President Obama, outlining his vision for ending the war in Afghanistan, vowed Wednesday to withdraw all surge troops by next summer and declared that after a decade of fighting “the tide of war is receding.”
In a prime-time address from the East Room of the White House, the president assured the nation that the U.S. military will begin its drawdown next month from a “position of strength” following the death of Usama bin Laden. He described that drawdown as “the beginning, but not the end, of our effort to wind down this war” – a transition he wants complete by 2014.
“We have put Al Qaeda on a path to defeat, and we will not relent until the job is done,” the president said.
**As anticipated, the president called for 10,000 troops to be withdrawn by the end of this year. He said the rest of the surge troops – about 23,000 – will be removed by the end of summer in 2012. It is expected that all surge troops will be out of Afghanistan by September of next year.
**
The president, in framing the drawdown, tried to appeal to competing factions on Capitol Hill and elsewhere over the war. To those urging the president to cut the mission short and withdraw forces at a more rapid pace, Obama assured that his interest is on “nation-building here at home,” not in Afghanistan.
“We won’t try to make Afghanistan a perfect place. We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely,” he said.
But to those concerned the impending withdrawal could leave Kabul ill-equipped to keep the Taliban at bay and extremist elements out, Obama vowed not to let Afghanistan again become a “safe haven” for terrorists.
He touted the recent death of bin Laden as a “victory for all who have served since 9/11,” and claimed intelligence recovered from his Pakistan compound revealed that Al Qaeda is under “enormous strain.” Obama said bin Laden had expressed concern that Al Qaeda could not replace senior leaders who were killed and was struggling “to portray America as a nation at war with Islam.”
Senior administration officials said the president reached his withdrawal decision after reviewing the “substantial progress” made toward three goals: denying Al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan, reversing the Taliban’s momentum so they cannot topple the government and training Afghan security forces.
**One official noted that for the past six years or more, the terrorist threat has come from Pakistan and not Afghanistan. “We don’t see a transnational threat coming out of Afghanistan,” the official said, claiming the pullout would not affect counterterror operations in Pakistan.
**
**Officials said the U.S. is meanwhile supporting Afghan efforts to reach a “political settlement” with some parts of the Taliban, acknowledging that the goal is not to eradicate the Taliban entirely. **
Obama briefly addressed those talks Wednesday night, saying the administration believes “progress can be made.” He said the talks must be led by the Afghan government and that Taliban members who want to integrate must “break from Al Qaeda, abandon violence and abide by the Afghan Constitution.”
But the president is nevertheless caught in a tricky spot as he tries to pursue the kind of gradual drawdown pushed by his commanders, while signaling to war-weary lawmakers that after a decade of fighting the Afghanistan war is coming to a close.
Reacting to the president’s announcement Wednesday, those lawmakers were not satisfied.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., scoffed at the president’s announcement earlier in the day, saying such a reduction in 2011 “would not even get us back to pre-escalation levels.” She suggested withdrawing 50,000 combat troops and is planning several amendments aimed at de-funding the mission.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi also said in a statement after the speech that many in Congress hoped the “full drawdown of U.S. forces would happen sooner than the president laid out – and we will continue to press for a better outcome.”
Critics of the war are surely bolstered by polling that shows Americans increasingly averse to the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. A Pew Research Center survey showed that for the first time a majority of those polled – 56 percent – says troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible. A majority also believes the U.S. will probably succeed in Afghanistan.
Democrats have been joined by Republicans, some Tea Party-aligned, in calling for a swift end to the war. Even some GOP candidates for president have echoed the call.
But as the president faces bipartisan pressure to get out of Afghanistan, he also faces bipartisan pressure not to leave too quickly. House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday he’d be “concerned about any precipitous withdrawal” from Afghanistan.
“We all want to bring our troops home as quickly as possible, but we must ensure that the gains we’ve made are not jeopardized,” Boehner said after the speech, urging the president to take into account the advice of commanders on the ground.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., in a YouTube video cut before the president’s speech, said Obama has “the right idea about starting a withdrawal” without allowing “the terrorists to gain safe haven elsewhere in the region.”
The president’s speech Wednesday only marked the start of discussion on Capitol Hill about his withdrawal strategy. The House Armed Services Committee is planning a hearing Thursday. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen is slated to testify.
Fox News has also learned House Democratic leaders plan to meet with Obama at the White House on Thursday. Though the discussion will focus on the status of debt-ceiling talks, a source familiar with the talks suggested Afghanistan, as well as Libya, could come up.
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a timetable for the rapid withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgement of the shifting threat in the region and fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America.
Asserting that the country that served as a launching pad for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.” And in a blunt acknowledgment of domestic economic strains, he said, “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”
Mr. Obama announced plans to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. The remaining 20,000 troops from the 2009 “surge” of forces would leave by next summer, amounting to about a third of the 100,000 troops now in the country. He said the troop reductions would continue “at a steady pace,” bringing to an end America’s longest war — a conflict that has cost 1,500 American lives.
The troop reductions, which came after a short but fierce internal debate, are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they come as the president faces relentless budget pressures, an increasingly restive Congress and American public and a re-election campaign next year.
The withdrawals would mark the start of a winding down of the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, which Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago. Most American forces are expected to leave Afghanistan by 2014. Administration officials indicated that they now planned to place more emphasis on smaller, focused counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden, which the president cited as Exhibit A in the case for a substantial American troop reduction.
“We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength,” Mr. Obama said in somber, 12-minute address delivered from the East Room of the White House. “Al Qaeda is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11.” He said that an intense campaign of drone strikes and other covert operations in Pakistan had crippled Al Qaeda’s original network in the region, leaving its leaders either dead or pinned down in the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of 30 top Qaeda leaders identified by American intelligence, 20 have been killed in the last year and a half, administration officials said.
But the withdrawal of the entire surge force by the end of next summer will significantly change the way that the United States wages war in Afghanistan, analysts said, suggesting that the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there.
Mr. Obama acknowledged as much in his remarks. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” he said. “We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is the responsibility of the Afghan government.”
Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the military engagement in Afghanistan. The president signaled that the days of the United States responding to terrorist attacks with massive force were over, and indicated a willingness to move toward more focused clandestine operations of the type that the United States is conducting in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. “When threatened, we must respond with force,” he said. “But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.”
**The pace of the withdrawal is a setback for his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Petraeus, who helped write the Army’s field manual on counterinsurgency policy, did not endorse the decision, said another official, though both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton both accepted it with reservations.
General Petraeus had recommended limiting withdrawals to 5,000 troops this year and another 5,000 over the winter, deferring the withdrawal of the rest of the surge force through next year’s fighting season.**
He and other military commanders argued that the 18 months since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase did not allow for enough time for the Americans to consolidate the fragile gains that they had made in Helmand and other provinces. Military officials say the withdrawal of American troops will impose limits on which areas of the country can be pacified. In particular, plans to pivot extra American troops from south and southwestern Afghanistan to volatile areas in the east, along the Pakistan border, will be curtailed or even canceled, officials said.
Troops have succeeded in clearing many towns and cities of insurgents, and then keeping them safe so that markets reopened and girls were able to go to school, for example.
But the effort to transfer responsibility for security to Afghan forces remains elusive because the Afghan troops are proving unprepared for the job.
While senior administration officials said Wednesday that the military campaign had made Afghans better able to govern themselves, they cited few specific initiatives that showed the Afghan government taking more responsibility for its citizens’ security. Corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai continues to be rampant, sapping the confidence of many Afghans.
Still, the growing disenchantment at home with the war, particularly given the ballooning national debt, the country’s slow economic recovery, and the whopping $120 billion price tag of the Afghan war this year alone, were all considerations weighed by the president.
“Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we must invest in America’s greatest resource: our people.”
Even some Republicans have been getting on the get-out-of-Afghanistan bandwagon. Republican presidential hopefuls including Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman are demanding a swift withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Democrats on Capitol Hill and elsewhere complain that the cost of the war is siphoning money away from efforts to create jobs in the United States.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, called on Mr. Obama to speed the withdrawal on Wednesday. “If we’re going to leave, we should leave,” he said in a statement. “The centralized system of government foisted upon the Afghan people is not going to hold after we leave. So let’s quit prolonging the agony and the inevitable.”
Highlighting the unusual political splits the war is causing, other Republicans criticized the president for pulling out too soon. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that Mr. Obama was playing politics with the troop reduction, saying, “The president is trying to find a political solution with a military component, when it needs to be other way around.” He said the situation in Afghanistan was “very precarious,” and that the White House seemed to be panicking about the levels of violence.
Afghan troop withdrawal: David Cameron set to order more British troops home
David Cameron is to order more British troops out of Afghanistan after Barack Obama on Wednesday night confirmed plans for a significant US withdrawal.
By James Kirkup, Alex Spillius in Washington8:58PM BST 22 Jun 2011
Mr Cameron spoke to the US president via videophone to coordinate British and US withdrawal plans before Mr Obama addressed the American nation on live TV.
Before the speech, advisers said that the US was bringing troops home from a “position of strength” in Afghanistan.
Mr Obama was on Wednesday night expected to confirm the withdrawal of 33,000 troops, up to 10,000 of them by the end of this year.
Following the killing of Osama bin Laden, Western forces are “on the way” to destroying the al-Qaeda network, White House sources said.
**The Prime Minister is set to use Mr Obama’s declaration of progress in Afghanistan to justify the gradual end of Britain’s mission.
** He has already confirmed that almost 450 of Britain’s 9,500 troops will start leaving soon but Whitehall sources said that a second, smaller withdrawal will come towards the end of the year, with another, larger reduction likely next autumn.
Like Mr Obama, Mr Cameron has faced resistance from military commanders who fear that a hasty withdrawal could jeopardise progress against the Taliban.
The Prime Minister has largely accepted calls to give combat forces two more summer “fighting seasons” before any major reduction.
British sources said Mr Cameron would make no immediate announcement following the US move. Instead, he is expected to set out his plans to MPs, perhaps as early as next week, following a final assessment of “conditions on the ground.”
After 10 years of British operations, Mr Cameron is keen to offer voters signs of progress and a clear exit strategy.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday arrived in Kabul after touring Helmand. He hailed “positive changes” and “discernible economic progress being made across the country.”
Mr Cameron has said all British combat operations in Afghanistan will cease by 2015, the year of the next general election.
The pledge has raised military suspicions that political concerns are driving defence policy, and General Sir Peter Wall, the head of the Army, this week suggested the 2015 timetable could slip.
But Downing Street yesterday insisted that it was “a deadline” and will not change.
Underlining that message, Mr Hague added: “By 2015, there will be no UK troops in Afghanistan in combat roles, but we will continue to work closely with the Afghan Government and people for many years to come.”
Despite Mr Cameron’s deadline to end combat operations by 2015, military leaders including Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, have made clear that Britain will retain a major presence in Afghanistan, supporting and training Afghan forces.
With more Americans than ever opposing the war and its $2 billion-a week cost, Mr Obama’s televised address from the White House was intended to mark the beginning of the end of the long US deployment from its current high point of 100,000.
Mr Obama was expected to go against his military commanders’ wishes and announce the withdrawal of 10,000 US troops, a third of the surge forces, by the end of the year, with 5,000 of those coming home next month.
The bulk of the remaining US forces would then depart by the end of 2014, the target date for handing over the leading security role to the Afghans.
Gen David Petraeus, the Nato commander, had favoured a minimal withdrawal of a few thousand troops this year and wanted to keep the vast majority of the surge troops until early 2013.
While U.S. Talks Withdrawal, Afghan Corruption SoarsPublished June 25, 2011
| Associated Press
WASHINGTON – **The farmer picking apples in the outskirts of Kabul must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit. The governor sends in armed men to chase workers off job sites if the official bribes aren’t paid. Poor neighborhoods never get their U.N.-provided wheat, long since sold on the black market.
**
These are some of the elements, large and small, that together form the elaborate organized crime environment Afghans contend with daily. And despite the hoped-for success of the U.S. military surge and President Obama’s claims of significant progress, Afghanistan’s resemblance to a mafia state that cannot serve its citizens may only be getting worse, according to an upcoming report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
The 46-page study, to be released next week, looks specifically at Afghanistan’s heartland: the rural areas of Ghazni, Wardak, Logar and other provinces just beyond the periphery of Kabul. Unemployment is high, government presence is low and the insurgency operates with impunity. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance. “Nearly a decade after the U.S.-led military intervention little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan,” the research group says. Rather, violence and the billions of dollars in international aid have brought wealthy officials and insurgents together. And “the economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen,” the report concludes.
The sobering analysis of a culture of corruption that long predates the U.S.-military effort comes as Obama tries to highlight military and other gains in Afghanistan as proof that Americans can leave. The widespread abuse of power from simple shakedowns to outright collusion with the Taliban will surely outlive the presence of American combat troops.
In announcing that he would pull out 10,000 soldiers this year and 23,000 more by the end of next summer, Obama made it clear that his timetable for a U.S. military drawdown was not going to be beholden to further security advances or the ability of American and Afghan forces to maintain their recent gains. Obama didn’t mention the issue of corruption.
But regardless of how many troops are withdrawn, and how fast they come home, Obama acknowledged the U.S. withdrawal by 2015 will create challenges for the country. “We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place,” the president said. A responsible end to the war is achievable, but he warned of “dark days ahead.”
For ordinary Afghans, the situation in the center of the country provides a valuable case study. There, the Pashtun majority lives alongside Hazaras and Tajiks. Foreign money has created competition even among the insurgent groups as fighters loyal to Mullah Omar’s Taliban vie with the Haqqani network and local militants for a share of the riches. Citizens end up squeezed by them and government officials, the report argues.
In the district of Qarabagh, southwest of Kabul, insurgents share an informal alliance with the local commander, Gen. Bashi Habibubullah. In nearby Ghazni city and elsewhere, rich chromite mines were plundered for export for the benefit of the provincial governor, Usmani Usmani.
Usmani was eventually removed from his post but only after becoming a “particularly embarrassing example of corruption,” according to Candace Rondeaux, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Afghanistan. To move the chromite – a mineral that goes primarily to Pakistan and then to China for stainless steel production – Usmani contracted the help of insurgents. They would then coordinate attacks to distract security forces away from outgoing trucks, Rondeaux said.
The pervasiveness of the corruption hasn’t escaped the attention of American officials, either. In a 2009 diplomatic memo released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, former Ambassador Francis Ricciardone noted how “conversations paint a picture of criminal enterprise masquerading as public administration in Ghazni.”
At the most micro of levels, there are the apples. The taxes may pale in comparison to the weapons and drug trades, but with insurgents gaining a large chunk of the revenues from hundreds of thousands of exports each year, the profits help feed the conflict. And for farmers living close to subsistence levels, the extortion may make survival even a challenge.
Ultimately, the enduring corruption and collusion between political elites and insurgents may not define the post-war Afghanistan or what America’s nearly 15-year legacy will mean when all U.S. troops have departed. But it does challenge any notion of a clean exit.
While the focus in Washington has centered on bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table, Rondeaux said her research of everyday life in Afghanistan shows it would be a mistake to see a political solution as a solve-all to the country’s problems.
“It will not address the growing organized crime networks in Afghanistan,” she said. “The U.S. and its partners can withdraw their forces and make power-sharing arrangements. It doesn’t mean these will hold, or that Americans should feel comfortable with how they are leaving this place.”
Attackers in uniform add to anxiety in Afghanistan
**Foreign troops say they’re increasingly concerned about the ‘enemy within,’ as deadly assaults by men who appear to be police or soldiers become more frequent. But those Western personnel also stress the importance of keeping anxiety in check in a climate of deepening mutual distrust.**By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
June 26, 2011
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan—** In late May, a NATO soldier was killed as he emerged from his tent. Two weeks earlier, two NATO soldiers were killed while eating a meal. In late
April, eight U.S. troops were shot dead at a meeting at Kabul airport.**
The attacks had one thing in common: The killers all wore Afghan military or police uniforms. Foreign troops serving in Afghanistan say they’re increasingly concerned about the “enemy within.” Yet they emphasize the importance of keeping anxiety in check amid a climate of deepening mutual distrust.
“You can’t go out scared every day,” said Sasha Navarro, an Air Force staff sergeant based at Camp Mike Spann in the northern province of Balkh. “You have to be confident in your training, and keep your head on a swivel.”
Since March 2009, at least 57 foreign troops, including 32 Americans, have been killed in 19 attacks by Afghan service members. More than half occurred this year.
That has created something of a balancing act since President Obama’s announcement that 33,000 U.S. troops are headed home by next summer: Protect yourself even as you engender the trust needed to transfer security to Afghan forces by 2014.
Maj. Gen. James Mallory, deputy commander for NATO training, said threats may include Taliban “sleeper” recruits who infiltrate the Afghan ranks; militants who use acquired uniforms to sneak onto bases; Afghan soldiers “turned” by blackmail, ideology or financial desperation; and stress-related cases in which a perceived insult or misunderstanding turns deadly.
Although the Taliban frequently claims responsibility for the attacks, fueling a myth of invincibility, the vast majority of cases involve stress or cultural differences, Mallory said.
“This is a society that for 30 years has been at war,” he said. “Only now are we coming to terms with the effects of stress on the force.”
Most Afghan and foreign troops get along well, he said, pointing out that the recent rise in killings dovetails with a proportionate rise in troops operating in the field.
Thomas Barfield, an anthropology professor at Boston University and author of a book on Afghanistan’s cultural history, said the U.S.-Afghan cultural gap is enormous.
“It’s like oil and water,” said Barfield, who has been paying visits to the country since the 1970s. “Neither side knows what [angers] the other. American soldiers are fairly foul-mouthed. Afghans are from an honor-based society and feel disrespected.”
A classified U.S. Army study based on 600 troop interviews, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, said “fratricide-murder” cases are provoking a crisis of confidence among Westerners working with Afghan forces. Recruits from the lower echelons of Afghan society are “somewhat prone to turning on and murdering their Western trainers,” the report said.
**Many Afghans interviewed for the report saw American troops as arrogant, culturally insensitive bullies who humiliated them by searching and disarming them in public and frequently violated women’s privacy.
And American forces often characterized their Afghan counterparts as drug abusers and thieves who were also incompetent, corrupt and lazy with “repulsive hygiene.”
**
Lt. Cmdr. Colette Murphy, spokeswoman for the NATO force in Afghanistan, said the report was systemically flawed and sensational, and relied on an inadequate sample, adding that “there will always be points of friction when cultures are forced to share close quarters and dangerous situations.”
Despite Taliban boasts of responsibility, commanders in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said there’s little direct evidence of sleeper cells or even much infiltration.
Still, they have stepped up countermeasures, including tougher screening for new Afghan recruits using iris scans, fingerprinting, drug-testing and database searches. And they’ve stationed more U.S. counterintelligence experts in Afghanistan to work with Afghan experts adept at recognizing cultural cues.
These include requiring that two elders vouch for every potential recruit, ensuring that they are well-known in the community, and flagging behavioral changes, such as when a moderately religious Afghan soldier becomes more hostile toward foreigners after time off, when he is most likely to face Taliban pressure.%between%
The U.S has to leave Afghanistan, and they are trying hard to leave on their own terms. They want to leave and say that mission was accomplished rather than that we have failed to win in 10 years.
**
Kabul Hotel Attack Underscores Hurdles in Push to ‘Reconcile’ Taliban**
**The deadly attack earlier this week on a western-style hotel in Kabul could throw into question efforts to reconcile with the Taliban, despite renewed calls by President Obama and top U.S. officials to engage the insurgent network in peace talks. **
The attack Tuesday at the InterContinental Hotel left a dozen people dead, including a local judge. The U.S.-led coalition blamed the sophisticated strike on the extremist Haqqani network, “in conjunction” with the Taliban.
**Western forces did not hesitate in striking back. The coalition reported Thursday that a Haqqani leader suspected of aiding the attack was killed in an airstrike. **But the Obama administration increasingly is trying to couple military muscle with diplomacy as the president begins to withdraw troops from the country and move toward a transition to Afghan command.
President Obama said last week that the U.S. will “join initiatives” to “reconcile” Afghans, including the Taliban, provided they split from Al Qaeda and abandon violence.
“We have reason to believe that progress can be made,” Obama said.
But while analysts see a clear upside in trying to peel away the pliable elements of the Taliban, the Kabul hotel attack contained some unsettling messages.
**Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, an Army Reserve officer who served in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2004, said the attack shows the Taliban are far from diminished. In turn, he suggested the motivation for accepting U.S. conditions for talks is not really there.
“The conditions are stupid,” he said. “The Taliban don’t care about conditions because they’re winning.”
Shaffer, who works with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, does not oppose the idea of reconciliation talks with the Taliban. But he said the administration needs to drop the conditions, while targeting its message toward leaders in Pakistan.
“We’re not getting to the people who are going to make the decisions,” he said. At the same time, Shaffer said the administration needs to make the choice even clearer – come to the table, or “we’ll kill you.” **
To that end, he applauded the coalition for taking out the Haqqani network operative within hours of the Kabul attack.
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who used to work on intelligence for the Treasury Department, said it’s likely the Kabul attack was executed by “full-fledged Taliban” – as opposed to rogue elements. This, coupled with the appearance that the Taliban has increased coordination with the Haqqani network, complicates U.S. efforts, he suggested.
“This is what the Taliban does and is all about,” Levitt said. “It means that there are hardcore (Taliban) that can’t be turned for certain.”
However, Levitt said the goal of creating “fissures” in the Taliban and drawing away the non-hardcore remains a worthy one. He questioned whether negotiations could make a big difference with the Taliban, but said it appears the Obama administration understands the uncertainty of it.
He also praised recent efforts at the U.N. Security Council to distinguish between Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
“I don’t think it reflects some naivete that the Taliban are really our friends and can be negotiated out of this,” Levitt said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clearly spelled out the United States’ reconciliation policy at an event in February, when she called on Taliban members to “break ties with Al Qaeda, renounce violence and abide by the Afghan constitution” in order to rejoin society. The administration has tried to impose similar demands on Hamas, which so far has not yielded many takers.
**Clinton also was quoted Thursday saying the U.S. is reaching out in Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood – which was officially banned under ex-President Hosni Mubarak but is looking to play a political role in a post-Mubarak country.
As with the Taliban talks, Levitt said the administration has something to gain from engaging the major parties in Egypt, but U.S. officials must enter those talks with a level head. **
“While mostly non-violent, they are indeed a radical Islamist organization,” he said, expressing concern that the State Department may not “be capable” of making that distinction. “It’s going to be a very delicate dance.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center was more critical, releasing a statement Friday saying despite the changing political landscape, “the Brotherhood’s hatred of Jews and Israel has not changed at all.”
For the 100,000 American forces, 40,000 NATO troops, and their commander, General David Petraeus, it’s Year One of the Surge in Afghanistan. For many Afghans it’s Year Nine of the US Occupation—or, to be kind, Year Nine of the US-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
US officers say that the war is finally on the right footing, with enough men and equipment to hammer the Taliban in their bases in the south. For US and European diplomats there are larger imponderables.
The strategic policy review released by President Obama on December 16 is extremely cautious, noting that recent gains in the south remain “reversible.” The report says the strategy “is setting the conditions” to withdraw a small number of US troops in July 2011, but it does not specify how many of the 100,000 American forces might leave. A Western ambassador posed the problem to me clearly: “Are we creating a sustainable government, are we getting the politics right, will there be an Afghan army and civil service to take over when we leave?”
In Kabul the foreigners breathe a little easier after several months with no suicide attacks. Kabulis say that the protective blast walls and concrete barriers that line the streets are now twenty feet high, suffocating them and eating up their road and living space.
War is always a mixture of different, conflicting stories, depending on whether you are crouching in a ditch or sipping tea at the presidential palace. To have dinner with Petraeus and tea with President Hamid Karzai is a central part of the story, as is journeying to the edge of the city to tiny, unlit, unheated flats to talk to former senior Taliban officials who want to explain to you how the Americans and the Taliban can make peace. Everyone tells you the endgame has started in Afghanistan but nobody can tell you how it will end.
The world is obsessed with the big picture of the Afghan war, not the domestic details that make it so difficult to end. The NATO summit in Lisbon on November 19–20 was a clear example. It tried to clarify the vision of a Western withdrawal but also created confusion. The NATO leaders—speaking for the organization, not the US—said that they planned for a phased transfer of responsibility for security to Afghan forces and the end of NATO’s combat role by 2014. They were committed to stay after that in a supporting role, while the US warned that its forces would continue fighting beyond that date if the security situation deteriorated. Clearly, the US and NATO are on two different timetables.
To confuse Afghans even further, President Barack Obama also added that someUS troops would start withdrawing from Afghanistan next July. That date, announced in January 2010 as the US surge began, has proved deeply embarrassing to the White House. It has been challenged by the Republicans, dismayed the Afghans, and created enormous uncertainty among regional countries such as Pakistan and Iran.
Obama’s final words in Lisbon were extraordinarily vague. Apparently speaking about the NATO decision to withdraw in 2014, he said, “It is a goal to make sure that we are not still engaged in combat operations of the sort that we’re involved with now,” but “it’s hard to anticipate exactly what is going to be necessary.” He added, “We are much more unified and clear about how we’re going to achieve our ultimate end state in Afghanistan.”
What Is the End State and How Do You Get to It?**None of the attempts at rebuilding the Afghan state over the past nine years have really worked. What assurance is there that they will work by 2014? **The dates and debates in the White House tell only half the story. Afghanistan is going through a series of domestic crises, which will determine whether there will be a functioning state by 2014 or not.
The most immediate issue has been the parliamentary elections, which were held on September 18, but whose final results were delayed until the end of November. After the rigged presidential elections in 2009, which Karzai won after immense controversy and international embarrassment, the United Nations and NATO were reluctant to hold parliamentary elections so soon.
However, Karzai insisted—hoping that his preferred candidates would win a majority in the 249-seat lower house of parliament, which would prepare the way for it to endorse Karzai’s peace talks with the Taliban.
Again rigging took place on a huge scale—except this time it was done by individual candidates, not by the government. Karzai’s handpicked Independent Election Commission (IEC), which oversaw the poll, stunned everyone by acting remarkably independently. It invalidated 1.33 million votes for fraud, or nearly a quarter of the 5.74 million cast, and in mid-November disqualified twenty-four candidates who had been declared unofficial winners, including a cousin of the President. The IEC asserted itself but left behind an intractable problem.
Turnout among the Pashtuns of southern and eastern Afghanistan, who make up some 40 percent of the population, was very low. The Taliban, who are largely Pashtuns, had threatened the Pashtun voters, telling them to boycott the polls. As a result the Pashtuns lost between 10 and 20 percent of their seats to ethnic minorities, especially the Tajiks and Hazaras. In the last parliament Pashtuns held 129 seats and now they are down to around ninety. All eleven seats in the important province of Ghazni, which has a mixed Pashtun-Hazara population, were won by Hazaras, a result that infuriated both the Pashtuns and Karzai. Ghazni’s results were announced after much delay and the eleven Hazaras were declared winners. Earlier the results were challenged by the attorney general, who ordered the arrest of several IEC officials, and there were demonstrations in Kabul for the failure to announce the results.
The election drama will continue. The non-Pashtuns are broadly against any peace deal with the Taliban, resent Pashtun dominance, and want to amend the constitution to introduce a parliamentary system in place of the current presidential system, which gives Karzai enormous powers. Karzai is trapped. If he accepts the election results, as he eventually must, he faces a parliament dominated by non-Pashtuns and his political opponents, which could scuttle his talks with the Taliban. Yet if he declares the elections null and void on account of the rigging and orders them redone, he could face open defiance from the ethnic minorities.
These election results have brought the unresolved ethnic problems to the forefront. Nine years after 2001, the divisions between the Pashtuns and the non-Pashtun nationalities that make up the complex weave of the Afghan national carpet are worse than ever. The notorious corruption and incompetence of the Karzai administration are still seen to have benefited the Pashtuns. **The American development efforts have focused heavily on wooing the Pashtun south and east where the Taliban insurgency is based, to the neglect of the minorities in the north and west. Non-Pashtuns are furious that an estimated 70 percent of all development funds are being spent in just two provinces in the south to woo the Pashtuns away from the Taliban.
** The non-Pashtuns mistrust Karzai’s talks with the Taliban. Despite several attempts by Karzai to arrange a national consensus, the non-Pashtuns are deeply suspicious that any Karzai–Taliban deal will only strengthen Pashtun hegemony in the country and further reduce minority rights. As a result non-Pashtun leaders from all the ethnic groups have launched political and grassroots movements to oppose talks with the Taliban.
Meanwhile the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, and Turcomen minorities have achieved advantages that cause immense resentment among the Pashtuns. For the first time the Tajiks and Hazaras dominate the upper officer class in the army and police even though US training and recruitment includes a strict parity between all ethnic groups. Traditionally the Afghan officer class has been Pashtun. Pashtun representation in the army is lower than its proportion of the population, and only 3 percent of recruits are from the volatile south.
The minorities who dominate the north and west have opened up roads and trade networks, imported electricity and gas supplies, and created other profitable links with their neighbors—Iran and the Central Asian states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Afghanistan’s drug trade—30 per- cent of which travels into Iran and Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan—has also enriched local elites. All this has improved lives for ordinary people, provided independent sources of wealth for local warlords and elites that are not dependent on Kabul, and given them political power. Meanwhile the Pashtuns in the south are stuck with the power of their neighbor Pakistan, which supports the Taliban and has done little toward improving their lives.
Tajik and Uzbek warlords have become so rich and powerful in the north that they now barely listen to Karzai. Governors of northern provinces have created their own fiefdoms that are left alone by NATO forces based there, because removing them would create further instability. You may not know it from press reports, but the most powerful man in the country after Karzai is probably Atta Muhammad Noor, a Tajik general who once fought the Taliban and is now the governor of Balkh province bordering Uzbekistan. He and his fellow northern warlords are rearming their militias in preparation for what they fear will be a long war with the Taliban.
The fear is justified because the Taliban have already arrived in the north, setting up bases, appealing to local populations, attacking NATO and Afghan forces, and infiltrating militants into Central Asia. For the first time, say US officials, there is evidence of the Taliban winning support from not just northern Pashtuns but even Tajiks and Uzbeks.
Making the TransitionAmid these worsening political problems there is the complex question of transition. After years of neglect, the US and NATO are at last trying to invest more in the numbers, equipment, training, and mentoring of the Afghan army. This year the US alone will spend $11 billion on the Afghan security forces—the largest single item in the US defense budget. The Afghan army has reached its first target of 134,000 men and will expand further, according to US officers involved in the training program. The police now number 109,100.
Yet these figures are seriously deceptive. The attrition rate from the Afghan army is still a staggering 24 percent per year. Some 86 percent of soldiers are illiterate and drug use is still an endemic problem. The Afghan police are even worse. (As a recent report on 60 Minutes showed, they are plagued by elementary incompetence, illiteracy, and corruption that make the creation of an adequate police force one of the country’s most intransigent problems.) Although 80 percent of army units are working with NATO units, no single Afghan unit is ready to take responsibility on its own in the field. Afghan forces are only in command in Kabul, but this is largely because there is a sizable NATO presence there.
Moreover, when there is so little Afghan administrative presence in the provinces, Afghan forces, even if they are well-trained, can achieve very little. There is now a civil service academy turning out bureaucrats, but it will be years before they make a difference.
Equally grave is the failure to establish an indigenous Afghan economy that is not permanently dependent on aid handouts. For the first few years after September 11 President Bush refused to rebuild Afghan infrastructure, including adequate roads and electrical supplies, and this stymied economic growth. Kabul got full-time electricity only this year. Industry failed to develop because of the lack of infrastructure and because neighbors such as China and Iran were dumping cheap goods in the Afghan market and undermining local productivity.
Obama has initiated a program to help the local civilian economy take off, but it needs time. The US Army still buys no local produce, but the Afghan army, at least, is being equipped with locally manufactured boots and uniforms. Another acute problem is that the huge profits of the drug trade are recycled into property speculation rather than economic production. Thus the key question for General Petraeus is not how many Taliban he kills, but whether the bare bones of an Afghan state—army, police, bureaucracy—which have been neglected so badly in the past nine years, can be set up by 2014. Moreover, can Afghan leaders, including the President, win the trust of a people who have put up with insecurity, gross corruption, and poor governance for many years?
If there is to be progress toward self-government in Afghanistan, a clear-headed Afghan president is badly needed. Yet Karzai is wrapped in contradictions and enigmas. During a two-hour animated conversation I had with him in the presidential palace, he seemed to be straining to not break ties with the US andNATO, while at the same time wanting to throw off their yoke because it makes him appear as a Western puppet.[SUP]1[/SUP]
Karzai’s on-again, off-again fights with Petraeus about the tactics of the USmilitary surge are essentially about his own role, his own sovereignty, his own image in Afghanistan—in all respects he feels he is losing power. He wants the war to somehow go away. Petraeus wants to conclude it, which means more violence in the months ahead.
Karzai’s view of the world has undergone a dramatic change and he is bitterly critical of the West and everything it has failed to do in the past nine years. He no longer supports the “war on terror” as defined by Washington, and he sees Petraeus’s surge as unhelpful because it relies too much on body counts of dead Taliban, often killed by US drones with civilian casualties that are resented deeply, and on nighttime raids by US special forces. The alternative, says Karzai, is to seek help from nearby countries like Pakistan and Iran, which he thinks could help him talk to the Taliban and end the war.
The NeighborsMany Afghans would disagree with Karzai. Neighboring states like Pakistan and Iran have a long and bloody record of monumental interference in Afghanistan, propping up proxy Afghan warlords and fighting over the spoils. Afghanistan will not become peaceful unless the neighbors are brought into an agreement not to interfere there that could be monitored by the international community. Obama made a promise to do just that when he was inaugurated but little has been accomplished.
**The major problem is Pakistan. All three major Taliban factions have been based in Pakistan for nine years, receiving official and unofficial support, sanctuary, funding, and recruits; yet three successive US administrations have been unable to stop the Pakistan military from continuing that support. **The December 16 strategy review avoids direct criticism of Pakistan for failing to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda bases. However, two classified intelligence reports given to the President in late November cited Pakistan’s hosting of sanctuaries as a serious obstacle toUS objectives.
President Bush never tried very hard, but Obama has offered much larger incentives and a tougher stick to Pakistan. Petraeus has been aggressive and made it clear to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kiyani that its support for the Taliban must end. But the US has no comprehensive strategy that either offers the Pakistani military some of what it wants or changes its assumptions that it must dominate Afghanistan. The army fears growing Indian influence in Afghanistan—an issue that nobody has addressed. It wants to use talks with the Taliban as a card in the endgame, so that maximum concessions can be extracted from the US, India, and Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan obtaining concessions from the Taliban.
**Iran too has learned to raise the stakes. Shia Iran has no love for the Sunni fundamentalists who make up the Taliban, but Tehran has stepped up its support and sanctuary for the Taliban groups operating in western Afghanistan. Like Pakistan, Iran sees them as a useful hedge for the endgame, when the US andNATO will have to bring it in to discuss noninterference in Afghanistan. Iran has joined with India and Russia to ensure that Pakistan is unsuccessful in dominating Afghanistan.
**
**So the region is already sharply divided. On one side stands Pakistan, virtually alone with some support from China, but none from the Arab-Muslim world that used to support the Taliban. Opposing Pakistan are Iran, Russia, India, and the Central Asian states, which are extremely suspicious of Pakistan and the Taliban but lack a strategy to deal with them. They want the US to stay longer in Afghanistan, but are also suspicious of an indefinite US presence.
**
The Taliban Want to TalkWhat of the Taliban? In separate interviews four former Taliban officials, now living in Kabul, told me that the Taliban leaders want to open a political office in a third country that is not Afghanistan or Pakistan, so that they can start talks with the Kabul regime, the US, and NATO. All four occupied high office in the 1990s when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and cannot be identified for security reasons.
**Some were captured and held for several years by US forces before being freed, and they all now live quietly in Kabul under heavy government guard. Still, they are allowed to remain in touch with the Taliban leadership based in Pakistan and have facilitated Karzai’s attempts to talk to Taliban leaders.
**
**They all said that negotiations would be possible only when they were free to negotiate from a neutral place—preferably an Arabian Gulf state, Turkey, Germany, or Japan. With Afghanistan under US occupation and Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence (ISI) trying to manipulate them, they needed space, freedom, and an address of their own.
**
The four former Taliban officials also called for a release of all Taliban prisoners held by the US in Guantánamo and Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, and the removal of the Taliban names from a list of terrorists that is maintained by the United Nations Security Council. Three of the four men I talked to said that Taliban–US talks were essential because the US is “the occupying power.” Karzai also admits that in his previous contacts, the Taliban have demanded talks with the Americans and he has tried to persuade Washington to agree.
The NATO summit did not mention anything about talking to the Taliban but it was the elephant in the room. Karzai sees his political survival as being linked to ending the war through a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Petraeus is less keen, wanting to continue the surge next year, killing more Taliban commanders and weakening others before inviting them to any negotiating table.
Petraeus does not accept the argument that by killing more Taliban you radicalize the movement further, bringing in younger and more militant commanders who owe nothing to the older leadership and are easier for the ISI to manipulate. He believes that the Taliban leadership can be broken, fragmented, and split off one by one. As a result, while drones target Taliban leaders and frequently kill them and people near them, less than a handful of US officials in Petraeus’s headquarters are addressing the issue of reconciliation with the Taliban.
The US administration is divided about the need for talks now or later. Skepticism is greater after the CIA and Britain’s MI6 were duped by a fake Taliban negotiator who twice held talks with Karzai, but turned out to be a Pakistani shopkeeper who was paid $65,000 each time he came to Kabul. Western officials believe the ISIwas behind the scam.
Moreover, at the moment neither Karzai nor the Taliban have a clear agenda for talks. They do not even have a clear notion of how to get to actual negotiations—but both sides realize that such a venture would have to include confidence-building measures to create trust on all sides.
**The Taliban leaders said that their first political aim would not be to lay down terms for power-sharing with Karzai, but to reach an agreement on a definition of what the future Afghan state would look like—would it be a democratic state or a shariah state? The most sensible among the Taliban also realize that since they could not run the country in the 1990s they will not be able to do so in the future. Rather than trying to grab power and then face isolation by the international community and the denial of funds and aid, they see the logic of a power-sharing formula with Karzai that would retain Western aid and international legitimacy. Their main concern right now seems to be how to break free from Pakistan, something the US can help them do only when it is ready to support peace talks.
**
An Approach to PeaceTo answer these questions and not give away too much to the Taliban at the outset, Karzai, neighboring states, the US, and NATO need to work together on a common agenda that reduces regional tensions and builds trust between the Taliban and Kabul. Any new approach to peace must include reciprocal confidence-building measures by Pakistan, Iran, and India as well as by the Taliban and the West. Karzai has set up the High Peace Council, a sixty-eight-person multiethnic body to negotiate with the Taliban, but he needs to do much more to build a consensus across the country. The main question, of course, will be how soon the White House and the Pentagon decide that it is time to talk to the Taliban. Victory on the battlefield is not possible but peace cannot be achieved without US participation in negotiations.
Here is a possible step-by-step approach, involving all the players, that is intended to build trust and confidence in the region so that ultimately negotiations with the Taliban can take place.
**1. NATO, the Afghan government, and Pakistan free most Afghan Taliban prisoners under their jurisdiction and seek to accommodate them safely in Afghanistan or allow them to seek refuge in third countries. NATO guarantees freedom of movement for Taliban mediators opening an office in a friendly third country.
****2. Iran enters into negotiations with the United Nations and European countries to end its safe haven for Afghan Taliban and allow them to return home or seek refuge in third countries. None of these actions includes amnesty or safe passage for al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups.
**
**3. The Taliban respond with confidence-building measures of their own such as publicly dissociating themselves from al-Qaeda, ordering an end to targeted killings of Afghan administrators and aid workers, and an end to suicide bombings and burning schools and government buildings.
**
**4. The US, NATO, and the UN declare their willingness to negotiate directly with the Taliban when the Taliban publicly request it, although they insist that the dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban remain the main avenue for negotiating a peace deal.
**
**5. A new UN Security Council resolution calls for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban to bring the war to an end. The UN resolution mandates its special representative in Kabul to help those negotiations and to start a dialogue between Afghanistan’s neighboring states to reduce their mutual antagonisms and interference; the resolution also calls for Afghan Taliban leaders who do not have ties to al-Qaeda to be struck off the list of terrorism suspects.
**
**6. India and Pakistan enter into secret talks between their intelligence agencies in order to make their presence in Afghanistan more transparent to the other and end their rivalries. Later the two governments come to agreements that would allow each one to tolerate the other’s embassies, consulates, rebuilding activities, and trade interests in Afghanistan. Both pledge not to seek a military presence in Afghanistan or to use Afghan soil to undermine the other.
**
**7. Central to any plan would be a deal with the separatist insurgents in the Pakistani province of Balochistan who make use of territory in Afghanistan to carry out their attacks on Pakistan. To address the problem, Pakistan issues a general amnesty for all insurgent Baloch separatist groups and dissidents and announces its intentions to discuss a new peace formula with all Baloch separatist groups to end the current insurgency. The army and ISI free all Baloch prisoners they are holding including the hundreds of “disappeared” prisoners.
****8. The Afghan government makes a commitment to return all Baloch separatist leaders on its soil once agreement is reached on a political deal in Balochistan and safe passage for Baloch leaders to return home is guaranteed by the Pakistan army and an international agency such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
**
**9. Pakistan issues a timetable and deadline of between six to twelve months for all Afghan Taliban leaders and their families who want to do so to leave Pakistan and return to Afghanistan. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UN would jointly help those Taliban not wishing to return home and not on any terrorism list to seek political asylum in third countries. Simultaneously Pakistan would undertake military action in North Waziristan in an effort to destroy remnants of al-Qaeda and Afghan and Pakistani Taliban who may remain and try to sabotage any peace process. Even if such action were not fully successful, the aim would be to limit their capacity to sponsor insurgency.
**
**10. The Afghan government works to build a national consensus inside the country among all ethnic groups, civil society, and the tribes before entering into formal negotiations with the Taliban. Negotiations also start between the US and the Taliban. The US agrees to sharply restrict killing of Taliban leaders by drones and other means.
**
Many questions hover over such a plan. It is a tragic loss that Richard Holbrooke, who would have been a strong leader in advancing such steps, died before they could be pursued. The former Taliban officials I talked to seemed open to a sequence of this kind. Whether their comrades in Pakistan can be persuaded to make a series of compromises and to estrange themselves from al-Qaeda is far from clear. But if after ten years the war is to be ended and the “end state” is to be actually achieved, then some such series of steps will be needed. —Kabul, December 16, 2010
Situation seems to be improving in Afghanistan,the NATO deaths this spring offensive are very low as compared to the previous year. During the past two months the deaths are about 58% of the previous year and this month is almost 50 % of the July 2010. Is the insurgency dying down?
The end game of Afghanistan issue is approaching as per the new reports, but it shows American hypocrisy. The Americans are willing to allow Taleban a share in Afghan government if they renounce international violence. It does not matter to them now if they keep their killing spree in the region but as long as it is not affecting them its fine.http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=28919&title=US,-Taliban-talks-reach-turning-point
US, Taliban talks reach turning point
WASHINGTON: After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior US officials said the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.
As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.
It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot.** Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.****
Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.**
U.S. officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura, the officials said.
The stakes in the diplomatic effort could not be higher. Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after NATO troops finish turning security over to Karzai’s weak government by the end of 2014.
U.S. officials have met with Tayeb Agha, who was a secretary to Mullah Omar, and they have held one meeting arranged by Pakistan with Ibrahim Haqqani, a brother of the Haqqani network’s founder. They have not shut the door to further meetings with the Haqqani group, which is blamed for a brazen attack this fall on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and which senior U.S. officials link closely to Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban - some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks - could be reconciled.
**On Sunday, a senior member of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council said the Taliban had indicated it was willing to open an office in an Islamic country.
But underscoring the fragile nature of the multi-sided diplomacy, Karzai on Wednesday announced he was recalling Afghanistan’s ambassador to Qatar, after reports that nation was readying the opening of the Taliban office. Afghan officials complained they were left out of the loop.
U.S. officials say they have kept Karzai informed of the process and have met with him before and after each encounter, but they declined to confirm whether representatives of his government are present at those meetings.**
**Afghanistan appeals for help with reconciliation talks
**UNITED NATIONS: **The Afghan government on Monday appealed for international help to boost talks with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups.
**
**At a UN Security Council debate on the war-torn country, Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister Jawed Ludin stressed the government’s determination to pursue reconciliation efforts despite Taliban attacks and assassinations.
**
**“We believe the process may benefit from the establishment of an office, within or outside Afghanistan, whereby formal talks between relevant Afghan authorities and representatives of armed opposition, including the Taliban, could be facilitated,” Ludin told the council.
**
Afghan authorities recently put forward Saudi Arabia or Turkey as the best places to set up a Taliban liaison office abroad to enable peace talks to end the devastating 10-year insurgency.
The minister stressed the cooperation needed from Pakistan and other neighbouring countries to overcome armed opposition groups.
UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said meanwhile that the UN mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, will remain in the country long after the international military withdrawal scheduled for 2014.
Civil groups in Afghanistan and the international community have called for a “strengthened” UN presence in the country.
Ladsous said there had been a “relative” decline in security incidents in recent months though over the year so far there has been a 21 per cent increase in incidents compared to 2010.
The number of attacks in September, October and November is down on last year, Ladsous said, without giving detailed figures.
It was hailed as “good news” but Ladsous added: “We mustn’t deceive ourselves. We have witnessed large-scale attacks over the recent weeks. We must continue to exercise great caution and vigilance.”
He said there had been nearly 800 civilian deaths in Afghanistan over the past three months.
A Security Council statement released at the end of the meeting welcomed plans for a decade of transformation for Afghanistan that a recent international conference in Bonn said would be launched after the military withdrawal in 2014.
But it stressed that the transition process “entails the assumption of the leadership responsibility by the government of Afghanistan.” President Hamid Karzai’s government has been widely criticised for being corrupt and divided.
KABUL, Afghanistan — As poignant in its imperial ambition as in its otherworldliness, the Soviet-era swimming pool atop Swimming Pool Hill here is as good a symbol as any of the doubtful legacy of empires.
Dug 30 years ago, it was barely ever used by Kabul’s swimmers, as the hill became entangled in barbed wire, first a gun placement for the Soviets and then the Taliban, before the whole area was bombarded by Western firepower in the 2001 invasion.
**Now restored, its five diving boards hang pointlessly above an empty pool and an indifferent city stretched out below that is consumed with yet another stage of Afghanistan’s precarious history, the pending withdrawal of more recent foreign occupiers — the United States and its allies.
**
Like the pool, Kabul holds many glimpses of its Soviet past hidden in plain sight around its jumbled hillsides: a polytechnic school built in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union and the United States jostled for cold war influence in Afghanistan by building big infrastructure projects; or a car factory expanded after 1979, when the Soviet Army marched in to wrench this nation more forcefully into the Kremlin’s sphere of power and way of thinking.
The Soviets retreated in 1989, leaving Afghanistan to a civil war that swept up the Soviet-constructed edifices in the conflagration. However improbably, a few of these are still inhabited, like an engineering school, the Auto Mechanic Institute, where a second-year student in a green T-shirt picked his way one recent afternoon from the ghostly wreckage of bombed-out classrooms.
Others are simply wrecks, prowled only by the homeless, drug addicts and dogs — sobering artifacts that confront the United States and its allies as they begin pondering what their own legacy might be.**“The Soviets came in believing they could re-engineer other people’s societies, releasing Afghans from their medieval backwardness,” said Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow whose book “Afgantsy” is about the Soviet occupation. “They didn’t transform Afghan society any more than we are going to.”In 1980s Kabul, the Soviet Embassy on Darulaman Road, bustling with technicians and ideologues, was the locus of power, just as the American Embassy across town is today.
**
The current Russian ambassador, Andrey Avetisyan, 51, worked here as a young diplomat during the 1980s. He was here, too, when things became dicey in the early 1990s: he spent 16 days hiding in a bomb shelter as the mujahedeen divided up Kabul, and he was one of the last Russians to flee Afghanistan, in August 1992.
An urbane man in a smart dark suit, Mr. Avetisyan cuts something of an isolated figure in the echoing halls of the reconstructed Russian Embassy, a third of its former size. The grounds were home to donkeys and nomads during the Taliban years, but they are now hidden from the highway behind a curtain of metal blast walls.
He has a plan to restore 150 of the Soviet-era infrastructure projects, starting with a housing construction factory on the outskirts of Kabul near the airport.“These were projects that were kind of the basis of the Afghan economy,” Mr. Avetisyan said. “Now it is difficult for me to see the state they are in.”The starkest illustration of thwarted imperial ambition is the Soviet House of Science and Culture, near the Russian Embassy and the Kabul zoo. It is a modern, angular, concrete hulk where Soviets and Afghans gathered for lectures, films and the propagation of modernizing ideas that for a while refashioned Kabul, including a time when women could work outside the home in Western clothing.
But during the civil war of 1992-96, the House of Science and Culture was occupied by one faction and wrecked as another lobbed shells down from a nearby hill. Today, the auditoriums are littered with rubble; cold air comes in through rocket holes; and once-bold Soviet murals of men and women, Afghans and Russians, are hidden in the squalid darkness near cartoon images depicting a Taliban fighter instructing children to become suicide bombers.“This used to be very luxurious,” said Mohammad Elyas, a heavy man with a big smile who was more intent on parking cars on the waste ground outside for 20 Afghanis each (about 40 cents) than contemplating the cultural center. “It is nothing now.”
Not every legacy bequeathed by the Soviets is lost. The Silo, an industrial bakery, fed the national Afghan Army and police. During the civil war, fighters threw their enemies from its rooftops. But its grimy yellow towers are once again turning out so-called silo bread for hospitals and schools.
The most enduring physical presence might be the Mikrorayon, gray apartment blocks originally built for Soviet administrators and the Afghan elite that stand amid the central suburbs of Kabul.
Also bearing the bullet and shell marks of the battles of the 1990s, they are cramped, run-down and patched, with clothing lines stretching haphazardly from windows to nearby trees. But the Mikrorayon are still some of the most prized homes for Kabul’s educated and wealthier middle class — a fact reflected in the loud street billboards for cellphones and private schools, and in the presence of young women walking the sidewalks in leg-hugging jeans unencumbered by the traditional dress.
“It is a safe place,” said Shir Mohammad Basheer, 50, a school principal who was fixing his car outside the four-room apartment that he shares with his wife and six children. “We have running water. We have electricity. We have central heating.”
**“To be honest, Russia did this great work for Afghanistan,” he said. “We have not seen anything big built by the international coalition.”
Many Afghans’ remembrance of the Soviet years is colored by this rosy nostalgia. But the grounds of a museum near the main stadium hold reminders of a bloodier legacy: mines, shells, rockets, helicopters and other tools the Soviets employed to suppress their own insurgency, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, a ghastlier toll than the coalition’s, if these things can be compared.
****Still, Abdul Wahid Taqat, a K.G.B.-trained intelligence officer during the Soviet years and now a military analyst who lives in an apartment near the Mikrorayon, said that he believed a powerful army and a muscular government were a valuable legacy. They allowed President Muhammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed leader, to withstand the mujahedeen alone for three years after 1989 before Moscow finally cut off oil and other supplies.
Then, of course, Mr. Najibullah was beaten, shot and hanged from a traffic light by the Taliban in Kabul in 1996.
“They left a strong Afghanistan behind, but today’s government will not last as long,” Mr. Taqat said, referring to the Soviets.
**Up on Swimming Pool Hill one recent evening, five police officers in blue uniforms took time off from their duties, dancing in a circle near the swimming pool, their outstretched arms swaying to Tajik music floating from the window of their Toyota Land Cruiser.
Watching them, another Afghan taking in the air, Harun Merzad, 34, who was jobless and wearing a black hat and a G-Star Raw jacket, spoke of the Americans’ impending departure, and of the Soviets’ before it, with indifference — as if it was inevitable that once again Afghanistan would revert to what it always had been.
“I don’t have anything bad to say,” he said of the Russians with a shrug. “Except they were infidels.”
interesting but long document, havent read it myself yet…
Some americans are now seeing the light but its already too late, the Americans should have atleast studied the history of that land before committing themselves to ‘bring democrazy’ to the ‘poor Afghans’.
From the same report I posted in post #36, I am reproducing a few paragraphs:
[QUOTE] Levels of Deception
Before retiring to become the Director of the CIA, General David H. Petraeus testified before the
Senate Armed Services Committee on 15 March 2011 to provide Congress an update on the
progress of the Afghan surge. A month later, the Department of Defense published its most
recent assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. Both paint a very optimistic appraisal and give
the unambiguous impression of success.
Below is an excerpt of General Petraeus' opening
statement followed by a key passage from the April 2011 DoD report. In his Opening Statement,
the General said:
As a bottom line up front, it is ISAF's assessment that the momentum achieved by the Taliban in
*Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country, and reversed in a number of important *
*areas. However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and *
*reversible. Moreover, it is clear that much difficult work lies ahead with our Afghan partners to solidify and *
*expand our gains in the face of the expected Taliban spring offensive. Nonetheless, the hard-fought *
*achievements in 2010 and early in 2011 have enabled the Joint Afghan-NATO Transition Board to *
**recommend initiation this spring of transition to Afghanistan lead in several provinces. **The achievements
of the past year are also very important as I prepare to provide option and a recommendation to President
Obama for commencement of the drawdown of the U.S. surge forces in July. Of note, as well, the progress
achieved has put us on the right azimuth to accomplish the objective agreed upon at last November's Lisbon
Summit, that of Afghan forces in the lead throughout the country by the end of 2014.
Since the last Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, International Security **
*Assistance Force (ISAF) and its Afghan partners have made tangible progress, arresting the insurgents' *
**momentum in much of the country and reversing it in a number of important areas. The coalition's efforts
*have wrested major safe havens from the insurgents' control, disrupted their leadership networks, and *
*removed many of the weapons caches and tactical supplies they left behind at the end of the previous *
*fighting season. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) continued to increase in quantity, quality, *
*and capability, and have taken an ever-increasing role in security operations. Progress in governance and *
*development was slower than security gains in this reporting period, but there were notable improvements *
**nonetheless, particularly in the south and southwest. **Over all, the progress across Afghanistan remains
fragile and reversible, but the momentum generated over the last six months has established the necessary
conditions for the commencement of the transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces in seven
areas this summer.
The following pages quantitatively demonstrate that much of the two public statements above are
either misleading, significantly skewed or completely inaccurate. Also I'll demonstrate how this
pattern of overt and substantive deception has become a hallmark of many of America’s most
senior military leaders in Afghanistan. As mentioned earlier in this report, were I able to share
the classified reports the gulf between what some of our leaders have said in public and what
they know behind the scenes would be dramatic. Nevertheless, even with what I’m about to
provide from open source material the gulf will still be clearly evident.
As part one of a multi-part series on the situation in Afghanistan, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), wrote in a February 15, 2011 article
that ISAF and the US leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in
Afghanistan and notes that, “since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the US does provide has
steadily shrunk in content effectively “spinning” the road to victory by eliminating content that
illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead .. . " It is no coincidence that he specified June
2010 as the date the "spinning" began: General David Petraeus took command in June 2010.
Here are some of the more noteworthy points Cordesman made in his presentation:
**• US and ISAF won every major tactical clash, but lost much of the country;
• ISAF denied the scale of the insurgency and the seriousness of its rise. Issued
intelligence and other reports claiming success that did not exist;
• The US and ISAF remained kinetic through 2009; the insurgent fought a battle of
influence over the population and political attrition to drive out the US and ISAF from
the start;
• In June 2010, the Acting Minister of Interior told the press that only 9 of Afghanistan's
364 districts were considered safe;
• No ISAF nation provides meaningful transparency and reporting to its legislature and
people**
**As a means of explaining other reasons the Taliban ought to have been notably degraded in
capacity, in numerous speeches during his 12 months in command of ISAF troops, General
Petraeus often stated (as he did in his January 2011 letter to US troops) that since the arrival of
US surge forces, ISAF has taken away Taliban strong holds, killed or captured hundreds of his
senior and mid-level leaders; thousands of foot-soldiers have been removed from the battle field
(killed or captured); ISAF has interdicted enemy lines of communication; discovered untold
numbers of weapons and ammo caches, and beaten the enemy on battlefields throughout the
country.
By any logic, then, since the number of ISAF troops never dropped throughout 2010 and ISAF
leaders often reported the Afghan people were coming more and more to our side, then the
number of enemy attacks, by any rational calculation, ought to have dropped throughout the
second half of 2010, and to have done so precipitously by the summer of 2011, some 18 month
after the surge began. But that is not what happened. In fact, as we'll see in the following sections
despite the fact we had 94,000 to 100,000 American military personnel on the ground in
Afghanistan from May 2010 through December 2011, the violence continued to rise at almost
the same rate it had risen since 2005 all the way through the summer of 2011 (and has leveled
off in some places and seen slight drops in others, but remains well above 2009 levels)**