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11 September 2012
FEATURE STORY
Afghan Taliban claims it 'had no hand in the 9/11 incident'
BUSINESS
No articles featured today
NATION
Former Talib Quashes Report that Taliban Want Peace Deal with US
Issues Linger as Afghans Take Control of a Prison
Rewarding Afghanistan’s torturers?
Why it's time for talks with the Taliban
Rockets hit NATO airbase north of Kabul, killing 3 Afghan staff
Kunduz Suicide Attack Kills 15, Injures 25
US faces 'utter defeat' in Afghanistan: Taliban
U.N. Expands Its Probe Into Funding Oversight
Taliban: We Will Kill Prince Harry
Afghanistan's First Football League to Release Draw Tomorrow
Army Aims To Use Words, Not Weapons, With Afghans
As troops move out, economy slows in Kabul
Taliban prepared to accept Afghanistan ceasefire and political deal, say experts
News analysis: Taliban-al-Qaida nexus still haunts Afghans 11 years after 9/11
NATO Chief Aims to Curb Assaults
The harsh truth about leaving Afghanistan
Lawmaker, Journalists End Hunger Strike Over Media Censorship
Change in Afghanistan: Evolution or Revolution?
The truth is being pushed aside in Afghanistan
Legal Proceedings Brought Against Afghan TV Channels
Afghanistan’s Karzai to Seek Lawmaker Backing for Securit
Don't forget US troops 'fighting and dying': Panetta
Taliban accuse U.S. of ‘unjust’ war in Afghanistan
Gay Afghan men face exile or marriage in conformist masculine society
PRESS RELEASES
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FEATURE STORY
Afghan Taliban claims it 'had no hand in the 9/11 incident'
Long War Journal
By Bill Roggio
September 11, 2012
The Afghan Taliban released a statement denying responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US and claimed the group would not allow Afghanistan to be "be used to harm anyone." The Taliban made the claim despite the fact that the attacks on the US were approved by al Qaeda's top leaders in Afghanistan.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released the announcement, titled "Statement Of Islamic Emirate On The Eleventh Anniversary Of The September," on Sept. 9, and it was obtained by the SITE Intelligence Group. The statement has not been released on the Taliban's official website, Voice of Jihad.
In the statement, the Taliban described the US and Coalition war as an "illegal and unjust crusade" and said "the Afghans have had no hand in the 9/11 incident and neither have you been able to provide any legitimate or logical proofs," according to SITE.
The Taliban attempted to convince the international community that Afghanistan would not serve as a launchpad for future attacks.
"Availing this moment, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again clarifies to the entire world including America that we are neither a threat to anyone nor will we let our soil be used to harm anyone," the Taliban said.
The Taliban's claim that it had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attack is fantastic, as Osama bin Laden, the slain emir of al Qaeda who ordered the attack, and his organization were based in Afghanistan when the attack took place. Bin Laden himself admitted in an interview that he helped plan the attack. A video of the interview was found in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan after the US invasion [see PDF transcript here], and is believed to have been recorded in Kandahar province, where bin Laden had a compound.
In the interview, bin Laden admitted that he was "at a camp of one of the brother's guards in Kandahar" when the "brother" told him of the dream he had about an attack that seemed to describe 9/11. Bin Laden said he was "was worried that maybe the secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dream" and ordered the brother not to discuss it.
Additionally, several of the 9/11 hijackers trained at the Khalden camp, a facility that trained al Qaeda, Taliban, and Pakistani terrorists. Khalden's trainers identified which recruits were best suited for Osama bin Laden's operations. Three of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- Mohamed Atta, the tactical commander, and hijackers Majed Moqed and Satam al Suqami -- were trained at Khalden. Other Khalden alumni include Ramzi Yusuf, Ibrahim Elgabrowny, Ahmed Ajaj, and Mahmoud Abouhalima, who were involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; shoe bomber Richard Reid; Ahmed Ressam, the "millenium bomber"; and Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker," who was arrested by the FBI prior to Sept. 11.
The Taliban's claim that it would not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks against the international community also rings hollow. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terror group closely allied to al Qaeda, has trained its operatives in Kunar province and then brought them to the Indian province of Kashmir and Jammu to wage jihad.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has integrated its operations with the Afghan Taliban in northern Afghanistan, plotted to conduct Mumbai-styled attacks in Europe in 2010. The operation was discovered and foiled when a German operative involved in the plot was detained in Afghanistan.
The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, which professes allegiance to the Islamic Emirate's of Afghanistan's emir, Mullah Mohammed Omar, executed the failed Times Square bombing in New York City on May 1, 2010. The bomb failed to explode due to a problem with the detonator.
The Taliban refused to hand over al Qaeda's top leaders after the Sept. 11 attack, and to this day has refused to denounce its support for the terror group. As recently as this February, Mujahid, the Taliban's spokesman, refused to renounce "international terrorism," much less acknowledge any willingness to sever links with al Qaeda.
Senior leaders of the Haqqani Network, a Taliban subgroup that operates in the east, have professed their support for al Qaeda. Siraj Haqqani, the operational commander of the network, released a training manual last fall that included portions praising al Qaeda and urging Haqqani Network members to support al Qaeda both locally and in its international operations.
Siraj's deputy, Mullah Sangeen Zadran, told As Sahab, al Qaeda's propaganda outlet, that "al Qaeda and Taliban all are Muslims and we are united by the brotherhood of Islam" in an interview in 2009. In July 2012, Sangeen called for foreign jihadists to join the Taliban's ranks and said they would take the jihad beyond Afghanistan.
And in February, Abdullah al Wazir, the Taliban's representative to jihadist forums, said said that the Taliban will not renounce al Qaeda and that al Qaeda operates under the "Military Command of the Islamic Emirate."
"They [al Qaeda] are among the first groups and banners that pledged allegiance to the Emir of the Believers [Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban], and they operate in Afghanistan under the flag of the Islamic Emirate," Wazir said.
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BUSINESS
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NATION
Former Talib Quashes Report that Taliban Want Peace Deal with US
TOLOnews.com
By Shakeela Abrahimkhail
Monday, 10 September 2012
Former Taliban commander Sayed Akbar Agha claimed Monday that reports of the militant Islamists seeking to strike an extensive peace deal with the US, which would allow the Americans to maintain bases in Afghanistan, were false.
Akbar Agha said that the Taliban would have made their own statement if such an idea were true, and that the British institute which published the report was presenting its own opinion.
"I believe such statements are their own personal idea because the Taliban usually talk through their spokesman or their political committee. That's why these statements do not represent the Taliban's idea," Akbar Agha told TOLOnews in Kabul.
The British Royal United Services Institute published a report on Monday making the claims based on interviews with four unnamed Taliban officials, two of which were ministers during its regime in Afghanistan.
The report said that the Islamists are willing to break with Al-Qaeda network as part of a deal with the US, but it will not negotiate with the government of President Hamid Karzai because of the high levels of corruption. They are also not confident that the Afghan government will be able to hold a transparent presidential election.
It also claimed that sections of the Taliban are looking to agree to a long-term presence of US troops in Afghanistan in a comprehensive peace deal as long as the bases occupied by the US were not used to attack foreign countries or interfere in Afghanistan.
According to the British publication, the Taliban understand that they will not win through war and so are open to reconciliation. They will allow the education of girls, unlike when they were in power in Afghanistan, but they strongly oppose the current Afghan constitution which was established by President Karzai.
These so-called moderate Taliban will also help to track down the Al-Qaeda groups still in country and help fight against terror in the region, it said.
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Issues Linger as Afghans Take Control of a Prison
New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND
September 10, 2012
BAGRAM, Afghanistan
It was supposed to be a ceremony to celebrate the full transfer of Afghan detainees and prison operations to Afghan control. But top American commanders were absent on Monday, hundreds of Afghan prisoners remained under American detention, and details of the deal remained in dispute.
Under the terms of a deal negotiated between the two governments six months ago, Monday was the deadline for authority to be transferred formally to Afghanistan for the Parwan detention facility, the American-built prison at Bagram Air Base.
During those six months, 3,000 prisoners were transferred from American to Afghan control, in what Afghan officials called a victory for Afghan sovereignty.
“It is a matter of pride for us to acquire responsibility for the prison,” said Nasrullah Stanikzai, the legal adviser to President Hamid Karzai, who has depicted the transfer as one of his government’s crucial accomplishments.
But about 600 newly captured prisoners remain under American control, according to Afghan officials, and there is lasting disagreement over how quickly they should be screened and turned over to Afghan custody. In addition, about 30 of the original prisoners were not handed over to Afghan authority, because of a dispute over whether the Afghans would continue to hold them without trial, as the United States had demanded and as stipulated under the detention deal.
As a result of the dispute, Lt. Gen. Keith M. Huber, the American commanding general of the prison, did not attend the transfer ceremony, which featured at least seven generals, two cabinet ministers and other dignitaries from the Afghan side. No one from the American Embassy or the State Department was present.
There were reports that General Huber was going to send his deputy, Brig. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson, but she, too, was a no-show. The only Americans on the dais were the Parwan task force commander, Col. Robert M. Taradash, and his bodyguard.
“Today, I affirm that we have fulfilled the agreement,” Colonel Taradash said in a brief speech that drew polite applause. “We transferred more than 3,000 Afghan detainees into your custody” and made sure that those who were still a threat “would not return to the battlefield.”
American officials have been concerned that the Afghans would release detainees too readily, turning the prison into a revolving door and speeding captured insurgents back to the battlefield. A joint review board has sorted through their cases, recommending some for prosecution and others for release — reportedly, more than half of those reviewed. During the ceremony on Monday, 15 detainees were freed, without objection from the American side.
American officials say the transfer agreement calls for the Afghan government to continue to hold some detainees even if there is not a formal legal case against them, reviewing their cases administratively rather than judicially. The Americans say it is impossible to build legal cases against all prisoners arrested in battlefield conditions.
Afghan news media reported that a dispute over the practice led to a falling-out between Mr. Karzai and Gen. John R. Allen, the American military commander in Afghanistan, over the weekend and apparently prompted the downgraded American presence at the event on Monday.
“From now, no foreigners will have any prison in any place in Afghanistan,” said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry.
Despite such vows, and whatever the amount of real control that the Afghans may have inside Parwan, the Americans are not going away soon. In addition to processing a steady stream of prisoners caught in night raids, the United States will continue holding 50 non-Afghan prisoners — mostly Pakistanis, but also some Arabs and Chechens — at the base, something the Afghans have not contested.
American military guards also remain a very real presence around the perimeter of the prison, even at gates to the Afghan section — despite the assertion of Col. Jalaludin Dehaty, the spokesman for the Bagram prison commander, who said, “You can enter now without ever seeing an American.”
At one of the Afghan gates, however, an American guard on duty, Staff Sgt. Michael Tantillo, said, “All of the gates remain dual service,” meaning that they will have both Afghan and American guards.
Inside the prison, Americans are still present in the completely Afghan-run section as well, Afghan and American officials said, though they say those Americans serve only as advisers.
The ceremony itself was dominated by sweeping oratory, echoing the emotion and urgency that Mr. Karzai has invested in the prison issue.
“This is an extremely important and historical day,” the acting defense minister, Enayatullah Nazari, said at the ceremony.
In a statement, Mr. Karzai said, “I consider the transfer of Bagram prison to the Afghan government a victory for the people of Afghanistan and a big step toward consolidation of the government’s sovereignty.”
Even that wording, however, showed another point of difference: the Americans built a new detention complex near the old Bagram Prison in 2009, and they refer to it as Parwan — after the province it is in, and apparently in an attempt to break the associations brought by accusations of waterboarding and deadly beatings at the old prison. Afghan officials still refer to the place as Bagram.
On the sidelines, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan chief of staff, acknowledged that misunderstandings had arisen. “The interpretation of the memorandum of understanding is confusing; everyone is translating from their own version,” General Karimi said. “These are small issues in the relationship of the international community and the government that will be solved, no problem.”
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
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Rewarding Afghanistan’s torturers?
CNN
By Brad Adams, Special to CNN
September 10th, 2012
Editor’s note: Brad Adams is the Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. The views expressed are his own.
The Afghanistan government appears to have a new policy for dealing with government officials accused of sadistic torture: it rewards them with job promotions.
President Hamid Karzai has announced that he will appoint Asadullah Khalid as chief of Afghanistan’s main intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Khalid is no garden variety spy chief. The current minister of border and tribal affairs and former governor of Kandahar and Ghazni provinces, he has been accused of running an unauthorized secret prison in Kandahar where torture was routine. Parliamentary confirmation is by no means a sure thing, but Karzai regularly circumvents parliament’s control over cabinet appointments by leaving government officials in an acting capacity for years.
“This will take the NDS back 10 years, to when they could do anything they wanted while everyone looked the other way, as long as they were killing Talibs,” a diplomat with many years’ experience in Afghanistan told Human Rights Watch. “If the U.S. doesn’t stand up and fight this, it will prove that they have lost all interest in human rights and the rule of law in Afghanistan.”
The appointment is especially worrisome since the NDS already has a long and well documented history of torture of detainees. A grisly 2011 United Nations report found that NDS agents routinely used torture to extract confessions or for punishment. Nearly half of all conflict-related NDS detainees interviewed by the United Nations reported they had been tortured in NDS custody. The alleged methods detailed are horrific: beatings with rubber hoses, electric cables, wires, and wooden sticks, often on the soles of the feet; hanging of prisoners by their wrists for long periods; electric shock; twisting of genitals; ripping out toenails; and prolonged standing.
The U.N. report forced NATO troops to temporarily suspend transfers of prisoners to the NDS facilities where the most serious torture was taking place. International law prohibits any country from handing over a prisoner where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being tortured. A U.S. law also prohibits U.S. funding to any unit of a foreign security force that has committed gross violations of human rights, unless effective measures are being taken to bring those responsible to justice.
The Afghan government reacted with fury and confusion to the U.N. report, simultaneously denying use of torture and vowing to end abuses. Since then, it has been hard to detect progress. Commanders at some facilities were moved, but prosecutions and firings of those responsible have been notably absent. “Some were transferred,” a senior international official told Human Rights Watch. “Some were promoted.”
Now, in an apparent attempt to surround himself with cronies, Karzai has also promoted Khalid. American, U.N., and Canadian sources have claimed that forces under Khalid’s command ran a secret prison when he was governor of Kandahar, employing many of the forms of torture detailed above. Khalid has also been accused of corruption, involvement in Afghanistan’s narcotics trade, and of ordering the assassination of U.N. staff members. He has been described by a U.S. official as a “bag man” handing out money for votes as part of Karzai’s 2009 re-election effort.
Khalid has in the past denied all wrongdoing, but many of these allegations were corroborated in a 2008 report by Canada’s Military Police Complaints Commission. Canadian authorities interviewed detainees and documented multiple cases of torture. Canada’s deputy ambassador to Afghanistan testified about serious abuses linked to Khalid.
The appointment of Khalid marks a new low in a long list of rights abusing appointments by President Karzai. Khalid’s appointment occurred just ahead of the September 10 ceremony marking the Afghan government’s assumption of control of the US detention center in Bagram, north of Kabul. The facility contains what the US and Afghan governments contend are the highest value insurgents captured on the battlefield. The perceived value of these prisoners as sources of intelligence on the Taliban and other insurgent groups puts them at high risk for torture, and this appointment drops them in Khalid’s hands.
The U.S. and other troop-contributing nations have collaborated closely with the NDS since 2001, sharing intelligence, conducting joint investigations, and cooperating in custody and interrogation of prisoners. The NDS receives significant support, financial and otherwise, from partner countries, primarily the United States, which helped rebuild Afghanistan’s intelligence services after the fall of the Taliban and has had a very close relationship with the NDS since.
Afghan activists are rightly angry and fearful about Khalid’s appointment and what it means for their country before the international troop withdrawal over the next few years. The U.S., other key countries, and the U.N. need to speak out forcefully against Khalid’s appointment and make it clear to Karzai that it is unacceptable to put a known human rights abuser in a position of authority. If his appointment goes unopposed by the U.S. and other countries, that sends a message too, and raises serious questions about whether they really care about human rights in Afghanistan.
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Why it's time for talks with the Taliban
The Taliban may not be as inflexible as feared. But we won't discover what they'd settle for until there is genuine dialogue
Guardian.co.uk
By Matt Waldman
Monday 10 September 2012
We should welcome the news that the Taliban are reportedly open to the idea of negotiating a general ceasefire and even a peace settlement. The peace process in Afghanistan is at risk from spoilers on all sides and fraught with challenges. But we owe it to the Afghan people, and to all those who have suffered in the conflict, to give it a try.
It would be a grave mistake to assume the Taliban would only settle for absolute power. Taliban leaders know they stand no chance of seizing power now or in the near future. They know that even coming close would reinvigorate and potentially augment the coalition of forces ranged against them. That could trigger a civil war, which they are anxious to avoid. Even if they could seize power, they would be pounded by drones, ostracised and dependent on Pakistan. The leadership craves the opposite: safety, recognition and independence.
The Taliban rose to power in the 1990s, promising to bring order in place of turmoil. But since 2001, the expectations of ordinary Afghans have changed. They not only want order and justice but reliable public services, basic freedoms and a say over their own affairs. Antediluvian theocracy has had its day, and thinking Talibs know it.
The Arab awakening has not gone unheeded. A Taliban think-piece leaked last year asked what kind of elections they should support and how the government should meet the people's needs. They yearn to be taken seriously as a credible, national political force.
The Taliban remain powerful in much of the country. But they have suffered big losses and are facing pressure, even armed resistance, from communities in provinces such as Ghazni, Laghman and Nangahar. The cohesion and discipline of the movement is under strain. And while the impending withdrawal of foreign forces will allow the Taliban to claim some sort of success, it also removes the movement's biggest single motivating force.
In addition to this, most Taliban leaders deeply resent their dependence on, and manipulation by, Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. Having spent a decade or more in Pakistan, from where they run the insurgency, they hope to return in safety to their homeland.
The justification for military action against the Taliban in 2001 was the movement's sheltering of al-Qaida. Today, most of al-Qaida's leaders live in Pakistan, and most analysts see the Taliban's relationship with al-Qaida as fragile and insubstantial.
Last month Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, said: "The Islamic emirate of Afghanistan wants good relations and mutual interactions with the world … [and] assures all the world that it will not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against any one." Or simply, we won't shelter al-Qaida again. We might not take his word for it, but it suggests there's a basis for discussion.
The Taliban are not monolithic; its fighters have varied motivations. Many fight because they believe the US seeks to conquer Afghanistan and subvert its religion or culture. Some are driven by the predation and degeneracy of the Afghan government and its warlord allies. Still others fight for personal, local or tribal reasons.
There are undoubtedly extreme elements within the movement. The Haqqani group, responsible for some of the most gruesome attacks in Kabul, is due to be designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US.
The aggressive campaign of air strikes and night raids initiated by General Petraeus all but wiped out a generation of moderate insurgent commanders. But the fanatics are still a minority.
Broadly the Taliban want the withdrawal of foreign forces, a share of power and the implementation of sharia law. They probably seek a major role in justice and anti-corruption, and influence in social, religious and educational affairs. But what exactly their demands are, and whether they are compatible with human rights or the aspirations of the Afghan people, is impossible to say until a genuine dialogue is under way.
The new study by the Royal United Services Institute suggests the Taliban might even accept a ceasefire and the presence of US forces in a peacekeeping capacity. There are a range of interpretations of sharia within the movement. It may be that the Taliban's position on issues such as the constitution or girls' education is not as radical or inflexible as we fear.
Indeed, comparative studies show that insurgent or paramilitary groups tend to overstate their demands for propaganda purposes and to bolster morale, and that their goals often diminish over time, as with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation or Colombia's National Liberation Army.
Talks could help to break down some of the misapprehensions that have inflamed the conflict. As in many other insurgencies, talks might also help to reduce the frequency or intensity of violence. In the absence of talks there is little reason to expect anything other than protracted conflict. There may even be an escalation of violence as the Taliban and other power-holders vie to occupy the space created by Nato's hurried departure. And given the deficiencies of Afghan national security forces, we should expect expansion of Taliban control in the rural south, south-east and west. All this explains why all polls and field research indicate that a clear majority of Afghans, both men and women, favour talks.
It is hard to believe that seven years since major hostilities began there is still no substantive, regular dialogue between the principal parties.
Last year's progress has stalled due to differences over terms and preconditions relating to the establishment of a Taliban office, a US-Taliban prisoner exchange, and the opening of formal talks. Especially problematic is the Taliban's willingness to talk to the US first, and only later to the Afghan government.
The priority should be to open substantive, multiparty talks without preconditions.
But as the troops and aid flows recede, so does the international community's ability to influence the parties, establish a peace process and protect the gains made since 2001. The involvement of agreed mediators or facilitators, currently absent, could help to unblock talks.
No channel can succeed without Pakistan's support. Whether or not Pakistan has a seat at the table, its officials should ultimately be involved in talks. And as the dialogue strengthens, it should expand to involve northern and central Afghan political factions.
It should be supplemented by a broader reconciliation process involving representatives of all parts of Afghan society. Any future peace, whether achieved through a single settlement or patchwork of understandings, will only be sustainable if it reflects the aspirations of ordinary Afghans.
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Rockets hit NATO airbase north of Kabul, killing 3 Afghan staff
Reuters
Sept 11, 2012
KABUL
Four rockets hit Afghanistan's Bagram airfield, destroying a helicopter belonging to the NATO-led forces and killing three Afghan personnel inside, a spokesman for the coalition said on Tuesday.
The attack, which took place at around 10 pm local time on Monday, came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Security across the capital, Kabul, was intensified.
Two personnel belonging to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who were also in the helicopter, were wounded, the spokesman said.
The helicopter was on a ramp in the airfield when the rockets hit.
The attack came a day after the United States handed control of the controversial giant Bagram prison and its 3,000 suspected Taliban inmates to Afghan authorities. (Reprting by Jessica Donati; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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Kunduz Suicide Attack Kills 15, Injures 25
TOLOnews.com
Monday, 10 September 2012
At least 15 people were killed and 25 others were injured in a massive bomb detonated by a suicide attacker in northern Kunduz province on Monday afternoon, local officials said.
The bomber drove a car laden with explosives into a police checkpoint in Kunduz city at around 3:00PM, the 303 Pamir Police Zone in northern Afghanistan spokesman Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai told TOLOnews.
He says that more security forces had arrived and in the area and the injured have been taken to hospitals.
The toll may rise after local hospital officials told TOLOnews that at least 35 people have been brought to the hospital, both dead and wounded, while Medecins Sans Frontiers said it has received at least 25 people, dead and wounded, at its medical facility in the city.
The high number of casualties appears to be both because of the size of the bomb combined with the crowded area – the checkpoint was near a busy bazaar.
No group including the Taliban has taken responsibility for the attack.
This is a developing story. Please check back for details.
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US faces 'utter defeat' in Afghanistan: Taliban
AFP
11/09/2012
WASHINGTON
US forces face "utter defeat" in Afghanistan and Americans are unsafe wherever they go in the world, the Taliban said ahead of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Eleven years ago Tuesday, almost 3,000 people lost their lives in the worst terror strike on American soil that saw two passenger planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda slam into New York's World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
What followed was a war in Afghanistan, launched over the Taliban's alliance with Al-Qaeda.
"The anniversary of 9/11 is approaching America this year at a time when it is facing utter defeat in Afghanistan militarily, politically, economically and in all other facets and it has exhausted all other means through which to prolong its illegal war," said a statement from the Afghan Taliban, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group said Monday.
The statement, which the Taliban wrote in English and posted on Sunday, goes on to say that the war in Afghanistan "under the pretext of retaliation for the September incident has no legal or ethical" basis, and that Afghans had "no hand" in what happened.
Even though the United States has spent "large amounts of military and economical assets" in the war, "no American is safe in any society today," the statement said.
The Taliban also claimed it was not a threat but vowed to defend its homeland and continue with its "sacred struggle" against "the invaders."
"The Islamic Emirate, on the eleventh anniversary of the September incident, once again calls upon the American officials, its coalition members and its people to halt shedding the blood of the oppressed Afghans under this pretext and to follow the path of sound reasoning instead of tyranny and stupidity."
The war in Afghanistan has steadily lost popular support in the United States.
A growing majority of Americans oppose the US military presence in Afghanistan and support NATO's plan to withdraw most combat forces by the end of 2014.
More than 2,000 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan. Some 77,000 are currently stationed in the country.
In a separate statement, also released Sunday according to SITE, the Taliban accused CIA Director David Petraeus of founding the "Arkabi" militia groups and alleged that he is therefore "directly involved" in killings attributed to them.
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U.N. Expands Its Probe Into Funding Oversight
Wall Street Journal
By DION NISSENBAUM
Updated September 10, 2012
WASHINGTON
The United Nations has expanded an internal examination into its largest global development program because of questions over the management of international aid funds in Afghanistan.
The U.N. Development Program's Afghanistan office used a recently established fund to hand out millions of dollars in donated money to Afghan ministries without proper oversight of how it was spent, according to a preliminary report by U.N. auditors.
In a majority of cases they examined, the auditors found "no evidence" that Afghan ministries receiving funds through the UNDP's so-called Policy Advisory and Development program spent the funds for the intended purpose. There were indications that ministry workers received excessive pay raises or double salaries, according to the report, which was completed in July and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The preliminary summary didn't include detailed allegations about the program, which was established to support special projects at Afghan ministries. But the questions it raised were echoed in recent months by several past and present UNDP employees who have alleged in interviews that the program was used to spread cash to win favor inside Afghan ministries for U.N. initiatives.
The U.N. said the document reflected initial findings that were undergoing further examination. In some cases, it said in a statement, further investigation determined that some of the concerns about misallocated funds and high pay raises were unfounded.
The program was created in 2009 under the UNDP's then-director in Afghanistan, Manoj Basnyat, a long-time U.N. official from Nepal. Soon after arriving in Kabul, Mr. Basnyat and the UNDP established the fund, which handed out about $1 million a year to Afghan ministries.
The U.N. hasn't accused Mr. Basnyat of wrongdoing, and he hasn't addressed any allegations publicly. The U.N. declined to make him available for an interview and said it couldn't comment on personnel matters. The U.N. said it encouraged anyone with allegations of wrongdoing to contact it directly and said it maintains a "zero tolerance" anticorruption policy.
The Kabul office is working to phase out the Policy Advisory and Development program in the wake of the auditing questions, a senior U.N. official there said.
"It is not a slush fund," said the official. "My feeling is that it is a project that was weak in terms of the planning and reporting."
The UNDP has been at the center of a multibillion dollar effort to reform the Afghan government and rebuild the battle-damaged country. In part, it is supposed to serve as a model to Afghan politicians of efficiency and transparency.
But the UNDP became the focus of scrutiny this year amid allegations—by U.N. workers as well as by an international monitoring group—of corruption at a fund it oversees, the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a $1.4 billion pool financed by international donors to pay the salaries of the 150,000-member Afghan police.
This summer, the European Union blocked the release of $37 million in funds until the allegations are resolved. In June, the program removed five staff members, including the program's assistant director in Afghanistan. The U.N. didn't say why the workers were dismissed or put on administrative leave. The workers declined to comment or couldn't be reached.
U.N. investigators returned to Kabul over the weekend to continue their examination of the UNDP office in Afghanistan, U.N. officials said.
In April, Mr. Basnyat was replaced after more than three years as country director in Afghanistan by Alvaro Rodriguez, a longtime UNDP employee who had previously held the same position in Pakistan and Somalia. The switch took place under a routine U.N. assignment rotation and wasn't a result of the audit, according to U.N. officials. He is currently on assignment in New York, the U.N. said.
Last year, the UNDP presented Mr. Basnyat with its Julia V. Taft Award, given each year to its most outstanding country office. —Nathan Hodge in Kabul Afghanistan, contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Taliban: We Will Kill Prince Harry
Taliban issue Harry 'kill notice'
The Daily Beast
By Tom Sykes
Sep 10, 2012
It's out of the frying pan and into the firing line for Prince Harry.
The third-in-line to the throne, who left behind the naked Vegas pictures scandal and touched down in Afghanistan on Friday morning to begin a four-month tour of duty as an Apache helicopter pilot with the job of 'killing insurgents', has been issued with a specific death threat by the Taliban.
Describing 27-year-old prince as a "high-value target", a Taliban spokesman said the group will "make their best efforts to arrest or kill" him.
Duh? Isn't that kinda the whole point of war? To kill and capture the other guy?
The statement by the Taliban does, however, confirm the long-held suspicion that the Taliban will seek to use Harry's presence on Afghan soil as a rallying call for insurgents.
Captain Wales, as Harry is known in the army, is being deployed in southern province of Helmand, one of the bloodiest war zones in the 10-year-old conflict, however military top brass have decided not to seek to prevent publication of details of his deployment because not one Apache helicopter has been lost in the war thus far.
He will be based at the heavily fortified Camp Bastion at Helmand.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said: "Whoever is fighting in our country alongside the US is our enemy and we will attack him.
"Prince Harry came to Afghanistan and he is a high value target for us. We will try to arrest him. Because he is an Apache helicopter pilot, he will target us more. If we are not able to arrest him we will target him," he said.
The new 'kill notice' on Harry by Taliban comes just two days after the Taliban had dismissed his deployment as a propaganda stunt, saying it was designed to divert attention from his escapades in US.
The Prince is to complete training courses this week in first aid, shooting and improvised explosive device awareness, before starting his Apache-specific preparation. During this phase of training, which starts today, he will climb into the cockpit and begin to familiarise himself with the way the deadly aircraft is configured for the country.
Harry is not expected to be sent out to take on Taliban for at least another seven days.
Tom Sykes is a writer and journalist whose family has long-standing connections to the British Royal Family. Tom previously worked as a nightlife reporter and gossip columnist for the New York Post. He is currently working with John Taylor of Duran Duran, helping him write and edit his autobiography, to be published later this year by Penguin. Tom lives in London and Ireland.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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Afghanistan's First Football League to Release Draw Tomorrow
TOLOnews.com
By Mir Sayed Sediqi
Monday, 10 September 2012
The official draw for Afghanistan's first ever nationwide football premier league will be announced Tuesday night after two months of selecting players for the eight teams, Afghan Football Federation (AFF) officials said Monday.
The draw will divide the eight teams into two groups of four for the group stage of the Roshan Afghan Premier League's (APL) inaugural 16-match season.
The competition will kick off with the first match on September 18 and end October 19 with the Grand Final in Kabul's Afghan Football Federation stadium.
"The league will improve the quality of football in Afghanistan and will help to have a professional and well-trained national team in the future," the National Football Team head coach Yousuf Kargar told TOLOnews.
AFF officials reassured that there will be tight security at the live matches so spectators can watch the games at the ground without any security issues.
"The families can watch football from the ground in a secure environment," AFF deputy head, technical, Mohammad Yasin Mohammadi said. "Football has found fans within the families and they can let their kids play football."
The eight teams were selected during July and August from eight zones across Afghanistan: Greater Kabul, Centre, North East, North, South East, West, South West, East.
The selection process for each 18-man team was broadcast nationwide in the reality programme 'Maidan e Sabz' (Green Field).
Thousands of young men registered and attended try-outs for one of the top 30 spots in each zone. Those 30 men were then put through a series of physical and mental football skills tests, with their performance judged by former Afghan national team players and coaches. The group was further reduced down to 21 players.
The final 18-player team for each zone was voted on by a Green Field studio audience.
The league is fully supported by the international football federation FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) with all games played in accordance with the official FIFA and AFC rules and regulations, the AFF said.
All APL matches will be broadcast on Moby Group* television channels TOLO TV and Lemar and radio stations Arman FM and Arakozia FM, as well as being available via cable TV, and online coverage. Follow the competition via www.afghanpremierleague.com.
* Disclaimer: Moby Group is the publisher of TOLOnews.com.
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Army Aims To Use Words, Not Weapons, With Afghans
NPR
By Blake Farmer
September 10, 2012
The U.S. Army has been ramping up instruction in the languages of Afghanistan, even as troop levels in the country decrease in preparation for the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014.
This year, key installations have added several hundred speakers of Pashto and Dari to their ranks, more than doubling the number of soldiers trained in the Afghan languages.
But it's not just the country's languages that are foreign to U.S. soldiers — it's the culture, as well.
On a recent day at Fort Campbell, which straddles the Tennessee and Kentucky state line, smiling men in long shirts and baggy pants spin in circles, following the leader on a small stage. It's an ancient attan dance, and important for soldiers to see, says Ahmad Dauodzai, a native of Afghanistan.
In modern renditions of the dance, rocket launchers are sometimes fired into the air. But, Dauodzai says, soldiers need not be afraid. "It's not a sign of war or hatred. It's a sign of love, reconciliation," he says.
Daoudzai and dozens of other Afghan natives have been hired as trainers for this immersion program, also being offered at Fort Carson in Colorado and at New York's Fort Drum.
The first few weeks of the course are spent learning the more than 40 letters in Pashto, one of Afghanistan's two official languages.
U.S. Army Pfc. Timothy Griffin has advanced beyond the basics and is now studying how to connect with Afghan people. The conversation style sounds a lot like that of the American South.
"You're constantly asking them how they're doing, how their family's doing, how their neighbor's doing, " Griffin says. "Just anything, [like], 'How's your car?' Ten minutes later, you get to the main point, which is 30 seconds long. That's a conversation."
Early in the war, this level of cultural immersion was largely left to the Army's elite Special Forces, who shouldered the task of training indigenous forces.
But in 2010, the military's top brass issued a directive that at least one American per platoon should be able to go beyond "hello" and "thank you."
And as training the Afghan troops has become an important component of the U.S. exit strategy, training Afghan forces — and the cultural understanding that requires — has become the job of 19-year-old privates as well, says Maj. Gen. James McConville of the 101st Airborne Division.
McConville himself has been learning Dari, the language of Afghan government.
"This will be my second time going back to Afghanistan," he says. "You start to realize, I would have been much more effective if I understood the language and understood the culture, and maybe some of the things that may offend them that may lead to some situations that are not in the best interest of either of our forces."
Last month, 12 U.S. troops were killed by forces dressed in Afghan uniform. The Pentagon believes the bloodshed is often a result of personal grievances and what it calls "social difficulties." Language training is hardly a direct response to the killings, but McConville acknowledges that it may help.
Pfc. Maxwell Murphy says spending so much time with his Afghan instructors is at least a start to helping bridge those tensions. "I'm sure that a lot of my comrades don't believe that they can trust [the Afghans]," Murphy says. "I mean, I don't totally believe that I can trust them all the time, too."
Once he's deployed, Murphy figures that if a uniformed Afghan does go rogue, he'll be tipped off before anyone else. U.S. soldiers, he says, aren't expected to know the language — meaning he may have an edge when Afghans speak with one another in their native language.
"You may pick up them saying things that they don't think that you'll know. So hopefully — maybe — we can catch some stuff before something happens," Murphy says.
Whether potential threats are coming from inside or outside a unit, military commanders are hoping soldiers like Murphy find a way to occasionally use their words instead of their weapons.
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As troops move out, economy slows in Kabul
USA TODAY
By Carmen Gentile, Special for USA TODAY
10/09/2012
KABUL
Mohammed Nabi stares out the window of his floor tile shop across a busy highway at the construction scaffolds rising around partially built apartment complexes and office buildings.
The scene in the Afghan capital appears to be evidence of bustling enterprise, until one sees that the scaffolds have no workers. They left several months ago and have not returned, says Nabi, whose own business is seeing a slowdown.
"We now realize that most of our business was dependent on foreigners," he says of the shop he started six years ago to provide goods to military bases and foreign organizations that brought thousands of foreigners to Kabul. "No more," he says despondently.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of 2001, Afghanistan witnessed rapid economic growth because of enormous flows on economic aid and military spending from Western nations there to combat the Taliban.
Afghanistan's economy grew by 9% per year, well above comparable nations, according to the World Bank report, "Afghanistan in Transition: Looking Beyond 2014." Construction and service industries grew fastest; mobile phone penetration went from less than 1% of the communications market to more than 50%.
But the basic flaws of Afghanistan's economy remain, analysts say, and may overwhelm the nation when the Western militaries withdraw most of their forces as currently planned by the end of 2014.
Graft remains a serious problem. Afghanistan is near the bottom of Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index. Opium poppy crops, which fuel the country's heroin trade, account for nearly half of agricultural production. Three-quarters of the country's 31 million people are illiterate. Little has been done to exploit the country's natural resources of gold, copper and natural gas.
The more than $6 billion a year Afghanistan receives from foreign governments in civilian aid (excluding military spending) represents nearly 40% of gross domestic product.
"International experience and Afghanistan's own history show that an abrupt cutoff in aid can lead to fiscal crisis, loss of control over the security sector, collapse of political authority, and possibly civil war," according to the World Bank.
Economist and former Afghan transport and civil aviation minister Hamid Ullah Farooqi says the capital and the entire country for that matter is ill-prepared to make the transition from a war-time economy to one driven by the private sector.
Farooqi says foreign aid is already slowing, as are the jobs on which Afghans working for NATO and international aid groups have grown to depend. Even with outside assistance, unemployment is more than 30%, he says.
"Most of the young, educated Afghans that work for foreigners will soon be out of work," Farooqi says. "And I don't see any means of creating new positions for them."
Land and property values are already in decline, as fewer foreigners rent homes used for work and living. In recent months, more and more "for rent" signs have popped up around the city. But Kabul city officials are more optimistic than many businesspeople.
Abdul Wahid Wahid, a deputy for the municipality of Kabul, says there are a number of reasons why some projects remain unfinished.
"There has been some stoppage of work," Wahid concedes, "but there can be a lot of reasons why," saying land disputes, common in Afghanistan, could be the culprit for some stoppages. Other reasons include "bad accounting" on the part of inexperienced financiers unfamiliar with the costs of raising a building.
Despite the stoppages and already apparent economic slump felt by Kabulis, Wahid says he is confident that the capital's economy will adjust to the departure of foreigners and their aid money.
"The arrival of the foreigners is like waves rocking a ship," Wahid says. "When the waves are gone, the ship resumes its course."
Residents of Kabul are worried that a diminished economy could bring about the return of the Taliban to the capital, which fell to the hardline Islamists in 1996 and remained under their rule until the U.S.-led invasion following the 9/11 attacks.
"Right now we are living day-to-day," says Noor Ali Hassani, 62, who owns a small motorcycle repair shop.
Hassani says business is significantly slower than it has been in the recent past.
"I think it has to do with the recent suicide bombings and attacks." he says, referring to an attack this summer in which eight Afghans were killed when a bomb blew up under a bridge. "People are afraid to go out as much."
His assistant, Mohammed Ibrahim, agrees.
"Every day the economy is getting worse," Ibrahim says, blaming security concerns and government corruption.
A barber, Delawar, who like many Afghans goes by a single name, says his business will suffer if the Taliban retakes power.
"If the Taliban return, then every man will have to grow his beard again," says Delawar as he finishes a customer's haircut. "Then what will I do?"
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Taliban prepared to accept Afghanistan ceasefire and political deal, say experts
Academics who conducted private talks with Taliban say senior figures believe war in Afghanistan is not winnable
Guardian.co.uk
By Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday 10 September 2012
A belief that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable and fear of a future civil war has persuaded Taliban leaders of the merits of a ceasefire, power-sharing and a political deal, according to a group of experts and academics who conducted private talks with senior Taliban figures.
Two former Taliban ministers, a former mujahideen commander and an Afghan mediator with experience of negotiating with the Taliban spent between three and five hours in individual discussions with professors Anatol Lieven, Theo Farrell and Rudra Chaudhuri of King's College London and Michael Semple of Harvard.
Separately, Matt Waldman, a former key UN official in Kabul involved in promoting dialogue and reconciliation in Afghanistan, has told the Guardian: "It would be a grave mistake to assume the Taliban would settle for nothing less than absolute power."
At a press briefing on Monday on their report published by the Royal United Services Institute, Lieven and his colleagues painted a picture of a pragmatic Taliban leadership around Mullah Omar.
Three of his group's four interlocutors said they could imagine a "long-term US military role in Afghanistan … so long as the US military presence contributed to Afghan security", Farrell said. But it could be used to attack Afghan's neighbours, including Iran, the Taliban leaders insisted.
Semple said the Taliban figures they spoke to were driven by the belief that "war was not winnable" and by "fear of precipitating civil war". Lieven described "real disillusionment and anger with al-Qaida" within the Taliban leadership.
However, he said their Taliban interlocutors were "very silent" on the question of the Haqqani network, which has attacked US and Afghan forces from their base in Pakistan. Originally encouraged by the CIA during the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the group has just been proscribed by the US as a terrorist organisation.
"Pakistan's influence would be crucial," Lieven described one of their Taliban interlocutors as saying, because Pakistan could undermine a peace agreement.
"Taliban leaders know they stand no chance of seizing power now or in the near future," writes Waldman in the Guardian. "They know that even coming close would reinvigorate, potentially augment, the coalition of forces ranged against them. That could trigger a civil war, which they are anxious to avoid."
He continues: "Antediluvian theocracy has had its day and thinking Talibs know it," and adds: "Most Taliban leaders deeply resent their dependence on, and manipulation by, Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI … They yearn to be taken seriously as a credible, national political force."
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News analysis: Taliban-al-Qaida nexus still haunts Afghans 11 years after 9/11
Xinhua
Sept. 11, 2012
KABUL
Exactly 11 years ago today after the deadly attacks on the twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 and a year after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan, the al-Qaida-backed Taliban militants are still staging attacks in Afghanistan, targeting Afghan as well as NATO forces.
The continued failure of the U.S. military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to wipe out armed fighters loyal to the Taliban and al-Qaida network has dented the trust of Afghans in the ability and credibility of the military alliance in bringing the war on terror to final victory.
"The U.S.-led Coalition has poured thousands of troops to Afghanistan as part of its so-called war on terror but for the past 11 years it has failed in its avowed mission," Faizullah Jalal, a political observer here, told Xinhua.
Jalal, a Kabul University professor, said that the killing of Bin Laden by the U.S. military in Pakistan did not result in diminishing the militants' capability to sow terror, adding that in fact, both the Taliban and al-Qaida network, like what they have done for the past 11 years, continue to kill Afghans and NATO troops through ambuscades and suicide attacks.
"In my opinion the messy situation, the suicide attacks, bombings and killing people by Taliban and al-Qaida operatives would not stop in Afghanistan unless a miracle happens," Jalal said.
The devastating Sept. 11 attacks paved the way for the stationing of thousands of U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan and eventually led to change of regime in Kabul.
Under a military campaign which began in October 2001, the U.S.- led Coalition forces had overthrown the Taliban reign and evicted al-Qaida operatives from Afghanistan within weeks.
The end of the repressive Taliban regime had raised hopes among Afghans at home and prompted more than 5 million Afghan refugees to return home and resume new life.
But the dream of Afghans for a better life and a lasting peace has virtually vanished, according to Jalal.
He said that contrary to expectations, Taliban militants staged a comeback in 2006 and since then have waged bloody attacks that included suicide bombings and roadside ambushes targeting not just military personnel but also innocent civilians.
Since the launching of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and the al-Qaida network on Oct. 7, 2001, according to iCasualties, a website tracking U.S.-led coalition forces casualties in the war on terror, 3,177 service members, 2,114 of them Americans, have been killed.
In 2012 alone, according to the website, 326 soldiers with 250 of them Americans have lost their lives in war on the Taliban-al- Qaida network in Afghanistan, while the alliance casualties in 2001, the first year of launching war on terror, was registered 12, all Americans.
In spite of the massive manhunt operation by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Taliban one-eyed elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has remained at large.
While the U.S. has been preparing to mark the Sept. 11 attacks and celebrate the death of Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the deadly assault, al-Qaida loyalists would continue to haunt both Afghans and Americans.
"The al-Qaida terrorists first assassinated our national hero Ahmad Shah Masoud on Sept. 9, 2001 and then targeted the U.S.," an Afghan war veteran Abdul Marouf told Xinhua.
The aging Marouf, who fought against the Taliban and its al- Qaida supporters under Masoud in the 1990s, said that the Taliban- al-Qaida nexus would continue to kill Afghans and Americans as well in the years to come.
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NATO Chief Aims to Curb Assaults
Wall Street Journal
By STEPHEN FIDLER
Updated September 10, 2012
BRUSSELS
The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said a surge in attacks by Afghan soldiers on NATO forces risked undermining public support for the alliance's mission in Afghanistan—and said new steps had been introduced in an effort to reduce their numbers.
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said three sets of measures had been stepped up in an effort to curb such assaults: vetting and screening procedures had been strengthened, counterintelligence improved and education on cultural differences among Afghan and foreign troops increased.
So-called insider attacks have increased sharply. According to figures from the Pentagon, there were 39 insider incidents through Sept. 5, compared with 21 in all of 2011, and 10 in 2010. NATO officials said more than 40 coalition troops have been killed in such incidents this year.
In an interview Monday with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Rasmussen said there appeared to be no single reason for the increase, though personal grievances, stress and infiltration by the Taliban had all contributed.
He noted such attacks were statistically more likely because of the increased numbers of Afghan troops now being trained and in operations with coalition forces. He said Afghan security forces would reach their full strength of 352,000 in a few weeks.
"Whatever the reason, it's of the utmost importance to prevent and counter these attacks because these threaten to undermine trust and confidence between foreign troops and Afghan security forces and also undermine public and political support for our training activities in Afghanistan," Mr. Rasmussen said.
NATO leaders have committed to continue their mission beyond the end of 2014, when the alliance's combat mission will officially end, to "train, advise and assist" Afghan forces.
Mr. Rasmussen said planning had now begun on how that training mission would be configured, though he said it was too early for details to be settled.
He said defense ministers would discuss the issue at a meeting in Brussels in early October, follow it up at a further meeting in February and settle on a plan in June.
He said a key element of the post-2014 mission would be to make sure that trainers were adequately protected.
"There is no doubt that coalition partners will make sure that our trainers can operate in a secure environment," he said.
Write to Stephen Fidler at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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The harsh truth about leaving Afghanistan
Our troops will pull out in 2014 knowing that the Taliban will be part of a future Afghan government
The Telegraph
By Telegraph View
10 Sep 2012
The length of the campaign in Afghanistan is a vivid measure of its cost. When British soldiers finally withdraw at the end of 2014, the fighting will have lasted for 13 years, making our Fourth Afghan War the longest foreign conflict this country has waged since the days of Napoleon. After so much toil and sacrifice, the Government owes it to the nation to acknowledge some harsh realities.
No one doubts the achievement of our forces, along with their American and coalition allies. Until 2001, Afghanistan served as the global headquarters of
al-Qaeda and the location for training camps turning out thousands of terrorists. All that has come to an end, with the camps razed and al-Qaeda eliminated as a functioning force, at least within Afghanistan’s borders. Our soldiers can take pride in their part in removing a threat to the security of the West.
Along the way, they have underwritten the birth of an elected government in Kabul and allowed at least three million girls to return to the schools from which the Taliban excluded them. It should never be forgotten that fighters loyal to this vicious movement still burn down classrooms, and cast acid in the faces of girls who want nothing more than an education.
That makes it harder still to acknowledge that there will be no outright military victory over the Taliban. Even the finest counter-insurgency force could not eliminate a movement so deeply rooted among the Pashtuns of southern and eastern Afghanistan. So a negotiated settlement is inevitable – and the Taliban will inevitably play a part.
The good news, according to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), is that senior Taliban commanders acknowledge a harsh truth of their own, namely that outright victory is also beyond their power. To achieve a negotiated end to the war, they are apparently willing to renounce al-Qaeda and even accept a continued American military presence after 2014. The Taliban figures interviewed by RUSI are also prepared to drop their medieval, obscurantist opposition to female education. Whether these “moderates” speak for the Taliban as a whole is open to question. Even if they do, other extremist groups such as the Haqqani network could try to sabotage any settlement. And the price for a deal with the Taliban would be the movement’s inclusion in a future Afghan government.
The Prime Minister should start preparing the public for the unpalatable agreement that will have to be struck by 2014. The men we fought for 13 years are likely to have real political power. The best we can hope for is that Afghanistan will be governable, and that the country will no longer be a threat to the West.
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Lawmaker, Journalists End Hunger Strike Over Media Censorship
TOLOnews.com
By Sharif Amiry
Monday, 10 September 2012
Afghan lawmaker Baktash Siawash and several journalists have ended their hunger strike in protest of media censorship after they were promised their demands would be met.
Speaker of the Parliament Abdul Rauf Ibrahim told TOLOnews Monday that the strikers were told their demands would be discussed, and the strike had ended.
Ibrahim had called Siawash himself to tell him that all the issues and conflicts between the media and the parliament will be solved, and asked him to end the strike – offering him a bottle of water.
The group began the strike Monday morning to protest the Parliament's attempts to curb media freedom, but it was over by Monday evening at Ibrahim's request.
However, Parliament's Secretary General Khudai Nazar Nasrat warned Siawash and the other journalists that they may face legal action for incitement.
"I will introduce you to the Attorney General over incitement," Nasrat said.
Before starting the hunger strike, Baktash Siawash had said that he would continue the strike until all the problems of censorship and limitations on the media were removed by the parliament.
"I will continue my hunger strikes as long as the problems of the journalists and censorship continues," he told reporters at the front gate of the Afghan Parliament where he sat with the other strikers.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are widely considered to be one of the main achievements of the Afghan government in the past decade, but recent moves to introduce more restrictions in the media law have shown that these gains may be weaker than they appear.
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Change in Afghanistan: Evolution or Revolution?
World Policy Institute (blog)
By Elizabeth Pond
September 10, 2012
A decade ago, I posed one question to Afghan women, in sewing circles, voting-rights seminars, support groups, impromptu schools, and on the street. What, I asked, do you most want for your country?
After 20 years of brutal civil war and draconian Taliban rule, their top priority was always security. They wanted to trust that their husbands would come home safely each night, and that their daughters could go out on the street without being humiliated or mutilated. No image better epitomized their longing for inviolability and dignity than the iconic National Geographic photo of a faceless, handless, burqa-shrouded woman carrying caged birds on her head.
The women's second wish was education. In one home literacy class for beginners ranging from girls of seven to a mother in her 20s, the mother pointed to her accompanying toddlers and explained that she wanted to master reading so she could be elected to the forthcoming loya jirga—the traditional tribal council that under American pressure would this time include social outsiders—and make a better life for her children.Women in prison, many of them underage, many incarcerated only because they fled husbands who beat them, pleaded to be released for just a few hours to see doctors. Refugees yearned to return to their native villages and restore the irrigation for their apricot trees.
I had little faith in Western forced transformation of war-torn agrarian societies, after having visited villages in Vietnam on the back of a motorbike in the 1960s. And while I was agnostic about the axiom that the fierce Afghans always repel foreign invaders, I was persuaded by anthropologist Thomas Barfield's variant that the Afghans are skilled at enlisting foreign allies to help them fight internecine wars and equally adept at dumping their alien allies when they are no longer useful.
Yet because of the resilience and even exhilaration of those Afghan women at the prospect of liberation, I suspended my skepticism. I hoped against hope that their dreams would be fulfilled. If CIA commandos on horseback could rout the Taliban with their GPS pointers in 2001, then perhaps NATO forces could just as miraculously find tribal allies, keep them from defecting, and persuade a critical mass of local leaders of the virtues of building schools. Perhaps this time around, the money the West flooded into Kabul and Islamabad would in fact accelerate modernization and not just skew social justice and turn the corrupt rich into millionaires. Perhaps the aspect of St. Augustine's conditions for a just war that requires a combatant to have a good chance of winning—so it doesn't simply make things worse by escalating the killing inconclusively—was fulfilled.
In retrospect, I think the United States never did have that Augustinian chance of victory. But it certainly had no chance of winning in Afghanistan after Washington, in a war of choice, squandered its asset as the world's sole remaining superpower by invading Iraq on specious grounds: That Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al-Qaida. That regime change in Baghdad would enhance Israel's security. That Iraq's small urban middle class would rise up and institute democracy. That America's democracy could safely compromise its monopoly on legitimate violence by outsourcing major war efforts to Blackwater mercenaries. That the U.S. monofocus on Iraq would not debase the military campaign in Afghanistan.
The Western intervention in Afghanistan did have one big success. It established secure zones that enabled civilians to get three million girls and women into schools and universities—up from an estimated 5,000 under the Taliban. Optimists contend that local Taliban leaders will by now tolerate popular education for girls if and when they take back power, either by a negotiated political deal or by force of arms. Yet attacks on girls' schools in the transitional year of 2012 cast doubts on this assumption. And once America's combat role in the country ends next year, no U.S. president will ever recommit forces for another ambiguous ten or 20 years just to educate Afghan females.
In virtually all other respects the Afghan experience has mocked both neo-conservatives' dreams of social engineering and liberals' visions of a "responsibility to protect" other nations' civilian populations against atrocities by their own governments. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it most bluntly in telling West Point cadets that any successor of his who deploys substantial American ground troops to Asian, Middle Eastern, or African theaters should have his head examined. President Barack Obama prudently scaled down his generals' aim of victory to "Afghanistan, good enough." And despite the SEALs' killing of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden 16 months ago, Afghanistan has vanished from the U.S. presidential campaign. Kabul is being relegated to its own devices—and the most likely scenario of a resumption of civil war as NATO forces are drawn down.
Today I have to count the costs of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. I mourn the deaths of more than 2,000 American soldiers, more than 1,000 allied soldiers, and more than 13,000 Afghan civilian victims of both NATO and Taliban weapons. I mourn the betrayal of our own ideals in the American resort to torture of prisoners. I mourn, with Iraq veteran and British MP Rory Stewart, "our inability to acknowledge the inherent paradoxes of occupation, to recognize an impossible mission, to expose the flimsiest of national security arguments, or to accept the limitations of government institutions abroad."
Above all, I am haunted by my long-ago conversations with Afghan women we once encouraged to gamble on a nobler future—and are now abandoning as fully as we abandoned Vietnamese employees struggling to get onto helicopters lifting off from the U.S. embassy roof for the last time. I wonder, heretically, if it would have been better for them if we had not kindled Afghan hopes we could never fulfill. Did our pursuit of a revolutionary best rather than a more modest evolutionary good in raising aspiration for change make things worse rather than better for Afghanistan's 15 million women?
This is the question I would now ask women in Kabul on the anniversary of 9/11.
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The truth is being pushed aside in Afghanistan
The Canberra Times
By Nicholas Stuart
Opinion
September 11, 2012
Increasingly, the war in Afghanistan is no longer about anything that's happening on the ground. Instead it is about managing political perceptions and appeasing the many different interest groups with a stake in the war, while the allies rush for the exits.
Tomorrow a young Australian is being laid to rest here in Canberra. His death is a tragedy. Nothing should detract from his sacrifice. He was attempting to do the right thing in an honourable cause - training Afghan soldiers to support the rule of law. His actions displayed the wonderful, honest openness we've come to expect from the ordinary digger.
His cause was noble. What a pity his sacrifice was immediately betrayed by others with their own axes to grind, who used his murder as an excuse to embark on vengeful activities of their own.
Last week began badly for Defence and massive letters splashed why. President Hamid Karzai was demanding a ''full inquiry'' into why a 70-year-old imam and his son were killed during a search for Sergeant Hekmatullah, the killer of the three Australian soldiers. Our soldiers then seized others, including a woman. No evidence has ever been adduced linking the raided compound to the murders. It's not surprising Karzai wanted more information.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith was quick to front the cameras. He announced the operation had been authorised in accordance with normal procedure. ''Two people,'' he continued, ''who have been confirmed as insurgents, were killed.''
Pardon? How can an ageing religious leader be ''confirmed as an insurgent''? Where's the proof? Despite continued requests Defence has refused to provide any further information about the raid.
In a country where only 2.4 per cent of the population makes it to the age of 65, someone who's 70 acquires a degree of respect, particularly if he's an imam. Was it really necessary to kill the old man? How did doing so help the fight for democracy? What, specifically, were the circumstances leading to his death and why did Smith describe him as an ''insurgent''? Was he armed and firing at the Australians? Had he just witnessed his son's death? Was he reaching for a gun, as we were earlier told Osama bin Laden was? Or was he, like the al-Qaeda leader, surprised unarmed?
The informed guess in Kabul is that Matiullah Khan, the Australian-backed and notoriously corrupt provincial police chief, apparently provided the tip-off. You may not have heard of Matiullah, but your taxes have made him an Aussie dollar multi-millionaire. How? Well, his ''Road Police Brigade'' collects regular bribes for keeping the route to Kandahar open. That's the main supply route for our forces.
The illiterate former taxi driver's managed to do pretty well out of the war. He also enjoys a special relationship with the US and Australian military. He identifies the bad guys and we eliminate them. Unfortunately it sometimes turns out that the dead ''insurgents'' weren't actually Talib after all. Sometimes they seem to have just been his personal rivals.
So what actually happened? The Afghan president has accused our forces of acting without authorisation. They deny it but nothing Smith has said rebuts Karzai's central allegation of recklessness - unless you are prepared to take at face value the Minister's blithe assertions.
Unfortunately other observers, people who posses a detailed understanding of the human terrain of the province, furiously question the ADF's interpretation. We don't know what's happening but the odds are Karzai does. The President spent time in the province as a young man. He comes from the same Popalzai tribe as the dead Imam and may well have known him personally. He may suspect that Matiullah's duping the Australians into fighting an internecine war that's seeing most of his rivals eliminated while the ''road police'' receive training from the ADF, paid for by the Aussie taxpayer.
We'll never know the truth about what's happening in Afghanistan because too many people want to push facts to the side. Let's start with Karzai. Perhaps his anguish is very genuine. He sits in the palace in Kabul courtesy of a rigged election, but he understands the enormous anger surging around the country at what appear to be 'targeted killings'. The Afghan people heard his fury.
Smith, on the other hand, is worried about Australia. He wanted to shut down the bad headlines. That's exactly what he did. It's possible he believes what he says, although I personally doubt he's that naive. We want to trust our forces are doing the right thing and I'm sure most are attempting to bring peace and stability to the country. But in order to achieve this we need to follow the correct strategy. At the moment we're not. These killings are making Australia detested. But it's not working. No matter how many are eliminated, the insurgency isn't being beaten.
That's other point. Few Afghan media outlets would have carried Smith's denials. At one time we were waging a war for the hearts and minds of the locals. Today only Karzai's engaged in that particular war. Smith's words didn't carry very far across the broken, rocky ground of Uruzgan.
It's difficult to know what to make of the opaque noises coming from Kabul, but Karzai does, apparently, feel personally affronted by the death of the imam. Until now it has always been assumed that when our trainers pull out in 2014 that the special forces would remain for as long as was necessary to prop up the regime.
The SAS and commandos are happy to stay. They want to. The money's good and, although the work's hard and dangerous, it's exciting. Now, however, it seems as if some question marks are finally being raised about this continued deployment. Karzai's finally beginning to weigh up all the assistance he's receiving and deciding he might be better off without some of it. It's increasingly difficult to see what, if anything, our forces are achieving in the province.
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.
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Legal Proceedings Brought Against Afghan TV Channels
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
September 10, 2012
KABUL
The Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information has brought legal proceedings against two popular entertainment television channels.
The ministry said Setara TV and Saba TV had broadcast "inappropriate" content, including "revealing" foreign music videos.
The ministry said the content violated a new media law, which bans programs that are deemed an affront to Afghan culture.
The ministry did not provide further details, including whether the channels would stop broadcasting while proceedings were under way.
In related news, Afghan journalists have boycotted sessions of the lower house of parliament, saying the sessions were being censored by the government.
Previously, journalists viewed sessions from behind a glass partition while they received a live feed.
Reporters say they now receive a distorted feed that cuts out controversial remarks and incidents involving lawmakers.
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Afghanistan’s Karzai to Seek Lawmaker Backing for Securit
Bloomberg
By Eltaf Najafizada
Sep 10, 2012
The U.S. transfered control of its largest prison in Afghanistan for Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects to local officials, ceding authority over a facility where the burning of copies of the Koran sparked deadly protests.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai hailed the move in a statement “as an important step towards the recognition of Afghan national sovereignty.” The jail near the U.S.-run Bagram airfield near the capital, Kabul, houses more than 3,000 guerrilla fighters, General Zaher Azimi, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said by phone. Afghanistan has been supervising most of those held since a March handover agreement with the U.S., part of a larger pact governing security co- operation once American combat troops leave by 2014, he said.
The U.S. has suspended the transfer of some prisoners, among them foreign citizens, fearing they may be released by Afghan authorities that have criticized the long-term detention of suspects without charge, the Associated Press reported.
Karzai’s government has said U.S. control of the Bagram jail, at the center of abuse allegations by former inmates and the Afghan government, violated Afghanistan’s sovereignty and helped militants attract recruits. The jail is now officially known as the Parwan Detention Center, and is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Kabul.
Protests over the burning of Korans taken from the prison library led to attacks on U.S. personnel in Afghanistan in February. Two American advisers were shot dead in the Interior Ministry Feb. 25, while nine Afghans were killed and two American soldiers wounded in a suicide car-bombing in eastern Afghanistan two days later.
The U.S. is seeking to engage the Taliban in negotiations to renounce violence and accept the Afghan constitution to better the chances of peace following the planned withdrawal of U.S. combat troops in 2014.
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Don't forget US troops 'fighting and dying': Panetta
AFP
10/09/2012
SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Americans not to forget the troops who are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, as he paid tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks on Monday.
In a visit to a memorial in southwestern Pennsylvania honoring the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 that was hijacked on September 11, 2001, Panetta said the fight against the Al-Qaeda militants behind the attacks was not over, and that US soldiers were still in harm's way.
"I pray that as we remember 9/11, and the terrible things that took place on 9/11, that we will also take the time to remind ourselves of the sacrifices that have been made by those who have fought and died in order to make sure that it not happen again," Panetta told reporters.
"My concern is that too often we do not express our concern and our attention to those who are fighting and dying for this country. We're continuing to lose good men and women in battle in Afghanistan," he said.
He drew a connection between the passengers of Flight 93, who struggled with their hijackers and foiled an apparent attempt by Al-Qaeda to strike Washington, and US troops waging war against Taliban insurgents eleven years later in Afghanistan.
The US soldiers are "putting their lives on the line every day," he said.
"That kind of sacrifice, that kind of commitment, that kind of dedication, that kind of courage is what makes this country strong.
"And we had damn well better remember that every day."
Panetta's impassioned plea to honor the roughly 77,000 American troops deployed in Afghanistan came in the middle of a presidential campaign that has barely touched on the conflict or foreign policy.
The war in Afghanistan, launched after the 9/11 attacks over the Taliban's alliance with Al-Qaeda, has steadily lost popular support but has generated no massive street protests or bitter debate similar to the one surrounding the Iraq conflict.
A growing majority of Americans oppose the US military presence there and support NATO's plan to withdraw most combat forces by the end of 2014.
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Taliban accuse U.S. of ‘unjust’ war in Afghanistan
The Washington Times
By Ashish Kumar Sen
Monday, September 10, 2012
The U.S. used the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as an “illegal pretext” for an “unjust” war on Afghanistan, the Taliban said in a statement on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the attacks.
Eleven years since the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. is “facing utter defeat in Afghanistan militarily, politically, economically and in all other facets and it has exhausted all other means through which to prolong its illegal war,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an e-mailed statement.
A U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 after the Taliban government in Kabul, which had provided shelter to Osama bin Laden, refused cut ties to al Qaeda or turn in its leaders for their role in the attacks. Airliners hijacked by militants crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pa.
The Taliban spokesman said no Afghans were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and the U.S. had not been able to provide any “legitimate or logical proofs” proving such links.
The Taliban called on U.S. officials to “halt shedding the blood of the oppressed Afghans under this pretext and to follow the path of sound reasoning instead of tyranny and stupidity.”
President Obama has set a 2014 deadline to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan. NATO partners also will leave the country by that time.
Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban is “neither a threat to anyone nor will we let our soil be used to harm anyone.”
However, he added, that it is the Islamist group’s “due legal and religious right to defend our homeland and establish in it an Islamic system.”
More than 2,000 American troops have been killed in the war in Afghanistan.
“Despite America spending large amounts of military and economical assets under the title of homeland security and murdering thousands of its soldiers by the hands of Afghans however no American is safe in any society today,” said Mr. Mujahid.
The Taliban leadership is at odds over peace talks. U.S. efforts to pursue such a track have deepened rifts between the group’s political leadership that favors reconciliation and the field commanders determined to continue the war.
A report released by the Royal United Services Institute on Monday concluded that the Taliban is prepared to work with the U.S. on security in Afghanistan and participate in peace negotiations in return for international political recognition. The report is based on interviews with two former senior Taliban officials, one with close ties to the group’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, a lead negotiator for the Taliban and an Afghan mediator with extensive experience mediating with the militants.
The Royal United Services Institute report found that the Taliban and its base deeply regret its association with al Qaeda.
The Taliban will not budge on its insistence not to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai or his administration, who they view as corrupt and weak, says the report.
And the group will not accept the Afghan Constitution, a key condition laid down by the U.S. and Karzai administration for reconciliation talks, because the leadership perceive that acceptance would be “tantamount to surrender,” adds the report.
In a surprising finding, the report found that the Taliban are willing to accept long-term U.S. military presence and bases as long as they do not constrain Afghan independence and Islamic jurisprudence. The eviction of foreign forces from Afghanistan has been one of the motivating factors for the Taliban’s jihad.
The Taliban broke off peace talks with the U.S. in March. One of the reasons for its decision was that the Obama administration has not released five high-value Taliban operatives from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Gay Afghan men face exile or marriage in conformist masculine society
The fear and loathing of being gay in an Afghanistan where family is king is exposed by Hamid Zaher's memoirs
Guardian.co.uk
By Nushin Arbabzadah
Monday 10 September 2012
The first time he slept with a man, Hamid Zaher was a young Afghan with little experience of life outside the city of Kabul. His lover, an older, Pakistani man, happened to be just the right type – educated, mature and well-mannered.
The young gay Afghan met the older man by accident. Hamid, like most Afghans, had family in Pakistan and while visiting his sister there, one day he went for a stroll in a nearby public park. The other man just happened to be there, walking toward Hamid from the opposite direction.
In his brutally honest memoirs, Living in a Nightmare, Hamid writes about other, equally restless lone men, wandering about the park. He suspected that they, too, were looking for that forbidden love with another man.
The older man held the young Afghan's gaze as he walked towards him, getting closer and closer. He stopped when he reached Hamid and struck up a conversation. Soon after, intuition kicked in and the two men sought privacy on a bench hidden away from public view.
The older man complimented Hamid on his beautiful eyes and asked for permission to touch and kiss them. He cautiously stroked Hamid's face, and carefully watched the young man's reaction. Far from being appalled, Hamid was flattered and already melting. He soon found himself holding hands with and being kissed and caressed by the older man.
One thing led to another and for Hamid, this first experience of gay love felt just right. It was, after all, the realisation of what he had dreamed about since puberty.
"I feel sorry for all those men who die without ever having realised their dream of love with another man," Hamid writes in his memoirs.
Such men do exist in Afghanistan. More than often they are married and have children, leading a perfectly "respectable" life on the surface. But secretly, they yearn for this other love – the one that dare not speak its name.
Officially, Afghanistan is a strictly heterosexual, family-based society where sex outside the legal bounds of marriage is a crime punishable by imprisonment. But behind the clean-cut surface of respectability, there's a foggy underworld of chaotic sexuality with no clear rules and boundaries to protect the vulnerable, including gay men.
"We fall in love easily and give our heart and soul but only to be betrayed and ridiculed," writes one gay blogger from Kabul. He gives an example of the kind of fear and loathing existence that is part and parcel of being gay and Afghan.
The blogger's ex-boyfriend, who turned out to be an intelligence officer, finished their relationship with an action that reeked of self-hatred bordering on sadism. Upon ending the affair, the intelligence officer gave his ex's name and telephone number to all his male acquaintances, encouraging these random men to approach the former boyfriend for sex.
Needless to say, the emotional damage of such cruelty can be irreparable and yet it is a piece of cake by comparison with the danger to one's life that can accompany such forced public outing of a gay man. After all, if an Afghan man is outed as a homosexual (sometimes it's enough to just be labelled gay), he is considered a disgrace to his family and runs the risk of becoming a victim of "honour killing".
Family is king in Afghanistan – a mini-mafia structure that rules over life and death, providing protection for those who comply with its rules and punishing those who dare to stray from the rules. To be gay and Afghan means to live life in perpetual fear of discovery and betrayal, a paranoid existence spent in continuous terror of forced outing.
In addition to such soul-crushing anxieties, there's the tyranny of a conformist society with a stubborn image of the ideal manhood to which every male is expected to aspire. This ideal is represented by the figure of the strong and powerful patriarch.
To get married and have children is not enough to live up to this ideal. A man has to be tough and masculine, rich and powerful. More importantly, he has to father many sons and raise them as obedient foot-soldiers under his command. That's the kind of man who is envied in Afghan society. (The warlords, with their big bellies and long beards are all but a contemporary reincarnation of this traditional model of brutish, militant masculinity).
Needless to say, far from aspiring to this ideal, gay Afghan men dread the prospect of wedding, dodging the barrage of questions and postponing marriage as long as possible.
For Hamid Zaher, the first openly gay Afghan man, leading the fake, pretend life of a married heterosexual man was simply out of question. He fled Afghanistan, and endured years of horrific hardship in Iran and Turkey in order to escape the tyranny of Afghan conformism.
It's a conformism where married life is forced upon everyone, young boys and girls, homosexual men and lesbian women as well as those who simply have no interest in sexuality or in leading a typical Afghan family life.
Many Afghans don't flee because of politics, they flee their society and escape their culture, Hamid writes in his memoirs after meeting teenage runaway boys who fled Afghanistan to avoid marriage.
Hamid finally settled in Canada where he wrote his pioneering memoirs. It was there in Canada that he met online the man he would have become had he not fled Afghanistan. This other man, also gay, had succumbed to society, marrying and fathering four children.
"What bitter life it is to have just one longing and to never, not even for a day, have this longing fulfilled," wrote the other man from an office in Kabul. For Hamid, these words were enough to clarify which one of the two had made the right decision.
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