USA > History > 2010 > War > Afghanistan (IV)

Adam Zyglis

political cartoon

The Buffalo News

Buffalo, NY

Cagle

2 September 2010

U.S. President Barack Obama

Families Bear Brunt

of Deployment Strains

December 30, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO
and CATRIN EINHORN

WAUTOMA, Wis. — Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian, a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered.

So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle’s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle’s rules. And Shawn’s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents’ attention with their younger cousins.

The once comfortable Eisch farmhouse suddenly felt crowded.

“It was a lot more traumatic than I ever pictured it, for them,” Shawn, 44, said. “And it was for me, too.”

The work of war is very much a family affair. Nearly 6 in 10 of the troops deployed today are married, and nearly half have children. Those families — more than a million of them since 2001 — have borne the brunt of the psychological and emotional strain of deployments.

Siblings and grandparents have become surrogate parents. Spouses have struggled with loneliness and stress. Children have felt confused and abandoned during the long separations. All have felt anxieties about the distant dangers of war.

Christina Narewski, 26, thought her husband’s second deployment might be easier for her than his first. But she awoke one night this summer feeling so anxious about his absence that she thought she was having a heart attack and called an ambulance. And she still jumps when the doorbell rings, worried it will be officers bearing unwanted news.

“You’re afraid to answer your door,” she said.

Social scientists are just beginning to document the rippling effects of multiple combat deployments on families — effects that those families themselves have intimately understood for years. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in January found that wives of deployed soldiers sought mental health services more often than other Army wives.

They were also more likely to report mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and sleep disorder, the longer the deployments lasted.

And a paper published in the journal Pediatrics in late 2009 found that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in civilian families. The longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the researchers found, the more likely the children were to have had difficulties in school and at home.

But those studies do not describe the myriad ways, often imperceptible to outsiders, in which families cope with deployments every day.

For Ms. Narewski, a mother of three, it has meant taking a grocery store job to distract her from thinking about her husband, a staff sergeant with the First Battalion, 87th Infantry, now in northern Afghanistan.

For Tim Sullivan, it has meant learning how to potty train, braid hair and fix dinner for his two young children while his wife, a sergeant in a support battalion to the 1-87, is deployed.

For young Joey Eisch, it meant crying himself to sleep for days after his father, a platoon sergeant with the battalion, left last spring. His older brother, Isaac, calm on the outside, was nervous on the inside.

“It’s pretty hard worrying if he’ll come back safe,” Isaac said. “I think about it like 10 or more times a day.”

Joining the Army Life

Soon after Christina and Francisco Narewski married in 2004, he applied for a job with the local sheriff’s office in Salinas, Calif. But he got tired of waiting and, after talking things over with Christina, enlisted in the Army instead.

“We both signed up for it,” Ms. Narewski said. “We knew deployments were going to come.”

That day arrived in the fall of 2007, when their third child was just 5 months old. Ms. Narewski missed Francisco dearly and sometimes cried just hearing his voice when he called from Iraq. But when he returned home in October 2008, it took them weeks to feel comfortable together again, she recalled.

“It’s almost like you’ve forgotten how to be with each other,” she said. “He’s been living in his spot for 15 months. Me and the kids have our own routine. It’s hard to get back to, ‘Oh, you’re home.’ ”

Last April, he left again, this time to Afghanistan. Ms. Narewski, who lives in Watertown, N.Y., thought she was prepared. Her mother came to live with them. She signed up for exercise classes to fill the hours. She and Francisco bought BlackBerrys with instant messaging service so they could communicate daily. And yet.

“I’ve never missed him as much as I do right now,” she said recently. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving. It’s like you’re in a dream and you’re trying to get something and you can’t get it.”

Not all the spouses back home are women. Tim Sullivan’s days have revolved almost entirely around his two children, Austin, 4, and Leah, 2, since his wife, Sgt. Tamara Sullivan, deployed to Afghanistan in March.

He rises each weekday at 5:30 a.m. to dress and feed them before shuttling them to day care. Evenings are the reverse, usually ending with him dozing off in front of the television at their rented ranch-style house in Fayetteville, N.C.

He has moved twice and changed jobs three times in recent years to accommodate his wife’s military career. But he does not mind being home with the children, he says, because his father was not, having left the family when Mr. Sullivan was young.

“I’m not going to put my kids through that,” said Mr. Sullivan, 35, who handles child support cases for the county. “I’m going to be there.”

He worries about lost intimacy with his wife, saying that they have had a number of arguments by phone, usually about bill paying or child rearing. “She tells me: ‘Tim, you can’t just be Daddy, the hard person. You have to be Mommy, too,’” he said. “I tell her it’s not that easy.”

Yet he says that if she stays in the Army — as she has said she wants to do — he is prepared to move again or even endure another deployment. “I love her,” he said. “I’m already signed up. I made a decision to join the life that goes with that.”

Doing What Uncle Sam Asks

Isaac and Joey Eisch have also had to adjust to their father’s nomadic life. “I don’t try to get too attached to my friends because I move around a lot,” said Isaac, who has lived in five states and Germany with his father. (Joey has lived in three states.) “When I leave, it’s like, hard.”

When Sergeant Eisch got divorced in 2004, he took Isaac to an Army post in Germany while Joey stayed with his mother in Wisconsin. Soon after returning to the States in 2007, the sergeant became worried that his ex-wife was neglecting Joey. He petitioned family court for full custody of both boys and won.

In 2009, he transferred to Fort Drum and took the boys with him. Within months, he received orders for Afghanistan.

After nearly 17 years in the Army with no combat deployments, Sergeant Eisch, 36, was determined to go to war. The boys, he felt, were old enough to handle his leaving. Little did he know how hard it would be.

When Shawn put the boys in his truck at Fort Drum to take them to Wautoma, a two-stoplight town in central Wisconsin, Isaac clawed at the rear window “like a caged animal,” Sergeant Eisch said. He still tears up at the recollection.

“I question myself every day if I’m doing the right thing for my kids,” he said. “I’m trying to do my duty to my country and deploy, and do what Uncle Sam asks me to do. But what’s everybody asking my boys to do?”

Within a few weeks of arriving at his uncle’s home, Joey beat up a boy so badly that the school summoned the police. It was not the last time Shawn and his wife, Lisa, would be summoned to the principal’s office.

The boys were in pain, Shawn realized. “There was a lot more emotion,” he said, “than Lisa and I ever expected.”

Shawn, a state water conservation officer, decided he needed to set strict rules for homework and behavior. Violations led to chores, typically stacking wood. But there were carrots, too: for Joey, promises of going to Build-a-Bear if he obeyed his teachers; for Isaac, going hunting with his uncle was the prize. Gradually, the calls from the principal declined, though they have not ended.

In September, Sergeant Eisch returned for midtour leave and the homecoming was as joyful as his departure had been wrenching. Father and sons spent the first nights in hotels, visited an amusement park, went fishing and traveled to New York City, where they saw Times Square and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

But the two weeks were over in what seemed like hours. In his final days, Sergeant Eisch had prepped the boys for his departure, but that did not make it any easier.

“Why can’t we just, like, end the war?” Isaac asked at one point.

As they waited at the airport, father and sons clung to each other. “I’m going to have to drink like a gallon of water to replenish these tears,” the sergeant said. “Be safe,” Isaac implored him over and over.

Sergeant Eisch said he would, and then was gone.

Despite his worries, Isaac tried to reassure himself. “He’s halfway through, and he’s going to make it,” he said. “With all that training he’s probably not going to get shot. He knows if there’s a red dot on his chest, run. Not toward the enemy. Run, and shoot.”

But his father did not run.

Dad Comes Home

Just weeks after returning to Afghanistan, Sergeant Eisch, the senior noncommissioned officer for a reconnaissance and sniper platoon, was involved with Afghan police officers in a major offensive into a Taliban stronghold south of Kunduz city.

While directing fire from his armored truck, Sergeant Eisch saw a rocket-propelled grenade explode among a group of police officers standing in a field. The Afghans scattered, leaving behind a man writhing in pain. Sergeant Eisch ordered his medic to move their truck alongside the officer to shield him from gunfire. Then Sergeant Eisch got out.

“I just reacted,” he recalled. “I seen a guy hurt and nobody was helping him, so I went out there.”

The police officer was bleeding from several gaping wounds and seemed to have lost an eye. Sergeant Eisch started applying tourniquets when he heard the snap of bullets and felt “a chainsaw ripping through my legs.” He had been hit by machine gun fire, twice in the left leg, once in the right.

He crawled back into his truck and helped tighten tourniquets on his own legs. He was evacuated by helicopter and taken to a military hospital where, in a morphine daze, he called Shawn.

“Are you sitting down?” Brian asked woozily. “I’ve been shot.”

Shawn hung up and went into a quiet panic. He could not tell how badly Brian had been wounded. Would he lose his leg? He called the school and asked them to shield the boys from the news until he could get there.

Outside school, Shawn told Isaac, Joey and his 12-year-old daughter, Anna, about Brian’s injury. Only Isaac stayed relatively calm.

But later, Shawn found Isaac in his bedroom weeping quietly while looking at a photograph showing his father outside his tent, holding a rifle. Shawn helped him turn the photograph into a PowerPoint presentation titled, “I Love You Dad!”

For Shawn, a gentle and reserved man, his brother’s injury brought six months of family turmoil to a new level. Sensing his distress, Lisa urged him to go hunting, a favorite pastime. So he grabbed his bow and went to a wooded ridge on his 40 acres of property.

To his amazement, an eight-point buck wandered by. Shawn hit the deer, the largest he had ever killed with a bow. It seemed a good omen.

A few days later, Shawn flew with the boys, his father and Brian’s twin sister, Brenda, to Washington to visit Sergeant Eisch at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At the entrance, they saw men in wheelchairs with no arms and no legs. Others were burned or missing eyes. Shawn feared what the boys would see inside Brian’s room.

But Brian, giddy from painkillers, was his cheerful self. His right leg seemed almost normal. His left leg, swollen and stapled together, looked terrible. But it was a real leg, and it was still attached. The boys felt relieved.

Within days, Brian was wheeling himself around the hospital and cracking jokes with nurses, a green-and-yellow Green Bay Packers cap on his head. While Joey lost himself in coloring books and television, Isaac attended to his father’s every need.

“I feel a little more grown up,” Isaac said. “I feel a lot more attached to him than I was when he left.”

One doctor told Brian that he would never be able to carry a rucksack or run again because of nerve damage in his left leg. Someone even asked him if he wanted the leg amputated, since he would certainly be able to run with a prosthetic. Brian refused, and vowed to prove the doctor wrong. By December, he was walking with a cane and driving.

For Shawn, too, the future had become murkier. It might be many weeks before Brian could reclaim his sons. But he also knew how glad the boys were to have their father back in one piece.

“Brian came home,” Shawn said one evening after visiting his brother in the hospital. “He didn’t come home like we hoped he would come home, but he came home.”

“Every single day I think about all those families and all those kids that are not going to have a dad come home from Afghanistan,” he said. “That hurts more than watching my brother try to take a step because I know my brother will take a step and I know he’s going to walk down the dock and get in his bass boat someday.”

It was late, and he had to get the boys up the next morning to visit their father at the hospital again. The holidays were fast approaching and the snow would soon be arriving in Wisconsin. Shawn wondered whether he could get Isaac out hunting before the season ended.

Yeah, he thought. He probably could.

    Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains, NYT, 30.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/asia/31families.html

Disappearances With Reported Ties

to Pakistan Worry U.S.

December 29, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed.

The issue came up in a State Department report to Congress last month that urged Pakistan to address this and other human rights abuses. It threatens to become the latest source of friction in the often tense relationship between the wartime allies.

The concern is over a steady stream of accounts from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security services have rounded up thousands of people over the past decade, mainly in Baluchistan, a vast and restive province far from the fight with the Taliban, and are holding them incommunicado without charges. Some American officials think that the Pakistanis have used the pretext of war to imprison members of the Baluch nationalist opposition that has fought for generations to separate from Pakistan. Some of the so-called disappeared are guerrillas; others are civilians.

“Hundreds of cases are pending in the courts and remain unresolved,” said the Congressionally mandated report that the State Department sent to Capitol Hill on Nov. 23. A Congressional official provided a copy of the eight-page, unclassified document to The New York Times.

Separately, the report also described concerns that the Pakistani military had killed unarmed members of the Taliban, rather than put them on trial.

Two months ago, the United States took the unusual step of refusing to train or equip about a half-dozen Pakistani Army units that are believed to have killed unarmed prisoners and civilians during recent offensives against the Taliban. The most recent State Department report contains some of the administration’s most pointed language about accusations of such so-called extrajudicial killings. “The Pakistani government has made limited progress in advancing human rights and continues to face human rights challenges,” the State Department report concluded. “There continue to be gross violations of human rights by Pakistani security forces.”

The Obama administration has largely sought to confront Pakistan in private with evidence of human rights abuses by its intelligence and security forces, fearing that a public scolding could imperil the country’s cooperation in combating Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other extremist groups.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush urged Pakistan to capture militants and Islamic extremists linked to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Since then, human rights groups have said that Pakistan’s security forces used that campaign as a cover to round up hundreds, if not thousands, of political activists and guerrilla fighters in Baluchistan and hold them in secret detention.

Precise numbers of disappearances are difficult to pin down, human rights advocates say, partly because family members fear that reporting missing relatives could endanger the relatives or even themselves.

“It is very difficult to put numbers on disappearances as they are accompanied by intimidation of the next of kin of the disappeared,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Lahore, Pakistan. “People are unable to speak publicly. But we can safely say that disappearances are the order of the day across Pakistan, particularly in relation with counterterrorism.”

In Islamabad on Wednesday, the interior minister, Rehman Malik, addressed the security issue in Baluchistan without mentioning the disappearances. “We are trying to ensure law and order in Baluchistan,” he told lawmakers in the National Assembly. “I will assure that we will do everything to improve the situation.” In August 2009, he acknowledged that 1,291 people were missing in the country. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, said in an e-mail on Wednesday that “the courts and the government are investigating cases of disappearances with a view to establishing the whereabouts of the disappeared persons and the circumstances under which the alleged disappearances took place.”

Under pressure from Pakistan’s Supreme Court, which has held hearings on petitions filed by family members of missing Baluch men, as well as public rallies in supported of the disappeared, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari has been forced to respond to the outcry. A judicial commission established to investigate the disappearances is scheduled to present its report to the Supreme Court on Friday.

Pakistani intelligence officials say that human rights groups have exaggerated the number of people held incommunicado. The officials seemed to justify the extrajudicial detentions by citing the country’s weak judicial system and often poor police investigations that they say have led to dozens of terrorism suspects’ being acquitted by local courts.

American officials have dismissed these claims for years. “ ‘Disappeared’ Pakistanis — innocent and guilty alike — have fallen into a legal black hole,” the United States Embassy in Islamabad said in a cable, dated Feb. 8, 2007, that was obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, including The New York Times.

American officials are expanding programs to build up the judicial system in Pakistan. Officials also offer human-rights training to police officers and finance programs to reduce the backlogs of court cases that prevent family members of those who disappear from seeking relief through the Pakistani judicial system.

“This issue has been a persistent challenge for Pakistan,” said a senior American official who deals with South Asia and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “We’re trying to help Pakistan build democratic institutions so they can be a more effective partner.”

But American officials concede that the programs may take years to produce enduring results. The State Department’s most recent report on human rights in Pakistan, issued in March, said that during 2009 “politically motivated disappearances continued, and police and security forces held prisoners incommunicado and refused to disclose their location.”

That report, citing a Pakistani human rights group, said that in August 2009, Pakistani Frontier Corps paramilitary troops arrested two members of the Baluchistan National Party in Khuzdar, Pakistan. Two days later, the men were turned over to the police. “Both men showed evidence of having been tortured,” the report said. “Authorities reportedly forced them to make false confessions before their release.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    Disappearances With Reported Ties to Pakistan Worry U.S., NYT, 29.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/world/asia/30disappear.html

States of Conflict: An Update

December 26, 2010
The New York Times
By IAN LIVINGSTON, HEATHER MESSERA, MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and AMY UNIKEWICZ

IT is fairly straightforward to summarize the past year in Iraq and Pakistan, but a more complicated matter for Afghanistan.

This was the year of two big developments in Iraq: the major reduction in American combat forces and a protracted election in which voting in March was followed by a nine-month delay in forming a new government. Despite the political confusion, violence did not escalate, and the economy continued to make slow progress. Still, Iraq cannot afford as much stalemate in the coming year as it experienced in 2010, and the new government will need to deliver security, public services and economic growth.

Pakistan had a rougher year. The summer floods may have displaced more people than any other natural catastrophe in history. The good news is that the government’s war against the Pakistani Taliban showed some progress, if not in reducing overall violence levels then at least in terms of establishing greater control over what had been insurgent strongholds.

Regrettably, however, Pakistan’s level of cooperation with the United States against Afghan extremist groups did not show measurable progress in 2010 and may even have slipped somewhat, despite the increase in effective American drone strikes in the tribal areas. Pakistan’s civilian government continued to lose ground at home politically as well.

Afghanistan saw the completion of the American and NATO troop surges that were the focal point of President Obama’s December 2009 policy decision. Afghan security forces grew both in number and quality, and NATO clarified its plan to keep partnering with them through 2014. And while September’s parliamentary elections were marred by fraud, this time it was primarily Afghans who held other Afghans accountable in the aftermath — demonstrating some fledgling aspects of a working democratic system.

Kabul and its environs are reasonably secure and under the general control of Afghan Army and police forces, not NATO troops. But the insurgents have proved resilient, as indicated by trends in violence. Extremist sanctuaries in Pakistan remain a major problem despite Washington’s increased aid to that country. And corruption in the Kabul government remains endemic. In sum, the war’s basic trajectory remains unclear.


Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Ian Livingston and Heather Messera are researchers at Brookings. Chart by Amy Unikewicz of JellyFever Graphic Design in South Norwalk, Conn.

    States of Conflict: An Update, NYT, 26.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/opinion/27ohanlon.html

Taliban Fighters Appear Quieted in Afghanistan

December 26, 2010
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The deadliest group of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has not conducted a complex large-scale attack in the capital city of Kabul for seven months, its momentum stymied as elite American-led commandos have escalated raids against the militants’ bomb makers and logisticians.

But in a testament to the resiliency of the fighters, the so-called Haqqani network, and a nod to the fragility of the allied gains, the White House is not trumpeting this assessment. Instead, it is tucked into a classified portion of the Obama administration’s year-end review of its Afghanistan war strategy, and senior American officials speak of it in cautious terms, as if not wanting to jinx the positive trend.

That is because even in its weakened state, the network remains the most formidable enemy that American troops face in Afghanistan, and the group is showing signs of adapting its tactics and shifting its combatants to counter the allied strategy, American commanders say.

“They’re financed better, they’re better trained and they’re the ones who bring in the higher-end I.E.D.’s,” said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the top allied commander in eastern Afghanistan, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, which the Haqqanis have employed with lethal efficiency in the past several years.

In many ways, much of the war in Afghanistan, particularly in the rugged eastern part, is a war against the Haqqani family, whose patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a legendary guerrilla fighter in the Central Intelligence Agency-backed campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. His son Sirajuddin now runs the group’s daily operations from his haven in Pakistan, and he has made aggressive efforts to recruit foreign fighters from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in Central Asia.

The Haqqani network is considered a part of the Afghan Taliban, and is a key ally and protector of Al Qaeda’s top leadership, whose members are believed to be hiding in Pakistan’s remote border regions. American and other Western intelligence officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, shields the Haqqanis in exchange for the network’s attacks against Pakistan’s archrival, India, in Afghanistan.

American intelligence officials say that the Haqqani network planned the attacks in 2008 in Kabul against the Serena Hotel and the Indian Embassy. It has also been linked to the suicide bombing of a C.I.A. outpost in Khost last December, and has held an American soldier, Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, since he was kidnapped after walking off his Army base in Paktika Province in June 2009. The Haqqanis finance their operations with timber smuggling, kidnapping ransoms and donations from wealthy Persian Gulf individuals, intelligence officials say.

NATO commanders and senior Obama administration officials take heart in the fact that the Haqqanis have not conducted a complicated attack in Kabul since a suicide bomber steered his explosives-laden Toyota minibus into an American convoy on May 18. The attack killed 18 people, including 5 American soldiers and an officer from Canada, and wounded at least 47 civilians.

Allied officials attribute the tactical success to several factors. A sixfold increase in the past year in the number of Special Operations raids against insurgents, including the Haqqanis, has disrupted the militants’ operations. In the past three months alone, commandos have carried out 1,784 missions across Afghanistan, killing or capturing 880 insurgent leaders.

About one-third of those operations were directed against the Haqqani network, a senior NATO official said. He and two other NATO officials agreed to speak candidly about current operations if they weren’t quoted by name.

At the same time, 5,400 additional American ground forces have been deployed to eastern Afghanistan, bringing the total there to nearly 37,000. Combined with increased Afghan army, police and intelligence service operations in and around Kabul, the troop surge has hampered the Haqqani network’s ability to run suicide bombers in a crucial corridor between Kabul and Khost, adjacent to the group’s Pakistan sanctuary, allied commanders and independent counterinsurgency specialists say.

“We’re going after their networks — the I.E.D. suppliers and bomb makers, and lead fighters,” said the senior NATO official in Kabul.

To help offset the withdrawal of some troops from isolated outposts in the east, NATO has increased surveillance drone flights and positioned 68 tethered balloons with cameras and other sensors along the border with Pakistan, a senior allied official said.

Inside Pakistan itself, 99 of the 112 airstrikes launched by C.I.A. drones this year have been directed at North Waziristan, the operations hub for the Haqqanis as well as one of their Waziri allies, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, according to Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yet so wily and tenacious are the Haqqanis that Kabul is rife with rumors that their attacks in the capital have subsided for other reasons. One suggests that President Hamid Karzai’s government is paying the Haqqanis not to attack, while another suggests that the ISI has told the Haqqanis to back off in order to keep them in the mix for any Afghan reconciliation talks. NATO, Afghan and Pakistani officials deny such maneuvering.

American and NATO officials say the increased operations have degraded the Haqqani network in its stronghold of Paktia, Paktika and Khost Provinces, but not its ability to attack.

“While targeting multiple training camps and rat lines have yielded short-term gains, the resilience of the HQN in the area has made quantifying these gains difficult,” a second NATO official said in an e-mail, using the abbreviation for the Haqqanis. “The network continues to recruit fighters and take measures to conceal the extent of damage to their capacity. At this point, the effort has disrupted, rather than dislodged the Haqqani network.”

A recent report on the Haqqani network by the Institute for the Study of War, a research organization here, concluded: “The population that Haqqani relies on for recruits, shelter and support has grown increasingly frustrated with the preponderance of civilian casualties and the death of recruits in Haqqani-linked operations.”

In a sign of their resiliency, the Haqqanis are moving north and west to avoid the Special Operations raids and drone strikes, and take advantage of ties to family and criminal networks there, American intelligence officials say. “The insurgents are taking advantage of targets of opportunity and responding to pressure, rather than any concerted efforts to try to expand their influence,” the second NATO official said.

In addition, American commanders say the Haqqani network has shifted from staging complex attacks against targets in Kabul, to smaller suicide-bombings and a series of furious, largely successful assaults this past summer against remote American outposts near the border with Pakistan.

On Dec. 19, Haqqani-linked insurgents armed with AK-47s and grenades opened fire on a bus carrying Afghan army trainers. One attacker ran into the bus and blew himself up, killing five officers and wounding nine others.

Afghan and allied commanders say that the increased raids against the Haqqani network are just a piece of the broader counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, and the Karzai government, to win over the population with good governance and economic opportunity, as well as with improved security.

And this puts the United States in direct competition with the Haqqanis. “The Haqqani network’s goal remains territory,” said a third NATO official in Kabul. “While it does not have the capacity to unseat the government in Kabul, nor to really govern, it wants to seize territory because that allows it to generate income ‘Mafia-like.’ ”

Food Aid Cut After Bombing

KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — About 300,000 villagers impoverished by fighting in Pakistan’s tribal belt are scrambling to find food after a suicide bombing that killed 45 people outside a World Food Program center prompted a suspension of the relief project.

Pakistani officials said the attack was a sign of insurgent desperation, but the bombing challenged Islamabad’s claims of victory over Al Qaeda and the Taliban in this part of the border with Afghanistan.

Shahab Khan, World Food Program district coordinator, said Sunday that its four centers in the Bajaur tribal region had been shut since Saturday’s bombing. The centers feed the 300,000 people who returned to the district from camps for the displaced elsewhere in the country.

Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

    Taliban Fighters Appear Quieted in Afghanistan, NYT, 26.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/world/asia/27policy.html

Taliban Challenge U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan

December 25, 2010
The New York Times
By RAY RIVERA

JUMAH KALA, Afghanistan — The villagers gathered on mounds of dirt to watch as the American armored vehicles rolled in. The streets were narrow and banked by high mud walls; the bulky vehicles could barely squeeze through. The villagers had not seen a coalition patrol here in at least two years, they told the American commander as he stepped out to greet them.

“And how long has it been since you’ve seen the governor?” the commander, Capt. Aaron T. Schwengler, asked the villagers as they crowded around him.

“Ten years,” one man said through an interpreter.

But the villagers do see the Taliban, and on a nightly basis. Insurgent leaders here and in many of the other small farming villages that dot much of the Andar District in Ghazni, one of Afghanistan’s more troubled provinces, have filled the void left by the government. They settle land and water disputes and dictate school curriculums. They issue curfews and order local residents, by way of “night letters,” not to talk to foreign forces.

It is in this environment that coalition forces must try to persuade villagers to trust a government they seldom see, and to help coalition forces root out the Taliban at great personal risk.

While American-led NATO forces have claimed gains in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, this strategically vital part of Afghanistan’s east, at the crossroads of Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar and along roads out to the provinces of Paktia and Paktika, has proved stubborn. Despite beefed-up coalition patrols in recent months, the insurgents are still sheltering in this remote wheat-farming area.

Though NATO officials dispute the notion, local residents say the coalition forces lost momentum here two years ago when the Americans quit patrolling and turned the region over to the Polish military, which the Afghans say sharply curtailed patrols.

Without question, security has eroded. Insurgent attacks in Andar have surged 113 percent since 2008, and in neighboring Deh Yak 106 percent, according to military figures. Battalion patrols engage in regular firefights with the Taliban, often up close. And the insurgents are employing more sophisticated improvised explosive devices, imported from the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, using remote control devices and safe-arming switches to set off explosions.

Fighters from the Haqqani network, based out of North Waziristan, Pakistan, have increasingly targeted the southwest part of the province. Military officials say traditional Taliban fighters under the leadership of the Quetta shura have increasingly hit other areas in the province.

In October, nine American soldiers were ambushed as they sat down to midday tea with a villager. Insurgents pounded the house with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire, wounding three soldiers and knocking out their radio. Sgt. First Class Paul Meacham popped a can of red smoke to signal for help from the nearby forward operating base. The fight went on for 15 minutes until armored vehicles rolled in and drove the insurgents away.

The battalion had been in a lucky bubble since arriving in Ghazni. Though more than 40 members had been wounded, none had been killed. Their good fortune ran out on Dec. 15, just two months short of going home, when insurgents fatally shot a soldier while he was on an operation intended to flush the Taliban out of the local villages.

“There’s definitely a fight here,” said Capt. Robert Kellum, the battalion’s intelligence officer. “It’s a definite safe haven for the Taliban.”

The September parliamentary elections further illustrated the Taliban’s grip on eastern Ghazni, about 90 miles south of Kabul. In Andar, a district of about 100,000 people, only three people voted. Some Ghazni leaders have blamed Taliban intimidation and the poor state of security for the turnout. But it also reflected the disaffection many Pashtuns, the ethnic majority, here feel toward the Kabul government.

Either way, the result was a victory for the Taliban.

“It certainly gave some credibility that it’s a strong insurgency,” said Lt. Col. David G. Fivecoat, commander of the Third Battalion, 187th Infantry, the American Army unit that took charge of the area from Polish forces in September. “It gave them street cred.”

One place the government’s minimal footprint can be seen is in the schools. The government pays teachers’ salaries and buys books. But even here, the Taliban assert their influence. At a school of about 1,300 boys and 30 teachers in the nearby village of Chawni, the Taliban recently posted a letter on the wall detailing the curriculum that was to be taught.

“So here they get money from the government, books from the government, and they think it’s perfectly legitimate to teach what that Taliban tells them,” said Captain Schwengler, who commands the Third Battalion’s Company B.

Turning that influence around has been tough going for the American forces. They have had some success getting government officials to visit the rural stretches. Checkpoints improved security on some roads. But reconciliation efforts with local Taliban have been largely futile.

So, too, has the push to recruit local police officers, under a fledgling program to provide temporary security until Afghan national security forces can be built up enough to take over. About 2,100 local police officers have been recruited in 13 locations across the country since the program began in July, according to NATO officials, but none here.

The long-term nature of the challenge was clear to Captain Schwengler during his company’s recent visit to Jumah Kala, a village of about 1,000 people. While talking with a crowd of schoolchildren, he asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Hands shot up. Schoolteacher, some boys shouted gleefully. Doctor, others said.

“Who wants to be a policeman?” the captain asked. Hands dropped. “What about the army?” the captain said, pointing to a nearby Afghan National Army soldier who patrolling with the Americans that day. Silence.

For now, the American unit’s main focus here has been on restoring security: pushing the Taliban out so that governing and development can proceed. “We can’t build something if we’re getting shot at,” the captain said.

The Afghan district’s governor, Sher Khan, said he had evidence that security was getting better “day by day” with the Americans here, though the Taliban are still able to intimidate and kill.

And there is a tough balance to strike for young soldiers who must fend off ambushes in one moment and act as ambassadors of counterinsurgency in the next.

At one family’s mud compound this month, an American soldier who was keeping watch up on a shed roof accidentally broke a chunk off as he climbed down. The soldiers casually apologized without offering compensation for the broken roof. A minor incident, but still one that upset the family and did little to build their faith in the soldiers.

At another family compound where soldiers heard there might be weapons, an elderly patriarch showed the soldiers around as his wife and children stood off in a corner in fear. Suddenly, as the father disappeared around a corner with the soldiers, the children began crying, believing that he was being taken away. He returned moments later, to gasps of relief from the children.

Meanwhile, in another area of the village, Sgt. First Class Meacham sat down to tea with a family, and Captain Schwengler wrestled a village man as residents cheered. He then gave school supplies to children.

By the end of the patrol, Captain Schwengler’s company had hauled away a 155-millimeter artillery shell that a mother and her daughters had led the soldiers to.

The Americans had also helped the Afghan forces take away a man who an Afghan intelligence officer believed was related to a local Taliban judge, but who a group of villagers said was a Kuchi — a Pashtun nomad. As the man was taken away, the village children who earlier had smiled when the soldiers arrived now wore expressions that were full of uncertainty.

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Taliban Challenge U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan, NYT, 25.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/asia/26ghazni.html

Deadly Blast at Gathering in Pakistan

December 25, 2010
Filed at 3:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A burqa-clad suicide bomber attacked a crowd of people waiting for aid in Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 40 of them, officials said, showing militants' ability to strike despite army offensives.

The attack in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border came a day after a clash between Pakistani Taliban insurgents and security forces in the neighboring Mohmand region that left 11 soldiers and 24 militants dead.

"I myself have counted 40 bodies but the death toll could rise as several wounded people are in critical condition," Dosti Rehman, an official at the main government hospital in Bajaur, told Reuters.

Zakir Hussain, the top government official in Bajaur, confirmed the death toll and said 60 tribesmen were wounded. He said the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition. Several women and children were among casualties, officials said.

The suicide bomber, who was wearing a head-to-toe burqa but whose gender has not been ascertained, detonated explosives as hundreds of people from the Salarzai tribe were heading toward a food distribution center set up by the World Food Programme (WFP) for people forced from their homes by earlier fighting between security forces and al Qaeda-linked militants.

A WFP spokesman said the attack took place where people were being screened at a security checkpoint near their center.

Witnesses said the attacker first threw hand grenades at tribesmen before detonating the bomb.

"First there were two small explosions and people started running for cover. But within seconds there was a major blast and there were dead bodies scattered everywhere," witness Hussain Ahmed said. "It was very terrifying."

ANTI-TALIBAN TRIBE

The Salarzais are a major regional anti-Taliban tribe, which

has been backing army operations against the militants.

Pakistan's volatile ethnic Pashtun tribal lands on the Afghan border have been infested with militants and the army has mounted a series of operations to dislodge them.

Salarzai tribesmen have been instrumental in raising lashkars, or tribal militia, to back the government's operations against the militants.

Militants have attacked pro-government tribes in the past to punish them for supporting the government.

Hundreds of militants have been killed and many of their strongholds captured but the insurgents have shown they are able to strike back and have killed hundreds of people in a campaign of bomb attacks across the country.

On Friday, about 150 Taliban militants staged simultaneous attacks on five paramilitary checkpoints in the Baizai area of the Mohmand tribal agency, killing 11 soldiers and wounding a dozen, officials said.

At least 24 militants were killed in by defending paramilitary forces. A Taliban spokesman confirmed clashes but disputed the official death toll saying only two of their fighters were killed.

Officials have claimed several times that militants have been driven out of Bajaur. A senior military official in October said it would take at least six months to clear militants from Bajaur and Mohmand.

(Additional reporting by Izaz Mohmand and Sahibzada Saeed-ur-Rehman; Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Daniel Magnowski)

    Deadly Blast at Gathering in Pakistan, NYT, 25.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/12/25/world/international-us-pakistan-violence.html

Sally Goodrich, Who Aided Afghans After 9/11 Loss, Dies at 65

December 24, 2010
The New York Times
By DENNIS HEVESI

Just three months after losing her son Peter on Sept. 11, 2001, aboard United Airlines Flight 175 — the second plane to crash into the World Trade Center — Sally Goodrich received a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

For three years, through chemotherapy, grief for her son and thoughts of suicide, Ms. Goodrich fought depression and continued to work as a remedial reading teacher and program coordinator for at-risk children in the North Adams, Vt., school system.

Then, in August 2004, an e-mail from a friend of Peter’s arrived from Afghanistan. Maj. Rush Filson, a Marine, asked if Ms. Goodrich and her husband, Donald, could collect school supplies for children in a village southeast of Kabul.

“That was the beginning,” Ms. Goodrich later told The Boston Globe. “I call it the moment of grace. I knew Peter would have responded to that e-mail; I knew I had to in his name. For the first time, I felt Peter’s spirit back in my life.”

That spirit evolved into the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation, which has since built one school and helped support two other schools and an orphanage in Afghanistan.

Ms. Goodrich died of ovarian cancer on Dec. 18 at her home in Bennington, Vt., her husband said. She was 65.

“The idea that we could go to Afghanistan — where the Afghan people were taken advantage of by Al Qaeda, manipulated, and where the planning for our son’s death took place — and provide an alternative way of looking at the world was very appealing to us,” Donald Goodrich told The Associated Press.

With donations from friends, neighbors, schoolchildren, local clubs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Goodrich Foundation has so far raised more than $1 million, Mr. Goodrich said.

It has built a school for 500 girls in Logar Province and supported two smaller schools and an orphanage in Wardak Province. It has also helped exchange students from Afghanistan attend schools in New England, and some have gone on to receive scholarships to colleges like Williams, Mount Holyoke and Bates.

Donations came from all sorts of people, Ms. Goodrich told ABC News in 2005.

“We have Jews and Muslims and Christians,” she said. “We have ardent Republicans and we have Democrats and Red Sox and, I hate to use that word, Yankees. I’m a Red Sox fan.”

Peter Goodrich was 33 when he died. “As time went on,” Ms. Goodrich said, “I realized that I had, in fact, this opportunity to use my life to continue his.”

Sarah Wales Donavan, known as Sally, was born in Newton, Mass., on May 12, 1945. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1967 with a degree in sociology, and later earned a master’s degree in education from Boston University and another master’s as a reading specialist from Simmons College.

Besides her husband, Ms. Goodrich is survived by her son, Foster; her daughter, Kim Trimarchi; three brothers, Peter, Mark and Jed Donavan; and five grandchildren.

In April 2005, to survey construction of the school in Logar Province, Ms. Goodrich made the first of several trips to Afghanistan. She was greeted, she said, as the “kind foreign lady.”

“I have regained my sense of trust and hope, and I have seen the best of human nature,” she said. “I’ve been the most unfortunate of women, but I am now the most fortunate of women.”

    Sally Goodrich, Who Aided Afghans After 9/11 Loss, Dies at 65, NYT, 24.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/us/25goodrich.html

Life and Death Decisions Weigh on Junior Officers

December 20, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO

QURGHAN TAPA, Afghanistan — The hill wasn’t much to behold, just a treeless mound of dirt barely 80 feet high. But for Taliban fighters, it was a favorite spot for launching rockets into Imam Sahib city. Ideal, American commanders figured, for the insurgents to disrupt the coming parliamentary elections.

So under a warm September sun, a dozen American infantrymen snaked their way toward the hill’s summit, intent on holding it until voting booths closed the next evening. At the top, soldiers settled into trenches near the rusted carcass of a Soviet troop carrier and prepared for a long day of watching tree lines.

Then, an explosion. “Man down!” someone shouted. From across the hill, they could hear the faint sound of moaning: one of the company’s two minesweepers lay crumpled on the ground. The soldiers of Third Platoon froze in place.

Toward the rear of the line, Capt. Adrian Bonenberger, the 33-year-old company commander, cursed to himself. During weeks of planning, he had tried to foresee every potential danger, from heat exposure to suicide bombers. Yet now Third Platoon was trapped among mines they apparently could not detect. A medical evacuation helicopter had to be called, the platoon moved to safety, the mission drastically altered. His mind raced.

“Did I do the right thing?” he would ask himself later.

Far from the generals in the Pentagon and Kabul, America’s front-line troops entrust their lives to junior officers like Captain Bonenberger. These officers, in their 20s and early 30s, do much more than lead soldiers into combat. They must be coaches and therapists one minute, diplomats and dignitaries the next. They are asked to comprehend the machinations of Afghan allies even as they parry the attacks of Taliban foes.

As commander of Alpha Company, First Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, Captain Bonenberger was in charge not just of ensuring the safety of 150 soldiers, but also of securing the district of Imam Sahib, a volatile mix of insurgent enclaves and peaceful farming villages along the Tajikistan border.

In his first three months of command, he had led soldiers in bruising firefights, witnessed the aftermath of a devastating car bomb, nominated soldiers for valor awards and disciplined others for insubordination. He had put in countless 18-hour days writing reports, accounting for $30 million in equipment and planning missions, at least one of which he had to abandon when his Afghan partners, the local police, unexpectedly declined to participate.

Captain Bonenberger, a graduate of Yale who protested the invasion of Iraq before he joined the Army, had deployed to Afghanistan once before, as a lieutenant in 2007, but had not commanded a combat unit. Now he had the prospect, terrifying but also thrilling, of shouldering greater responsibility than he had ever known.

“You have the ability, and the responsibility, to imagine and implement the strategy that will turn your districts from red to yellow to green,” he said. “Taking command of Alpha Company was one of the crowning achievements in my life.”

Many officers fondly recall their days as platoon leaders and company commanders as the most fulfilling of their military careers. Yet the Army each year faces an exodus of captains from the service. Burnout, second-guessing by superior officers and the prospect of dull administrative jobs after deployment are often cited as reasons.

Captain Bonenberger would soon face questions about the events on Qurghan Tapa, from both himself and his superiors. But in the relentless world of the front-line commander, he also had to put them out of his mind and advance the battalion’s mission. That was best, he believed, for his company’s morale — and for his own sanity.

“You don’t have the luxury of letting yourself really feel,” he said later. “That is the part of me that I could very happily see going away if I weren’t in the Army. But in the Army, it is absolutely essential. You can’t dwell on it.”

Frequent Ambushes

Imam Sahib is the northernmost district of Kunduz Province, an ethnically diverse region of rice paddies and cotton and wheat fields. Once considered secure, the province has seen a sharp rise in insurgent violence and intimidation since 2008.

Soon after arriving in March, battalion commanders discovered that a third or more of the province was controlled by insurgent groups, a mix of Taliban supporters, criminal gangs and radical separatists from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. By summer, American units were being ambushed almost every time they crossed the invisible borders into those contested areas, including in Imam Sahib.

Alpha Company stumbled into a series of fierce firefights in July just a few miles east of Imam Sahib city, the district’s government center. The next month, a car packed with mortar shells exploded near a convoy of American and Afghan trucks in the village of Qurghan Tapa, killing eight Afghan police officers and militiamen and wounding two American soldiers.

The bombing was devastating to the local police, who lost several top officers. But it was also wrenching for Captain Bonenberger, who had taken command of Alpha Company just weeks before. In the following days, the company battled insurgents around Qurghan Tapa, and the experience cemented his resolve to control the nearby hill.

“It’s all related for me,” he said in early September. “It all started with that suicide bombing.”

But the Taliban were not Captain Bonenberger’s only concern. The Afghan police could be unreliable partners, sometimes skipping planned missions, sometimes fleeing when shooting began.

The allegiances of the district police chief were also unclear. The Americans had received complaints that he was using the police to help his brother, a member of Parliament who was running for re-election. Other rumors connected the chief’s family to militias that smuggled drugs and weapons across the Tajikistan border.

Even more worrisome, the district governor was the brother of a Taliban commander who controlled villages south of Imam Sahib city. The governor claimed he had been trying to get his brother to support the government, but the Americans assumed that anything they told the governor’s office would be shared with the Taliban.

Captain Bonenberger had to consider those issues in early September as he planned one of his first major missions, building a checkpoint atop Qurghan Tapa hill that would be manned by the Afghan border police.

On the day before the mission was to begin, he led a convoy of nearly 20 vehicles carrying snipers, a mine-clearing team, a mortar crew and two infantry platoons to Imam Sahib. All that was needed was final consent from the district police chief, Col. Kajum Ibrahimi.

But Colonel Ibrahimi, who had supported the hill operation during previous meetings, suddenly had a litany of objections. Captain Bonenberger told him, “All I need is 10 men.”

“I can’t do 10,” Colonel Ibrahimi replied.

“I’ll take five,” Captain Bonenberger said.

“I cannot help,” the colonel concluded.

Captain Bonenberger walked out of the meeting deflated and perplexed. Was the chief trying to protect his brother’s re-election prospects? Was he afraid of another car bomb? Or was internal police department politics at play? (The provincial police chief had just been fired.) The captain assumed that he would never know what had changed.

The mission was scrapped, but Captain Bonenberger remained determined to secure the hill. And so, just a week later, the company returned to Imam Sahib.

This would be a scaled-back operation, without the Afghan police, using two American platoons to hold the hill just overnight, until polls closed the next day. “After that, we’ll have to break it down,” Captain Bonenberger said.

“It’s not my hill, it’s Giroa’s hill,” he added, referring to the government of Afghanistan. “If they want it, they’ll have it. If they don’t, then we’re not going to stay.”

Renewed Concerns

Early on the morning of Sept. 17, Sgt. First Class Dean Lee huddled with members of Alpha Company’s Third Platoon inside the walled district police headquarters in Imam Sahib city.

Sergeant Lee, a 36-year-old from Buffalo on his third combat deployment, took seriously his role as the platoon’s father figure, prowling the compound in his Red Sox cap looking for unfinished work and undisciplined soldiers. He has three daughters and is an evangelical Christian, but he can also tell a raunchy story and defuse tense moments with a joke.

This day he urged the soldiers to be on the lookout for antipersonnel mines. Then he said a prayer and sent them to their trucks. “Make sure your boots are tied,” he quipped, reminding them that an officer recently lost an unlaced boot in the mud of a rice paddy.

As the Alpha Company convoy approached Qurghan Tapa hill, Lt. Nathaniel Bleier, the leader of Third Platoon, called Captain Bonenberger on the radio and voiced renewed concerns about antipersonnel mines. Could they pepper the hill with mortar rounds or grenades to detonate buried explosives before scaling the hill, he asked.

Captain Bonenberger told Lieutenant Bleier that he had considered that idea but decided against it. There was no guarantee that mortars or grenades would detonate all the mines, he said. Worse, some of the rounds might not explode, leaving new dangers for the soldiers. An explosives team from the Navy attached to the battalion had assured him, he said, that they could find just about any antipersonnel mine buried in the hill.

The mission went forward. Waving his mine detector in front of him, Petty Officer First Class John Kremer, 27, of the Navy led Third Platoon up a narrow path along the edge of the hill. He listened intently to his device, calm as a man sweeping his front porch, as it squawked and buzzed at hints of buried danger.

A boom broke the afternoon quiet, and suddenly Petty Officer Kremer was on the ground, seriously wounded. Soldiers in the trenches nearby at first thought they were taking mortar fire. But when they learned that the minesweeper himself was down, a sickening realization set in: they might be surrounded by hidden explosives that the detectors could not sense because they were made of plastic. “We’re screwed,” one soldier muttered.

Sergeant Lee’s first instinct was to rush toward the wounded man. But he knew there were probably other mines nearby, so he stopped 10 yards short, holding back a young medic, Specialist Donovan Lovelace, who was also racing to the petty officer.

“Where do I walk?” Sergeant Lee shouted to a second minesweeper who was bending over Petty Officer Kremer.

“In someone else’s the tracks,” the minesweeper replied.

Sergeant Lee took one step and then another before arriving at a rut where the footprints ended. He looked left, glanced right and, finding no tracks ahead, leaped across the rut. The medic followed.

Within minutes, two other medics reached the scene, rapidly applying tourniquets to both of the sailor’s legs and giving him morphine before carrying him by stretcher down the hill, walking slowly behind the second minesweeper. A Blackhawk helicopter swooped in and took the sailor away, leaving an eerie silence in its wake.

Near the middle of the hill, Captain Bonenberger was on the radio explaining the situation to battalion headquarters while a platoon leader began ordering the remaining soldiers off the hill. At the top, Specialist Matthew Hayes shouldered his M240 machine gun and began stepping gingerly from his trench.

The specialist’s parents had both died in a car accident when he was an infant. He was known as the platoon’s practical joker, easily identified by the huge Mountain Dew tattoo on his left forearm. “In my mind, I thought we were safe because there were a lot of footprints,” he said later.

But when he shifted the weight of his 28-pound weapon, a mine detonated beneath his feet.

From below the cusp of the hill, Captain Bonenberger watched a dark cloud spiral skyward, trailed by chunks of debris. “That guy’s dead,” he said out loud, knowing that this time, someone from his own company was down.

Specialist Hayes would later recall waking up on his back several feet from where he had stepped on the mine. “I just smelled something burning and kind of opened up my eyes and I saw the dust,” he said. He looked at his right leg, spotted what looked like bone and did not look at it again. “I thought for sure it was blown off.”

A few yards away, Specialist Lovelace could see Specialist Hayes on the ground, his face taut with pain. Just a few minutes before, the medic had been sitting beside the gunner, his best friend in the unit, trying to collect himself after the first mine explosion. Now their eyes met and Specialist Hayes called to him: “Doc!”

For the second time in an hour, the medics stepped carefully in footprints to reach a wounded man. Sergeant Lee gripped his hand as Specialist Hayes screamed for morphine to dull the intense throbbing in his leg. But the specialist could also see anguish in his sergeant’s eyes and found himself trying to comfort him.

“Hey, I’ll be able to buy shoes half price,” Specialist Hayes said as Sergeant Lee helped carry him down the steep path.

At the bottom, Specialist Lovelace tapped the wounded soldier on the shoulder, bent to his ear and said over the roar of an incoming helicopter, “Drinks on me when we get back.” Specialist Hayes touched his friend on the cheek. And then he was gone, the chopper taking off in a hail of gunfire from insurgents a quarter-mile away.

The senior medic, Sgt. Jerry Price, wrapped an arm around Specialist Lovelace in the whirlwind left by the departing helicopter. “You did really good,” the sergeant told him. But the specialist wept anyway.

Quiet Doubts

That evening, Sergeant Lee gathered Third Platoon inside police headquarters in Imam Sahib city. A trash fire gave light to their darkening corner of the walled compound as he tried to make sense of the day. Specialist Hayes had a chance of keeping his leg, he told the men, but he admitted later that he did not believe it himself.

A soldier asked him, “Why was that hill so important?”

Sergeant Lee answered in a voice so low he was almost inaudible. Because the Taliban could have used it to “rain hellfire” on Imam Sahib, he said. But he also had doubts, which he had kept to himself, about whether securing the hill was necessary.

“You don’t always agree with the mission,” he said later. “But it’s what you’re paid to do when you are a soldier. We have a mission to accomplish.”

Captain Bonenberger rode back to the police headquarters lost in thought about the injured men. But as his truck pulled into the police compound, he learned that the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Russell Lewis, had already arrived to check on the company. Captain Bonenberger steeled himself for the meeting.

He had taken command of Alpha Company in July after spending the first three months of his deployment behind a desk in the battalion’s planning cell, barely able to contain his desire to lead a company. On his first visit to Imam Sahib, just days before assuming command, he joined a squad of soldiers who charged a machine-gun nest after their convoy was ambushed.

His new soldiers were impressed by his willingness to fight. “You can see it in his eyes,” one of the most seasoned ones said. The soldier had a name for the look: “the dark relish of mayhem.”

But the soldiers did not always know what to make of their new commander. He could be bookish one moment — a biography of Lord Curzon, British viceroy of India at the turn of the last century, was on his nightstand — and proudly lowbrow the next (“Hot Tub Time Machine” was a favorite movie). He listened to heavy metal music as well as Stravinsky. Violence in sports bothered him, yet here he was, planning missions to kill Taliban.

He was raised in Branford, Conn. His father was a corporate lawyer who had opposed the Vietnam War and studied classical guitar at Yale. His mother had been a painter who became a librarian, teaching Adrian and his younger sister an appreciation for gospel music.

But from childhood, he was fascinated by the soldiering life, immersing himself in Homer’s “Iliad” and, later, World War II histories. In high school, he considered applying to West Point, but was dissuaded by his father and grandfather.

He chose Yale, majoring in English literature and graduating in 2002. Early the next year, he protested near the United Nations when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the American case for war in Iraq, believing that the Bush administration was exaggerating the threat.

Yet by late 2004, he was talking to military recruiters, fueled by a mix of idealism and outrage. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib had made him wonder whether better leaders in the Army would have prevented the atrocities. He burned to test his own leadership skills.

A year later, he was a second lieutenant, only the second person from his Yale class to join the military, to his knowledge. (A blue-and-white “For God, for Country and for Yale” banner hangs over his desk at the company headquarters in Kunduz.)

On his first deployment in 2007, as a lieutenant with the 173rd Airborne Brigade to Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan, he carefully studied the leadership styles of his commanders. One worked hard to build a sense of camaraderie among his soldiers. Another berated subordinates in front of others.

He knew which one he would try to emulate. As Alpha Company commander, he tried to keep an open door. And to build team spirit, he ordered coins of his own design sent to Kunduz, where he distributed them to his soldiers. Each bore the Alpha Company insignia, a “gator.”

To him, leadership could make the difference between a unit that comes home “emotionally healthy” and one where everyone “just goes crazy with drinking.”

“I’m convinced that the only responsible way to be a leader in this life is to be compassionate,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t do hard things and set rules for people and enforce the breaches in discipline when they happen.”

In the days immediately after the minefield incident, he would acknowledge wondering “if there is other stuff I could have done.” But as his truck pulled into the police compound in Imam Sahib in the hours after it, he was deluged by reports of new crises.

An improvised explosive device had been found in the shopping district. A police checkpoint had received intelligence of an impending Taliban attack. And his First Platoon, which had stayed at the base of Qurghan Tapa hill, was bracing for a possible attack.

Captain Bonenberger briefed Colonel Lewis, grabbed some food and then headed back to his truck. “I’m done with my grieving,” he said. “There’s work to be done.”

Back Into the Fray

Third Platoon met for a group counseling session two days later with the battalion chaplain and a mental health counselor. Specialist Alan Bakula, a decorated young soldier who was injured in the elbow and face by the mine that Specialist Hayes hit, told the group he was “never so scared in my life” as when they withdrew from the hill, calling it “the longest walk of my life.”

Staff Sgt. Robert Kennedy, Specialist Hayes’s squad leader who was also injured by shrapnel from the blast, described the helplessness all the soldiers felt when facing mines they could not fight. “You’re thinking you could have done more,” he said to the soldiers. “Thinking that is good. But doing enough is good, too.”

Captain Bonenberger threw the company into new missions, telling his platoon leaders that work would help the soldiers get past the casualties. Within a week, Third Platoon was back patrolling near the base of Qurghan Tapa hill while First Platoon visited a village where American troops had not been before.

That village, Naghma Bazaar, bordered contested territory just northwest of Qurghan Tapa. A village elder and a doctor at the local clinic welcomed the Americans when they arrived. But then the mission took a worrisome turn after a mine-clearing truck fell into a ditch, stranding the platoon for hours.

When the Afghan police officers accompanying the Americans received reports of insurgent fighters gathering nearby, one of the officers challenged Lt. Matt Vinton, the First Platoon leader, to chase them away. Estimating that there were at most a dozen insurgents, Captain Bonenberger gave the effort his blessing.

Lieutenant Vinton led two squads across a rice paddy, and within minutes a rocket-propelled grenade burst overhead. Gunfire erupted, and the soldiers began to whoop.

They had wanted a fight, and they found one. The soldiers bounded across a field and through an irrigation ditch, taking cover behind fallen trees and haystacks. They cleared a small building from which insurgents had been shooting, then moved to a second compound across the road.

There, a terrified family emerged from a back room. As Lieutenant Vinton tried to calm them, an old man wept uncontrollably in a high-pitch wail while a young boy sang to himself, clutching the bottom of his father’s jacket.

Taliban fighters had forced their way into the house and demanded food and milk, the old man told the Americans through their Afghan interpreter. When the shooting began, the fighters fled into the fields with barely a trace.

The soldiers searched for bullet casings and other telltale signs of the insurgents, then returned to their trucks. They were elated because they had chased the Taliban from the village, if only for a day. “Schoolyard bullies,” Captain Bonenberger called them.

More important, the soldiers felt a sense of catharsis in having fought flesh-and-blood enemies for a change. The frustration of Qurghan Tapa lifted, at least for the moment.

“After the minefield incident, the greatest feeling on earth was getting shot at, because it gave you a reason to shoot back,” Lieutenant Vinton said later.

New Frustrations

Doctors amputated both of Petty Officer Kremer’s legs in the days after he was injured on Qurghan Tapa hill. He was eventually flown to San Diego, where he lives with his wife and daughter, who was born just weeks before the minefield incident. He has re-enlisted, saying he wants to rejoin his explosives disposal team after he finishes rehabilitation.

Specialist Hayes lost his right leg and headed to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He says he will probably leave the Army when his rehabilitation is over next year. His wife and 20-month-old daughter have joined him in an apartment on the hospital’s campus.

The specialist was initially angry about his injury, but says he came to grips with it while staring at the stump of his leg in a German hospital. These days, he reassures his platoon-mates in Afghanistan that he is improving, cracking jokes on Facebook about his plight.

“It’s got a hemi,” he said in one post showing a photograph of his new prosthetic leg.

Throughout the fall, Captain Bonenberger immersed himself in missions. Some yielded successes: an insurgent commander changed sides, villagers near Naghma Bazaar formed militias allied with the government, and Third Platoon killed a Taliban leader in its fiercest firefight of the year.

But there were also new frustrations: a major mission in Imam Sahib was canceled just hours before it was to start, this time because the battalion’s resources were needed elsewhere.

“For now, it’s jabs,” Captain Bonenberger said of the smaller-scale missions he was conducting instead.

He had again reviewed his preparations for the Qurghan Tapa hill operation and concluded that he had done all he could to avoid casualties. “Bottom line was, there wasn’t any system that I had that was going to increase our chances of having an effective clearance of that hill,” he said.

He was less certain about his future in the Army. His contract will be up next year, and he was not sure he would re-sign. “I’m definitely on the fence about that one,” he said.

“Part of it is just the exhaustion of constant campaigning, and part of it is the bad things that have happened that I take ultimate responsibility for,” he said. “I’m getting pretty well tired of seeing dead bodies, that’s for sure.”

For now, though, he had many more missions to plan and a company of soldiers to worry about. And he still had to decide what to do about Qurghan Tapa hill. Should the battalion clear it of mines and build that checkpoint? Or should they just level it with bombs?

So many decisions to make, so many reports to write. Captain Bonenberger turned to his computer and began to type.

    Life and Death Decisions Weigh on Junior Officers, NYT, 20.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/asia/21captain.html

U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan

December 20, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and DEXTER FILKINS

WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan. Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated.

The Americans are known to have made no more than a handful of forays across the border into Pakistan, in operations that have infuriated Pakistani officials. Now, American military officers appear confident that a shift in policy could allow for more routine incursions.

America’s clandestine war in Pakistan has for the most part been carried out by armed drones operated by the C.I.A.

Additionally, in recent years, Afghan militias backed by the C.I.A. have carried out a number of secret missions into Pakistan’s tribal areas. These operations in Pakistan by Afghan operatives, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, have been previously reported as solely intelligence-gathering operations. But interviews in recent weeks revealed that on at least one occasion, the Afghans went on the offensive and destroyed a militant weapons cache.

The decision to expand American military activity in Pakistan, which would almost certainly have to be approved by President Obama himself, would amount to the opening of a new front in the nine-year-old war, which has grown increasingly unpopular among Americans. It would run the risk of angering a Pakistani government that has been an uneasy ally in the war in Afghanistan, particularly if it leads to civilian casualties or highly public confrontations.

Still, one senior American officer said, “We’ve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across.”

The officials who described the proposal and the intelligence operations declined to be identified by name discussing classified information.

Ground operations in Pakistan remain controversial in Washington, and there may be a debate over the proposal. One senior administration official said he was not in favor of cross-border operations — which he said have been generally “counterproductive” — unless they were directed against top leaders of Al Qaeda. He expressed concern that political fallout in Pakistan could negate any tactical gains.

Still, as evidence mounts that Pakistani troops are unlikely to stage a major offensive into the militant stronghold of North Waziristan, where Al Qaeda’s top leaders are thought to be taking shelter, United States commanders have renewed their push for approval to send American commando teams into Pakistan.

In announcing the results of a review of the strategy in Afghanistan, Obama administration officials said they were considering expanded American operations to deal with threats inside Pakistan. They offered no specifics.

In interviews in Washington and Kabul, American officials said that officers were drawing up plans to begin ground operations to capture or kill leaders from the Taliban and the Haqqani network. American officers say they are particularly eager to capture, as opposed to kill, militant leaders, who they say can offer intelligence to guide future operations.

Even before finalizing any plans to increase raids across the border, the Obama administration has already stepped up its air assaults in the tribal areas with an unprecedented number of C.I.A. drone strikes this year. Since September, the spy agency has carried out more than 50 drone attacks in North Waziristan and elsewhere — compared with 60 strikes in the preceding eight months.

In interviews, the officials offered a more detailed description of two operations since 2008 in which Afghans working under the direction of the C.I.A. — a militia called the Paktika Defense Force — crossed the border into Pakistan. They also offered a richer account of the activities of these militia groups throughout the country.

According to an Afghan political leader, one of the raids was initiated to capture a Taliban commander working inside Pakistan. When the Afghan troops reached the compound, they did not find the Taliban commander, but the Pakistani militants opened fire on them, the Afghan said.

An American official disputed this account, saying that the C.I.A. militias are not sent over the border to capture militant leaders, but merely to gather intelligence.

In a second raid, the Paktika militia attacked and destroyed a Taliban ammunition depot and returned to base, officials said. Both of the C.I.A.-backed raids were aimed at compounds only a few miles inside Pakistani territory.

The Paktika Defense Force is one of six C.I.A.-trained Afghan militias that serve as a special operations force against insurgents throughout Afghanistan. The other militias operate around the cities of Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad as well as in the rural provinces of Khost and Kunar.

One American service member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the C.I.A.-backed militia near Khost had recently deployed in the mountains along the Pakistan border, where it would spend the winter trying to intercept Taliban fighters. So far, the C.I.A.-backed force has proven effective, he said.

“The rockets we endured for the past seven months suddenly dried up,” the service member said.

In the past, the American military has had only limited success in its few cross-border operations. In October, an American military helicopter accidently killed a group of Pakistani soldiers during a flight over the border in pursuit of militants. The episode infuriated Pakistan’s government, which temporarily shut down American military supply routes into Pakistan. Several fuel trucks sitting at the border were destroyed by insurgents, and American officials publicly apologized.

Two years earlier, in September 2008, American commandos carried out a raid in Pakistan’s tribal areas and killed several people suspected of being insurgents. The episode led to outrage among Pakistan’s leaders — and warnings not to try again.

Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Dexter Filkins from Kabul, Afghanistan. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

    U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan, NYT, 20.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/asia/21intel.html

Officials: CIA Station Chief Pulled From Islamabad

December 17, 2010
Filed at 9:35 a.m. EST
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA has pulled its top spy out of Pakistan after threats were made against his life, current and former U.S. officials said, an unusual move for the U.S. and a complication on the front lines of the fight against al-Qaida.

The CIA station chief was in transit Thursday after a Pakistani lawsuit earlier this month accused him by name of killing civilians in missile strikes. The Associated Press is not publishing the station chief's name because he remains undercover and his name is classified.

CIA airstrikes from unmanned aircraft have successfully killed terrorist leaders but have led to accusations in Pakistan that the strikes kill innocent people. The U.S. does not acknowledge the missile strikes, but there have been more than 100 such attacks this year — more than double the amount in 2009.

The lawsuit blew the American spy's cover, leading to threats against him and forcing the U.S. to call him home, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

CIA officials' "serious concerns" for the station chief's safety led to the decision to bring him home, a U.S. official said. A spokeswoman for the spy agency, Jennifer Youngblood, declined to comment.

The Pakistani lawsuit also named CIA Director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The station chief's name has been published by local media covering the lawsuit and demonstrations related to it. Demonstrators in the heart of the capital have carried placards bearing the officers's name and urging him to leave the country.

Shahzad Akbar, the lawyer bringing the case, said he got the name from local journalists. He said he named the man because he wanted to sue a CIA operative living within the jurisdiction of the Islamabad court.

A Pakistani intelligence officer said the country's intelligence service, the ISI, knew the identity of the station chief, but had "no clue" how his name was leaked.

The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because his agency, like many around the world, does not allow its operatives to be named in the media.

The CIA's work is unusually difficult in Pakistan, one of the United States' most important and at times frustrating counterterrorism allies.

The station chief in Islamabad operates as a secret general in the U.S. war against terrorism. He runs the Predator drone program targeting terrorists, handles some of the CIA's most urgent and sensitive tips and collaborates closely with Pakistan's ISI, one of the most important relationships in the spy world.

Almost a year ago seven CIA officers and contractors were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan. Six other agency officers were wounded in the attack, one of the deadliest in CIA history.

It's rare for a CIA station chief to see his cover blown. In 1999, an Israeli newspaper revealed the identity of the station chief in Tel Aviv. In 2001, an Argentine newspaper printed a picture of the Buenos Aires station chief and details about him. In both instances, the station chiefs were recalled to the U.S.

_____

Associated Press writer Chris Brummitt in Islamabad contributed to this report.

    Officials: CIA Station Chief Pulled From Islamabad, NYT, 17.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/17/us/politics/AP-US-Pakistan-CIA.html

Britons Reported Killed as U.S. Drones Strike in Pakistan

December 17, 2010
The New York Times
By ISMAIL KHAN

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — As attacks attributed to American remotely-piloted drones in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas seemed to widen on Friday, killing 26 militants, officials in North Waziristan said they believed two British converts to Islam had been among many people killed in recent days.

“I think it’s pretty much confirmed now,” said a senior Pakistani official in Peshawar, who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. He said the Britons were believed to have assumed Islamic names — Abu Bakar, said to be his late 40s, and Mansoor in his mid-20s — after their conversion to Islam in Britain a few years ago.

They traveled to North Waziristan a year ago to join Al Qaeda, the official said, and died when a missile struck the vehicle in which they were traveling along with two local militants who were also killed.

The official said the vehicle seemed to have been electronically tracked as it traveled from Afghanistan. The attacks took places in the Dattkhel area, well inside Pakistan.

“Circumstantial evidence suggests that the Americans have developed considerable human intelligence on the ground and have penetrated Al Qaeda and the Taliban that has enhanced their capability to hit moving targets,” the official said.

“It is clear that the Americans had solid and precise intelligence about the identity of those inside the vehicle,” the official said. In London, the Foreign Office said diplomats were aware of the reports and were trying to confirm them.

The report was the second in recent months suggesting the presence of foreigners among militants fighting American forces in the border area. In July, American forces in Afghanistan detained a German citizen, Ahmed Sidiqi, 36, said to have ties to the men who helped plot the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Then in October, Pakistani officials said that several German citizens were killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.

The attack earlier this week was followed on Thursday by a drone strike in the Terah valley in the Khyber region along the Afghan border which has become a converging point for Pakistani militants fleeing military operations in Swat, Khyber, Orakzai and South Waziristan tribal regions.

In three more strikes on Friday, a government official said 26 militants were killed in the same area, the fourth attack there in two days.

Almost all American drone attacks this year have been in the North Waziristan tribal region, a known sanctuary for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Attacks in Khyber are not very frequent, a Reuters report said. The area is home to Lashkar-e-Islami, a militant organization sometimes allied with the Pakistani Taliban, but which has often clashed with other groups.

For several years, drone attacks have been a regular element of American tactics to counter militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas but the number of such strikes has increased markedly this year.

As it published its year-end review of its Afghan war strategy on Thursday, the Obama administration indicated that it plans to step up attacks on Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the area.

That would mean using Predator and Reaper drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and possibly carrying out Special Forces operations along the border, officials indicated.

“There are a lot of, as we say in our building, kinetic actions taking place along that border,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said during a news conference at the White House on Thursday.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

    Britons Reported Killed as U.S. Drones Strike in Pakistan, NYT, 17.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/world/europe/18pstan.html

Afghan Report Exposes a Split Over Pullout Timelines

December 16, 2010
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — The White House report on Afghan strategy released Thursday was notable as much for what it did not say as for what it did.

It reports some real military gains, but acknowledges that they remain fragile and that NATO troops will need more time to achieve their goals. However, that progress has come only by adding more troops in key areas, and the fierce debate to come will be over whether any troops can be subtracted without undermining that progress.

Already, parts of the country with fewer troops are showing a deterioration of security, and the gains that have been made were hard won, coming at the cost of a third more casualties among NATO forces this year.

Then there are the starkly different timelines being used in Washington and on the ground. President Obama is on a political timetable, needing to assure a restless public and his political base that a withdrawal is on track to begin by the deadline he set of next summer and that he can show measurable success before the next election cycle.

Afghanistan, and the American military, are running on a different clock, based on more intractable realities. Some of the most stubborn and important scourges they face — ineffectual governance, deep-rooted corruption and the lack of a functioning judicial system — the report barely glanced at.

“We have metrics that show increased progress,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “But those positives are extremely fragile because we haven’t done enough about governance, about corruption. 2010 was supposed to be a year of change, but it has not changed as much as we hoped.”

In government, improvement was spotty at best. NATO commanders still fight tooth and nail with Afghan officials in Kabul to remove corrupt district governors, or to retain honest ones. Often they fail. The same goes for police chiefs and other law enforcement officials.

In the WikiLeaks cables released in the past several weeks, diplomats described pitched efforts to retain an effective governor in Helmand Province over the objections of President Hamid Karzai, who wanted to replace him with a tribal power broker with unsavory connections. The governor, Gulab Mangal, kept his job but only because of a concerted effort by the British, backed up by NATO allies.

A fundamental conundrum, unmentioned in the report, is that the United States and its NATO allies constantly speak of Mr. Karzai and his government as an ally and a partner and try to shore up his image as the leader of his people. Yet many Afghans view his government as a cabal of strongmen, who enrich themselves and their families at the expense of the country.

By identifying themselves with Mr. Karzai, the United States risks being seen as endorsing the culture of warlords and approving of the enrichment of a privileged few while much of the rest of the country lives in penury.

As September’s parliamentary elections suggested, many Afghans are so disillusioned with the government that they harbor doubt that even the idea of a government — any government — is worth supporting.

Fewer than a third of eligible voters cast ballots in the elections, and there was so much fraud that the proportion is likely to have been even lower. The candidates that Mr. Karzai supported did less well than expected, raising further questions about whether he is losing his base — and by extension, whether the United State is losing its.

A recent American military focus on blacklisting Afghan contractors who officials believe are paying bribes is an important change that could put the United States on the side of more respected actors rather than those viewed as swindlers, several military experts said.

One of the blacklisted contractors, Al Watan Risk, a security company that is owned by two cousins of Mr. Karzai’s, is alleged to have paid Afghan officials and Taliban commanders to keep routes safe for NATO supply convoys.

If so, that meant that American taxpayer dollars helped to finance the Taliban. By halting the security contract, the United States sent a signal that it is willing to draw a line that even relatives of the president would not be allowed to cross.

“The blacklisting of Al Watan Risk got a lot less attention than it deserved,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Biddle said that such actions would in the long term help improve governance. But he cautioned that in the short term, if the Americans could not rely on the private security companies to keep the peace, they would have to “backfill the security gap themselves,” and that could prolong the amount of time they need to root out the Taliban.

“I don’t see any way to do that other than gradually,” he said.

Also largely glossed over in the report is the extent and implications of pervasive corruption. Bribery and nepotism remain a feature of daily life for the vast majority of Afghans, and nowhere is it more clear than in the judicial system.

In most of Afghanistan, the police, prosecutors, judges and jailers can be bought. The government talks about the need to wipe out corruption, but at the highest levels it has done little since last summer when Mr. Karzai became infuriated by the efforts of an Afghan anticorruption task force to prosecute his chief of administration for the national security council.

Taken together, the lack of justice remains a major recruiting tool for the Taliban. And, according to a report released this week by Chatham House, a British research institute, corruption is “also implicated in the increasing spread of the insurgency outside its southern Pashtun base.”

The elephant in the room is that whatever the trajectory of the war, the Afghan government does not envision a defeat of the Taliban, but a negotiated peace. Unmentioned in the report is what the Americans may be looking for in such a deal, and what they are willing to do to bring that peace.

Rod Nordland contributed reporting.

    Afghan Report Exposes a Split Over Pullout Timelines, NYT, 16.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/asia/17kabul.html

The Afghanistan Review

December 16, 2010
The New York Times

For Americans, anxious about the war in Afghanistan, there is not a lot of comfort or clarity to be found in President Obama’s long-promised strategy review.

For weeks, American officials have been talking about fragile progress, a small drawdown of troops starting next summer, and 2014 as the date when Afghans will take “the lead” for their own security. The unclassified version of the report released Thursday did not go any further, nor did President Obama in his remarks.

Part of the murkiness may be unavoidable. It has been a year since the president announced he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but the last arrived only last summer. It may be too early to know if the military gains claimed by the Pentagon since then are temporary or have a real chance of breaking the Taliban.

Reporting in The Times shows a very mixed picture. Carlotta Gall and Ruhullah Khapalwak reported on Thursday that the American offensive in Kandahar Province was turning local residents against the insurgents — at least for now — and undermining the Taliban’s morale and its ability to recruit fighters. The same day, Alissa Rubin reported that insecurity is rising in the north, where the Taliban are expanding their reach and local armed groups are terrorizing residents.

It is even harder to judge the administration’s claims about “disrupting and dismantling” Al Qaeda.

These things may be difficult to measure, but there is no excuse for the review’s failure to explain how the administration plans to deal with two of its biggest problems: Pakistan’s continued refusal to go after Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries, and the corruption and incompetence of the Afghan government.

We understand the deep anti-American sentiments in Pakistan and the high strategic stakes. But we worry that the Pentagon is increasingly resigned to Pakistan’s inaction. American drone strikes may be inflicting real pain on Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but likely not enough. Pakistan’s army needs to do more to stop insurgents from crossing into Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s intelligence service must end its support and protection for the extremists.

Mr. Obama has to signal more clearly — to the Pakistanis and his own team — that American patience has limits.

The report, at least the public version, is even less frank about the myriad failings of the Afghan government and its erratic leader, President Hamid Karzai. Unlike Mr. Obama’s speech last December — when he said “the days of providing a blank check are over” — there wasn’t even an implicit warning to Mr. Karzai.

We know the administration got nowhere trying to bully Mr. Karzai. But private cajoling doesn’t appear to be any better. What is President Obama’s strategy for handling the Afghan president, or for empowering other more credible regional and local leaders? The report is silent on that, too.

When President Obama promised this review last December, he also vowed that America’s commitment in Afghanistan would not be open-ended. It may be too early to judge whether the strategy is working. But Americans will need a full accounting soon. Right now, they need a lot franker talk from Mr. Obama about what is really happening on the ground.

    The Afghanistan Review, NYT, 16.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/opinion/17fri1.html

On Borrowed Time

December 15, 2010
The New York Times

No American has worked harder to build better relations with Pakistan’s army than Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet as he completed his 21st meeting with Pakistan’s top general, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Islamabad on Wednesday, he was no closer to securing General Kayani’s commitment to go after the Taliban groups that are launching murderous attacks from Pakistan’s border region into Afghanistan.

During Admiral Mullen’s trip this week, which includes a member of our editorial board, he has been talking about the need for “strategic patience.” But until Pakistan’s army moves against the Afghan Taliban — and Pakistan’s intelligence service cuts all ties with the extremists — the prospects for President Obama’s war strategy are, frankly, dim.

On Thursday, Mr. Obama plans to issue his promised review of the war. It must provide clarity about the way forward in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The president is expected to argue that, with about 140,000 American and NATO troops now on the ground, there has been progress in Afghanistan, most notably pushing back Taliban forces from around Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual base and the country’s second-largest city.

But the list of things still going wrong is depressingly long, starting with the incompetence and corruption of the government of President Hamid Karzai. And as The Times reported on Wednesday, two new classified intelligence reports are particularly downbeat about the ease with which Pakistani-based militants cross into Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan’s refusal to shut down the sanctuaries used by the militants for rest and resupply.

While some American military commanders disputed the reports’ overall pessimism, there have been disturbing signs on our visit this week that the Pentagon is increasingly resigned to Pakistan’s inaction.

A defense official argued that Pakistan’s army is so overstretched — from flood relief and 19 months of sustained combat that has caused thousands of Pakistani casualties — that it cannot possibly undertake any more operations.

That may be true, but it would not take a major offensive for Pakistan to weaken the insurgents. The country’s intelligence service, the ISI, could start by withdrawing all support and protection from the militants.

Even as Pakistan’s army vows to take on militants spreading chaos and mayhem inside Pakistan, the intelligence service still sees the Afghan Taliban as a way to ensure influence on the other side of the border and keep India’s influence at bay. It is a dangerous game, based on a flawed premise. American officials say the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other groups increasingly act like a syndicate, sharing know-how and colluding when needed. General Kayani, whose previous job was heading the ISI, should certainly know that.

The Obama administration has said and done many of the right things to build a long-term relationship with Pakistan, including cultivating top military leaders and providing long-term development aid. And not all of the news is grim. Last week, Pakistan and American forces jointly launched a successful cross-border operation. The number of American cross-border drone attacks into Pakistan have also increased significantly, while Islamabad’s protests have been comparatively muted.

For a relationship this complicated, strategic patience may well be necessary. The problem is that the Taliban pose a threat, right now, to the survival of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Obama and his advisers — military and civilian — clearly have to do more to change the thinking in Islamabad.

    On Borrowed Time, NYT, 15.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/opinion/16thurs1.html

Afghan Report Sees July Troop Pullouts Despite Perils

December 16, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON— A review of President Obama’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan concludes that American forces can begin withdrawing on schedule in July, despite finding uneven signs of progress in the year since the president announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops, according to a summary made public Thursday.

The summary said the United States continues to kill leaders of Al Qaeda and diminish its capacity to launch terrorist attacks from the region. It cited some signs that the United States and its allies have halted or reversed inroads by the Taliban in Afghanistan and strengthened the ability of Afghan forces to secure their country, but acknowledged that the gains are fragile and could be easily undone unless more progress is made towards hunting down insurgents operating from havens in neighboring Pakistan.

The report is the first full-scale assessment of Mr. Obama’s strategy, and was once portrayed by the administration as critical to decisions about the course of the conflict and the pace of the exit by the United States from Afghanistan. But the White House has been playing down the report’s importance for months, even as it continues to balance pressure from the military for time to allow the troop surge to work and pressure from many Democrats — some inside the administration — to start showing next year that Mr. Obama is serious about winding down the nine-year conflict.

The summary shed little light on the scale of any troop withdrawal next year, which the administration says will be determined by conditions on the ground. It also reiterated that troops will remain in Afghanistan through at least 2014.

The five-page unclassified overview of the review describes both progress and challenges only in general and restrained terms, avoiding outright criticism of Pakistan for failure to do more to confront extremists on its soil and the Afghan government for corruption and inconsistent support for American efforts to secure key areas of the country.

Mr. Obama will formally present the Afghanistan strategy review Thursday morning at the White House. He will be joined, administration officials said, by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The summary points to a handful of areas where the influx of American troops has had an impact. For instance, night raids by special forces operatives and increased security measures in local villages, the report said, have reduced overall Taliban influences in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

In addition, the Afghan army has exceeded growth targets set by NATO and American military officials, and training of the Afghan forces who will be expected to take over the lead from American and NATO troops has improved, the summary said.

American counterterrorism operations, including unmanned drone strikes, have been particularly effective in targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in the border regions, a senior administration official said.

“There has been significant progress in disrupting and dismantling the Pakistan-based leadership and cadre of Al Qaeda over the past year,” the report said. “Al Qaeda’s senior leadership has been depleted, the group’s safe haven is smaller and less secure, and its ability to prepare and conduct terrorist operations has been degraded in several ways.”

But those gains appear dwarfed by the challenges that remain, particularly in Pakistan, where the review characterizes progress as “substantial but also uneven.”

In Pakistan “the denial of extremist safe havens will require greater cooperation with Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan,” the review said. “Furthermore, the denial of extremist safe havens cannot be achieved with military means alone, but must continue to be advanced by effective development strategies.”

While the overview appeared to take pains not to specifically criticize the Pakistani government, administration officials have expressed frustration over Pakistan’s willingness to hunt down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.

In fact, two new classified intelligence reports offer a negative assessment, saying that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.

For Mr. Obama, this year-end review of his Afghanistan strategy was intended to assess, among other things, whether the administration would be able to stick to its stated intention to begin reducing its military presence in Afghanistan next summer at an as-yet undecided pace.

Even as Republicans urge the president not to withdraw troops on an arbitrary timeline, White House officials are already bracing for a fight next year with their Democratic base, where many anti-war Democrats have been calling for a more rapid withdrawal of American troops. Some Democrats in Congress say that they will soon begin resisting continuing to spent $100 billion annually on Afghanistan.

The White House is keenly aware of the shifting political tolerance among Democrats for the Afghanistan war; and even as the review described tentative and uneven gains, administration officials made certain to reiterate that come July 2011, American troops will begin coming home. “Our strategy in Afghanistan is setting the conditions to begin the responsible reduction of U.S. forces in July 2011,” the report said.

But just how many soldiers will actually come home next July remains an open question; military officials have indicated that they want only a limited number, and even White House officials take pains to say that the withdrawal will be “conditions-based.”

By 2014, the overview said, the Afghanistan army will be expected to assume the lead all across the country, and the bulk of American troops will have come home.

Just as it did not single out the Pakistani government for criticism, the overview does not overtly criticize the government of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, reflecting the administration’s decision earlier this year that its previous tactic of overt public pressure on Mr. Karzai had appeared to backfire.

Now, even though administration officials privately say that corruption in the Afghan government has continued to flourish, the overview of the report appears to skirt the issue. “Emphasis must continue to be placed on the development of Afghan-led security and governance within areas that have been a focus of military operations,” the summary said.

In the year since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase, he has lost four members of his Afghanistan and Pakistan team: General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan who was fired in June because of remarks he made to Rolling Stone magazine; Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who left to run for mayor of Chicago; General James Jones, the National Security Advisor, who left his post in November, and Richard Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who died Monday after suffering a rupture in his aorta.

    Afghan Report Sees July Troop Pullouts Despite Perils, NYT, 16.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/asia/17afghan.html

NATO Push Deals Taliban a Setback in Kandahar

December 15, 2010
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and RUHULLAH KHAPALWAK

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the Obama administration reviews its strategy in Afghanistan, residents and even a Taliban commander say the surge of American troops this year has begun to set back the Taliban in parts of their southern heartland and to turn people against the insurgency — at least for now.

The stepped-up operations in Kandahar Province have left many in the Taliban demoralized, reluctant to fight and struggling to recruit, a Taliban commander said in an interview this week. Afghans with contacts in the Taliban confirmed his description. They pointed out that this was the first time in four years that the Taliban had given up their hold of all the districts around the city of Kandahar, an important staging ground for the insurgency and the focus of the 30,000 American troops whom President Obama ordered to be sent to Afghanistan last December.

“To tell you the truth, the government has the upper hand now” in and around Kandahar, the Taliban member said. A midlevel commander who has been with the movement since its founding in 1994 and knows it well, he was interviewed by telephone on the condition that his name not be used.

NATO commanders cautioned that progress on the battlefield remained tentative. It will not be clear until next summer if the government and the military can hold on to those gains, they said. Much will depend on resolving two problems: improving ineffectual local governments and strengthening Afghan troops to fight in NATO’s place.

The Taliban commander said the insurgents had made a tactical retreat and would re-emerge in the spring as American forces began to withdraw.

But in a dozen interviews, Afghan landowners, tribal elders and villagers said they believed that the Taliban could find it hard to return if American troops remained.

The local residents and the Taliban commander said the strength of the American offensive had already shifted the public mood. Winning the war of perceptions is something the military considers critical to the success of the counterinsurgency strategy being pursued by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the coalition commander.

While coalition gains in other parts of the south are spottier, Afghans with Taliban contacts say the insurgents have lost their bases in the rural areas around Kandahar and are a much weakened force in their old southern stronghold. Commanders have taken refuge across the border in Pakistan and are unwilling to return, they said.

“They are very upset and worried,” said one Afghan who lives in Quetta, the western Pakistani city where the Taliban leadership is based, and knows a number of Taliban commanders who live in his neighborhood. “This whole operation in the south has made it very difficult for them. They have lost their heart. A lot of leaders have been killed.”

NATO commanders have issued reams of press releases on the capture and killing of Taliban fighters.

While an emphasis on body counts can be misleading when fighting an indigenous insurgency, Afghans around the country said the strategy of targeted raids on Taliban field commanders had hit the movement hard. The Taliban member also confirmed the impact, and said the Taliban were dismayed to see the much more concerted offensive by coalition forces, as well as the corresponding shift in the public mood.

American forces have occupied former bases of the Taliban in districts surrounding Kandahar, and set up positions in the same buildings, including the Taliban’s main headquarters and courthouse in Sayedan where they held trials under Islamic law, or Shariah.

“Positioning themselves in the Taliban bases signals to the people that the Taliban cannot come back,” said one landowner from Panjwai, an important district outside the city of Kandahar. Like many others, he asked not to be named, indicating there was still widespread fear of Taliban retribution in the rural communities.

“Our Afghan security forces are assuring us that they will stay, and that gives hope,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member from Panjwai District. A medical worker who visited his home village in Panjwai on Monday said the area that used to be the front line between the government and the Taliban was now completely cleared and safe.

The coalition and government forces had blocked access to Panjwai and Zhare, another important district outside Kandahar, with wire fencing, concrete blast walls and tank berms so that all traffic had to filter through their checkpoints, making it nearly impossible for insurgents to move through the area clandestinely, the Taliban member and residents said.

Raids on houses of suspected Taliban members have also badly rattled those Taliban remaining in the area, landowners and residents said. Most of the Taliban have either fled or gone into hiding, they said. One local landlord, Abdul Aleem, said a group of Taliban had begged for food and lodging from villagers in Zhare 20 days ago, but were terrified whenever they heard shooting.

The Taliban are even more concerned that the Americans are gaining the upper hand in the battle of perceptions on who is winning the war, several people with contacts in the Taliban said. “The people are not happy with us,” the Taliban fighter said. “People gave us a place to stay for several years, but we did not provide them with anything except fighting. The situation is different now: the local people are not willingly cooperating with us. They are not giving us a place to stay or giving us food.”

NATO’s announcement that it would remain until a transfer to Afghan forces in 2014 has also convinced people that it will not withdraw quickly, he said.

“The Americans are more serious, and another thing that made people hopeful was when they said they would stay until 2014,” the Taliban commander said. “That has made people change their minds.”

That shift in support could hamper Taliban operations, said one landowner, a former guerrilla fighter who has Taliban contacts. “It will hurt the leadership because they will not have people to work for them in the area,” he said.

The Taliban leadership was so concerned that it held a meeting recently to discuss how to counter the American-led offensive and regain key districts around the city of Kandahar, the Taliban member said. They appointed a new commander, Maulavi Sattar, to oversee the winter campaign in Kandahar and are pressing fighters to stall expansion of coalition and government forces in the province, and prevent recruitment of local police officers in the districts.

Nevertheless the Taliban fighters were losing heart and showing signs of division, said the Taliban commander, who has been sheltering in Kandahar city since the insurgents were routed from his district in October.

He said he traveled recently to the Pakistani border town of Chaman and met three Taliban commanders there. But when he asked when they were coming back to Kandahar, they said they were reluctant to return and feared they would be killed. “They said they feared our own men, that other Taliban might betray them,” he said.

The Afghan living in Quetta said that Taliban commanders he knew were trying to recruit and pay others to fight while holding themselves back. “One threw me 50,000 Pakistani rupees and said, ‘If you have anyone who can go and fight, take them and go and fight,’ ” he said. “When they threw me the money, they said, ‘If you don’t want to go and fight, could you find some recruits for the spring?’ ”

The Taliban leaders and commanders will certainly not give up, Afghans familiar with them said. Some of them have moved to Pakistan and will rest up until the spring. Others have shifted to more remote areas, where the coalition and government presence is not as strong.

“The Taliban will come back in the spring, but most people predict that they will not come with the force of previous years because they have been hit very hard and they keep being hit,” the landowner from Kandahar said.

“And if the Americans stay, the Taliban commanders will never come back,” he said.

    NATO Push Deals Taliban a Setback in Kandahar, NYT, 15.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/asia/16south.html

Taliban Extend Reach to North, Where Armed Groups Reign

December 15, 2010
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — This city, once a crossroads in the country’s northeast, is increasingly besieged. The airport closed months ago to commercial flights. The roads heading south to Kabul and east to Tajikistan as well as north and west are no longer safe for Afghans, let alone Westerners.

Although the numbers of American and German troops in the north have more than doubled since last year, insecurity has spread, the Taliban are expanding their reach, and armed groups that purportedly support the government are terrorizing local people and hampering aid organizations, according to international aid workers, Afghan government officials, local residents and diplomats.

The growing fragility of the north highlights the limitations of the American effort here, hampered by waning political support at home and a fixed number of troops. The Pentagon’s year-end review will emphasize hard-won progress in the south, the heartland of the insurgency, where the military has concentrated most troops. But those advances have come at the expense of security in the north and east, with some questioning the wisdom of the focus on the south and whether the coalition can control the entire country.

“The situation in the north has become much more difficult, a much stronger insurgency than we had before,” said a senior Western diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. “We have to get these better under control.”

The NATO command has largely defined Afghanistan’s instability in terms of the Taliban insurgency, which is the most recent fight here, but hardly the only one that looms in people’s memories. For many, the period 20 years ago when mujahedeen warlords divided the country into fiefs shapes their current fears. It was the behavior of the warlords, among other factors, that drove people into the arms of the Taliban in the 1990s.

“The north has its own logic,” said Pablo Percelsi, the director of operations in northern Afghanistan for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has had a staff and presence here for 30 years. “The Taliban are only a small part of the equation.”

“You have the whole fabric of the militias,” he added. “There are groups that collect money, and they collect it from civilians and by doing kidnapping and bold actions against internationals.”

NATO’s current strategy aims to transform many of these militias into local police forces that would augment the often thin national police. However, many local Afghan officials worry that the plan legitimizes the groups, some of which are made up of little more than thugs, and amounts to putting government uniforms on gunmen whose real loyalty is to their local strongman.

Sometimes known as “arbekais,” these armed groups include semiofficial militias organized and paid by the Afghan intelligence service; others are simply armed gangs that prowl through villages demanding food, shelter or money.

Some are headed by former mujahedeen, strongmen who fought the Soviets; some are cobbled together by village elders. Still others, particularly in Takhar Province, are little more than protection for warlords who traffic narcotics along a drug transport corridor that runs to the Tajik border, according to military intelligence officials.

“There’s a major narco-drug corridor, and the militias are protecting that,” said a NATO intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak to reporters.

The abuses of the armed groups, along with the growing disenfranchisement of Pashtuns who won few seats in Parliament in most northern provinces, have begun to make the Taliban more attractive for those who are already disillusioned with the government.

“It is the carelessness of the government that the Taliban have come back,” said Mahboobullah Mahboob, the chairman of the Kunduz Provincial Council, who is a Tajik. “They returned here and they started to grow, and the government didn’t pay attention. We implored the central government repeatedly because the local government couldn’t counter them.”

Hajji Aman Uthmanzai, a Pashtun colleague on the provincial council, agreed, but added that the Taliban also offered speedy justice, and the government did not. The government has not protected people either from the Taliban or the militias, so villagers feel caught between the two.

“The government claims they established arbekais to protect the villages, but if you go to the villagers and ask the villagers some will even say they prefer the Taliban, because the arbekais are harassing them, taxing them,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have begun to spread throughout the north to areas that were previously untroubled, like the provincial capital of Sar-i-Pul and the neighboring province of Faryab. More than 50 Taliban fighters — some officials put the number at 150 — staged a complex attack in Sar-i-Pul on Oct. 24 to try to win the release of Taliban prisoners.

In the northwest corner of the province, foreign extremists have made themselves a haven, according to NATO intelligence officials as well as the governor of Sar-i-Pul, Sayed Anwar Rahmati.

The proliferation of armed groups has left organizations, including the Red Cross, struggling to keep projects afloat. Since they work without armed security, they have to persuade local strongmen to allow their staffs to operate unimpeded. Doctors Without Borders is weighing whether to open a clinic, but found the number of armed groups there daunting, said Michiel Hofman, the country representative.

It used to be that such negotiations were time consuming, but possible. Now humanitarian officials say there are so many armed groups that it is difficult to get guarantees from all of them. “Every five kilometers there’s a different commander with no central command structure,” Mr. Hofman said.

The insurgency here includes extremists from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, although much of the rank and file is Pashtun, according to American intelligence and military officials. In the past two months, NATO officials announced the killing and capture of several Uzbek militants.

An estimated 25 Tajik extremists took up residence in an inaccessible border area of northern Kunduz Province, according to a NATO intelligence officer as well as the Kunduz police chief, Abdul Rahman Sayid Khali.

In the meantime the armed groups continue to maraud in the northern provinces. “We are trying to bring them into the police,” Mr. Rahman said. “We’ll give them police uniforms and bring them under police discipline.”

Might they end up extorting people while in uniform? General Rahman, a former Northern Alliance mujahedeen commander himself, shrugged and picked his teeth with the business card of the reporter interviewing him.

“Their salaries will be lower than that of normal police,” he admitted, but he said it was hard to tell if that would make a difference. “We don’t know how much they are making now.”

At dawn on the edges of Kunduz city, taxi drivers herd passengers into scuffed Toyota Corollas and Kia minibuses for the dangerous drive north to Imam Sahib District or west to Chardara, eager to make the most of the safer daylight hours. Once dusk falls, they are at risk from both the Taliban and armed militias.

“After 6 p.m. the road is absolutely dangerous,” said Ismatullah, 35, a taxi driver from Imam Sahib District. “Many times my car has been looted by unknown armed people. Who knows — are they arbekais, Taliban or are they our own police?”

    Taliban Extend Reach to North, Where Armed Groups Reign, NYT, 15.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/asia/16kunduz.html

Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War

December 14, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — As President Obama prepares to release a review of American strategy in Afghanistan that will claim progress in the nine-year-old war there, two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.

The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.

The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The findings were described by a number of American officials who read the reports’ executive summaries.

American military commanders and senior Pentagon officials have already criticized the reports as out of date and say that the cut-off date for the Afghanistan report, Oct. 1, does not allow it to take into account what the military cites as tactical gains in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces in the south in the six weeks since. Pentagon and military officials also say the reports were written by desk-bound Washington analysts who have spent limited time, if any, in Afghanistan and have no feel for the war.

“They are not on the ground living it day in and day out like our forces are, so they don’t have the proximity and perspective,” said a senior defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified while criticizing the intelligence agencies. The official said that the 30,000 additional troops that Mr. Obama ordered to Afghanistan in December 2009 did not all arrive until September, meaning that the intelligence agencies had little time to judge the effects of the escalation. There are now about 100,000 American forces in Afghanistan.

The dispute between the military and intelligence agencies reflects how much the debate in Washington over the war is now centered on whether the United States can succeed in Afghanistan without the cooperation of Pakistan, which despite years of American pressure has resisted routing militants on its border.

The dispute also reflects the longstanding cultural differences between intelligence analysts, whose job is to warn of potential bad news, and military commanders, who are trained to promote “can do” optimism.

But in Afghanistan, the intelligence agencies play a strong role, with the largest Central Intelligence Agency station since the Vietnam War located in Kabul. C.I.A. operatives also command an Afghan paramilitary force in the thousands. In Pakistan, the C.I.A. is running a covert war using drone aircraft.

Both sides have found some areas of agreement in the period leading up to Mr. Obama’s review, which will be made public on Thursday. The intelligence reports, which rely heavily on assessments from the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, conclude that C.I.A. drone strikes on leaders of Al Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan have had an impact and that security has improved in the parts of Helmand and Kandahar Provinces in southern Afghanistan where the United States has built up its troop presence. For their part, American commanders and Pentagon officials say they do not yet know if the war can be won without more cooperation from Pakistan. But after years and billions spent trying to win the support of the Pakistanis, they are now proceeding on the assumption that there will be limited help from them. The American commanders and officials readily describe the havens for insurgents in Pakistan as a major impediment to military operations.

“I’m not going to make any bones about it, they’ve got sanctuaries and they go back and forth across the border,” Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters last week in the remote Kunar Province of Afghanistan. “They’re financed better, they’re better trained, they’re the ones who bring in the higher-end I.E.D.’s.” General Campbell was referring to improvised explosive devices, the military’s name for the insurgent-made bombs, the leading cause of American military deaths in Afghanistan.

American commanders say their plan in the next few years is to kill large numbers of insurgents in the border region — the military refers to it as “degrading the Taliban” — and at the same time build up the Afghan National Army to the point that the Afghans can at least contain an insurgency still supported by Pakistan. (American officials say Pakistan supports the insurgents as a proxy force in Afghanistan, preparing for the day the Americans leave.)

“That is not the optimal solution, obviously,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who led a White House review of Afghan strategy last year that resulted in Mr. Obama sending the additional forces. “But we have to deal with the world we have, not the world we’d like. We can’t make Pakistan stop being naughty.”

Publicly, American officials and military commanders continue to praise Pakistan and its military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, if only for acknowledging the problem.

“General Kayani and others have been clear in recognizing that they need to do more for their security and indeed to carry out operations against those who threaten other countries’ security,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said last week.

But many Afghan officials say that the United States, which sends Pakistan about $2 billion in military and civilian aid each year, is coddling Pakistan for no end. “They are capitalizing on your immediate security needs, and they are stuck in this thinking that bad behavior brings cash,” said Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan intelligence chief, in an interview on Tuesday.

The Pakistan intelligence report also reaffirms past American concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile, particularly the risk that enriched uranium or plutonium could be smuggled out of a laboratory or storage site.

The White House review comes as some members of Mr. Obama’s party are losing patience with the war. “You’re not going to get to the point where the Taliban are gone and the border is perfectly controlled,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Smith said there would be increasing pressure from the political left on Mr. Obama to end the war, and he predicted that Democrats in Congress would resist continuing to spend $100 billion annually on Afghanistan.

“We’re not going to be hanging out over there fighting these guys like we’re fighting them now for 20 years,” Mr. Smith said.

Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

    Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War, NYT, 14.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/world/asia/15policy.html

Killings of Afghan Relief Workers Stir Debate

December 13, 2010
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 100 relief workers in Afghanistan have been killed so far this year, far more than in any previous year, prompting a debate within humanitarian organizations about whether American military strategy is putting them and the Afghans they serve at unnecessary risk.

Most of the victims worked for aid contractors employed by NATO countries, with fewer victims among traditional nonprofit aid groups.

The difference in the body counts of the two groups is at the heart of a question troubling the aid community: Has American counterinsurgency strategy militarized the delivery of aid?

That doctrine calls for making civilian development aid a major adjunct to the military push. To do that there are Provincial Reconstruction Teams in 33 of 34 provinces, staffed by civilians from coalition countries to deliver aid projects. The effort is enormous, dominated by the Americans; the United States Agency for International Development alone is spending $4 billion this year, most of it through the teams.

The so-called P.R.T.’s work from heavily guarded military compounds and are generally escorted by troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Traditional aid workers worry that the P.R.T.’s and the development companies working for them are compromising their neutrality. Oxfam and 28 other charitable groups signed a report last month, “Nowhere to Turn,” that denounces the practice, saying it puts civilians at greater risk.

“In many instances, where P.R.T. projects have been implemented in insecure areas in an effort to win ‘hearts and minds,’ they put individuals and communities at risk,” the Oxfam report said.

Michiel Hofman, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan, said, “This assistance forces the beneficiaries to choose sides, and many people in the disputed areas do not want to choose sides.”

The military and its NATO civilian partners disagree. Earl Gast, the mission director for U.S.A.I.D. in Afghanistan, said the United Nations and the International Security Assistance Force had agreed on a clear distinction and clear rules regarding humanitarian aid — “that it can’t be militarized and it can’t be politicized.”

“Those are rules that we follow,” Mr. Gast said.

Part of the problem is the definition of humanitarian aid. Traditionally it means life-saving emergency assistance, but the distinction is often unclear. Providing medical care for disaster victims, for instance, is clearly humanitarian, but building a medical clinic for war victims could be considered either humanitarian or developmental aid, properly within the scope of the civil-military effort.

Further complicating matters, many traditional relief groups have expanded their efforts into development work, although they take pains to ensure that their projects are not connected to the government or the military.

But the military and its supporters say traditional aid groups have neither the capacity nor the willingness to bring large-scale aid programs to conflict areas. This has resulted in a reliance on private development companies, most of them profit-making, to deliver the aid programs paid for by NATO countries.

“Someone has to go into the areas where the war is being fought,” Mr. Gast said. “We recognize that some N.G.O.’s don’t have the capacity and some of them don’t want to, but there are other willing partners who can go,” he said, using the abbreviation for nongovernmental organizations.

A Dec. 1 report by Refugees International was highly critical. “U.S.A.I.D.’s use of development contractors and frequent embeds with the military have dangerously blurred humanitarian principles by associating such programs with a party to the conflict,” the group wrote.

Among the contracted aid groups working for coalition government programs, which nearly always employ armed guards and work in fortified compounds or from military bases, the body count has been particularly severe. Eighty aid contractors employed by the United States Agency for International Development were killed and 220 wounded from January through early November of this year. (In the same period, 410 American soldiers and Marines died.)

The aid contractors were attacked on average 55 times a month — a sevenfold increase over 2009, Mr. Gast said. By contrast, 20 people employed by charitable and humanitarian groups, which refuse to use armed guards or work with the military, were killed during the first nine months of this year.

Sixty-four charitable aid workers were kidnapped by insurgents this year. All were released unharmed, usually after negotiations involving local community leaders who vouched for them, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

One U.S.A.I.D. contractor who was kidnapped, Linda Norgrove, was killed during a botched rescue attempt by American Special Forces troops.

The military and its supporters say the difference in body counts only reflects the fact that the aid contractors work in dangerous areas where many nongovernmental organizations are unwilling to operate.

Nongovernmental organizations vigorously disagree. “We are in 26 provinces,” said Ashley Jackson of Oxfam, “and in Arghandab there are four N.G.O.’s working on health care and education.” Arghandab is one of the most dangerous areas in Kandahar, with a district-level team from the Provincial Reconstruction Team running more than 50 aid projects. “The P.R.T.’s’ presence makes it more dangerous to work there,” Ms. Jackson said.

NATO officials contend that insurgents do not distinguish between aid workers. “Insurgents have made clear both in their rhetoric and their actions that they target N.G.O.’s and aid workers,” said Mark Jacobson, the deputy senior civilian representative of NATO in Afghanistan.

But aid officials counter that the very difference in casualties between private contractors and charitable ones shows that the Taliban do make a distinction.

“It’s quite easy,” said Mr. Hofman of Doctors Without Borders. “We don’t use armed guards, we don’t have barbed wire on our gates, there’s a clear logo on our cars, and we are not associated with any program strengthening government. The government is just one of many warring parties.”

Doctors Without Borders has offices in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, where it runs a hospital. Those offices have never been attacked, while a private development company, International Relief and Development, just down the same street, has a fortified compound that has been attacked by insurgents. In Kunduz, his group has not been attacked, but the company DAI has been.

Many of the traditional aid groups are particularly critical of the United Nations, which they accuse of failing in its responsibility to make sure aid efforts are not militarized. The United Nations recognizes the Afghan government and is politically committed to it, but many of its agencies, including Unicef and the World Food Program, are expected to deliver humanitarian aid.

The conflict inherent in those two roles is typified by Robert Watson, who is both the deputy special representative of the secretary general, a political role, and the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kabul.

Mr. Watson agrees that the lines are often blurred. “It makes it difficult for us in the humanitarian community to demonstrate to those on the other side of the conflict that we strive to be neutral intermediaries,” he said.

    Killings of Afghan Relief Workers Stir Debate, NYT, 13.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/world/asia/14afghan.html

6 Americans Killed by Bomb at a New U.S.-Afghan Outpost

December 12, 2010
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

ZHARE, Afghanistan — Six American soldiers were killed and more than a dozen American and Afghan troops were wounded on Sunday morning when a van packed with explosives was detonated at a new jointly operated outpost in southern Afghanistan.

The soldiers were inside a small mud-walled building near the village of Sangsar, north of the Arghandab River, when the bomber drove up to one of the walls and exploded his charge around 9 a.m.

The blast could be heard eight miles away, and it sent a dusty cloud towering over the surrounding farmland.

The explosion blasted a hole in the thick wall, causing the roof to collapse on the soldiers inside. Others quickly arrived and clawed and pulled at the waist-deep rubble to free the buried troops.

The building had been occupied by the Americans and Afghans for only a few days, an American official said, and was beside a narrow road. It was not immediately clear how the van managed to get so close without being challenged or stopped.

Gen. Abdul Hameed, a commander in the Afghan National Army, said in a telephone interview that his soldiers had tried to stop the van, but that its driver ignored them and rammed the vehicle into the building.

After the van exploded, the field beside the ruined building became a busy landing zone, with four medical evacuation helicopters arriving to shuttle the victims to two military hospitals in nearby Kandahar.

The Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility for the bombing. “We have killed numbers of Americans and Afghan soldiers and wrecked and ruined their security checkpost,” a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone. “We will carry out similar attacks in the future.”

In addition to the six Americans who were killed, four American soldiers were wounded, but their injuries were not considered life-threatening, according to officials familiar with their conditions. The names of the victims were being withheld pending the notification of their families.

American fatalities in Afghanistan have risen steadily for five years, with 479 American soldiers killed so far in 2010, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site that compiles battlefield data. That is more than three times the 155 American casualties in 2008.

Despite the Taliban’s claim, it appeared that no Afghan soldiers had been killed in the attack. There were conflicting official reports of the number of Afghans wounded. Some reports said 11 Afghan soldiers had been wounded; others put the number as high as 14. At least one Afghan soldier, who was seen by two journalists aboard a medical evacuation helicopter, had a head injury and appeared to be gravely wounded.

Most of the other Afghans who were injured were walking on their own and appeared to have suffered cuts and shrapnel wounds. A medical official said they were all expected to survive.

The attack occurred in an area where the Americans and Afghans have maintained a heavy military presence this fall, when NATO and Afghan forces flowed into Taliban-controlled territory of Kandahar Province in an effort to clear it of insurgents and bring the area under the control of the government in Kabul.

The Arghandab River Valley, a belt of irrigated fields and small villages, is now dotted with a network of American and Afghan outposts. Patrols crisscross the region each day, and new positions — like the outpost that was attacked on Sunday — are being built.

Fighting has subsided in recent weeks as the weather has cooled and the leaves have fallen, making it more difficult for insurgents to hide.

But the Taliban has continued to plant bombs and send suicide bombers, and American and Afghan soldiers are wounded or killed in the province almost every day.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

    6 Americans Killed by Bomb at a New U.S.-Afghan Outpost, NYT, 12.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/asia/13afghan.html

Jailed Afghan Drug Lord Was Informer on U.S. Payroll

December 11, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States.

At the height of his power, Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai’s government.

In a series of videotaped meetings in Washington hotels, Mr. Juma Khan offered tantalizing leads to the C.I.A. and D.E.A., in return for what he hoped would be protected status as an American asset, according to American officials. And then, before he left the United States, he took a side trip to New York to see the sights and do some shopping, according to two people briefed on the case.

The relationship between the United States government and Mr. Juma Khan is another illustration of how the war on drugs and the war on terrorism have sometimes collided, particularly in Afghanistan, where drug dealing, the insurgency and the government often overlap.

To be sure, American intelligence has worked closely with figures other than Mr. Juma Khan suspected of drug trade ties, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother, and Hajji Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in 2005. Mr. Karzai has denied being involved in the drug trade.

A Shifting Policy

Afghan drug lords have often been useful sources of information about the Taliban. But relying on them has also put the United States in the position of looking the other way as these informers ply their trade in a country that by many accounts has become a narco-state.

The case of Mr. Juma Khan also shows how counternarcotics policy has repeatedly shifted during the nine-year American occupation of Afghanistan, getting caught between the conflicting priorities of counterterrorism and nation building, so much so that Mr. Juma Khan was never sure which way to jump, according to officials who spoke on the condition that they not be identified.

When asked about Mr. Juma Khan’s relationship with the C.I.A., a spokesman for the spy agency said that the “C.I.A. does not, as a rule, comment on matters pending before U.S. courts.” A D.E.A. spokesman also declined to comment on his agency’s relationship with Mr. Juma Khan.

His New York lawyer, Steven Zissou, denied that Mr. Juma Khan had ever supported the Taliban or worked for the C.I.A.

“There have been many things said about Hajji Juma Khan,” Mr. Zissou said, “and most of what has been said, including that he worked for the C.I.A., is false. What is true is that H. J. K. has never been an enemy of the United States and has never supported the Taliban or any other group that threatens Americans.”

A spokeswoman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is handling Mr. Juma Khan’s prosecution, declined to comment.

However, defending the relationship, one American official said, “You’re not going to get intelligence in a war zone from Ward Cleaver or Florence Nightingale.”

At first, Mr. Juma Khan, an illiterate trafficker in his mid-50s from Afghanistan’s remote Nimroz Province, in the border region where southwestern Afghanistan meets both Iran and Pakistan, was a big winner from the American-led invasion. He had been a provincial drug smuggler in southwestern Afghanistan in the 1990s, when the Taliban governed the country. But it was not until after the Taliban’s ouster that he rose to national prominence, taking advantage of a record surge in opium production in Afghanistan after the invasion.

Briefly detained by American forces after the 2001 fall of the Taliban, he was quickly released, even though American officials knew at the time that he was involved in narcotics trafficking, according to several current and former American officials. During the first few years of its occupation of Afghanistan, the United States was focused entirely on capturing or killing leaders of Al Qaeda, and it ignored drug trafficking, because American military commanders believed that policing drugs got in the way of their core counterterrorism mission.

Opium and heroin production soared, and the narcotics trade came to account for nearly half of the Afghan economy.

Concerns, but No Action

By 2004, Mr. Juma Khan had gained control over routes from southern Afghanistan to Pakistan’s Makran Coast, where heroin is loaded onto freighters for the trip to the Middle East, as well as overland routes through western Afghanistan to Iran and Turkey. To keep his routes open and the drugs flowing, he lavished bribes on all the warring factions, from the Taliban to the Pakistani intelligence service to the Karzai government, according to current and former American officials.

The scale of his drug organization grew to stunning levels, according to the federal indictment against him. It was in both the wholesale and the retail drug businesses, providing raw materials for other drug organizations while also processing finished drugs on its own.

Bush administration officials first began to talk about him publicly in 2004, when Robert B. Charles, then the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told Time magazine that Mr. Juma Khan was a drug lord “obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban.”

Such high-level concern did not lead to any action against Mr. Juma Khan. But Mr. Noorzai, one of his rivals, was lured to New York and arrested in 2005, which allowed Mr. Juma Khan to expand his empire.

In a 2006 confidential report to the drug agency reviewed by The New York Times, an Afghan informer stated that Mr. Juma Khan was working with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the political boss of southern Afghanistan, to take control of the drug trafficking operations left behind by Mr. Noorzai. Some current and former American counternarcotics officials say they believe that Mr. Karzai provided security and protection for Mr. Juma Khan’s operations.

Mr. Karzai denied any involvement with the drug trade and said that he had never met Mr. Juma Khan. “I have never even seen his face,” he said through a spokesman. He denied having any business or security arrangement with him. “Ask them for proof instead of lies,” he added.

Mr. Juma Khan’s reported efforts to take over from Mr. Noorzai came just as he went to Washington to meet with the C.I.A. and the drug agency, former American officials say. By then, Mr. Juma Khan had been working as an informer for both agencies for several years, officials said. He had met repeatedly with C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 or 2002, and had also developed a relationship with the drug agency’s country attaché in Kabul, former American officials say.

He had been paid large amounts of cash by the United States, according to people with knowledge of the case. Along with other tribal leaders in his region, he was given a share of as much as $2 million in payments to help oppose the Taliban. The payments are said to have been made by either the C.I.A. or the United States military.

The 2006 Washington meetings were an opportunity for both sides to determine, in face-to-face talks, whether they could take their relationship to a new level of even longer-term cooperation.

“I think this was an opportunity to drill down and see what he would be able to provide,” one former American official said. “I think it was kind of like saying, ‘O.K., what have you got?’ ”

Business, Not Ideology

While the C.I.A. wanted information about the Taliban, the drug agency had its own agenda for the Washington meetings — information about other Afghan traffickers Mr. Juma Khan worked with, as well as contacts on the supply lines through Turkey and Europe.

One reason the Americans could justify bringing Mr. Juma Khan to Washington was that they claimed to have no solid evidence that he was smuggling drugs into the United States, and there were no criminal charges pending against him in this country.

It is not clear how much intelligence Mr. Juma Khan provided on other drug traffickers or on the Taliban leadership. But the relationship between the C.I.A. and the D.E.A. and Mr. Juma Khan continued for some time after the Washington sessions, officials say.

In fact, when the drug agency contacted him again in October 2008 to invite him to another meeting, he went willingly, believing that the Americans wanted to continue the discussions they had with him in Washington. He even paid his own way to Jakarta, Indonesia, to meet with the agency, current and former officials said.

But this time, instead of enjoying fancy hotels and friendly talks, Mr. Juma Khan was arrested and flown to New York, and this time he was not allowed to go shopping.

It is unclear why the government decided to go after Mr. Juma Khan. Some officials suggest that he never came through with breakthrough intelligence. Others say that he became so big that he was hard to ignore, and that the United States shifted its priorities to make pursuing drug dealers a higher priority.

The Justice Department has used a 2006 narco-terrorism law against Mr. Juma Khan, one that makes it easier for American prosecutors to go after foreign drug traffickers who are not smuggling directly into the United States if the government can show they have ties to terrorist organizations.

The federal indictment shows that the drug agency eventually got a cooperating informer who could provide evidence that Mr. Juma Khan was making payoffs to the Taliban to keep his drug operation going, something intelligence operatives had known for years.

The federal indictment against Mr. Juma Khan said the payments were “in exchange for protection for the organization’s drug trafficking operations.” The alleged payoffs were what linked him to the Taliban and permitted the government to make its case.

But even some current and former American counternarcotics officials are skeptical of the government’s claims that Mr. Juma Khan was a strong supporter of the Taliban.

“He was not ideological,” one former official said. “He made payments to them. He made payments to government officials. It was part of the business.”

Now, plea negotiations are quietly under way. A plea bargain might keep many of the details of his relationship to the United States out of the public record.

    Jailed Afghan Drug Lord Was Informer on U.S. Payroll, NYT, 11.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/world/asia/12drugs.html

Arrest Made in Afghan Disfigurement Case

December 7, 2010
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND and TAIMOOR SHAH

KABUL, Afghanistan — When Bibi Aisha’s nose and ears were cut off by her husband and her in-laws, no one ever expected much to be done about it, especially because it happened in a remote area under Taliban control.

Thanks to support from aid groups and the American Embassy in Kabul, and the charity of a hospital in Southern California, Aisha was whisked off to the United States for reconstructive surgery, and everyone assumed that it was case closed on the perpetrators.

Now it appears that, while Afghan law enforcement did not have a long enough arm to reach into the village that Aisha had fled, the police nonetheless did have long memories, and this week arrested one of the suspects.

“It would have taken 100 armored vehicles to go in there to that village,” said the district police chief, Mohammed Gul. Sooner or later, though, everyone in the area comes to the bazaar in the Chora district, in south-central Oruzgan Province. When Aisha’s father-in-law, Sulaiman, showed up, the police were waiting.

According to Mr. Gul’s account, the suspect spotted the police at the same time as they spotted him, and made a run for it. Officers chased him on foot and ran him down a mile and a quarter later, he said.

Aisha’s case came to prominence in August when Time magazine used a picture of her on its cover, with the suggestion that this was what would happen if the West left Afghanistan. A child bride, Aisha (Bibi is an honorific; Aisha asked that her family name be withheld) had fled her arranged marriage to a Taliban fighter, but was captured and returned to the village, where her husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law carried out the mutilation, after approval by the local Taliban mullah. Left for dead, she said, she then fled to the safety of a women’s shelter in Kabul run by Women for Afghan Women, which publicized her plight a year later.

Mr. Gul said Mr. Sulaiman, who like many Afghans has one name, confessed to participating in the disfigurement.

He credited an unusual campaign from higher police officials pressing his department into trying to apprehend the perpetrators. “I had 15 letters and warrants come down for them,” he said.

“This was a case of persistence and diligence by our police,” said Zemarai Bashary, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. “The M.O.I. was very involved in pushing this case after we received a complaint from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.”

The provincial police chief in Oruzgan was scathing in denouncing the crime and its perpetrators. “Sulaiman pointed a gun at her head while the other men, his sons, sliced off her nose,” said Brig. Gen. Juma Gul Himat. “Sulaiman then took her amputated nose and proudly showed it off around the village.”

It is rare for the police in Afghanistan to intervene when local villagers impose punishments for social crimes, even severe ones such as flogging and stoning, which are allowed under Shariah law, the legal code of Islam based on the Koran. There is no Shariah law provision, however, for cutting off nose and ears of a runaway child bride.

“This is against Afghan-ism, against Afghan and Shariah laws, against every principle in the world, against humanity, so that’s why we wanted to bring him to justice,” said General Himat. He said that the police knew Mr. Sulaiman well as an associate of what he called terrorists, but that the police had not hunted him down for that.

“He made a big mistake,” the general said. “He disfigured a creature of God, and he was proud of what he had done.”

Aisha’s father, Hajji Muhammed Zai, reached by telephone, confirmed that he had agreed to the betrothal of Aisha and her younger sister to Mr. Sulaiman’s family members, in payment of what is called “baad,” a customary obligation owed by his own family. It is a common practice in rural areas. Both were infants when they were engaged.

He insisted, however, that he had not as yet turned over the younger daughter, who is now 12, to consummate the marriage contract.

“I will never forgive them for what they have committed against my daughter,” Mr. Zai said. “I am serious to punish them so I want her back in the country to testify.”

Aisha, who is now 20, is living in Brooklyn while she gets treatment for emotional problems from her ordeal. Doctors at the Grossman Burn Foundation in California said they felt that was necessary before she could have reconstructive surgery there, according to Manizha Naderi, the head of Women for Afghan Women, which has offices in Brooklyn and Kabul. So far, Aisha has been given a prosthetic nose as a temporary measure.

“She’s not coming back to Afghanistan to testify,” Ms. Naderi said. “We won’t put Aisha in danger like this. Nobody will guarantee her security in Afghanistan if she comes back.”

In addition, she added, Aisha’s father was himself responsible for returning her to her in-laws after she ran away. “He should have known that she would either be killed or injured when she was given back.”

Ms. Naderi expressed satisfaction that some arrest had been made, but added, “It’s definitely not the end. The end would be when her husband and brother-in-law are also arrested.”

“This arrest gives hope to all Afghan women that their perpetrators will be brought to justice, that sooner or later criminals will be punished,” she said.

“I regret what I did now, sending her back,” said Mr. Zai, Aisha’s father. “I only wanted to try to have good relations with their family despite their bad behavior, so I sent her back to them.”

Like his daughter, Mr. Zai, too, is a refugee now, in Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan Province. After the Sulaiman arrest, which took place two weeks ago, “I left our village because I was afraid of retaliation,” he said. “We are very tired, we have left everything behind, land, orchards and home.”

    Arrest Made in Afghan Disfigurement Case, ,NYT, 7.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/asia/08afghan.html

Afghan War Review Called Likely to Show Progress

December 7, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior defense official said Tuesday that a year-end White House review of American strategy in Afghanistan was expected to declare progress in the nine-year-old war and conclude that a surge in United States forces had expanded security in the south and around the capital, Kabul.

But the official said the review would also conclude that the fight was far from over, even though President Obama remained committed to beginning the withdrawal of some United States forces in July 2011. “Clearly, there is a good deal more to be done,” the official said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could talk freely about a process that was still under way, was describing what was widely expected to be the conclusion of the review, due later this month. But his comments were more specific than those made recently by senior administration officials.

The official spoke to reporters traveling in Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, whose spokesman, Geoff Morrell, warned that the White House review was not complete and therefore it was “premature to draw any definitive conclusions.”

Still, the specter of the review dominated Mr. Gates’s day in Afghanistan as the military offered differing judgments of the war. In Kabul, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in the country, gave reporters an upbeat assessment. But his commanders on the porous eastern border with Pakistan described a brutal fight with rising American casualties and a sharp increase in violence from a year ago.

The contrasting pictures pointed to the uneven course of the fighting and to some extent the military leadership’s attempt to shape public opinion ahead of the White House review.

General Petraeus told reporters: “We believe that we have arrested the momentum of the Taliban in many parts of Afghanistan, but not all,” and that there had been important progress in recent months.

Hours earlier at an American base in the rugged, isolated terrain of Kunar Province, Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of United States forces in eastern Afghanistan, told reporters that the fight was “very, very kinetic,” creating questions in his mind about whether it was safe for Mr. Gates to travel there.

“We dropped nine bombs here yesterday. I had to decide whether I would bring the secretary even up here,” General Campbell told reporters, speaking at Forward Operating Base Joyce.

Lt. Col. J. B. Vowell, commander of the Second Battalion, 327th Infantry, told Mr. Gates in a briefing at the base that violence in June had increased by 200 percent over last year and that insurgents were fighting hard to try to gain negotiating strength in anticipated reconciliation talks, although none are under way.

The base is about two miles west of the border with Pakistan and about five miles east of the Korengal Valley, the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. American forces abandoned the Korengal in April.

General Campbell said his troops were making progress, but “a lot of the reason we get attacked is because we’re up here.” The goal of United States forces is to disrupt insurgent activity in the border area, but the general said he wanted to get to the point where he could withdraw troops from the remote mountains and reposition them in small towns to try to win over the local people.

“People don’t want us up there, but they don’t want the Taliban either,” he said. “They want to be left alone.”

He added that the region was vast and that his forces could not be everywhere. “We can’t be in every single valley; I mean there’s thousands of them out there, we just can’t do it,” he said.

At the same base, Mr. Gates made emotional remarks to about 300 soldiers. “I feel the sacrifice and hardship and losses more than you’ll ever imagine,” he told them, adding, “I just want to thank you and tell you how much I love you guys.”

From there Mr. Gates traveled to Forward Operating Base Connolly in Nangahar Province, where he met privately with members of the platoon that lost six soldiers last week when an Afghan Border Police trainee turned his gun on them and killed them. The soldiers were operating near the base when they were shot; it was one of the worst attacks by an Afghan service member on NATO forces in the war.

Capt. Cyle Alden, a military planner at the base, said that the attack had been a deep loss. “We’ve all had friends killed, but nothing prepares you for something like that,” he said. He said that American troops had built close relationships with the Afghan security forces, but that the attack had made him think twice.

“It’s always in the back of your head,” he said.

    Afghan War Review Called Likely to Show Progress, NYT, 7.12.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/asia/08kabul.html

Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor

November 22, 2010
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

Many in the Taliban leadership, which is largely made up of barely literate clerics from the countryside, had not been seen in person by American, NATO or Afghan officials.

American officials say they were skeptical from the start about the identity of the man who claimed to be Mullah Mansour — who by some accounts is the second-ranking official in the Taliban, behind only the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Serious doubts arose after the third meeting with Afghan officials, held in the southern city of Kandahar. A man who had known Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him. “He said he didn’t recognize him,” said an Afghan leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Western diplomat said the Afghan man was initially given a sizable sum of money to take part in the talks — and to help persuade him to return.

While the Afghan official said he still harbored hopes that the man would return for another round of talks, American and other Western officials said they had concluded that the man in question was not Mr. Mansour. Just how the Americans reached such a definitive conclusion — whether, for instance, they were able to positively establish his identity through fingerprints or some other means — is unknown.

As recently as last month, American and Afghan officials held high hopes for the talks. Senior American officials, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the talks indicated that Taliban leaders, whose rank-and-file fighters are under extraordinary pressure from the American-led offensive, were at least willing to discuss an end to the war.

The American officials said they and officials of other NATO governments were helping to facilitate the discussions, by providing air transport and securing roadways for Taliban leaders coming from Pakistan.

Last month, White House officials asked The New York Times to withhold Mr. Mansour’s name from an article about the peace talks, expressing concern that the talks would be jeopardized — and Mr. Mansour’s life put at risk — if his involvement were publicized. The Times agreed to withhold Mr. Mansour’s name, along with the names of two other Taliban leaders said to be involved in the discussions. The status of the other two Taliban leaders said to be involved is not clear.

Since the last round of discussions, which took place within the past few weeks, Afghan and American officials have been puzzling over who the man was. Some officials say the man may simply have been a freelance fraud, posing as a Taliban leader in order to enrich himself.

Others say the man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”

Others suspect that the fake Taliban leader, whose identity is not known, may have been dispatched by the Pakistani intelligence service, known by its initials, the ISI. Elements within the ISI have long played a “double-game” in Afghanistan, reassuring United States officials that they are pursuing the Taliban while at the same time providing support for the insurgents.

Publicly, the Taliban leadership is sticking to the line that there are no talks at all. In a recent message to his followers, Mullah Omar denied that there were any talks unfolding at any level.

“The cunning enemy which has occupied our country, is trying, on the one hand, to expand its military operations on the basis of its double-standard policy and, on the other hand, wants to throw dust into the eyes of the people by spreading the rumors of negotiation,” his message said.

Despite such statements, some senior leaders of the Taliban did show a willingness to talk peace with representatives of the Afghan government as recently as January.

At that time, Abdul Ghani Baradar, then the deputy commander of the Taliban, was arrested in a joint C.I.A.-ISI raid in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Although officials from both countries hailed the arrest as a hallmark of American-Pakistani cooperation, Pakistani officials have since indicated that they orchestrated Mr. Baradar’s arrest because he was engaging in peace discussions without the ISI’s permission.

Afghan leaders have confirmed this account.

Neither American nor Afghan leaders confronted the fake Mullah Mansour with their doubts. Indeed, some Afghan leaders are still holding out hopes that the man really is or at least represents Mr. Mansour — and that he will come back soon.

“Questions have been raised about him, but it’s still possible that it’s him,” said the Afghan leader who declined to be identified.

The Afghan leader said negotiators had urged the man claiming to be Mr. Mansour to return with colleagues, including other Taliban leaders whose identities they might also be able to verify.

The meetings were arranged by an Afghan with ties to both the Afghan government and the Taliban, officials said.

The Afghan leader said both the Americans and the Afghan leadership were initially cautious of the Afghan man’s identity and motives. But after the first meeting, both were reasonably satisfied that the man they were talking to was Mr. Mansour. Several steps were taken to establish the man’s real identity; after the first meeting, photos of him were shown to Taliban detainees who were believed to know Mr. Mansour. They signed off, the Afghan leader said.

Whatever the Afghan man’s identity, the talks that unfolded between the Americans and the man claiming to be Mr. Mansour seemed substantive, the Afghan leader said. The man claiming to be representing the Taliban laid down several surprisingly moderate conditions for a peace settlement: that the Taliban leadership be allowed to safely return to Afghanistan, that Taliban soldiers be offered jobs, and that prisoners be released.

The Afghan man did not demand, as the Taliban have in the past, a withdrawal of foreign forces or a Taliban share of the government.

Sayed Amir Muhammad Agha, a onetime Taliban commander who says he has left the Taliban but who acted as a go-between with the movement in the past, said in an interview that he did not know the tale of the impostor.

But he said the Taliban leadership had given no indications of a willingness to enter talks.

“Someone like me could come forward and say, ‘I am a Talib and a powerful person,’ ” he said. “But I can tell you, nothing is going on.”

“Whenever I talk to the Taliban, they never accept peace and they want to keep on fighting,” he said. “They are not tired.”

Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting.

    Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor, NYT, 22.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23kabul.html

To Save Lives, NATO Is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes

November 16, 2010
The New York Times
By TAIMOOR SHAH and ROD NORDLAND

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — In the newly won districts around this southern city, American forces are encountering empty homes and farm buildings left so heavily booby-trapped by Taliban insurgents that the Americans have been systematically destroying hundreds of them, according to local Afghan authorities.

The campaign, a major departure from NATO practice in past military operations, is intended to reduce civilian and military casualties by removing the threat of booby traps and denying Taliban insurgents hiding places and fighting positions, American military officials said.

While it has widespread support among Afghan officials and even some residents, and has been accompanied by an equally determined effort to hand out cash compensation to homeowners, other local people have complained that the demolitions have gone far beyond what is necessary.

It would also seem to run counter to Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy, which calls for respecting property as well as lives, and to run up against recent calls by President Hamid Karzai for foreign forces to lower their profile and avoid tactics that alienate Afghan civilians. There have been no reports of civilians casualties from the demolitions.

General Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, has recently pointed to progress in routing the Taliban in Kandahar, thanks to 30,000 additional troops, although the insurgents have countered that they have simply gone into hiding to wait out the American push.

What they have left behind are vacant houses and farm buildings so heavily rigged that soldiers have started referring to them as house-borne improvised explosive devices.

In recent weeks, using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and even airstrikes, American troops have taken to destroying hundreds of them, by a conservative estimate, with some estimates running into the thousands.

“We don’t know the accurate number of homes destroyed, but it’s huge,” said Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa, and who with the governor visited on Oct. 21. “It’s the insurgents and the enemy of the country that are to blame for this destruction, because they have planted mines in civilian houses and main roads everywhere.”

Lt. Col. Webster Wright, the spokesman for NATO forces in Kandahar, said he did not know how many homes had been destroyed in the campaign, but put the number of deliberate demolitions since September at 174, including homes and other structures.

The number seemed well below the destruction indicated by the accounts of local officials.

In the most fiercely contested areas, especially in Zhare District, but also in parts of neighboring Panjwai and Arghandab Districts, American troops have been routinely destroying almost every unoccupied home or unused farm building in areas where they are operating.

In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district. “There was no other way; we knew people wanted us to get rid of all these deadly I.E.D.’s,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices, the military’s term for homemade bombs.

“In some villages where only a few houses were contaminated by bombs, we called the owners and got their agreement to destroy them,” Mr. Ahmadi said. “In some villages like Khosrow that were completely empty and full of I.E.D.’s, we destroyed them without agreement because it was hard to find the people.

“And not just Khosrow, but many villages,” he said, listing a half-dozen others. “We had to destroy them to make them safe.”

Military units in the field have been seen keeping meticulous records, recording not only every house they blow up, but also every grape-drying shed, retaining wall, tree and vine, and entering that data into computerized systems.

“I don’t know exactly how many people have received compensation yet, but there are hundreds of people waiting to claim for their losses and many who already have put in claims,” said Karim Jan, the governor of Zhare District, where the destruction of homes has been most extensive. In neighboring Panjwai District, Gov. Baran Khaksar said 60 families had been compensated for destruction of their homes or other property.

Responding to questions about whether house demolitions contradicted counterinsurgency strategy, Col. Hans E. Bush, a press aide speaking on behalf of General Petraeus, said the steps had been taken to safeguard the local residents.

“The buildings in question posed a threat to everyone in the area since they were rigged with explosives and booby-trapped in a way to prevent E.O.D. personnel from rendering them safe,” he said referring to the American Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams.

American troops are using an impressive array of tools not only to demolish homes, but also to eliminate tree lines where insurgents could hide, blow up outbuildings, flatten agricultural walls, and carve new “military roads,” because existing ones are so heavily mined, according to journalists embedded in the area recently.

One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58 Mine-Clearing Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied to a rocket, which upon impact destroys everything in a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The Himars missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying 200-pound warheads, has also been used frequently for demolition work.

Often, new military roads go right through farms and compounds, cutting a route that will keep soldiers safe from roadside bombs. In Zhare District alone, the 101st Airborne’s Second Brigade has lost 30 soldiers since last June, mostly to such bombs.

Activists at the organization Afghanistan Rights Monitor have been critical of the campaign. “These are all mud houses, quite humble houses,” said Akmal Dawi, of the group, “so they are just taking the easiest way and saying, ‘We will destroy them and then help them rebuild, give them a couple hundred dollars and show we are on their side.’ ”

However, with winter approaching and the fight continuing, owners are not likely to begin rebuilding anytime soon. “It’s not enough,” Mr. Dawi said. “People will not be satisfied with that.”

The number of refugees from the districts around Kandahar is difficult to determine, because most of them stay with relatives or friends in the city, but local officials estimate that nearly 1,000 families have fled Zhare and Arghandab in the past month alone. Many others left before military operations stepped up, fleeing Taliban domination in the area.

Abdul Rahim Khan, 50, a tribal elder from Spirwan in Panjwai District, claimed that in many cases the American troops had been destroying empty homes, even when there were not any explosives inside. However, military officers pointed out, searching empty homes was often too dangerous.

“People are not happy with the compensation,” said a tribal elder in Zhare, who said he was afraid to give his name for publication. “Compensation is just kicking dirt in our eyes.”

Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Christoph Bangert contributed reporting from Zhare, Afghanistan.

    To Save Lives, NATO Is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes, NYT, 16.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/world/asia/17afghan.html

Despite Gains, Afghan Night Raids Split U.S. and Karzai

November 15, 2010
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER, ELIZABETH BUMILLER and ROD NORLAND


WASHINGTON — For the United States, a recent tripling in the number of night raids by Special Operations forces to capture or kill Afghan insurgents has begun to put heavy pressure on the Taliban and change the momentum in the war in Afghanistan. For President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the raids cause civilian casualties and are a rising political liability, so much so that he is now loudly insisting that the Americans stop the practice.

The difference — and a flare-up over the raids between Mr. Karzai and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan — is likely to be a central focus at a NATO summit this week in Lisbon, where the United States and NATO are to present a plan that seeks to end the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014.

Publicly, the Obama administration took a diplomatic tone so as not to further inflame the situation before the Lisbon meeting, which will include President Obama, other NATO leaders and Mr. Karzai.

“On President Karzai’s concerns, we share these concerns,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters on Monday. “We’ve discussed them on a number of occasions.” But she stressed that “these operations are conducted in full partnership with the government of Afghanistan.”

At the center of the public debate — the latest chapter in the tense relationship between the United States and Mr. Karzai — is an American military tactic that, while used for years, has become a cornerstone of General Petraeus’s strategy to reassert NATO and Afghan control over contested parts of Afghanistan since the American troop buildup reached its peak at the end of the summer.

More than a dozen times each night, teams of American and allied Special Operations forces and Afghan troops surround houses or compounds across the country. In some cases helicopters hover overhead. Using bullhorns, the Afghans demand occupants come out or be met with violence. In the majority of cases — about 80 percent, according to NATO statistics — the occupants are captured rather than killed.

As recently as early July, Special Operations forces were carrying out an average of five raids a night, mostly in southern Afghanistan. But in a 90-day period that ended Nov. 11, Special Operations forces were averaging 17 missions a night, conducting 1,572 operations over three months that resulted in 368 insurgent leaders killed or captured, and 968 lower-level insurgents killed and 2,477 captured, according to NATO statistics.

Many Afghans see the raids as a flagrant, even humiliating symbol of American power, especially when women and children are rousted in the middle of the night. And protests have increased this year as the tempo has increased.

In one high-profile encounter in February, 23 Afghan male civilians were killed and 12 Afghan women and children were wounded in a helicopter attack when Army Special Forces were operating in a village in Oruzgan Province. An Air Force investigation concluded that a Predator drone operator had dismissed two warnings about the presence of youths in the area before military commanders ordered the helicopter to attack.

Mr. Karzai told The Washington Post on Sunday, in the interview that created the latest outbreak of controversy, that the raids were undermining support for the American-led war effort.

“The Afghan people don’t like these raids. If there is any raid, it has to be done by the Afghan government, within the Afghan laws,” he told The Post.

Secretary Clinton and other American officials insist that Afghan troops have participated as full partners.

NATO officials in Kabul say that representatives from the Afghan ministries of defense and interior, and from Mr. Karzai’s own national directorate of security, work inside the operations center and approve each mission.

They also say that new rules have significantly decreased the chances of civilian casualties, and are intended to make the American-led raids seem less like an affront to Afghan sovereignty.

For one thing, Afghans are the first ones in to search any homes or compounds, and female Afghan police officers accompany the missions in case female detainees must be searched.

“They check the due-diligence box in very credible ways,” said Bill Harris, a retired senior Foreign Service officer who recently wrapped up a yearlong tour leading the State Department’s provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar.

With a major increase in surveillance planes, more cellphone monitoring and a rise in informers as local residents gain confidence in their security, the Americans say the compounds and the people in them are now more precisely pinpointed. They say the raids are focused on Taliban shadow governors, midlevel insurgent commanders and people who handle finances and logistics for the Taliban.

That, in turn, puts pressure on senior Taliban leaders operating in the safe havens of Pakistan, according to a strategy outlined by General Petraeus, who hopes they may be forced to the bargaining table.

Administration officials said they are hoping Mr. Karzai will temper his comments on the raids at the NATO summit in Lisbon, where the way ahead in Afghanistan is a main topic.

“He wants to get to the point where the south and east of the country don’t have dozens of raids every night,” said an administration official involved in Afghan policy, acknowledging that the raids pose a political problem for the Afghan president.

“He wants to drive a return to normalcy. It’s not normal to have night raids happening in your village. I just think when he does these things he speaks less precisely than we would like. If he had said the same thing in the context of transition and where he hopes and expects the international effort to go, it wouldn’t have been a crisis.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he was baffled by Mr. Karzai’s comments. He said the topic of the night raids never came up during a dinner he attended last week with Mr. Karzai and other senators in Kabul. The raids, he said, were crucial to the military strategy.

“If you took the night raids off the table,” Mr. Graham said in an interview on Monday, “it would be a disaster for the Petraeus strategy.”

Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington.

    Despite Gains, Afghan Night Raids Split U.S. and Karzai, NYT, 15.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/world/asia/16night.html

Taliban Leader Rejects Afghan Talks

November 15, 2010
Filed at 11:39 a.m. EST
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar said Monday that the insurgents' strategy aims to increase operations nationwide and battle the U.S.-led coalition in a war of attrition.

But in a sign that NATO's campaign against the Taliban may be hurting the militants far more than they have acknowledged, Mullah Omar also appealed for funding from Muslims around the world.

Mullah Omar, who has not been seen in public since being driven from power following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., said the Taliban wants to boost operations across Afghanistan to "compel the enemy to come out from their hideouts and then crush them through tactical raids."

In his message for Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, the Taliban leader also claimed that NATO forces were in Afghanistan for the "achievement of some colonialist objectives and goals, so it is the religious and humane obligation of the Afghans to stand up."

The U.S.-led coalition has ramped up its military campaign against the Taliban in their southern stronghold, capturing or killing hundreds of insurgent leaders and cutting into the movement's ability to draw funds from the poppy harvest.

A senior coalition official has said the military has been averaging more than 200 special forces operations a month, with more than half resulting in the capture or killing of the targeted insurgents.

Mullah Omar appealed for funds in his holiday message, which suggests that NATO operations may be taking a toll on the insurgents.

"The people are grappling with hardship and poverty. But the Afghans have embraced all these sufferings out of commitment to the great cause of establishment of rules of the Holy Quran and the defense of the Islamic faith," he said, asking that Muslims "perform your obligation of fraternity in your material wealth."

He also reiterated Taliban denials that the insurgents were open to talks with the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai has made reconciliation a top priority and recently formed a 70-member High Peace Council to find a political solution to the insurgency.

Mullah Omar accused Karzai's government of being full of people who are tools of the West and "not interested in the future and prosperity of the country."

"They are only hankering after filling their pockets with money and fleecing the masses," the Taliban leader said. He called on those in the government "to desist from supporting the invaders."

NATO said that Mullah Omar's message was not meant for Afghans but for the international community.

"We believe this message is targeted at the international audience more than Afghan audiences. The language is more nationalistic and anti-colonial; a departure from past messages," said Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a NATO spokesman.

He added that Mullah Omar's message includes more criticism against the international media than in the past.

"The Taliban cannot use facts to explain away their setbacks in and around Kandahar City, the civilian casualties they continue to cause deliberately and through indiscriminate methods like improvised explosive devices, and their intimidation of Afghan civilians wherever they are able."

    Taliban Leader Rejects Afghan Talks, NYT, 15.11.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/11/15/world/asia/AP-AS-Afghan-Taliban-Message.html

U.S. Plan Envisions Path to Ending Afghan Combat

November 14, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and ROD NORDLAND

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has developed a plan to begin transferring security duties in select areas of Afghanistan to that country’s forces over the next 18 to 24 months, with an eye toward ending the American combat mission there by 2014, officials said Sunday.

The phased four-year plan to wind down American and allied fighting in Afghanistan will be presented at a NATO summit meeting in Lisbon later this week, the officials said. It will reflect the most concrete vision for transition in Afghanistan assembled by civilian and military officials since President Obama took office last year.

In many respects, the concept follows the precedent set in Iraq, where a similar troop surge and strategy shift under President George W. Bush in 2007 enabled American-led coalition forces to eventually hand over security duties to the Iraqis region by region. By last summer, Mr. Obama was able to pull out two-thirds of United States forces from Iraq and declare America’s combat mission there over.

“Iraq is a pretty decent blueprint for how to transition in Afghanistan,” one American official said Sunday, insisting like others on anonymity to discuss the strategy before its presentation. “But the key will be constructing an Afghan force that is truly capable of taking the lead.”

The new transition planning comes as prospects for last year’s troop increase in Afghanistan and reformulated strategy there remain uncertain. American forces in Afghanistan have tripled under Mr. Obama, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander, has expressed confidence that they are making progress. But the last of the reinforcements arrived only recently, and officials in Washington have said it is too early to say whether the strategy will work.

Any such transition risks declaring Afghan units combat-ready before they really are, and officials emphasized Sunday that any transition would be based on local conditions, not a dictate from Washington, and would be a process, not an event. “This will be ground-up,” one official said.

The American government is already assessing which areas could be safely handed over to Afghan security forces and will be ready to identify them late this year or early next year, officials said. Every few months, more areas will begin the transition, with the last at the end of 2012. Those will almost certainly include the toughest areas, like Khost in the east and Kandahar in the south.

Even after Afghan forces have assumed the lead in a province, some American or NATO forces may remain or be positioned “over the horizon” elsewhere in Afghanistan ready to respond quickly if necessary. By the end of 2014, American and NATO combat forces could be withdrawn if conditions warrant, although tens of thousands very likely will remain for training, mentoring and other assistance, just as 50,000 American troops are still in Iraq.

The plan came amid escalating pressure from President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to reduce the visibility of American troops, to halt night raids unless carried out by Afghan soldiers or police officers and to begin withdrawing foreign forces by next year. “The time has come to reduce military operations,” Mr. Karzai told The Washington Post in an interview that stirred renewed concern among American officials on Sunday. “The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan.”

While Mr. Obama last year set July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal, he left undetermined the pace and schedule for pulling out the 100,000 American troops now in Afghanistan. The vow to begin bringing troops home helped mute anger among his liberal base but prompted some in the region to assume that America was rushing for the exits.

To emphasize America’s long-term commitment to the country, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have stressed in recent days that 2014 will be the critical date for Afghanistan to take full control of security, a date first set by Mr. Karzai.

The plan’s success depends in part on building an Afghan Army and police force genuinely able to defend their own country. The combined forces today have about 264,000 men, with a goal of 350,000 by 2013. Yet attrition has been a problem for years, with many soldiers and police officers simply walking away, some winding up with the insurgents.

The transition plan may draw skepticism among Republicans, who have complained about Mr. Obama’s previously announced intention to begin withdrawing some forces from the troop increase starting next July.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent in 2008, said Sunday that the president appeared to be basing his war planning on the politics of his liberal base. “You don’t fight and conduct wars that way,” Mr. McCain said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “You win, and then you leave. And that’s what we’ve done in Iraq.”

Appearing on the same program, the president’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said any pullout would be driven by strategy. “We’ve always said it would be based on conditions on the ground, and that is still the case,” he said. “But it’s important to let the Afghans know that they have to pick up the pace in terms of training up the military, training up their police, being ready to accept responsibility.”

While Mr. Karzai has criticized the American military, his latest remarks appeared to go further. But a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omer, said “the president has just talked in line with the transition strategy of NATO.”

On the ground, the tempo of Special Operations raids has greatly increased, resulting in what the United States military says is a sixfold increase in captures and killings of Taliban commanders, but also in an increase in night raids that sometimes lead to civilian casualties.

“It’s not desirable for the Afghan people either to have 100,000 or more foreign troops going around the country endlessly,” Mr. Karzai said, suggesting they should by next year begin drawing down and confining themselves to their bases.

Mr. Omer said the suggestion that American troops be confined to bases referred to a long-term strategic partnership after 2014. But he said “the president does hold the view that there needs to be a reduction in visibility and intrusiveness.” He also said the “visibility and presence” of Afghan forces must increase.

A senior NATO official said that discussions about night raids had been held with Mr. Karzai, and that tactics had been adapted to recognize his sensitivity, including using Afghan partners.

The official said General Petraeus “is spending a considerable amount of time working with President Karzai and his national security team to build upon the progress we’ve made to date, ensuring the eventual transition to Afghan lead by the end of 2014.”

Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    U.S. Plan Envisions Path to Ending Afghan Combat, NYT, 14.1.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/asia/15prexy.html

For Afghan Wives, a Desperate, Fiery Way Out

November 7, 2010
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

HERAT, Afghanistan — Even the poorest families in Afghanistan have matches and cooking fuel. The combination usually sustains life. But it also can be the makings of a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women.

The night before she burned herself, Gul Zada took her children to her sister’s for a family party. All seemed well. Later it emerged that she had not brought a present, and a relative had chided her for it, said her son Juma Gul.

This small thing apparently broke her. Ms. Zada, who was 45, the mother of six children and who earned pitiably little cleaning houses, ended up with burns on nearly 60 percent of her body at the Herat burn hospital. Survival is difficult even at 40 percent.

“She was burned from head to toe,” her son remembers.

The hospital here is the only medical center in Afghanistan that specifically treats victims of burning, a common form of suicide in this region, partly because the tools to do it are so readily available. Through early October, 75 women arrived with burns — most self-inflicted, others only made to look that way. That is up nearly 30 percent from last year.

But the numbers say less than the stories of the patients.

It is shameful here to admit to troubles at home, and mental illness often goes undiagnosed or untreated. Ms. Zada, the hospital staff said, probably suffered from depression. The choices for Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted: Their family is their fate. There is little chance for education, little choice about whom a woman marries, no choice at all about her role in her own house. Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. Outside that world, she is an outcast.

“If you run away from home, you may be raped or put in jail and then sent home and then what will happen to you?” asked Rachel Reid, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who tracks violence against women.

Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man. Women and girls are still stoned to death. Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.

“Violence in the lives of Afghanistan’s women comes from everywhere: from her father or brother, from her husband, from her father-in-law, from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law,” said Dr. Shafiqa Eanin, a plastic surgeon at the burn hospital, which usually has at least 10 female self-immolation cases at any one time.

The most sinister burn cases are actually homicides masquerading as suicides, said doctors, nurses and human rights workers.

“We have two women here right now who were burned by their mothers-in-law and husbands,” said Dr. Arif Jalali, the hospital’s senior surgeon.

Doctors cited two recent cases where women were beaten by their husbands or in-laws, lost consciousness and awoke in the hospital to find themselves burned because they had been shoved in an oven or set on fire.

For a very few of the women who survive burnings, whether self-inflicted or done by relatives, the experience is a kind of Rubicon that helps them change their lives. Some work with lawyers who are recommended by the hospital and request a divorce. Most do not.

Defiant and Depressed

Engaged at 8 and married at 12, Farzana resorted to setting herself on fire when her father-in-law belittled her, saying she was not brave enough to do so. She was 17 and had endured years of beatings and abuse from her husband and his family.

Defiant and depressed, she went into the yard. She handed her husband their 9-month-old daughter so the baby would not see her mother burning. Then she poured cooking fuel on herself.

“I felt so sad and such pain in my heart and I felt very angry at my husband and my father- and mother-in-law, and then I took the matches and lit myself,” she said.

Farzana’s story is about desperation and the extremes that in-laws often inflict on their son’s wives. United Nations statistics indicate that at least 45 percent of Afghan women marry before they are 18; a large percentage before they are 16. Many girls are still given as payment for debts, which sentences them to a life of servitude and, almost always, abuse.

A bright child whose favorite subjects were Dari language and poetry, Farzana dreamed of becoming a teacher. But she had been promised in marriage to the son of the family that was providing a wife for her brother, and when she turned 12, her in-laws insisted it was time to marry. Her future husband had just turned 14.

“On the marriage day, he beat me when I woke up and shouted at me,” she said. “He was always favoring his mother and using bad words about me.”

The beatings went on for four years. Then Farzana’s brother took a second wife, an insult to Farzana’s in-laws. Her mistreatment worsened. They refused to allow her to see her mother, and her husband beat her more often.

“I thought of running away from that house, but then I thought: what will happen to the name of my family?” she said. “No one in our family has asked for divorce. So how can I be the first?”

Doctors and nurses say that especially in cases involving younger women, fury at their situation, a sense of being trapped and a desire to shame their husbands into caring for them all come together.

This was true of Farzana.

“The thing that forced me to set myself on fire was when my father-in-law said: ‘You are not able to set yourself on fire,’ ” she recalled.

But she did, and when the flames were out, 58 percent of her body was burnt. As a relative bundled her raw body into a car for the hospital, her husband whispered: “If anybody asks you, don’t tell them my name; don’t say I had anything to do with it.’ ”

After 57 days in the hospital and multiple skin grafts, she is home with her mother and torn between family traditions and an inchoate sense that a new way of thinking is needed.

Farzana’s daughter is being brought up by her husband’s family, and mother and daughter are not allowed to see each other. Despite that, she says that she cannot go back to her husband’s house.

“Five years I spent in his house with those people,” she said. “My marriage was for other people. They should never have given me in a child marriage.”

A Common Option

Why do women burn themselves rather than choose another form of suicide?

Poverty is one reason, said Dr. Jalali. Many women mistakenly think death will be instant. Halima, 20, a patient in the hospital in August, said she considered jumping from a roof but worried she would only break her leg. If she set herself on fire, she said, “It would all be over.”

Self-immolation is more common in Herat and western Afghanistan than other parts of the country. The area’s closeness to Iran may partly explain why; Iran shares in the culture of suicide by burning.

Unlike many women admitted to the burn hospital, Ms. Zada showed no outward signs of distress before she set herself on fire. Her life, though, was hard. Her husband is a sharecropper. She cleaned houses and at night stayed up to clean her own home — a nearly impossible task in the family’s squalid earthen and brick two-room house buffeted by the Herati winds that sweep in a layer of dust each time the door opens.

To her family, she was a constant provider. “Before I thought of wanting something, she provided me with it,” said Juma Gul, 32, her eldest son, a laborer who earns about $140 a month. “She would embroider our clothes so that we wouldn’t feel we had less than other people.”

As he spoke, his 10-year-old twin sisters sat near him holding hands and a picture of their mother.

In the hospital, Ms. Zada rallied at first, and Juma Gul was encouraged, unaware of how hard it is to survive such extensive burns. That is especially true in the developing world, said Dr. Robert Sheridan, chief of surgery at the Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston and a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The greatest risk is sepsis, a deadly infection that generally starts in the second week after a burn and is hard to stop, Dr. Sheridan said. Even badly burned and infected patients can speak almost up to the hour of their death, often giving families false hopes.

“She was getting better,” her son insisted.

But infection had, in fact, set in, and the family did not have the money for powerful antibiotics that could give her whatever small chance there was to survive. Juma Gul eventually managed to beg and borrow the money, but not before the infection spread.

Two weeks after his mother set herself on fire, he stood by her bed as she stopped breathing.

    For Afghan Wives, a Desperate, Fiery Way Out, NYT, 7.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08burn.html

Army Studies Thrill-Seeking Behavior

October 30, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — Senior Airman Michael Kearns had been back from Iraq for only two months when he was pulled over on a Florida highway for going more than 120 miles per hour on his new Suzuki. He knew his motorcycle riding was reckless, but after living through daily mortar attacks on his base in Iraq, he said he needed the adrenaline rush.

“When you get here, there’s nothing that’s very exciting that keeps your pulse going,” Airman Kearns, 27, said in a recent interview.

His experience is so common that the United States military, alarmed by a rising suicide rate and the record number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who die in highway accidents back home, is asking a provocative new question: Nearly a decade into two bloody wars, are the armed forces attracting recruits drawn to high-risk behavior?

“In January 1990, you could join the military and think, ‘You know, I’m probably not going to get deployed,’ ” said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University professor who has done research on the gap between the military and civilian society. “So on the margins it is reasonable to expect that there might have been a few more people in the pre-9/11 period who said, ‘I have no interest in war and there are other reasons for me to join.’

“By 2005, there were very few, or nobody, like that,” he said. “Or if you were like that, you were a fool. The evidence was staring you in the face that you would be deployed in ground combat.”

The military says the people who enlist to serve their country have always included plenty of adrenaline addicts, which recruiters say is a good thing when troops are needed to jump out of airplanes and go on raids in Afghanistan. But military researchers say they have been compelled to take a deeper look at the psychological demographic of an all-volunteer force during the most prolonged period of combat in American history.

“We’ve never been at war for as long as we’ve been, and we don’t know the effects of that,” said Bruce Shahbaz, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of the three main authors of a recent Army suicide report. “We may be attracting people who are more comfortable with risk, and if so, how do we measure that?”

Beyond that, Colonel Shahbaz said, the Army wants to know whether risk-takers are more likely to commit suicide or die in accidents, and whether a predisposition to risk-taking is increased by combat.

To try to find answers, this fall the Army and the National Institute of Mental Health are beginning a five-year study of 90,000 active-duty soldiers and all new Army recruits, 80,000 to 120,000 per year. The recruits are to answer confidential surveys that Colonel Shahbaz said might include questions on whether they owned motorcycles, used drugs or liked to bungee-jump. There will be cognitive tests to measure reactions to stress as well as an in-depth look at a recruit’s family background and genetics.

“It will give us an assessment of someone’s cognitive style and whether they have a history that draws them to high-risk behaviors,” said Thomas R. Insel, the institute’s director.

Researchers acknowledge that in focusing so much on recruits, they are slighting what many say is the biggest reason for the high military suicide rate, the stress of repeated wartime deployments. But in one of the more surprising statistics cited in the Army’s suicide report, 79 percent of the soldiers who committed suicide in recent years had had only one deployment, or had not deployed at all.

“For us to blame this thing just on the war would be wrong,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, said at a July news conference about the report.

The report concluded that much of the fault was with commanders who disregarded the mental health problems of their troops, but it also blamed the Army for not winnowing out enough of the recruits with records of substance abuse and crime. From roughly 2005 to 2007, when a strong economy sent potential soldiers looking elsewhere for jobs with better pay, the Army lowered its recruiting and retention standards to meet the demands of two wars. As a result, the report said, tens of thousands of recruits were granted waivers for the kind of behavior, including felonies, that would have kept them out of the service in earlier years.

There were a record 160 active-duty Army suicides in the year from Oct. 1, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2009, and the report said that if accidental deaths were included, “less young men and women die in combat than die by their own actions.”

Whatever the survey finds, the military says it has to do a better job of managing the risk-takers of any kind within its ranks. “A soldier who dies bungee-jumping on a weekend because he needs that adrenaline rush is no less painful to the Army than a soldier who commits suicide,” Colonel Shahbaz said. “If we could figure out three or four of those behaviors that affect a large number of people and say, ‘O.K., a lot of guys are doing this, how can we teach them to do that in a way that is more safe and more responsible?’ ”

Some programs are already in place for young men and women who return from war feeling invincible. The military requires riding classes for service members who buy motorcycles, a popular way to spend deployment cash. The Marines hold sport-bike racing events to try to cut down on speeding on the roads. And the Air Force has a new safety program in which young airmen who have been in accidents talk to their peers about their close calls.

One of them is Airman Kearns, the Iraq veteran who was stopped speeding on his motorcycle. This year, working out of Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, he has spoken to at least 300 young members of the Air Force to tell them, “There are other ways to get your adrenaline.”

Before he joined the military, Airman Kearns liked extreme sports, including motorcycle racing and bungee-jumping. He enlisted, he said, to serve his country. But, as he also acknowledged, “I might have been attracted to the risk of it.”

    Army Studies Thrill-Seeking Behavior, NYT, 30.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/us/31memo.html

In Icy Tip of Afghanistan, War Seems Remote

October 27, 2010
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BOZAI GUMBAZ, Afghanistan — As the pickup truck bounced toward a remote village deep in northeastern Afghanistan, the young woman was told by her companions that she could toss her burqa aside.

“It’s free here,” said the woman, Zarmina Nazaria, a 26-year-old nurse. She slipped off her powder-blue burqa and laid it on the rear seat.

The rules that apply to the rest of Afghanistan are often irrelevant in the Wakhan Corridor, a frigid, finger-shaped stretch of land squeezed between Tajikistan, Pakistan and China that is cut off from the Afghan heartland by the icy ramparts of the Hindu Kush. Here, the one constant of life for most Afghans — war — is as distant as a tropical wind.

From the Soviet invasion to the civil war to the Taliban takeover to the anti-Taliban resistance, the Wakhan has remained largely free of strife. No Taliban show their faces here, nor do American soldiers. Villagers train to be wildlife rangers, not army rangers. The prevalent brand of Islam, Ismailism, is moderate; its spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, is a billionaire society figure in Paris.

Foreign tourists are trickling in, about 200 during each of the past two summers. The trekkers and mountaineers are following in the footsteps of explorers like Marco Polo and Sir Aurel Stein. This year, British and Polish expeditions climbed 20,000-foot peaks in the area.

Long ignored by Kabul, the people lack the most basic services. But nongovernmental groups have a growing presence, finding it easier to work here than in more violent parts of Afghanistan. Greg Mortenson, co-author of “Three Cups of Tea,” has built 11 schools in the corridor through his nonprofit group, the Central Asia Institute. Foreign employees of the Wildlife Conservation Society track snow leopards and train local rangers.

“There has been no war and no violence in the Wakhan,” said Malang Daria, a local trekking guide who was part of a 2009 French-Afghan expedition that climbed Noshaq, at 24,580 feet Afghanistan’s highest peak. “The people here are very peaceful, very calm.”

More than 12,000 people live in the 220-mile corridor, a series of broad valleys and high-altitude plateaus carved by the Panj River. A vast majority are ethnic Wakhi. As Ismailis, they eschew some of the mainstream conventions of Islam. They do not fast during Ramadan, for example, which is unheard of elsewhere in Afghanistan, where conservative Sunnis predominate.

“Ismailis have a modernist outlook,” said John Mock, a scholar of South Asia at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “The Aga Khan promotes modernism.”

Wakhi villages dot Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China. The Wakhan Corridor should logically be part of Tajikistan or Pakistan, but an 1895 agreement between Britain and Russia made it an Afghan-controlled buffer zone to prevent their two empires from touching.

The corridor has remained a no man’s land. It is so remote that the people still live on a barter economy. During the summer, they trade sheep, goats and yaks, usually their only valuables, to merchants who arrive on horseback bearing clothing and other luxury items. Some are resentful of the outsiders, who resell the livestock at a substantial profit.

Wakhi herders tend flocks of sheep, and women in traditional red dresses work the wheat and barley fields. They don burqas only when going to Ishkashim, a village at the western mouth of the corridor where half the residents are Sunni Tajiks. Some Wakhi traders cross freely between Afghanistan and Pakistan over high passes.

In the eastern half, toward China, the corridor becomes a lunar bowl not unlike the Tibetan plateau. This is the Little Pamir, home to about 100 nomadic Kyrgyz families who live in felt yurts above 13,000 feet. Closer to Tajikistan, 140 Kyrgyz families live on a plateau called the Big Pamir. Blizzards are known to blow through in August.

At Bozai Gumbaz, in the heart of the Little Pamir, centuries-old beehive-shaped tombs built by the Kyrgyz sit next to rusted concertina wire left over from a Soviet military base. Beside the graves flow the waters of the Panj, better known elsewhere as the Amu Darya, born from a glacier near the Chinese border.

The Wakhan was not always sealed off from the currents of history. A branch of the Silk Road once ran through here, bringing influences from different civilizations. Outside the village of Sarhad-e Broghil, the ruins of an eighth-century Tibetan fort sit on a knoll. “In terms of religious belief, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Islam have all been prevalent in the region at different times and have left their mark,” said Andy Miller, a heritage consultant in Kabul who wrote a book on folklore of the Wakhan.

Marco Polo wandered through the valley, as did Francis E. Younghusband, the British Great Game explorer whose surprise run-in with a Russian colonel at Bozai Gumbaz led to the negotiations that would create the borders of the modern Wakhan.

Nor are the people here today untouched by the political struggles and violence that rage outside the Wakhan. Mr. Malang, the mountaineer, said his half brother, Daulat Muhammad, 40, a policeman, was killed in August while taking part in a disastrous Afghan Army battle against the Taliban around Kunduz.

Social problems endemic to other parts of Afghanistan also surface here. Opium addiction is common among the Kyrgyz nomads. In the summer settlement of Kashch Goz, several Kyrgyz spend their days smoking in their yurts. With outside help, the Wakhi largely broke their addiction years ago.

The Kyrgyz complain about a lack of attention from Kabul. They say food, running water and electricity are scarce in the Pamirs. One Kyrgyz elder, Haji Osman, recently asked President Hamid Karzai for aid. “We’re still waiting,” he said. (Mr. Osman has less to complain about than most Kyrgyz, though: he has a satellite dish outside his yurt and a television powered by solar electricity.)

Of the nongovernmental organizations working here, the most ubiquitous are the Aga Khan Development Network and Mr. Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute, which completed a school this year for the Kyrgyz at Bozai Gumbaz. “Their leader organized 50 yaks to bring building materials through the Wakhan,” Mr. Mortenson said.

But the school is still trying to fill its classrooms. Kyrgyz parents prefer that their children herd livestock, said Sarfraz Khan, the group’s regional manager.

“We need to convince the people to send their children to school,” he said.

When some locals discuss how the Wakhan might develop, they look east, toward the frontier with China. They say they hope that China and Afghanistan will one day open the border at the Wakhjir Pass, and that China will build a road or railway through the corridor, perhaps to gain better access to Afghanistan’s rich mineral deposits. Afghan officials say they have pressed China on the question.

“The Chinese side says principally it is important, but practically it takes time and money,” said Sultan Baheen, the Afghan ambassador to China.

Until those doors open, the Wakhan and its people will probably remain cloistered in their world of wind and ice, as they have for centuries.

    In Icy Tip of Afghanistan, War Seems Remote, NYT, 27.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/world/asia/28wakhan.html

What About Afghan Women?

October 23, 2010
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KABUL, Afghanistan

For those of us who favor a sharp reduction in American troops in Afghanistan and a peace deal with the Taliban, the most vexing question is: What about Afghan women?

Time magazine framed the issue in a wrenching way with a cover this summer of Aisha, an 18-year-old woman who ran away from an abusive husband. The article said that last year the Taliban had punished Aisha by having her nose and ears hacked off — a traditional punishment for women considered disobedient or promiscuous. Her husband did the cutting.

Time quoted Aisha as saying of the Taliban, as she was touching her disfigured face: “How can we reconcile with them?”

It’s a fair question, as is: Are those of us who favor a military pullback in Afghanistan sentencing more women to be brutalized? Those are questions that I came to Afghanistan to wrestle with.

Women are fearful, no question. Here in Kabul, far fewer women wear the burqa today than on my previous visits. But several women told me that they were keeping burqas at home — just in case. The gnawing fear is that even if the Taliban do not regain control in Kabul, fundamentalist values and laws will gain ground.

Still, it seems to me a historic mistake to justify our huge military presence in Afghanistan as a bulwark to protect the women. In fact, most women I interviewed favored making a deal with the Taliban — simply because it would bring peace. For them, the Taliban regime was awful, but a perpetual war may be worse.

Take Pari Gol, a woman from Helmand Province whom I met here in Kabul. She despises the Taliban and told me on this trip that back in 2001, “I prayed that the Taliban would be defeated, and God listened to my prayers.”

Yet in the fighting since then, she said, her home was destroyed and her husband and daughter were both killed by American airstrikes. She is now living in a mud hut here — fuming at the Taliban, the Americans and the Afghan government. “I hate all of them,” she told me.

Remember also that while women in Kabul benefit from new freedoms, that is not true of an Afghan woman in a village in the South. For such women there, life before 2001 was oppressive — and so is life today.

One man from Helmand Province, Wali Khan, told me that there would be no difference for women in his village, whether the Taliban rule or not, because in either case women would be locked up in the home. He approvingly cited an expression in Pashto that translates to: “a wife should be in the home — or in the grave.”

In other words, oppression is rooted not only in the Taliban but also in the culture. The severing of a woman’s nose and ears occurs not only in Taliban areas but also in secure parts of Pakistan. Indeed, I’ve come across such disfigurement more in Punjab, the most powerful and populous province of Pakistan, than in Afghanistan — yet I haven’t heard anybody say we should occupy Pakistan to transform it.

The best way to end oppression isn’t firepower but rather education and economic empowerment, for men and women alike, in ways that don’t create a backlash. As I wrote in my last column, schooling is possible even in Taliban-controlled areas, as long as implementation is undertaken in close consultation with elders and doesn’t involve Westerners on the ground.

Often the best place to hold girls’ literacy classes is in the mosque. And the insistence of Western donors that they get credit with signs on projects they finance is counterproductive. Buildings might as well have signs reading “burn me down.”

One impressive force for change is BPeace, which encourages female entrepreneurs in Afghanistan. Soora Stoda, one of the entrepreneurs I met, is building a potato chip factory. Another, Shahla Akbari, makes shoes. Her mother, Fatima Akbari, has 3,000 (mostly female) employees around Afghanistan, working in jam-making, furniture building, tailoring, knitting, jewelry and other lines.

Fatima Akbari is now expanding her women’s businesses and literacy classes in Taliban-controlled areas, always working closely with mullahs and elders to gain their support and protection. “When you go and win their hearts, you can do anything,” she said.

“I’m not threatened by negotiations with the Taliban,” she added. “In fact, it would be good for the Taliban to be involved in the country, to see that there’s nothing wrong with women leaving the house. And once there’s a deal with the Taliban, security will be better.”

So let’s not fool ourselves by thinking that we’re doing favors for Afghan women by investing American blood and treasure in an unsustainable war here. The road to emancipate Afghan women will be arduous, but it runs through schools and economic development — and, yes, a peace deal with the Taliban, if that’s possible.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

    What About Afghan Women?, NYT, 23.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/opinion/24kristof.html

Iran Is Said to Give Top Karzai Aide Cash by the Bagful

October 23, 2010
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — One evening last August, as President Hamid Karzai wrapped up an official visit to Iran, his personal plane sat on the airport tarmac, waiting for a late-running passenger: Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan.

The ambassador, Feda Hussein Maliki, finally appeared, taking a seat next to Umar Daudzai, Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff and his most trusted confidant. According to an Afghan official on the plane, Mr. Maliki handed Mr. Daudzai a large plastic bag bulging with packets of euro bills. A second Afghan official confirmed that Mr. Daudzai carried home a large bag of cash.

“This is the Iranian money,” said an Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Many of us noticed this.”

The bag of money is part of a secret, steady stream of Iranian cash intended to buy the loyalty of Mr. Daudzai and promote Iran’s interests in the presidential palace, according to Afghan and Western officials here. Iran uses its influence to help drive a wedge between the Afghans and their American and NATO benefactors, they say.

The payments, which officials say total millions of dollars, form an off-the-books fund that Mr. Daudzai and Mr. Karzai have used to pay Afghan lawmakers, tribal elders and even Taliban commanders to secure their loyalty, the officials said.

“It’s basically a presidential slush fund,” a Western official in Kabul said of the Iranian-supplied money. “Daudzai’s mission is to advance Iranian interests.”

The Western and Afghan officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of discussing the financial dealings of Mr. Karzai and his aide. The sources said they were motivated by a concern that Mr. Daudzai was helping to poison relations between Mr. Karzai and the United States. Mr. Daudzai and Mr. Karzai both declined to respond to written questions about their relationship with Iran. An aide to Mr. Daudzai dismissed the allegations as “rubbish.”

Mr. Maliki, the Iranian ambassador in Kabul, also declined to answer questions. A spokesman for Mr. Maliki called the allegations “devilish gossip by the West and foreign media.”

The Iranian payments are intended to secure the allegiance of Mr. Daudzai, a former ambassador to Iran who consistently advocates an anti-Western line to Mr. Karzai, the officials said. Mr. Daudzai briefs Mr. Karzai each morning.

“Karzai knows that without the U.S., he is finished,” an associate of the president said. “But it’s like voodoo. Daudzai is the source of all the problems with the U.S. He is systematically feeding him misinformation, disinformation and wrong information.”

The payments to Mr. Daudzai illustrate the degree to which the Iranian government has penetrated Mr. Karzai’s inner circle despite his presumed alliance with the United States and the other NATO countries, which have sustained him with military forces and billions of dollars since the Taliban’s ouster since 2001.

Earlier this year, Mr. Karzai invited the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the presidential palace, where Mr. Ahmadinejad gave a virulently anti-American speech. When Mr. Ahmadinejad visited Kabul, he brought two boxes of cash, an Afghan official said. “One box was for Daudzai personally, the other for the palace,” the official said.

A senior NATO officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to discuss whether Mr. Daudzai was receiving money from Iran. But he said that the Iranian government was conducting an aggressive campaign inside Afghanistan to undermine the American and NATO mission and to gain influence in politics.

The NATO officer said Iran’s intelligence agencies were playing both sides of the conflict, providing financing, weapons and training to the Taliban. Iranian agents also financed the campaigns of several Afghans who ran in last month’s parliamentary election, the NATO officer said.

The Iranian intelligence services have developed the ability to assassinate opponents and attack American troops inside the country, the NATO officer said.

“I am very concerned that they have a lethal capability and presence inside Afghanistan and Kabul,” the officer said.

Obama administration officials have expressed alarm about Iranian intentions. Last week, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, complained to Afghanistan’s finance minister, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, about Mr. Daudzai and Iran’s influence in the presidential palace, a former Afghan official said.

Mr. Holbrooke did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview, Mr. Zakhilwal declined to talk about the discussion with Mr. Holbrooke or about any Iranian activities in Afghanistan.

“We have no choice but to be friendly with Iran,” Mr. Zakhilwal said. “It’s a hostile neighborhood.”

Mr. Daudzai is part of a group of Afghans around Mr. Karzai whose members once belonged to Hezb-i-Islami, a hard-line Islamist group that fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The group, loosely allied with the Taliban, is still fighting NATO forces and the Afghan government.

Hezb-i-Islami’s leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was one of the most brutal of Afghan warlords. During the civil war in the 1990s, his forces conducted an extended bombardment of Kabul, killing thousands of civilians. Since 2001, Mr. Hekmatyar has spent at least part of the time living under the protection of the Iranian government. The group also has long-standing ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, which maintain links to the Taliban.

Current and former Afghan officials say the Iranian government began financing Mr. Karzai before Mr. Daudzai became his chief of staff in 2003. It is not clear when Mr. Daudzai became a conduit for Iranian cash. In 2005, he was named ambassador to Iran. It was then, one Afghan official said, that Mr. Daudzai became acquainted with Iranian intelligence officials and grew close to senior Iranian leaders like Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Daudzai returned to Kabul in 2007 to resume his job as chief of staff. Since then, officials said, Mr. Daudzai has maintained a close relationship with the Iranian ambassador. Iranian officials have nearly unfettered access to Mr. Karzai’s palace, bypassing the normal rules of protocol.

“The relationship is intimate,” an Afghan political leader said of Mr. Daudzai and the Iranians.

Accounts vary as to how much Iranian money flow into the presidential palace. An Afghan political leader said he believed that Mr. Daudzai received between $1 million and $2 million every other month. A former diplomat who served in Afghanistan said sometimes single payments totaled as much as $6 million.

One former Afghan official said the money appeared to be kept in a safe in Mr. Daudzai’s office.

It is not clear whether Mr. Daudzai takes any of the money himself or whether he is the only conduit. But Afghan and Western officials say Mr. Daudzai owns at least six homes in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and in Vancouver, British Columbia, acquired during his time as Mr. Karzai’s top aide.

One Afghan official said Mr. Daudzai used his power over Mr. Karzai’s schedule to ensure that Afghans who saw him registered complaints about the American presence in the country and the deaths of Afghan civilians in the war. “This is the strategy,” the Afghan official said.

Mr. Daudzai’s efforts on Iran’s behalf have met with some resistance. According to the Western official, Mr. Daudzai ran afoul of Afghan intelligence officials when he tried to help some Iranian businesses set up operations in Kabul. The Afghan intelligence officials believed that the Iranian officials were fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a powerful wing of the Iranian military.

The Iranian businesses were shut down by the National Directorate of Security, the Western official said. But not for long.

“Daudzai helped them get going, then N.D.S. closed them down, but then they reopened again,” the Western official said. An Afghan official confirmed the account.

Iranians get involved in other parts of Afghanistan’s political life as well. The Iranian ambassador is trying to sway the choice of speaker of the lower house of Parliament, Afghans said. According to an Afghan official, Mr. Maliki recently called Mirwais Yasini, a candidate for the speaker’s job, and urged him to step aside in favor of Yunus Qanooni.

Sangar Rahimi and Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.

    Iran Is Said to Give Top Karzai Aide Cash by the Bagful, NYT, 23.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/asia/24afghan.html

C.I.A. Was Warned About Man Who Bombed Afghan Base, Inquiry Finds

October 19, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Three weeks before a Jordanian double agent set off a bomb at a remote Central Intelligence Agency base in eastern Afghanistan last December, a C.I.A. officer in Jordan received warnings that the man might be working for Al Qaeda, according to an investigation into the deadly attack.

But the C.I.A. officer did not tell his bosses of suspicions — brought to the Americans by a Jordanian intelligence officer — that the man might be planning to lure Americans into a trap, according to the recently completed investigation by the agency. Later that month the Qaeda operative, a Jordanian doctor, detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of C.I.A. officers at the base.

The internal investigation documents a litany of breakdowns leading to the Dec. 30 attack at the Khost base that killed seven C.I.A. employees, the deadliest day for the spy agency since the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. Besides the failure to pass on warnings about the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the C.I.A. investigation chronicled major security lapses at the base in Afghanistan, a lack of war zone experience among the agency’s personnel at the base, insufficient vetting of the alleged defector and a murky chain of command with different branches of the intelligence agency competing for control over the operation.

Some of these failures mirror other lapses that have bedeviled the sprawling intelligence and antiterrorism community in the past several years, despite numerous efforts at reform.

The report found that the breakdowns were partly the result of C.I.A. officers’ wanting to believe they had finally come across the thing that had eluded them for years: a golden source who could lead them to the terror network’s second highest figure, Ayman al-Zawahri.

As it turned out, the bomber who was spirited onto a base pretending to be a Qaeda operative willing to cooperate with the Americans was actually a double agent who detonated a suicide vest as he stood among a group of C.I.A. officers. “The mission itself may have clouded some of the judgments made here,” said the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, who provided details of the investigation to reporters on Tuesday.

Mr. Panetta said that the report did not recommend holding a single person or group of individuals directly accountable for “systemic failures.”

“This is a war,” he said, adding that it is important for the C.I.A. to continue to take on risky missions.

The investigation, conducted by the agency’s counterintelligence division, does, however, make a series of recommendations to improve procedures to vet sources and require that C.I.A. field officers share more information with their superiors.

Mr. Panetta said that he also ordered that a team of counterintelligence experts join the C.I.A. counterterrorism center, and to thoroughly vet the agency’s most promising informants. It is unclear whether any action will be taken against the C.I.A. operative in Jordan who chose not to pass on the warning.

The agency is a closed society that makes precious little public about its operations. It is sometimes loath to investigate itself, and at times has resisted punishing people for failures.

In 2005, for instance, Director Porter J. Goss rejected the recommendation of an internal review that “accountability boards” be established to determine which senior C.I.A. officials should be blamed for intelligence breakdowns before the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Goss said that punishing top officers “would send the wrong message to our junior officers about taking risks.”

Current and former C.I.A. officials said that the decision not to hold officers directly responsible for the bombing was partly informed by an uncomfortable truth: some of those who may have been at fault were killed in the bombing.

In particular, the officials said there was particular care about how much fault to assign to Jennifer Matthews, a Qaeda expert at the C.I.A. who was the chief of the Khost base and who died in the attack.

One former C.I.A. officer with Afghanistan experience said there was bitter internal debate at the spy agency over whether Ms. Matthews — who had little field experience — ought to singled out for blame for the security lapses that allowed the bomber, Mr. Balawi, onto the base.

“There’s a lot of built-up emotion over this, because one of the primary people accused is Jennifer, and she’s not here to defend herself,” he said.

Several family members of the victims of the Khost attack, reached by telephone and e-mail on Tuesday, declined to comment about the C.I.A. report. Mr. Panetta said that families would be informed about the report’s conclusions in the coming days.

The warnings about Mr. Balawi came from a Jordanian intelligence officer. Mr. Panetta said that it appeared that the C.I.A. operative in Amman, Jordan, was dismissive of them because he suspected that the Jordanian was jealous that one of his colleagues had a close relationship with Mr. Balawi, and might have been trying to scuttle the operation.

As he detailed the report’s conclusions, the C.I.A. director provided new details about the unraveling of, and deadly conclusion to, Mr. Balawi’s operation.

Mr. Panetta said that the General Intelligence Department, the Jordanian spy service that is a close C.I.A. ally, had first told the Americans that Mr. Balawi might be willing to become a C.I.A. informant. Over a period of months, he said, the Jordanian doctor provided information from the tribal area of Pakistan to establish bona fides with his handlers.

A meeting at the Khost base was set up for the Americans to meet Mr. Balawi in person, to discuss specific ways that the Jordanian doctor might be able to consistently pass along information to the C.I.A.

Mr. Panetta said that because he was considered a reliable source, normal security procedures were eased: Mr. Balawi was not subjected to screening at the perimeter of the Khost base, and a large group of C.I.A. officers gathered to greet him when he arrived.

C.I.A. officers became suspicious however, when Mr. Balawi chose to get out of the car on the side opposite the security personnel, who were waiting to pat him down. The security guards drew their guns, and Mr. Balawi detonated his suicide vest.

The force of the bomb killed the seven C.I.A. employees, the Jordanian intelligence officer who was Mr. Balawi’s handler, and an Afghan driver. Six more C.I.A. officers were wounded in the attack, but Mr. Panetta said that the bomb could have been deadlier had Mr. Balawi’s car — which blunted the explosion — had not been in between the bomber and most of the Americans.

Current and former American officials said that the final report on the Khost attack went through several drafts, in part because an already complex investigation was made even more difficult by the bomb’s devastating impact.

As Mr. Panetta said, “A lot of the evidence here died with the people.”

    C.I.A. Was Warned About Man Who Bombed Afghan Base, Inquiry Finds, NYT, 19.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/asia/20intel.html

Taliban’s Elite, Aided by NATO, Join Talks for Afghan Peace

October 19, 2010
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — Talks to end the war in Afghanistan involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group’s leadership, who are secretly leaving their sanctuaries in Pakistan with the help of NATO troops, officials here say.

The discussions, some of which have taken place in Kabul, are unfolding between the inner circle of President Hamid Karzai and members of the Quetta shura, the leadership group that oversees the Taliban war effort inside Afghanistan. Afghan leaders have also held discussions with leaders of the Haqqani network, considered to be one of the most hard-line guerrilla factions fighting here; and members of the Peshawar shura, whose fighters are based in eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban leaders coming into Afghanistan for talks have left their havens in Pakistan on the explicit assurance that they will not be attacked or arrested by NATO forces, Afghans familiar with the talks say. Many top Taliban leaders reside in Pakistan, where they are believed to enjoy at least some official protection.

In at least one case, Taliban leaders crossed the border and boarded a NATO aircraft bound for Kabul, according to an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. In other cases, NATO troops have secured roads to allow Taliban officials to reach Afghan- and NATO-controlled areas so they can take part in discussions. Most of the discussions have taken place outside of Kabul, according to the Afghan official.

American officials said last week that talks between Afghan and Taliban leaders were under way. But the ranks of the insurgents, the fact that they represent multiple factions, and the extent of NATO efforts to provide transportation and security to adversaries they otherwise try to kill or capture have not been previously disclosed.

At least four Taliban leaders, three of them members of the Quetta shura and one of them a member of the Haqqani family, have taken part in discussions, according to the Afghan official and a former diplomat in the region.

The identities of the Taliban leaders are being withheld by The New York Times at the request of the White House and an Afghan who has taken part in the discussions. The Afghan official said that identifying the men could result in their deaths or detention at the hands of rival Taliban commanders or the Pakistani intelligence agents who support them.

The discussions are still described as preliminary, partly because Afghan and American officials are trying to determine how much influence the Taliban leaders who have participated in the talks have within their own organizations.

Even so, the talks have been held on several different occasions and appear to represent the most substantive effort to date to negotiate an end to the nine-year-old war, which began with an American-led campaign to overthrow the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks. “These are face-to-face discussions,” said an Afghan with knowledge of the talks. “This is not about making the Americans happy or making Karzai happy. It’s about what is in the best interests of the Afghan people.”

“These talks are based on personal relationships,” the official said. “When the Taliban see that they can travel in the country without being attacked by the Americans, they see that the government is sovereign, that they can trust us.”

The discussions appear to be unfolding without the approval of Pakistan’s leaders, who are believed to exercise a wide degree of control over the Taliban’s leadership. The Afghan government seems to be trying to seek a reconciliation agreement that does not directly involve Pakistan, which Mr. Karzai’s government fears will exercise too much influence over Afghanistan after NATO forces withdraw.

But that strategy could backfire by provoking the Pakistanis, who could undermine any agreement.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, the overall leader of the Taliban, is explicitly being cut out of the negotiations, in part because of his closeness to the Pakistani security services, officials said.

Afghans who have tried to take part in, or even facilitate, past negotiations have been killed by their Taliban comrades, sometimes with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

“The ISI will try to prevent these negotiations from happening,” the Afghan official said. “The ISI will just eliminate them,” he said, referring to the people who take part.

Earlier this year, the ISI detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders residing in Pakistan after the intelligence service discovered that the Taliban leaders were talking secretly with representatives of the Afghan government.

Cutting Mullah Omar out of the negotiations appears to represent an attempt by Afghan leaders to drive a wedge into the upper ranks of the Taliban leadership. Though there is some disagreement among Afghan officials, many regard Mullah Omar as essentially a prisoner of the Pakistani security establishment who would be unable to exercise any independence.

Some American and Afghan officials believe that the Taliban is vulnerable to being split, with potentially large chunks of the movement defecting to the Afghan government.

The Haqqani group is the namesake of Jalalhuddin Haqqani, a former minister in the Taliban government in the 1990s who presides over a Mafia-like organization based in North Waziristan, in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani network has sheltered several members of Al Qaeda and maintains close links to Pakistan’s security services.

The group is believed to be responsible for many suicide attacks inside Kabul that have killed hundreds of civilians. Earlier this year, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of NATO forces here, asked the Obama administration to declare the Haqqani network a terrorist organization. That has not happened.

Indeed, the endorsement of such talks presents the Americans with a paradox. Many if not most of the leaders of the Taliban and the Haqqani group are targets for death or capture. Many of the same individuals are also on the United Nations “black list,” which obliges governments to freeze their assets and prevent them from traveling.

Waheed Omar, a spokesman for President Karzai, acknowledged that the government was in contact with a range of Taliban leaders, but he declined to discuss any details. “I cannot confirm that there have been discussions with the Quetta shura,” he said.

The Taliban leadership and those in their immediate circle appear to be in the dark as well. A Pakistani cleric close to the Quetta shura and the Haqqani leadership said in an interview that he was unaware of any face-to-face discussions with Afghan leaders. But he said the Afghan government had recently sent out feelers to several Taliban commanders, with the proviso that Mullah Omar be left out.

“The problem is, they want to exclude Mullah Omar,” the cleric said. “If you exclude him, then there cannot be any talks at all.”

The Pakistani cleric said that some discussions among members of the Quetta shura may have taken place recently in Saudi Arabia, where many of the group’s leaders had traveled during the holy month of Ramadan.

One Pakistani security official said he was aware of talks involving a member of the Quetta shura. But he said those discussions would likely come to nothing, because the Taliban leader did not any have official endorsement.

“He’s useless,” the Pakistani security officer said of the Taliban leader. “This guy is not in a position to make a deal.”

For their part, American officials say they are wary of investing too much hope in the discussions. In the past, talks — or, more accurately, talks about talks — have foundered over preconditions that each side has set: for the Taliban, that the Americans must first withdraw; for the Afghan government, that the Taliban must first disarm.

Perhaps the biggest complication lies on the battlefield. As long as the Taliban believe they are winning, they do not seem likely to want to make a deal. In recent months, as the additional troops and resources ordered up by President Obama have poured in, the American military has stepped up operations against Taliban strongholds.

So far, the insurgents have shown few public signs of wanting to give up. That much was acknowledged Tuesday by the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta.

“If there are elements that wish to reconcile and get reintegrated, that ought to be obviously explored,” he said in Washington. “But I still have not seen anything that indicates that at this point a serious effort is being made to reconcile.”

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. A Pakistani employee of The New York Times also contributed reporting.

    Taliban’s Elite, Aided by NATO, Join Talks for Afghan Peace, NYT, 19.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/asia/20afghan.html

Time to Talk to the Taliban

October 18, 2010
The New York Times
By RICHARD BARRETT

SPECULATION is growing both inside and outside Afghanistan that the government in Kabul is about to open reconciliation talks with the Taliban. Indeed, Taliban leaders, however hesitantly, are beginning to look at alternatives to fighting. They no doubt realize that a military victory is as remote and as hard to define for them as it appears to be for President Hamid Karzai and his NATO allies.

This is unsurprising. Time, rather than resources or appetite for fighting, is beginning to run out for the Taliban. Until recently, they have argued that they will continue to fight until all foreign troops leave the country. Their other conditions are that certain Taliban prisoners must be freed from detention and that the United Nations Security Council should remove the names of Taliban members from its Qaeda-Taliban sanctions list.

But as it becomes increasingly clear that there will be only a limited drawdown of United States troops starting next July, and that the current intense air campaign and other attacks on Taliban leaders are likely to continue, waiting until the foreigners leave is no longer such an attractive option.

The Taliban’s command-and-control networks have stood up relatively well since their resurgence in 2006, but the campaign against their senior and middle leadership by American, Afghan and other special forces, aided by a much-improved intelligence picture and supported by drones, has taken a huge toll. The Taliban have not just lost many key commanders; the surviving senior leaders are forced to keep out of sight and now rarely travel within Afghanistan.

This lack of face-to-face contact with their subordinates and the enemy is sapping their authority. Taliban leaders have also had to limit their telephone communications for fear of giving away their locations, and have had to find less reliable and efficient ways to discuss strategy and pass orders to the field.

Personal connections, which have been essential to the cohesion of the movement, have been broken by the deaths of many mid-ranking commanders and their replacement by younger and lesser-known successors. Regional and local commanders have become more independent and less likely to follow orders that go against their personal interests; for example, in the way that they raise and use money, often keeping it for themselves rather than passing it back to their leaders for redistribution. Following Afghan tradition, local commanders are building independent fiefs that they will be reluctant to relinquish.

This disaggregation of the Taliban, who have always been held together more by a common enemy than a shared ideology, may seem like good news for Kabul and Washington, but it also creates some difficulties. The Taliban leaders’ weakening position will make it tougher for them to carry through any agreement — and not just to stop the fighting and ensure observance of a national constitution, but to make a clear break with Al Qaeda.

Many of the Taliban’s new leaders are being courted by Al Qaeda and other extremists who do not support making a deal with President Karzai. Those in the south and the east of the country are also likely to have links with the Pakistani Taliban and their hard-core affiliates.

The weakening of the Afghan Taliban also puts time pressure on Pakistan, which will certainly be involved in any reconciliation process. In addition to dealing with the aftermath of this summer’s floods, the Pakistani Army is embroiled in a draining fight with well-armed militants in the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The army urgently needs to tamp down the Pakistani Taliban, and a settlement in Afghanistan would help — especially if it resulted in more effective control of the Afghan side of the border. Furthermore, while at present there are still senior Afghan Taliban who have longstanding contacts with the Pakistani military and recognize common interests, the younger Taliban leadership that is emerging will be less likely to cooperate with Islamabad.

Thus Pakistan’s leaders may well support reconciliation, deciding that stability in Afghanistan is more important than angling for the creation of a pro-Pakistan administration in Kabul.

Other regional powers, including Iran and Russia, will not want to see a full-fledged return of the Taliban to power, but nonetheless would welcome a settlement. The trade in Afghan-produced drugs has created a huge internal market in Iran, with all the attendant problems of health and crime, and is becoming an increasing problem in Russia. It cannot be stemmed without greater stability in Afghanistan.

Tehran may delight in America’s struggles in the war, but its long-term interest will be to help establish a balance of power in Kabul that provides border security and protects its fellow Shiites in Afghanistan, the Hazara. Russia may also see advantage in a power-sharing agreement, which could limit the opportunity for fundamentalist groups to use Afghanistan as a base to undermine the fragile governments of its Central Asian neighbors.

So, what would negotiations with the Taliban entail? On their prime demand — the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces — we can expect some flexibility. Their leaders must understand that a precipitate departure by Western troops would lead to more fighting rather than less, as the ethnic and clan rivalries that have prevented stability for the last 30 years re-emerged. What they really want now is simply an end to aggressive operations. As for taking Taliban members off the sanctions list, they must accept that this will come only as a result of peace, not as an incentive to make it.

The big issue is Al Qaeda: the Taliban will have to agree, and show that they can enforce their agreement, that Al Qaeda will not be able to pursue its terrorist agenda from any part of Afghanistan under their control. Theoretically, this should be possible. The Taliban leadership has said repeatedly that when back in power it will neither interfere itself in the affairs of other states, nor allow anyone to do so from its territory.

The Afghan government may need to give ground on a few issues as well. For one, its insistence that the Taliban lay down their arms will probably have to mean just that, rather than that they turn in their weapons. And Kabul’s insistence that the Taliban support the Afghan Constitution suggests that parts of it may need to be changed.

The Taliban, for all their retrogressive conservatism, are pragmatic Afghans. They have grown up in a culture of negotiation where no one gets everything but no one leaves with nothing. Unlike Al Qaeda, they are a nationalist movement with national objectives, and while they will fight to the last man, they would far prefer to rule. If talks are to begin, let alone succeed, the Taliban will need to show that they are also prepared to govern.

Richard Barrett is the coordinator of the United Nations Al Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team.

    Time to Talk to the Taliban, NYT, 18.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/opinion/19barrett.html

The Wars That America Forgot About

October 17, 2010
The New York Times
By TOM BROKAW

McLeod, Mont.

IN what promises to be the most contentious midterm election since 1994, there is no shortage of passion about big issues facing the country: the place and nature of the federal government in America’s future; public debt; jobs; health care; the influence of special interests; and the role of populist movements like the Tea Party.

In nearly every Congressional and Senate race, these are the issues that explode into attack ads, score points in debates and light up cable talk shows. In poll after poll, these are the issues that voters say are most important to them this year.

Notice anything missing on the campaign landscape?

How about war? The United States is now in its ninth year of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the longest wars in American history. Almost 5,000 men and women have been killed. More than 30,000 have been wounded, some so gravely they’re returning home to become, effectively, wards of their families and communities.

In those nine years, the United States has spent more than $1 trillion on combat operations and other parts of the war effort, including foreign aid, reconstruction projects, embassy costs and veterans’ health care. And the end is not in sight.

So why aren’t the wars and their human and economic consequences front and center in this campaign, right up there with jobs and taxes?

The answer is very likely that the vast majority of Americans wake up every day worrying, with good reason, about their economic security, but they can opt out of the call to arms. Unless they are enlisted in the armed services — or have a family member who has stepped forward — nothing much is asked of them in the war effort.

The all-volunteer uniformed services now represent less than 1 percent of the American population, but they’re carrying 100 percent of the battle. It’s not unusual to meet an Army infantryman or Marine who has served multiple tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

Moreover, the majority of those in uniform come from working-class or middle-class backgrounds. The National Guard units and reserve forces that have been called up, some for more than one tour, draw heavily on first responders, as well as farm, factory and service workers.

Their families live in their own war zone. At a recent Minnesota event for military families, I heard Annette Kuyper, the mother of a National Guardsman who had an extended deployment in Iraq, describe how she and other Guard mothers changed their lives while their children were in harm’s way. “We close the blinds on the windows overlooking the driveway,” she said, “so we don’t see the Army vehicle arriving with a chaplain bearing the unbearable news.”

This woman’s son returned safely, but too many do not. As the campaign season careens to an end, military funerals will be held in country burial grounds, big city graveyards and at Arlington National Cemetery. Military families will keep the blinds closed on the windows facing the driveway.

While campaigns trade shouts of witchcraft, socialism, greed, radicalism (on both sides), warriors and their families have a right to ask, “What about us?” If this is an election about a new direction for the country, why doesn’t some candidate speak up for equal sacrifice on the home front as well as the front lines?

This is not just about military families, as important as they are. We all would benefit from a campaign that engaged the vexing question of what happens next in the long and so far unresolved effort to deal with Islamic rage.

No decision is more important than committing a nation to war. It is, as politicians like to say, about our blood and treasure. Surely blood and treasure are worthy of more attention than they’ve been getting in this campaign.

Tom Brokaw, a special correspondent for NBC News, is the author, most recently, of “Boom! Talking About the ’60s.”

    The Wars That America Forgot About, NYT, 17.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/opinion/18brokaw.html

In Afghan South, U.S. Faces Frustrated Residents

October 16, 2010
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — As American troops mount a critical operation this weekend in the campaign to regain control in Kandahar, they face not only the Taliban but also a frustrated and disillusioned population whose land has been devastated by five years of fighting.

While most villagers have fled the area, those who remain complain that they are trapped between insurgents and the foreign forces, often suffering damages for which they remain uncompensated.

One of those who left is Abdul Hamid, once a prosperous grape farmer and the owner of two houses, a raisin barn and 900 vines. He lived in a hamlet called Lora in Panjwai, a fertile farming district southwest of Kandahar where others who recently left say there has been heavy shooting and bombardment.

Three years ago, Canadian troops built a temporary post near Lora. When they immediately came under fire from insurgents, they bulldozed much of the hamlet, flattening houses, water pumps and surrounding orchards, the villagers and local elders say.

“There were 10 families who had houses there that were totally destroyed, and mulberry trees were taken out by their roots,” Mr. Hamid said in a recent interview in Kandahar city. “They destroyed all these things, and we are unable to replace them.”

Press officers for Canadian forces, who have led operations in Kandahar Province for the past four years, and the Afghan district administration said they could not confirm the destruction. But a provincial councilor, landowners and farmers from the area said at least half the hamlet was demolished. A year later the Canadians dismantled the post and left, but the village remains deserted, the villagers said.

The experience has left a bad taste for many villagers. “Fighting brings no result for us because when they are fighting, we get caught under their feet,” said Ghulam Haidin, a butcher who fled the hamlet of Garaj for a second time recently.

The case of Lora, and two neighboring hamlets, Garaj and Ghilzan, which were also destroyed, would seem to be a lesson in the mistakes that NATO forces have made in southern Afghanistan, and what should not be repeated.

The influx of an extra 50,000 American troops since 2009 has allowed NATO to develop a counterinsurgency strategy that improves security and focuses more on protecting the civilian population, and so avoid such large-scale damage to villages.

“Not only Lora was destroyed; in Zhare District two villages were completely destroyed,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the provincial councilor from the area. “Some got compensation and others did not,” he said, blaming Afghan officials who he said divided up the money.

The Canadian forces have a detailed system of compensation for farmers and villagers who have lost family, property or livelihoods. Afghans can submit claims and have to provide photos or confirmation from a village elder, said Lt. Cmdr. Saloumeh Turani, who runs the program in Kandahar.

Grapes are among the most valuable crop, and compensation for half an acre of vines destroyed, taking into account the time and work needed to replace them, exceeds $8,000, Commander Turani said.

Yet Afghan officials and rural residents say many farmers have fallen through the cracks, partly because of the continuing war and because many areas remain under Taliban control, but also because of the corruption and carelessness of local officials.

That means that many of the poorest villagers — whether through bad luck, ignorance or fear of retaliation by the Taliban — have missed out on compensation payments and assistance programs.

Mr. Hamid, the grape farmer, said his wheat harvest was burned in the fighting. He and other villagers filed for compensation through the district administration. He was told the foreigners had accepted the claim, but said he never got any money.

A month later the Canadians moved in the bulldozers and demolished his farm and more than 600 of his vines, he said. “I did not make a complaint for the houses because no one can hear my voice,” he said.

Mr. Haidin, the village butcher, said he fled his home in such haste when the bombardment began that he did not have time to grab his savings, and the women fled without shoes and head coverings. They ran in fear for three hours, and his baby son remained mute for a week, he said.

His son, Hedayatullah, is now 5. Jobless, Mr. Haidin took the family back to the village this summer to try to live off the land. A huge bomb had destroyed his home, so he could not make out the boundary between his land and his neighbor’s, he said. He borrowed a house and planted vegetables on his small plot of land.

The Taliban were around but did not bother them, he said. But after 20 days, military operations and night raids by American forces grew so intense that the family came back to the city. “The situation is not calm,” he said. “All the children were crying and not sleeping.”

Mr. Haidin and the other villagers said they felt caught in a downward spiral of violence and poverty. “Everyone is living in poor conditions, going door to door,” Mr. Haidin said.

“I lost all my money when my house was bombed; I worked hard to save that money,” he said. “Of course we would go back to the village. We were happy there, we grew up there.”

He put in a general claim with other villagers for compensation through the district and provincial government offices to the Canadian military, but he said he never received anything.

“I tried so much,” he said. “I tried writing many letters, but I received nothing and I became disappointed, and then I threw out the letters.”

Part of the problem is that in areas where the Taliban presence is strong, villagers cannot take compensation openly. “When the Taliban know you went to the district, or to the city, they come and see you and say, ‘What is this?’ Then they take the money and beat you,” said one farmer, asking not to be named.

Yet fighting through the bureaucracy seems just as hard for the Afghans. Lt. Kelly Rozenberg-Payne, a public affairs officer with the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in Ottawa, wrote by e-mail that she had no information to support the allegations that Lora was bulldozed.

But she acknowledged the existence of an “austere platoon house” in the area, which Canadian forces upgraded to a substation for the Afghan police in the spring of 2008. It was dismantled in the fall of 2008 “because of changing operational priorities,” she wrote.

“Should locals have concerns, we encourage them to come forward,” she wrote.


Muhib Habibi contributed reporting from Kandahar, and Ruhullah Khapalwak from Kabul.

    In Afghan South, U.S. Faces Frustrated Residents, NYT, 16.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17afghan.html

G.I.’s Accused in Deaths Were Isolated From Officers

October 15, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and WILLIAM YARDLEY

WASHINGTON — Soldiers in an American Army platoon accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport say they took orders from a ringleader who collected body parts as war trophies, were threatened with death if they spoke up and smoked hashish on their base almost daily.

Now family members and the military are asking a central question: How could their commanders not know what was going on?

“I just don’t understand how this went so far,” said Christopher Winfield, the father of Specialist Adam C. Winfield, one of the platoon members charged with murder. “I’ve been in management for 20 years; you know what your people are doing.”

But interviews in recent days and hundreds of pages of documents in the case offer a portrait of an isolated, out-of-control unit that operated in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan with limited supervision and little oversight from senior commanders.

There are indications of missed warnings among Army officers who saw trouble with some platoon leaders but did not dig deeper — let alone suspect the extent of the problem — until investigators began asking questions in early May, nearly four months after prosecutors say the first of three murders of Afghan civilians occurred.

The documents, which have not been made public, include sworn statements from soldiers and some of their officers. So far, neither the leaders of the 30-man platoon nor more senior officers in the Fifth Stryker Combat Brigade have been charged or disciplined in one of the most gruesome war crimes cases to come out of nearly a decade of conflict in Afghanistan. It is unclear whether action will be taken against them in the future.

Five platoon members of lower ranks have been charged with murder and all have said they are not guilty. Seven more were charged with lesser offenses.

Drug tests were conducted regularly on most of the platoon and its larger brigade before the group left Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Seattle, for the war, and 1,207 tests were done while the 3,800-member brigade was in Afghanistan. (Drug tests are required for entire units in the United States, but are conducted at commanders’ discretion during deployments.)

“I cannot totally discount the fact that a platoon someplace was never tested and was on drugs,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, acknowledged in an interview this week.

Soldiers in the platoon give no indication that illicit drug use was the reason for the alleged crimes. Lawyers interviewed said it was symptomatic of larger trouble.

Still, illicit drug use was already common in the platoon as it prepared to leave Lewis-McChord for Afghanistan in spring 2009, at least according to the sworn testimony from one of its members, Pfc. Justin A. Stoner. While at the base, “my platoon was not exactly straightforward with substance abuse,” Private Stoner told Army investigators.

He said members of the platoon “would blatantly smoke” what they said was marijuana and that another platoon member, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, had gone AWOL for a week to avoid a final drug test before deployment. Specialist Morlock, one of those charged with murder, was referred on Friday for court-martial proceedings.

In summer 2009 the platoon was sent to Forward Operating Base Ramrod, a military installation of about 1,600 people in the desert about 50 miles west of the city of Kandahar, the ideological home of the Taliban. Once at Ramrod they were separated from their company of 150 soldiers and attached to a separate cavalry troop — a move that Specialist Winfield told his father cut the men off from their regular chain of command.

“They were kind of the red-headed stepchild of the cavalry because they weren’t their guys and they were kind of left by themselves,” Mr. Winfield said. During a rough deployment with high brigade casualties and a daily fear of being killed by homemade bombs, Specialist Winfield told his father that the platoon’s leader, First Lt. Roman Ligsay, rarely checked on his soldiers and that they were even further removed from the Troop A commander, Capt. Matthew Quiggle.

Soldiers and their lawyers say the drug use continued among as many as 20 of the 30 platoon members at Ramrod, where the group and its leaders lived close to each other in small prefabricated housing units. They say they used the unit that Private Stoner shared with a roommate for drinking alcohol — they received it by mail — and for smoking hashish that they easily got from Afghan interpreters.

On May 3, Private Stoner told investigators, the hash-smoking in his room was “to the point where the smoke was lingering in the air and the smell was impossible to get rid of.”

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of hashish, and Afghan Army troops smoke it on the outposts they share with American forces. So it is unclear whether commanders assumed that any odor was from the Afghans, did not notice it or looked the other way when soldiers used the drug, which, they told investigators, helped them to relax.

In an interview, Private Stoner was described by Specialist Winfield’s lawyer, Eric Montalvo, as the platoon’s effective drug dealer. Private Stoner told investigators that he had never used illegal substances himself, a claim investigators discarded. Private Stoner also told investigators that when he reported the hashish smoking to a superior on the base outside the platoon in May, the superior “assured me that he already had an idea about it.”

At that point, in early May, Army investigators say that members of the platoon, urged on by a ringleader, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, had already killed three Afghans for thrills in the surrounding farming villages, where insurgents were said to be active. The platoon traveled to the areas in troop carriers but also went on foot patrols.

Sergeant Gibbs, Specialist Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes are accused of detonating a grenade near an Afghan civilian in January so that the man appeared to be a threat, then shooting him to death. Sergeant Gibbs, Specialist Morlock and Specialist Michael S. Wagnon II are accused of shooting an unarmed Afghan man in February without cause, then placing a Kalashnikov rifle next to the body to justify their action. Sergeant Gibbs is accused of detonating a grenade near an Afghan man in early May before ordering Specialist Morlock and Specialist Winfield to shoot him.

Even before the last death in May, in an indication of some concern among commanders, Lieutenant Ligsay was removed as the platoon’s leader because, an officer told investigators, the platoon had been regularly killing dogs and had discharged a weapon without reason. Although officers at Ramrod criticized Lieutenant Ligsay for allowing the episodes to happen, he was not relieved of duties “for cause,” which would be a damaging step in an officer’s career.

In sworn testimony, Specialist Morlock told investigators that Lieutenant Ligsay had also allowed his soldiers to plant a loaded Kalashnikov magazine near an unarmed Afghan whom the platoon had shot to death — this was a separate episode from the three other killings, and no charges have been filed — to make it appear as if the man had been a threat. Lieutenant Ligsay disputed the accusation in his own testimony.

But in an indication that another senior commander might have been worried about the platoon’s behavior, Lieutenant Ligsay also said in his statement that Captain Quiggle, the Troop A commander, was unhappy about that particular killing and told him the Afghan man “didn’t seem like a threat.”

Sergeant Gibbs’s motives were described by Specialist Morlock as “pure hatred” for Afghans, whom Sergeant Gibbs referred to as “savages.” Several soldiers say that Sergeant Gibbs tossed two severed fingers from dead Afghans in front of Private Stoner after Private Stoner reported the hashish use. Private Stoner told investigators that he feared being killed by the platoon the way the Afghans had been, as if his death had occurred in combat.

The soldiers are also accused of possessing a skull.

Army officials say that Lt. Col. Jeffrey French, the battalion commander and at the time of the killings the most senior officer at Ramrod, is not under investigation. Neither is Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, the former brigade commander. Sergeant Gibbs was one of those assigned to his security detail for a few months in 2009, before the killings took place.


Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and William Yardley from Seattle.

    G.I.’s Accused in Deaths Were Isolated From Officers, NYT, 15.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/world/middleeast/16military.html

U.S. Uses Attacks to Nudge Taliban Toward a Deal

October 14, 2010
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.

American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.

The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end. In recent weeks, General Petraeus has increased raids by Special Forces units and launched large operations to clear territory of Taliban militants.

And it seems increasingly clear that he is partly using the attacks to expand a parallel path to the end of the war: an American-led diplomatic initiative, very much in its infancy but ultimately aimed at persuading the Taliban — or large parts of the movement — to make peace with the Afghan government.

In recent weeks, American officials have spoken approvingly in public of new contacts between Taliban leaders and the Afghan government. On Wednesday they acknowledged their active involvement by helping Taliban leaders travel to Kabul to talk peace.

On the diplomatic front, Afghan leaders said Thursday that they were seeing what they believed were the first positive signs from the Taliban. In a news conference in Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of a council charged with making peace, said that discussions with Taliban leaders — carried out through third parties — were under way.

“The Taliban have not rejected peace completely,” said Mr. Rabbani, a former Afghan president. They want the talks “to take place,” he added.

For all the efforts, American and Afghan officials were quick to play down any suggestion that peace was at hand — or even remotely near. Most of the Taliban leaders, if not the movement’s foot soldiers, have given no sign that they are willing to make any sort of deal.

Even on the battlefield, there are few indications that the large increase in firepower ordered by President Obama is having the intended effect. With the American-led war moving through its bloodiest phase since 2001, more American and NATO soldiers have been killed this year than at any time since the war began. In the past two days alone, at least 14 members of the Western forces here have been killed.

Indeed, senior American officials, gathering Thursday at a NATO conference in Brussels, indicated that they were trying to energize a peace process about whose contours and duration they could only guess.

“We just — you know, we need to be open to opportunities that arise,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said in Brussels.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and his advisers have been trying for months to engage the Taliban’s leaders about the possibilities of ending the war. In part, Mr. Karzai and his team are motivated by concerns about Mr. Obama’s plan to begin reducing the number of American forces here by next July.

So far, those diplomatic efforts have come to naught. Pakistani officials helped scuttle one incipient dialogue that was unfolding earlier this year.

For their part, the Taliban’s leaders have mostly dismissed the possibility of making a deal with Mr. Karzai’s government, declaring — not without reason — that time is on their side.

American officers said the intensified airstrikes were possible because of better intelligence, which enables pilots to be more precise in their attacks. Much of that intelligence, the officers said, is being supplied by remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator drones, which have flooded the skies in recent months.

According to the Air Force’s statistics, remotely piloted vehicles have flown more than 21,000 sorties so far this year, already surpassing the roughly 19,000 drone flights for all of last year. The targets for many of the airstrikes have been insurgents who were building or planting homemade bombs, which are the most prolific killers of American and NATO troops.

“We have been able to find a lot of places where they are putting these things together,” said Col. Jim Sturgeon, chief of air operations for NATO.

So far, the greater number of airstrikes does not appear to have resulted in more civilian casualties, at least not according to NATO statistics. In 2008, between January and September, 169 Afghans were inadvertently killed or wounded in NATO airstrikes. Over the same period in 2010, the number of Afghans killed or wounded was 88, the statistics show.

Insurgents cause the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths here, but errant strikes by NATO jets and helicopters have been a source of great tension with the Karzai government.

The statistics on American airstrikes were first published in Wired magazine.

The more intensive air campaign comes as American and NATO forces have stepped up the fight in other areas as well. The operation to pacify Kandahar, the epicenter of the insurgency, is well under way.

Members of Special Operations units have been unleashed with particular ferocity. In a three-month period ending Oct. 7, the units killed 300 midlevel Taliban commanders and 800 foot soldiers, and captured 2,000 insurgents.

“You’ve got to put pressure on the networks to get them to start thinking about alternatives to fighting,” said a senior NATO officer in Kabul. “We are not at the tipping point yet.”

General Petraeus appears to be following a template that helped him pull the Iraq war back from the cataclysmic levels of violence that engulfed the country after the American invasion. Beginning in 2006, American commanders simultaneously opened negotiations with insurgent leaders while killing or capturing those not inclined to make a deal.

Afghanistan is a different country, and it is not clear that the tactics that brought success in Iraq will work here. In particular, the Afghan insurgency is nowhere near to being as cohesive as the insurgency in Iraq, where guerrilla leaders could order their men to stop fighting with a reasonable expectation that they would obey.

Some Afghan experts believe that NATO’s two-track strategy is flawed — that bleeding the Taliban may actually make the insurgents less inclined to negotiate. Matt Waldman, an independent analyst who has worked extensively in the region, said that it was unlikely that many Taliban leaders could order their men to stop fighting.

“It’s dangerous to assume that you can bring off a senior commander and all his men will follow,” Mr. Waldman said.

It was more likely, he said, that the midlevel commanders now being killed by NATO would be replaced by others ever more committed to fighting. After all, one of the principles of the Afghan campaign, enunciated by General Petraeus himself and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal before him, was that NATO would never be able to kill and capture its way to victory.

“The idea that killing insurgents will take us to negotiations seems pretty doubtful,” Mr. Waldman said. “They have an infinite capacity to regenerate.”


Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Thom Shanker from Brussels and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

    U.S. Uses Attacks to Nudge Taliban Toward a Deal, NYT, 14.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/asia/15afghan.html

Full Probe Vowed in Captive Briton's Death

October 12, 2010
Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — U.S. and U.K. military officials have started what's promised as a thorough investigation into the death of a kidnapped British aid worker who may have been killed in error by U.S. special forces — rather than, as originally stated, by her Taliban captors.

Linda Norgrove's death has reverberated through the corridors of power from Kabul, to London, to Washington — where President Barack Obama expressed condolences and pledged "to get to the bottom" of what happened during the deadly raid.

Norgrove, 36, and six insurgents were killed Friday night after U.S. special forces stormed a compound in eastern Kunar province where she had been held for two weeks. Norgrove and three Afghan colleagues were ambushed and kidnapped Sept. 26. Her colleagues were quickly freed.

NATO said initially Norgrove was killed by her captors. On Monday, however, alliance officials said new information indicated Norgrove may have been killed by a U.S. grenade.

"The review showed what was believed to be a member of the rescue team throwing a hand grenade in the area near where Ms. Norgrove was later found," said NATO spokeswoman Maj. Sunset Belinsky. "It's now unclear what the exact circumstances surrounding her death are, and the investigation will attempt to determine the facts."

The White House said Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron both said the rescue operation was necessary and "agreed that it was now essential to get to the bottom of what had happened."

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen emphasized that "whatever happened, I would like to stress that those who are responsible of course are the captors."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague told parliament Monday Norgrove's kidnappers were members of a local Salafist group allied to the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other insurgents. Salafist militants seek to revive strict Muslim doctrine dating to the 6th century Prophet Muhammad.

"At no stage was any serious attempt made to negotiate by those holding her," Hague said.

The probe will be led by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Joseph L. Votel of U.S. Special Operations Command. The U.K. will appoint Brig. Rob Nitsch, head of logistics for British forces in Afghanistan, to "work closely" with the Votel, Britain's prime minister's office said.

All British citizens who die abroad are entitled to a formal inquest into their death. NATO officials say they hope the investigation will be completed quickly.

Meanwhile, an Afghan interpreter was killed and seven NATO troops and an Afghan police officer were wounded when insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade into their helicopter in Kunar Tuesday, the alliance said.

The CH-47 Chinook helicopter — with 26 people aboard — had just landed and was off-loading when the RPG was launched into its cargo bay.

Also, a NATO service member died in a highway bombing in the south, and 11 civilians were killed in an insurgent rocket attack and roadside blasts in the east, Afghan officials and NATO said Tuesday.

NATO did not give a nationality or exact location of the service member's death Tuesday, which brought 28 the number of troops killed in October. At least 2,016 NATO service members have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, according to an Associated Press count.

Violence has risen particularly sharply in the south in recent months, along with a surge of U.S. forces targeting Taliban strongholds.

That has led to record numbers of patients with war wounds seeking treatment at the main hospital in southern Kandahar city, the Red Cross said Tuesday.

About 1,000 patients came to Mirwais Regional Hospital with weapon-related injuries in August and September, about twice number from the same period of 2009, said the Red Cross aid.

The sharp jump this year was likely caused by the increasing number of armed groups operating in the area, said Reto Stocker, chief of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Kabul.

"Our greatest challenge consists in maintaining access to the areas hardest hit by the fighting, but the multiplication of armed groups is making this much harder for us," Stocker said.

Attacks in the east included an insurgent rocket, which hit a vehicle carrying civilians in Jani Khel district of eastern Paktika province. Six people died, the Interior Ministry said.

Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, spokesman for the governor of southeastern Zabul province, said another group of civilians riding in a vehicle hit a roadside bomb Monday night in Shahjoy district. Four were killed. The same day, an Afghan civilian died in a roadside bombing in the Ismail Khel district of eastern Khost province.

Afghan civilians are killed by roadside bombs and other violence almost daily. A U.N. report said more than 1,200 civilians died and nearly 2,000 were wounded between January and June this year.

___

Associated Press writers Raphael G. Satter and Paisley Dodds in London, Frank Jordans in Geneva, and Deb Riechmann, Heidi Vogt, and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

    Full Probe Vowed in Captive Briton's Death, NYT, 12.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/12/world/asia/AP-AS-Afghanistan.html

Inquiry Finds Guards at U.S. Bases Are Tied to Taliban

October 7, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found. So they used the nicknames that the contractor was using — Mr. White and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs,” the 1992 gangster movie by Quentin Tarantino. Mr. Pink was later determined to be a “known Taliban” figure, they reported.

In another incident, the United States military bombed a house where it was believed that a Taliban leader was holding a meeting, only to discover later that the house was owned by an Afghan security contractor to the American military, who was meeting with his nephew — the Taliban leader.

Some Afghans hired by EOD Technology, which was awarded a United States Army contract to provide security at a training center for Afghan police officers in Adraskan, near Shindand, were also providing information to Iran, the report asserted. The Senate committee said it received intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency about Afghans working for EOD, and that the reporting found that some of them “have been involved in activities at odds with U.S. interests in the region.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee adopted the report by a unanimous vote, although Republican members issued a statement critical of the report for too narrowly focusing on case studies in western Afghanistan.

In response to the Senate report, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a letter saying that the Pentagon recognized the problems and has created new task forces to help overhaul contracting procedures in Afghanistan. "Through the new programs we have implemented, I believe D.O.D. has taken significant steps to benefit our forces on the ground while not providing aid to our enemies," Mr. Gates wrote.

The latest disclosures follow a series of reports, including articles in The New York Times and testimony before a House committee, describing bribes paid by contractors to the Taliban and other warlords to make sure supply convoys for the American military were provided safe passage.

But the Senate report goes further, spelling out the close relations between some contractors and the forces arrayed against the Kabul government and the Americans, and saying that the proliferation of contractors in the country is sometimes fueling the very insurgency that the military is there to combat. It names a few of the contracting companies, and uses one base as a case study, but calls the problems it identified pervasive.

“We must shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee’s chairman.

“There are truly some outrageous allegations here, and it’s a wake-up call that we have to get a better handle on contractors in Afghanistan and ensure that taxpayer dollars don’t end up in the hands of the enemy,” said Richard Fontaine, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington research group.

There are more than 26,000 private security employees in Afghanistan, and 90 percent of them are working under United States government contracts or subcontracts. Almost all are tied to the militias of local warlords and other powerful Afghan figures outside the control of the American military or the Afghan government, the report found.

The contracting firms are now hiring active-duty members of the Afghan military and security forces, the investigators found, further undermining the efforts by the United States to help Afghanistan build a stronger military that can take on the Taliban insurgency on its own.

The Senate report focuses heavily on security contracting at remote American military bases in western Afghanistan, including the air base in Shindand, near Herat. ArmorGroup, a British-based security firm, was hired by a contractor to the United States Air Force to provide security at Shindand, and then ArmorGroup turned in 2007 to two warlords who had their own militias to do the actual security work. ArmorGroup called them “Mr. White” and “Mr. Pink,” and few Americans knew their real identities, although a leader of an American military team at an adjacent base had recommended Mr. Pink.

“The two warlords and their successors served as manpower providers for ArmorGroup for the next 18 months — a period marked by a series of violent incidents,” the report found.

Fights soon erupted between the forces of Mr. White and Mr. Pink, with Mr. Pink finally killing Mr. White. Mr. Pink then sought refuge with the Taliban. ArmorGroup then turned to Mr. White’s brother, Mr. White II, to run its security force, but also continued to employ Mr. Pink’s men, even though they knew he was now working with the Taliban.

In a raid on Aug., 21, 2008, in Azizabad, Afghanistan, American forces bombed a house where a local Taliban leader, Mullah Sadeq, was suspected of holding a meeting. It was the home of Mr. White II; he was killed in the raid, along with seven other men employed as security guards by ArmorGroup or ArmorGroup Mine Action, an affiliated company with a contract with the United Nations for mine clearing.

The Azizabad raid sparked outrage within Afghanistan. Local villagers, human rights officials and Afghan government officials said that the attack had resulted in more than 90 civilian deaths. The raid had a broad impact on relations between the Afghan government and the American military, and was one of the major incidents that led to a reassessment by President Hamid Karzai of his support for American air raids in the country.

Mr. Karzai visited the village after the attack, and President George W. Bush called Mr. Karzai to express his regret. But the report shows that the bombing raid was entangled in the interplay between contractors and the Taliban, and occurred during a meeting between Mr. White II and the suspect Taliban leader, Mullah Sadeq.

Providing contracts to local militia leaders with ties to the Taliban “gives these warlords an independent funding source,” observed Carl Forsberg, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “And it gives them a feeling of impunity.”

    Inquiry Finds Guards at U.S. Bases Are Tied to Taliban, NYT, 7.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/world/asia/08contractor.html

Gunmen Torch NATO Trucks In New Raids In Pakistan

October 7, 2010
Filed at 2:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Pakistan set fire to up to 40 supply trucks for NATO troops in two raids on Wednesday, police said, the latest in a series of assaults on the logistical backbone of the war in Afghanistan.

The attacks were launched on the same day the United States apologized to Pakistan for a NATO cross-border incursion in which U.S. helicopters killed two Pakistani soldiers.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson called the killings a terrible accident.

A U.S. embassy statement said a joint investigation showed U.S. helicopters had mistaken the soldiers for insurgents they had been pursuing. Pakistani officials were not immediately available to say whether they accepted the findings.

The September 30 helicopter strike was the most serious of recent cross-border incidents involving NATO-led forces fighting in Afghanistan, which have stoked tensions with neighboring Pakistan.

Pakistan shut a vital supply route for coalition troops in Afghanistan after the strike, officially citing security reasons.

Gunmen torched 20 fuel tankers in the first attack on Wednesday near the southwestern city of Quetta. The second attack was in the northwest.

"There are 15 to 20 tankers. A fire is still raging. No one can come close to them for now. We don't know about casualties," Ali Anan Qamar, a top administration official in the northwestern city of Nowshera told Reuters by telephone.

In the earlier attack near Quetta, gunmen opened fire on the trucks and torched them, killing a driver.

U.S. pressure on Islamabad to eliminate militants in its northwest tribal areas, who cross the border to attack Western troops in Afghanistan, is also a source of friction.

PAKISTAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT

An alleged al Qaeda plot to attack European targets has put the Pakistani government's performance against militants under scrutiny again, while the country reels from summer floods that left over 10 million homeless and heavily damaged the economy.

European and American counter-terrorism officials have said that concerns about a group of about 100 German Islamists who had travelled between Germany and the tribal border areas of Pakistan contributed to the latest security alert in Europe.

A British man killed by an air strike in Pakistan had ties with the would-be Times Square bomber, a Pakistani intelligence official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

He said the Briton, Abdul Jabbar, had also been in the process of setting up a branch for the Taliban in Britain.

"He had some links to Faisal Shahzad but the nature of the ties are not clear," the official said, referring to the Pakistani-born U.S. citizen sentenced to life in prison in the United States Tuesday for trying to set off a car bomb in New York's busy Times Square.

Those links are likely to fuel concerns that al Qaeda and its allies, such as Pakistan's Taliban, which trained Shahzad, are becoming an increasing threat to Western nations.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in early September vowed to launch attacks in the U.S. and Europe "very soon." It had made previously similar threats but Shahzad's plot was the closest it has come to success.

Before his sentencing, Shahzad denounced the presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, described himself as the "first droplet of the flood that will follow" and mentioned al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The TTP claimed responsibility for most of the latest attacks hitting dozens of NATO supply trucks.

The U.S. has also ramped up pilotless drone aircraft strikes against militant targets within Pakistan's borders, further deepening concern of a more aggressive U.S. war strategy.

Two missiles from a suspected U.S. drone Wednesday struck a house in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, killing six militants, local intelligence officials said. Hours later another drone strike killed 3 militants in a nearby town.

There was no immediate verification of either incident.

The bulk of supplies for foreign forces in Afghanistan moves through Pakistan, which is itself battling a Taliban insurgency.

Tensions could deepen if Washington demands more cooperation from Pakistan before a gradual July 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Kamran Haider; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Charles Dick)

    Gunmen Torch NATO Trucks In New Raids In Pakistan, NYT, 7.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/10/07/world/international-us-pakistan-security.html

Soldier Killed Saving Comrades Is Awarded the Medal of Honor

October 6, 2010
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously on Wednesday to a Green Beret who died to save his fellow soldiers in a pitched battle with insurgents in Afghanistan last year, the latest in a series of such tributes at a time of domestic debate about the war.

Staff Sgt. Robert J. Miller’s unit was ambushed on Jan. 25, 2008, during a predawn reconnaissance mission in Gowardesh by enemy fighters who assaulted them from above. Under withering fire, Sergeant Miller charged forward and drew fire away from his fellow soldiers. Even after he was shot, he continued returning fire to allow his team to pull back.

Ultimately, according to a Pentagon account of the seven-hour battle in Kunar Province, Sergeant Miller killed at least 10 insurgents while saving the lives of 7 American and 15 Afghan soldiers.

Mr. Obama presented the medal to Sergeant Miller’s family in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “You gave your oldest son to America,” he told the soldier’s parents, Phil and Maureen Miller, “and America is forever in your debt.”

Sergeant Miller’s seven brothers and sisters also attended, as did some of his fellow soldiers from Company A, Third Battalion, Third Special Forces Group from Fort Bragg, N.C.

“These soldiers,” the president said, “embody the spirit that guides our troops in Afghanistan every day: the courage, the resolve, the relentless focus on their mission to break the momentum of the Taliban insurgency and to build the capacity of Afghans to defend themselves.”

Sergeant Miller, 24, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and grew up in Wheaton, Ill., where he was a high school gymnast, joined the Army in 2003. He had learned to speak Pashto and was on his second tour of Afghanistan when he died.

His was the third Medal of Honor for service in Afghanistan approved by Mr. Obama, even as the country debates the future of the war. Mr. Obama has vowed to begin pulling some forces out next July.

    Soldier Killed Saving Comrades Is Awarded the Medal of Honor, NYT, 6.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/us/07medal.html

U.S. Tries to Calm Pakistan Over Airstrike

October 6, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration scrambled to halt a sharp deterioration in its troubled relationship with Pakistan on Wednesday, offering Pakistani officials multiple apologies for a helicopter strike on a border post that killed three Pakistani soldiers last week.

But even as the White House tried to mollify Pakistan, officials acknowledged that the uneasy allies faced looming tensions over a host of issues far larger than the airstrike and the subsequent closing of supply lines into Afghanistan.

American pressure to show progress in Afghanistan is translating into increased pressure on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist groups. It is also running up against Pakistan’s sensitivity about its sovereignty and its determination to play a crucial role in any reconciliation with the Taliban.

American and NATO officials said privately that the Pakistani government’s closing of a crucial border crossing might have made it easier for militants to attack backed-up tanker trucks carrying fuel through Pakistan to Afghanistan to support the American war effort.

Still, the unusual apologies, officials and outside analysts said, were intended to clear away the debris from the explosive events along the border, in hopes of maintaining Pakistani cooperation.

“We have historically had astonishing sources of resilience in our relations with Pakistan,” said Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “One should not too quickly assume we’re in a breakpoint. But having said that, the time we’re in right now, the intensity of anti-American feeling, the antipathy of militants, all of these things make new crises a little more complicated to get through than the old ones were.”

The overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has been pulling out all the stops — aggressively using the American troop buildup, greatly expanding Special Operations raids (as many as a dozen commando raids a night) and pressing the Central Intelligence Agency to ramp up Predator and Reaper drone operations in Pakistan.

He has also, through the not-so-veiled threat of cross-border ground operations, put pressure on the Pakistani Army to pursue militants in the tribal areas even as the army has continued to struggle with relief from the catastrophic floods this summer.

The fragility of Pakistan — and the tentativeness of the alliance — were underscored in a White House report to Congress this week, which sharply criticized the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and other insurgents and noted the ineffectiveness of its civilian government.

American officials lined up to placate Pakistan on intrusions of its sovereignty. General Petraeus offered Pakistan the most explicit American mea culpa yet for the cross-border helicopter strikes, saying that the American-led coalition forces “deeply regret” the “tragic loss of life.”

Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, quickly followed suit, calling “Pakistan’s brave security forces” an important ally in the war. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a private, but official, apology to Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a telephone call on Wednesday afternoon.

Both American and Pakistani officials said that they expected that Wednesday’s apologies would be effective, at least in the short term, and that Pakistan would soon reopen the border crossing at Torkham, a supply route for the NATO coalition in landlocked Afghanistan that runs from the port of Karachi to the Khyber region. The Pakistani government closed that route last week to protest the cross-border strikes.

“It’s obvious that the situation right now ain’t good,” said a senior NATO official, who agreed to speak candidly but only anonymously. “The best thing we could do is to strip away as many of the relatively smaller things as possible so we can focus on the big issues. And crazy as it may seem, the border crossing is a relatively small issue, compared to the others.”

Those other issues were flagged in the latest quarterly report from the White House to Congress on developments in the region. The assessment, first reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, takes aim at both the Pakistani military and the government.

For instance, “the Pakistani military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda forces in North Waziristan,” the report said. It also painted Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, as out of touch with his own populace, a disconnect that the report said was exacerbated by Mr. Zardari’s “decision to travel to Europe despite the floods.” The overall Pakistani response to the catastrophic floods this summer, the report said, was viewed by Pakistanis as “slow and inadequate.”

Frustration with Pakistan is growing in the United States in part because “we’re living in the post-Faisal Shahzad era,” said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Pakistani-American who was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for the attempted Times Square bombing.

Mr. Markey said that tensions among counterterrorism officials had also mounted because of the unspecified threats of terrorist attacks in Europe. “Frustration has really mounted, so the drumbeat is getting louder,” he said.

Making things worse, the administration is expected to brief Congressional officials on an Internet video, which surfaced last week, that showed men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes, underscoring concerns about unlawful killings by Pakistani soldiers supported by the United States.

A prominent House Democrat warned on Wednesday that American aid to Pakistan could be imperiled. “I am appalled by the horrific contents of the recent video, which appears to show extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military,” Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

“The failure of Pakistani officials to punish those responsible could have implications for future security assistance to Pakistan,” he said.

A joint Pakistan-NATO inquiry on the helicopter strike concluded on Wednesday that Pakistani border soldiers who initially fired on NATO helicopters were “simply firing warning shots after hearing the nearby engagement and hearing the helicopters flying nearby,” said Brig. Gen. Timothy M. Zadalis, a NATO spokesman, in a statement.

“This tragic event could have been avoided with better coalition force coordination with the Pakistani military,” he said.


Alissa J. Rubin and Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    U.S. Tries to Calm Pakistan Over Airstrike, NYT, 6.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07diplo.html

Gunmen Attack More NATO Supply Trucks in Pakistan

October 6, 2010
The New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ AND WAQAR GILLANI

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Dozens of tankers carrying fuel to Afghanistan for NATO troops were torched near Quetta in western Pakistan on Wednesday, the third major attack on supplies since Pakistan closed one border crossing to Afghanistan a week ago and the first at the only checkpoint that remained open.

At least one person was killed after three carloads of gunmen fired at the tankers and then burned them, the police said.

“According to eyewitnesses and initial reports some terrorists came on vehicles a few minutes before morning prayer and started firing and then burned some of the tankers,” the deputy inspector general of Quetta police, Hamid Shakeel said.

About 40 tankers were at the terminal, and about half were saved from the attack, Mr. Shakeel said.

Firefighters struggled to contain the blaze. Live television showed the fire raging hours after the attack.

“We don’t have foam to put out the fire,” the police official said.

Hours after the attack on the tankers at Quetta, Taliban militants claimed responsibility, according to reports on Pakistani television channels.

In a sign that the government was continuing to distance itself from the attacks, the police chief in Quetta, Malik Muhammad Iqbal said it was not the responsibility of the government to provide security for the convoys. In the past few days, senior police officers have said the safety of the trucks lay with the fleet owners who had signed contracts with NATO.

The standoff between the government and NATO continued on Wednesday with no definitive word from Pakistan about when the border at Torkham in the Khyber region would be reopened.

That crossing was closed last week in protest over NATO helicopter strikes against a mountainous border post at Kurram manned by Pakistani paramilitary soldiers.

A second crossing at Chaman, near Quetta, where the tankers were attacked Wednesday morning, has remained open in the past week.

Unknown assailants, never identified or captured by the police, have attacked and torched NATO oil tankers three times since the closure and there have been several other more minor incidents against the convoys. The route is a vital supply line for NATO to carry non-lethal equipment such as food, clothing and vehicles.

The closure of the Torkham crossing has been used by Pakistan to demonstrate its leverage over the NATO supply route that courses from the port of Karachi to the Khyber region.

Haggling over the outcome of a joint Pakistan-NATO inquiry into the helicopter attacks appeared to be holding up the reopening of the Torkham crossing, the major English language newspaper, Dawn, reported on Wednesday.

Pakistan was demanding an apology from NATO for the helicopter attacks, but NATO was only willing to offer regrets, the newspaper said.

Pakistani officials have stressed that the helicopter attacks, in which three paramilitary soldiers died, were an unacceptable infringement of the nation’s sovereignty.

    Gunmen Attack More NATO Supply Trucks in Pakistan, NYT, 6.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07pstan.html

Pakistan Halts NATO Supplies to Afghanistan After Attack

September 30, 2010
The New York Times
By ISMAIL KHAN and JANE PERLEZ

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan closed a vital transit link for NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for an attack by coalition helicopters on a Pakistani security post hours earlier.

Trucks and oil tankers were stopped at the border post of Torkham just north of Peshawar and it was unclear when the post would reopen, a Pakistani security official said.

A closure of the crossing through which NATO and American troops receive most of their non-lethal equipment is rare, and signaled a downturn in the military relationship between Pakistan and the United States just three months before the Obama administration takes stock of progress in Afghanistan.

A NATO helicopter attacked a border post at Mandati Kandaw, a town close to the capital of Parachinar in the Kurram area of Pakistan’s tribal region, at 5 a.m. on Thursday, the official said. Three paramilitary soldiers of the Frontier Corps were killed, and three others injured, he said. Another border post at Kharlachi in the Kurram region was struck a few hours later, the official added.

The two posts are about 15 miles apart and border Paktia Province in Afghanistan.

The incident occurred as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, was in Islamabad for a previously scheduled visit. He was expected to meet the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, later on Thursday, American officials said.

The helicopter attacks into Pakistani territory Thursday came after American military helicopters launched three airstrikes last weekend killing more than 50 people suspected of being members of the Haqqani network of militants.

American officials in Afghanistan tried to temper Pakistani anger about those attacks, saying that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and had acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan.

American military commanders say they have become increasingly frustrated at the tempo of deadly attacks against American troops in Afghanistan by the Haqqani militants who shelter in Pakistan’s tribal region.

A spokesman at NATO headquarters in Afghanistan said the incident was under investigation.


Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Jane Perlez from Islamabad.

    Pakistan Halts NATO Supplies to Afghanistan After Attack, NYT, 30.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/world/asia/01peshawar.html

Four Suicides in a Week Take a Toll on Fort Hood

September 29, 2010
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — Four veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan died this week from what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds at Fort Hood in central Texas, raising the toll of soldiers who died here at their own hands to a record level and alarming Army commanders.

So far this year, Army officials have confirmed that 14 soldiers at Fort Hood have committed suicide. Six others are believed to have taken their own lives but a final determination has yet to be made. The highest number of suicides at Fort Hood occurred in 2008, when 14 soldiers killed themselves, said Christopher Haug, a military spokesman.

About 46,000 to 50,000 active officers and soldiers work at the base at any given time, making this year’s suicide rate about four times the national average, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at 11.5 deaths per 100,000 people.

The largest base in the United States, Fort Hood and the surrounding communities have suffered high rates of crime, domestic violence, suicide and various mental illnesses as wave after wave of soldiers have been deployed abroad over nine years of continual warfare, often serving more than one tour.

Last November, an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, was charged with killing 13 people with a pistol in a rampage at a building on the post.

On Sunday, Sgt. Michael Timothy Franklin and his wife, Jesse Ann Franklin, were found fatally shot in their house on the base.

Army investigators said they believed that Sergeant Franklin, who was 31 and had served two tours in Iraq, killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself. The couple had two small children.

Maj. Gen. William F. Grimsley, the Fort Hood senior commander, said in a statement released at a news conference on Wednesday that “leaders at all levels remain deeply concerned about this trend.”

Mr. Haug said that the general did not believe that additional measures were necessary to stop the trend and that the base already had an extensive suicide-prevention program.

But advocates for soldiers who have suffered mental breakdowns said the programs were not effective.

Cynthia Thomas runs the Under the Hood Café, an organization of antiwar activists and veterans who provide referrals for soldiers to mental health professionals. She said a stigma remained among soldiers about seeking help from Army counselors for suicidal thoughts or other mental problems. And those soldiers who do seek counseling are often given medication and put back on duty, she said.

“You don’t get counseling, you get medication,” Ms. Thomas said. “These soldiers are breaking.”

    Four Suicides in a Week Take a Toll on Fort Hood, NYT, 29.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/us/30hood.html

C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks in Pakistan to Thwart Taliban

September 27, 2010
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.

The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.

Beyond the C.I.A. drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, American military helicopters have launched three airstrikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against American troops.

Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said Monday that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while American “surge” forces are in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have angrily criticized the helicopter attacks, saying that NATO’s mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.

As evidence of the growing frustration of American officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to American officials.

“Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens,” said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. “He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more.”

Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send American troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.

But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. American and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.

“We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano before a Senate panel last week.

The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters, but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe. “The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity,” the official said.

The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.

According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.

Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.

The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.

One American official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to “keep the pressure on as long as we can.”

But the C.I.A.’s campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fueling anger in the Muslim world. The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in Times Square told a judge that the C.I.A. drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.

In a meeting with reporters on Monday, General Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.

In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hide-outs thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

The intelligence technology, General Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas.


Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.

    C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks in Pakistan to Thwart Taliban, NYT, 27.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/world/asia/28drones.html

Drug Use Cited in Unit Tied to Civilian Deaths

September 27, 2010
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — Members of an American Army unit consumed with drug use randomly chose Afghan civilians to kill and then failed to report the abuses out of fear they would suffer retaliation from their commander, according to testimony in military court here on Monday.

The testimony, in a hearing to determine whether one of those soldiers, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock, would face a court-martial and a possible death sentence, came the same day that a videotape in the case was leaked showing Specialist Morlock talking to investigators about the killings in gruesome detail with no apparent emotion.

Top Army officials worry that the case against Specialist Morlock and four other soldiers accused in the killings of three Afghan civilians will undermine efforts to build relationships with Afghans in the war against the Taliban.

The soldiers are accused of possessing dismembered body parts, including fingers and a skull, and collecting photographs of dead Afghans. Some images show soldiers posing with the dead. As many as 70 images are believed to be in evidence.

Some of the soldiers have said in court documents that they were forced to participate in the killings by a supervisor, Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who is also accused in the killings. All five defendants have said they are not guilty.

In one incident, Specialist Morlock recounted in the video, he described Sergeant Gibbs identifying for no apparent reason an Afghan civilian in a village, then directing Specialist Morlock and another soldier to fire on the man after Sergeant Gibbs lobbed a grenade in his direction.

“He kind of placed me and Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade, and tells me and Winfield: ‘All right, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy,’ ” Specialist Morlock said in the video.

Referring to the Afghan, the investigator asked: “Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?”

Specialist Morlock replied: “No, not at all. Nothing. He wasn’t a threat.”

As Monday’s hearing was getting under way, CNN and ABC News broadcast the video. In the CNN clip and the ABC clip, Specialist Morlock, speaking in a near monotone, looks like a teenager recounting a story to his parents.

CNN also broadcast video of the interview of a soldier who is not accused in the killings but has been accused of lesser crimes, Cpl. Emmitt R. Quintal.

When asked by an investigator when and how often members of the unit used illegal drugs, Corporal Quintal, seated in camouflage fatigues, said it occurred on “bad days, stressful days, days that we just needed to escape.”

The interview with Specialist Morlock was conducted in Kandahar in May, while he was en route to a medical evaluation for what his lawyers said was possibly a traumatic brain injury suffered during his deployment. They say he was taking medication prescribed by military doctors for sleep deprivation, pain and muscle stress, though they said they could not yet establish exactly when he had taken the medication and how it might have affected him.

Specialist Morlock, who grew up in Wasilla, Alaska, appeared in court on Monday but did not testify.

Michael Waddington, his lawyer, questioned Army investigators by phone from their duty station in Afghanistan. Mr. Waddington repeatedly asked whether they found Specialist Morlock to be under the influence of medication in the interviews. Some investigators described Specialist Morlock as tired and sometimes slouching, but they said he was coherent and had a strong recollection of details.

The video, provided to defense lawyers to help them prepare their cases, was not intended by the military to be made public.

“The disclosure of these video recordings is troubling because it could adversely affect the military justice process,” said Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman.

The power of images in the case was apparent last week, when the commander of the Stryker brigade in which the soldiers serve ordered photographic evidence to be strictly controlled by investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, with access limited to lawyers.

A memo circulated by a military defense lawyer the previous week described an inadvertent release of photographs, including three that show American soldiers holding up the heads of dead Afghans. It was unclear whether all of the pictures showed soldiers in the cases, though military prosecutors said Monday that Specialist Morlock was in at least one image, apparently with a dead Afghan.

Photographic evidence could play an important role in the Army’s case, as will statements from soldiers. No bodies have been recovered, and a military investigator testified on Monday that the nature of the areas where the crimes occurred, including religious views of residents and potential danger to American soldiers, prevented them from conducting crime scene investigations.

“To exhume a body would cause a lot of issues, even if it was for a good purpose,” said Special Agent Anderson D. Wagner.

Mr. Wagner noted that at least two statements, from Specialist Morlock and another soldier charged, Pfc. Adam C. Winfield, corroborated elements of each other’s story. He also said there was little physical evidence connecting the soldiers to the killings. “I don’t know the final thing that killed those guys, whether it was a bullet or whose grenade it was,” Mr. Wagner said.

The Army’s case is complicated by claims that it ignored warnings that there was trouble in the unit. Private Winfield’s father has said he repeatedly tried to alert military officials that his son had told him through Facebook in February that a murder was committed by members of his unit in January. The soldiers are accused of killings in January, February and May.

Mr. Waddington said in an interview that his client was present where the three crimes are said to have taken place, but that he had not killed anyone.

Mr. Wagner, the investigator, said that during his interview in May, Specialist Morlock had feared retaliation for talking.

Lawyers for Specialist Morlock told reporters during a break that the case reflected a “failed policy” in Afghanistan, and that soldiers like Specialist Morlock should never have been allowed to continue with their unit given the medication they say he was on and the alleged widespread use of drugs in the unit. Seven other soldiers in the unit are accused of other crimes, including hashish possession.

It could be weeks before the military investigator presiding over the hearing, Judge Thomas Molloy, determines how to charge Specialist Morlock.


Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Washington.

    Drug Use Cited in Unit Tied to Civilian Deaths, NYT, 27.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28soldier.html

Crash Kills 9, Makes 2010 Worst Year Of Afghan War

September 21, 2010
Filed at 2:10 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

KABUL (Reuters) - A helicopter crash killed nine troops from the NATO-led force in Afghanistan's south on Tuesday, making 2010 the deadliest year of the war for foreign troops just as attention turns to plans to start withdrawing them.

Violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, with military and civilian casualties at record levels.

The crash came soon after one of the deadliest days of the year on Saturday, when the Taliban launched scores of attacks across the country in a bid to disrupt a parliamentary election.

The election was being closely watched in Washington ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's planned war strategy review in December, which will likely examine the pace and scale of U.S. troop withdrawals after nine years of war.

Obama's Democrats also face difficult mid-term Congressional elections in November amid sagging public support for the war and record troop casualties in Afghanistan will likely only make their task harder.

Few details were immediately available about the crash in Afghanistan's volatile south, the heartland of the Taliban.

U.S. and British troops form the largest contingents in the area. However, there was no immediate indication of the nationality of the dead troops and a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said more information would be released later.

"There are no reports of enemy fire in the area," ISAF said.

One ISAF service member, an Afghan soldier and a U.S. civilian were wounded in the crash and were taken to hospital for treatment, ISAF said in a statement.

The deaths take the toll so far in 2010 to at least 529, according to monitoring website iCasualties.org. Last year, the previous deadliest of the war, 521 foreign troops were killed.

At least 2,097 foreign troops have been killed since the war began, about 60 percent of them American.

VIOLENCE SOARS

Violence in recent months has soared to its highest levels since the Taliban were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

The Taliban have spread the insurgency out of their heartland in the south and east into once relatively peaceful areas in the north and west.

At the same time, foreign troops have been increasing the reach and scale of operations to seek out the Taliban, especially in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south, and U.S. commanders have warned of more tough times ahead.

There are almost 150,000 foreign troops fighting a growing Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, supporting about 300,000 Afghan security forces. Obama ordered in an extra 30,000 troops late last year, the last units of which arrived this month.

Saturday's flawed election, in which widespread fraud and violence were reported, has only underscored the challenges facing U.S. and other NATO nations as they decide how long they will keep troops in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's endemic corruption has long been a point of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western allies. Transparency Internation ranks Afghanistan as one of the world's two most corrupt countries, ahead only of Somalia.

Washington believes graft weakens the central government and its ability to build up institutions like the Afghan security forces, which in turn determines when troops will leave. Obama has pledged to start drawing down U.S. forces from July 2011.

Dutch troops ended their mission in August and several European and other nations are under growing public pressure to bring their troops home.

Germany, the third-largest ISAF contributor with 4,400 soldiers, aims to start a pullout next year. Denmark hopes to withdraw many of its 700 troops by 2015 and Canada will pull out its nearly 3,000-strong force next year.

Aircraft crashes are not infrequent in Afghanistan. In October 2009, two helicopter crashes killed 11 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians.

(Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Kim Coghill)

    Crash Kills 9, Makes 2010 Worst Year Of Afghan War, NYT, 21.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/21/world/international-us-afghanistan.html

5 U.S. Soldiers Accused of Killing Afghan Civilians

September 19, 2010
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY and ERIC SCHMITT

SEATTLE — The brutal, premeditated killings of three Afghan civilians — allegedly at the hands of American soldiers — are expected to be detailed in military court near here this fall, potentially undermining efforts by the United States as it tries to win support among Afghans in fighting the Taliban.

The cases, which accuse five members of an Army Stryker brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, of deliberately ambushing three Afghan men with grenades and rifle fire this year, have also raised questions about how the Army has handled them.

The father of one of the soldiers said in an interview that he had repeatedly tried to alert military officials that his son had told him through Facebook in February that one murder had already been committed by members of his unit and that others could happen in the future.

The son had been threatened by members of his unit and feared for his life, said the father, Christopher Winfield, of Cape Coral, Fla. Two more people were killed after Mr. Winfield first reached out to the Army.

“Nobody listened,” he said.

Mr. Winfield, whose claims were first reported by The Associated Press, said in an interview that he called an Army hot line, an Army criminal investigations unit and members of his son’s command unit based at Fort Lewis on Feb. 14.

The only time he reached a person by phone, he said, a Fort Lewis sergeant told him his son should report the activities upon his return to the United States.

But he said that when his son, Specialist Adam C. Winfield, returned from his deployment in June, “They arrested him for murder as soon as he stepped off the plane.”

Specialist Winfield is one of three soldiers accused in the killing of Mullah Adahdad near Forward Operating Base Ramrod, in early May, “by means of throwing a fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a rifle,” according to an Army charging document.

Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs is also accused in that killing, as is Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock. Sergeant Gibbs and Specialist Morlock are also accused in the January killing of Gul Mudin and in the February killing of Marach Agha.

Specialist Michael S. Wagnon II is also accused in the death of Mr. Agha and of later trying to impede the criminal investigation “by obtaining a hard drive which contained evidence of murders and asking another soldier to erase said hard drive,” according to a charging document.

Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes is also accused in the death of Mr. Mudin.

Army officials say the Army’s senior leadership in Washington is watching the cases closely, fearing that the negative publicity any hearings will generate as well as photos and other evidence might anger Afghan civilians while the United States is trying to win support for a counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban. They worry the cases could be a propaganda boon for the Taliban.

The charges echo several high-profile criminal episodes at the peak of the fighting in Iraq, when American Marines and other servicemen were accused of killing Iraqi civilians in unprovoked attacks.

In one case that outraged Iraqis, American soldiers were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl and killing her and her family. In Afghanistan, air strikes and botched American commando raids that killed civilians have already caused political problems.

In addition to the murder charges against the Stryker soldiers, Army investigators are likely to investigate the claims made by Christopher Winfield, Army officials said. The Army would not comment directly on the murder cases beyond the information in its charging documents.

“We’re just waiting to see where the facts of the investigation will lead,” said Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman.

The defendants have denied the accusations. An Army spokeswoman said dates for the defendants to appear in court this fall have yet to be determined. But lawyers said they expected Article 32 hearings, which will determine formal charges against the soldiers, to begin at Fort Lewis in the coming weeks.

Maj. Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for I Corps, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, said she expected that the hearings would be public and that each soldier’s case would be handled independently.

The charges against Sergeant Gibbs appear to be the most extensive and the most gruesome. A lawyer for Specialist Winfield said several defendants had claimed that Sergeant Gibbs, their unit leader, had planned the killings as a kind of morbid entertainment and that he had intimidated subordinates into either participating in or covering up the crimes.

A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs has said in the past that the killings resulted from legitimate battlefield engagements. An automated e-mail response from the lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, said he was out of the office, in Afghanistan. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“There are two versions of the story you will hear come out,” said Eric Montalvo, the lawyer for Specialist Winfield. “These are legitimate kills, some people will say. The second tier is going to be that ‘Gibbs made me do it.’ ”

Charging documents and statements made to investigators by the soldiers say that Sergeant Gibbs collected “finger bones, leg bones and a tooth taken from Afghan corpses.”

Documents and people interviewed also said Sergeant Gibbs illegally collected AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons used by the Afghan National Police and other non-United States forces to place near victims to suggest that American soldiers were simply returning fire.

Although Mr. Winfield, the soldier’s father, said he first made efforts to report trouble in the unit in February — including leaving what he said was an unanswered message with the office of Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, the murder investigation did not get under way until the spring.

The investigation initially focused on reports that soldiers in the unit were using hashish. One soldier then informed superiors of the killings, Mr. Montalvo said. Seven other people in the unit have been charged with crimes, in some cases accused of firing on Afghan civilians and in others accused of hashish use.

It was unclear whether senior Army leaders had made any assessment about the platoon’s parent unit, which was renamed the 2nd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division after it returned from Afghanistan. Mr. Tallman, the Army spokesman, said the brigade had faced heavy combat.

“This brigade had a very challenging tour and suffered a significant number of casualties while in Afghanistan,” he said.

    5 U.S. Soldiers Accused of Killing Afghan Civilians, NYT, 19.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20soldiers.html

Once Wary, Obama Relies on Petraeus

September 16, 2010
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER, DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER.

This article is by Helene Cooper, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker.

WASHINGTON — When President Obama descended into the White House Situation Room on Monday for his monthly update on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the new top American military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, ticked off signs of progress.

Come December, when the president intends to assess his Afghan strategy, he will be able to claim tangible successes, General Petraeus predicted by secure video hookup from Kabul, according to administration officials.

The general said that the American military would have substantially enlarged the “oil spot” — military jargon for secure area — around Kabul. It will have expanded American control farther outside of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. And, the aides recalled, the general said the military would have reintegrated a significant number of former Taliban fighters in the south.

“He essentially promised the president very bankable results,” one administration official said. (Others in the room characterized the commander’s list more as objectives than promises.) Mr. Obama largely listened, asking a few questions, and two hours later, the White House sent an e-mail to reporters using language that echoed the general’s.

But even inside an administration that is pinning its hopes, both military and political, on the accuracy of the general’s report, there are doubters. Assessments from intelligence officials are far more pessimistic, and Mr. Obama regularly reviews maps that show how the Taliban have spread into areas where they had no major presence before.

And some military officers, who support General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy and say he readily acknowledges the difficulties ahead, caution that the security and governance crisis in Afghanistan remains so volatile that any successes may not be sustainable.

How that tension plays out in coming months — the guarded optimism of a popular general leading an increasingly unpopular war, and the caution of a White House that prides itself on a realism that it says President George W. Bush and his staff lacked — will probably define the relationship between Mr. Obama and his field commander. General Petraeus, who led the Iraq surge and was a favorite of Mr. Bush, has slowly worked himself into the good graces of a president who was once wary of him.

So far, the two men appear to be meshing well, advisers say. The men “are actually somewhat similar in temperament and style,” said Benjamin Rhodes, the National Security Council’s director of strategic communications. Both are meticulous, even-keeled and matter of fact, and both like to do their homework, studying detailed reports.

Since General Petraeus took on the commander’s job in June, several aides said, the president has struck a more deferential tone toward him than he used with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, General Petraeus’s predecessor. Often during pauses in meetings, one White House official said, Mr. Obama will stop and say, “Dave, what do you think?”

Like no other figure today, General Petraeus has stepped into Gen. Colin L. Powell’s shoes as the face of the military to ordinary Americans, particularly as the White House extols the end of the combat mission in Iraq, which was largely made possible by the troop surge that General Petraeus orchestrated.

For Mr. Obama, that may be a blessing and a curse. General Petraeus has made clear that he opposes a rapid pullout of troops from Afghanistan beginning next July, as many of the president’s Democratic allies would like. Some in the White House, with an eye on the 2012 presidential election, fear that the general may already be laying the foundation for keeping a large force in Afghanistan for a long while.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that the unresolved question was whether the “campaign plan” for Afghanistan was working.

“The evidence that General Petraeus is seeing so far suggests to him that it is, and both on the civilian and the military side, not just the military side,” Mr. Gates told reporters. “But he is cautious, and I will be cautious.”

The new alliance between Mr. Obama and General Petraeus holds risks for the general as well as the president. In taking on Afghanistan, he is risking his reputation as perhaps the greatest general of his generation on a war that many people think will end in a stalemate. Even if General Petraeus’s strategy is a solid one, few believe Mr. Obama will commit the time and resources — many years and hundreds of billions of dollars — needed to test the Petraeus thesis.

General Petraeus has a history of early optimistic assessments that proved largely correct; one dates back to the Iraq surge, over which he and Mr. Obama first butted heads. Military officials say that during the early days of the surge, General Petraeus cited what his staff termed “leading indicators” of progress, even when much of the private and public discussion of the war effort was still negative. (During one Senate hearing with General Petraeus, then-Senator Obama accused the Bush administration of setting “the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation” was considered success.)

While General Petraeus’s track record in Iraq may give added weight to his analysis on Afghanistan, the two wars are radically different in Mr. Obama’s mind, his aides said. During meetings at the White House, the general “always brings up Iraq,” one senior administration official said.

While Mr. Obama asked General Petraeus last fall to assemble the lessons learned in the Iraq surge that could be applied in Afghanistan, the president, by and large, “remains focused on Afghanistan,” the official said.

Some officials would speak only on background about interactions they had witnessed in confidential meetings.

In preparation for this fall’s review of the strategy in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama’s first request of General Petraeus was for new and better ways to measure success or setbacks; the general presented them on Monday.

He started with familiar measures: how many Afghan troops have been trained and how many operations have focused on Taliban strongholds in places like Kandahar and Helmand.

Then General Petraeus added three others: one looking at local security initiatives enacted by the Afghan police, another at the pace of “reintegration” of former members of the Taliban and a third looking at the successes of attacks by American Special Operations forces.

“These are more specific,” said one adviser to the president. “With McChrystal, it was ‘You’ll know victory when you see it.’ The president has asked for a lot more visibility into what’s happening.”

Mr. Obama gets a wider view from intelligence reports, chiefly from the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, that land on his desk weekly. They assess whether President Hamid Karzai’s government is preparing to survive on its own, or whether the Taliban can successfully retreat to their safe haven in Pakistan to prepare new attacks. Those longer-range assessments have been significantly more pessimistic than General Petraeus’s measures of battlefield progress.

Some national security experts say that the fate of General McChrystal — now on the lecture circuit making $60,000 a speech — and the fired general before him, Gen. David D. McKiernan, means Mr. Obama must make things work with General Petraeus, lest he appear unable to get along with his commanders.

“If they have a falling out, it’s not at all clear that the public would necessarily side with the president the way they did in the McChrystal incident,” said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official.

Added Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations: “They are joined at the hip, but the leverage lies with Petraeus. And Petraeus has made plain, publicly, that after July 2011, he doesn’t think there should be a rapid pullout.”

    Once Wary, Obama Relies on Petraeus, NYT, 16.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/17prexy.html

Record Level of U.S. Airstrikes Hit Afghan Militants

September 15, 2010
Filed at 12:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIR ALI, Pakistan (AP) -- Drone aircraft unleashed a missile attack in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Wednesday, keeping up the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.

The stepped-up campaign that included Wednesday's strike is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.

In the latest strike, US missiles killed 12 people in a house in Dargah Mandi, 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) west of the main town of Miran Shah in North Waziristan, Pakistani intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a ''hammer-and-anvil'' effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.

The missiles have killed more than 60 people in 13 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.

The border region has long been a refuge for Islamist extremists from around the world. Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are believed to have fled there after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials said most of this month's strikes have targeted the forces of Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani, a former anti-Soviet commander and his son who are now battling American forces in eastern Afghanistan.

The raids targeting the group in Afghanistan are led mainly by the Joint Special Operations Command. Such raids across Afghanistan are now more frequent than at any previous time in the nearly nine-year war, with some 4,000 recorded between May and August as special operations numbers were boosted by troops arriving from Iraq.

The raids have focused on the Haqqanis for the last two years, officials said.

A senior American intelligence official in Afghanistan said the U.S. had reports that Haqqani commanders were under pressure from the operations.

''We're seeing from some of the raids that some of the more senior guys are trying to move back into Pakistan,'' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The official cautioned that the Haqqanis often employ military disinformation. And so far, the official said, neither the special operations raids nor the missile strikes on the Pakistan side of the border appear to have degraded the militants' ability to fill the ranks of the slain.

But sometimes, the U.S. official said, the replacements are far less competent than their predecessors.

The Pakistan army has launched several offensives in the tribal regions over the last 2 1/2 years, but has not moved in force into North Waziristan. The U.S. is unable to send ground forces into Pakistani territory, and must rely on the drone strikes.

A major offensive in North Waziristan became even less feasible last month after massive flooding forced tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers to focus exclusively on rescuing stranded victims, redirecting flood waters and rebuilding damaged infrastructure.

Last month also saw a lull in U.S. airstrikes, until an attack on Sept. 2 began days of repetitive missile attacks.

U.S. officials did not discuss specific reasons for the surge of airstrikes this month. A former American military official said poor weather often hampers drone operations.

Until now, the highest number of airstrikes inside Pakistan in a single month had been the 11 launched in January 2010 after a suicide bomber killed a Jordanian intelligence officer and seven CIA employees at a base in Afghanistan.

''Usually when there's this type of intensity in strikes, they're going after something specific,'' Bill Roggio, of the Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes, said of this month's attacks. ''They hit it, watch what moves, then hit it again. It becomes an intel feedback loop,'' that fuels further strikes, he said.

U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge the missile strikes but have said privately that they have killed several senior Taliban and al-Qaida militants and scores of foot soldiers in a region largely out of the control of the Pakistani state.

Critics say innocents are also killed, fueling support for the insurgency.

A Pakistani intelligence official told the AP that ''most of the fighters killed in recent weeks are from the Haqqani network,'' adding that Arab militants had also been killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

''We live in constant fear,'' said Munawar Khan, 28, who lives in the nearby village of Darpa Khel. ''We have missile strikes every day.''

U.S. forces began targeting Pakistan's tribal regions with aerial drones in 2004 but the number of strikes soared in 2008 and has been steadily climbing since then, with nearly 70 attacks this year, according to an AP tally.

There has been little evident public or official outrage inside Pakistan in the wake of September's airstrikes, but the Pakistani government says it has not altered its long-standing objection to such attacks, which have also targeted Pakistani Taliban militants who carry out attacks inside the country.

''The position of the army and government is the same, that it harms more than it helps,'' said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman.

The Haqqanis worked closely with Pakistan's intelligence service during the anti-Soviet war and have not waged attacks inside Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, however, they often use suicide bombs in civilian areas and do not let suicide bombers back out of an attack, unlike the Afghan Taliban, the U.S. intelligence official told AP.

There's some disagreement in U.S. intelligence ranks as to whether the Haqqanis are part of the Taliban, or simply allied with them in what an intelligence official in the U.S. called ''a marriage of convenience.''

Many in the Haqqani leadership have roles as Taliban commanders. But officials say the Haqqanis seek dominion only over the areas in which they hold sway -- Afghanistan's mountainous eastern provinces of Paktika, Paktia, and Khost, stretching to the outskirts of the capital, Kabul. The Taliban, by contrast, want to take over the whole country. The two ruled those areas side by side when the Taliban governed Afghanistan -- though Jalaluddin Haqqani was subservient to Taliban ruler Mullah Omar and did not have independence.

----------

Dozier reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Michael Weissenstein and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.

    Record Level of U.S. Airstrikes Hit Afghan Militants, NYT, 15.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/15/world/asia/AP-AS-Pakistan.html

Dozens Injured in Anti-American Protests in Kabul

September 15, 2010
The New York Times
By ADAM B. ELLICK

KABUL, Afghanistan — A clash between anti-American protesters and the Afghan police injured 35 police officers and 12 civilians here on Wednesday, as both sides accused each other of indiscriminately firing shots, police officials and witnesses said.

It was still unclear whether anyone had died in the violence, the latest in a series of outbursts around the country protesting the canceled plan of an American pastor to burn copies of the Koran last week.

Many of the recent protests are widely believed to be organized by political candidates who are trying to gain political clout by rallying around anti-American sentiments ahead of Saturday’s parliamentary elections.

“The people are being misused,” said Mir Ahmad Joyanda, a member of Parliament from Kabul Province. “Maybe it’s not the candidates themselves, but their agents, their people are motivating the illiterate, uneducated who are very strong Muslims and love the Koran.”

He continued: “They can say, ‘We’re defending Islam, we’re defending religion, so you have to support us.’ ”

On Wednesday, thousands of protesters carrying the white flag of the Taliban gathered at 6:30 a.m., chanting anti-American slogans and burning tires, according to Fareed, a car salesman who witnessed the clash from his showroom in Company, a neighborhood in western Kabul.

In an effort to diffuse the aggressive crowd, the police fired shots into the air. The protesters retaliated by throwing rocks at the police and beating officers with sticks, said General Khalil Dastyar, the deputy police chief of Kabul Province.

An intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with standard policy, said some of the protesters were carrying weapons and fired at the police.

A witness said about 15 civilians with severe bleeding were taken away in ambulances. “They were all shot by policemen,” he said.

Noor Oghli Kargar, the spokesman for Ministry of Public Health, said the injured civilians were recovering “in good condition.” He added that it was still unclear “if these people were shot.”


Sharifuallah Sahak contributed reporting.

    Dozens Injured in Anti-American Protests in Kabul, NYT, 15.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/world/asia/16afghan.html

3 Afghans Die in Protest Over Koran Burning

September 12, 2010
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two Afghans died in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan on Sunday when the police fired into a crowd protesting the planned burning of the Koran in Florida, a day after the burning had been called off.

The deaths bring to three the number of Afghans killed in demonstrations tied to the threat made by Terry Jones, a Florida pastor, to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

Mr. Jones relented under intense pressure from the Obama administration and others, but not before tapping a deep well of anger among Afghans. It was likely that many of those protesting on Sunday in Baraki-e-Barak, a district in western Logar Province, had not heard the news. Mass media is scant in the region.

As of Sunday night there had been no reports on local television about a couple of Koran burnings that did take place on Sunday in Tennessee.

The crowd chanted anti-American slogans, including “death to Americans,” “death to Obama,” and “death to Jews.”

But its violence was directed at the Afghan government, which is seen as beholden to the United States. “A group of protesters engaged with police at around noon and started to throw rocks and bricks at police, wounding some policemen," said Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the governor of Logar Province.

The previous day, the demonstrators burned a police checkpoint, he said. On Sunday, the police fired to stop the crowd from advancing on the district center and burning it, said Mr. Darwish. The shots wounded six people, two of them critically, and they died while being taken for medical treatment.

The planned Koran burning touched a raw nerve in a region deeply proud of its Muslim faith.

“Afghans fought for 30 years against Communism and during mujahedeen time and Afghans are ready to die for their religion and customs and traditions,” said Maulavi Qalamuddin, a former Taliban from Baraki-e-Barak, who spent nearly seven years in detention at Bagram Airbase. “Whenever someone does something against their values and religion they are quick to anger.”

He said that the protest reflected a broadly popular frustration with the government because the demonstrators included “shopkeepers, teachers and taxi drivers who have to deal with the government every day,” and not people from remote areas of the district.

Muhammad Alam, a high school teacher in the provincial capital, agreed that there was serious disillusionment with the government, although he suspected that the Taliban had also stoked emotions on Sunday.

“In Logar, there is a mixture of Taliban motivating people to do this demonstration and people not being happy with the current administration,” he said. “This regime is based on bribery. You cannot do anything unless you pay a bribe to the government. People are jobless. People are fed up with the current government.”

When the Americans or other foreigners pay for projects, the money is whittled away by corrupt officials, he said. “Needy people cannot get anything at all, so that is why people are resorting to demonstrations to show their anger in any way possible.”

Also on Sunday, NATO officials conceded that civilians may have been killed in a Sept. 2 strike aimed at a man believed to be the Taliban deputy shadow governor of Takhar Province in northern Afghanistan. A NATO statement said that an investigation confirmed that the man, who was associated with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, had been killed, but could not rule out the possibility that civilians were also killed.

President Hamid Karzai, citing reports from local officials, said at the time that the airstrikes killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 3, including a parliamentary candidate who was in the convoy with several campaign workers. The candidate, Abdul Wahid Khurasani, said that the convoy of six vehicles struck by two NATO rockets was part of his campaign team and that the vehicles were draped with campaign posters.

NATO officials disputed that description on Sunday. The NATO statement said there were no campaign signs on the vehicles. They said only one vehicle was struck.

“We are very confident that the targeted individual was in the vehicle struck by the air weapons team and was killed,” said Italian Army Brig. Gen. Luigi Scollo of the Italian Army, the Joint Command operations chief for the NATO forces. “The question remains why an election official or candidate was traveling with a known terrorist.”


Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.

    3 Afghans Die in Protest Over Koran Burning, NYT, 12.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/asia/13afghan.html

Afghans Protest Koran Burning For Second Day

September 11, 2010
Filed at 7:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By REUTERS

PUL-E-ALAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Protestors clashed with Afghan security forces on Saturday, as thousands of Afghans demonstrated for a second day, despite a U.S. pastor suspending plans to burn copies of the Koran, officials said.

The renewed protests in the war-torn country came after obscure Florida Pastor Terry Jones called off plans to burn copies of the Koran to mark the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The plans triggered outrage in Afghanistan and across the Muslim world with President Barack Obama warning the action could deeply hurt the United States abroad and endanger the lives of U.S. troops.

Four demonstrators were seriously wounded when Afghan security forces opened fire as thousands of protestors tried to storm several government buildings in Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province, south of Kabul, a provincial official said.

"The security forces did not want any trouble but were forced to open fire when the protestors tried to force their way into the buildings," said Din Mohammad Darwish, the provincial governor's spokesman.

Demonstrators also hurled stones at the buildings, including the department for women's affairs, causing some damage. Pul-e-Alam is located some 70km (40 miles) south of the capital, Kabul.

 

"MORE BLOODY ATTACKS"

Elsewhere in northeastern Badakhshan province, where a day earlier one protestor was shot dead, several thousand people took to the streets in three separate districts, provincial police chief Aqa Noor Kentuz said.

"Demonstrators have come in their thousands to protest the Koran burning, though so far it is peaceful. Our police force is there to prevent any violence," he told Reuters.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said he was aware of two demonstrations in Badakhshan. He said no ISAF forces were involved and that the protests were not near any military bases.

In a statement posted on their website, alemarah-iea.com/, the Taliban called on all Afghans to join the hardline Islamists in their fight against the Western forces and warned of more attacks if the Koran burning went ahead.

"This stupid pastor who wants to avenge the September 11 attacks by burning the Koran will not only cause hundreds of bloody attacks in the United States but also throughout the world," the statement said.

On Friday, a crowd estimated at 10,000, protested on the streets of Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, after special prayers for Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

One protester was shot dead when a smaller group attacked a German-run NATO base in Faizabad, hurling stones at the outpost. Protesters also gathered in the capital, Kabul, and in four other provinces, mainly in the west of the country.

Similar protests over perceived desecration of Muslim symbols have led to dozens of deaths in Afghanistan in recent years, including after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad in 2005.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Elham in KUNDUZ and Hamid Shalizi and Jonathon Burch in KABUL; Writing by Tim Gaynor and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

    Afghans Protest Koran Burning For Second Day, NYT, 11.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/11/news/news-us-usa-muslims-afghanistan.html

Afghan Protests Against Koran Burning Turn Violent

September 10, 2010
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK

KABUL, Afghanistan — Numerous protests broke out in Afghanistan on Friday and two of them turned violent in response to plans by a Florida pastor to burn copies of the Koran, even after the pastor announced he had suspended those plans.

In western Afghanistan, one civilian was killed and three were wounded by gunshots at a protest outside a NATO base in Bala Buluk in Farah Province, according to a hospital official there.

In northern Afghanistan, five Afghan protesters were wounded by gunshots, three of them critically, when hundreds of men tried to force their way onto a NATO reconstruction base in Faizabad, the capital of Badakshan Province, Afghan officials said.

There were few details on what happened regarding the death in western Afghanistan, except that it was the result of a protest over the threat to desecrate the Koran.

Nasir Sultan Zada, the emergency room doctor on duty at the Central Public Hospital in Bala Buluk, said four protesters were brought to the hospital suffering from gunshot wounds, one already dead.

“We do not know who shot them,” Dr. Zada said. “Whether police shot them or coalition forces, it’s not clear.”

He identified the dead man as Muhammad Daoud, 24, of Shewan, a village in Farah Province.

In Faizabad, in addition to the five wounded protesters, four policemen were wounded defending the NATO base from attack, officials said. Muhammad Amin, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said earlier reports that a protester had been shot to death there proved false.

Aga Noor Kentooz, the provincial police commander in Faizabad, also said that although a mob tried to force its way into the base, no one was killed there. He added that the wounded civilians were hit by shots fired from inside the base, and the injured Afghan policemen were hurt by stones thrown by the crowd.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force disputed the reports.

“Reporting indicates no ISAF troops fired shots during any protests today,” said Maj. Sunset Belinsky, a spokeswoman for the security force. “Initial reporting does indicate Afghan forces fired shots, but I would have to defer” to the Ministries of Interior and Defense for confirmation, she said. Officials from those Afghan ministries could not be reached for comment.

In Faizabad, both Afghan officials’ accounts said the trouble came after several thousand people left morning prayers for the Id al-Fitr holiday and attended a peaceful demonstration against the plans for the Koran burning. Although the Florida pastor, Terry Jones, said Thursday that he had canceled plans to stage the event on Saturday, in commemoration of 9/11, his subsequent comments left it unclear if he planned to go ahead or not.

After the demonstration in Faisabad broke up, groups of several hundred young men, both on foot and piled into automobiles, stormed toward Airport Road and the NATO reconstruction team base, which is staffed by German soldiers who are part of the NATO-led international force.

After overpowering Afghan security forces on the outer wall of the compound, the crowd, armed with sticks and throwing rocks, tried to storm the inner wall, the Afghan officials said.

Commander Kentooz said “foreign security forces” inside the base then fired warning shots, and when that failed to work they fired into the crowd. Mr. Amin put the number of wounded at five civilians hit by gunfire, and four Afghan security officers hurt by stones from the crowd.

The director of the Public Health Hospital in Faisabad, Abdul Mohmin Jalali, said five civilians were admitted there with gunshot wounds; one was treated and released, and three of the four who remained in the hospital were in critical condition.

The police commander said protesters outside the German base were angered because of reports that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had attended an award ceremony in Berlin for the Danish cartoonist whose caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad angered Muslims worldwide.

At the same ceremony, Mrs. Merkel denounced the plans of the Florida pastor to desecrate the Koran.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, has warned that plans for the Koran-burning put coalition troops at risk, and both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates called on the Florida pastor not to go ahead with his planned action.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, there were numerous reports of demonstrations against the Koran-burning in Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, as well as in Bamian, Kunar and Kapisa Provinces, but they were small and mostly peaceful.

President Hamid Karzai, in a message issued for the Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, called on Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban insurgents fighting his government, to join the peace process.

Mullah Omar’s own Id message was uncompromising, boasting that American forces were on the verge of leaving Afghanistan, and ignoring calls for peace talks.

The president’s remarks came after prayers for Id at the mosque on the presidential palace grounds and a statement from his office said, “The President once again called on Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban, and other angry Afghans, to honor Id by joining the peace process and stop killing our brothers and harming civilians.”

Mr. Karzai also criticized the plans to burn the Koran.

“Disrespect to this holy book will not harm this book because the Koran is in every Muslim’s heart and mind,” he said. “I hope these people will stop this disrespect.”

The demonstrations were lightly attended for the most part, although officials in Kapisa Province said a crowd of 10,000 gathered there on Thursday. Television footage, however, showed only a few hundred, and government officials there said the protest was organized by people connected to the governor, who had earlier been the target of an American-supported anticorruption investigation.

Mullah Omar’s remarks, in a message posted on jihadist Web sites Friday and monitored in Kabul, were notably more confident than previous such messages from the reclusive leader, who American military officials believe has been hiding in Pakistan since the fall of his regime in 2001.

“The victory of our Islamic nation over the invading infidels is now imminent,” Mullah Omar’s statement said. “All those who work in the stooge Kabul administration should hear with open ears that the invading enemy is about to leave Afghanistan.”

President Karzai’s message referred to his establishment of a High Peace Council, asking the Taliban to cooperate with that organization. A peace jirga in June agreed to create such a body for the purpose of negotiating with the Taliban, but so far the decree creating the council has not been published and its members, especially the chairman, have not yet been announced.


Adam B. Ellick contributed reporting from Kabul, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

    Afghan Protests Against Koran Burning Turn Violent, NYT, 10.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/asia/11afghan.html

Afghans Protest Koran Burning; One Dead

September 10, 2010
The New York Times
By REUTERS
Filed at 5:30 a.m. ET

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - One man was shot dead when protesters, angry over plans by a U.S. pastor to burn copies of the Koran, attacked a NATO base in Afghanistan's north on Friday, a provincial government spokesman said.

A crowd, estimated at 10,000 by a spokesman for the Badakhshan province governor, had earlier poured into the streets after special Eid prayers. Some later hurled stones at a NATO base run by Germans and a protester was shot when troops inside opened fire, spokesman Amin Sohail said.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul said ISAF was aware of protests in Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, and were investigating.

(Reporting by Ahmad Elham and Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

    Afghans Protest Koran Burning; One Dead, NYT, 10.10.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/10/world/asia/international-us-afghanistan-koran-violence.html

Gates Lands in Afghanistan

September 2, 2010
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here on an unannounced visit Thursday for meetings with American military commanders and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

It is Mr. Gates’s first visit to the country since Gen. David H. Petraeus became the top American and NATO commander, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was fired by President Obama in June.

In a briefing on Thursday afternoon to reporters traveling with Mr. Gates, General Petraeus said that the United States was still trying to fix its intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, which was sharply criticized earlier this year in a report by Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the top American military intelligence officer in the country.

“We have never had the granular understanding of local circumstances in Afghanistan that we achieved over time in Iraq,” General Petraeus told reporters at Camp Eggers, an American military base in Kabul. “One of the key elements in our ability to be fairly agile in our activities in Iraq during the surge was a pretty good understanding of who the powerbrokers were in local areas, how the systems were supposed to work, how they really worked, which tribe was which.”

Without providing details, General Petraeus said that “we are just completing the process of getting the inputs right here.”

The general also said that insurgents were still fighting hard for full control of the farming area of Marja, the site of a major United States military operation in February. General Petraeus said, however, that shops and a school had reopened, that the district center has been rebuilt and that a voter registration drive occurred there last week.

In Kandahar, he said, United States forces continue to kill insurgents in the surrounding districts, but he said the operation would take more time. He offered these statistics: In June, July and August, American and NATO forces killed or captured 235 insurgent leaders, killed 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents and captured another 1,673 rank-and-file insurgents.

Mr. Gates and Mr. Karzai were to have a joint news conference in Kabul on Thursday night.

    Gates Lands in Afghanistan, NYT, 2.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/world/asia/03military.html

Accounts Differ on Fatal NATO Strike on Afghans

September 2, 2010
The New York Times
By ADAM B. ELLICK and SANGAR RAHIMI

KABUL, Afghanistan — Airstrikes by NATO forces that killed 12 people on Thursday in northern Afghanistan have produced sharply conflicting accounts as to whether the attacks hit a team of election campaign workers, including the parliamentary candidate himself, or a group connected with an Uzbek terrorist network.

Officials in Kabul and in Takhar Province, where the deaths occurred, said two NATO jets fired twice on a convoy of campaign workers. The candidate, Abdul Wahid Khurasani, was among three wounded.

“What reaction can I have?,” said Mr. Khurasani by telephone from his hospital bed in Kabul. where he was being treated for minor injuries. “NATO came in, killed my supporters and my campaigners. They are powerful, what can I do? I cannot do anything.”

But in a contrasting assessment of the dead, international forces said the airstrike singled out a group connected to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, including a senior leader who is believed to be the deputy shadow government in Takhar.

A spokesman for NATO also said “a great deal of time and patience” was used to ensure the strike occurred in a remote area void of civilians. The occupants’ activity was tracked for days prior to the attack.

“We’re aware of the allegations that this strike caused civilian causalities and we’ll do our best to get to the bottom of the accusations,” Maj. Gen. David Garza said.

When told of NATO’s claim that the convoy included people linked with the Islamic movement, Mr. Khurasani said, “That is an absolute lie.”

There has been a surge of violence ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for Sept. 18. Insurgents have killed 3 candidates, and at least 12 campaign workers have been killed or remain missing in recent weeks.

Mr. Khurasani, an ethnic Uzbek, is running for office for the first time. He previously served as the head of information and culture in Takhar and was also the director of state-run radio and television.

Mohammad Hussein, the district chief of Rustaq, where the airstrike happened, said Mr. Khurasani’s entourage included a man named Amanullah, a former jihadist commander who had recently returned from an extended trip to Pakistan.

Mr. Khurasani said Mr. Amanullah was a relative and strong supporter of his candidacy, and not a terrorist.

In a news release, NATO said the strike took aim at an insurgent who recently traveled to Pakistan, where he coordinates attacks with the Taliban.

While Mr. Khurasani said the attacks struck six vehicles in his convoy, all draped with campaign posters. However, NATO said that only one of the vehicles was hit. Mr. Khurasani also said that he informed the police in two districts of his campaign trip and that they had guaranteed his security.

President Karzai condemned the strike on Thursday.

American and NATO forces have placed a strong emphasis on sparing civilian lives after years of mounting criticism from Afghan political leaders for the soaring number of civilians killed by airstrikes and fighting between Taliban and American-led forces.

However, 70 percent of civilians who die in Afghan violence are killed by insurgents, according to the United Nations.

Also on Thursday, a NATO solider was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, and another in the south.

    Accounts Differ on Fatal NATO Strike on Afghans, NYT, 2.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html

A Time for Reflection on Two Wars

September 1, 2010
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Obama Declares an End to Iraq Combat Mission” (front page, Sept. 1):

President Obama’s Iraq speech, given from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, was straightforward and concise. He praised the troops and acknowledged that our job in Iraq was done, although as the Iraqis begin the difficult process of governing themselves, violence will likely continue.

President Obama told us that he had kept his promise to bring the troops home. He also acknowledged his disagreement with President George W. Bush on war strategy, but thanked him for his love of country and his support of the troops. Mr. Obama advised that domestic issues were a priority.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, however, apparently listened to an entirely different speech, a speech in which the president was patting himself on the back and taking bows, along with credit, for the success of the surge strategy. Amazing.

Patricia A. Weller
Emmitsburg, Md., Sept. 1, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Re “The War in Iraq” (editorial, Sept. 1):

As a Vietnam War era veteran who saw my friends and fellow soldiers who served in Vietnam “scorned for decisions made by politicians,” I, too, was grateful for President Obama’s visit to Fort Bliss in Texas and, subsequently, in his address to the nation, for his generous and well-deserved words of praise and gratitude for our troops who served and sacrificed in Iraq.

Often criticized — in my opinion, undeservedly so — for not sufficiently addressing the courage and dedication of our troops, the president used almost one-third of his speech to do exactly that.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Dorian de Wind
Austin, Tex., Sept. 1, 2010

The writer is a retired Air Force major.

•

To the Editor:

David Brooks’s Aug. 31 column, “Nation Building Works,” presented a somewhat rosy picture of the United States’ nation-building efforts in Iraq.

Was it worth it? The answer, considering the sacrifices in American blood and treasure, is a resounding no.

We should have never been put in the position of having to rebuild Iraq, when you consider that we had no legal or logical reason to invade in the first place. All the nation building in the world will never change that.

Dan Norman
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Aug. 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Re “We Owe the Troops an Exit” (column, Aug. 31):

Bob Herbert is right in his assertion that we have failed our brave soldiers miserably in Afghanistan. Any time one reduces war to a political chess game, the potential for disaster is very real, very present.

As a veteran who was drafted in 1967 and was sent to Vietnam a year later, I saw firsthand even in my limited capacity as a 20-year-old foot soldier that we were sent there with one hand tied behind our backs.

We have repeated history both in Afghanistan and Iraq, sending our soldiers into the horrific meat grinder that is war, using them as pawns in a political game, asking them again and again to risk their lives in one of the most inhospitable and unforgiving terrains in the world.

War is territorial; you have to take ground — and keep it — to win. With early victories against the Taliban and political opportunities squandered in Afghanistan by diverting our resources to Iraq and by sending our soldiers into harm’s way for three, four and five tours of combat duty, we have betrayed the soul of what made this country great.

Where are the voices of the Vietnam veterans? We should be shouting from the rooftops to all who would listen: Don’t ask us to shed our blood for a political police action! Don’t commit us to fight unless the entire country is behind us! And don’t send us into war unless you want us to win!

Len DiSesa
Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

As David Brooks and Bob Herbert comment on the legacies of the Iraq war and the future of the war in Afghanistan, our national uneasiness about our nation’s place in history comes into sharp focus.

How do we honor the veterans of the Iraq war, and simultaneously mourn the American, coalition and Iraqi loss of life? How do we mark this homecoming that is not the end of the casualties in Iraq, but a new kind of challenge for Iraqis, the continuation of service for 50,000 American troops, a time of recuperation and a new start for returning veterans, and another stage of grief for the families on all sides of this war who have lost loved ones?

Commemoration differs from celebration in important ways. A national day — or week — of mourning seems a proper tribute, with solemn marches through each community.

Linda Gray
Calais, Vt., Aug. 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Thank you, Bob Herbert, for your eloquent and poignant call to end this nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.

I was at Camp Lejeune, N.C., recently to welcome my son home from Afghanistan. I cannot describe the unfathomable joy that night, but it was tempered by my feelings for the families who were not there because their sons didn’t return or had already returned badly injured.

Military families do their best to support our sons and daughters during these difficult deployments no matter how we feel about this war. And when they are deployed it is a strange, fragile time. More of us need to speak up and more people need to realize that these troops we feed “into the meat-grinder,” these names and numbers we read in the newspaper, are our children and we want them home.

Patricia Hohl
Framingham, Mass., Aug. 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert writes, “One of the reasons we’re in this state of non-stop warfare is the fact that so few Americans have had any personal stake in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Acknowledging this truth, I propose a constitutional amendment requiring that a state of war would trigger a draft of human resources and a rationing of material commodities.

Carroll F. Johnson
Longboat Key, Fla., Aug. 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

The saddest thing about reading the names of the American casualties in Afghanistan is to read their ages: 18, 19, 20, 21. They were children when the war began.

Mark Hopkins
Cleveland, Aug. 31, 2010

    A Time for Reflection on Two Wars, NYT, 1.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/opinion/l02iraq.html