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Bombing Kills Key Figure in Northern Afghan Province
By ROD NORDLAND The New York Times May 20, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber disguised as a police officer killed 14 people on Monday, including the head of a provincial council in northern Afghanistan, officials said.
The head of the council, Rasul Mohseni, commonly known as Rasul Khan, was widely regarded as the most powerful man in Baghlan Province and was a veteran commander who had led northerners in revolt against the Taliban government. He was killed along with four of his bodyguards and three police officers, as well as six civilians, according to Zubair Akbari, the province’s director of public health. Nine other people were wounded.
Sadiq Muradi, the deputy police chief of Baghlan Province, said that Mr. Mohseni had arrived at the provincial council offices in Pul-i-Kumri, Baghlan’s capital, with his bodyguards and a group of elders who wanted to meet with him and was walking toward the council building when the bomber joined the group. Dressed in a police uniform, the bomber mingled with officers until the group got inside the building, where he detonated an explosive device hidden on his body.
Mr. Mohseni, who was viewed as more powerful than either Baghlan’s governor or its police chief, had been accused of quietly rearming militia fighters in the north in case the Taliban again proved to be a threat. His brother Mustafa Mohseni is an Afghan general, and another brother, Azim Mohseni, is an influential member of Parliament.
They were all prominent members of the Jamiat-i-Islami party, formerly led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was assassinated in 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber pretending to be a peace emissary.
Enayat Najafizada contributed reporting from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul.
Taliban aims victory after NATO pullout from Afghanistan: Azimi
By SAYED JAWAD - 20 May 2013, 4:11 pm Khaama Press
Afghan defense officials on Monday said that Taliban militants have deployed a large number of fighters to Afghanistan after closing its religious Madrasas in Pakistan.
According to reports thousands of of Taliban fighters are busy with the religious studies in Pakistani Madrasas.
The officials also added that Taliban group has increased its psychological war and claim that NATO troops have been defeated in Afghanistan and that Taliban group will gain power after 2014.
Defense ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi told reporters in capital Kabul on Monday, “Based on our information, Taliban has closed all its religious Madrasas in Pakistan and Taliban has deployed all its fighters in Afghanistan to carry out insurgency and suicide attacks.”
Increased insurgency activities by Taliban militants comes amid preparations by NATO troops to withdraw from the country after Afghan security forces takes full security lead across the country.
Gen. Zahir Azimi said Taliban group is expecting a victory in 2014 and therefore has deployed all its fighters in Afghanistan in a bid to take control of the power after NATO troops leave Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Afghan defense officials assured that Taliban’s increased insurgency activities will have not impact on the security situation of the country, since Taliban militants do not have the capability to face Afghan security forces.
Defense ministry spokesman, Gen. Zahir Azimi said Taliban militants will be able to carry out major attacks in eastern provinces of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, however Afghan security forces are ready to counter their attacks.
Afghan president leaves for India on state visit
KABUL, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai left on Monday for a two-day visit to India, a statement released here by his office said.
"President Hamid Karzai, leading a high-level delegation, left this morning on a two-day state visit to India at the invitation of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee," the statement said.
During his visit, Karzai is scheduled to meet with Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other Indian officials, the statement added.
Discussions at the meetings with Indian leaders will focus on ways to enhance bilateral relations in various areas, strengthening of Afghan civil and military institutions as well as situation in Afghanistan and the region, the statement went on to say.
Afghanistan catching up with the Internet and modern lifestyle
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Some 12 years ago, it was unthinkable to have Internet cafes in Afghanistan. But today, Kabul, and some other cities and towns in the country, have Internet shops where Afghans, especially students, can surf and look for the information that they need.
"I go the Internet cafe usually twice a week to gather information about Afghanistan's contemporary history as well as on other topics, such as World War II and about Adolf Hitler," Mohammad Omar, a Kabul University student, said.
Although there is a public library in Kabul, the vast majority of students prefer to go to Internet shops where they can get the necessary information through search engines without any hassle.
Despite being a conservative country where tribalism is deeply rooted, Afghanistan has no recourse but to move towards modernization and join the computer age otherwise it will be left behind.
Even in Kandahar, once the bailiwick of the Taliban, there are universities, schools and Internet shops that are open to both men and women.
During the six-year Taliban rule, which collapsed after the invasion of the country by the U.S.-led military coalition in late 2001, the Internet was banned, schools for girls were closed, and men were forced to wear turban, sport beard and study theology.
The Taliban also confined women to their houses and forced them to wear burqa whenever they come out of their houses. They were not allowed to walk in the streets without male escorts.
Today, according to officials, nearly two million Afghans have access to the Internet. Around 22 million Afghans, or some 72 percent of the country's population, have now access to phone services, a tremendous achievement that would be unthinkable decade ago.
Now parents, even in rural areas, are sending their daughters to school, a practice that was taboo during the brutal reign of the Taliban.
"I want my daughters to become doctors and serve the patients particularly the female ones," Abdul Qadir, a villager in Baghlan province, said during a recent interview with Xinhua.
A farmer, Qadir, 41, said that he wants his three daughters to continue their studies until they become doctors, adding that by being medical practitioners, his daughters can best serve their fellow Afghans, particularly the poor.
Aside from dreaming big dreams, there is now a perceptible change in lifestyle and standard of living in Afghanistan, not just in Kabul but also in the countryside.
Some villagers who have adequate incomes have now abandoned their traditional mud houses but built concrete houses.
Afghans today, even in the remote areas, listen to music, watch television and enjoy European and Asian channels with the use of satellite disks, something that they could not have enjoyed just a decade ago under the Taliban.
Some villagers, when they come to Kabul to study, often abandon the turban that their fathers wear. They now wear plain clothes replacing the traditional pirahan-tonban.
Even the traditional burqa, an envelope-like dress worn by Afghan women is also being gradually replaced by Iranian or Arabic hijab or veil that only partially covers the woman's face.
"We are young people and living in modern world, so it is unnecessary for us to wear heavy turban and carry a gun," a college student from the southern Helmand province, Ziarat Gul, told Xinhua.
In the rural areas, it is customary for a man to carry a gun. This is a part of their culture.
Afghanistan to Sign Security Agreement Once the War Ends
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian 19 May 2013
Afghanistan government will not sign the security agreement with US until the end of war in the region and overall stability is visible.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a telephonic conversation with the US Secretary of State said that he will never sign the security agreement when violence is still prevalent in Afghanistan.
President Karzai stressed that stability and end of war are the main conditions of Afghanistan to sign the agreement.
Afghanistan Presidency said in a statement that signing the agreement in an unstable situation means that Afghan civilians will be sacrificed at the hands of foreigners daily.
"President Karzai stayed firm on his position. The signing of security agreement does not have any meaning if peace does not prevail in Afghanistan," University lecturer Mohammad Taher Hashimi told TOLOnews.
Meanwhile, President's firmness in the decision over signing the security agreement received mixed reactions. Some say that such a stand will damage the efforts on signing the agreement in the future.
"Peace is a sustainable process. The mindsets should change. The security issue is important. We cannot connect all important issues such as security to peace which still does not have clear definition for several people," MP, Farkhonda Zahra Naderi said.
The signing of the security agreement is extremely crucial considering the current situation- where violence has reached the once considered-to-be secured parts of the country and security forces facing severe shortages.
"The agreement means that security forces be strengthened that can fight insurgency and security be assured. First the foreign intervention should be stopped," former Military General Atiqullah Amarkhil told TOLOnews.
Previously, President Karzai said that negotiations on signing the agreement reached its final stage but if the US does not accept Afghanistan's conditions it will not sign.
It is believed that the security agreement will secure Afghanistan and prevent foreign aggressions.
Afghanistan’s forgotten crisis: its economy
Financial Times By Victor Mallet 20, 2013
Delhi - As long ago as 1841, those who tried to govern Afghanistan complained about the country’s paltry income.
“But what can be done with a Kingdom whose net revenues are only fifteen Lakhs [1.5m] of Rupees per annum?” wrote a frustrated Sir William Macnaghten from Kabul to his East India Company bosses.
Nearly two centuries later, those sentiments are echoed by the foreign advisers who have struggled to revive the Afghan economy since the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001.
Amid all the security concerns over the current withdrawal of Nato forces from Afghanistan after their failure to defeat the resurgent Taliban, the disastrous state of the landlocked Afghan economy has been all but forgotten.
But once most Nato troops have gone in 2014, billions of dollars of annual aid for Afghanistan will be essential for decades if the country is to manage its own security, educate its children and modernise the economy, according to foreign donors and international financial institutions.
The International Monetary Fund estimates Afghanistan’s current account deficit at 45 per cent of gross domestic product, and has postponed the prospect of “fiscal sustainability” until after the distant year 2032.
Last year’s legal exports, including fruit and nuts, handmade carpets and semi-precious stones, were estimated at $376m by the US Central Intelligence Agency – about one 17th of the value of imports.
According to the World Bank, annual aid flows of more than $15bn a year, roughly the same as Afghanistan’s GDP, are a sign of extreme and growing dependence and “cannot be sustained”.
Aid comes on top of the treasure already spent by the west: the US, says the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, has incurred direct spending of $642bn on the Afghan war.
Yet western governments are weary of paying for Afghanistan and enraged by unrestrained corruption, as well as by what they see as President Hamid Karzai’s ingratitude towards his western allies.
So there are risks not only of more terror and instability because of the departure of 100,000 Nato troops, but also of an economic crisis that could stoke yet more violence as growth slows.
“I am getting the feeling that we will experience an economic shock in the country, whether it’s 2014 or 2015,” says Niamatullah Ibrahimi of Afghanistan Watch, a group promoting human rights, accountability and transparency. “It’s already showing signs in the property market, in supermarkets. People are losing jobs, the power to buy.”
The main problem with the legal Afghan economy, donors say, is that it has been largely sustained by a flood of aid money. Small businesses that used to export fruit or make plastic shoes for local consumption have collapsed as dollars have poured in, making the local currency uncompetitively strong and boosting wages.
Afghanistan has thus suffered the kind of “resources curse” afflicting countries that experience a sudden rush of revenues from oil.
“Here you can call it an aid curse,” says the head of one foreign agency, who asked not to be named. “A lot of exports have dried up because it’s more interesting to go into servicing the donors. There’s more rewards in that than in trying to export more nuts or pomegranates.”
It is not all gloom. Businesses serving domestic consumers have expanded rapidly.
Entrepreneurs have launched scores of private schools, and the number of mobile telephones has increased from nothing in 2001 to around 18m today.
“This country is very young, very aspirational and still not that depressed or frustrated,” says Saad Mohseni, the ebullient Afghan television mogul who chairs the Moby Group. “There’s an enormous opportunity to keep the momentum going.”
Afghanistan’s business climate remains so daunting, however, that investors typically keep their surplus wealth in the Gulf or in the West.
Corruption is the biggest problem. Kabul Bank, which accounted for more than a third of Afghanistan’s banking assets, turned out to be a billion-dollar fraud for the benefit of a few well-connected Afghans, including associates of Mr Karzai, according to an international investigation. As a share of national GDP, the scam exposed in 2010 was one of the world’s biggest bank failures.
“Aid inflows,” says the World Bank in a report entitled Afghanistan in Transition, “have become a source of rents, patronage and political power.”
Oil and gas and the mining of copper, iron and other minerals, are the sectors most likely to produce exports and economic growth. “If Detroit is cars, Afghanistan is minerals,” says David Bolger of the Pentagon’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, estimating Afghan mineral wealth at $1tn-$3tn.
A crucial mining law, however, has yet to be passed by the parliament, and neither military security nor the power and transport infrastructure are good enough for most projects to proceed.
Afghanistan’s biggest export industry by far is opium. But that mostly benefits the Taliban, and researchers say the rebels run the expanding opium trade better than the Afghan state manages its own businesses.
Foreign donors are divided over whether Afghanistan should be weaned gradually off outside aid or subjected to a sharp cutback to force it to adjust.
Either way, it will not be easy. The foreign donor chief in Kabul likened Afghanistan to a patient lying on a bed for the past 12 years while being nourished intravenously with glucose. “Now they are telling him to walk, and saying ‘You’re not going to get your glucose.’”
Cause for hope -- and fear -- in Pakistan
Can new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif succeed? That will depend largely on whether he has the strength of will to resist the military and to confront radical Islamists.
By Peter Tomsen May 19, 2013 Los Angeles Times
There is reason for hope in Nawaz Sharif's victory in the recent Pakistani elections. Sharif, who has twice served as Pakistan's prime minister, has said he wants to build a more robust democracy, revive the country's shattered economy and end the military's 40-year domination of its politics. He has also promised to improve relations with India and take on the radical Islamist terrorism that has tormented Pakistan. The United States should assist him in every way possible to achieve those goals.
But there is also ample reason for caution. The U.S. has a long history of "betting on the come," of unwarranted optimism that the transfer of billions in unconditional aid will influence Pakistan to withdraw its support for the Afghan Taliban insurgency based in Pakistan. With a new Pakistani leader in place, it is time to begin linking Washington's huge military and economic assistance programs more directly to U.S. interests, including anti-terrorism and regional stability.
Perhaps Sharif's greatest challenge — as he knows all too well — will be ending the Pakistani military's outsized influence on foreign and defense policy, which is implemented largely through its powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. In 1999, the last time Sharif served as Pakistan's prime minister, he attempted to improve Indo-Pakistani relations and replace the head of the army, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Instead, the army ousted Sharif in a coup, and Musharraf assumed power. Since 2008, Pakistan's elected leaders have tended to cede key decisions to the military in order to survive.
Moreover, Sharif does not have an unblemished record in his willingness to confront extremists. During his second stint as prime minister in the 1990s, he played an influential role in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was seen to be in Pakistan's interest. Recently, Taliban extremists in Pakistan spared Sharif's party in their violent pre-election attacks on political rallies and candidates. Against this backdrop, and given Sharif's stated opposition to U.S. drone strikes, it seems unlikely that the new prime minister will vigorously combat extremism in Pakistan.
This sobering environment makes it incumbent on Washington to conduct its relations with Pakistan patiently, positively, candidly and in a transactional manner, emphasizing both equality and give-and-take. America's ineffective policy through successive administrations has seemed paralyzed, tolerating Pakistan's phony insistence that it does not support Mullah Mohammed Omar's Afghan Taliban insurgency and the notorious Haqqani network operating from Pakistani territory. With the new prime minister comes an opportunity to change that dynamic.
Sharif, for his part, must understand that he will not be able to accomplish any of his goals — including economic prosperity and stability in Pakistan — unless the ISI's radical Islamist infrastructure in Pakistan is dismantled.
Another part of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship that needs resetting is Washington's continuing hope, against much evidence to the contrary, that Pakistan will be useful in guiding Afghan peace talks. In fact, any Afghan political process organized by foreigners, including the U.S.-sponsored Qatar initiative that has languished since 2010, is doomed to failure.
Rather than trying to act as the catalyst for talks between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, the U.S. should step back, encourage the Afghans to reach agreement on their own and insist that Pakistan also step back. It would be nothing less than foolish to continue to work with Pakistan to convert the ISI's Taliban and Haqqani network proxies into genuine peace negotiators instead of what they are: Al Qaeda-linked terrorists bent on violence to achieve their extremist version of an Afghan Islamist state.
Last year, Congress and President Obama officially designated the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization. Congress should now move quickly to add Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura to the list. The group's suicide bombers are no different from those of the Haqqani network, having killed hundreds of American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, along with thousands of Afghans. Both operate with Al Qaeda and share the same ideology, and both were created and sustained by the ISI, and have been supported or unofficially tolerated by Pakistani civilian leaders.
Strategically, Washington should support Sharif's policies to strengthen the Pakistani economy, democratic institutions, civil society, human rights and gender equality. American responses to Pakistani requests, including on an upcoming International Monetary Fund bailout, must be conditioned on the military's cessation of support for its Afghan terrorist proxies operating from Pakistani soil.
Concurrently, the U.S. and its allies should urge Pakistan to join a multilateral consensus to revive Afghanistan's classic buffer role in Central Asia between larger powers. The Afghan government, like Austria during the Cold War, would adhere to nonaligned neutrality. Outside powers, Pakistan included, would honor Afghanistan's territorial integrity and exercise mutual restraint from interfering in Afghanistan. The outcome — opening up Central Asia to a new era of intercontinental commerce through Afghanistan — would benefit both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan is an important, populous Muslim nation poised to move forward under the leadership of a new prime minister. Its success or failure will depend largely on whether its leaders have the strength of will to resist military domination of the Pakistani state and confront radical Islamists. The U.S. should do everything in its power to help should Sharif choose to follow this path.
Peter Tomsen was special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992 and ambassador to Armenia from 1995 to 1998. He is the author of "The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers."
Without U.S. helicopters, Afghans struggle to save wounded
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff May 20, 2013
Kandahar, Afghanistan - As soon as the Taliban bullet struck 24-year-old Afghan Sgt. Nazir Moradi’s leg, the men in his unit began brainstorming a way to get him off the battlefield.
The roads were too dangerous for an army ambulance. The Afghan soldiers, in several calls to their commanders, repeated one plea: They needed a helicopter.
The Afghan air force didn’t have any working aircraft available. The U.S. military, in the midst of drawing down its air support, denied a request for help. Instead, Moradi was carried for miles and eventually put in an unarmored ambulance impeded by rough terrain and the threat of roadside bombs.
By the time Moradi arrived at the Kandahar Regional Military Hospital, more than three hours away, he had bled to death from a minor wound. Hospital workers carried him to the morgue in a flag-draped coffin, the ritual they perform each time a soldier arrives too late. “We kept waiting for a helicopter, either American or Afghan. But it never arrived,” said Pvt. Morabuddin, Moradi’s best friend. “He did not have to die.”For the past decade, the Afghan army has relied on hundreds of American helicopters to pluck wounded soldiers from remote battlefields and outposts. Now, the U.S. helicopters are leaving Afghanistan just as the country’s army embarks on its toughest fight, assuming formal responsibility for security this summer. The Afghan air force has 60 helicopters, but many are out of commission at any given time, and none is dedicated solely to casualty evacuation.
The war here is full of asymmetries between one of the world’s strongest militaries and one of the world’s newest forces, dependent entirely on foreign aid. The staggering gap in air evacuation capacity raises questions not only about how Afghan troops will defeat a resilient enemy, but how they will avoid countless unnecessary deaths. About 250 Afghan soldiers and police officers die every month, a toll far higher than that suffered by Western troops in their deadliest period.
The United States has invested millions of dollars in training and supplying the Afghan air force, but American officials acknowledge that Afghan pilots will be able to evacuate only a fraction of wounded soldiers and police officers. Last year, the United States evacuated 4,700 Afghan soldiers by air, compared with the Afghan air force’s 400.
With American air support vanishing, the rest will have to rely on unarmored ambulances, even though soldiers are often wounded hundreds of miles from an adequate hospital, separated by roads peppered with homemade bombs, known as IEDs.
“Your helicopters are our life support, and they’re leaving,” said Ahmad Zia Safai, a surgeon at the Kandahar hospital.
A crisis of confidence
When its troops are wounded, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has long relied on a massive fleet of Black Hawk helicopters operating 24 hours a day. Rapid air evacuation is credited with saving hundreds of lives in the past decade of war. The coalition deems transporting its own casualties from the battlefield in ambulances too dangerous.
The Afghan air force, meanwhile, has about six working helicopters in all of the restive south. Afghan pilots don’t have the resources, such as night-vision goggles, necessary to fly after sunset, and their weakness in ground combat means that they are seldom able to land in hostile territory.
The Afghan fleet is expected to require NATO support until at least 2017, according to U.S. officials, due in large part to concerns about maintenance.
“There’s no way the Afghan air force will be able to cover what we’ve been covering,” said Col. Michael Paston, the U.S. 438th Air Expeditionary Advisory Wing surgeon general. “Are they going to be surprised when they call on ISAF [to evacuate a casualty] and ISAF says no? That’s happening now.”
That new reality has prompted a crisis of confidence in many Afghan units. Some commanders worry that troops might be less willing to put their lives at risk knowing that they lack once-dependable medical support.
“How can we fill the gap as the U.S. withdraws? It’s impossible. We can’t grow fast enough,” said Col. Asrail Wardak, the deputy commander of the Afghan air force’s southern fleet.
As the Taliban’s summer fighting season went into full swing this month, the dead and critically wounded soldiers poured into Kandahar Regional Military Hospital in almost equal number. All the men who arrived with life-threatening injuries had been evacuated by U.S. helicopters.
After performing a double amputation on a soldier who had stepped on a makeshift bomb, Khadir Tajik, a physician, emerged from the operating room with beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Without a helicopter, there’s no question he would have died. An ambulance would have taken way too long,” he said.
The recovery room was full of patients who said they knew that the helicopters that saved their lives were leaving Afghanistan. With the NATO withdrawal accelerating, they could be some of the last Afghan casualties to be evacuated by international forces.
Lt. Tamarac Dyer, an ISAF spokesman, said coalition forces “will provide assistance when needed, but not on a routine basis,” at bases shared with Afghan forces, which are rapidly diminishing in number.
In most cases, like Moradi’s, Afghan soldiers are injured while on missions at which no foreign forces are present.
In the Kandahar recovery room, there was a 25-year-old commando whose unit had unearthed eight makeshift bombs before the ninth exploded beneath his feet. There was a 21-year-old police officer whose vehicle had stepped on a roadside bomb and whose right leg was amputated by doctors; when he couldn’t hear them, they whispered that his left leg would probably have to be removed, too. There was a 22-year-old soldier who was stabbed and beaten after he stepped out of his outpost to investigate suspicious activity.
Top U.S. and Afghan military leaders have met twice in the past year to discuss the future of casualty evacuation after NATO’s pullout. U.S. officials urged Afghan commanders to do ground evacuation, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. Gen. Abdul Basir, the Afghan army’s deputy medical commander, said he stood at the second meeting and spoke angrily.
“If a soldier is in serious condition — if he has lost his limbs — an ambulance will not get him to the hospital in time,” he recalled saying.
Like many of his colleagues, Basir was trained by American doctors and military officers over the past decade. His U.S. advisers taught him the importance of the “golden hour” — the window of opportunity to save a victim of severe trauma.
“Without helicopters, we lose the golden hour,” Basir said in an interview. “We lose an opportunity to save lives.”
Still, late last year, after the meeting with U.S. officials, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army’s chief of staff, issued a memo to his commanders explaining the need to rely on ambulances as U.S. air support dwindles.
“Until now, the evacuation of the war wounded and injured was often carried out by the international coalition through air,” Karimi wrote. “Since this process has been gradually reduced . . . Afghan army units need to arrange their plans for ground evacuation.”
Evacuations and escalations
Recently, two Afghan Mi-17 helicopters flew over the rocky, inhospitable terrain between Kandahar and Zabul provinces. Each casualty evacuation amounts to a small triumph for the nation’s young air force. This one occurred after a hailstorm grounded the entire fleet for four days.
A few hours after a wounded soldier, Pvt. Lal Muhammad, was loaded, grimacing, into the helicopter and transported to the Kandahar military hospital, he spoke coldly from his hospital bed.
“It took four days for them to pick me up,” he said. “How is that possible?”
Muhammad’s injury wasn’t life-threatening — he had accidentally shot himself in the foot in the middle of a firefight. But the closest hospital with experienced medics was nearly 200 miles from his remote outpost. The road to the facility, Muhammad’s unit knew, was lined with bombs. The only solution was to wait for a helicopter, however long it took. If the injury had been more serious, he he assumes he would have died.
“You can’t replace a U.S. helicopter with an Afghan ambulance,” said Soor Gulab Ahmadzia, the flight medic who tended to Muhammad.
U.S. officials haven’t articulated what kind of air support they will provide to Afghans through 2014 — only that it will continue to diminish. That transition has been rocky, and U.S. officials acknowledge that they are letting Afghans down by denying requests for air evacuation.
The U.S.-led coalition made a similar change in 2009, when it largely stopped providing air evacuation assistance to Afghan civilians injured by the Taliban. Some in the U.S. military viewed that as a betrayal.
“Not only did the U.S. choose to escalate the war knowing that civilians would increasingly be killed and wounded — without proper trauma care in place — they also changed the medical rules of engagement, resulting in greater mortality,” said one U.S. official who is not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials say they are simply trying to find an “Afghan solution” as their resources diminish. But there are many stories, like Moradi’s, of Afghan soldiers and police officers dying of treatable injuries.
‘He died for his country’
In March, Naqibullah, a police officer in Wardak province who had been injured by a Taliban mortar round, waited seven hours to be evacuated by air because his commander worried that an ambulance would be vulnerable to roadside bombs. The helicopter never came, and Naqibullah bled to death.
But the commander’s concern turned out to be justified: Hours later, a vehicle in the convoy transporting Naqibullah’s body from Jaghatu district to the provincial capital hit one such bomb, killing another officer.
“This brought down the morale of our officers one hundred percent,” said Wahid Tanha, the Jaghatu police chief. “It shows the weakness of our government.”
In an interview in Kandahar, Morabuddin said he traveled 500 miles with Moradi’s coffin to Badakhshan province, along the border with Tajikistan.
When he arrived, Moradi’s relatives opened the coffin and saw the minor gunshot wound. Morabuddin said he felt obligated to explain what had happened, how their son and brother had died of a treatable injury.
“After he was wounded, there was no way to evacuate him by ambulance,” Morabuddin recalled telling them. “
There was no road. By the time he arrived in the hospital, he was dead.”
Morabuddin waited for more questions, dreading the answers he would have to give. But the family was silent. Finally, Moradi’s brother spoke.
“What we know is that he died for his country. It was his destiny.”
Canadian military gear stranded in Afghanistan
Soldiers sent to check on more than 375 shipping containers still at Kandahar Airfield
CBS News May 19, 2013
A team of 15 Canadian soldiers has been dispatched to Kandahar on a month-long assignment to assess whether dozens of military containers are still seaworthy enough to be brought home.
Over 375 shipping containers full of military supplies remain stranded at Kandahar Airfield nearly 18 months after Canada's withdrawal from the war-torn province, and almost two years since combat operations ceased.
National Defence says the material is considered low priority and that all high-value and sensitive equipment has been returned to Canada.
A spokeswoman for the country's operational command, Capt. Jennifer Stadnyk, said certification of as many as 150 of the containers has expired and the technical assistance team will have to access whether they can still meet the standards set out by international shipping companies.
Defence sources said if the containers don't pass, the military will have to find a way to dispose of the material.
Logistics nightmare The seemingly endless delay in repatriation of the containers, which were supposed to travel overland, was brought on by the extended closure of the Afghan border with Pakistan.
It has turned into a long, costly logistics nightmare for the military, which had intended to have everything home to fully re-equip and refurbish the army.
The equipment includes tires, spare parts, tents and other gear, and officials say their absence does not directly impede the army's regeneration.
Last fall documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation showed the Canadian government has faced increased withdrawal costs because the containers still have to be stored and guarded.
Pakistan cut off NATO's supply lines through its country in November 2011 after a U.S. air raid mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and the border remained shut until July 2012.
In winding up Canada's five-year involvement in Kandahar, the military funnelled its gear into two streams.
The first was an air bridge that saw Canadian C-17s and rented transports fly sensitive equipment and vehicles out to a friendly port, where it was loaded on cargo ships bound for Canada. The second route was to drive non-sensitive material over land through Pakistan, where it was loaded on a cargo ship in the port of Karachi.
When the Pakistan border clapped shut, only 186 of the estimated 632 containers destined for overland transport had made it back to Canada. Of those, a significant number were pilfered.
The documents show an average loss rate among the containers of 27 per cent. Thieves who pried open the metal containers would steal the contents, replace them with sandbags and weights, and then reseal the containers.
Karzai Must Not Station Foreign Spies in Presidential Palace: Senates
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 19 May 2013
Afghan Senators on Sunday's session said that the networks of foreign spies stationed at the Presidential Palace are working for their own interests. The foreign spies had been positioned in the Palace on the orders of the President.
The senators stressed that the spies constantly advise the President keeping their selfish motives in mind. This poses a great threat for the country.
"Specific networks of foreign spies are appointed on the orders of the President and they go to the extent of infiltrating into the cabinet which is really worrying," Senator Abdul Hanan Haqyoun said.
"Hezbi Islami (Islamic Party) representatives come to the table for negotiations but the talks fail and they start fighting against government," Senator Hadayatullah Rahayi said.
Meanwhile, the numerous killing of civilians in the country by Taliban and other armed opposition groups raised the Senates' concerns.
"Hezbi Islami, Taliban or any other group involved in the killing of innocent lives in the country are committing a big crime. Also, the government must nab the masterminds behind the numerous terrorist attacks," Speaker of the Senate Fazal Hadi Muslimyar said.
"Huge amount of explosives are routed into the country with the help of the security officials. Without their help it is not possible to distribute explosives to different parts of the country," Senator Daoud Asas said.
At the same time, a number of senators asked President Karzai to give the order of hanging all those responsible for killing civilians and those involved in organized crimes.
"We are asking the government especially the President to sign the execution orders of those who have been charged for civilian killings," Head of Complaints Committee of Senate, Zalmai Zabuli said.
The senators argue that till the government doesn't make a clear policy against government's armed opposition groups and other enemies, it will be difficult to achieve lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Reapprove The Law Governing IEC and ECC: Karzai
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi 19 May 2013
Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants that the laws governing Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) must be approved.
President Karzai in an interaction with the Heads of Parliamentary committees asked the MPs to approve the laws governing the IEC and ECC.
This development happened at a time when President Karzai made some changes in the law and resent it for approval to the Parliament.
A number of MPs believe that the Presidency will use all possible ways for the changes made in the law to be accepted.
It is said that the President asked the lawmakers to decide over new adjustments and approve it at the earliest.
"I think that if the law is approved soon then many of our problems will be solved before upcoming elections," Member of Parliament, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi said.
The transferring of the ECC's responsibilities to the Attorney General is one of the changes made by President Karzai.
"The Presidency is against ECC. The Parliament has approved the creation of this Commission. I think, if the commission is not established, the upcoming election will face lots of challenges and it might so happen that the President may even support his favorite nominee in the election," Member of Parliament, Ghulam Farooq Majroh said.
The laws governing the IEC and ECC were approved by the Afghanistan National Assembly. Many political parties consider the law to be of utmost importance for the upcoming election. But it is unclear as to when the law would be reapproved by the Parliament.
Smuggling of LPG into Pakistan on the Rise: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Zabiulah Jahanmal 19 May 2013
Oil and Gas Enterprise Department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries on Sunday said that a number of Afghani and Pakistani traders are smuggling Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) into Pakistan due to its high price in the Pakistani market.
The Oil and Gas Department officials believe that if the government does not take steps to prevent smuggling, the prices of gas will increase in Afghanistan.
The officials said that the price of 1Kg of LPG in Pakistan has escalated to 180 Pakistani Rupees. Due to this steep rise in its price, the smuggling of gas has also increased.
Officials have said that at present LPG is smuggled through the Spin Boldak district in Kandahar into Pakistan.
"We are asking our security forces to prevent the smuggling of LPG into Pakistan," Head of Oil and Gas Enterprise Department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Faridullah Shirzai, told TOLOnews.
Currently Pakistan does not have transit permits to pass through Afghanistan, thus, a number of Pakistani and Afghani traders smuggle LPG into Pakistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By ROD NORDLAND The New York Times May 20, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber disguised as a police officer killed 14 people on Monday, including the head of a provincial council in northern Afghanistan, officials said.
The head of the council, Rasul Mohseni, commonly known as Rasul Khan, was widely regarded as the most powerful man in Baghlan Province and was a veteran commander who had led northerners in revolt against the Taliban government. He was killed along with four of his bodyguards and three police officers, as well as six civilians, according to Zubair Akbari, the province’s director of public health. Nine other people were wounded.
Sadiq Muradi, the deputy police chief of Baghlan Province, said that Mr. Mohseni had arrived at the provincial council offices in Pul-i-Kumri, Baghlan’s capital, with his bodyguards and a group of elders who wanted to meet with him and was walking toward the council building when the bomber joined the group. Dressed in a police uniform, the bomber mingled with officers until the group got inside the building, where he detonated an explosive device hidden on his body.
Mr. Mohseni, who was viewed as more powerful than either Baghlan’s governor or its police chief, had been accused of quietly rearming militia fighters in the north in case the Taliban again proved to be a threat. His brother Mustafa Mohseni is an Afghan general, and another brother, Azim Mohseni, is an influential member of Parliament.
They were all prominent members of the Jamiat-i-Islami party, formerly led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was assassinated in 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber pretending to be a peace emissary.
Enayat Najafizada contributed reporting from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul.
Taliban aims victory after NATO pullout from Afghanistan: Azimi
By SAYED JAWAD - 20 May 2013, 4:11 pm Khaama Press
Afghan defense officials on Monday said that Taliban militants have deployed a large number of fighters to Afghanistan after closing its religious Madrasas in Pakistan.
According to reports thousands of of Taliban fighters are busy with the religious studies in Pakistani Madrasas.
The officials also added that Taliban group has increased its psychological war and claim that NATO troops have been defeated in Afghanistan and that Taliban group will gain power after 2014.
Defense ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi told reporters in capital Kabul on Monday, “Based on our information, Taliban has closed all its religious Madrasas in Pakistan and Taliban has deployed all its fighters in Afghanistan to carry out insurgency and suicide attacks.”
Increased insurgency activities by Taliban militants comes amid preparations by NATO troops to withdraw from the country after Afghan security forces takes full security lead across the country.
Gen. Zahir Azimi said Taliban group is expecting a victory in 2014 and therefore has deployed all its fighters in Afghanistan in a bid to take control of the power after NATO troops leave Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Afghan defense officials assured that Taliban’s increased insurgency activities will have not impact on the security situation of the country, since Taliban militants do not have the capability to face Afghan security forces.
Defense ministry spokesman, Gen. Zahir Azimi said Taliban militants will be able to carry out major attacks in eastern provinces of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, however Afghan security forces are ready to counter their attacks.
Afghan president leaves for India on state visit
KABUL, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai left on Monday for a two-day visit to India, a statement released here by his office said.
"President Hamid Karzai, leading a high-level delegation, left this morning on a two-day state visit to India at the invitation of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee," the statement said.
During his visit, Karzai is scheduled to meet with Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other Indian officials, the statement added.
Discussions at the meetings with Indian leaders will focus on ways to enhance bilateral relations in various areas, strengthening of Afghan civil and military institutions as well as situation in Afghanistan and the region, the statement went on to say.
Afghanistan catching up with the Internet and modern lifestyle
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Some 12 years ago, it was unthinkable to have Internet cafes in Afghanistan. But today, Kabul, and some other cities and towns in the country, have Internet shops where Afghans, especially students, can surf and look for the information that they need.
"I go the Internet cafe usually twice a week to gather information about Afghanistan's contemporary history as well as on other topics, such as World War II and about Adolf Hitler," Mohammad Omar, a Kabul University student, said.
Although there is a public library in Kabul, the vast majority of students prefer to go to Internet shops where they can get the necessary information through search engines without any hassle.
Despite being a conservative country where tribalism is deeply rooted, Afghanistan has no recourse but to move towards modernization and join the computer age otherwise it will be left behind.
Even in Kandahar, once the bailiwick of the Taliban, there are universities, schools and Internet shops that are open to both men and women.
During the six-year Taliban rule, which collapsed after the invasion of the country by the U.S.-led military coalition in late 2001, the Internet was banned, schools for girls were closed, and men were forced to wear turban, sport beard and study theology.
The Taliban also confined women to their houses and forced them to wear burqa whenever they come out of their houses. They were not allowed to walk in the streets without male escorts.
Today, according to officials, nearly two million Afghans have access to the Internet. Around 22 million Afghans, or some 72 percent of the country's population, have now access to phone services, a tremendous achievement that would be unthinkable decade ago.
Now parents, even in rural areas, are sending their daughters to school, a practice that was taboo during the brutal reign of the Taliban.
"I want my daughters to become doctors and serve the patients particularly the female ones," Abdul Qadir, a villager in Baghlan province, said during a recent interview with Xinhua.
A farmer, Qadir, 41, said that he wants his three daughters to continue their studies until they become doctors, adding that by being medical practitioners, his daughters can best serve their fellow Afghans, particularly the poor.
Aside from dreaming big dreams, there is now a perceptible change in lifestyle and standard of living in Afghanistan, not just in Kabul but also in the countryside.
Some villagers who have adequate incomes have now abandoned their traditional mud houses but built concrete houses.
Afghans today, even in the remote areas, listen to music, watch television and enjoy European and Asian channels with the use of satellite disks, something that they could not have enjoyed just a decade ago under the Taliban.
Some villagers, when they come to Kabul to study, often abandon the turban that their fathers wear. They now wear plain clothes replacing the traditional pirahan-tonban.
Even the traditional burqa, an envelope-like dress worn by Afghan women is also being gradually replaced by Iranian or Arabic hijab or veil that only partially covers the woman's face.
"We are young people and living in modern world, so it is unnecessary for us to wear heavy turban and carry a gun," a college student from the southern Helmand province, Ziarat Gul, told Xinhua.
In the rural areas, it is customary for a man to carry a gun. This is a part of their culture.
Afghanistan to Sign Security Agreement Once the War Ends
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian 19 May 2013
Afghanistan government will not sign the security agreement with US until the end of war in the region and overall stability is visible.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a telephonic conversation with the US Secretary of State said that he will never sign the security agreement when violence is still prevalent in Afghanistan.
President Karzai stressed that stability and end of war are the main conditions of Afghanistan to sign the agreement.
Afghanistan Presidency said in a statement that signing the agreement in an unstable situation means that Afghan civilians will be sacrificed at the hands of foreigners daily.
"President Karzai stayed firm on his position. The signing of security agreement does not have any meaning if peace does not prevail in Afghanistan," University lecturer Mohammad Taher Hashimi told TOLOnews.
Meanwhile, President's firmness in the decision over signing the security agreement received mixed reactions. Some say that such a stand will damage the efforts on signing the agreement in the future.
"Peace is a sustainable process. The mindsets should change. The security issue is important. We cannot connect all important issues such as security to peace which still does not have clear definition for several people," MP, Farkhonda Zahra Naderi said.
The signing of the security agreement is extremely crucial considering the current situation- where violence has reached the once considered-to-be secured parts of the country and security forces facing severe shortages.
"The agreement means that security forces be strengthened that can fight insurgency and security be assured. First the foreign intervention should be stopped," former Military General Atiqullah Amarkhil told TOLOnews.
Previously, President Karzai said that negotiations on signing the agreement reached its final stage but if the US does not accept Afghanistan's conditions it will not sign.
It is believed that the security agreement will secure Afghanistan and prevent foreign aggressions.
Afghanistan’s forgotten crisis: its economy
Financial Times By Victor Mallet 20, 2013
Delhi - As long ago as 1841, those who tried to govern Afghanistan complained about the country’s paltry income.
“But what can be done with a Kingdom whose net revenues are only fifteen Lakhs [1.5m] of Rupees per annum?” wrote a frustrated Sir William Macnaghten from Kabul to his East India Company bosses.
Nearly two centuries later, those sentiments are echoed by the foreign advisers who have struggled to revive the Afghan economy since the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001.
Amid all the security concerns over the current withdrawal of Nato forces from Afghanistan after their failure to defeat the resurgent Taliban, the disastrous state of the landlocked Afghan economy has been all but forgotten.
But once most Nato troops have gone in 2014, billions of dollars of annual aid for Afghanistan will be essential for decades if the country is to manage its own security, educate its children and modernise the economy, according to foreign donors and international financial institutions.
The International Monetary Fund estimates Afghanistan’s current account deficit at 45 per cent of gross domestic product, and has postponed the prospect of “fiscal sustainability” until after the distant year 2032.
Last year’s legal exports, including fruit and nuts, handmade carpets and semi-precious stones, were estimated at $376m by the US Central Intelligence Agency – about one 17th of the value of imports.
According to the World Bank, annual aid flows of more than $15bn a year, roughly the same as Afghanistan’s GDP, are a sign of extreme and growing dependence and “cannot be sustained”.
Aid comes on top of the treasure already spent by the west: the US, says the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, has incurred direct spending of $642bn on the Afghan war.
Yet western governments are weary of paying for Afghanistan and enraged by unrestrained corruption, as well as by what they see as President Hamid Karzai’s ingratitude towards his western allies.
So there are risks not only of more terror and instability because of the departure of 100,000 Nato troops, but also of an economic crisis that could stoke yet more violence as growth slows.
“I am getting the feeling that we will experience an economic shock in the country, whether it’s 2014 or 2015,” says Niamatullah Ibrahimi of Afghanistan Watch, a group promoting human rights, accountability and transparency. “It’s already showing signs in the property market, in supermarkets. People are losing jobs, the power to buy.”
The main problem with the legal Afghan economy, donors say, is that it has been largely sustained by a flood of aid money. Small businesses that used to export fruit or make plastic shoes for local consumption have collapsed as dollars have poured in, making the local currency uncompetitively strong and boosting wages.
Afghanistan has thus suffered the kind of “resources curse” afflicting countries that experience a sudden rush of revenues from oil.
“Here you can call it an aid curse,” says the head of one foreign agency, who asked not to be named. “A lot of exports have dried up because it’s more interesting to go into servicing the donors. There’s more rewards in that than in trying to export more nuts or pomegranates.”
It is not all gloom. Businesses serving domestic consumers have expanded rapidly.
Entrepreneurs have launched scores of private schools, and the number of mobile telephones has increased from nothing in 2001 to around 18m today.
“This country is very young, very aspirational and still not that depressed or frustrated,” says Saad Mohseni, the ebullient Afghan television mogul who chairs the Moby Group. “There’s an enormous opportunity to keep the momentum going.”
Afghanistan’s business climate remains so daunting, however, that investors typically keep their surplus wealth in the Gulf or in the West.
Corruption is the biggest problem. Kabul Bank, which accounted for more than a third of Afghanistan’s banking assets, turned out to be a billion-dollar fraud for the benefit of a few well-connected Afghans, including associates of Mr Karzai, according to an international investigation. As a share of national GDP, the scam exposed in 2010 was one of the world’s biggest bank failures.
“Aid inflows,” says the World Bank in a report entitled Afghanistan in Transition, “have become a source of rents, patronage and political power.”
Oil and gas and the mining of copper, iron and other minerals, are the sectors most likely to produce exports and economic growth. “If Detroit is cars, Afghanistan is minerals,” says David Bolger of the Pentagon’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, estimating Afghan mineral wealth at $1tn-$3tn.
A crucial mining law, however, has yet to be passed by the parliament, and neither military security nor the power and transport infrastructure are good enough for most projects to proceed.
Afghanistan’s biggest export industry by far is opium. But that mostly benefits the Taliban, and researchers say the rebels run the expanding opium trade better than the Afghan state manages its own businesses.
Foreign donors are divided over whether Afghanistan should be weaned gradually off outside aid or subjected to a sharp cutback to force it to adjust.
Either way, it will not be easy. The foreign donor chief in Kabul likened Afghanistan to a patient lying on a bed for the past 12 years while being nourished intravenously with glucose. “Now they are telling him to walk, and saying ‘You’re not going to get your glucose.’”
Cause for hope -- and fear -- in Pakistan
Can new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif succeed? That will depend largely on whether he has the strength of will to resist the military and to confront radical Islamists.
By Peter Tomsen May 19, 2013 Los Angeles Times
There is reason for hope in Nawaz Sharif's victory in the recent Pakistani elections. Sharif, who has twice served as Pakistan's prime minister, has said he wants to build a more robust democracy, revive the country's shattered economy and end the military's 40-year domination of its politics. He has also promised to improve relations with India and take on the radical Islamist terrorism that has tormented Pakistan. The United States should assist him in every way possible to achieve those goals.
But there is also ample reason for caution. The U.S. has a long history of "betting on the come," of unwarranted optimism that the transfer of billions in unconditional aid will influence Pakistan to withdraw its support for the Afghan Taliban insurgency based in Pakistan. With a new Pakistani leader in place, it is time to begin linking Washington's huge military and economic assistance programs more directly to U.S. interests, including anti-terrorism and regional stability.
Perhaps Sharif's greatest challenge — as he knows all too well — will be ending the Pakistani military's outsized influence on foreign and defense policy, which is implemented largely through its powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. In 1999, the last time Sharif served as Pakistan's prime minister, he attempted to improve Indo-Pakistani relations and replace the head of the army, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Instead, the army ousted Sharif in a coup, and Musharraf assumed power. Since 2008, Pakistan's elected leaders have tended to cede key decisions to the military in order to survive.
Moreover, Sharif does not have an unblemished record in his willingness to confront extremists. During his second stint as prime minister in the 1990s, he played an influential role in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was seen to be in Pakistan's interest. Recently, Taliban extremists in Pakistan spared Sharif's party in their violent pre-election attacks on political rallies and candidates. Against this backdrop, and given Sharif's stated opposition to U.S. drone strikes, it seems unlikely that the new prime minister will vigorously combat extremism in Pakistan.
This sobering environment makes it incumbent on Washington to conduct its relations with Pakistan patiently, positively, candidly and in a transactional manner, emphasizing both equality and give-and-take. America's ineffective policy through successive administrations has seemed paralyzed, tolerating Pakistan's phony insistence that it does not support Mullah Mohammed Omar's Afghan Taliban insurgency and the notorious Haqqani network operating from Pakistani territory. With the new prime minister comes an opportunity to change that dynamic.
Sharif, for his part, must understand that he will not be able to accomplish any of his goals — including economic prosperity and stability in Pakistan — unless the ISI's radical Islamist infrastructure in Pakistan is dismantled.
Another part of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship that needs resetting is Washington's continuing hope, against much evidence to the contrary, that Pakistan will be useful in guiding Afghan peace talks. In fact, any Afghan political process organized by foreigners, including the U.S.-sponsored Qatar initiative that has languished since 2010, is doomed to failure.
Rather than trying to act as the catalyst for talks between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, the U.S. should step back, encourage the Afghans to reach agreement on their own and insist that Pakistan also step back. It would be nothing less than foolish to continue to work with Pakistan to convert the ISI's Taliban and Haqqani network proxies into genuine peace negotiators instead of what they are: Al Qaeda-linked terrorists bent on violence to achieve their extremist version of an Afghan Islamist state.
Last year, Congress and President Obama officially designated the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization. Congress should now move quickly to add Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura to the list. The group's suicide bombers are no different from those of the Haqqani network, having killed hundreds of American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, along with thousands of Afghans. Both operate with Al Qaeda and share the same ideology, and both were created and sustained by the ISI, and have been supported or unofficially tolerated by Pakistani civilian leaders.
Strategically, Washington should support Sharif's policies to strengthen the Pakistani economy, democratic institutions, civil society, human rights and gender equality. American responses to Pakistani requests, including on an upcoming International Monetary Fund bailout, must be conditioned on the military's cessation of support for its Afghan terrorist proxies operating from Pakistani soil.
Concurrently, the U.S. and its allies should urge Pakistan to join a multilateral consensus to revive Afghanistan's classic buffer role in Central Asia between larger powers. The Afghan government, like Austria during the Cold War, would adhere to nonaligned neutrality. Outside powers, Pakistan included, would honor Afghanistan's territorial integrity and exercise mutual restraint from interfering in Afghanistan. The outcome — opening up Central Asia to a new era of intercontinental commerce through Afghanistan — would benefit both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan is an important, populous Muslim nation poised to move forward under the leadership of a new prime minister. Its success or failure will depend largely on whether its leaders have the strength of will to resist military domination of the Pakistani state and confront radical Islamists. The U.S. should do everything in its power to help should Sharif choose to follow this path.
Peter Tomsen was special envoy and ambassador on Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992 and ambassador to Armenia from 1995 to 1998. He is the author of "The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers."
Without U.S. helicopters, Afghans struggle to save wounded
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff May 20, 2013
Kandahar, Afghanistan - As soon as the Taliban bullet struck 24-year-old Afghan Sgt. Nazir Moradi’s leg, the men in his unit began brainstorming a way to get him off the battlefield.
The roads were too dangerous for an army ambulance. The Afghan soldiers, in several calls to their commanders, repeated one plea: They needed a helicopter.
The Afghan air force didn’t have any working aircraft available. The U.S. military, in the midst of drawing down its air support, denied a request for help. Instead, Moradi was carried for miles and eventually put in an unarmored ambulance impeded by rough terrain and the threat of roadside bombs.
By the time Moradi arrived at the Kandahar Regional Military Hospital, more than three hours away, he had bled to death from a minor wound. Hospital workers carried him to the morgue in a flag-draped coffin, the ritual they perform each time a soldier arrives too late. “We kept waiting for a helicopter, either American or Afghan. But it never arrived,” said Pvt. Morabuddin, Moradi’s best friend. “He did not have to die.”For the past decade, the Afghan army has relied on hundreds of American helicopters to pluck wounded soldiers from remote battlefields and outposts. Now, the U.S. helicopters are leaving Afghanistan just as the country’s army embarks on its toughest fight, assuming formal responsibility for security this summer. The Afghan air force has 60 helicopters, but many are out of commission at any given time, and none is dedicated solely to casualty evacuation.
The war here is full of asymmetries between one of the world’s strongest militaries and one of the world’s newest forces, dependent entirely on foreign aid. The staggering gap in air evacuation capacity raises questions not only about how Afghan troops will defeat a resilient enemy, but how they will avoid countless unnecessary deaths. About 250 Afghan soldiers and police officers die every month, a toll far higher than that suffered by Western troops in their deadliest period.
The United States has invested millions of dollars in training and supplying the Afghan air force, but American officials acknowledge that Afghan pilots will be able to evacuate only a fraction of wounded soldiers and police officers. Last year, the United States evacuated 4,700 Afghan soldiers by air, compared with the Afghan air force’s 400.
With American air support vanishing, the rest will have to rely on unarmored ambulances, even though soldiers are often wounded hundreds of miles from an adequate hospital, separated by roads peppered with homemade bombs, known as IEDs.
“Your helicopters are our life support, and they’re leaving,” said Ahmad Zia Safai, a surgeon at the Kandahar hospital.
A crisis of confidence
When its troops are wounded, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has long relied on a massive fleet of Black Hawk helicopters operating 24 hours a day. Rapid air evacuation is credited with saving hundreds of lives in the past decade of war. The coalition deems transporting its own casualties from the battlefield in ambulances too dangerous.
The Afghan air force, meanwhile, has about six working helicopters in all of the restive south. Afghan pilots don’t have the resources, such as night-vision goggles, necessary to fly after sunset, and their weakness in ground combat means that they are seldom able to land in hostile territory.
The Afghan fleet is expected to require NATO support until at least 2017, according to U.S. officials, due in large part to concerns about maintenance.
“There’s no way the Afghan air force will be able to cover what we’ve been covering,” said Col. Michael Paston, the U.S. 438th Air Expeditionary Advisory Wing surgeon general. “Are they going to be surprised when they call on ISAF [to evacuate a casualty] and ISAF says no? That’s happening now.”
That new reality has prompted a crisis of confidence in many Afghan units. Some commanders worry that troops might be less willing to put their lives at risk knowing that they lack once-dependable medical support.
“How can we fill the gap as the U.S. withdraws? It’s impossible. We can’t grow fast enough,” said Col. Asrail Wardak, the deputy commander of the Afghan air force’s southern fleet.
As the Taliban’s summer fighting season went into full swing this month, the dead and critically wounded soldiers poured into Kandahar Regional Military Hospital in almost equal number. All the men who arrived with life-threatening injuries had been evacuated by U.S. helicopters.
After performing a double amputation on a soldier who had stepped on a makeshift bomb, Khadir Tajik, a physician, emerged from the operating room with beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Without a helicopter, there’s no question he would have died. An ambulance would have taken way too long,” he said.
The recovery room was full of patients who said they knew that the helicopters that saved their lives were leaving Afghanistan. With the NATO withdrawal accelerating, they could be some of the last Afghan casualties to be evacuated by international forces.
Lt. Tamarac Dyer, an ISAF spokesman, said coalition forces “will provide assistance when needed, but not on a routine basis,” at bases shared with Afghan forces, which are rapidly diminishing in number.
In most cases, like Moradi’s, Afghan soldiers are injured while on missions at which no foreign forces are present.
In the Kandahar recovery room, there was a 25-year-old commando whose unit had unearthed eight makeshift bombs before the ninth exploded beneath his feet. There was a 21-year-old police officer whose vehicle had stepped on a roadside bomb and whose right leg was amputated by doctors; when he couldn’t hear them, they whispered that his left leg would probably have to be removed, too. There was a 22-year-old soldier who was stabbed and beaten after he stepped out of his outpost to investigate suspicious activity.
Top U.S. and Afghan military leaders have met twice in the past year to discuss the future of casualty evacuation after NATO’s pullout. U.S. officials urged Afghan commanders to do ground evacuation, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. Gen. Abdul Basir, the Afghan army’s deputy medical commander, said he stood at the second meeting and spoke angrily.
“If a soldier is in serious condition — if he has lost his limbs — an ambulance will not get him to the hospital in time,” he recalled saying.
Like many of his colleagues, Basir was trained by American doctors and military officers over the past decade. His U.S. advisers taught him the importance of the “golden hour” — the window of opportunity to save a victim of severe trauma.
“Without helicopters, we lose the golden hour,” Basir said in an interview. “We lose an opportunity to save lives.”
Still, late last year, after the meeting with U.S. officials, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army’s chief of staff, issued a memo to his commanders explaining the need to rely on ambulances as U.S. air support dwindles.
“Until now, the evacuation of the war wounded and injured was often carried out by the international coalition through air,” Karimi wrote. “Since this process has been gradually reduced . . . Afghan army units need to arrange their plans for ground evacuation.”
Evacuations and escalations
Recently, two Afghan Mi-17 helicopters flew over the rocky, inhospitable terrain between Kandahar and Zabul provinces. Each casualty evacuation amounts to a small triumph for the nation’s young air force. This one occurred after a hailstorm grounded the entire fleet for four days.
A few hours after a wounded soldier, Pvt. Lal Muhammad, was loaded, grimacing, into the helicopter and transported to the Kandahar military hospital, he spoke coldly from his hospital bed.
“It took four days for them to pick me up,” he said. “How is that possible?”
Muhammad’s injury wasn’t life-threatening — he had accidentally shot himself in the foot in the middle of a firefight. But the closest hospital with experienced medics was nearly 200 miles from his remote outpost. The road to the facility, Muhammad’s unit knew, was lined with bombs. The only solution was to wait for a helicopter, however long it took. If the injury had been more serious, he he assumes he would have died.
“You can’t replace a U.S. helicopter with an Afghan ambulance,” said Soor Gulab Ahmadzia, the flight medic who tended to Muhammad.
U.S. officials haven’t articulated what kind of air support they will provide to Afghans through 2014 — only that it will continue to diminish. That transition has been rocky, and U.S. officials acknowledge that they are letting Afghans down by denying requests for air evacuation.
The U.S.-led coalition made a similar change in 2009, when it largely stopped providing air evacuation assistance to Afghan civilians injured by the Taliban. Some in the U.S. military viewed that as a betrayal.
“Not only did the U.S. choose to escalate the war knowing that civilians would increasingly be killed and wounded — without proper trauma care in place — they also changed the medical rules of engagement, resulting in greater mortality,” said one U.S. official who is not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials say they are simply trying to find an “Afghan solution” as their resources diminish. But there are many stories, like Moradi’s, of Afghan soldiers and police officers dying of treatable injuries.
‘He died for his country’
In March, Naqibullah, a police officer in Wardak province who had been injured by a Taliban mortar round, waited seven hours to be evacuated by air because his commander worried that an ambulance would be vulnerable to roadside bombs. The helicopter never came, and Naqibullah bled to death.
But the commander’s concern turned out to be justified: Hours later, a vehicle in the convoy transporting Naqibullah’s body from Jaghatu district to the provincial capital hit one such bomb, killing another officer.
“This brought down the morale of our officers one hundred percent,” said Wahid Tanha, the Jaghatu police chief. “It shows the weakness of our government.”
In an interview in Kandahar, Morabuddin said he traveled 500 miles with Moradi’s coffin to Badakhshan province, along the border with Tajikistan.
When he arrived, Moradi’s relatives opened the coffin and saw the minor gunshot wound. Morabuddin said he felt obligated to explain what had happened, how their son and brother had died of a treatable injury.
“After he was wounded, there was no way to evacuate him by ambulance,” Morabuddin recalled telling them. “
There was no road. By the time he arrived in the hospital, he was dead.”
Morabuddin waited for more questions, dreading the answers he would have to give. But the family was silent. Finally, Moradi’s brother spoke.
“What we know is that he died for his country. It was his destiny.”
Canadian military gear stranded in Afghanistan
Soldiers sent to check on more than 375 shipping containers still at Kandahar Airfield
CBS News May 19, 2013
A team of 15 Canadian soldiers has been dispatched to Kandahar on a month-long assignment to assess whether dozens of military containers are still seaworthy enough to be brought home.
Over 375 shipping containers full of military supplies remain stranded at Kandahar Airfield nearly 18 months after Canada's withdrawal from the war-torn province, and almost two years since combat operations ceased.
National Defence says the material is considered low priority and that all high-value and sensitive equipment has been returned to Canada.
A spokeswoman for the country's operational command, Capt. Jennifer Stadnyk, said certification of as many as 150 of the containers has expired and the technical assistance team will have to access whether they can still meet the standards set out by international shipping companies.
Defence sources said if the containers don't pass, the military will have to find a way to dispose of the material.
Logistics nightmare The seemingly endless delay in repatriation of the containers, which were supposed to travel overland, was brought on by the extended closure of the Afghan border with Pakistan.
It has turned into a long, costly logistics nightmare for the military, which had intended to have everything home to fully re-equip and refurbish the army.
The equipment includes tires, spare parts, tents and other gear, and officials say their absence does not directly impede the army's regeneration.
Last fall documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation showed the Canadian government has faced increased withdrawal costs because the containers still have to be stored and guarded.
Pakistan cut off NATO's supply lines through its country in November 2011 after a U.S. air raid mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and the border remained shut until July 2012.
In winding up Canada's five-year involvement in Kandahar, the military funnelled its gear into two streams.
The first was an air bridge that saw Canadian C-17s and rented transports fly sensitive equipment and vehicles out to a friendly port, where it was loaded on cargo ships bound for Canada. The second route was to drive non-sensitive material over land through Pakistan, where it was loaded on a cargo ship in the port of Karachi.
When the Pakistan border clapped shut, only 186 of the estimated 632 containers destined for overland transport had made it back to Canada. Of those, a significant number were pilfered.
The documents show an average loss rate among the containers of 27 per cent. Thieves who pried open the metal containers would steal the contents, replace them with sandbags and weights, and then reseal the containers.
Karzai Must Not Station Foreign Spies in Presidential Palace: Senates
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 19 May 2013
Afghan Senators on Sunday's session said that the networks of foreign spies stationed at the Presidential Palace are working for their own interests. The foreign spies had been positioned in the Palace on the orders of the President.
The senators stressed that the spies constantly advise the President keeping their selfish motives in mind. This poses a great threat for the country.
"Specific networks of foreign spies are appointed on the orders of the President and they go to the extent of infiltrating into the cabinet which is really worrying," Senator Abdul Hanan Haqyoun said.
"Hezbi Islami (Islamic Party) representatives come to the table for negotiations but the talks fail and they start fighting against government," Senator Hadayatullah Rahayi said.
Meanwhile, the numerous killing of civilians in the country by Taliban and other armed opposition groups raised the Senates' concerns.
"Hezbi Islami, Taliban or any other group involved in the killing of innocent lives in the country are committing a big crime. Also, the government must nab the masterminds behind the numerous terrorist attacks," Speaker of the Senate Fazal Hadi Muslimyar said.
"Huge amount of explosives are routed into the country with the help of the security officials. Without their help it is not possible to distribute explosives to different parts of the country," Senator Daoud Asas said.
At the same time, a number of senators asked President Karzai to give the order of hanging all those responsible for killing civilians and those involved in organized crimes.
"We are asking the government especially the President to sign the execution orders of those who have been charged for civilian killings," Head of Complaints Committee of Senate, Zalmai Zabuli said.
The senators argue that till the government doesn't make a clear policy against government's armed opposition groups and other enemies, it will be difficult to achieve lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Reapprove The Law Governing IEC and ECC: Karzai
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi 19 May 2013
Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants that the laws governing Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) must be approved.
President Karzai in an interaction with the Heads of Parliamentary committees asked the MPs to approve the laws governing the IEC and ECC.
This development happened at a time when President Karzai made some changes in the law and resent it for approval to the Parliament.
A number of MPs believe that the Presidency will use all possible ways for the changes made in the law to be accepted.
It is said that the President asked the lawmakers to decide over new adjustments and approve it at the earliest.
"I think that if the law is approved soon then many of our problems will be solved before upcoming elections," Member of Parliament, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi said.
The transferring of the ECC's responsibilities to the Attorney General is one of the changes made by President Karzai.
"The Presidency is against ECC. The Parliament has approved the creation of this Commission. I think, if the commission is not established, the upcoming election will face lots of challenges and it might so happen that the President may even support his favorite nominee in the election," Member of Parliament, Ghulam Farooq Majroh said.
The laws governing the IEC and ECC were approved by the Afghanistan National Assembly. Many political parties consider the law to be of utmost importance for the upcoming election. But it is unclear as to when the law would be reapproved by the Parliament.
Smuggling of LPG into Pakistan on the Rise: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Zabiulah Jahanmal 19 May 2013
Oil and Gas Enterprise Department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries on Sunday said that a number of Afghani and Pakistani traders are smuggling Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) into Pakistan due to its high price in the Pakistani market.
The Oil and Gas Department officials believe that if the government does not take steps to prevent smuggling, the prices of gas will increase in Afghanistan.
The officials said that the price of 1Kg of LPG in Pakistan has escalated to 180 Pakistani Rupees. Due to this steep rise in its price, the smuggling of gas has also increased.
Officials have said that at present LPG is smuggled through the Spin Boldak district in Kandahar into Pakistan.
"We are asking our security forces to prevent the smuggling of LPG into Pakistan," Head of Oil and Gas Enterprise Department of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Faridullah Shirzai, told TOLOnews.
Currently Pakistan does not have transit permits to pass through Afghanistan, thus, a number of Pakistani and Afghani traders smuggle LPG into Pakistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com