and courage of Afghan women... the lessons we have learned in the last decade teach us to avoid duplication of efforts but, rather, be force multipliers." Like many other supporters of the AUAF, the Foundation for Afghanistan stands ready to connect rural and urban women and their respective projects with the work of the university and its new women's center. The center will open on May 25, 2013, in conjunction with the graduation of AUAF's third undergraduate class and first cohort of business school students.
The Trials
Needless to say, the security situation in Kabul is a concern for the students, faculty, and staff of AUAF. In October 2011, a massive suicide car bomb was driven into a military shuttle bus just beyond the gates of the university. The attack took 13 American lives, as well as those of at least half a dozen bystanders. That event was the second largest single loss of American lives since the war began, behind only the tragic helicopter crash that killed 30 U.S. troops a few short months earlier.
As Matt Trevithick-who worked for two and a half years as the university's Media Relations Manager-remarked, "We don't forget where we are, [and we] provide the safest environment we can." Visitors are screened prior to entry through the main gate, and are vetted and searched thoroughly before proceeding through metal detectors to the campus grounds. Armed guards keep watch over the campus and quickly blend away into the sense of normalcy that blankets the university's goings-on.
Within the perimeter of the blast walls is a safe zone, and at the heart of the campus is a grass quad where students are free to act as they like and voice their own thoughts. Building a community in which students feel comfortable engaging in free discourse is important to the university's academic environment, and plays a foundational role in building a strong civil society that students will export outside the university's walls following their graduation.
Aspects of pedagogy and thought that are central to many Western educational experiences can prove to be revelatory to new students at AUAF. Given Afghanistan's highly hierarchical social structure where elders make almost all of the most important decisions, the idea that it is the young students' responsibility to take ownership of fixing the country's problems is often intriguing to them. As Trevithick observed, "We're always telling them to ‘Identify the problem, propose a solution, and try to fix it.' Amazingly, students will come up to staff and professors here later and let us know that they have never been told this before."
In addition to exporting knowledge to villages far from the capital city, the university offers a rare forum in which individuals from across the country can openly discuss events and debate ideas. As Trevithick explained, "We're the only school in Afghanistan that has the country's name in our name, and we have students from 33 of the 34 provinces. So, if there's an uprising in, say Ghazni, there's a good chance we have a student from that village that we can ask about it." In a country that is still in the nascent stages of redeveloping its national character, a place like AUAF is pivotal in building shared relationships and common identities.
The Promise
Former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, who was awarded an honorary degree of humane letters by the university at the Friends of AUAF gala in March of this year at Washington, D.C.'s Museum of Women in the Arts, has said that he is a "strong believer in the power of education to change our world... at its best, education is a great equalizer. It unites us."
The value of education that both Afghans and Americans share is important to remember at times like this, when rhetoric can easily overtake reality. As Mrs. Shamim Jawad, also an AUAF Board of Trustees member (and wife of Amb. Jawad) said of the university's role in advancing Afghan-American relations: "The people of Afghanistan will never forget your sacrifices and count on your continued support and friendship...Afghan people have come a long way in building a peaceful, pluralistic, and prosperous society, and are determined to finish the journey that we have started jointly with you a decade ago. I can assure you that Afghans will never return to the dark days of repression."
The marked success of the independent university blazes a trail for other private entities to assume the risk and reward of pursuing their own ventures. As there is a move from coalition-led projects to Afghan-led initiatives, so too is it time to transition from government-led efforts to private sector-provided services like tertiary education. The university has already proven to be innovative and successful in a number of valuable ways, and its outlook for the future is equally promising.
CBS reporter Lara Logan summed up the university's value at the Friends of AUAF gala succinctly when she remarked, "There's stuff born in those classrooms that can outlast a war." If there is anything that the people of Afghanistan need right now, it's the durability of an education that students can never thereafter be deprived of.
Mobile Afghanistan: How a National Telecom Network Delivers Social Goods
5/02/2013 Forbes
Editor’s Note: Karim Khoja has been chief executive officer of Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading telecommunications provider, since January 2003. He is also an independent consultant and adviser to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, an international- development organization focused on Afghanistan.
Roshan is Afghanistan’s largest telecommunications provider. Nearly a decade ago we entered war-ravaged Afghanistan with the ambitious goal of harnessing the power of mobile technology to catalyze reconstruction and economic development. Thirty years of conflict had decimated infrastructure, created chronic security risks, encouraged corruption, and left most Afghans in abject poverty. Once renowned for its thriving cultural and literary traditions, Afghanistan was now 70 percent illiterate. Among the working population, few potential employees had the education and skills necessary to support a viable business enterprise. Despite these obstacles, we viewed Afghanistan as an untapped reservoir of human potential.
Roshan is part of a new generation of companies that are redefining the concept of a social enterprise in emerging markets. This approach derives from our majority investor, the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), which fosters entrepreneurship and builds economically sound enterprises in the developing world. We are pioneering a business model in Afghanistan that breaks down the traditional distinctions between profit and nonprofit and between social contribution and commercial success. Tapping the tremendous economic potential in emerging markets such as Afghanistan requires companies to jettison the old paradigms of corporate philanthropy and social responsibility, where social benefit is often disconnected from commercial operations and realities. If the goal is both social impact and profit, then they are inseparable.
Roshan began by making an investment that is the foundation of any successful enterprise: skilled employees. If we were to succeed in leveraging mobile technology to leapfrog decades of traditional infrastructure development in just a few years, Afghans would need the capacity to take on significant leadership roles. Each interviewee, many of whom barely knew how to turn on a computer, had a role to play in shaping this new landscape. Our role was to galvanize the entrepreneurial spirit of the Afghan people and supplement it with extensive training in technology and management. Today, 93 percent of Roshan employees and 52 percent of senior management are Afghan nationals.
Investing in the future of Afghanistan has been crucial to the success of our business. In 2003, most Afghans did not have access to a mobile phone. Today Roshan serves more than 6.5 million customers. Through our nationwide network we provide mobile telecom access to 21.5 million Afghans (71 percent of the population).
Connecting Afghans to one another and to the world through mobile technology has become the foundation for a new economy. Both directly and through the multiplier effect, Roshan has created more than 30,000 jobs in Afghanistan. New complementary businesses, from kiosks selling mobile-phone SIM cards to public call centers serving remote villages, are providing legitimate opportunities for economic development and the growth of a new middle class.
Mobile products and services are creating an ecosystem that supports public institutions and helps entrepreneurs build new businesses. Through M-Paisa, Roshan’s mobile-banking service, the Afghan National Police are now receiving their monthly salaries via mobile phone. Before mobile money, the intermediaries responsible for transferring the cash pocketed up to 30 percent of a police officer’s salary. Police officers now receive their rightful salaries. We believe that this motivates them to achieve the mandate of public safety and allows them to take pride in being part of a transparent government institution.
Mobile financial services also allow a talented village seamstress to obtain a microfinance loan, enabling her to purchase another sewing machine, employ other women in her village, and provide for her family instead of relying on aid or depriving her children of basic education. She has now broken the cycle of generational poverty in her family.
With the rise of “impact investing” in emerging markets, a model that was once considered audacious is beginning to catch on. To Roshan and other AKFED companies it is simply common sense and business as usual. Rather than hindering financial returns, social enterprise offers a huge competitive advantage in the unpredictable global economy. Instead of relying only on profits generated by wealthy consumers in developed nations, truly innovative companies are inventing new wealth and fostering human potential in rapidly growing emerging markets.
The metrics prove that impact investing works. As the largest communications provider in Afghanistan, Roshan generates 6 percent of the country’s GDP. Our social impact and profitability are mutually reinforcing. To date we have paid $350 million in taxes and invested $550 million in infrastructure. In addition to cell towers and transmission lines, Roshan has constructed and financed playgrounds, sports facilities, e-learning centers, and schools all over Afghanistan. In 2012, we built 57 wells that deliver clean drinking water to our customers in the most remote regions of the country. We also served half a million meals to children who work in the streets and are attending school part time. These activities deliver tangible change and improve the well-being of entire communities.
The telecom sector is developing products and services that link education, healthcare, business, aºnd technology to support Afghan youth as they develop into the leaders of the future. For example, partnerships with Vodafone, Cisco, and Netlink are bringing more and better technology to Afghanistan, amplifying the younger generation’s interest in technology and IT entrepreneurship by providing students with laptop computers and connecting medical professionals to teleconsultation networks that link rural hospitals to medical centers of excellence. As one of the few business success stories in Afghanistan, the telecom sector has attracted $2 billion in foreign direct investment for reconstruction.
As we approach our tenth anniversary in Afghanistan, our model will be put to an important test. With the partial withdrawal of foreign troops expected in 2014, the Afghan people are already capitalizing on this unique opportunity to define their country’s identity and future. We believe that Roshan’s model of meaningful social contribution combined with commercial success will continue to play a vital role in shaping the future of Afghanistan.
Helmand has become almost dull for Marines, with Afghans now leading combat
McClatchy Newspapers By Jay Price May 1, 2013
CAMP DWYER, Afghanistan - One statistic about the war in Afghanistan has stood out for weeks: the single U.S. Marine killed so far in 2013.
For years, the Marines have fought and died in Helmand, a hot, dusty province in Afghanistan’s south that’s earned a bloody place in corps lore, right beside the likes of Anbar province in Iraq. It’s been by far the deadliest province for the U.S-led coalition, where more than 900 international soldiers have been killed, including more than 350 Marines.
But the days of heavy combat and casualties in Helmand are over, at least for conventional American troops. And soon that might be true across Afghanistan. In the next few weeks, Afghan security forces are expected to reach one of the biggest milestones of the 11-year-old war: They’ll officially take the lead in the last remaining pockets of the country where they haven’t already.
The changes in Helmand are the most graphic example of what that means.
Marines are no longer walking the harrowing foot patrols that once were common in much of the province. Instead, they mainly work on large bases, teaching and mentoring Afghan security forces, and simply packing up to leave.
Some Marines are still exposed to risk, including those who run supply convoys and help clear the roads of bombs, and at least 30 have been wounded this year in the northern part of Helmand. But it’s the Afghan army and police that are doing the real fighting in the province – and taking the bulk of the casualties.
"I can’t think of a scenario where we’re out there right with them anymore," said Brig. Gen. George W. Smith, the deputy commander for the NATO regional command in Helmand who oversees the coalition’s work training and advising the Afghan army and police.
Mentoring or assistance on a combat operation, he said, is now done "one terrain feature" behind the Afghans, meaning the Marines hang back, observing, and ready with assistance such as a medevac helicopter if an Afghan soldier or police officer suffers a wound serious enough to put life or limb at risk.
None of this means the fighting has stopped or even slowed. Instead, the Afghans are now taking nearly all the casualties. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense declined to provide casualty figures for Helmand, but U.S. officers there said they thought the climb in Afghan losses roughly corresponded with the decline in coalition casualties.
In Helmand, the shift in who’s doing the fighting marks a huge change since the peak of fighting two and three years ago.
Once, there were more than 21,000 Marines in Helmand spread across nearly 300 bases, some of them outposts with fewer than half a dozen men. There were constant firefights, sometimes several a day. Now there are just more than 8,000 Marines, and they’re clustered mainly on a handful of large bases, behind elaborate layers of security.
Behind those walls, some Marines are frantically inventorying and packing up trucks and equipment to ship home while others are advising Afghans on advanced skills: how to train other troops, render medical assistance, plan operations and improve the Afghans’ notoriously unreliable supply chain.
No longer are the lessons taught out on patrol.
Typical was a recent day at Camp Shorabak _ the Afghan base adjacent to the Marines’ giant Camp Leatherneck _ which is home to the Afghan National Army’s 215th Corps.
Outside one end of a building, Sgt. Matthew Nickelsen, a Marine from Dana Point, Calif., was teaching Afghan soldiers how to train other Afghans to operate the iconic U.S. M2 .50-caliber machine gun. A hundred yards away, other Marine and U.S. civilians were teaching another group how to use 60 mm mortars, a new addition to the Afghan arsenal that the NATO-led coalition hopes will make up for the Afghans’ lack of air support. The Afghans under training were expected take their skills back to their companies to instruct others.
The Marine advisers were working out of a military training center that the coalition wants to turn into a regional school to improve soldiers’ skills after they’ve gone through basic training and been in the ranks for a while.
It’s hoped that the school will become a model that’s replicated across the country, said the adviser group’s commander and the lone member of the British army assigned here, Maj. Joseph Power.
The Afghans are good at fighting and can be great, with the proper equipment and training, he said. But the attrition via desertion and casualties is staggering, and it’s crucial for the long-term health of the army that it shift to a modern cycle of fighting, leaving and then getting additional training, rather than just having basic training and then being permanently on duty.
"They don’t think about training a sustainable force, partly because they just don’t look at it that way, and partly because we’ve always been there to help keep them going," he said.
It took the United States about three decades to develop a similar approach, and the Afghans have only a couple of years.
The changes are particularly noticeable in the southern half of Helmand, where the Marines once had more than 200 bases. Now they’re clustered in about half a dozen larger bases mainly strung along a 100-mile stretch of the Helmand River.
As of early last week, not a single Marine had been killed or wounded in action in the southern half of Helmand this year, said Lt. Col. Carl E. Cooper Jr. of Ruston, La., the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C. The 3/9 is the lone remaining U.S. infantry battalion in the southern part of the province.
"The security here is provided in whole by the Afghans," Cooper said. "Our operations are to enable them in a few areas, but frankly it has become a rarity to be asked to support them in an operation."
Maxim magazine once put Camp Dwyer, the main Marine base in southern Helmand, on a list of the five most dangerous places in Afghanistan. Now it’s among the calmest. The base is so large it has a bus system to move Marines from their living quarters to work, chow and recreation. It’s surrounded by desert, and attacks are rare.
Having trained to fight and fight aggressively, many of the younger Marines on their first tour of duty are bored.
"I don’t think the word is exactly ‘useless,’ but there’s not much more we can do here," said Lance Cpl. Christian Cappucci, 20, of Townsend, Mass. "It’s unfortunate that there’s no combat. I wish I had seen it earlier."
His unit is tasked with security for Dwyer, which means he at least gets to go outside the base for patrols. They stick so close, though, there’s not much chance of action. Basically they just patrol the desert just outside the base, partnering with Afghan soldiers who stop passing cars on the two desert routes around the base.
Over near the Helmand River, a few kilometers away, there’s a tree line, and every time Cappucci sees it, he gets a feeling that the Taliban could be found there in the cover. But it’s out of bounds.
He eyes that tree line and wishes.
"It’s aggravating, because it’s right there, and you can almost reach out and touch it, but we can’t go there," he said.
Lt. Col. Cooper, the commander of 3/9, said he was aware of that sentiment. From the beginning of the deployment, he said, his officers have pushed the message that not being in combat means the Marines have reached the goal of helping the Afghans take responsibility for their own security.
"We push down the consistent message that this is what winning looks like," he said.
Eager young infantry Marines such as Cappucci may be glum, but elsewhere on the base, 1st Lt. James Atkinson, 26, of Boca Raton, Fla., was all but whistling while he worked at the overwhelming job of tracking all the Marine equipment that’s being collected and sent back to the United State.
It’s the challenge of a lifetime for a logistics guy, and Atkinson was bursting with cheer as he played his spreadsheets and a stream of Marines poked their heads in every couple of minutes with more questions about stuff to be shipped.
At one point, 25 percent of all the Marine Corps’ gear was in Afghanistan, but in the past year that’s been cut to around 9 percent.
Since October, Atkinson has helped whittled down the rows of massive armored trucks, generators, portable communications towers and other Marine gear in southern Helmand from about $390 million worth to about $180 million.
"It’s not sexy for the grunts," he said. "But for us in logistics, this is why we’re here."
Online correction: This version corrects the name of the Marine in the next to last graph to Atkinson, clarifies near the top that some Marines are still engaged in dangerous tasks and clarifies that the reference to no Marines killed or wounded in action in the southern half of Helmand province is for this year.
The Taliban spring offensive - civilians count the cost
No major offensive has accompanied the resumption of widescale fighting but it has not stopped civilian casualties rising markedly
Guardian.co.uk By John Wendle Wednesday 1 May 2013
Kabul - The Taliban's annual spring offensive was not marked with a big operation this year, as it did last year when the militants unleashed a string of attacks around Kabul and across Afghanistan. Instead, there has been an increasing trickle of military and civilian casualties.
On Tuesday, three British soldiers were killed in Helmand province, and six Afghan family members were killed or wounded in Uruzgan province, both by roadside bombs.
This year's offensive, dubbed Khalid bin Waleed after the victorious general and companion to the Prophet Mohammed and nicknamed "the drawn sword of God", will consist of "special military tactics" and "insider attacks" which will be carried out "in a systematic and coordinated manner", the Taliban announced.
"Similarly, collective martyrdom operations on bases of foreign invaders, their diplomatic centres and military airbases will be even further structured while every possible tactic will be utilised in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors," its statement added.
The spring offensive coincides with the melting of winter snows, which opens passes across the Hindu Kush, affording insurgents greater mobility. At the same time, ill-equipped fighters, many without suitable clothing for winter warfare, have less reason to stay indoors during the warmer months.
General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Defence, predicted more fighting this year. "I see two reasons for this. First, the Taliban have gathered many fighters and we also have many soldiers. Secondly, with the American army pulling out of a fighting role, our soldiers will have to fight the Taliban.
In response to the Taliban statement, Nato said: "The Afghan people should not fear Taliban threats. The Afghan National Security Forces have wisely used the winter months to prepare for taking over the security lead throughout Afghanistan by mid-2013."
Such statements and predictions do not bode well for Afghan civilians. Georgette Gagnon, director of human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan, said that the number of civilians killed and wounded had increased 18% compared to the first four months of 2012, with 682 civilians killed so far, compared to 550 in 2012. Gagnon added that the numbers for April are still preliminary and are likely to rise.
"The UN is very concerned because the fighting season has just begun and already civilian casualties are rising, compared to the same period last year," said Gagnon.
Roadside bombs: 'The deadliest weapon' in Afghan war
BBC News By Bilal Sarwary 1 May 2013
Kabul - The roadside bomb killed thousands in Afghanistan last year, stifled the economy and created a climate of fear - yet its capacity to wreak destruction and havoc only seems to be increasing.
The exact toll is difficult to calculate but the interior ministry says the majority of 1,800 Afghan national police killed last year, died as a result of roadside bombs.
In addition, about 900 Afghan National Army soldiers were killed by roadside bombs - averaging three soldiers a day, according to General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the defence ministry.
Over the last two years, the insurgents' focus on roadside bombs - also known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - has gained momentum.
They no longer want to take on Afghan and Nato forces face-to-face, says Haji Abdul Mutalib, district governor of Marjah in Helmand province.
Instead, they are packing TNT and plastic explosives - as well as metal and ball bearings - into their bombs to make them more powerful and more destructive, he says.
Due to increased investment by al-Qaeda, a growing number of Afghan insurgents now have the expertise to make such bombs.
But they are also outsourcing the job of bomb-making and planting the devices to young jobless men, according to intelligence sources in the south. And every target has a price - whether a police officer or a district governor.
Wedding buses
The growth in bomb use has also had the unlikely impact of straining relations with Pakistan.
The Afghan government complains the fertiliser used in bomb-making comes from Pakistani factories.
The structure of the bombs is basic but very effective, and difficult to detect.
Last month in Kandahar province, more than 1,000 roadside bombs were found in the Panjwai district. And, according to the regional police chief Abdul Raziq, there are thousands more.
Almost daily, Afghan forces are focused on finding and defusing these bombs. It is not unusual for them to be tipped off by farmers, shopkeepers, butchers or villagers who might find one under a bridge or in a field.
By laying bombs where ordinary people live and work, insurgents have ensured roadside bombs remain the biggest killer of civilians in Afghanistan.
Over the last year, entire families travelling together in a van, perhaps to a wedding, funeral or picnic, have been blown up, leaving 15 or so men, women and children dead.
The devices, often detonated through mobile phones or timers, may be powerful but they are not accurate.
'Most vulnerable'
The tactical advantages of roadside bombs are many.
They allow insurgents to block the country's main arteries, cutting off areas and causing serious food and medicine shortages.
One road, on the borders of the remote provinces of Daykundi and Uruzgan, usually used by thousands of people, has been closed for five weeks.
Insurgents have lined it with bombs to stop people travelling and supplies being delivered.
In other instances, construction projects have been cancelled.
And, in rural Afghanistan, these bombs have stopped children attending school, and at worst, killed some.
They are also laid on routes that insurgents know will be used by Afghan forces about to carry out operations or make arrests.
Stopping the spread of these bombs is proving hard. Without helicopters, the local and national police are the most vulnerable.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) use drones to detect insurgents, and security cameras on blimps are an aid, but the Afghan government does not have the same capability.
However, together with Nato, the government is targeting the Taliban commanders responsible - a side of the story that often goes unreported.
Earlier on Wednesday, in the same district in Helmand where three British soldiers were killed on Tuesday, a roadside bomb killed the head of the High Peace Council for Helmand Province, Raees Malim Shah, and two policemen.
They had gone to carry out an assessment of the security situation. Now, it means Afghan officials will no longer be able to go to that area.
The roadside bomb has, without doubt, been one of the deadliest weapons in this war, and it remains so.
Taliban abduct 28 Afghan local police officers in Faryab
Khaama Press 01 May 2013
According to local authorities in northern Faryab province of Afghanistan, Taliban militants abducted around 28 Afghan local police forces after attacking a number of security check posts in Ghormach district.
The officials further added, Taliban militants had abducted the Afghan local police officers from four security check posts on Tuesday evening.
In the meantime local tribal elders in Faryab province are saying that Taliban militants have abducted around 46 local police officers during the attack which continued for several hours however neither the Taliban militants nor Afghan security forces suffered any casualties.
Tribal elders also warned that Taliban militants have been deployed in various surrounding locations of Ghormach district after Afghan police and Afghan army were pulled out of the area.
In the meantime provincial governor Mohammadullah Batash confirmed the clashes and said that Afghan local police forces have pulled out of the area following the clashes.
He denied the reports regarding the abduction of Afghan local police forces by Taliban militants.
However he said that Karez-e-Deewana area is under the total control of the Taliban militants and efforts have been put in place to clear the area from the militants.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com