Meanwhile, in Afghanistan....

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From the Los Angeles Times

War dead

Los Angeles Times - Afghanistan | Sunday, August 23, 2009



The Defense Department last week identified the following American military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan or at a U.S. military hospital:

Adam F. Benjamin, 34, of Garfield Heights, Ohio; gunnery sergeant, Marine Corps. Benjamin died Tuesday while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 2, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Joshua M. Bernard, 21, of New Portland, Maine; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Bernard died Aug. 14 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay.

Clayton P. Bowen, 29, of San Antonio; staff sergeant, Army. Bowen was one of two soldiers killed Tuesday in Paktika province, Afghanistan, when a roadside bomb detonated near their vehicle. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division at Ft. Richardson, Alaska.

Jose S.N. Crisostomo, 59, of Inarajan, Guam; first sergeant, Army. Crisostomo died Tuesday in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to International Security Assistance Force Kabul.

Leopold F. Damas, 26, of Floral Park, N.Y.; lance corporal, Marine Corps. Damas died Monday while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Paul E. Dumont Jr., 23, of Williamsburg, Va.; specialist, Army. Dumont died Wednesday at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from a non-combat-related incident. He was assigned to the 149th Transportation Company, 10th Transportation Battalion at Ft. Eustis, Va.

Matthew D. Hastings, 23, of Claremore, Okla.; specialist, Army. Hastings died Monday in Baghdad of injuries sustained from a non-combat-related incident. He was assigned to the 582nd Medical Logistics Company, 1st Medical Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Justin R. Pellerin, 21, of Boscawen, N.H.; specialist, Army. Pellerin died Thursday in Wardak province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) at Ft. Drum, N.Y.

Nicholas R. Roush, 22, of Middleville, Mich.; corporal, Army. Roush died Aug. 16 in Herat, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 1st Psychological Operations Battalion, 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

William Z. VanOsdol, 23, of Pinson, Ala.; private first class, Army. Vanosdol died Wednesday at Ad Diwaniyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when enemy rocket fire struck his quarters. He was assigned to the 172nd Support Battalion in Schweinfurt, Germany.

Morris L. Walker, 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; private first class, Army. Walker was one of two soldiers killed Tuesday in Paktika province, Afghanistan, when a roadside bomb detonated near their vehicle. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division at Ft. Richardson, Alaska.

Brian M. Wolverton, 21, of Oak Park; private first class, Army. Wolverton died Thursday in Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) at Ft. Drum, N.Y.

William B. Woods Jr., 31, of Chesapeake, Va.; sergeant first class, Army. Woods died Aug. 16 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, of wounds suffered Aug. 14 when he was shot while on patrol in Ghanzi, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Glen Arm, Md.

• Sources: Department of Defense and the Associated Press.

www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/afghanistan/la-me-wardead23-2009aug23,0,85128.story

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From the Los Angeles Times

U.S. fears clock ticking on Afghanistan

As public support wanes, the Obama administration feels it needs
to deliver speedy progress in Afghanistan so that it can gain time
and backing for its long-term military strategy.

By PAUL RICHTER and JULIAN BARNES | Sunday, August 30, 2009



Lance Corporal Mark Chieffallo of Pittsburg arrives at an observation post on a peak above a village
in Helmand province with over Marines. — Julie Jacobson/Associated Press/August 22, 2009.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington — The Obama administration is racing to demonstrate visible headway in the faltering war in Afghanistan, convinced it has only until next summer to slow a hemorrhage in U.S. support and win more time for the military and diplomatic strategy it hopes can rescue the 8-year-old effort.

But the challenge in Afghanistan is becoming more difficult in the face of gains by the Taliban, rising U.S. casualties, a weak Afghan government widely viewed as corrupt, and a sense among U.S. commanders that they must start the military effort largely from scratch nearly eight years after it began.

A turnaround is crucial because military strategists believe they will not be able to get the additional troops they feel they need in coming months if they fail to show that their new approach is working, U.S. officials and advisors say.

"Over the next 12 to 15 months, among the things you absolutely, positively have to do is persuade a skeptical American public that this can work, that you have a plan and a strategy that is feasible," said Stephen Biddle, a military expert who advises the U.S.-led command in Afghanistan.

A similarly urgent view was voiced by military and diplomatic officials who described the administration's goals and self-imposed deadline during recent interviews in Afghanistan and Washington. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in an interview last month, first pointed publicly to the need for progress by next year. Since then, the goal has spanned the administration's international diplomatic efforts, its aid program for the Afghan government and its combat strategy.

Unlike during the Bush administration years, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld clashed with other Cabinet members, particularly in the State Department, Gates' assessment appears to be shared by every other major Obama administration player. At the White House, State Department and elsewhere, officials agreed on the need for rapid progress in key areas.

Besides reversing Taliban advances and strengthening the central government, U.S. officials will strive to hold the NATO alliance intact while reshuffling deployments to consolidate gains, especially in the eastern part of the country, near the Pakistani border.

Administration goals in Afghanistan also include stemming government corruption, improving security forces, especially the police, and reducing violence through efforts such as wooing insurgents.

In part, the administration thinking reflects the growing impatience of liberal Democrats with the war. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has called for a "flexible timetable" for troop withdrawals, while House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin has warned of funding cuts next spring unless there is significant progress.

A senior administration official said Obey's comment was "a very important signal" to the White House.

Among military commanders, there has been no effort to sugarcoat conditions in Afghanistan.

"We need a fundamental new approach," said one officer, a senior advisor to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly appointed top commander in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's initial assessment of Afghanistan to Pentagon officials is due soon, in a report expected to be made public in early September.

That report will probably avoid a troop recommendation, but by outlining McChrystal's view of what has gone wrong and his vision for fixing it, officers hope he can make Washington more receptive to a later request for more troops.

"We have to demonstrate we have a clear way ahead, matched with appropriate resources, that is making an impact on the ground," said the officer.

The proportion of Americans who believe it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan rose from about 25% in 2007 to 42% this year, according to Gallup surveys. A slight majority of Americans no longer believe the war is worth fighting, according to a Washington Post-ABC survey this month.

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A U.S. fighter was killed Friday when his vehicle hit an explosive device in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths to 45 and exceeding the previous record, set in July. At least 732 U.S. service members have been killed in the Afghanistan war, compared with more than 4,300 killed in the Iraq conflict.

The faltering public support highlights another concern: the U.S. midterm elections next year. Democratic lawmakers fear they may become targets of Republican political attacks over the administration's handling of the war.

More troops?

In the face of those doubts and time pressures, top Obama administration officials such as James Jones, the national security advisor, have expressed skepticism about the prospects of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

President Obama has committed 21,000 additional troops this year, bringing the U.S. force to 68,000 by the end of the year. But military analysts said that the new strategy being developed in Kabul, the Afghan capital, will require still more troops.

Officers in Afghanistan consider much of the effort of the last eight years wasted, with too few troops deployed, many in the wrong regions and given the wrong orders.

For instance, in Iraq, the military spent between three and nine months on programs to roust militants from cities. In Afghanistan such clearing operations have lasted as little as three weeks.

"Clearing operations aren't about kicking down doors, or even going house to house once," said Kimberly Kagan, a strategist who has advised the military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "They are about establishing presence and then building a trust relationship with the local population so that over time they feel they can provide information."

Shoring up NATO

Diplomatically, U.S. officials have begun a push to persuade NATO countries to send more forces to Afghanistan. And they are also trying to stave off departures by key allies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with its 38,000 troops, is considered important both to combat efforts and to the international credibility of the war.

But Canada, which now oversees the southern regional command, is scheduled to pull out its combat troops in 2011, and the Dutch are scheduled to leave next year. A German opposition party, the Free Democrats, this month called for the removal of Germany's 4,500 troops. And in Britain, public support for the war is flagging.

Any departures mean more work for U.S. forces, but are also likely to raise questions at home about why Americans are shouldering so much of the burden of the conflict.

"We cannot afford to re-Americanize the war," said a senior administration official.

Fighting corruption

As the military is overhauling its priorities, so too is the State Department. Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has signaled a major push to reduce corruption in the government as soon as the presidential election results are known.

Senior officials are weighing a number of approaches, including, possibly, an international commission to probe corruption cases. The goal is not only to improve Afghans' low regard for their government, but also to reassure Americans that the $2.6 billion a month they are providing is well spent.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the task is not easy. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, expected to win the election, has built political support for his administration through alliances with a number of regional leaders and warlords who face allegations of corruption.

One is his running mate, former Defense Minister Mohammed "Marshal" Fahim, accused of involvement in drug trafficking. U.S. officials have already warned Karzai that they were not happy with the prospect of Fahim as vice president.

Improving the police

Key to both the diplomatic and military strategies is a rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces.

U.S. officials are particularly focused on stepping up police training programs, a key to long-term stability in the country.

Holbrooke describes police training as one of the toughest jobs the allies face, and predicts that success in Afghanistan will depend heavily on whether a skilled force can provide security. But NATO officials continue to report that Afghan police, woefully undertrained in many regions, can't be trusted with many of the most important assignments.

Choosing fights

Most military officers believe lasting progress will be years in the making. But they also realize that they only have a few months to add to the perception that they are making headway.

As a result, the military is likely to focus on select goals instead of trying to save the entire country at once. McChrystal has said he plans to focus efforts on securing population centers. That means, at least initially, Taliban outposts that do not threaten significant Afghan cities or villages will not be targeted.

"We have to do triage," Biddle said. "We do not have the resources to stabilize the whole country at once."

www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-afghan30-2009aug30,0,5417839,full.story

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From The Times Online

Vote-rigging in Afghanistan leaves US scrambling to save election

US left to pick up poll pieces

By JAMES HIDER in Kabul and TIM REID in Washington D.C. | Tuesday, September 01, 2009



The sheer scale and brazen nature of vote rigging in Afghanistan’s elections has left the US Administration scrambling for a “least-worst” option, according to officials haunted by the spectre of a failed government in Kabul.

The widespread evidence of fraud followed a decision by Washington to remain completely neutral in the run-up to the election. It was a position that had been strongly argued by Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s “AfPak” envoy, who said any appearance of interference might backfire.

As President Karzai edges towards a first-round victory — preliminary results have him on 46 per cent, against 33 per cent for his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah — the White House faces the prospect of backing a man whose regime is seen widely as ineffective and corrupt and who may have stolen the election.

The Times understands that emergency discussions are taking place in Washington to come up with an alternative. One option is to try to engineer a second-round run-off in an attempt to give the election greater legitimacy.

However, when Mr Holbrooke suggested the idea to Mr Karzai over dinner in Kabul last week the Afghan leader reacted with fury. Some US officials think the account was deliberately leaked by the Karzai camp to make him look like the only man willing to stand up to Washington.

Western officials are trying to put a brave face on matters as the reports of vote rigging flood in. A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said: “Speculating on turnout figures or likely results would be premature. The important thing is that the outcome of the elections represents the will of the Afghan people.”

But it is precisely this that is worrying the US. While most parties appear to have indulged in some ballot-box stuffing, intimidation or bribery, Mr Karzai’s supporters have appeared most culpable. Much of the vote rigging appears to have happened in the violence-ridden southern provinces, where heavy British losses in recent weeks failed to stop Taleban intimidation of voters, causing a low turnout.

Only 150 Afghan voters went to the polls in the former Taleban stronghold of Babaji, north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, when several thousand could have voted. Four of the ten troops who died in Operation Panther’s Claw, the offensive to clear out the Taleban before the election, were killed in or around Babaji.

One election observer told The Times yesterday that in Paktia province, about 100 miles south of Kabul, witnesses reported that groups of 40 to 50 men had been seen using the voting cards of women who had not dared venture out of their homes, and were casting hundreds of votes each. This was sometimes done in collusion with officials from the Independent Electoral Commission, he alleged.

The Election Complaints Committee is now considering almost 700 serious allegations and the number is rising daily. Last month The Times reported several instances, including one when more than 5,500 people had apparently cast their ballots in the first hour of the election on August 20.

Some fear that Afghanistan might revert to civil war if the election results are contested. Haroun Mir, a political analyst, said: “We can either move forward to democracy or back to the 1990s, where conflict is based on ethnicity.”

Dr Abdullah, a Tajik, has promised to protest against any fraudulent victory by his Pashtun rival. But Mr Mir said that if he did not concede defeat, “we move towards a crisis. Then what could prevent us from falling again into the same disaster that we witnessed in the 1990s?”

Bruce Reidel, chosen to head Mr Obama’s Afghanistan policy review, said: “If the Government of Afghanistan goes into free fall, all the troops in the world aren’t going to matter. If we don’t have a government that has some basis of legitimacy in the country, the best generals, the best strategy, isn’t going to help turn it around.

Phantom voters

• More than 17 million Afghans registered to vote, although the number of eligible voters is estimated at 12 million to 15 million.
  
  
• Abdul Hadee, the local election commission head in Helmand, told The Times on August 20 that fewer than 50,000 people had voted in the province; by August 23 he changed the figure to 110,000. In Garmsir his estimate rose from nought to 20,000.
  
  
• The election commission is investigating claims that up to 70,000 illegal votes were cast in centres around the Haji Janat Gul polling centre east of Kabul.
  
  
• Witness reports in Jawji Aryub district of Paktia province claim that some individual men voted with hundreds of women’s cards at female polling stations.
  
  
• The Times arrived at Pul-e-Charki polling station an hour after it opened to find the station empty but 5,530 votes already cast.
  
  
• Tribal leaders in Helmand told The Times in early August that Karzai supporters were buying voting cards from local residents.
  

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6816462.ece

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From The Times Online

‘Deviant guards’ go wild in Kabul

US Embassy staff's drunken, naked hijinks put security at risk

By GILES WHITTELL in Washington D.C. | Thursday, September 03, 2009



Pictures of the embassy workers show some drinking alcohol; others are portrayed in nude or obscene poses.

US inspection after pictures of private security contractors in Kabul.

The images tell a story that no apology or investigation is likely to lay to rest: naked men drinking vodka and eating crisps from each others’ buttocks at the US Embassy in Kabul.

Others show naked men cavorting round fires or posing for group pictures, their faces blacked out but their bottles of liquor held aloft, in defiance of Muslim custom.

Yesterday the US State Department announced that it was sending a team of more than a dozen inspectors to Kabul to investigate the activities of private security contractors at their barracks in the Afghan capital.

Officials admit that security is in jeopardy at the embassy because of the poor performance of its 450 private guards. The release of pictures of degrading and abusive behaviour — including photographs of Afghan personnel apparently being goaded into drinking alcohol — threatens to inflict further damage on the image of US forces in Afghanistan at a critical moment in the eight-year conflict with the Taleban.

An e-mail that was sent to support the allegations, written by an anonymous guard in Kabul, said: “The pictures will help. You will see that they have a group of sexual predators, deviants running rampant over there. We are not Boy Scouts but there should be some expectation of professionalism in one’s leadership.”

A State Department spokesman admitted that “there were things going on in Kabul which we were not aware of but, frankly, we should have been aware of”.

His remarks came after 36 hours of frantic — and largely fruitless — damage control. He promised that “prompt and effective action” would follow the multiple investigations under way into the contract with ArmorGroup North America, and said that the US Ambassador to Afghanistan would conduct a meeting with staff to reassure them that everything was being done to guarantee their safety. The embassy has come under repeated attack from the Taleban in recent weeks.

Such reassurances will not satisfy critics who say that the incident has already been mishandled at the highest level. Eight official complaints about the ArmorGroup contract have been made within the State Department in the past two years, it emerged yesterday.

Claims that two thirds of the guards cannot speak English and are sleep-deprived because of staff shortages and 14-hour shifts were forwarded by a Senate subcommittee to the State Department in June. The $186 million (£114 million) contract, however, was renewed this summer.

“This is not Abu Ghraib,” a spokeswoman for the Project on Government Oversight group, which published the material, admitted. It was not normal partying either, she noted.

Guards wrote to the group saying that the images reflected a culture of fear and coercion in which employees refusing to go along with so-called hazing rituals were liable to be fired.

The outsourcing of such work is supposed to save taxpayers’ money, yet expatriate employees of companies such as ArmorGroup can earn three to four times the daily wages of US military personnel. Congressional concerns over the glut of private contractors in Afghanistan may force the Pentagon to re-examine proposals to increase the number of US combat troops there.

According to one report 14,000 extra troops could be deployed without increasing the total number of US military personnel deployed in the country — but only by outsourcing more security and support work to contractors.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6819334.ece

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From The Times Online

US Embassy in Kabul bans alcohol after allegations of drunkenness

By JAMES HIDER in Kabul | Friday, September 04, 2009



Employees of ArmorGroup at the US Embassy in Kabul.

The US Embassy in Kabul has banned alcohol from the camp where supervisors are alleged to have indulged in drunken hazings, nude drinking bouts and abuse of subordinates.

The move was a belated attempt at damage limitation after video footage and photographs emerged to back up allegations by security guards who said that the unruly and abusive behavior at Camp Sullivan was putting security at risk at the embassy, which has been attacked in the past by rockets and suicide bombers.

The footage and photographs have also tarnished the image of the US in Afghanistan, an Islamic republic that is observing Ramadan.

The decision to ban alcohol was made at a meeting yesterday by the US Ambassador, who is a former army general, and other senior embassy staff, after the State Department said that it was sending inspectors to Kabul to look into the allegations that the 450 guards, employed by ArmorGroup North America, had been behaving badly and performing poorly.

Video footage showed what looked more like a drunken stag night in Estonia than professional security guards who are responsible for hundreds of lives in one of the most hostile countries in the world. Other photographs show Afghan personnel being goaded into drinking alcohol, something that could put their security at risk in this Muslim country.

The e-mail described supervisors “peeing on people, eating potato chips [crisps] out of [buttock] cracks, broken doors after drunken brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity”.

The conditions were alleged to have created a “climate of fear and coercion,” with anyone refusing to join in being mocked, humiliated or even fired.

Although the country is officially called the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Islamist Taleban are waging an insurgency in the south and east, alcohol is available in Kabul, a relatively calm city where expatriate parties are common and Western aid workers, diplomats and journalists wine and dine in garden restaurants, behind high walls and with security protection. Alcohol is shipped in by bonded container through Pakistan and is priced steeply.

The breach of discipline was exposed in an e-mail sent anonymously by a guard in Kabul, who described the situation as akin to the novel Lord of the Flies and called those in charge of the security outfit “a group of sexual predators”. The e-mail added that there were “deviants running rampant over there. We are not Boy Scouts but there should be some expectation of professionalism.”

The accusations have come at a damaging time in a country where many are suspicious of the Americans, whose planned troop surge to combat the Taleban is seen as an occupation.

The US and its international partners in Afghanistan are also struggling to come up with a solution to allegations of fraud in the election that secured a second term for President Karzai.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6820942.ece

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Little will be gained from this election

Afghanistan faces another five years of corruption, nepotism and weak government if Hamid Karzai is re-elected.

By NAJIBULLAH LAFRAIE - The Dominion Post | 8:17AM - Wednesday, 09 September 2009

Despite a low voter turnout and widespread violence, the Afghanistan presidential election of August 20 was declared "successful" by the UN special representative for Afghanistan and various world leaders as well as President Hamid Karzai and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

Reports of massive fraud, however, soon led to a sombre mood. The Election Commission has already disqualified the results of several hundred polling stations, and more may follow. But even if there were no fraud, violence and intimidation, would the mere holding of an election be a success for the cause of peace, stability and democracy? The answer seems to be a resounding "no" for several reasons.

The election is not expected to lead to good governance. While the official declaration of the results will take several weeks, Mr Karzai is ahead of his rivals and will most probably be the winner.

His re-election will certainly mean another five years of corruption, nepotism and weak government. Even if Dr Abdullah were able to defeat Mr Karzai, however, there is not much hope he could do a better job.

He is part of the same elite that has dominated Afghan politics since the removal of the Taleban. Thus, the faces of the cabinet members and the "advisers" surrounding the president would change, but their attitudes and behaviours would mostly remain the same.

The election will not improve the government's legitimacy. Although in a society like Afghanistan legitimacy emanates from many other sources than an election, the first presidential election in October 2004 did bestow a measure of legitimacy to Mr Karzai.

More than 70 per cent of the registered voters went to the polling stations and about 55 per cent of them cast their votes for him. It was the first election in Afghanistan in several decades, and people were attracted not only by the novelty of the election but also because of their high hopes for the future.

Unfortunately, Mr Karzai soon squandered that goodwill by his incompetence and by acting in a way that made him appear an American stooge. That led to the erosion of his government's legitimacy, and it also brought the legitimacy of the whole voting process into question.

The percentage of the people participating in parliamentary elections only a year later dropped to 50 per cent. Thus, the low turnout in the recent election, at about 35 per cent, is as much due to the Taleban threat as to people's disillusionment with the political process.

The election is far from being an exercise in democracy, although it does provide Afghans with some experience in the democratic process.

Although there were some major differences in candidates' political platforms, policy positions do not seem to be a top priority for most of the voters.

Ethnicity and regionalism play a much more important role. That is why Mr Karzai has tried to co-opt prominent personalities (power brokers) from all major ethnic groups as well as from the north, the south, the east, the west and central Afghanistan.

The election is not expected to bring peace with the Taleban. On the contrary, it has increased the level of violence. The Taleban did not intensify their activities because they feared the election would legitimise the Karzai government — they knew very well that it would not. What they wanted to do was to challenge the US forces. As a Taleban commander told a Newsweek reporter: "We didn't take the election seriously until the Americans started arriving in larger numbers with more and better equipment than ever before." It seems that they have been successful in that challenge.

If the election contributes neither to peace nor to good governance, why waste over US$200 million holding it?

There seem to be two main reasons for that. The US and its allies need to show their public some "tangible achievement" to justify investing billions of dollars and hundreds of lives.

If there is no peace in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda and Taleban leaders are still at large, at least there is democracy. This is why there was so much insistence on the "success" of the election.

The other reason is that "election" is the logical consequence of the Bonn Agreement, on which the post-Taleban political setup is based.

The international community has committed itself to the flawed conference and flawed agreement of December 2001 in Bonn, Germany. Following the "Bonn process", there was no option but to hold the election. No-one seems to be contemplating any alternatives. Doing that, it is thought, would not only undermine the good work of the UN, but would also open a Pandora's box, further damaging the political stability and adding to the woes of the Western allies.

Only when the US, the United Nations, Nato and the European Union realise and admit their mistakes, and take actions to alter the course, could there be a chance for a real change in Afghanistan.

• Najibullah Lafraie is a lecturer in politics at Otago University. He was minister of state for foreign affairs in Afghanistan after the fall of the communists in 1992, serving in that role until the Taleban captured Kabul in September 1996.

www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/2846303/Little-will-be-gained-from-this-election

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From The Sydney Morning Herald

Let slip the dogs of war

Parallels with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are prompting observers to question if the US is digging another foreign war grave for itself.

By PAUL McGEOUGH at Satukandav Pass | Saturday, September 26, 2009



At the K-G Road in the Paktia Province, Afghanistan.

Before four MRAP vehicles, each costing a million dollars, engage treacherous country beyond the Satukandav Pass, their American troops close in for a tense briefing inside the military base at Gardez.

"All gunners, binos out," orders Sergeant John Floyd. "Glass the ridges before we enter the pass." Floyd leaves nothing to chance — he actually reminds them this is Taliban country. "They're still on the route," he warns. "Look for pressure plates and tripwires [that likely will trigger roadside bombs]."

Floyd might also have warned them to watch for ghosts. Not just of the handful of their own colleagues who died in this conflict; not even of the hundreds who died in a legendry clash here between the Afghan mujahideen and Soviet forces during Moscow's ill-fated occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

No. Out here, where the spectral sense of history finds good hanging space in the mists that swirl through an awe-inspiring mountain pass, is as good a place as any to confront the ghosts of entire wars — the payback that comes with them and lessons unlearnt from them.

In the 1980s, as the US armed and funded the Afghan mujahideen to drain the very life-blood from the entire Soviet empire, there was grim chortling in Washington that Moscow had been afflicted with its own Vietnam. More recent guffaws come from the Kremlin. Some observers wonder if the US is again digging a Vietnam-like war grave for itself.

The cruel lesson from the alpine slopes of the Satukandav Pass is that winning a battle — even thinking you're winning — does not a war victory make.

In a week when the top US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, likened Washington's failing campaign here to an American bull weakened by each cut in its repeated charges at a matador-like insurgency, his region commander in Paktia province, Colonel Robert Campbell, took in the thin air at the top of the Satukandav Pass, declaring with satisfaction: "These Taliban thugs are failing miserably …. losing horribly."

No doubt the Russian general Boris Gromov thought similarly as he executed Operation Magistral, Moscow's desperate search for a fig-leaf of victory as its decade-long occupation of Afghanistan fell apart in the winter of 1987-88. Gromov's operation would be the last major ground offensive of the war — and his nemesis was none other than Jalaluddin Haqqani, then an American favourite among the mujahideen leadership. Today Haqqani is an outcast, because of his role as a key Taliban strategist confronting Campbell's men in the volatile eastern border region.

Year after year through the 1980s, the mujahideen repelled every Soviet attempt to wrest control of the K-G Road, a vital route between the provincial centre Gardez and far-flung Khost which, perched strategically on Afghanistan's border, was the funnel through which Pakistani middlemen passed much of Washington's aid to the mujahideen.

Sculpting myth from stubborn resistance, more than 10,000 tribal fighters had surrounded Khost, severing supply lines to more than 8000 troops, drawn from both the puppet regime in Kabul and the Soviet military, and a Khost civilian population of 40,000. "The road had become a thing of myth," one of the Afghan leaders wrote. It was "the mujahideen-held road that no power could open".

Gromov, head of Moscow's 40th Army, called on his own soldierly cunning, poring over the faded blueprints from Moscow's World War II campaigns against German forces in the Caucasus and Carpathians, before sending more than 16,000 Soviet troops and thousands more from the Kabul regime into this last battle with the Mujahideen.

With Haqqani in charge and Pacha Khan Zadran a lieutenant, the mujahideen dug in for their last stand at the Satukandav Pass, where near-sheer rock walls tower hundreds of metres above a bent and twisting track. Laying concentric minefields on all approaches, they camouflaged themselves expertly on the shoulders of the pass, about 20 kilometres east of Gardez.

As Gromov's huge ground forces attempted to advance from Gardez to Khost, snatching any high ground not held by tribal militias, the Russian general's air fleet — including 70 jet fighters and dozens of helicopter gunships — dumped a daily average of 400 tonnes of bombs on mujahideen positions.

At 3500 metres altitude when peaks were cloaked in snow and cloud, Gromov produced his masterstroke in the battle to retake the pass and clear the last bottleneck for supplies to Khost. Witnessing the dropping of waves of dummy paratroopers, the mujahideen opened fire, revealing their positions. A reconnaissance aircraft pinpointed their locations, allowing artillery strikes to clear the road.

In six weeks of fighting, more than 4000 Kabul and Soviet troops were killed, wounded or captured. Gromov lost more than 100 vehicles — half of them tanks — and seven aircraft. An estimated 450 mujahideen were killed or captured.

With the supply road open, Gromov dropped nearly 9000 troops north of Khost, hoping a pincer formation would trap the retreating mujahideen. Just as American successors failed to capture Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaeda and Taliban foot soldiers fleeing over the same border into Pakistan 14 years later, however, Gromov captured none of the mujahideen. Within two weeks, Haqqani forces had regained control of the road through Satukandav Pass.

By then, little of the road was left. The mujahideen had funded their campaign to defend it by digging up the asphalt and selling it across the border in Pakistan — thereby creating an Afghan version of the immortal cliche said to have been uttered by a US general in Vietnam: "We had to bomb the village to save it."

Washington now is embarking on the ninth year of its war in Afghanistan, seemingly following each phase of a blueprint that 1980s Soviet officials now admit was stillborn from the start.

Official rhetoric in the American capital seems to consign the US campaign to the same fate. The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, says the US venture might well be doomed if not turned around in the coming year.

Zamir Kabulov, who was a 1980s spy but more recently served as Moscow's ambassador to Kabul, told The New York Times last year: "I know quite a lot about the past, but almost nothing about the future." The Soviets have admitted to past mistakes that are now familiar — the strength of resistance underestimated, bringing in extra troops but in insufficient numbers to make a difference, an inability to rein in tribal rivalries, radical Islam and greedy warlords, a failure to break the nexus between weak central government and corruption.

Washington says it understands all that and is focusing on protecting the population, not relentlessly pursuing the enemy.

Patrolling the K-G Road, Campbell explains to the Herald: "We have to do whatever it takes. If we ignore governance, infrastructure and development, and just fix on security, we'll leave Afghanistan just as the Soviets did."

But ominously for the US, Viktor Yermakov, another former Soviet general in Afghanistan, warns that by the time the Soviets made the same realisation, they were caught in a cycle of attack and counterattack. "We had to answer fire — when we were attacked, we attacked back with all of our might."

Gromov famously walked across a bridge on the Amu Darya River, Afghanistan's northern border, to be the last Russian soldier to leave. Early this year, he marked the 20th anniversary of the withdrawal with his observation of an invaluable lesson learned in Afghanistan: "It has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force."

Thomas Ruttig, an analyst with the Afghanistan Analysts' Network, says: "This time the other side is more dangerous. The mujahideen did not have today's IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and suicide-bombing was unknown."

For now, the US presses ahead, rebuilding the road Moscow could not capture.

Interviewed in a Kabul hospital, the Paktia warlord Pacha Khan thinks before concluding the two operations are very different. "The Soviets wanted to subordinate my country; the Americans just want to build a road."

www.smh.com.au/world/let-slip-the-dogs-of-war-20090925-g6bi.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From The Sydney Morning Herald

The road to perdition

After eight difficult years, Afghanistan has gone off the rails. America's top general says he needs thousands more troops to avoid defeat, and Barack Obama has added "cut and run" to America's list of options. The Herald's chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, and the SBS Dateline cameraman David Brill travelled to Afghanistan's south-east, where a Taliban warlord has declared war against a $US100 million road being built by the Americans.

This is the FIRST of three stories.

By PAUL McGEOUGH | Saturday, September 26, 2009



Armed patrol on the K-G Road in the Paktia Province, Afghanistan.

As ominous as the spot thunder storms electrifying the mountain air this time of year, Jalallulidin Haqqani's and Pacha Khan Zadran's shared history of victories and defeats rumbles menacingly across the craggy south-east. And just as theirs is no ordinary falling out, the $US100 million ($115 million) bid to link the remote, eastern border city of Khost to the hub-city of Gardez, south of Kabul, is no ordinary road project.

Standing between them, astride a ribbon of bitumen snaking its way towards one of Afghanistan's most treacherous mountain passes, is the unlikely figure of Robert Campbell — a lean, leathery US Army colonel who finds himself slipping between the sliding doors of time. On one side, ancient tribal enmity, big-man chest-thumping and insurgency diktats issued amid feuds, internecine ethnic loyalties and strange codes of honour and conduct; on the other side, a faltering, US-led bid to root democracy in the parched, rocky valleys of the Hindu Kush.

Inevitably, the tale of Haqqani and Pacha Khan entwines with that of a huge effort to build this new road, as a parable on the crisis gripping their homeland. Told in several parts, it is the story of Washington getting one up over Moscow. It's a tale of Afghan power-brokers milking the international donor community, hedging their bets while playing footsies with the Taliban and other insurgencies, because they're unconvinced Washington and its allies will not cut and run.

More than that, it reveals the dual dialogue that is a flaw in the glass of a chaotic effort to haul Afghanistan into the 21st century. Local leaders, from the President down, tell the world what it wants to hear, while tribal elders and local warlords kowtow to those above them in the power chain, as they carve up the country and its people on their own brutal, near-biblical terms.

Connecting Khost and Gardez, the K-G Road is part of a grand design to break five strategic centres from economic and social dependency on neighbouring Pakistan. By linking them together and to the national ring-road, they might be hooked back into Kabul's orbit.

In Paktia province, people worry about who will control the road. Will Jalallulidin Haqqani slap a tourniquet on it and hold the city of Khost to ransom — as he did so relentlessly in the past? Will Pacha Khan Zadran throw up checkpoints to extract tolls from all who pass — as he did so voraciously in the past?

For Americans stuck between them, the contest is as much about a showdown between two old tribal enemies as it is about the longevity and viability of the Kabul government.

Campbell, the American colonel, knows the stakes are high and that he dare not underestimate either opponent. "They have very different objectives," he tells the Herald while patrolling the K-G Road late last month. "Pacha Khan wants to control commerce on the road; Haqqani wants to control Khost."

Haqqani's whereabouts are a mystery. "The last I heard, he was in Pakistan — in Miram Shah," says a senior US officer, referring to a small town in the wilds of Waziristan, just over the border. When the Herald previously searched for Pacha Khan, the Pancho Villa lookalike was at home in the woodcutters' village of Wazi Zadran, lolling on a pile of floor cushions, his girt ample and the whiteness of his teeth visible below the black-dyed moustache. A belt of bullets stretched diagonally across his chest as he worked a great length of cotton into a classic Pashtun turban.

This time, he is in a private hospital in suburban Kabul. Lifting his hospital-greens, he reveals a flabby stomach and the bandaged wound of his hernia operation. Bare-headed, Pacha Khan is in an armchair. The warlord has not shaved in several days. A briefcase is on the floor and an AK-47 against the wall. Armed men guard the corridor and the street outside. Huddled in a corner beside a small primus stove and its bent teapot is an old woman. Almost cowering, she pulls a veil across her eyes because two male strangers have been ushered into the room.

Pacha Khan has a great sense of entitlement. "One-third of this country belongs to me," he says before revealing he views power more through the prism of past factional wars than the permanence of the nascent Afghan state. "I share equal rights with [President] Hamid Karzai and Abdul Haq [another former Mujahideen commander executed by the Taliban as he organised a 2001 uprising]. By rights, I should be Karzai's deputy or defence minister. He refuses me, but I could bring peace to this country in less than a year."

Pacha Khan has a problem, however. Within the local dynamic, Haqqani's bloody and brutal opposition to the Kabul government and its US-led backers, leaves him little room to manoeuvre on the anti-Kabul, anti-US side. Despite him being the first old-guard warlord to violently challenge the Karzai presidency, Pacha Khan is obliged, however reluctantly, to line up with Kabul and the Americans. Haqqani sucks all the oxygen of opposition.

"I don't oppose Karzai," Pacha Khan says. "The President is a good national figure. There is no alternative and I ordered my people to vote for him. We don't clash … I just demand my rights every now and again." He finished there, but might have added: "And Karzai ignores me."

He is at pains to deny that he and 59-year-old Haqqani were ever close. "I reject that we were friends," he insists. "He always had his own ideas - even in the time of Jihad [the 1990s]. Now he works for al-Qaeda and the [Pakistani intelligence service] ISI. He serves their agenda; I support the Afghan Government."

Pacha Khan and Haqqani come from opposing sub-tribes of the Zadran tribe, which sprawls across a dozen high-mountain districts in three eastern provinces. Pacha Khan is Supeer; Haqqani is Mizai. Haqqani has tried three times to kill Pacha Khan. That pales against US efforts to assassinate Haqqani - usually by dropping bombs on suspected hideouts on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Last year, Haqqani's bearded face emerged from a Taliban propaganda video to taunt the Americans: "Now as you see, I'm still alive."

In his Kabul hospital room, Pacha Khan's gold fillings flash the indignation. "Haqqani keeps launching these suicide-bomb attacks on me," he says. "Each time God saved me. Some of my men were injured in the attacks, but Haqqani will try again and again and again as long as I am alive. We are enemies."

Both men were Washington darlings when they fought side-by-side with huge supplies of American arms against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Pacha Khan was paid American millions to have his militia join the failed chase for Osama bin Laden after the Taliban fell in 2001.

The Americans see Pacha Khan almost as a cartoonish representation of the Afghan warlord trying to assert authority in the face of a significant Haqqani challenge. "Cuddly evil," says one. Others opted for the descriptive scumbag. "To describe this guy as pragmatic is a massive understatement," said another of the warlord's wild record of switching sides and lashing out in fury when he does not get his way.

In the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Pacha Khan was made to cough up 42 truckloads of heavy arms. He refuses to disarm entirely and is presumed capable of fielding 2000 to 3000 soldiers.

After the fall of the Taliban, the warlord was so impressed with American firepower he arranged for it to be turned on his enemies. He lied to the Americans that a convoy of elders bound for Kabul to attend Karzai's 2002 inauguration were Talibs. The Americans bombed, killing more than 60. "He knows how to eliminate his political rivals by whatever means," says a US military analyst.

The CIA assessed PKZ — its name for Pacha Khan — as "brutish, mercurial and unstable". His eldest son was killed in an early 2003 clash with US forces. Last year, Haqqani's youngest son, Omar, died in a clash at the Satukandav Pass, the highest point on the K-G Road. Campbell, the American colonel, is clear about Haqqani: "His business is killing people and trying to delegitimise the Afghan Government."

For Afghans, the Haqqani myth is rooted in his fierce fighting against Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s — and his 1991 capture of Khost from the Moscow-backed Kabul government. He allegedly introduced suicide bombs to the Afghan war.

Haqqani was Paktia governor under the Taliban; Pacha Khan under Karzai.

When Pacha Khan was sacked from the post, his men took to the streets, guns blazing, as he tried to bomb his way back into office. Angry US Special Forces were caught in the crossfire, but their plans to arrest the warlord were stymied by a decision in Washington that Pacha Khan was untouchable. When Pacha Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, his militia attacked Afghan Government installations in the south-east for two years. Both men see Khost as a prize worth fighting for. A year after the Taliban fell, Pacha Khan forces were driven out by rivals who exploited confusion generated by a rumour that Americans had arrested Pacha Khan. On another occasion, Pacha Khan laid siege to Khost because the Americans spurned him.

These days, Campbell reckons he has Pacha Khan's measure. "He has a shady past, but now he is on the side of the Government. He wants this road to happen." Why? Because violently extorting tolls from truck drivers is profitable. As much as the Americans distrusted Pacha Khan, they worried he would bolster the respectability of the Taliban and al-Qaeda if he defected to them with his mujahideen warlord credentials.

"Haqqani wants to dominate the road so that he can hold Khost to ransome," says Campbell. "He wants to own the road to stop traffic getting through by closing it when he likes — and his use of foreign fighters makes him a force to reckon with."

Of Pacha Khan, Campbell says locals "will think about trying to shut down the road if they don't get what they want [from Kabul]. They are not fools - they feel left out and they know what's going on. Pacha Khan is a powerful force. He lives in Kabul and comes back here like an evangelist, making speeches and riling up the people. Then he leaves and the elders have to deal with the aftermath."

An analyst on Campbell's staff says Haqqani opposition to the road is rooted in denying "people access to the outside world". "He wants to keep the people as they are — prisoners of their ignorance and religion. Haqqani figures that if he makes the road as costly as he can, we'll be forced to pull out."

Poverty is deep in the Zadran Arc. Villagers eke out existence, farming crevices or narrow ledges in the mountains. Illiteracy is high and some American officers worry that children's growth is stunted. The only non-farm employment is driving jingle-trucks with their decorative chains dangling from the bodywork. So the Zadran staunchly defend the K-G Road, right?

Well, no. In the mountains, something doesn't add up. Zadran are swathed in warrior heritage. Haqqani and Pacha Khan are legends because, as mujahideen commanders in the 1980s, they sensationally defied all but one short-lived Soviet effort to break the mujahideen grip on the K-G Road.

Today, some locals risk their lives by working on US bases and last year there were loud demands for funding and authority for them to stand an arbaki force — a local militia to defend the road. But they shun service in the new Afghan security forces and their warrior instincts don't kick in unless a bag of money is on the table. "At times we tell the elders that they are an embarrassment to themselves," says US Sergeant Brent Koegler. "They got the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but they can't fight 20 Talibs who threaten their village? They're supposed to be awesome fighters."

This indifference by locals is staggering in the face of excoriating speeches by Pacha Khan and other senior figures at a community meeting last year at Combat Out Post Wilderness, as work began on the road.

Warning people their fence-sitting embarrassed him, Pacha Khan demanded they take sides. "Don't shame yourself into being stuck in the middle, by not picking a side and not fighting," he hectored. "It is shameful to be whining to the Government one minute that you can't fight the Taliban; and at the next moment, telling the Taliban when they come to your door that you are on their side."

General Said Gul, chief of staff of the Afghan National Army, told the people: "We let you keep your weapons in the name of your Pashtun culture, [but] things have to change. If my enemy continues to shoot at me from your doorsteps, I'm not going to respect your elders or your tradition.

"I keep hearing that Paktia is the land of respect; the land of the brave, the land of the proud. What pride? What bravery? What respect? I don't see any of it. I was sent here to protect your sisters, your wives and your kids. And if you are the enemy, how am I going to fight you and protect them?"

At the Kabul hospital, Pacha Khan sets out his solution. It was wrong, he says, to let a major contract to an Indian firm. "I warned them to give the contract to the Turks, not the Indians. The road will not be finished unless the Turks get the construction contract and I get the security contract — the budget should be split between us." He insists he does not have a particular Turkish contractor in mind, with an eye to a big fat kickback.

Seemingly oblivious to the loathing prompted by his extortionate toll collections on the road just a few years ago, he goes on: "I would have to set up checkpoints and patrol the road."

But would Pacha Khan do a better job than the South African firm managing the security cocoon around the road work? He feigns ignorance. "South Africans? I've not seen them on the road. All I hear about is IEDs [improvised explosive devices], kidnappings and terrorists running around. There'd be none of that if it was a proper Afghan security operation.

"I have an army of 3000 fighters. I would defeat Haqqani — he is a thief who comes in the dark. You should ask the Americans why they can't beat him. They have more than 60,000 troops and forces from 40 other countries and they still can't deal with him? And if he operates from Pakistan, why are the Americans not putting more pressure on Islamabad to shut him down?"

Kabul will not allow Pacha Khan a look-in. It fears the Zadran's fierce independence and seeks to weaken and undermine the tribe, lest there be an uprising in a region traditionally left to manage its own affairs. The Zadran claim as their right the Ministry of Tribal and Border Affairs but have been denied this influential post for nearly 20 years. No Zadran has been made a foreign ambassador. Efforts last year by elders to iron out differences between Zadran sub-tribes ignited American speculation that the Zadran were bent on resisting Kabul.

Says Pacha Khan, with a wagging finger: "We should not be forgotten, but we don't get what we deserve in terms of schools, clinics and economic development; we don't get the jobs we need. It concerns me that Paktia is seen as the forgotten province."

The Haqqani Network is the only significant element of the insurgency not based inside Afghanistan. His local support and training bases are supplemented by lethal long-range hit-and-run missions by mostly foreign fighters based in Pakistan. Influential as he is in Paktia, however, Haqqani must work with the reality that tribes do sit on the fence, play his game but also play America's. "They want to keep in touch with the Americans and Kabul," says Thomas Ruttig, a 25-year veteran of the region and a member of the Afghanistan Analysts' Network. "The Zadran are split, but the tribes are strong."

The Haqqani Network is judged by analysts to be the most unreconcilable of the Afghan insurgency units. Haqqani is believed by the US to be the Taliban figure most closely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, to be in receipt of Arab funds and to get help of sympathetic elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services in cross-border movement and in hiding his operatives in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

American eavesdropping last year reportedly heard the Pakistani military chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, describe Haqqani as "a strategic asset". Colleagues of the general were overheard warning Haqqani of attacks against his forces. In the 1980s war against the Soviets, Haqqani was one of Washington's strategic assets, receiving significant funds and huge arms shipments.

"Today, Haqqani seems to enjoy a ‘most-favoured’ status among some Pakistani and Saudi authorities who repeatedly have suggested including him as a ‘moderate’ in attempts to start negotiations with insurgents," Ruttig writes in a paper published in July.

After the 1990s civil war, Haqqani threw in his lot with the Taliban and their Saudi Arabian guest — bin Laden. He went from being Washington's well-funded mujahideen darling to sworn enemy.

Haqqani, one of the most powerful American-backed mujahideen warlords against the Soviets, was undefeated in the subsequent mujahideen civil war. With the mid-1990s emergence of the Taliban, he signed up with the fundamentalists, reportedly making available his plentiful stocks of US-supplied Stinger missiles. His reward was to be the first non-Talib in the Kabul ministry and later commander of Taliban forces and governor of Paktia. There, he formed a personal and organisational bond with bin Laden, who had his al-Qaeda training camps near Khost.

Shortly after the Taliban fell, Haqqani was courted by the US and Kabul. He was reportedly offered the post of Karzai's prime minister. Later his brother Ibrahim and son Ishaq were arrested and used unsuccessfully as bargaining chips to turn Haqqani. Haqqani told reporters in Islamabad late in 2001: "We will retreat to the mountains and begin a long guerrilla war to reclaim our pure land from infidels and free our country like we did against the Soviets … We'll deal with [the Americans] in our own way."

Haqqani is believed to be a member of the Taliban leadership council and to have embraced the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar as his spiritual leader. But Haqqani operates his own command, a semi-independent warlord with autonomy from the Taliban.

"Haqqani's strength is intimidation," says the analyst Ruttig. "He is ruthless, so he intimidates people."

Haqqani has extended his operations into the provinces of Wardak and Logar, on Kabul's doorstep. He's been blamed for last year's assassination attempt on Karzai; last year's bombing of the Serena, Kabul's only five-star hotel; last year's suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul; and a car-bomb attack on NATO military headquarters in Kabul in the lead up to the August 20 presidential election.

He refused to agree to Mullah Omar's 2006 order to cease attacks on ordinary Afghans. "Haqqani would be responsible for two-thirds of all the strife there [in the Zadran Arc]," ventured an American analyst. "Some of the communities are very Taliban, and much of the rest is neutral. No one in the whole area is pro the Kabul government or the NATO forces."

Haqqani, who has an Arab wife and funding from Dubai and other Arab regions, was excluded from the Bonn process, where the international blueprint for Afghanistan was stamped. His nemesis Pacha Khan was at the top table for festivities, hob-nobbing with diplomats. "His fury at being left out is the reason for his resistance," says US Captain Gary McDonald at COP Dyesai in the depths of the mountain pass. "How much of that is in play? The son has to continue the father's war because the father was so disrespected."

In the way of the tribes, Pacha Khan's son has been installed as the sub-governor of Wazi Zadran, the seat of Pacha Khan power. When the Taliban fell, the son was a twentysomething car dealer in Dubai. "None of the father's presence," says a senior American officer. "He watched out for the family interests, but he is not very dynamic." This arrangement leaves much of the running in Paktia to Haqqani.

The fathers may be handing power to the sons and, in Paktia, the Americans are banking on leadership shortcomings in the younger generation.

But already the Americans rank Haqqani's son Serajuddin, 35, as an influential insurgency leader in the east. He is understood to have taken over day-to-day running of the terrorist network. "The Haqqanis have had a successful succession," says a US analyst. "But I can't say the same for Pacha Khan and his boy."

Pacha Khan bridles at the suggestion his warlord days are over. As the Herald's question is translated, his entire brow quivers. Stabbing a finger in the air, he says: "I have not delegated my power or authority to anyone — my son is just the district chief to help secure the area. I'm 58 — and still a strong man."

Colonel Campbell is disarmingly frank about his circumstances. With 19 years of conventional military service behind him, he is also a model spokesman for Washington as American forces in Afghanistan attempt to switch to the counterinsurgency objective of protecting people and growing communities, instead of relentlessly pursuing the enemy in the gaps between communities. "What I have changed in the lives of the people will be the indicator of my success," says Campbell. "Beating my chest on rounds fired and enemy kills is one thing … I can kill 150 fighters, but next year another 150 will come over the mountains. What I have to do is create an environment in which they can't come back."

While remaining "on the offensive" and looking for the enemy, "we look for sources of discontent that can be exploited by the Taliban and we try to fix them. We have to be the anchor that pulls the people towards the Kabul government. If they are afraid, we have to separate them physically and psychologically. The people are the centre of gravity."

As the Afghanistan crisis enters its ninth year, there is a growing sense that the number of Americans in central Asia is insufficient, and that the "more" that Barack Obama might provide won't be sufficient enough to make a real difference.

"The first eight years have been wasted," says Thomas Ruttig. "And it is very difficult to answer what do we do now. We've been talking up a rosy picture for the last five years — and now we have awakened to a nightmare."

Insurgency leaders are wont to claim time is on their side; that the Americans will be ground down and will leave. But at COP Dyesai, Sergeant Brent Koegler has seized the sentiment as his own. "We can wait out the Taliban … we just have to keep doing what we are doing."

Koegler seems to embrace the local inshallah principle of deferring to a higher authority — God willing, things will happen. His boss, Neal Erickson, doesn't buy it. "I hope it's not inshallah," he says. "Inshallah is nice — but it doesn't get shit done."

• TOMORROW in The Sun-Herald, Paul McGeough explains how the Taliban get their share of Washington's road money through a protection racket.

www.smh.com.au/world/the-road-to-perdition-20090925-g6bh.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From The Sydney Morning Herald

Deals with a devil to pave a road to hell

After eight difficult years, Afghanistan has gone off the rails. America's top general says he needs thousands more troops to avoid defeat, and Barack Obama has added "cut and run" to America's list of options. The Herald's chief correspondent, Paul McGeough, and the SBS Dateline cameraman David Brill travelled to Afghanistan's south-east, where a Taliban warlord has declared war against a $US100 million road being built by the Americans.

This is the SECOND of three stories.

By PAUL McGEOUGH in Afghanistan | Sunday, September 27, 2009



Dangerous work... a Romanian security contractor stands guard at a section of the road from Khost to Gardez.

The Taliban have declared war against a $US100 million road being built by the Americans in Afghanistan's south-east. And yet the road builders have little choice but to play by the insurgents' rules; and even make sure they get a cut of the money through a protection racket.

Everyone — even the Taliban — gets a slice of the action when it comes to building roads in Afghanistan.

High in the Hindu Kush, where bursts of lavender enliven a fading alpine carpet of summer's green bumfluff, winks, nods and timely backhanders make the insurgents a key, albeit unofficial, party when big money is divided.

It is effectively the Taliban that decide which local contractors will work on a project — either by setting a level of protection money that the contractor can afford to pay, or by scrubbing their participation with bullets and bombs. The Taliban also keep an eye on locals who get work on the project — especially the all-important security jobs.

A key construction project in the volatile south-eastern border region is the Washington-funded K-G Road — a $US100 million ($115million), 100-kilometre blacktop through Taliban country between Khost, on the Pakistan border, and the hub city of Gardez, south of Kabul.

Overseeing the road is a bluff American engineer, Steve Yahn, a 53-year-old Massachusetts father who has been building roads in Afghanistan since 2002.

He is acutely aware of the challenge. "On the earlier projects, including the Kabul-Kandahar Road, we had 136 workers killed and 158 wounded,” he says. “But that was on open, flat land in the south. This one is much harder in terms of security and engineering.”

Since groundwork began on the K-G Road in May last year, Yahn has lost 16 workers — 13 dead and three missing — and 19 have been wounded.

Deals in which the Taliban top up their coffers by demanding as much as 30 per cent of the value of a contract as protection money are rife across the country.

As project manager for the US contractor Louis Berger Group, Yahn knows of the Taliban pressure on his local contractors — staff get kidnapped, vehicles burnt, they are harassed and threatened, and many of their employees walk in fear for their lives.

A foreign security observer who has made a study of the project, but who cannot be identified in this report, explains the grim reality of relationships in the mountains.

“There are lots of local workers — some are Taliban and some of the subcontractors are Taliban associates,” he says. “The project has its eyes and ears on the ground, telling it when not to go on the road. These ‘eyes and ears’ communicate with the Taliban and they work for the Taliban.”

The project tries to make itself as small a target as possible — “playing by the Taliban's rules”, the observer notes. All road gangs are cleared off the carriageway to avoid them becoming killed as military or heavily armed private convoys, which are prime Taliban targets, move through.

The Taliban rules insist on maximum local employment and, among other things, that all road-construction vehicles fly the white flag of the Taliban.

It is easy to be shocked by all this. But Yahn says he has seen it all before — in another time, another place.

“You do construction work in New York City and you'll find the same thing, just different labels — there, the factions are politicians, the Mafia and labour unions. In New York, Boston, on the Baltimore docks, there's a lot of this stuff at work.”

“They're not all bad,” Yahn says of the Taliban, drawing a parallel with the conservatism of some American Mormons. “They have their beliefs and maybe they don't want to send their children to school, but if they're not disrupting my project, they are moderate Talibs.”

All up there are about 1000 workers on the project — two security men for each construction worker. Most are Afghans employed by local sub-contractors. But the South African-run security operation includes Romanians and Gurkhas.

Before work starts each day, the construction corridor is swept for roadside bombs that may have been planted in the night. Arriving on the job, Yahn is not allowed to alight until a security cordon is thrown around his armoured vehicle — and one of the guards decides it is safe to open the door for him.

Depending on the terrain, the South Africans' objective is to create a security bubble in which construction can proceed — anywhere between 500 metres and two kilometres either side of the road.

Traffic is mostly convoys of colourful trucks, crawling at snail's pace over bone-jarring rock and earth that bears little resemblance to a road.

Most trucks lumbering down from the mountains are laden with firewood, cut by high-country axemen. The wood is invariably piled with near surgical precision — often causing the American forces to wonder about what might be buried under it.

US Army Colonel Robert Campbell explains: “Infiltration from Pakistan is a Mafia-like operation — apart from fighters coming over, smugglers bring in weapons and cash that finds its way to Kabul and elsewhere.”

The business structure on the K-G project is of a kind replicated across Afghanistan, much to the fury of some aid organisations. Louis Berger Group is the principal contractor but it has subcontracted an Indian firm to actually build the road.

A US government official, who requested that he not be named, says that despite being a controversial choice, the Indian firm was selected because it was one of only two companies prepared to do the job.

Asked about the wisdom of the choice, given virulent anti-Indian sentiment among the local, pro-Pakistan Pashtu population, he says: “The locals have some reservations about the Indians — but the company is doing its best to employ locals and to mitigate animosity.” But at the same time, he explains that the road is already over budget, mainly because of security. “Insecurity has increased exponentially since the inception of the project.”

This road is vital. Khost sits just kilometres from the border with Pakistan. But because the track that links it to the rest of Afghanistan is so appalling, the city, its farmers and traders have effectively been a part of the Pakistani economy. Their currency is the Pakistani rupee and much of their summer produce is trucked to Pakistan for cold storage and then hauled back for sale at twice the price in winter — because Khost does not have adequate storage facilities.

Originally, the road design called for metal guard rails but once the Taliban discovered they could fix explosives to the metal to target passing convoys, the rails were scrapped in favour of stone walls with a reinforced slab-concrete core.

In winter, work at the higher altitudes grinds to a halt as freezing temperatures make road-building impossible and, with the summer pasture fading already, the Kuchi are on the move.

The Central Asian equivalent to the Bedouin of the Middle East, thousands of these nomads, with their herds and camels burdened with the tents that are their homes, are heading back to lower country near Khost. They know they must stick to the narrow corridor in which Yahn is trying to build a highway because white-painted rocks that speckle the shoulders of the road mark the extent to which Soviet and mujahideen minefields have been cleared.

Already work is behind schedule. The road was to be completed before the coming winter, but the work gangs will be lucky to crest the Satukandav Pass before the winter shutdown. The new completion date is some time next northern summer.

Yahn talks about the 23-kilometre mark, just short of the Satukandav Pass, as an "imaginary barrier". “Heading out from Gardez, it's relatively safe up to that point, but from 23 to 70 we've had lots of hits — that's where the provincial governor was nearly killed.”

The military convoy on which we travelled returns to base without mishap. But, less than 24 hours later, there is a mighty explosion just up the road from where we had been — an improvised bomb makes shrapnel of a lumbering truck and kills its driver, who happened to be in the wrong place as insurgents targeted a passing US convoy.

There had been a string of attacks in Khost and Gardez, in a bid to disrupt voting in the August 20 presidential election. But the bomb that destroys the truck heralds a new burst of insurgency activity along the road — in the space of a couple of days, an Afghan National Police station at the 16-kilometre mark is attacked; massed Taliban fighters are reported on the move near Khost; and around Gerda Serai, a bazaar we visited, pro-Taliban commanders are issuing dire threats to any locals who co-operate with the Americans or the Afghan Government.

Days later, the Afghan counterterrorism chief was gunned down in Khost and five Afghan soldiers died in an improvised bomb strike at Barmali in neighbouring Paktia province.

The Taliban might be slowing progress on the K-G Road but they have not forced the project to a halt. Standing on flat ground outside Gardez, Yahn gazes up to the heights of the Satukandav Pass. “We're marching up the hill,” he says with determination.

• TOMORROW in The Sydney Morning Herald, the final report in this three-part series by Paul McGeough.

www.smh.com.au/world/deals-with-a-devil-to-pave-a-road-to-hell-20090926-g75s.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

From The Sydney Morning Herald

New road paved with promises and projects

The US hopes a highway from Khost, on the border with Pakistan, to the hub city of Gardez will help tame Afghanistan's wild south-east. But in this final report in a three-part series, the Herald's Chief Correspondent finds distrust and unease in the village of Gerda Serai.

By PAUL McGEOUGH | Monday, September 28, 2009



Rocky progress...an Afghan with a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher watches traffic on the Khost-Gardez road.

All who travel the K-G Road come to Gerda Serai, a hovel in the hills that depends for its existence on the heaving through-traffic. Its spartan, dust-coated bazaar is a hotch-potch of basic travellers' needs — mechanical services, a ramshackle hotel, "take-your-life-in-your-hands" food stalls. Dogs run in the pot-holed, flooded street, but something is happening here that the Americans must manage expertly — their lives depend on it.

Gerda Serai sits on a turn in a valley which is too narrow for the $US100 million ($115 million) road, the bazaar and a river that runs wild when the mountain snows melt in the spring. So, to make room for the new blacktop when it comes through next summer, the bazaar must be moved.

As US Colonel Robert Campbell's convoy eases to a halt at the entrance to the bazaar, he sets out the challenge. "They'll be given new shops. It'll be an enemy victory if we bulldoze this place without providing new ones," he says, as his nervy troops throw a cordon around the convoy.

Campbell mooches through the bazaar, becoming an actor in a game of bluff — his own terrier-like watchfulness is sheathed in hail-fellow, well-met repartee with locals who, for the most part, respond in kind — but it has to be assumed that some of them are Talibs or friends or relatives of the insurgents who are playing the same game. "The enemy's not far away," he says. "They're watching us now, working out what we are doing so they can intimidate the people."

Deeper into the bazaar, men who have built a high retaining wall to stop the new road from falling into the river grouse because they have not been paid for their hard work. "The road won't come this year," Campbell tells them, before invoking a Muslim term that absolves him of all responsibility, by deferring to a higher authority. "But next year, inshallah [God willing]." Campbell is looking for information: had the insurgents bothered them as they built the wall?

"No," says Ezat Khan, one of the stonemasons.

Campbell: "But you know the enemy's in the area? You will report any suspicious activity?" Khan: "Yes, we will tell the police."

Campbell crosses the road to engage a thick-set, heavily bearded man who stands chest forward, hands on his hips — this is one of the local strongmen, Haji Keyle. The American sticks to his scripted patter about the road — but as he wraps up, there's a new edge to his voice. "You stay out of trouble, you hear?"

And that, we might have thought, was the last we would hear of Haji Keyle.

The Americans here are spirited, even upbeat. But the more they talk, the more difficult it becomes to understand their confidence. In these parts, in these times, nothing can be taken at face value. The Americans fully understand the push-me, pull-me power of the local warlords: Jalaluddin Haqqani, who, with his son, is the bridge between the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda; and Pacha Khan Zadran, who is erratic and brutal, but seemingly is acceptable to the Americans because, for the time being at least, he says he supports President Hamid Karzai — a position that could change with any coming phase of the moon.

The challenge is in reading which of the locals run with the Taliban, and why - be it out of a loyalty as old as memories of fighting the Soviets together, or from intimidation as fresh as yesterday's threat to behead village elders, which might have been posted on the mosque wall.

Perplexing the Americans is Haji Sangeen, an elder pivotal in their relationship with the people of Gerda Serai, but who they suspect has ties to Haqqani and his terrorism network.

"Haji Sangeen works with us and with Kabul," says Neal Erickson, a young US Army captain, as he elaborates on the complexities of the local equation and on how the elders try to stay alive. "Some of the other elders don't know yet if they want to side with us or with the Taliban. Haqqani still has his old mujahideen links. Everyone here fought the Soviets and those who fought with Haqqani remember him as a good guy who helps some of them with medical costs."

"Elders who sided with Haqqani in the past will do what is best for their own; they will go with the development projects. But I'd put money on it that they still have connections to Haqqani; they provide intelligence and shelter, but maybe not as actively as in the past."

And for one of the young captain's military colleagues, that uncertainty extends to Haji Sangeen. "He sits on the fence — we don't know which way he'll fall," he says.

As they enter year nine of this conflict, it is remarkable that the Americans still grope to understand the people they are attempting to pacify.

An offshoot of the Mogul tribes, the Zadran broke away after a rift eons ago. "The original tribe lived to the north and what became the Zadran came to this harsh area," says an American analyst before invoking the film Deliverance in an unsettling description of the people and their culture. "This is the West Virginia of Afghanistan — they moved to the mountains and they did not evolve. They are very clannish, xenophobic."

When the winter snow closes in, the entire area becomes isolated for up to six months, during which the locals nurse grievances and massage their anger at the world, prompting this observation from an American: "That's their biggest problem. They feel disconnected and, boy, are they pissed off by what they say are a lot of broken promises."

Grappling to explain the Zadran people, another US analyst at Gardez turns on a computer and calls up a recently commissioned anthropological study. "It says they are savages," he says, incredulous. The analyst refuses to endorse the report's terminology, yet he is taken by some of the sentiment: "A savage is someone who has no self-restraint and no moral obligations in terms of himself and his own desires. As an assessment of these people, that's possibly unfair, but there is an element of ‘it's all about me, and screw everyone else because I want my share of the pie — and I'm going to get it’."

The American reads the critical paragraphs from the computer: "The Zadran have been written up as a small tribe, but they are the biggest in the south-east. Their manners resemble the Waziris [who straddle the nearby border with Pakistan] and the Kharotis [also concentrated in the east], from which we may infer that they are utter savages. They live in small villages … they are great robbers and their country was a refuge for bad characters."

Thomas Ruttig, a member of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, is shocked by the anthropologists' assessment of the locals as savages. "I take exception to that," he says. "I have been working in Afghanistan for 25 years. They might look like savages, but they have a sophisticated political understanding."

Explaining how he had been able to inoculate German-funded development projects from insurgency attacks, by getting the locals to remind the Taliban that the work was a one-off chance that would benefit their communities, Ruttig says: "One of these 'savages' said to me, ‘We know who the Germans, the Swedes and the Americans are’."

The "savage's" point, and Ruttig's, is that America's military tactics have created so much local hostility that it has become difficult, if not impossible, for the locals to accept the US presence and Washington's aid. Ruttig says that local people he knows in Khost, at the far end of the K-G Road, who had long supported the presence of foreign troops, turned against the US earlier this year after a controversial civilian casualty. "They told me they had no option but to join a tribal uprising."

"There is great hostility to the Americans, but it is not because the people are savages."



Power talks...tribal elder Haji Sangeen and US colonel Rob Campbell.

There are moments in Afghanistan when the locals flick a light switch for a foreign observer, revealing in the simplest exchange all the complexities that make the US-led campaign to rebuild Afghanistan so daunting. Early one morning at COP (Combat Outpost) Wilderness, amid the strewn carpets of the shura hut in which the Americans meet and greet local leaders and officials, Colonel Campbell sits on the floor next to the richly bearded and steely, blue-eyed Haji Sangeen, the strongman from Gerda Serai.

Campbell, cross-legged in his stockinged feet, shoots the breeze on a range of local issues: progress on the road, moving the bazaar, and income for locals when the road is finished.

Haji Sangeen is an imposing figure; his anthracite beard is burnished with henna, his blue eyes — rare among Afghans — are riveting.

Campbell is a Pentagon poster pin-up boy, seeming to relish a challenge to his 19 years of military service which he admits, beyond Haji Sangeen's hearing, is confounding. "I came into the army to kill people, for a sense of adventure — not to sit in meetings like this or to foster development. I want an army formation to manoeuvre on top of — but this is not that kind of war."

Asked about Haqqani's power and influence in the district, Haji Sangeen plays a straight bat as he speaks through an interpreter. "The people are tired of him," he offers. "Our people do not support Haqqani. They will not follow his orders and those who followed him have fled to Pakistan."

Likewise, he dispatches Pacha Khan. "He is from a different sub-tribe and he has alienated our people … always siding with his own people." He reconsiders: "But Pacha Khan is still important and relations are improving."

Campbell then makes a plea that can be described only as heartfelt: "I know you can't physically stop the enemy coming back. But I want to create a place where he is not welcome, where there's no support when he returns in the spring. I ask for your help in finding the enemy and in talking to the people to make sure they don't support them when they come down from the mountains for supplies. Every year we have to make this place stronger, give the people something to be proud of, something that belongs to them that they will want to protect."

But this wily tribal elder ignores Campbell's plea, instead upping the ante with a demand for more projects. "This is a remote, backward area," he parries. "We have rivers that can give us electricity …"

Campbell counters: "I want to be smart about projects. If we try to do too many, we'll not be able to control them to ensure they are properly built and operated."

Haji Sangeen does not miss a beat. He presses what he believes is his advantage. "Our main issues are clinics and electricity. In my village we have a problem with snow blocking the roads — in winter we have to transport the sick by wheelbarrow, because we can't use cars and trucks."

Campbell calls a truce: "Inshallah, this will be the last year that you don't have a good road." Haji Sangeen seems to agree: "The US has delivered on all its promises. Our people see the Americans every day and trust them increasingly. This is very good."

Later, one of Campbell's senior colleagues explains that Haji Sangeen is playing for time, gouging what he can from the Americans and in the full knowledge that the constant rotation of US military officers and aid officials will deliver to his door an American who will think that local hydro-electricity is a great idea. "Haji Sangeen will get his power plant," the officer says. "You watch."

Watching in intense silence as Haji Sangeen speaks is the rest of his village delegation. Ordinarily someone of his standing would meet the likes of Campbell and the Herald alone — but it is safe to assume there will be local reports back on this encounter and a need for reassurance that Haji Sangeen has not deviated from the local script.

"A couple of years ago, Haji Sangeen would have said ‘yes’ to the American colonel, but now he is afraid — he knows the Taliban will come later," Ruttig, an expert on the political dynamic in the south-east, says later. "My guess is that he would have told the Taliban he was going to see the colonel. To do otherwise would be to risk his life."

It was only after Colonel Campbell's encounter at the Gerda Serai bazaar with Haji Keyle, the man he warned to stay out of trouble, that the depth of the Americans' suspicion about key local players emerged. Campbell explains Haji Keyle's role in the community. "That one's influential — a lot of the young people listen to him," he says. "He has a questionable past … he's been dealing with the enemy. We're watching him," by which Campbell means every time Haji Keyle uses his mobile phone, an American intelligence officer is listening to every word.

Absent from the bazaar during Campbell's street-walk was another powerbroker under the same microscope. Maiki Khan is a towering figure, but what particularly interests the Americans is his family ties — he reputedly is married to Haqqani's sister. The suspicion is that Maiki Khan is part of what sometimes is described as Haqqani's "shadow government". A US military analyst explains: "They are still loyal to Haqqani and they have people in the Kabul Government who still play both sides. They grew up with Haqqani. They are not very effective, but this is a network of people tied to other people who seek to influence the locals."

One of Campbell's analysts reckons there is an even chance Maiki Khan will be locked up by the Americans.

Campbell says that removing such prominent figures is not an easy decision. "I have to be careful — people look up to these guys, so if you push them out of the community you have a problem on your hands. But we did lift a member of the Gerda Serai shura — he was bad." Campbell stops short of a final call on the allegiances of Haji Sangeen, who is a man on whom the Americans have to rely in Gerda Serai.

As though in conversation with himself, the colonel says: "Haji Sangeen? We don't think he's doing anything crooked … ‘we don't think’, yeah."

www.smh.com.au/world/new-road-paved-with-promises-and-projects-20090927-g7r5.html

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Afghan battle fatigue

Eight years after the US-led invasion, Afghanistan is no closer to peace, there are record US and Allied casualty figures, and New Zealand now has its fourth wave of SAS troops on the ground. Foreign affairs reporter Jon Stephenson explains why the West's strategy has failed.

By JON STEPHENSON - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 25 October 2009



Commandos from Afghanistan's Crisis Response
Unit, Task Force 24, are put through their paces
at a training ground near Kabul. New Zealand SAS
troopers are training and mentoring the Afghans,
replacing the Norwegian special forces who built
up the unit. — Photo: Jon Stephenson.

AN AMERICAN special forces commander told a New Zealand SAS team hunting insurgents in Afghanistan: "We're going to put our boot in the middle of the puddle and see which way the water squirts."

The commander was "a hell of a nice bloke", one SAS man recalls. Another begs to differ, describing the American as "a bit of a loose cannon" who "talked shit". The US military, he adds, "don't know how to do hearts and minds".

Stomping in puddles — raiding homes, detaining the wrong people, and killing civilians in wayward air strikes — has cost America dearly in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander there, knows winning hearts and minds — and quickly — is the only way to avoid defeat.

Eight years after the US-led invasion, success seems further away than ever. The Taliban — the conservative Islamic movement that ruled the country from 1996 until it was toppled in 2001 — is leading an increasingly virulent and effective insurgency.

Casualty figures for US and allied forces are at record levels, while Afghans are disillusioned and demoralised. McChrystal has asked for more troops, warning that failure to turn the Taliban tide in a year "risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible".

The West now faces some difficult questions — and so does New Zealand. What has gone wrong? Can the situation be turned around and, if so, how? What precisely is our strategy? Few in the West seem to know, or agree on, what "success" in Afghanistan might look like. In the aftermath of 9/11, America's goal was to rid the country of terrorists and prevent it being used again as a safe haven for al Qaeda. That soon morphed into promises to rebuild a society shattered by decades of conflict and chaos: to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

In Afghanistan, however, western intentions have a nasty habit of running aground on the reefs of reality. Diplomats such as US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, interviewed recently in New Zealand, now couch their hopes for Afghanistan's future in phrases like "some form of stability".

How even that objective can be reached by America and its allies is unclear to many, including the assistant secretary. "All I can tell you," Campbell told Television New Zealand's Guyon Espiner, "is that there is a deep and profound recognition that we need a better strategy..."

Campbell's boss, US President Barack Obama, is struggling for answers. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is mulling over McChrystal's grim Afghanistan assessment and working with Washington's defence chiefs on a way to win his "war of necessity".

BUT BACK in Wellington, Prime Minister John Key has not waited to learn what tack Obama will take. In August, he announced the drawdown of New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team in Bamiyan province and ordered 70 Special Air Service commandos back to the fray.

The SAS troopers are highly regarded for their skills and versatility, and were sent on their fourth Afghanistan deployment at the specific request of the Obama administration. Among other tasks, they will be training and mentoring Afghan commandos from the Crisis Response Unit, or Task Force 24.

Labour leader Phil Goff, who criticised the return of the SAS, has suggested the Afghanistan conflict may be hopeless. In a recent interview with the Sunday Star-Times he said the call for more combat troops to go there reminded him of the latter days of the Vietnam War.

"I think the critical question is: you cannot win in Afghanistan unless you have an effective partner in the local administration and a reliable partner. And I don't believe that [America and its allies] have an effective and reliable partner."

The former defence minister is not alone in this. After meeting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York last week, Goff quoted the UN chief as saying Afghanistan was in "political crisis" after evidence of widespread voter fraud by supporters of President Hamid Karzai.

"We have a litany of failures," says a high-level official in the Afghanistan government, speaking to the Star-Times on condition of anonymity. But he says the international community and Karzai share the blame.

"To make Karzai the public face of failure is downright criminal," the official says. "They're undermining their partner, and then they wonder why he can't deliver."

He says America and the international community must start working with and empowering Afghans. Of the billions in aid money that has been poured into Afghanistan, roughly three-quarters had been disbursed by the UN, NGOs and foreign governments.

There is plenty of corruption and inefficiency on the part of foreigners, he claims. "They've done no better than the Afghan government. We have had no results to show for it."

Goff, however, appears to view the dodgy election as a watershed event. "This outcome aggravates the situation where the Afghanistan government has been shown to be endemically corrupt, its national police incompetent and deeply unpopular, and the Afghanistan government ineffective in failing to deliver to the Afghan people," he says.

"This is the context in which President Obama is making a decision as to whether to commit further US troops to that country."

EVERY CHOICE Obama makes will be a bad choice, says Arturo Munoz, a senior political scientist at the Washington DC-based Rand Corporation, a global policy think-tank. "If he stays, it's bad; if he leaves, it's bad. If he sends more troops, it's bad; if he doesn't send troops, it's bad. The least-bad option is what he needs to choose."

Munoz spent three decades in the CIA and was in one of the first CIA teams that entered Afghanistan in early 2002. He says Goff is right about one thing: foreign forces can't win in Afghanistan. The Afghans will have to defeat the Taliban — and that, he argues, is still possible.

"The only reason why the Taliban is doing so well is because of the mistakes we have made."

The good news is that, despite America's mistakes, polls consistently show most Afghans do not want the Taliban back. That goes for the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara as well as the Pashtun — Afghanistan's largest and most powerful ethnic group, from which the Taliban are predominantly drawn.

"If you had massive widespread popular support for the Taliban, even just in the Pashtun areas, then I would say it's hopeless," says Munoz. "But I think the Taliban are seen by many as a backward set of people that are going to impose a retrograde regimen."

The bad news is that distaste for the Taliban does not equate to support for American forces. Nor does any dislike of Mullah Omar and his men mean support for the corrupt and ineffectual Karzai administration.

He says what the average Afghan wants is an end to the petty corruption that makes their daily life a misery: an end to the bureaucrats, policemen and judges who demand bribes at every turn. "That the elections were free and fair? I think that's a lesser concern."



An anti-Taliban fighter in battle during the 2001 US-led
invasion of Afghanistan. Former CIA officer Arturo Munoz
says Afghans welcomed the Americans eight years ago,
but are “profoundly disillusioned” by their failure to rebuild
the country. — Photo: Jon Stephenson.

EVEN WITH good equipment, first-rate intelligence and a disciplined, well-led army, counter-insurgency is notoriously hard to get right. T.E. Lawrence, better-known as "Lawrence of Arabia", famously described it as "messy and slow, like learning to eat soup with a knife".

Afghanistan, with its patchwork of ethnic and tribal groups, is no exception. For foreign forces, telling friend from foe can be next to impossible. As one New Zealand SAS trooper says: "Anyone could be a farmer by day and Taliban by night." The only way to know, soldiers say, is when the bullets start flying.

But attributing all resistance to "the Taliban" is a mistake, says Seth Jones, another Rand scholar and author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. This is not a Taliban insurgency, he argues, but a very localised and complex one with more than a dozen groups operating in the country.

He says the Taliban might be the largest group, but clans and tribes are key players too. Then there are criminals and militias, as well as intelligence agents from Pakistan who are supporting or collaborating with Afghan insurgent groups.

Munoz agrees. "It's very much tribal-based: they come together against a common enemy, as they did with the Soviets. What unifies all these people is us."

Building that unity is made easier for the Taliban when US forces or those of its allies are heavy handed in their operations. The air strikes that kill innocent civilians are a classic example.

"We have been saying for years: ‘This is collateral damage and it's unavoidable’. But the Afghans don't feel that way," says Munoz. "They say, ‘Well, it is avoidable. You don't have to call in an air strike. The Taliban don't have any airplanes, and they fight all the time’."

Getting this aspect of counter-insurgency right is not rocket science, he says. A simple cost/benefit analysis tells you that there is little point in killing one insurgent if you kill 10 civilians in the process and thereby create 100 new enemies.

Up against the high-tech US military juggernaut, the Taliban have become adept at publicising their enemy's mistakes, knowing civilian deaths sit badly in the western world as well as with Afghans. Like McChrystal, they know this war will not be decided on the battlefield.

As with other insurgents groups throughout history, they also understand that they do not have to win; they just have to avoid losing. Time is on their side, and they know it. "The Taliban," says Munoz, "are extremely confident that we will tire."

SO, IS the situation hopeless? Not at all, says the high-level official. "It's absolutely salvageable." He adds, however, that Obama as well as McChrystal must work hard and work fast to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

"I think right now we're on a knife-edge," he says. "I think a majority of Afghans want the Americans there, but it's a thin majority. It isn't that the Afghans don't welcome the foreign troops; they just want their lives to improve as a result."

He says the average Afghan believes America and its allies are simply looking for an exit strategy. They worry that they will be left to face the Taliban alone and ask: "Why should I put myself on the line?" "They are fence-sitters," the official says.

So, one of Obama's first tasks must be to convince Afghans that America is there for the long haul — committed to staying until its goals have been met. And those goals, says the official, must be realistic.

The West must abandon any notion that Afghanistan can be transformed into a Jeffersonian democracy. The goal should be a moderate Islamic country, at peace with itself and with its neighbours; a minimal state, strong enough to deliver basic security and services to its people.

The official's preference is for the "clear, hold, and build" strategy that is already being applied in troubled provinces like Helmand, and getting Afghanistan's security forces to a level that allows some US and Nato troops to be pulled out. That, he estimates, will take three to five years.

But all of this effort will be wasted, he says, if America does not go after Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan or force the Pakistanis to do so properly.

"The Pakistanis know exactly where they are."

"At some point in time we will have to bite the bullet and say: ‘If you don't go after these guys, we will’."

Upping the ante with Pakistan is a high-stakes strategy — and three to five years is a long time in politics, especially US politics. America's allies would love to get out, and experts agree that, when Nato countries abandon the cause, the US will be politically and militarily incapable of continuing on its own. Commentators say McChrystal will get two years at most to turn things around, whether or not he gets extra troops.

The end may come even sooner if US casualties mount, public support in the States for the war slumps further, or American politicians pull the plug. Democratic congressional leader Nancy Pelosi is among those uneasy about the war — a worrying sign, for those who know their history. The Vietnam War did not end because of a US military defeat but when the congress cut off funding.

Meanwhile, McChrystal has issued a virtual ban on air strikes in civilian areas. He wants the additional troops he has asked for to help deliver security to Afghans, but he wants those troops to tread carefully.

Will the extra troops McChrystal is after help or hinder the cause? "I think it's the behaviour of those forces," says Munoz. "The complaints that have been made by the Pashtun for years don't have to do with the number of troops, but how they're used."

WHAT WOULD failure look like? What would happen if the West left Afghanistan? Many commentators claim it would descend again into conflict and chaos, and very likely into civil war. Some predict the Taliban would carve out a "Pashtunistan", anchored in a large southern chunk of the country.

But would this present a danger to America and its Nato allies, let alone New Zealand? Key apparently thinks it would, stating that the decision to send the SAS back to Afghanistan is linked to the need to stop it becoming "an even bigger hotbed for global terrorism".

Terence O'Brien, former New Zealand diplomat and now senior fellow at the Wellington-based Centre for Strategic Studies, has little truck with this view. Al Qaeda has been dispersed, he says, and the Taliban were never interested in international jihad. "Their interests stopped at the border of Afghanistan."

Others say some Taliban factions have been radicalised by the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan, adopting al Qaeda's ideology as well as its trademark tactics like suicide bombings. But they say the longer the West remains in Afghanistan, the more radical the Taliban are likely to become.

Either way, it is not difficult to get the impression that Key's decision to dispatch the SAS is less about a commitment to the "Afghanistanians" than a desire to "curry favour with the Americans", as O'Brien claimed recently.

But it can be no coincidence that Key has put an 18-month cap on New Zealand's military commitment. With his currency trader's eye for risk, he will know the odds in Afghanistan are stacked against the West.

So, if Munoz were a betting man, would he put money on the US-led forces or the Taliban winning the day? Who does he think will be ahead in 18 months? "I think the Taliban are ahead," he says. "I think the Taliban will be ahead."

The history of America's involvement in Afghanistan these past eight years is, says Munoz, a history of lost opportunities. "We were welcome there. I experienced it myself. The Afghans, contrary to all the stuff you read about xenophobia, wanted help. Afghans had been tired of civil war; they were tired of the Taliban. They saw the Americans as people who could make their lives better. And as a quid pro quo for not resisting the invasion, they gave us a chance."

"We have not brought progress to Afghanistan. Things are not better; in many respects, things are worse. You haven't had the job creation, the economic infrastructure, to really transform society."

"Now the Taliban are saying: ‘What did you get out of the American occupation? Corruption, air strikes, humiliation, and joblessness’."

British foreign correspondent and long-time Afghanistan observer Christina Lamb argued recently that foreign forces have essentially lost the trust and consent of the Afghans. She doubts they will be able to regain it.

Munoz is not quite as pessimistic, but accepts that the prospects for US success in Afghanistan look bleak. "We have made too many mistakes. We have lost too much time."

• Jon Stephenson has spent much of the past eight years reporting issues and events associated with the so-called "war on terror". He was the only New Zealand journalist to report from the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and has also covered conflict in Lebanon and Gaza.

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New Zealand's role in Afghanistan

One thing Afghans care about greatly – more than corrupt officials or their government's failure to deliver jobs and services – is the way they are treated by foreign forces.

Here America's record is not distinguished, and this, says political scientist and former CIA officer Arturo Munoz, goes to the heart of his country's failure in Afghanistan.

The searching of villages, the frisking of women, the arbitrary arrests of Pashtun men, the disarming of those who see a gun as their birthright – all these actions have caused deep offence and have served as a recruiting aid for the Taliban.

"Coalition" nations such as Denmark and New Zealand were also caught up, following the US-led invasion, in a policy that focused on counter-terrorism at the expense of counter-insurgency: on capturing or killing "high-value targets" rather than winning hearts and minds. New Zealand SAS troopers and their Danish counterparts have well-earned reputations for professionalism and decency. But in Afghanistan, both countries' special forces have been small players in a big game.

Senior SAS sources say their orders came down from the Americans. "They decided our missions," one told the Star-Times, and the Danes and New Zealanders were sent on occasion to snatch Afghan suspects, some of whom were mistreated in US custody. Standards on raids were strictly observed by the SAS, the New Zealand commandos insist.

Their rules of engagement, issued by defence chiefs in Wellington, stated no one could shoot unless their life or a colleague's was in imminent danger. But having the wall of your compound blown open in the middle of the night and heavily armed men invading your home cannot be pleasant, regardless of whether the invaders are disciplined or happen to come from New Zealand or Denmark.

"Firm but fair" is how an SAS commander termed the treatment of suspects detained by his men, none of whom struck him as an insurgent. "I know we looked after them," another SAS man told the Star-Times.

US soldiers at Kandahar Detention Center took a more "robust" approach to detainees the New Zealanders handed over, and the issue was raised by the SAS. The mistreated prisoners, who turned out to be innocent, were returned to their villages with sacks of rice as compensation. Rice notwithstanding, the experience cannot have gone down well – and in the Pashtun culture, where honour is paramount, an affront to dignity is not easily forgiven.

One Afghan man, arrested by Danish commandos due to faulty intelligence and abused at Kandahar by US soldiers, later told the Associated Press: "If they gave us all of Afghanistan now, it wouldn't make up for this insult."

Provincial reconstruction teams, such as the New Zealand one at Bamiyan, are much more focused on the counter-insurgency philosophy of winning hearts and minds, and a high-level Afghan official says he cannot understand John Key's decision to wind it down and re-deploy the SAS.

"I think that's a huge mistake," the official says. "It sends the wrong signal. Those [SAS] troops will be doing whatever the Americans are doing, and that is hunt-and-kill missions." He says some counter-terrorist operations that are mounted by commandos are a necessary evil, but "special forces do not have a good reputation with the Afghan people".

www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/2995955/Afghan-battle-fatigue