History > 2008 > USA > Wars > Afghanistan (III)

Bush Administration

Reviews Its Afghanistan Policy,

Exposing Points of Contention

September 23, 2008
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Four months before President Bush leaves office, his top civilian and military aides are conducting four major new reviews of the war strategy and overall mission in Afghanistan, which have exposed internal fissures over American troop levels, how billions of aid dollars are spent, and how to cope with a deteriorating security situation in neighboring Pakistan.

The most ambitious of the assessments, run by the White House, begins in earnest this week with a series of high-level meetings, administration officials said. Officials have been directed to produce detailed recommendations within about two weeks for Mr. Bush’s most senior advisers on a broad range of security, counterterrorism, political and development issues. Many of the dozen aides interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because the reviews are continuing.

Some of the issues being studied, including proposed increases in American troop levels in Afghanistan, have set off internal debate and could have far-reaching consequences for the next administration.

Last week, Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said he needed as many as 15,000 combat and support troops beyond the 8,000 additional troops that Mr. Bush had recently approved for deployment early next year. The general’s announcement came after he sent his request to the Pentagon; it has not yet been acted on.

It was only last December that the administration concluded its last major reassessment of Afghanistan policy. The administration recently announced a series of changes, including plans to double the size of the Afghan Army, restructure the American military command there and put more intelligence analysts on the ground to help hunt down militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

But administration officials express concern that the earlier adjustments have either failed or been overtaken by changes on the ground. Among other things, they note that the violence by militants in Afghanistan has risen by 30 percent this year; that deaths are rising among allied and American forces and in recent months have outnumbered those in Iraq; and that any successful policy must consider the security and economic conditions in neighboring Pakistan.

Related to General McKiernan’s request, one of the other assessments proposes a military campaign plan for Afghanistan for the next 5 to 10 years, creating long-term requirements for troop levels in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where most of the fighting is taking place, according to one participant in the study. But some American officials say that European allies may balk at these long-term force commitments, potentially leaving the United States to supply an even larger share of the troops.

The reviews are also examining how and where the nearly $6 billion in annual United States assistance to Afghanistan is being spent; how to improve the effectiveness of small teams of allied civilians and troops seeded throughout the Afghan provinces to spur economic growth; and how to strike the right balance between taking military action against Qaeda fighters in Pakistan and providing more development aid to that country.

More broadly, many of these assessments are seeking to improve synchronization across the military and the rest of the government, suggesting that seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States still cannot marshal its power effectively to prevail in Afghanistan.

“I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this month. But he added, “I am convinced we can.”

As the Bush administration enters its twilight months, many senior national security policy officials and military commanders say there is a new urgency to put the mission in Afghanistan on the right path. Among the reasons are the standard updates required of military strategy in a time of war. But officials acknowledge there are aspects of legacy-building, an effort to make sure the next president, whoever he is, cannot accuse the Bush administration of leaving Afghan policy in disarray.

“We’ll look at whatever adjustments need to be made to put it on a proper footing for long-term success,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman.

Geoff Morrell, spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, stressed that the analysis under way for Afghanistan was not as sweeping as the review of Iraq policy by the administration in late 2006 that resulted in the “surge” strategy that improved security in Iraq.

Other reviews under way within the military will ultimately feed into the White House’s broader assessment.

This summer, the acting commander of the Central Command, Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, sent a top-level team of planners to assist General McKiernan in assessing operations there. Senior officers said that the review undertaken by Central Command and General McKiernan was a full strategy review in everything but name, looking at the proper deployment of troops, the chain of command and even bandwidth requirements for communications and surveillance.

At the same time, the senior NATO military commander, Gen. John Craddock, has undertaken a review of the foundering NATO security mission in Afghanistan.

General Craddock’s review, which a senior Pentagon official said would be completed before the end of the month, was meant to take on the central question of whether NATO has supplied sufficient troops and equipment to fulfill the mission.

And just two weeks ago, Admiral Mullen told Congress he had ordered a comprehensive military strategy review to address the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Finally, another review is expected. Gen. David H. Petraeus quietly made a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan before handing off command of the war in Iraq last week to take over Central Command, according to senior American officers in the region.

While General Petraeus has not discussed his plans for Afghanistan, officials said that, as he did when assuming command in Iraq, he would bring in a trusted group of field-grade officers, led by Col. H. R. McMaster, to analyze the campaign and offer a fresh assessment for the region.

    Bush Administration Reviews Its Afghanistan Policy, Exposing Points of Contention, NYT, 23.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/washington/23policy.html

Gates:

More troops may go to Afghanistan

in spring

23 September 2008
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said up to three more combat brigades could be available to go to Afghanistan beginning next spring, in answer to repeated calls from commanders for more troops.

Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that more forces can't be committed now without extending combat tours or changing troop deployments. But in response to prodding from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., he said they probably could go in the spring and summer of 2009.

Last week the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan said he needs at least 10,000 more ground troops, beyond the 3,700 Army soldiers due early next year.

In testimony prepared for delivery Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates paints a somber picture of the hurdles in Afghanistan, as the U.S. heads toward its eighth year at war there.

He said the U.S. must encourage Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together to secure their border — a volatile region that has seen an increase in deadly clashes in the past year. The violence there has been exacerbated by ongoing tensions over cross-border incursions by U.S. troops as well as reports of civilian casualties, and unconfirmed suggestions that U.S. helicopters have been targeted by Pakistanis during border operations.

    Gates: More troops may go to Afghanistan in spring, UT,23.9.2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-09-23-gates-afghanistan_N.htm

US allows first family visits to Afghan prison

September 23, 2008
Filed at 12:12 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Five detainees in an American military prison in Afghanistan met with their families Tuesday in the first face-to-face visits allowed since the U.S. set up the detention center six years ago, officials said.

The five families met for an hour with the prisoners inside the heavily fortified Bagram Air Base, some 30 miles north of Kabul, said the International Committee for the Red Cross, which helped broker the agreement with the U.S. to allow the visits.

''This is indeed a crucial day for many families who have not seen their relatives in a long period of time,'' said Greg Muller, a Red Cross delegate in Kabul.

U.S. military spokesman Capt. Scott Miller said the U.S. will now allow routine family visits at least once a week and possibly more frequently. However it was not clear whether the U.S. has agreed to allow all of the some 600 prisoners in Bagram family visits and whether they will permit more than five visits a week.

Some 20 men, women and children boarded a small bus at the Red Cross offices in Kabul for the journey to Bagram. Most of the women wore the all encompassing burqa while some of the men hid their faces. The families met the prisoners at a facility outside the prison but inside the American base.

Haji Qasim's brother Ahktar Mohammad was detained nearly three years ago in the eastern province of Khost. Like many family members of prisoners in Bagram, Qasim said his brother was detained based on wrong information provided to American troops.

On Tuesday, he sat across from his older brother, a glass window separating the two. They could not hear each other well, but Qasim saw the number 2629 on Mohammad's prison uniform.

''We cried first,'' Qasim said. Then he said they chatted for about an hour and fifteen minutes, before Qasim and other family members were bused back to Kabul where they were given money by the Red Cross for their journey home.

The decision to allow the visits followed years of discussions between American officers and the Red Cross, which says face-to-face visits between prisoners and relatives are a guaranteed right under international humanitarian law.

''We understand the positive impact these types of programs can have on the mission here in Afghanistan, particularly in terms of detainee behavior,'' said Brig. Gen. James McConville, a senior U.S. military official at Bagram.

The U.S. military in Iraq already allows visits to detainees by family members. Two detention centers, one in Baghdad and one on the Kuwait border, receive an average of 13,000 visitors a month, said Maj. Neal V. Fisher II, a U.S. spokesman in Iraq. Video conference visits are also available, he said.

The Red Cross helps individuals in jails around Afghanistan and the world establish contact with their families, largely through written messages. Red Cross delegates have been visiting Bagram prison since 2002. Their reports on the conditions there are kept secret.

In January, the Red Cross began helping families speak with Bagram prisoners through a video-conferencing call system. Families come to the Red Cross offices in Kabul to speak to the detainees. More than 1,500 calls were made the last eight months, the Red Cross said.

McConville said the video-conferencing has improved detainee behavior, prompting the creation of face-to-face visits.

''The videophone system was an important first step in reassuring family members that their relatives held in Bagram were alive and well, and vice versa, because it gave them the opportunity to see and speak to one another,'' said Franz Rauchenstein, head of the Red Cross delegation in Afghanistan.

But nothing can replace ''the intensity'' of in-person visits, Rauchenstein said.

''We have continued to work with the U.S. authorities to make such visits a reality, and we are very happy for the families that they now have this opportunity,'' he said in a statement.

------

Associated Press writer Kim Gamel in Baghdad contributed to this report.

    US allows first family visits to Afghan prison, NYT, 23.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-AS-Afghan-US-Prison-Visits.html

Appeals court orders release of Iraqi abuse photos

Mon Sep 22, 2008
10:00pm EDT
The New York Times

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Monday ordered the release of 21 photographs it said depicted prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, which rights groups say prove abuse was widespread.

The pictures, which have never been made public and are part of U.S. Army investigative files, were first ordered released, with redaction, in 2006 by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein after he reviewed them and ruled they were of critical public interest.

Their release was held up while the U.S. Department of Defense appealed, arguing the release would endanger U.S. soldiers and result in an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the detainees they depict.

On Monday, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned aside those objections.

The 21 pictures were taken at multiple locations by individuals serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the photographs, the detainees "were clothed and generally not forced to pose," the ruling said.

"The photographs depict abusive treatment of detainees by United States soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan," the ruling said.

The order to release the images is part of a Freedom of Information Act suit filed in 2003 by civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, over treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

The ACLU, who originally requested the release of 29 photos, of which Hellerstein ruled 21 related to detainee abuse, said in a statement that the release of the pictures would help deter future abuse.

"These photographs demonstrate that the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational and not confined to Abu Ghraib," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said in a reference to the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison that gained notoriety in 2004 when photos emerged of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees.

"Their release is critical for bringing an end to the administration's torture policies and for deterring further prisoner abuse," Singh said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan had no comment. The government could try to appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court but otherwise the photos could be released by the ACLU within weeks.

In response to the suit, the Pentagon initially offered a list of documents, including a separate group of photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison, which included scenes of detainees being physically abused and sexually humiliated, but declined to make them public.

Hellerstein said the release of the images, which were provided by Sgt. Joseph Darby whose photos set off the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, would initiate debate on the conduct of American soldiers and about the U.S. Army's command structure.

The Pentagon appealed but backed down after the same photos and others were published on Salon.com.

To date more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the lawsuit.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Christine Kearney and Bill Trott)

    Appeals court orders release of Iraqi abuse photos, NYT, 22.9.2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE48M0Z420080923

War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply

September 19, 2008
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

YAKOWLANG, Afghanistan — A pitiable harvest this year has left small farmers all over central and northern Afghanistan facing hunger, and aid officials are warning of an acute food shortage this winter for nine million Afghans, more than a quarter of the population.

The crisis has been generated by the harshest winter in memory, followed by a drought across much of the country, which come on top of the broader problems of deteriorating security, the accumulated pressure of returning refugees and the effects of rising world food prices.

The failure of the Afghan government and foreign donors to develop the country’s main economic sector, agriculture, has compounded the problems, the officials say. They warn that the food crisis could make an already bad security situation worse.

The British charity Oxfam, which conducted a provisional assessment of conditions in the province of Daykondi, one of the most remote areas of central Afghanistan, has appealed for international assistance before winter sets in. “Time is running out to avert a humanitarian crisis,” it said.

That assessment is echoed by villagers across the broader region, including in Bamian Province. “In all these 30 years of war, we have not had it as bad as this,” said Said Muhammad, a 60-year-old farmer who lives in Yakowlang, in Bamian. “We don’t have enough food for the winter. We will have to go to the towns to look for work.”

Underlying the warnings are growing fears of civil unrest. The mood in the country is darkening amid increasing economic hardship, worsening disorder and a growing disaffection with the government and its foreign backers, particularly over the issue of government corruption.

Returning refugees are already converging on the cities because they cannot manage in the countryside, and they make easy recruits for the Taliban or other groups that want to create instability, said Ashmat Ghani, an opposition politician and tribal leader from Logar Province, south of Kabul, the nation’s capital.

“The lower part of society, when facing hunger, will not wait,” he said. “We could have riots.”

The Afghan government, together with United Nations organizations, was quick to mount an appeal at the beginning of the year to prevent a food shortage as world food prices soared and neighboring countries stopped wheat exports.

The World Food Program, which was assisting 4.5 million of the most vulnerable Afghans with food aid in recent years, widened its program to include an additional 1.5 million Afghans and extended it further because of the drought to reach a total of nine million people until the end of next year’s harvest.

Several weeks ago, Oxfam warned in a letter to ministers responsible for development in some countries assisting Afghanistan that the $404 million appeal by the government and the United Nations was substantially underfinanced.

“If the response is slow or insufficient, there could be serious public health implications, including higher rates of mortality and morbidity, which are already some of the highest in the world,” the letter said.

It also warned of internal displacement of families who had no work or food, and even of civil disturbances. “The impact as a whole could further undermine the security situation,” Oxfam said.

The United States government announced this week that it would supply nearly half the emergency food aid requested in the appeal.

Susana Rico, the director of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, said last-minute contributions had come in to cover the immediate emergency. But there is still a rush to get supplies to the countryside before the first winter snows arrive next month, she said.

Development officials say that deteriorating security has made it harder to do that job in the countryside. Aid workers have become the targets of an increasing number of attacks from insurgents and criminals.

The dangers have restricted the scale and scope of aid operations, said the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group of nongovernmental organizations.

Those dangers, the agency says, have even spread to areas previously considered relatively secure. In the first seven months of the year, it reported, 19 workers for nongovernmental organizations were killed, more than the number in all of 2007.

The agency appealed for governments to take a broad range of measures, beyond the military, to combat the escalating insurgency.

“The conflict will not be brought to an end through military means,” the agency said in a statement. “A range of measures is required to achieve a sustainable peace, including strong and effective support for rural development.”

Neglecting a lifeline as vital as agriculture has been dangerous for stability in Afghanistan, as people are unable to feed themselves, several provincial governors said in interviews.

The governor of Bamian, Habiba Sarabi, has repeatedly complained that because her province has been one of the most law-abiding and trouble-free, it has been forgotten in the big distribution of resources from international donors.

Donors, and in particular the United States government, have spent far larger amounts in the provinces in the south and southeast to help combat the dual problems of the insurgency and narcotics, she said.

Hasan Samadi, 23, the deputy administrator of Yakowlang District in Bamian Province, said, “The economic situation of the people here is very bad and the government is not focused to help.

“They focus on other provinces and unfortunately not on Bamian, and not on remote districts of Bamian,” he said.

Daykondi, adjacent to Bamian, is one of the most underfinanced provinces in the country. It receives half the budget of its neighbor to the south, Oruzgan, which has two-thirds the population and a poor record on combating insurgency and the cultivation of the opium poppy, said Matt Waldman, a spokesman for Oxfam in Kabul.

In Daykondi, 90 percent of the population relies on subsistence farming, yet the provincial Department of Agriculture has a budget of only $2,400 for the whole year, he added.

The imbalance in aid to the provinces is being corrected now, Governor Sarabi said, but in the meantime it has put great strain on the people in her province.

She estimated that a quarter of Bamian’s population would need food aid this winter because of the drought. There have already been local conflicts over water supplies in two regions, she said.

Development officials warn that neglecting the poorest provinces can add to instability by pushing people to commit crimes or even to join the insurgency, which often pays its recruits.

While the severe drought contributed to the decline of poppy cultivation in the central and northern provinces, it also pushed farmers into debt. If they do not get help now, they could turn back to poppy-growing and lose their faith in the government, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Mr. Costa called for urgent assistance for farmers and regions that have abandoned poppy cultivation. He and others have also criticized the inefficiency of international aid.

Of $15 billion of reconstruction assistance given to Afghanistan since 2001, “a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries,” the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a March report.

“Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world,” Mr. Costa said during a recent visit to Kabul. “I insist on the importance of increasing development assistance, making it more effective. Too much of it is eaten up by various bureaucracies and contractors.”

    War and Drought Threaten Afghan Food Supply, NYT, 19.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?hp

Gates Apologizes for Afghan Deaths

September 18, 2008
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Wednesday expressed “sincere condolences and personal regrets” for the recent deaths of Afghan civilians as a result of American and allied air strikes that have brought widespread condemnation.

After meeting here with President Hamid Karzai, Mr. Gates pledged that American and NATO forces would do more to prevent the loss of innocent lives.

“While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder,” Mr. Gates said.

The American military has been widely criticized for a recent incident in which more than 90 civilians may been killed.

During a press conference at the American Embassy for local and American reporters, he promised the people of Afghanistan that “we will do everything in our power to find new and better ways” to target what he described as the “common enemies of the United States and Afghanistan.”

“Our interests are the same as yours: an Afghanistan where all citizens can strive for a better and brighter future without fear of violence and terrorism,” he said.

The American- led coalition, meanwhile, announced that four of its soldiers and one Afghan national were killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday in the east of the country.

The statement did not identify the nationalities of the soldiers or say precisely where the incident occurred. Most of the troops in eastern Afghanistan are Americans.

The toll Wednesday was the highest in a single attack for several weeks in a mounting campaign by resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda militants. About 194 foreign soldiers have been killed this year, the highest number since the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001.

On his fourth visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary, Mr. Gates endorsed calls by the senior American commander, Gen. David McKiernan, for three more combat brigades, in addition to the extra battalion and extra brigade that President Bush has ordered deployed by early next year.

But Mr. Gates did not say whether the anticipated increases would come from the American military or whether allies would be pressed to fill the shortfall in troops identified by General McKiernan.

“My expectation is that we will be able to meet the requirements the commanders have here during the course of 2009,” Mr. Gates said.

The additional request could add about 15,000 troops, above the more than 5,000 fresh troops in the president’s current order, to bolster the American presence in Afghanistan.

General McKiernan said Tuesday that in an effort to reduce civilian casualties, he had tightened the rules around when NATO troops here may use lethal force.

Because of the troop shortage, he said, the military was relying more on air power; that has contributed to the rise in civilian casualties, which has outraged Afghans and brought international condemnation.

Hoping to reduce that toll, General McKiernan said, he issued a “revised tactical order” to NATO troops on Sept. 2, which emphasized putting Afghan forces out front in searches of homes and requiring multiple sources of information before attacking targets. It also set rules calibrating how quickly troops may increase their use of force to lethal levels, the general said. -

Mr. Gates gave an impassioned restatement of the American commitment to Afghanistan, which often has been described as the forgotten war while vastly more resources were committed to Iraq.

“You have seen the face of the enemy, the ruthlessness and the determination,” he said Wednesday. “Let there be no doubt that the United States and our many partners around the world are just as determined to help you win the peace and freedom you deserve.”

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting for this article.

    Gates Apologizes for Afghan Deaths, NYT, 18.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/world/asia/18gates.html?hp

U.S. Arms Sales Climbing Rapidly

September 14, 2008
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies.

From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism.

“This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.”

The surging American arms sales reflect the foreign policy tides, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader campaign against international terrorism, that have dominated the Bush administration. Deliveries on orders now being placed will continue for several years, perhaps as one of President Bush’s most lasting legacies.

The United States is far from the only country pushing sophisticated weapons systems: it is facing intense competition from Russia and elsewhere in Europe, including continuing contests for multibillion-dollar deals to sell fighter jets to India and Brazil.

In that booming market, American military contractors are working closely with the Pentagon, which acts as a broker and procures arms for foreign customers through its Foreign Military Sales program.

Less sophisticated weapons, and services to maintain these weapons systems, are often bought directly by foreign governments. That category of direct commercial sales has seen an enormous surge as well, as measured by export licenses issued this fiscal year covering an estimated $96 billion, up from $58 billion in 2005, according to the State Department, which must approve the licenses.

About 60 countries get annual military aid from the United States, $4.5 billion a year, to help them buy American weapons. Israel and Egypt receive more than 80 percent of that aid. The United States has also recently given Iraq and Afghanistan large amounts of weapons and other equipment and has begun to train fledgling military units at no charge; this assistance is included in the tally of foreign sales. But most arms exports are paid for by the purchasers without United States financing.

The growing tally of international weapon deals, which started to surge in 2006, is now provoking questions among some advocates of arms control and some members of Congress.

“Sure, this is a quick and easy way to cement alliances,” said William D. Hartung, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. “But this is getting out of hand.”

Congress is notified before major arms sales deals are completed between foreign governments and the Pentagon. While lawmakers have the power to object formally and block any individual sale, they rarely use it.

Representative Howard L. Berman of California, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he supported many of the individual weapons sales, like helping Iraq build the capacity to defend itself, but he worried that the sales blitz could have some negative effects. “This could turn into a spiraling arms race that in the end could decrease stability,” he said.

The United States has long been the top arms supplier to the world. In the past several years, however, the list of nations that rely on the United States as a primary source of major weapons systems has greatly expanded. Among the recent additions are Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, India, Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan, according to sales data through the end of last month provided by the Department of Defense. Cumulatively, these countries signed $870 million worth of arms deals with the United States from 2001 to 2004. For the past four fiscal years, that total has been $13.8 billion.

In many cases, these sales represent a cultural shift, as nations like Romania, Poland and Morocco, which have long relied on Russian-made MIG-17 fighter jets, are now buying new F-16s, built by Lockheed Martin.

At Lockheed Martin, one of the largest American military contractors, international sales last year brought in about $6.3 billion, or 15 percent of the company’s total sales, up from $4.8 billion in 2001. The foreign sales by Lockheed and other American military contractors are credited with helping keep alive some production lines, like those of the F-16 fighter jet and Boeing’s C-17 transport plane.

Fighter jets made in America will now be flying in other countries for years to come, meaning continued profits for American contractors that maintain them, and in many cases regular interaction between the United States military and foreign air forces, Mr. Lemkin, the Air Force official, said.

Sales are also being driven by the push by many foreign nations to join the once-exclusive club of countries whose arsenals include precise, laser-guided missiles, high-priced American technology that the United States displayed during its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the Persian Gulf region, much of the rearmament is driven by fears of Iran.

The United Arab Emirates, for example, are considering spending as much as $16 billion on American-made missile defense systems, according to recent notifications sent to Congress by the Department of Defense.

The Emirates also have announced an intention to order offensive weapons, including up to 26 Black Hawk helicopters and 900 Longbow Hellfire II missiles, which can knock out enemy tanks.

Saudi Arabia, this fiscal year alone, has signed at least $6 billion worth of agreements to buy weapons from the United States government — the highest figure for that country since 1993, which was another peak year in American weapons sales, after the first Persian Gulf war.

Israel, long a major buyer of United States military equipment, is also increasing its orders, including planned purchases of perhaps as many as four American-made coastal warships, worth $1.9 billion.

In Asia, as North Korea has conducted tests of a long-range missile, American allies have been buying more United States equipment. One ally, South Korea, has signed sales agreements with the Pentagon this year worth $1.1 billion.

So far, the value of foreign arms deliveries completed by the United States has increased only modestly, reaching $13 billion last year compared with an average of $12 billion over the previous three years. Because complex weapons systems take a long time to produce, it is expected that the increase in sales agreements will result in much greater arms deliveries in the coming years. (All dollar amounts for previous years cited in this article have been adjusted to reflect the impact of inflation.)

The flood of sophisticated American military equipment pouring into the Middle East has evoked concern among some members of Congress, who fear that the Bush administration may be compromising the military edge Israel has long maintained in the region.

Not surprisingly, two of the biggest new American arms customers are Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just in the past two years, Iraq has signed more than $3 billion of sales agreements — and announced plans to buy perhaps as much as $7 billion more in American equipment, financed by its rising oil revenues.

Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said that making these sales served the interests of both Iraq and the United States because “it reduces the risk of corruption and assists the Iraqis in getting around bottlenecks in their acquisition processes.”

Over the past three years, the United States government, separately, has agreed to buy more than $10 billion in military equipment and weapons on behalf of Afghanistan, according to Defense Department records, including M-16 rifles and C-27 military transport aircraft.

Even tiny countries like Estonia and Latvia are getting into the mix, playing a part in a collaborative effort by 15 countries, mostly in Europe, to buy two C-17 Boeing transport planes, which are used in moving military supplies as well as conducting relief missions.

Boeing has delivered 176 of these $200 million planes to the United States. But until 2006, Britain was the only foreign country that flew them. Now, in addition to the European consortium, Canada, Australia and Qatar have put in orders, and Boeing is competing to sell the plane to six other countries, said Tommy Dunehew, Boeing’s C-17 international sales manager.

In the last year, foreign sales have made up nearly half of the production at the California plant where C-17s are made. “It has been filling up the factory in the last couple of years,” Mr. Dunehew said.

Even before this new round of sales got under way, the United States’ share of the world arms trade was rising, from 40 percent of arms deliveries in 2000 to nearly 52 percent in 2006, the latest year for which the Congressional Research Service has compiled data. The next-largest seller was Russia, which in 2006 accounted for 21 percent of global deliveries.

Representative Berman, who sponsored a bill passed in May to overhaul the arms export process, said American military sales, while often well intended, were sometimes misguided. He cited military sales to Pakistan, which he said he feared were doing more to stoke tensions with India than combat terrorism in the region.

Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, a Washington research group, said one of his biggest worries was that if alliances shifted, the United States might eventually be in combat against an enemy equipped with American-made weapons. Arms sales have had unintended consequences before, as when the United States armed militants fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, only to eventually confront hostile Taliban fighters armed with the same weapons there.

“Once you sell arms to another country, you lose control over how they are used,” Mr. Sharp said. “And the weapons, unfortunately, don’t have an expiration date.”

But Mr. Lemkin, of the Pentagon, said that with so many nations now willing to sell advanced weapons systems, the United States could not afford to be too restrictive in its own sales.

“Would you rather they bought the weapons and aircraft from other countries?” he said. “Because they will.”

    U.S. Arms Sales Climbing Rapidly, NYT, 14.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/washington/14arms.html?hp

Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid

September 8, 2008
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

AZIZABAD, Afghanistan — To the villagers here, there is no doubt what happened in an American airstrike on Aug. 22: more than 90 civilians, the majority of them women and children, were killed.

The Afghan government, human rights and intelligence officials, independent witnesses and a United Nations investigation back up their account, pointing to dozens of freshly dug graves, lists of the dead, and cellphone videos and other images showing bodies of women and children laid out in the village mosque.

Cellphone images seen by this reporter show at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries, among some 30 to 40 bodies laid out in the village mosque. Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old. Their shock and grief is still palpable.

For two weeks, the United States military has insisted that only 5 to 7 civilians, and 30 to 35 militants, were killed in what it says was a successful operation against the Taliban: a Special Operations ground mission backed up by American air support. But on Sunday, Gen. David D. McKiernan, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, requested that a general be sent from Central Command to review the American military investigation in light of “emerging evidence.”

“The people of Afghanistan have our commitment to get to the truth,” he said in a statement.

The military investigation drew on what military officials called convincing technical evidence documenting a far smaller number of graves than the villagers had reported, as well as a thorough sweep of this small western hamlet, a building-by-building search a few hours after the airstrikes, and a return visit on Aug. 26, which villagers insist never occurred.

The repercussions of the airstrikes have consumed both the Afghan government and the American military, wearing the patience of Afghans at all levels after repeated cases of civilian casualties over the last six years and threatening to erode their tolerance for the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai visited Azizabad on Thursday to pay his respects to the mourners, condemning the strikes, and vowing to arrest an Afghan he says misled American forces with false intelligence.

President Bush expressed his regrets and sympathy in a call to Mr. Karzai on Wednesday. And General McKiernan has issued several statements voicing sorrow for civilian casualties.

The Afghan government is demanding changes in the accords defining the United States military engagement in Afghanistan, in particular ending American military raids on villages and halting the detention of Afghan citizens.

“People are sick of hearing there is another case of civilian casualties,” one presidential aide said.

Differing Accounts

The accounts of the airstrike’s aftermath given by Afghans and Americans could not be further apart.

A visitor to the village and to three graveyards within its limits on Aug. 31 counted 42 freshly dug graves. Thirteen of the graves were so small they could hold only children; another 13 were marked with stones in the way that Afghans identify women’s graves.

Villagers questioned separately identified relatives in the graves; their names matched the accounts given by elders of the village of those who died in each of eight bomb-damaged houses and where they were buried. They were quite specific about who was killed in the airstrikes and did not count those who died for other reasons; one of the fresh graves, they said, belonged to a man who was killed when villagers demonstrated against the Afghan Army on Aug. 23.

At the battle scene, shell craters dotted the courtyards and shrapnel had gouged holes in the walls. Rooms had collapsed and mud bricks and torn clothing lay in uneven mounds where people had been digging. In two places blood was splattered on a ceiling and a wall. An old woman pushed forward with a cauldron full of jagged metal bomb fragments, and a youth presented cellphone video he said was shot on the day of the bombing; there was no time stamp.

The smell of bodies lingered in one compound, causing villagers to start digging with spades. They found the body of a baby, caked in dust, in the corner of a bombed-out room.

Cellphone images that a villager said that he shot, and seen by this reporter, showed two lines of about 20 bodies each laid out in the mosque, with the sounds of loud sobbing and villagers’ cries in the background.

An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village said he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike. The doctor, who works for a reputable nongovernmental organization here, at first gave his name but then asked that it be withheld because he feared retribution from Afghans feeding intelligence to the Americans.

The United States military, in a series of statements about the operation, has accused the villagers of spreading Taliban propaganda. Speaking on condition that their names not be used, some military officials have suggested that the villagers fabricated such evidence as grave sites — and, by implication, that other investigators had been duped. But many villagers have connections to the Afghan police, NATO or the Americans through reconstruction projects, and they say they oppose the Taliban.

The district chief of Shindand, Lal Muhammad Umarzai, 45, said he personally counted 76 bodies that day, and he believed that more bodies were unearthed over the next two days, bringing the total to more than 90. Mr. Umarzai has been praised for bringing security to the district in the three months since his appointment and is on good terms with American and NATO forces in the region.

American military investigators said that they had interviewed him and that he had told them that he had no access to the village. But Mr. Umarzai said Taliban supporters came into the village in midmorning after the airstrikes, forcing him and the police to leave the village, but that later he was able to return and attend the burials.

The United Nations issued a statement pointing to evidence it considered conclusive that about 90 civilians were killed, some 75 of them women and children. Villagers and relatives said that the bodies were scattered in different locations; many of the victims were visiting Azizabad for a family memorial ceremony, and their relatives took their bodies back to their home villages for burial. This reporter did not visit the other villages but was given a detailed list of names and places where the remaining victims were buried.

Accounts from survivors, including three people wounded in the bombing, described repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping, grandparents and uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. Most of the village families were asleep when the shooting broke out, some sleeping out under mosquito nets in the yards of their houses, some inside the small domed rooms of their houses, lying close together on the floor, with up to 10 or 20 people in a room.

“I woke up when I heard shooting,” Zainab, a 26-year-old woman who doctors said was wounded in the attack, said in an interview in the Herat city hospital. “The shooting was very close to our house. We just stayed where we were because it was dangerous to go out. When the bombardment started there was smoke everywhere and we lay down to protect ourselves.”

Yakhakhan, 51, one of several men in the village working for a private security firm, and who uses just one name, said he heard shooting and was just coming out of his house when he saw his neighbor’s sons running.

“They were killed right here; they were 10 and 7 years old,” he said. In the compound next to his, he said, four entire families, including those of his two brothers, were killed. “They bombard us, they hate us, they kill us,” he said of the Americans. “God will punish them.”

A policeman, Abdul Hakim, whose four children were killed and whose wife was paralyzed, said she had told him how an Afghan informer accompanying the American Special Operations forces had entered the compound after the bombardment and shot dead her brother, Reza Khan; her father; and an uncle as they were trying to help her. She said she had heard her father plead for help and ask the Afghan: “Are you a Muslim? Why are you doing this to us?” Then she heard shots, and her father did not speak after that, he said.

A United States military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, said in an e-mail message that she was unaware of such an allegation, and that the American military did not have Afghan civilian informers accompanying its forces during the mission. Soldiers treated wounded people at the scene, which indicated that the Laws of Armed Conflict were followed, she said.
 

No Taliban, Villagers Say

While the American forces reported they had come under fire upon entering the village, it is not clear from whom. The villagers and the relatives of some of the people killed in the raid insisted that none of them were Taliban and that there were no Taliban present in the village. Eight of the men killed were security guards supplied by Reza Khan to a private American security company and did possess weapons, said Gul Ahmed Khan, Reza Khan’s brother. Two other security guards and three members of the local Afghan police were detained by United States forces during the raid. Four of them were released a week later.

The Khan brothers are from the most prominent family in the village and were hosting the memorial ceremony for their brother, Taimoor Shah, who was killed in a business dispute a year ago. They had cards issued by an American Special Forces officer that designated each of them as a “coordinator for the U.S.S.F.” Another brother, Haji Abdul Rashid, blamed a business rival for falsely telling the Americans that their family supported the Taliban.

American military officials in Afghanistan and Washington have stood by their much lower body count. Capt. Christian Patterson, an American military spokesman at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, said that an investigating officer, a Special Forces major, visited the village after the airstrikes. Guided by aerial photographs, he visited six burial sites within a six-mile range of the attack; only one had any freshly dug graves, about 18 to 20 in total, Captain Patterson said. The 12-page investigative report does not indicate whether they were the graves of children or women. The officer did not interview villagers, he said.

Mr. Khan, whose house is just yards from the main graveyard, which contains 24 fresh graves, said no members of the American military had entered the village since Aug. 22. Villagers living around the graveyards would have seen them, he said.

The American military also said that it had found only two wounded people, a woman and a child, at the scene, and that in a survey of clinics, doctors and hospitals of the area it had found no other wounded.

U.S. Defends Operation

In a series of statements about the operation, the American military has said that extremists who entered the village after the bombardment encouraged villagers to change their story and inflate the number of dead. Yet the Afghan government and the United Nation have stood by the victims’ families and their accounts, not least because many of the families work for the Afghan government or reconstruction projects. The villagers say they oppose the Taliban and would not let them in the village.

“You can see our I.D. cards,” said a police officer, Muhammad Alam, 35, who was accused by the Americans of being a Taliban supporter and was detained for a week after the airstrikes, then released. “If the Taliban caught me, they would slaughter me.”

Two families in the village have lost men serving in the police during recent Taliban attacks. Reza Khan, whose house was the main target of the Special Operations Forces operation, and who was shot dead in the episode, was a wealthy businessman with construction and security contracts with the nearby American base at Shindand airport, and with a cellphone business in the town of Herat. A recent photo of him shows a clean-shaven, slightly portly man in a suit and tie — far from the typical look of a Taliban militant.

His brother, Haji Rashid, said the American forces “should question the people who gave them the wrong information.”

“We want them brought to trial and punished for what they have done,” he added.

His claim was supported by the district chief, Mr. Umarzai, who said, “The victims did not fire on the Americans.” He said he suspected that an informer falsely told the American forces that Taliban fighters were in the village and also staged the firefight. The gunmen first fired on the police checkpoint on the edge of the village that night, he said. “When the Americans came, they laid down heavy gunfire and then they left the area. Then the Americans called in airstrikes,” he said.

Villagers also challenged the American military’s claims that it successfully conducted its planned operation against a Taliban commander, Mullah Sadiq, and a group of his men.

A man claiming to be Mullah Sadiq called Radio Liberty several days after the raid and declared that he was alive and well and was never in the village of Azizabad that night. Reporters at the radio station, who asked not to be identified, said they knew his voice well and double checked the recording with residents of Shindand and they were sure the caller was Mullah Sadiq.

American military officials have said that the man who called the radio program was an imposter and that they are confident they killed their target.

A senior American officer who has been briefed on the military investigation’s findings said in an e-mail message: “I will simply say that the soldiers — U.S. and Afghan — reported what they saw and found at each building site as they looked for material, weapons, bodies. I cannot explain why later the numbers are so far apart.”

Members of the Afghan government investigation commission said that the Americans were just covering up the truth. “The Americans are guilty in this incident: it is much better for them to confess the reality rather than hiding the truth,” said Abdul Salam Qazizada, a member of Parliament and the government commission from Herat Province, where the village is located.

Villagers suggested that the soldiers just counted those who died in the open and did not try to dig under the rubble. A local journalist, Reza Shir Mohammadi, said that when he visited the village on the second day after the attack, women and children were still weeping at one collapsed house, saying they still had not found their mother and siblings.

The operation in Azizabad once again raises questions for the military about whether it is worth pursuing members of the Taliban with airstrikes inside a densely populated village where civilian casualties and property damage can be so high. A similar raid in the same district by American Special Forces in April 2007, which killed 57 people, led American and NATO commanders to tighten rules on calling in airstrikes on village houses.

“This is not fair to kill 90 people for one Mullah Sadiq,” said Mr. Umarzai, the district chief. “If they continue like this, they will lose the people’s confidence in the government and the coalition forces.”
 

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Sangar Rahimi and Abdul Waheed Wafa from Afghanistan.

    Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid, NYT, 8.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp

American Inquiry Disputes Afghan Deaths

September 3, 2008
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — An American military investigation concluded Tuesday that 5 to 7 civilians and 30 to 35 Taliban were killed in an airstrike operation in western Afghanistan last month, many fewer than the 90 civilians that the Afghan government and the United Nations found in their preliminary investigations. Two civilians were also wounded, the American command said in a statement.

The American investigation, a standard internal procedure, precedes a joint investigation that the military has agreed to conduct with the United Nations and the Afghan government.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, condemned the operation at the time and dismissed two commanders for what he called dereliction of duty and concealing the truth, after a government inquiry concluded that large numbers of women and children had died in the airstrike.

The United Nations’ special representative in Afghanistan said a human rights team had found convincing evidence that 90 people had been killed, 60 of them children.

The American military command originally reported a successful operation that killed 25 militants, then announced that it was opening an investigation.

Its findings Tuesday differed little from the first military reports. The operation was a planned offensive conducted in early on Aug. 22 in the village of Azizabad, in Herat Province, and Afghan and American forces came under fire as they approached their objective, the statement said. The fire’s intensity justified using small-arms fire and close air support, it said.

The military investigator interviewed 30 Afghan and American participants in the operation and reviewed reports from ground and air personnel during the engagement, the statement said.

The investigator also used video taken during the engagement, photos taken at the scene and weapons, explosives and intelligence materials collected there, some of it suggesting that militants had been planning an attack on a nearby American base.

The investigation found that 30 to 35 Taliban militants had been killed, with evidence suggesting that a known Taliban commander was among them.

The statement added, however, that the military investigator had not seen evidence collected by other organizations, nor were troops able to return to the village on Aug. 22. According to the United Nations and the Afghan government, villagers dug out most of the bodies of the women and children on that day.

U.S. Accused in Pakistan Deaths

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — At least 15 people, including women and children, died in an attack involving American-led forces in a remote Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan, intelligence officials and a witness said Wednesday.

The American-led coalition in Afghanistan said it had no report of such an incursion, in the militant-infested South Waziristan tribal region. Pakistan’s army confirmed an attack but did not say if it believed foreign troops were involved.

    American Inquiry Disputes Afghan Deaths, NYT, 3.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp

Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan

August 4, 2008
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world’s most powerful armies at bay.

The mounting toll inflicted by the insurgents, including nine American soldiers killed in a single attack last month, has turned Afghanistan into a deadlier battlefield than Iraq and refocused the attention of America’s military commanders and its presidential contenders on the Afghan war.

But the objectives of the war have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight American and NATO forces to defeat them — only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home.

The Taliban’s tenacity, military officials and analysts say, reflects their success in maintaining a cohesive leadership since being driven from power in Afghanistan, their ability to attract a continuous stream of recruits and their advantage in having a haven across the border in Pakistan.

While the Taliban enjoy such a sanctuary, they will be very hard to beat, military officials say, and American officials have stepped up pressure on Pakistan in recent weeks to take more action against the Taliban and other militants there. That included a visit last month by a top official of the Central Intelligence Agency who, American officials say, confronted senior Pakistani leaders about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Pakistani officials say those ties, which stretch back decades, have been broken. But there is no doubt that the Taliban continue to use Pakistan to train, recruit, regroup and resupply their insurgency.

The advantage of that haven in Pakistan, even beyond the lawless tribal realms, has allowed the Taliban leadership to exercise uninterrupted control of its insurgency through the same clique of mullahs and military commanders who ran Afghanistan as a theocracy and harbored Osama bin Laden until they were driven from power in December 2001.

The Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, a one-eyed cleric and war veteran, is widely believed by Afghan and Western officials to be based in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

He runs a shadow government, complete with military, religious and cultural councils, and has appointed officials and commanders to virtually every Afghan province and district, just as he did when he ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban claim.

He oversees his movement through a grand council of 10 people, the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, said in a telephone interview.

Mullah Bradar, one of the Taliban’s most senior and ruthless commanders, who has been cited by human rights groups for committing massacres, serves as his first deputy. He passes down Mullah Omar’s commands and makes all military decisions, including how foreign fighters are deployed, according to Waheed Muzhta, a former Taliban Foreign Ministry official who lives in Kabul and follows the progress of the Taliban through his own research.

The Taliban even produce their own magazine, Al Somood, published online in Arabic, where details of their leadership structure can be found, he said.

But while the Taliban may be united politically, the insurgency remains poorly coordinated at operational and strategic levels, said Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of the NATO force in Afghanistan.

Taliban forces cannot hold territory, and they cannot defeat NATO forces in a direct fight, other NATO officials say. They also note that scores of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders have been killed over the past year, weakening the insurgents, especially in the south.

Three senior members of the grand council were killed in 2007, and others have been detained, Mr. Muzhta said. The military council has lost 6 of its 29 members in recent years, he said. Despite their losses, however, the Taliban repeatedly express confidence that the United States and its allies will grow weary of a thankless war in a foreign land, withdraw and leave Afghanistan open for a return of the Taliban to power.

The Taliban say they need little in the way of arms or matériel. “The Taliban are now mounting a hit-and-run war against their enemies,” Mr. Mujahed, the spokesman, said. “It doesn’t need much money or weapons compared to what the foreign troops are spending.”

Even so, Western officials say the Taliban have a steady stream of financing from Afghanistan’s opium trade, as well as from traders, mosques, jihad organizations and sympathizers in the region, and Arab countries.

At the same time, Taliban leaders can still exploit their position as moral authorities — Taliban means religious students — which gives them overarching power over the various commanders, bandits, smugglers and insurgents fighting around Afghanistan.

That aura is increasingly terrifying. Known for their harsh rule when in power, the Taliban have turned even more ruthless out of power, and for the first time they have shown great cruelty even toward their fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

The Taliban have used terrorist tactics — which include beheadings, abductions, death threats and summary executions of people accused of being spies — as well as a skillful propaganda campaign, to make the insurgency seem more powerful and omnipresent than it really is.

“The increasing use of very public attacks has had a striking effect on morale far beyond the immediate victims,” the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group that seeks to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts, said in a recent report.

Some of that brutality may be attributed to the growing influence of Al Qaeda, but much of it has by now taken root within the insurgents’ ranks.

After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Qaeda and the Taliban both sought refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have since become a breeding ground where they and other foreign fighters have found common cause against the American forces in Afghanistan and have shared terrorist tactics and insurgent strategies.

Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border are now the main pool to recruit fighters for Afghanistan, General McKiernan said. Pakistani insurgent groups in the region — Pakistani Taliban — have also become a potent threat to the security and stability of Pakistan itself.

Jihad does not recognize borders, the Taliban like to say, and indeed much unites the Taliban on both sides of the border. They share a common Pashtun heritage, a longstanding disregard for the Afghan-Pakistani border drawn by the British and the goal of establishing a theocracy that would impose Islamic law, or Shariah.

In fact, the dispatches of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, carry the symbol of the Islamic Emirate, the name the Afghan Taliban used for their government.

Mr. Mehsud and his cohort have sworn allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, as well as to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former minister in the Taliban government who now commands Taliban forces in much of eastern Afghanistan.

Western military officials often describe Mr. Haqqani as running a distinct network with close links to Arab members of Al Qaeda, but he and his followers have also proclaimed allegiance to Mullah Omar.

Even Mr. bin Laden has paid tribute to Mullah Omar as Amir ul-Momineen, or Leader of the Faithful, the paramount religious leader.

To avoid jeopardizing their sanctuary or their hosts, however, the Taliban have always maintained the pretence that their leadership is based inside Afghanistan and that the insurgency is made up entirely of Afghans.

The two Afghan Taliban spokesmen, Mr. Mujahed and Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who speak regularly by telephone to local journalists, never reveal their whereabouts. They profess sympathy for their Muslim brothers, the Pakistani Taliban, but deny that there is any joint leadership or unified strategy.

They also claim that the Afghan Taliban broke with Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, which led to the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government dismisses those claims, however, and insists that the Taliban on both sides of the border are directed by Pakistani intelligence officials with the aim of destabilizing Afghanistan and maintaining some sway over their neighbor.

While the Pakistani government was one of the only supporters of the Taliban government when it was in power from 1996 to 2001, today the Pakistani authorities profess not to know the whereabouts of Mullah Omar or his colleagues.

But Afghan and NATO officials say the Taliban today operate much as the mujahedeen did in the 1980s, when they used Pakistan as their rear base, to drive out the Soviet Army, which had invaded Afghanistan.

Many members of President Hamid Karzai’s government, who were themselves mujahedeen, say the Taliban are even using some of the same contacts from 20 years ago, including a well-known trader in Quetta who handles logistics, housing and other supplies.

He was widely known to be the front man for the largest Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, according to one former mujahedeen commander who is now a senior official in the Afghan government.

Meanwhile, Taliban spokesmen dismiss the idea of negotiations or power-sharing deals with the Afghan government, even though Afghan officials say that more Taliban members have made overtures to talk in recent months.

“We carried out the fight to oppose the invaders,” one of the Taliban spokesmen, Mr. Ahmadi, said. “Now they are on the brink of humiliation. That’s the aim of our fight.”

    Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan, NYT, 4.8.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/world/asia/04taliban.html

1 US - led coalition member

killed in bomb attack

August 3, 2008
Filed at 5:58 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A roadside bomb struck a U.S.-led coalition vehicle on Sunday, killing one service member and wounding another on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, a coalition spokesman said.

The blast happened in Hussein Kheil village, in Kabul's eastern outskirts on the way toward a police training center, said Bariyalay Khan, a district police chief.

Coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry confirmed the casualties but did not specify their nationalities.

Khan said those traveling in the convoy were Americans.

Najib Rahman, another police official at the site of the blast, said an American helicopter landed to pick up the wounded while another hovered overhead.

Militants regularly use roadside bombs to attack Afghan and foreign troops in the country, which is facing a Taliban-led insurgency.

More than 2,700 people -- mostly militants -- have been killed so far this year in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.

    1 US - led coalition member killed in bomb attack, NYT, 3.8.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Violence.html

As the Fighting Swells in Afghanistan,

So Does a Refugee Camp in Its Capital

August 3, 2008
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — On a piece of barren land on the western edge of this capital, a refugee camp is steadily swelling as families displaced by the heavy bombardment in southern Afghanistan arrive in batches.

The growing numbers reaching Kabul are a sign of the deepening of the conflict between NATO and American forces and the Taliban in the south and of the feeling among the population that there will be no end soon. Families who fled the fighting around their homes in Helmand Province one or two years ago and sought temporary shelter around two southern provincial capitals, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, said they had moved to Kabul because of growing insecurity across the south.

“If there was security in the south, why would we come here?” said Abdullah Khan, 50, who lost his father, uncle and a female relative in the bombing of their home last year. “We will stay here, even for 10 years, until the bombardment ends.”

Sixty-one families from just one southern district — Kajaki, in northern Helmand Province — arrived in Kabul in late July. A representative for those families, Khair Muhammad, 27, said that a major jailbreak last month that freed hundreds of Taliban prisoners was the latest sign of the deteriorating security. “Do you know, the Taliban entered Kandahar city and broke into the prison?” he said. “Do you think that is security?”

The United Nations refugee agency has registered 450 families from Helmand Province at the camp — approximately 3,000 people. But that is only a part of the overall refugee picture. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people have been displaced by the insurgency in the south, but the numbers fluctuate as some have been able to return home when the fighting moves elsewhere.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that the displaced who have reached the cities represent only the tip of the iceberg, and many others are trapped by violence in remote areas without assistance.

Many of the families who have arrived in Kabul have suffered traumatic losses and injuries, and they say that they are pessimistic about the future.

“The Taliban are getting stronger,” said Muhammad Younus, a farm worker who abandoned his village after his father, brother and uncle were killed in an airstrike two years ago. “There were armored vehicles on the hill and they were firing. There was a heavy bombardment, and planes bombed, too,” he said. “They did not differentiate between the guilty and not guilty.”

He, like many of the displaced people, complained that villagers found themselves trapped between Taliban fighters, who used the villages for cover to attack foreign forces, and NATO and American forces, which would often call in airstrikes on village compounds where civilians were living.

“We left our houses because we had no power to resist the Taliban or the government,” said Mr. Muhammad, the representative who brought families to Kabul from villages in Kajaki.

“Anytime the Taliban fired a shot from our houses, then the coalition, the government and the police came to the area and hit us.”

“The government comes and arrests us, and then the Taliban come and arrest us as well,” he said. “We are under the feet of two powers.”

As a civilian plane circled above the city, Mr. Muhammad and the crowd of men around him all looked nervously upward. “We are in trouble with these things,” he said, pointing at the plane. “There was fighting in the village a hundred times, roadside bombs, bombardment, firing and shooting.”

His strongest complaints were against the Taliban who, he said, had accused a relative of being a spy for the coalition forces and executed him. “I absolutely know he was not,” he said vehemently.

“The Taliban are coming during the night, with heavy weapons, riding on vehicles, and we cannot even dare ask them to leave, because if they see someone at night outside they will slaughter them and accuse them of being spies,” he said.

But the heavy reprisals by NATO and American forces was what drove them from their homes in the end, he and others said.

Khan Muhammad, 35, came with 40 people from his extended family three months ago after their village, Tajoi, near Kajaki, was bombed and his 4-year-old son, Umar Khan, was killed. “His mother was cooking, and he was lying beside her,” he said. “The whole village was destroyed, and after that we left.”

He said the villagers did not even see the Taliban but heard them fire as foreign troops were driving along the road outside the village.

“We don’t know from which side they fired, but we heard that,” he said. “Half an hour or an hour later they bombed.”

His father, Sher Ali Aqa, 75, was trapped under the rubble and his leg was shattered. Still unable to walk, he sat on a mat beside a makeshift tent.

“I blame the foreigners,” Mr. Muhammad said. “If the Taliban fire from over there, do you come and bomb this village?”

He added, “We only want a stable country, whether with the Taliban or the foreigners.” But he said that the level of violence made him realize that the foreign forces could not bring security.

That sentiment was echoed by many of the villagers, who said that the civilian deaths were particularly galling given the sophisticated technology of the coalition’s warplanes.

“If they kill, if they wound innocent people, we don’t want them,” said Tauz Khan, a man from the Sangin district who said he lost five members of his family in bombings last year. “If they build and bring peace we will accept them.”

His father, brother and a daughter were among those killed. “You cannot take revenge against a plane,” he said. “But I will not forgive the foreigners for this crime.”

    As the Fighting Swells in Afghanistan, So Does a Refugee Camp in Its Capital, NYT, 3.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/world/asia/03afghan.html

Afghan Bombings

Kill 5 Soldiers and Interpreter

August 2, 2008
Ther New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — Roadside bombs killed five soldiers, at least four of them Americans, and an interpreter in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, allied and Pentagon officials said.

Four United States Army soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in Kunar Province by what the Taliban claimed was a remote-controlled bomb, Reuters reported.

A fifth allied soldier died in a separate roadside bombing in the eastern province of Khost, NATO said in a statement without identifying the nationality of the service member. Most of the troops in the NATO-led force in eastern Afghanistan are American.

The combat deaths offered the latest evidence of a strengthening Taliban insurgency that has menaced NATO forces and reclaimed control over some southern and eastern parts of the country.

Taliban and other militant groups have turned increasingly to the insurgents’ weapon of choice in Iraq — the improvised roadside bomb — to attack American and other allied forces in Afghanistan.

A Pentagon report last month noted an increase in attacks by Afghan militants using roadside bombs.

The violence has spiked even as the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan nears its highest level since 2001. Roughly 32,000 American soldiers are deployed in the country, up from 25,000 in 2005. The Pentagon is considering sending 7,000 more troops.

The American-led coalition also includes about 38,000 troops from dozens of other countries who are operating under NATO leadership.

Late Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates authorized sending about 200 additional specialized troops to Afghanistan, including bomb-disposal experts, engineers for clearing routes and the crews for eight Cobra and Sea Stallion helicopters, a senior Defense Department official said. Some of the troops and helicopters may be transferred from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Attacks in eastern Afghanistan have increased about 40 percent from the same time a year ago, largely because more militants are launching cross-border strikes from safe havens in the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan.

Last month, Taliban fighters attacked and nearly overran an American-run combat outpost in Kunar Province, killing nine American soldiers and wounding 15 in the worst attack against United States forces in Afghanistan in three years.

Pentagon analysts say much of the violence is fueled by a sharp increase in foreign Islamist fighters traveling to Pakistan to train and mobilize, and then carry out attacks in Afghanistan against Afghan and allied targets.

“It’s bad, and it’s increasing,” a Defense Department official who follows militant trends in Pakistan and Afghanistan said Friday about the influx of foreign fighters, many of them linked to Al Qaeda. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of the information.

The pattern may reflect a change that is making Pakistan and Afghanistan, and not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, intelligence analysts say.

American intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a “winning fight,” compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks recently.

Afghan Bombings Kill 5 Soldiers and Interpreter, NYT, 2.8.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/world/asia/02afghan.html