June 27, 2013
The New York Times
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
WASHINGTON — THE United States is still planning to hold peace
talks with the Taliban in Qatar, despite the fact that the group attacked the
presidential palace and a C.I.A. office in Kabul, Afghanistan earlier this week.
As was the case in the 1990s, negotiating with the Taliban now would be a
grievous mistake.
Unlike most states or political groups, the Taliban aren’t amenable to a
pragmatic deal. They are a movement with an extreme ideology and will not
compromise easily on their deeply held beliefs. Before committing the blunder of
negotiating with them again, American diplomats should read up on the history of
Washington’s engagement with the Taliban during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The planned talks have been arranged through the good offices of Pakistan’s army
chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. At the urging of Pakistan’s military, the
United States agreed to the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. Taliban
officials immediately portrayed the American concession as a victory. They flew
the Taliban flag, played the Taliban anthem and called their new workplace the
office of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — the name of the state they ran
in the 1990s before being dislodged from power after 9/11. This was intentional.
It reflected the Taliban’s view of the talks as the beginning of the restoration
of their emirate.
There is no reason to believe — and no evidence — that the Taliban are now ready
for political accommodation. Pakistan’s rationale for the talks differs little
from the last two times it tried to save the Taliban from America’s wrath, after
the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and
immediately after 9/11. Pakistan’s goal has always been to arrange American
talks with the Taliban without being responsible for the outcome.
Declassified State Department documents and secret cables made public by
WikiLeaks show that in the 1990s, as now, Pakistan claimed it had contact with
the Taliban but no control over them.
As the Taliban advanced in eastern Afghanistan in 1996, they took over several
terrorist training camps run by various Pakistan-supported mujahedeen factions
and Arab groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. The Taliban’s deputy foreign affairs
adviser at the time, Abdul Jalil, told American officials that the “Arab”
occupants of the camps had fled, and that Osama bin Laden’s precise location was
unknown. Taliban interlocutors assured the United States that the “Taliban did
not support terrorism in any form and would not provide refuge to Osama bin
Laden.”
That was, of course, an outright lie. The C.I.A. concluded that the Taliban had
closed down training camps run by their Afghan rivals but not the ones run by
Bin Laden and Pakistani terrorist groups.
In October 1996, Mr. Jalil delivered a friendly diplomatic message from the
Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, to American representatives, letting them
know that “the Taliban think highly of the U.S., appreciated U.S. help during
the jihad against the Soviets, and want good relations with the U.S.” This, too,
turned out to be nothing but dissimulation. At one point, Pakistani officials
even suggested that America “buy” Bin Laden from the Taliban.
Ironically, while American diplomats were interacting with Taliban officials,
Western journalists traveling in Afghanistan often found evidence of large-scale
terrorist training. An American Embassy cable in November 1996 spoke of an
unnamed British journalist’s seeing “assorted foreigners, including Chechens,
Bosnians, Sudanese” as well as various Arabs training for global jihad in Afghan
provinces adjacent to Pakistan.
Mullah Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban representative, told American officials in
1997 that Bin Laden’s expulsion was not a solution and urged them to recognize
the legitimacy of Taliban rule “if the U.S. did not want every Afghan to become
a Bin Laden.” By then, the Taliban had changed their story on Bin Laden. They
admitted that he was their “guest” but insisted that they had “instructed him
not to commit, support or plan any terrorist acts from Afghan soil.”
On Aug. 20, 1998, American missiles struck Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation
for the terrorist attacks on the embassies in Africa. Two days later, Mullah.
Omar called the State Department and demanded President Bill Clinton’s
resignation, asserting that the missile attack would spread Bin Laden’s
anti-American message by uniting the fundamentalist Islamic world and would
cause further terrorist attacks.
Fifteen years later, the Taliban and their Pakistani mentors have hardly changed
their arguments or their tendency to fudge facts. Americans may believe that
talks offer an opportunity to end an expensive war that is no longer popular
among Americans, but they shouldn’t forget the Taliban’s history of deception.
For the Taliban, direct dialogue with the United States is a source of
international legitimacy and an opportunity to regroup. They are most likely
playing for time while waiting for American troops to withdraw in 2014.
Everything about the talks in Qatar hints at déjà vu. America must enter these
talks with a healthy does of skepticism, or not participate at all.
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States
from 2008 to 2011, is the author of the forthcoming book
“Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States,
KABUL,
Afghanistan — In one of the deadliest insurgent attacks in the decade-long war
in Afghanistan, nine Taliban fighters dressed as Afghan soldiers stormed a
government compound in the western part of the country on Wednesday morning,
killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 100 in a hostage standoff.
The complex assault began around 8:45 a.m., when two suicide attackers detonated
explosives packed into an army pickup truck at the entrance gate of the
provincial government compound in Farah, according to police officials. After
the explosion, which ripped through the mayor’s office and neighboring
buildings, insurgents rushed the packed provincial courthouse, taking civilians
and a handful of employees hostage.
Afghan security forces surrounded the building, firing at the Taliban fighters
tucked away on the second floor. At some point during the nearly seven-hour
gunfight, the insurgents took the hostages downstairs to the basement and shot
them, the police said.
By 4 p.m., the fight was over, leaving behind a scene of carnage and
destruction. The death toll: 34 civilians, 10 Afghan security forces and the 9
insurgents, the Farah police said. More than 100 people, mostly civilians, were
wounded.
“Terrorists once again have shed the blood of innocent people visiting
government departments for their work,” President Hamid Karzai said in a
statement. “Terrorists should know that they must answer for this before the
nation and that they will face the God’s punishment in the afterlife.”
The attack highlighted the deteriorating security situation in Farah, a restive
province that borders Iran to the west. The last major assault in the province
occurred in May, when four insurgents dressed as police officers staged an
attack on the governor’s compound, killing at least 11 people and wounding a
dozen others. But violent attacks in general have been on the rise recently in
the province.
Officials from Farah said the province had become a hotbed for the insurgency
and drug traffickers, as the government focused its resources on more violent
areas of the country. Humaira Ayobi, a member of the Parliament who represents
Farah, said that a recent effort by the police to stem the drug trade may have
contributed to the violence on Wednesday. Last month, five police officers were
killed in the province while conducting a poppy eradication campaign.
As warm weather spreads throughout Afghanistan, a period referred to as the
fighting season, Taliban violence is expected to increase. And as Afghan forces
take the lead role in securing the nation, they are preparing for a particularly
fierce year of fighting ahead of the planned 2014 withdrawal of international
forces.
“Farah is bleeding and crying today,” Ms. Ayobi said. “The province will mourn
for weeks.”
On the street where the attack took place on Wednesday, witnesses described a
nightmarish scene, with bodies splayed all over. Ambulances carted charred
bodies from the buildings, including the offices of the mayor, the prosecutor
and the governor.
“When I reached the street I saw that all shops and houses around the courthouse
were destroyed,” said Jalil Khan, 47, a civil servant at the customs office. “I
saw men, women and some children lying on the ground, bleeding or burned. Some
of them didn’t know where they were or what had happened to them.”
Shujauddin, 22, a teacher in the city of Farah, said he was in the courthouse to
address a land dispute when the first explosion struck the government compound.
When Shujauddin, who uses one name, tried to escape, he was shot in the arm
twice and caught a third bullet in the leg. He woke up hours later in the
hospital, he said.
The attack in Farah Province coincided with the highly anticipated return of
Afghanistan’s powerful intelligence chief, Asadullah Khalid, who was seriously
wounded in a December suicide attack. Mr. Khalid, who was treated in the United
States and required multiple surgeries, returned to Kabul on Wednesday morning.
Mr. Khalid’s return, heralded by banners reading “Welcome” strung from traffic
posts across Kabul, is seen by many as a symbolic victory for the Afghan
government. At the time of the attack in December, when an insurgent detonated a
hidden bomb at a National Directorate of Security guesthouse, Mr. Khalid’s very
survival, no less his return, was in question.
But for months, the government promised he would again take the helm of the
intelligence agency. On Wednesday, the agency issued a statement celebrating his
return and promising to “continue its services day and night to bring security,
peace and stability to the country.”
A former governor of Kandahar and Ghazni Provinces, Mr. Khalid is seen as a
close confidant and supporter of Mr. Karzai. After the president’s brother Ahmed
Wali Karzai was killed in 2011, Mr. Khalid took over the brother’s security
portfolio in the south. Many here see Mr. Khalid as instrumental in whatever
political transition takes place in the 2014 elections after Mr. Karzai is set
to step down.
In his various governmental assignments under Mr. Karzai, Mr. Khalid has proved
his anti-Taliban credentials. During his short tenure as chief of the National
Directorate of Security, he has presided over a fierce crackdown on the
insurgency. He is also seen as a relentless detractor of Pakistan.
His efforts have won him both praise and criticism from Western officials.
He received visits from President Obama and Leon E. Panetta, who was the defense
secretary at the time, while hospitalized in the United States, but Mr. Khalid
has been dogged by accusations of corruption and that he was associated with a
torture prison while governor of Kandahar.
Those concerns have followed him to the National Directorate of Security, which
has been accused by the United Nations of abuse in its prison facilities. Mr.
Khalid and the intelligence agency have denied the allegations of torture and
corruption.
Reporting was
contributed by Sangar Rahimi, Jawad Sukhanyar,
March 23,
2013
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON
— After months of delays and recriminations by American and Afghan officials,
the Pentagon announced Saturday that a deal had been reached to transfer control
of Bagram Prison to the Afghan government.
The agreement would bring to a close a particularly acrimonious chapter of
America’s relationship with the government of President Hamid Karzai, who at the
last minute backed out of a plan to sign a transfer deal during a visit to Kabul
by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this month. On Saturday, a Pentagon spokesman
said that the transfer would take place on Monday.
American officials gave few details on Saturday about the specific terms of the
deal, but one senior defense official said that the Afghans had offered “private
assurances” that detainees whom the United States considers to be most dangerous
would not be released. The official said that the United States would be able to
advise Afghan officials on a process to determine whether prisoners should be
released, but that “final decisions will be Afghan.”
The biggest issue holding up the prison transfer was an American demand for veto
power over whom the Afghans would release from Bagram, which the American
military calls the Detention Facility in Parwan.
Concerned about insurgents returning to the battlefield after being freed,
American military commanders also wanted promises that the Karzai government
would not release certain prisoners deemed “enduring security threats,” even if
they could not be prosecuted in court for offenses they are accused of.
In addition, American officials wanted regular access to Afghan-run cellblocks
to ensure that detainees were not being abused.
Bagram, the only remaining American prison for the long-term detention of those
suspected of being insurgents in Afghanistan, holds nearly 4,000 prisoners.
Transfer of the prison’s oversight is considered a crucial step in the gradual
winding down of America’s war in Afghanistan.
George Little, the Pentagon spokesman, said that the agreement was reached in
Kabul and that Mr. Hagel and Mr. Karzai spoke on Saturday after an “intensified
round of discussions this week between U.S. and Afghan officials.”
Mr. Little said that “the transfer will be carried out in a way that ensures the
safety of the Afghan people and coalition forces by keeping dangerous
individuals detained in a secure and humane manner in accordance with Afghan
law.”
Bagram Prison has long been a controversial symbol of American power in
Afghanistan. It was notorious during the early years of the Afghan war as a site
of detainee abuses, and Afghan officials have repeatedly cited the need to take
control of the prison as a matter of national pride.
More than a year ago, American and Afghan officials negotiated a deal to give
control of the prison to Mr. Karzai’s government within six months, and several
thousand prisoners at Bagram were transferred into Afghan control at the prison.
But last fall, both countries disagreed about how to handle hundreds of new
prisoners who had been captured on the battlefield, and the transfer
negotiations languished.
Then, just weeks ago, a ceremony to officially transfer control of the prison
during Mr. Hagel’s visit to Kabul was canceled at the last minute when Mr.
Karzai objected to several provisions in the proposed agreement.
February
24, 2013
The New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
KABUL,
Afghanistan — The Afghan government barred elite American forces from operating
in a strategic province adjoining Kabul on Sunday, citing complaints that
Afghans working for American Special Operations forces had tortured and killed
villagers in the area.
The ban was scheduled to take effect in two weeks in the province, Maidan
Wardak, which is seen as a crucial area in defending the capital against the
Taliban. If enforced, it would effectively exclude the American military’s main
source of offensive firepower from the area, which lies southwest of Kabul and
is used by the Taliban as a staging ground for attacks on the city.
By announcing the ban, the government signaled its willingness to take a far
harder line against abuses linked to foreign troops than it has in the past. The
action also reflected a deep distrust of international forces that is now
widespread in Afghanistan, and the view held by many Afghans, President Hamid
Karzai among them, that the coalition shares responsibility with the Taliban for
the violence that continues to afflict the country.
Coalition officials said they were talking to their Afghan counterparts to
clarify the ban and the allegations that prompted it. They declined to comment
further.
Afghan officials said the measure was taken as a last resort. They said they had
tried for weeks to get the coalition to cooperate with an investigation into
claims that civilians had been killed, abducted or tortured by Afghans working
for American Special Operations forces in Maidan Wardak. But the coalition was
not responsive, they said.
A Western official said late on Sunday that a commission of Afghan and coalition
officials would be announced in the next few days to investigate the claims.
The Afghan officials said that without information from the coalition, they
could provide few specifics about who was accused or which units they worked
with.
A statement from the presidential palace suggested that abuses might have been
committed by American troops, and not just by Afghans working alongside them.
But in interviews after the announcement, Afghan officials indicated that the
Afghans were the main suspects, and that the Americans were seen as enabling the
abuses rather than perpetrating them.
Throughout the war, the United States military and the C.I.A. have organized and
trained clandestine militias. A number still operate, and remain beyond the
knowledge or control of the Afghan government. Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for
Mr. Karzai, said it was time for foreign forces to hand over control of the
“parallel structures,” as he called them, to the government.
Much of the work done by American Special Operations forces in Afghanistan or
anywhere else is highly classified, and information about it is closely guarded.
A senior American military officer, for instance, said he did not know whether
such forces were based in Maidan Wardak or were based elsewhere and were flown
in for missions.
Afghan officials are, for the most part, told even less, and many in the Karzai
administration no longer wish to allow Americans to continue “running roughshod
all around our country,” said a person who is close to Mr. Karzai.
As additional evidence of that sentiment, the person close to Mr. Karzai, who
asked not to be identified because he was discussing internal deliberations,
cited an order issued earlier this month by Mr. Karzai sharply curtailing the
circumstances in which Afghan forces could call in coalition airstrikes.
That order, however, simply brought Afghan forces into line with the rules that
coalition troops have followed since last year. Neither Afghan nor foreign
military commanders believe its impact will be far-reaching.
It will probably be harder to assess the effects of the ban decreed on Sunday,
and the competing views on the matter illustrate just how far apart Afghan and
coalition officials are when it comes to charting a course for the war.
With the withdrawal of American forces picking up pace, most of the coalition’s
conventional forces in eastern Afghanistan, including in Maidan Wardak, have
shifted into advisory roles. Among coalition troops, offensive operations are
increasingly becoming the sole purview of the Special Operations forces.
United States officials, in fact, are planning to rely heavily on the elite
troops to continue hunting members of Al Qaeda and other international militants
in Afghanistan after the NATO mission here ends in 2014.
Afghans have expressed far less enthusiasm about foreign forces, either
conventional or Special Operations troops, continuing to operate in Afghanistan
for years to come. “The international forces, they are also factors in
insecurity and instability — it’s not only the insurgency,” said Mr. Faizi, the
presidential spokesman.
As for concerns that the new ban could reduce pressure on the Taliban, Mr. Faizi
said that the Afghan Army and the police would “certainly be able to handle this
work.”
He said the security situation in Maidan Wardak had not improved in years, even
after the Special Operations forces stepped up their activity there, mostly
focused on killing or capturing Taliban field commanders and other high-ranking
insurgents. Those operations have failed to reduce the violence, Mr. Faizi said,
and now “local people are blaming the U.S. Special Forces for every incident
that is taking place there.”
“It is better to make the Special Forces withdraw from the province, and let the
local people understand that they are facing only Afghan forces,” he continued.
“That will bring clarity to the situation.”
The provincial government in Maidan Wardak expressed support for the ban. “There
have been lots of complaints from the local people about misconduct,
mistreatment, beating, taking away, torturing and killing of civilians by
Special Forces and their Afghan associates,” said Attaullah Khogyani, a
spokesman for the provincial government.
He cited a raid on a village on Feb. 13, when American troops and Afghans
working with them detained a veterinary student. “His dead body was found three
days later in the area under a bridge,” Mr. Khogyani said, prompting protests
against foreigners.
Mr. Faizi said that villagers in Maidan Wardak had reported a number of similar
episodes in recent months, including the disappearance of nine men in a single
raid. “People from the province, elders from villages, have come to Kabul so
many times, and they have brought photographs and videos of their family members
who have been tortured,” he said.
Afghan officials have provided the coalition with pictures and videos of the men
thought responsible for the abuses, he said. They appeared to be Afghan, but
could be Afghan-American.
Mr. Faizi said that when the government first approached the coalition about the
allegations, coalition officers seemed ready to cooperate, but their position
soon shifted. Coalition officers said the men in question had disappeared or had
never worked with American forces. The officers questioned whether there had
been any killings or torture, and if so, whether anyone tied to the Americans
was responsible.
Mr. Faizi said the Afghan government simply wanted to investigate, and was open
to the possibility that the perpetrators had no connection to the coalition. But
that would raise another question: “Let’s imagine that the U.S. Special Forces
are not involved,” Mr. Faizi said. “Then how come they have not once heard about
this? How come they do not know who is doing this?”
Violence continued in the country on Sunday, with three Taliban car bombers
striking in separate attacks, including two in Logar Province just east of
Maidan Wardak. Two security guards and a police officer were killed as well as
the three bombers. Five other people were wounded.
A fourth bombing was foiled on Sunday when Afghan intelligence agents in Kabul
shot a man in a sport utility vehicle packed with explosives, said Gen. Mohammed
Ayoub Salangi, Kabul’s police chief.
Habib Zahori
and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul,
February
12, 2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON
— President Obama’s decision to remove 34,000 American troops in Afghanistan by
this time next year represents a careful balancing of political interests and
military requirements.
The decision, which administration officials disclosed on Tuesday and which Mr.
Obama highlighted in his State of the Union address, enables the White House to
say that slightly more than half of the 66,000-strong American force will be out
of Afghanistan by the end of February 2014.
But Mr. Obama will also give the military commanders in Afghanistan flexibility
in determining the pace of the reductions and will enable them to retain a
substantial force until after the next fighting season, which ends in October.
That, according to administration officials, satisfies one of the major concerns
of Gen. John R. Allen, who recently left his post as the top commander in
Afghanistan.
At the same time, officials said, it rebuffs arguments by Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr. to pull out troops more quickly.
Administration officials said last year that they would determine the size and
composition of the American presence after 2014 before determining the
withdrawal schedule for the next two years. But on Tuesday, officials said that
Mr. Obama had not yet made a decision on the post-2014 force, which is likely to
number no more than 9,000 or so troops and then get progressively smaller.
“Beyond 2014, America’s commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will
endure, but the nature of our commitment will change,” Mr. Obama said. “We are
negotiating an agreement with the Afghan government that focuses on two
missions: training and equipping Afghan forces, so that the country does not
again slip into chaos, and counterterrorism efforts that allow us to pursue the
remnants of Al Qaeda and their affiliates.”
There still appears to be a debate within the administration about the plans for
after 2014. Officials said there was also a reluctance to go public with a final
number of troops and a description of their missions while still in the early
stage of negotiating a security agreement with the Afghans over retaining a
military presence after 2014.
From the start, the Afghan issue has been a double-edged sword for the White
House. Mr. Obama campaigned for his first term on the premise that the conflict
was a “war of necessity” to deprive Al Qaeda of a potential sanctuary in
Afghanistan, and in 2009 he ordered a surge of more than 30,000 troops.
As the war dragged on, and the 2012 presidential election approached, Mr. Obama
began to take troops out of Afghanistan on a more expedited schedule than his
commander at the time, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had recommended. Mr. Obama’s talk
of a war of necessity was supplanted by his refrain that the “tide of war is
receding.”
But since his re-election, Mr. Obama has confronted the question of how to stay
true to his pledge to wind down the war without undermining the still-fragile
military gains. Presidents in their second terms often tend to think about their
foreign policy legacy, and the conflict in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, has come
to be known as Mr. Obama’s war.
The troop withdrawal question came to the fore last month after Mr. Obama met
with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in Washington, where Mr. Obama said
he would accelerate the transfer of responsibility for security to the Afghans
this year.
As he had done before, Mr. Obama set the parameters of the deliberations over
the troop level by issuing planning guidance to the Pentagon. Operating on the
basis of those presidential instructions, which the White House has not made
public, General Allen prepared three options. Administration officials said that
the White House had essentially endorsed the general’s preferred option — what
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in a statement was General Allen’s
“phased approach.”
According to the new withdrawal schedule, the number of troops is to go down to
60,500 by the end of May. By the end of November, the number will be down to
52,000. By the end of February 2014, the troop level is to be around 32,000.
The February 2014 number is less than some military officers had hoped would be
on hand when the Afghan presidential election is held that April. But that seems
to be more than offset by the decision to allow the military to keep the bulk of
its force through the 2013 fighting season.
“The intensity of combat in the warmer months is twice what it is in colder
months,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings
Institution. “For the next eight months, it is as good an outcome as proponents
of the current strategy could have had.”
Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that
withdrawing half of the American troops over a year would reduce the chances of
success because insurgents would still have havens in the eastern part of
Afghanistan, and it is not clear whether Afghan forces will be able to maintain
control of the southern part of the country with an extremely limited coalition
presence.
“But if the command really does have the flexibility to control the pace of the
withdrawal and to bring about a short-term increase of specialized units, then a
chance of campaign success remains,” Mr. Kagan said.
Alissa J.
Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND and THOM SHANKER
KABUL,
Afghanistan — The American military has suspended the transfer of detainees to
some Afghan prisons out of concern over continuing human rights abuses and
torture, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday in
response to questions about the subject.
In addition, the American-led coalition said that it had asked the Afghan
government to investigate allegations of torture by Afghan Local Police units
that have been trained and advised by American Special Operations forces.
The moves were a setback on detention issues that have created tension between
the countries, and on years of international efforts to promote humane treatment
of prisoners. And under American law, the torture allegations could also set off
significant financial aid cutoffs to parts of the Afghan security forces, which
play a crucial role in plans for an American withdrawal that are based on
handing over responsibility for security to the Afghans as early as this spring.
Afghan control over all detention in the country has been a primary demand of
President Hamid Karzai and was a central issue of the summit talks between Mr.
Karzai and President Obama in Washington just a week ago.
Though a Pentagon official said Wednesday that the new suspension would not halt
detainee transfers at the main Bagram Prison, which has been the primary source
of tension, it presents an added complication for American troops in the field,
who now in some places will not be able to turn over detainees to local Afghan
authorities.
“Afghan military forces and police that operate effectively and with respect for
human rights are central to the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan,”
said Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman on Afghan policy.
Transfer of prisoners to Afghan control throughout the country was restored last
year, after it had been cut off in response to a United Nations investigation
published in October 2011 that found widespread use of torture at prisons run by
Afghan police and intelligence agencies.
Now a second United Nations report on the subject is to be released, possibly as
early as next week, and according to American officials the move by the security
assistance force was prompted by revelations expected in that report. United
Nations officials involved, however, had no comment.
Afghan officials denied there was any torture or abuse of prisoners while in
Afghan custody. “I dismiss all the allegations of torture and mistreatment of
prisoners in Afghan prisons,” said Amir Mohammad Jamshidi, general director of
the prisons department in the Ministry of Interior. “I have not heard anything
about Americans’ decision to halt or cut their support or transfer of detainees
to the Afghan side,” he said.
But a spokesman for the security assistance force, Jamie Graybeal, said prisoner
transfers had been suspended “as a result of information I.S.A.F. has determined
to be credible.” He added: “In the remaining 23 months of the I.S.A.F. mission,
we will continue to support the Afghan government in its efforts to improve
problems identified.”
There have also been a series of concerns raised about the Afghan Local Police
units, which are recruited and trained by American Special Operations troops in
villages in heavily contested areas. Some of those units have changed sides, and
been involved in serious abuses, including rapes and murders.
“We have formally requested that the Ministry of Interior investigate
allegations of torture by the A.L.P.,” Mr. Graybeal said. “I.S.A.F. takes all
reports of human rights violations seriously, and we are committed to the humane
treatment of detainees.”
Both actions by the International Security Assistance Force were apparently in
anticipation of legal provisions — informally known as the Leahy law, after its
champion, United States Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat — which
prohibit Defense and State Department financing to foreign government agencies
that practice torture or other human rights abuses and take no action to punish
those responsible. At stake are billions of dollars in direct American aid that
will essentially pay the salaries of every member of Afghanistan’s security
forces for years to come — but which would legally not be payable under the
Leahy provision if torture and other abuse continues.
“It is known that the Afghan security forces have committed abuses, including
extrajudicial killings of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners,” said Tim
Rieser, foreign policy aide to Senator Leahy. “They have not been accountable in
ways Senator Leahy believes they should be.”
Pentagon officials acknowledged that certain Afghan commanders had been
identified as potential violators of human rights, and that steps had been taken
to prevent Defense Department money from supporting those commanders and their
units, in keeping with the Leahy law.
A spokesman for the NATO Special Operations Component Command in Afghanistan,
Lt. Col. Tom Bryant, said there had been no financing cutbacks under the Leahy
law to the Afghan Local Police program. He said it was continuing to grow, and
had been extended from a five-year program, as initially planned, to one to be
continued to 2025 by the Afghan authorities. He declined to comment on the
security assistance force request that the Afghan authorities investigate
accusations of Afghan Local Police torture.
“There has been some misbehavior by A.L.P., there are members who have violated
Afghan law and who do things they shouldn’t do,” Colonel Bryant said. “Show me a
police program anywhere in the world that is perfect.”
The Afghan general in charge of the program nationwide, Gen. Alisha Ahmadzai,
acknowledged concerns about the forces, but said officials had acted to
prosecute abusers and insisted that most of the 20,000 local police members did
a good job. “We know that there are some problems and complaints from our local
police forces about the A.L.P., and therefore we have arrested 65 or 66 local
police officers, who were accused of murder, rape, theft, torture or dereliction
of duty,” he said.
Colonel Bryant said in most places Afghan Local Police units had been important
in fighting insurgents and had suffered three times as many attacks by the
insurgents as other Afghan security forces, which he said was a measure of their
importance in the war.
Recruited in their local communities and vouchsafed by elders in a process
overseen mostly by Army Special Operations troops, the local police units
receive less pay and training than normal police units.
“One of the beauties of the A.L.P. program is that it is Afghan-sustainable,”
Colonel Bryant said, adding that by June, 15,000 of the local policemen would
have been completely transferred from oversight by Special Operations troops to
purely Afghan authority and support.
Critics of the program, however, have raised concerns that the local units are
essentially militias with insufficient accountability to the Afghan authorities
— echoing an initial concern of Mr. Karzai’s when the program was started.
Azam Ahmed and
Habib Zahori contributed reporting.
President Obama said on Friday that the United States is moving toward a
“responsible end” to the war in Afghanistan that has lasted for 12 years. At a
news conference, he and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan filled in some
details on how they would get there, but there are still many questions that
must be addressed.
The first order of business should be accelerating the withdrawal of the 66,000
American troops remaining in Afghanistan so that it can be completed by the end
of the year. Mr. Obama said, as he previously has, that the troops will be
withdrawn at a “steady pace,” but he again gave no details. In fact, he
suggested it may be months before there is a decision.
On other fronts, Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai reported some progress. They agreed to
accelerate the handover of combat operations from NATO to Afghan forces by this
spring rather than summer — a small but encouraging advance. Even after that
transition, Americans will still fight alongside the Afghan troops when needed,
but the Americans will focus on training, advising and assisting their Afghan
counterparts, Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Karzai supported this change, saying that it would allow American troops to
stop patrolling Afghan villages. He also applauded an agreement to turn over
control of prisons that house terrorism suspects from the United States to
Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai said that these steps, which the Afghans consider
important to regaining full sovereignty over their country, would enable him to
support a demand by the Obama administration that all American troops remaining
in the country after 2014 be granted immunity from prosecution under Afghan law.
As for the size of the force after 2014, the White House has indicated that it
is considering a range of 3,000 to 9,000 troops, which would be far lower than
the Pentagon’s high-end proposal of 20,000 troops. Mr. Obama sounded as though
he intends to keep enough there to carry out what he described as “a very
limited mission” of training Afghan forces and hunting down remnants of Al
Qaeda. Mr. Karzai reportedly has been counting on a force of 15,000, but that
seems unlikely and strikes us as far too high.
The two leaders reaffirmed support for negotiations with the Taliban, which have
shown tentative promise in recent months, and they endorsed the establishment of
a Taliban office in Qatar, which could facilitate peace talks. Mr. Karzai also
promised to step down as president next year as the Constitution requires and to
work toward a free and fair election, but whether he will keep those vows is an
open question.
The American plan for an end to the war depends heavily on Afghan forces that
can secure the country. Mr. Obama oversold how much they have improved and
played down serious weaknesses. But he has rightly narrowed America’s goal in
Afghanistan. And now he needs to withdraw the 66,000 troops as soon as possible.
January 8,
2013
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
LOY BAGH,
Afghanistan — The battle against the Taliban in Helmand Province was so fierce
two years ago that farmers here say there were some fields where virtually every
ear of corn had a bullet in it.
Now it is peaceful enough that safety concerns were an afterthought during this
year’s harvest. In districts of Helmand like Marja and Nad Ali that used to be
Taliban strongholds, life has been transformed by the American troop surge that
brought in tens of thousands of Marines three years ago. Over several recent
days, a reporter was able to drive securely to places that in the past had been
perilous without a military escort, and many of the roads were better paved,
too.
So why, then, was it so difficult to find an optimist in Helmand Province?
In conversations with dozens of tribal elders, farmers, teachers and provincial
officials, three factors loomed large: dissatisfaction with the Afghan
government, the imminent departure of Western troops and recognition that the
Taliban are likely to return. Few expressed much faith in the ability of the
Afghan government and security forces to maintain the security gains won by the
huge American and British military effort here.
Although some people said they believed that areas near the provincial capital
would remain secure, beyond that there was little confidence, and many voiced
worries that much of the province would drift back under Taliban control after
the NATO combat mission ends in 2014.
Even now, with at least 6,500 Marines still in Helmand after a peak of 21,000
troops last year in Helmand and neighboring Nimroz Provinces, local people say
the Taliban have begun “creeping back.” Residents report that threats from
nearby militant commanders have increased, and that the Taliban are sending in
radical mullahs to preach jihad in the mosques and woo the young and unemployed
to their cause.
As fearful as residents may be of a resurgent Taliban, they are also angry at
the government for what they see as widespread corruption and hypocrisy. Some of
that anger focuses on bribery connected with government services, and some on
policies relating to the opium trade, which still thrives here. Helmand is the
supplier of more than 40 percent of the world’s opium, according to United
Nations statistics, and the poppy crop is still the most profitable one by far.
Even farmers who are willing to grow other crops are angry at officials who have
eradicated poppy but failed to provide enough help with alternatives. Farmers
say some of those same officials profit from the drug trade they profess to be
fighting.
“Before the surge, the government in Helmand did not control even a single
district,” said Hajji Atiqullah, a leader of the powerful Barakzai tribe in the
Nawa district of central Helmand. “They had a presence in the district centers,
a very small area, but the Marines cleared many districts, and they expanded the
presence of the central government.”
Afghan forces now control his district, he said, but will not be able to hold it
unless “the foreigners manage to get rid of corruption in the Afghan government,
in the districts and the province levels.”
Local elders fear that many farmers, especially those impoverished by the
government’s strict poppy eradication policies, will return to opium cultivation
and look to the Taliban or other criminals for protection because the government
has not offered them a satisfactory substitute livelihood.
“Before the Marines launched this big offensive, Marja was the center of the
opium trade,” said Ahmad Shah, the chairman of the Marja development shura, a
group of elders that works with the government to try to bring change here.
“Millions and millions of Pakistani rupees were being traded every day in the
bazaar. People were so rich that in some years a farmer could afford to buy a
car.
“We were part of the eradication efforts by the government, and if they had
provided the farmer with compensation, we could have justified our act. But the
government failed to provide compensation, and unless it does so, the people
will turn against us or join the insurgency and be against development, as they
were during the Taliban.”
Part of the government’s rationale for poppy eradication was to starve militants
of the opium profits that have been important to their finances. As opium
cultivation was pushed away from the centers of the American troop surge, the
Taliban made new allies by providing protection for farmers who moved their
poppy cultivation to outlying deserts. Over the past few years, militants and
opium farmers have increasingly found common cause.
A largely British-financed alternative crop program made significant headway at
first in persuading farmers to switch crops, but few farmers could do as well as
they had with opium.
Juma Khan, a farmer in Nad Ali, substituted wheat and corn for opium poppies but
now cannot make enough to feed his family. That means not only a gnawing in his
children’s stomachs but a delay in seeking medical services and marriages for
his sons, as well as a feeling of being abandoned by the government.
“When we used to cultivate poppy, I made enough money to have sheep, and we
could eat meat whenever we wanted,” said Mr. Khan, 53, standing in the middle of
his cornfields in the hamlet of Loy Bagh on an autumn afternoon, stripping
kernels from the dried cobs with his six children working beside him. “Now we
eat a little meat only once every two weeks.”
He hopes that the government will subsidize cotton, a favorite crop here and one
worth more than wheat. But the government would have to create a market by
buying the cotton, which so far it has declined to do.
“We feel kind of lost,” he said, gazing bleakly at his fields of dried
cornstalks.
Several district officials and tribal elders noted that legal agriculture had
received a huge boost from roads paved as part of the American troop surge. The
new roads and security have greatly reduced the ability of militants to plant
roadside bombs and allowed farmers to take their crops to bigger markets.
Hajji Atiqullah, the tribal leader in Nawa, says the road between his city and
the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, has been life-changing.
“This road will last for many years, and I think people will remember it as one
of the biggest contributions of the American Marines,” he said.
Other economic benefits, however, are dwindling as the Western troops leave.
The surge brought jobs for many rural residents. There were small irrigation and
construction projects, which are finished now. In Marja alone, about 1,400
people were hired to work for the informal security forces set up by the Marines
at the height of the surge, according to elders in Marja. But when the Interior
Ministry began to integrate these forces into the Afghan Local Police, they
offered places to only 400, said Mr. Shah, the chairman of the development
shura.
As the rest find themselves jobless, village elders say, they will turn to
whoever will protect them, even if that is the Taliban or criminals.
On a recent day, the commander of the Afghan Local Police unit in Marja, Hajji
Asif Khan, was closing down 21 of his outposts because the men had not been
accepted into the police contingent approved by the Interior Ministry. Those 21
posts had 100 men, each of whom helped support his family on the monthly $120
salary, Mr. Khan said.
“Now the enemy knows these people, and every one of them is a target,” he said.
One commander, Koko Jan, who had just lost his post in the small hamlet known as
Block 5, said he had 70 men a few months ago but now had none. Angry and
confused, he railed against the government.
“I will not go to the Taliban, but I will do anything else to feed my family,
and I told them I might go to the desert where there is no government and
cultivate poppy,” he said.
Western military leaders say lasting security here is up to the Afghan
government now, but they sound reserved about its ability to do the job.
“The prerequisite, the foundation of security has been laid by us and by the
Afghan National Security Forces,” said Maj. Gen. David H. Berger, commanding
general for ground forces in Helmand. “The necessary follow-on step is the
governance. The challenge now is for the government to step in and fill that
void.”
He added, “It comes down to choices for people in Helmand between what the
Taliban have to offer and what the government has to offer.”
The Taliban may be diminished in number and farther from population centers, but
they cannot be written off, many Helmand residents said. In the far northern
districts of Helmand, only the district centers, if those, are under government
control. The rest of the province is mostly under government control, except the
vast western desert, which remains dominated by the Taliban.
According to the United States military, the number of violent attacks dropped
by 50 percent or more from 2011 to 2012 in the central districts of Marja and
Garmsir and the northern district of Sangin. But in most of the north, violence
was as prevalent in 2012 as it was in 2011, and sometimes more so.
The Helmand residents know that well, and few believe that the Afghan government
can prevail here once the troops and money are gone.
In Nad Ali on a recent morning, members of the district shura, asked what they
thought would happen after 2014, smiled knowingly.
“Let’s be honest,” said Mohammed Omar Barakzai, a senior shura member. “The
Afghan government is like a generator. The foreigners have provided enough fuel
so that it will run until 2014. If they don’t refill the fuel tank, it will stop
working.”
Habib Zahori
contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
January 8,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON
— As the Obama administration weighs how many troops to keep in Afghanistan
after 2014, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal cautioned that the United States still
needs to keep forces there to help stabilize the country and urged a continued
effort to advise the Afghan military that appears to be more extensive than the
White House has in mind.
“If we allow Afghanistan to become completely unstable, Pakistan’s stability is
really difficult,” the former American commander in Afghanistan said in a recent
interview. “So I think there’s a geostrategic argument for it.”
General McChrystal offered his analysis of Afghanistan in the interview, which
coincided with the release of his book “My Share of the Task: A Memoir,”
published by Portfolio/Penguin.
The general, who is retired from the Army, was fired by President Obama from his
post in 2010 after an article in Rolling Stone quoted him and his staff as
making dismissive comments about the White House.
His comments come as Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is scheduled to begin a
series of high-level meetings this week in Washington.
Regarding Afghanistan, some analysts have urged that the United States rely
mainly on small numbers of commandos to carry out raids against Al Qaeda and
other terrorist groups.
But General McChrystal asserted that such “counterterrorism” operations work
best when they are coupled with “counterinsurgency” efforts to build up the
ability of the host nation to govern and bolster the capability of its forces.
He also noted that to carry out commando raids, the American military needs
bases, an intelligence network and arrangements for medical evacuation. “But if
you don’t have the support of the Afghan people, if you are just in there doing
what you want to do on their terrain, there’s no reason for them to be
supportive of this,” he said. “We’d be fighting our own war on their territory,
and they’re just not that interested in that.”
On troop numbers, General McChrystal declined to say how many troops the United
States might need to keep in Afghanistan after 2014. (The White House is
considering retaining a force of 3,000 to 9,000 troops, which would be
complemented by a much smaller number of troops from other NATO nations).
General McChrystal agreed that the American force, currently 66,000 troops,
should be substantially reduced. But he cautioned advised against retaining too
small a force.
“We had 7,500 in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002 when I was first stationed
there,” he said. “And 7,500 wouldn’t do much.”
An important question for the NATO mission after 2014 is what level of the
Afghan military hierarchy would allied nations advise. Under the largest of the
troop options under consideration by the White House, it is generally expected
that NATO would advise seven regional Afghan Army corps and several regional
Afghan police headquarters.
It is unlikely that NATO officers will advise Afghan battalions on the
battlefield under this option as that would require many more advisers than the
alliance is likely to muster.
But General McChrystal suggested that a more extensive advisery effort was
needed to make the Afghan military more effective. “My personal tendency would
be to get advisers a little bit lower than corps; I’d want them down to
battalion level,” he said.
General McChrystal said he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 but declined to say whom
he had voted for in 2012. He would not discuss the Rolling Stone article in
detail but insisted that he had intended no disrespect for the president or his
aides.
After the article was published, General McChrystal said that he arrived at his
fateful meeting with Mr. Obama on June 23, 2010, with his resignation in hand.
The decision whether to accept it was up to the president.
“I walked in with it in my pocket and I said, ‘Whatever’s best for the
mission,'” General McChrystal recalled. “And we had a good conversation and then
he said he was going to accept it.”
The interview was conducted at General McChrystal’s consulting firm in
Alexandria, Va., which has the trappings of a military headquarters, including a
horseshoe-shape table for the general and his staff facing an array of wall
clocks that showed the time in political and economic power centers: Washington,
London, Dubai and Beijing.
Following are excerpts from interview. Some questions have been edited.
QUESTION: You wrote in your book that there was a “deficit of trust” between the
White House and the Defense Department on Afghanistan at the start of the Obama
administration. Did this exist during the Bush administration?
GENERAL McCHRYSTAL: I think with the beginning of any political administration,
you have to build trust, and it takes time. The challenge that we faced with the
arrival of the Obama administration is, they didn’t really have time to build
trust before they had to make big, difficult decisions.
I go back and think of President Kennedy, who had a military service background,
but he comes into the presidency and he’s faced with a decision on the Bay of
Pigs, with the C.I.A. and the military giving him data, and it turns out very
badly. It really set back their ability to build trust over time.
With the start of the Obama administration, we had a financial crisis, we had a
new administration, and yet we had this compressed decision-making timeline on
Afghanistan before people had been able to mature relationships and trust to go
at this as effectively as I think they would have liked to.
Q. Do you think the trust has improved?
A. I think it’s a problem that needs to be worked at.
Q. During the Afghanistan review you conducted in 2009, the options ranged from
sending 80,000 troops on the high end and 40,000 as your recommended course of
action. President Obama decided to send 30,000 American troops and to seek
10,000 troops from allied nations. Did those allied contributions materialize,
and did this meet your requirement?
A. In December, when the president made the decision, I thought that I had
generally gotten what I had asked for. I was concerned about the allied 10,000,
and at the end of the day I’m not sure how many of those came. … I know there
was an intent to get the full 10,000.
Q. How did you design and carry out your strategy in Afghanistan?
A. I went over there with the expectation that we didn’t need additional forces.
… We did an operational assessment, and we identified 80 key districts out of
364 in the country. … It was a little like David Plouffe might do for an
election strategy: those places that make a big difference.
We assessed that if we could control — achieve a decent level of security — in
those 80 key districts over a reasonable period of time, that would be enough to
make the Taliban strategy irrelevant. They wouldn’t be able to influence enough
of the population enough of the time to win. We thought we’d be able to “change
Afghan perceptions,” which of course was the key thing.
So we did the analysis, and we ran computer runs over and over. And we came down
to that we were going to need the equivalent of 40,000 more forces to give us
enough bridge capability until we could grow Afghan forces. …
Q. How did you interpret the mission in Afghanistan at that point?
A. At that point, I thought the primary focus was to keep Afghanistan from being
a potential safe haven for Al Qaeda, but it also said that we were to create,
essentially, a stable Afghanistan. Implied in that was, the state of Afghanistan
had to survive as a sovereign state. To do that, you had to solve the biggest
problem, which was this uncertainty caused by this insurgency. There was no way
to cure the patient partially. You had to cure the patient “mostly” to do that.
And I thought everybody understood that.
Q. How did you determine the sequencing of the strategy geographically and in
terms of fighting seasons?
A. The war in Afghanistan is all about people’s minds. It is not a military
campaign like World War II. So you’re trying first to convince the Afghan people
that this is going to succeed, and as you go over time they’ll be able to solve
the problem.
When I took over, the forces that had been approved for General McKiernan [Gen.
David D. McKiernan, the former American commander in Afghanistan] were already
focused and had begun to arrive into Helmand. Helmand was the area with the
highest levels of violence. … I made the decision that we needed to continue
with that strategy for several reasons.
First, we needed to take advantage of the forces. If — if I tried to change them
elsewhere, it would take me time to figure out where. It would take time to
build, and it would be months to change. I didn’t think we had months. We had
the election coming up in August, and those forces had been brought to help
secure certain areas for the election. … If we could secure the Helmand River
Valley, it was going to be a clear indication that, if the Taliban couldn’t be
effective in their heartland, they weren’t going to be effective elsewhere. …
Now, there was a certain argument that says, “Why don’t you go to Kandahar
first?” Well, the first thing: Kandahar wasn’t under siege. Kandahar wasn’t
about to fall. … So we made a decision to use the next set of forces to secure
Kandahar — not to capture it, because it wasn’t enemy-controlled, but to secure
it.
We felt that that would tremendously increase confidence, particularly in the
Pashtun south, which we needed.
Q. How did eastern Afghanistan fit into your strategy?
A. The east was important — obviously, Kunar, Nuristan and all were important.
And if you consider the host area and the Haqqani network [a militant group
based in Pakistan and Afghanistan] it’s their key — they affect Kabul. RC-East
[Regional Command East], the U.S. division there, the 82nd and then the 101st,
they needed additional forces but they were in pretty good shape. I thought
that, if anybody could continue to make progress without additionalforces
initially, they could.
Q. Did you intend to shift effort there later?
A. Yes, as we achieved what we wanted in Helmand and Kandahar, I felt we could
continue to increase forces in the east and, if necessary, in the north,
although I was hoping to arrest the problem in the north partially by arresting
it elsewhere.
Q. What did you accomplish by the end of your Afghanistan tour?
A. When I arrived in 2009 … there was this sense of gloom. The allies that I
talked to were literally saying, “Let’s get ready to turn the lights out.”
I think we turned the mind-set, not completely, but we changed the mind-set of
the ISAF forces [the International Security Assistance Force, the American-led
NATO command in Afghanistan] towards protecting the population — not 100 percent
but a huge shift toward effective counterinsurgency.
We changed the mind-set of the Afghans in several ways. We continued to affect
President Karzai’s view of it. He didn’t become a robust, war-fighting
president, but he went a lot farther than he ever had before.
We started to build the Afghan National Police and the army in a very serious
way.
Q. How did this affect Pakistan’s behavior?
A. It was in their interest for us to succeed, and I think they knew that, but
they didn’t think we were going to succeed. So their actions were often in
contradiction to what they wanted to happen, because they felt we were going to
lose and were trying to hedge their bets by doing other things. They were
supporting the Haqqanis, they were allowing the Afghan Taliban to have refuge
inside Pakistan and things like that — pretty clearly.
I was trying to convince the Pakistanis that we were going to pull this off, so
it was in their interest to help us. And I think we convinced them we were
moving in the right direction — General Kayani [Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the
Pakistani Army chief] told me face to face, “I think you’ve got the right
strategy now.”
Q. What did you accomplish on the ground?
A. Two things. One, we don’t write a lot about it in the book, but we increased
the pressure through our special operations. We quadrupled them, and we started
the pressure that had worked so well in Iraq. But it only worked in Iraq,
really, when we were complemented by an effective counterinsurgency effort. So
what I was trying to do here was, increase that in a precision way and help tamp
down the enemy network while we got the counterinsurgency part going as well.
I think in areas like Helmand and — it was just starting, when I left, in
Kandahar — we did make progress. If you go down to the Helmand River Valley now,
it’s very different. … We thought we had to prove to people that
counterinsurgency worked in Afghanistan. I think we proved part of that.
Q. Which part?
A. That the military part of counterinsurgency works in Afghanistan. … I don’t
think it’s proven yet that the government of Afghanistan could rise to meet what
they have to do. Because if they can’t do it, another pillar of
counterinsurgency is missing, and you have to have it.
Q. There is a sense that Afghanistan is a lost cause.
A. In fall 2001, there had been 22, 23 years of constant turmoil inside the
country. They’d lost 1.2 million Afghans during the Soviet war. They had this
big diaspora of people leaving. The memory of what happened during the civil
war, '92 to '96, the first part of it — that’s deeply etched on people,
particularly inside Kabul. We kind of gloss over it, we go, “Yeah, that civil
war ended, move on.” It was as long as our civil war, and 40,000 people were
killed in Kabul by [former mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar’s shelling.
People had deep animosities, hatreds and what not that came from that era. And
the Taliban era was, of course, problematic at best. … If a country can be
psychologically damaged, Afghanistan was psychologically damaged. … My biggest
criticism of all of us is that we didn’t make a great effort to understand that.
… We didn’t really say, “This is a badly abused nation, and helping this get on
its feet is going to be a long-term, difficult, expensive project.”
Q. What is our stake today?
A. I think it’s both emotional and geostrategic. I’ll start with the emotional
part. The emotional part is, we did come in. We fought Al Qaeda, and threw apart
their government. And we did incur a certain responsibility there. We raised
expectations as well. We raised expectations for the 15 million Afghan females,
that they might have a different future. We raised expectations of Afghan
children that they’d be able to go to school, and all of these things. They may
have been unrealistic expectations, but we raised them. …
I think that, over time, there’s been a certain cynicism that has risen, by
people in the U.S., that “It’s so hard, and the Afghans won’t help themselves,
and the Pakistanis can’t be trusted — we should just stay away from that.”
And there’s been a cynicism on the part of people in the region, saying: “You
use us when it’s helpful. You use us when Henry Kissinger needs to sneak into
China in 1971, or you use us when you need the Northern Alliance to overthrow
the Taliban so you can get at Al Qaeda, or you use us when you need to fight the
Soviet Union during the cold war — but you don’t help when you don’t need us.”
That’s sort of the emotional part of it. …
I don’t think there are many places in the world that “don’t matter” anymore. …
If we allow Afghanistan to become completely unstable, Pakistan’s stability is
really difficult. … So I think there’s a geostrategic argument for it.
Q. Is it possible to succeed in Afghanistan today?
A. I believe it can succeed for several reasons: one, the Taliban are not really
very strong. They’re not a popular National Liberation Front, they don’t bring a
compelling narrative of a better future. In fact, they are antithetical to what
a certain percentage of the Afghan population wants. The more educated part, the
females, don’t want a Taliban regime. … Having said that, Afghanistan has got to
take a multiethnic society with some huge fissures in it, meld that back into a
country. And it’s been a nation before. The idea that it hasn’t is incorrect, in
my view. … They’ve got this level of corruption which undermines and corrodes
the legitimacy of everyone. Anyone in a position of power is either corrupt or
assumed to be corrupt, and the assumption of corruption is as bad as the reality
of it.
Q. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is going to be here next week. Can the
United States work with him?
A. I might put myself inside the Afghan government and say, “Can they work with
the United States?” And they might write equally interesting memos about the
challenges of working with us. …
My opinion is, we have to stop any idea that says, “Well, we don’t like Karzai —
let’s get another." Stop. They elected him — you can argue about the election,
but I believe they did elect him. There’s a lot of corruption, but I think he
would have been the winner anyway. So that’s the first thing and we’ve got to
respect that. …
I think President Karzai’s successor is unclear. I don’t see any heir apparent,
and that’s a little disturbing to me.
Q. Can one maintain a counterterrorism capability in Afghanistan without a
complementary counterinsurgency effort?
A. If you take the raid into Abbotabad, that was years of gathering
intelligence, some on the ground, some in the air, some signals intelligence. It
was launched from bases — not just a single base, it needed a network. It had
medevac available. It had this infrastructure that supported it that isn’t seen
by people who just look at a couple helicopters landing in a compound.
CT [counterterrorism] typically requires that. … Otherwise, it’s really, really
hard. It’s like trying to do Desert One that was going to go into Tehran. …
If you don’t have the support of the Afghan people. … There’s no reason for them
to be supportive of this. … I think any country where we’re just launching from
or operating within becomes a target for the terrorists, too. And then they have
a legitimate reason to go, “What’s in it for us?”
Q. For counterterrorism efforts to be effective, you need to do more than
counterterrorism?
A. The most important CT thing you can do is strengthen the countries it’s
operating in. Terrorism is two things: it’s a symptom of frustration, but it
also operates in areas that are less governed and can’t deal with it. So you
have to try to create places where you have enough stability in the government
where they can provide for the people and you’re not causing terrorists to grow,
or not encouraging terrorists. …
What we need is a stable Afghanistan. … I personally think there’s going to be a
military component that I urge be mostly enabling for the institution building,
and them doing most of the fighting. I think it’s trainers, logistics support,
institutions, leadership, things like that. I don’t think it’s a huge footprint
on the ground. I would be very reticent to put a lot there because of the
resistance to it, there’s a negative side. And helping the governance get
better.
Q. The White House is considering keeping 3,000 to 9,000 troops in Afghanistan
after 2014. What can one accomplish with 3,000 or 6,000 or 9,000 troops?
A. I honestly haven’t done the math on it. We had 7,500 in Afghanistan in the
summer of 2002 when I was first stationed there. And 7,500 wouldn’t do much,
because by the time you had a pretty small headquarters at Bagram, you were
running the airfield, you had some people starting to train A.N.S.F. (Afghan
National Security Forces). … Pretty soon you don’t have much reach.
Q. What is needed politically?
A. It goes back to, “What do you think the mission is? What are you trying to
do?” If you make the decision that Afghanistan is a strategic, important
priority for the U.S. and we’re going to have a reasonable level of effort…that
doesn’t end the civilian requirement. That doesn’t end the requirement for
governance help or U.S.A.I.D.-kind of assistance. It actually opens the way for
it.
Q. Do the Afghans want that?
A. I thought that they did. I thought there was a great thirst for stable,
credible government at the local level. Now, sometimes it’s the eye of the
beholder. … But I think the average Afghan desperately wants that.
Q. Was Afghanistan worth it?
A. I think it should have been done differently from the beginning. … People ask
me what we should have done, and I say, “On Sept. 12, 2001, we should have sent
10,000 people to language school.”
January 8,
2013
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON
— On the eve of a visit by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the Obama
administration said Tuesday that it was open to a so-called zero option that
would involve leaving no American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when the
NATO combat mission there comes to an end.
While President Obama has made no secret of his desire to withdraw American
troops as rapidly as possible, the plans for a postwar American presence in
Afghanistan have generally envisioned a residual force of thousands of troops to
carry out counterterrorism operations and to help train and equip Afghan
soldiers.
In a conference call with reporters, the deputy national security adviser,
Benjamin J. Rhodes, said that leaving no troops “would be an option that we
would consider,” adding that “the president does not view these negotiations as
having a goal of keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”
Military analysts have said it is difficult to conceive of how the United States
might achieve even its limited post-2014 goals in Afghanistan without any kind
of troop presence. That suggests the White House is staking out a negotiating
position with both the Pentagon and with Mr. Karzai, as he and Mr. Obama begin
to work out an agreement covering the post-2014 American role in Afghanistan.
Discussing the administration’s planning, Mr. Rhodes said the “core goal” of the
United States was to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda” and to “ensure
that they can never return to Afghanistan.”
To that end, American military officers in Kabul and at the Pentagon have been
developing plans for a commando force that could carry out raids against
terrorist groups. Such a force would also need logistical support and
arrangements for rapid medical evacuation, as well as helicopters that could
whisk them to the battlefield and warplanes that could carry out airstrikes if
they needed additional firepower.
Another objective, Mr. Rhodes said, would be to “ensure that Afghan national
security forces are trained and equipped.”
According to a recent Pentagon report, only one of the Afghan National Army’s 23
brigades is capable of operating without support from the United States and
other NATO nations.
To help the Afghan military become more self-sufficient, the United States and
its NATO allies have been discussing plans to advise Afghan troops after 2014.
Gen. John R. Allen, the American commander in Kabul, initially outlined a series
of options that ranged from 6,000 to 20,000 troops to carry out such missions.
After the White House pressed for lower troop options, the Pentagon offered
three plans that would leave 3,000, 6,000 and 9,000. Given the demanding nature
of the mission in Afghanistan, the Pentagon officials have indicated the upper
end of that limit is more realistic.
Douglas E. Lute, the senior White House aide on Afghanistan, suggested that the
requirement for troops could be low if the United States made progress against
Al Qaeda over the next two years and the Afghan military improved.
“The ranges are completely derivative from different assumptions about the
variables,” Mr. Lute said. “And that process with John Allen continues even as
recently as today.”
Anthony H. Cordesman, a prominent military analyst at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said in a recent report that the administration had
disclosed so little about its plans for a military or civilian transition in
Afghanistan that the debate over troop numbers was not meaningful.
“This lack of public and transparent plans and reporting makes it impossible to
determine whether there is a real transition plan or a disguised exit strategy,”
he wrote.
Mr. Karzai will meet Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at
the White House on Friday. On Thursday, he will confer at the Pentagon with
Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta. He is also scheduled to speak at
Georgetown University on Afghanistan’s future.
President
Obama will soon make critical choices on Afghanistan, including how fast to
withdraw 66,000 American troops and whether to keep a small residual force there
once the NATO combat mission concludes at the end of 2014. His talks with the
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, this week will be an important marker in that
process.
A lot has happened since the two men met in Kabul last May and signed a
strategic partnership agreement. Some developments, like signs of an incipient
peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government, are promising. But
many are not. The Afghan Army and police forces have taken responsibility for
securing larger and larger swaths of the country, but the Pentagon has admitted
that only 1 of 23 NATO-trained brigades can operate without American assistance.
The recent alarming rise in fatal attacks by Afghan forces on their American
military mentors has crushed whatever was left of America’s appetite for the
costly conflict.
Ideally, the 66,000 American troops would already be leaving, and all of them
would be out as soon as safely possible; by our estimate, that would be the end
of this year. The war that started after Sept. 11, 2001, would be over and
securing the country would be up to Afghanistan’s 350,000-member security force,
including the army and police, which the United States has spent $39 billion to
train and equip over a decade.
But there is a conflict between the ideal and the political reality. Mr. Obama
has yet to decide how fast he will withdraw the remaining troops, and the longer
he delays, the more he enables military commanders who inevitably want to keep
the maximum number of troops in Afghanistan for the maximum amount of time.
Another matter of concern is that Mr. Obama is seriously considering keeping a
residual military force for an indefinite period after 2014. He needs to think
carefully about what its mission would be and make his case to the public. Gen.
John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, had provided the White House with
options for an enduring presence that went as high as 20,000 troops. That was an
alarmingly big number, but fortunately now seems to be a nonstarter. American
officials on Saturday said the administration is considering a much smaller
force of 3,000 to 9,000.
If Mr. Obama cannot find a way to go to zero troops, he should approve only the
minimum number needed, of mostly Special Operations commandos, to hunt down
insurgents and serve as a deterrent against the Taliban retaking Kabul and Al
Qaeda re-establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama will want to
discuss all these issues with Mr. Karzai. The United States cannot go forward if
Afghanistan opposes a residual force or puts undue restrictions on those troops.
Mr. Karzai, a deeply flawed leader who is expected to leave office next year,
has his own agenda, which includes requests for updated American aircraft,
surveillance equipment and longer-range artillery to modernize his army. Those
requests cannot be taken seriously when Afghan security forces are increasingly
murdering Americans and the Afghan government remains so profoundly corrupt.
January 5,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON
— In a memoir, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former American commander in
Afghanistan, writes that tensions between the White House and the Pentagon were
evident in the Obama administration from its opening months in office.
The beginning of President Obama’s first term “saw the emergence of an
unfortunate deficit of trust between the White House and the Department of
Defense, largely arising from the decision-making process on Afghanistan,”
General McChrystal writes. “The effects were costly.”
The book by General McChrystal, who was fired from his post in 2010 after an
article in Rolling Stone quoted him and his staff making dismissive comments
about the White House, is likely to disappoint readers who are looking for a
vivid blow-by-blow account of infighting within the administration.
The book, titled “My Share of the Task: A Memoir,” does not provide an account
of the White House meeting at which Mr. Obama accepted the general’s
resignation. General McChrystal’s tone toward Mr. Obama is respectful, and he
notes that his wife, Annie, joined the crowd at Mr. Obama’s inauguration. The
book is to be released on Monday.
An advance copy of the book provides revealing glimpses of the friction over
military planning and comes as Mr. Obama is weighing, and perhaps preparing to
overrule, the troop requests that have been presented by the current American
commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen.
The account is all the more noteworthy since General McChrystal, who retired
from the Army, remains a respected voice within the military and teaches a
course on leadership at Yale.
According to the book, the tensions began before General McChrystal took command
in Kabul, Afghanistan, and were set off by a request from his predecessor, Gen.
David D. McKiernan, for 30,000 additional troops at the end of the Bush
administration.
Instead of approving the entire request, in February 2009, Mr. Obama decided
that 17,000 would be sent, adding that decisions on additional deployments would
be based on further analysis.
From the White House perspective, General McChrystal writes, “this partial
decision was logical.” After less than a month, the president had increased
American forces in Afghanistan by 50 percent. Though Mr. Obama had cast the
conflict in Afghanistan as a “war of necessity,” as a candidate he was
nonetheless wary about a prolonged American military involvement there.
But the Pentagon pressed for an additional 4,000 troops, fearing that there was
little time to reverse the Taliban’s gains before the August elections in
Afghanistan.
“The military felt a sense of urgency, seeing little remaining time if any
forces approved were to reach Afghanistan in time to improve security in advance
of the elections,” he wrote.
The White House later approved the 4,000 troops, but the dispute pointed to a
deeper clash of cultures over the use of force that continued after General
McChrystal took command.
“Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized
the dangers of an incremental escalation, and the historical lesson that
‘trailing’ an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure,” he
writes.
In May 2009, soon before he assumed command in Kabul, General McChrystal had a
“short, but cordial” meeting with Mr. Obama at which the president “offered no
specific guidance,” he notes.
The next month, General McChrystal was surprised when James L. Jones, Mr.
Obama’s first national security adviser, told him that the Obama administration
would not consider sending more forces until the effect of arriving units could
be fully evaluated.
That contradicted the guidance that General McChrystal had received from Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates that he should submit an assessment in August of the
additional forces that might be required, he writes.
At an Oct. 8, 2009, video conference with Mr. Obama’s National Security Council,
differences again emerged when General McChrystal outlined his goals: “Defeat
the Taliban. Secure the population.”
That prompted a challenge by a Washington-based official, whom General
McChrystal does not name, that the goal of defeating the Taliban seemed too
ambitious and that the command in Kabul should settle instead for an effort to
“degrade” the Taliban.
At the next video conference, General McChrystal presented a slide showing that
his objectives had been derived from Mr. Obama’s own speeches and a White House
strategy review. “But it was clear to me that the mission itself was now on the
table for review and adjustment,” he wrote.
After General McChrystal determined that at least 40,000 additional forces were
needed to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama provided
30,000 and said he would ask allied nations to contribute the rest.
General McChrystal acknowledges that he had concerns that Mr. Obama’s decision
to announce a date for beginning the withdrawal of the additional “surge” forces
might embolden the Taliban. But the general writes that he did not challenge the
decision.
“If I felt like the decision to set a withdrawal date would have been fatal to
the success of our mission, I’d have said so,” he writes.
General McChrystal has little to say about the episode that led to the article
in Rolling Stone. He writes that the comments attributed to his team were
“unacceptable” but adds that he was surprised by the tone of the article, which
he had expected would show the camaraderie among the American, British, French
and Afghan officers.
As the controversy over the article grew, General McChrystal did not seek advice
before offering his resignation. The book does not say if he was disappointed
when Mr. Obama accepted it at a brief White House meeting.
Returning to his quarters at Fort McNair after that White House meeting, he
broke the news to his wife: “I told her that our life in the Army was over.”
January 3,
2013
The New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
KABUL,
Afghanistan — It was only after the young Afghan soldier’s hatred of Americans
had grown murderous that he reached out to the Taliban.
The soldier, named simply Mahmood, 22, said that in May he told the insurgents
of his plan to shoot Americans the next time they visited the outpost where he
was based in northeastern Afghanistan. He asked the Taliban to take him in if he
escaped.
The Taliban veterans he contacted were skeptical. Despite their public
insistence that they employ vast ranks of infiltrators within the Afghan Army
and the police, they acknowledged that many of the insider attacks they take
credit for start as offers by angry young men like Mahmood. They had seen many
fail, or lose their nerve before even starting, and they figured that Mahmood,
too, would prove more talk than action or would die in the attempt.
“Even the Taliban didn’t think I would be able to do this,” Mr. Mahmood said in
an interview.
He proved them wrong days later, on the morning of May 11, when he opened fire
on American trainers who had gone to the outpost in the mountains of Kunar
Province. One American was killed and two others were wounded. Mahmood escaped
in the ensuing confusion, and he remains free in Kunar after the Taliban
welcomed him into their ranks.
It was, he said, his “proudest day.”
Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became
“the signature violence of 2012,” in the words of one former American official.
The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment
of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed
worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of
the American withdrawal plan for 2014.
“It’s a game changer on all levels,” said First Sgt. Joseph Hissong, an American
who helped fight off an insider attack by Afghan soldiers that left two men in
his unit dead.
Cultural clashes have contributed to some of the insider attacks, with Afghan
soldiers and police officers becoming enraged by what they see as rude and
abusive behavior by Americans close to them. In some cases, the abusive or
corrupt behavior of Afghan officers prompts the killer to go after Americans,
who are seen as backing the local commanders. On rare occasions, like the
killing of an American contractor by an Afghan policewoman late last month,
there seems to be no logical explanation.
But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding
that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans
has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some
will find a reason to act on those feelings.
“A great percentage of the insider attacks have the enemy narrative — the
narrative that the infidels have to be driven out — somewhere inside of them,
but they aren’t directed by the enemy,” said a senior coalition officer, who
asked not to be identified because of Afghan and American sensitivities about
the attacks.
The result is that, although the Taliban have successfully infiltrated the
security forces before, they do not always have to. Soldiers and police officers
will instead go to them, as was the case with Mr. Mahmood, who offered a glimpse
of the thinking behind the violence in one of the few interviews conducted with
Afghans who have committed insider attacks.
“I have intimate friends in the army who have the same opinion as I do,” Mr.
Mahmood said. “We used to sit and share our hearts’ tales.”
But he said he did not tell any of his compatriots of his plan to shoot
Americans, fearing that it could leak out and derail his attack. The interviews
with Mr. Mahmood and his Taliban contacts were conducted in recent weeks by
telephone and through written responses to questions. There are also two videos
that show Mr. Mahmood with the Taliban: an insurgent-produced propaganda video
available on jihadi Web sites, and an interview conducted by a local journalist
in Kunar.
Though Mr. Mahmood at times contradicted himself, falling into stock Taliban
commentary about how it had always been his ambition to kill foreigners, much of
what he said mirrored the timelines and versions of events provided by Taliban
fighters who know him, as well as Afghan officials familiar with his case.
Mr. Mahmood grew up in Tajikan, a small village in the southern province of
Helmand. The area around his village remains dominated by the Taliban despite
advances against the insurgents made in recent years by American and British
troops. Even Afghans from other parts of Helmand are hesitant to travel to
Tajikan for fear of the Taliban.
Col. Khudaidad, an Afghan officer who runs the Afghan National Army’s
recruitment center in Helmand, said Mr. Mahmood enlisted about four years ago.
His story, up to that point, would be familiar to many Americans: He was a poor
boy from a family of eight who worked sweeping up in a tailor shop and was
looking for a better life. The army offered steady pay, reading and writing
lessons, and a chance to see something beyond the mud hovels in which he was
born and raised.
“He barely had a beard,” recalled Colonel Khudaidad, who also uses only one
name, in an interview. “He looked so innocent that you wouldn’t believe what he
did if you only saw him then.”
Mr. Mahmood says he was anything but an innocent. He grew up being told that
Americans, Britons and Jews “are the enemies of our country and our religion,”
he said.
But until May, he worked and fought alongside foreigners without incident. The
change came in the Ghaziabad District of Kunar, where he ended up after the
start of 2012, he said.
The area is thick with Taliban, along with Islamists from Pakistan. Many
residents sympathized with the insurgents and often complained to Afghan
soldiers about the abuses committed by Americans and the failure of Afghan
soldiers to control much of anything beyond the perimeter of their own outpost,
Mr. Mahmood said. The Taliban, they glorified.
Listening to villagers, Mr. Mahmood became convinced that the foreigners had
killed too many Afghans and insulted the Prophet Muhammad too many times. He
wanted to be driving them out, not helping them stay. The villagers’ stories
“strengthened my desire to kill Americans with my own fingers,” he said.
He contacted the Taliban through a local sympathizer. He did not want help — he
only asked the insurgents “not to shoot me” if he managed to escape after
attacking the Americans, which he told them would happen in a few days.
He was on guard duty when American soldiers arrived at the outpost on May 11. He
waited for a few of them to shed their body armor and put down their weapons,
and then he opened fire. (New regulations require American trainers to keep
their armor on and weapons at hand when visiting Afghan bases.)
The Afghan and American soldiers initially thought the attack was coming from
the outside. They “didn’t even think that someone within the Afghan Army might
have opened fire on Americans,” he said. “I took advantage of this confusion and
fled.”
He claimed to have hit six Americans. “I don’t know how many were killed, though
I hope all were,” he said. The coalition said one soldier was killed and two
were wounded.
The Taliban welcomed him as a hero. He was given the title “ghazi,” an honorific
for someone who helps drive off non-Muslim invaders. “They let me keep the same
rifle I used to kill Americans.”
In August, the Taliban featured Mr. Mahmood in a propaganda video, calling him
“Ghazi of Ghaziabad.” The video shows Mr. Mahmood, smiling broadly, being draped
with garlands and showered with praise from local elders, Taliban fighters and
cheering crowds of men and boys.
The following month, the American-led military coalition announced that it had
killed Mr. Mahmood in an airstrike. The coalition now says it was mistaken and
that Mr. Mahmood is still with the Taliban in Kunar.
Villagers and officials in Helmand backed up that account, saying Mr. Mahmood
had been in touch with relatives since the report of his death. Mr. Mahmood said
he spoke only to his mother, and that “she was happy.”
Sangar Rahimi
and Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Kabul,
and an
employee of The New York Times from Asadabad.
January 2,
2013
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON
— Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, has
submitted military options to the Pentagon that would keep 6,000 to 20,000
American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, defense officials said on Wednesday.
General Allen offered Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta three plans with
different troop levels: 6,000, 10,000 and 20,000, each with a risk factor
probably attached to it, a senior military official said. An option of 6,000
troops would probably pose a higher risk of failure for the American effort in
Afghanistan, 10,000 would be medium risk and 20,000 would be lower risk, the
official said.
But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to discuss the options, said that a more important factor in the
success of any post-2014 American mission was how well — or whether — an Afghan
government known for corruption could deliver basic services to the population.
General Allen’s options offer ascending levels of American involvement in
guarding against the expansion of terrorist groups in Afghanistan and advising
an Afghan military that has limited air power, logistics, leadership and ability
to evacuate and treat its wounded.
With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be
a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down
insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan
security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of
Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add
some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.
Defense officials said it was unclear whether President Obama had studied the
options, although they said he was expected to discuss them at the White House
next week when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan visits. About 66,000
American troops are now in Afghanistan.
Under an agreement between NATO and the Afghan government, the NATO combat
mission in Afghanistan is to end on Dec. 31, 2014, when the Afghan Army and the
police are to have full responsibility for their country’s security. But in
recent months the Obama administration has been debating the size and mission of
a residual American force that would remain after 2014 to increase Afghan
stability.
The help is sorely needed, according to the most recent Pentagon report on the
state of the 11-year-old war. In an assessment released last month that covers
April through September 2012, the Pentagon found that only one of the Afghan
Army’s 23 brigades was able to operate independently without air or other
military support from the United States or its NATO partners.
Defense officials said that General Allen’s recommendations did not include
options for the pace of withdrawals of the remaining 66,000 troops, although
American officials say he wants to keep a large majority — perhaps as many as
60,000 — through the fighting season next fall.
Military officials anticipate that the White House will push for a more rapid
withdrawal.
General Allen’s recommendations come as he and Mr. Panetta are soon due to leave
their jobs. General Allen is to be replaced in February by Gen. Joseph F.
Dunford Jr., and Mr. Panetta is expected to step down after Mr. Obama nominates
a successor.
General Allen, who is under investigation for a series of e-mails he exchanged
with a socialite in Tampa, Fla., Jill Kelley, is to become the NATO supreme
allied commander in Europe, but his nomination is delayed until the
investigation concludes.
Pentagon officials said Wednesday that he had long planned to leave Afghanistan
in February and that the inquiry had not accelerated his departure.
January 3,
2013
The New York Times
By SALMAN MASOOD and ISMAIL KHAN
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — An American drone strike killed a top Pakistani militant commander in
a northwestern tribal region, security officials said on Thursday. The death of
Maulvi Nazir was seen as a serious blow to Taliban fighters who attack United
States and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
The drone strike took place Wednesday night and targeted Mr. Nazir’s vehicle in
the Angoor Adda area in South Waziristan. Five other people were also killed,
including one of his key aides, officials said.
“He has been killed. It is confirmed,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence
officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vehicle he was traveling in
was hit.
Mr. Nazir was traveling from Birmal to Wana, the main town in South Waziristan,
when his vehicle was struck by the drone.
In a separate drone strike in North Waziristan on Thursday morning, at least
four people were killed when a vehicle was targeted. The identities of those
killed were not immediately known.
Mr. Nazir, believed to be in his 30s, was based in the western part of the South
Waziristan tribal region. He led the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe and his loyalists
regularly joined attacks on American forces across the porous border with
Afghanistan. Unlike other Taliban factions, Mr. Nazir’s fighters did not attack
Pakistani military or government targets, instead focusing on the war inside
Afghanistan. He was believed to have signed a peace pact with the Pakistani
military.
Mr. Nazir was allied with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leading warlord in North
Waziristan. The nonconfrontational posture of the two commanders toward the
Pakistani military often led to them being labeled here as “good Taliban.”
Asad Munir, a former Pakistan Army brigadier and the intelligence chief in
Peshawar, said the killing of Mr. Nazir could lead to a spurt in violence.
“A dangerous scenario for Pakistani military would be joining of hands of Hafiz
Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir supporters with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.”
Mr. Munir said the area controlled by Mr. Nazir’s forces had been “relatively
peaceful” but his death increased the chances of attacks on military targets.
Mr. Nazir had survived two earlier drone strikes. In November, he survived a
suicide attack, which was blamed on Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistani, or T.T.P., the
Pakistani Taliban who conduct attacks inside Pakistan. Following the suicide
attack, he expelled rival Mehsud tribesmen from territory controlled by his
fighters.
Mr. Nazir also opposed the presence of Uzbek fighters inside Pakistan and, with
the help of the Pakistani military, pushed Uzbeks out of his region several
years ago.
Some analysts said that militants like Mr. Nazir could be troublesome for the
Pakistani military once the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan
begins in 2014.
“Maulvi Nazir would probably have posed a problem for the Pakistan Army if and
when a political settlement is reached in Afghanistan in 2014. But in the
interim, the killing of Nazir and his deputies likely hurts the Pakistan Army’s
efforts against the T.T.P. in South Waziristan,” said Arif Rafiq, an adjunct
scholar at the Middle East Institute, based in Washington.
"Nazir would probably have wanted to hold on to his local jihadist fiefdom,
making him a long-term threat for the Pakistani state,” said Mr. Rafiq.
The suspicion that the Pakistani military gave a nod to Mr. Nazir’s killing
could result in attacks on Pakistani troops in some areas in South Waziristan,
analysts said.
Pakistani officials publicly denounce American drone strikes but have privately
acknowledged the effectiveness of the campaign.
January 1,
2013
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON
— The young president who ascended to office as a change agent decides to end
the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan. He seeks an exit with honor by
pledging long-term financial support to allies in Kabul, while urging
reconciliation with the insurgency. But some senior advisers lobby for a
deliberately slow withdrawal, and propose leaving thousands of troops behind to
train and support Afghan security forces.
This is a nearly exact description of the endgame conundrum facing President
Obama as he prepares for a critical visit by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president,
planned for early January.
But the account is actually drawn from declassified Soviet archives describing
Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closed-door struggles with his Politburo and army chiefs
to end the Kremlin’s intervention in Afghanistan — one that began with a
commando raid, coup and modest goals during Christmas week of 1979 but became,
after a decade, what Mr. Gorbachev derided as “a bleeding wound.”
What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s
humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that
threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and
the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on
Sept. 11, 2001.
But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for
the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat
forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale
military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in
’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of
“Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2012).
“As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did
pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat
effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal,
when the fight for survival become wholly their own.
But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian
leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western
powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and
money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three
months later.
To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in
Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal
aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community,
including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban
and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of
choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is
feasible.
Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States
soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create
nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism,
orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had
interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan,
whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.
“The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently,
and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a
modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of
Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research
center at George Washington University.
“Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with
all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is
democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted
across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written
extensively on the Soviet archives.
If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal,
she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but
to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in
military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not
focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common
people.”
And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with
Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the
population as tainted by his association with the Americans.
Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military
presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the
progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and
supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda
and insurgent leaders.
In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A.
Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and
pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist
government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.
But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the
Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon
withdrawal.
Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which
has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric
Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford
University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist
Party documents.
“How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking
as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray
their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote
of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum
today.
Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist
Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out.
Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the
Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.
“Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of
schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery
schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They
sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and
canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations
in trouble.”
The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but
Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO
officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and
no outpost ever fell to insurgents.
That understanding seemed to animate Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as he
toured Afghanistan recently in a traditional holiday visit with the troops.
At each stop, Mr. Panetta acknowledged that significant challenges remain to an
orderly withdrawal and a stable postwar Afghanistan, and not just the resilient
insurgency.
He cited unreliable Afghan governance, continuing corruption and the existence
of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. None of those are likely to be fixed with
American firepower.
