'Afghan governor buys Maliks abandoned by Pakistan'

By Umar Cheema in the News, Aug 1

ISLAMABAD: A sitting PPP MNA from Bajaur Agency, Syed Akhunzada Chitan, has made an alarming disclosure that Afghanistan has offered compensation to the flood-affected people of the Bajaur Agency to win their loyalties.

Talking to The News, Chitan disclosed that the governor of Kunar province of Afghanistan was actively involved in buying loyalties of the people in favour of his country by paying them in cash and kind. It is not for the first time that he is doing this, Chitan asserted. Instead, there are many Maliks in Bajuar Agency on his payroll since long, he said.

The Bajaur Agency borders the Kunar province of Afghanistan and has recently been hit by the flood caused by torrential rains.

Additional Chief Secretary, Fata, Habibullah Khan, rejected Chitan’s claim as baseless when contacted for version. Political Agent of Bajaur Agency, Zakir Hussain, was not available for comments. Chitan said he was ready for a televised debate with the Fata administration, adding, “Let the people judge who is right.”

Elaborating how governor of Kunar was fast penetrating into Bajaur, Chitan said there were people in the Agency on his constant payroll. As they visit the governor, the delegation leader gets Rs 10,000 and those accompanying him are awarded Rs 5,000 each during a single visit.

Chitan said he could produce videos flashed on TV in Afghanistan showing Maliks from Bajaur meeting with the governor and expressing their loyalty to Afghanistan. “It is a serious issue. I had also raised it in the National Assembly,” Chitan said.

Chitan said the Pakistan Army had managed the defection of a Malik loyal to governor of Kunar, who was then interviewed by the Army-run FM radio called Aman Radio. During the interview, the man disclosed having received money in the past but said he had never conducted any anti-Pakistan activity for money. In the radio interview, he also promised to stop visiting the Afghan governor.

According to Chitan, the Bajaur people loyal to governor of Kunar were now making a damage assessment and had announced for registration so that the affected people could be helped by the Afghan government.

Chitan said the man playing a pivotal role in connecting Bajaur people with the governor of Kunar was a blue-eyed guy of Pakistani authorities dealing with the Fata affairs. That particular man was arrested in 2004 for visiting India, only to be released later upon the death of his brother. “On the one hand, this man is close to the governor of Kunar, while on the other hand, he is in contact with the Pakistani officials,” he said but refused to divulge the name of that person.

However, officials in the Fata Secretariat rebuffed the claim and said Chitan was trying to settle old scores. They claimed that Chitan’s relatives were important allies of the Taliban. https://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30417

2.Border crossing without passport to be banned at Torkham

LANDIKOTAL: Border crossing at the Pak-Afghan Torkham border will not be allowed without a passport, Daily Times learnt on Saturday.

No one would be allowed to cross the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan and vice-versa without legal documents, including a passport. According to eyewitnesses, a person who was entering Pakistan from Afghanistan had been stopped at the Torkham border and was asked to show his passport. But he was allowed to go after he told the FC personnel that he belonged to the Tribal Areas. The local political administration had not issued any such orders, a government official said. A security official said that he was unaware of any orders to check passports of the people crossing the Pak-Afghan border at Torkham.

Another security official said that only suspicious people would be asked to show their passports and the masses would be exempted from such conditions. Local tribesmen criticised the condition saying that they had been exempted from showing their passports at the border crossing since several years. They said that the tribal people would not accept any such condition, as they visited businesses in Afghanistan. https://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=201081story_1-8-2010_pg7_5

3. Targeted Killing Is New U.S. Focus in Afghanistan: The NY Times, Aug 1

WASHINGTON — When President Obama announced his new war plan for Afghanistan last year, the centerpiece of the strategy — and
a big part of the rationale for sending 30,000 additional troops — was to safeguard the Afghan people, provide them with a competent government and win their allegiance.

Eight months later, that counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success, as demonstrated by the flagging military and civilian operations in Marja and Kandahar and the spread of Taliban influence in other areas of the country.

Instead, what has turned out to work well is an approach American officials have talked much less about: counterterrorism, military-speak for the targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Faced with that reality, and the pressure of a self-imposed deadline to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011, the Obama administration is starting to count more heavily on the strategy of hunting down insurgents. The shift could change the nature of the war and potentially, in the view of some officials, hasten a political settlement with the Taliban.

Based on the American military experience in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, it is not clear that killing enemy fighters is sufficient by itself to cripple an insurgency. Still, commando raids over the last five months have taken more than 130 significant insurgents out of action, while interrogations of captured fighters have led to a fuller picture of the enemy, according to administration officials and diplomats.

American intelligence reporting has recently revealed growing examples of Taliban fighters who are fearful of moving into higher-level command positions because of these lethal operations, according to a senior American military officer who follows Afghanistan closely.

Judging that they have gained some leverage over the Taliban, American officials are now debating when to try to bring them to the negotiating table to end the fighting. Rattling the Taliban, officials said, may open the door to reconciling with them more quickly, even if the officials caution that the outreach is still deeply uncertain.

American military officials and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan have begun a robust discussion about “to what degree these people are going to be allowed to have a seat at the table,” one military official said. “The only real solution to Afghanistan has got to be political.”

The evolving thinking comes at a time when the lack of apparent progress in the nearly nine-year war is making it harder for Mr. Obama to hold his own party together on the issue. And it raises questions about whether the administration is seeking a rationale for reducing troop levels as scheduled starting next summer even if the counterinsurgency strategy does not show significant progress by then.

A senior White House official said the administration hoped that its targeted killings, along with high-level contacts between Mr. Karzai and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief and a former head of its intelligence service — which is believed to have close links to the Taliban — would combine to pressure Taliban leaders to come to the negotiating table.

A long-awaited campaign to convert lower-level and midlevel Taliban fighters has finally begun in earnest, with Mr. Karzai signing a decree authorizing the reintegration program. With $200 million from Japan and other allies, and an additional $100 million in Pentagon money, American military officers will soon be handing out money to lure people away from the insurgency.

“We’re not ready to make the qualitative judgment that the cumulative effects of what we are doing are enough to change their calculus yet,” the White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. But, reflecting the administration’s hope that the killings are making a difference, he added, “If I were the Taliban, I’d be worried.”

Mr. Obama’s timetable calls for an assessment in December of how his strategy is faring. The administration has not yet begun a formal review of the policy. But while several officials said Mr. Obama remained committed to the strategy he set out at the end of last year, they conceded that the counterinsurgency part of it had lagged while the counterterrorism part had been more successful.

That divergence could lead to a replay of last year’s policy debate, in which Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pushed for a focus on capturing and killing terrorist leaders, while the Pentagon, including the current commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, pushed for a broader strategy that also included a strong focus on securing Afghan population centers with more troops.

Still, in an interview Thursday with “Today” on NBC, Mr. Biden appeared to reiterate his earlier stance.

“We are in Afghanistan for one express purpose: Al Qaeda,” he said. “Al Qaeda exists in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are not there to nation-build. We’re not out there deciding we’re going to turn this into a Jeffersonian democracy and build that country.”

The administration’s shift in thinking is gradual but has been perceptible in the public remarks of various officials. The incoming commander of the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, was asked last week by Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, whether the administration’s July 2011 date for starting to withdraw American troops implied a shift in emphasis from counterinsurgency to a strategy concentrating on killing terrorists.

“I think that is the approach, Senator,” he replied.

The emerging American model can best be described as “counterterrorism, with some counterinsurgency strategy that forces the hands of insurgent leaders,” said a diplomat with knowledge of the planning. It melds elements of both strategies in a policy that continues to evolve, as conditions change.

Some of the feelers to the Taliban are being put out by the Karzai government and some by the Pakistanis. Some, eventually, will be handled by General Petraeus and other military officials. Contacts are being kept under wraps, several officials said, because any evidence that insurgent leaders are talking to American or Afghan officials could be used against them by rival insurgents.

Another factor that has spurred talk of reconciliation is a classified military report, called “State of the Taliban,” prepared by Task Force 373, a Special Operations team composed of the army’s Delta Force and Navy Seals, which has captured insurgents and taken them to Bagram Air Base for interrogation.

While the report does not offer a silver bullet for how to deal with the Taliban, one official said that for the first time, it gives Americans and their allies “a rich vein of understanding of why the Taliban was fighting and what it would take them to stop.” The report depicts the Taliban as spearheading a fractured insurgency, but one in which conservative Pashtun nationalism and respect for Afghan culture are both at play, this official said.

Despite deep American concerns about Pakistan’s trustworthiness as an ally, Pakistan has also emerged in recent months as a potential agent for reconciliation. Mr. Karzai has held at least two meetings with General Kayani of Pakistan. American officials say they believe that their talks have not yet delved into the details of negotiations with insurgent leaders, but Pakistan is eager to play a role in talks with the Haqqani network, a major insurgent group based in the country that has close ties to its intelligence service.

The links between Mr. Karzai and General Kayani, officials said, helped seal a recent trade deal between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which required concessions on the part of the Pakistani military.

“The best hope for resolving Afghanistan lies in Pakistan, and we have made some progress there,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent visitor to the region. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/world/asia/01afghan.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

4. Burden of war in Afghanistan shifts even more to the U.S.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, Aug 1

Reporting from Forward Operating Base Kunduz: The platoon sergeant was inspecting the gaping crater left by a roadside bomb in northern Afghanistan when a second thunderous blast went off just 20 feet away.

A choking dust cloud enveloped him. He had no feeling in his left leg. When the soldiers who rushed to his rescue shouted questions at him, he couldn’t hear them.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said Saturday, two days after the explosion. Requesting that his name and hometown not be mentioned to protect his family’s privacy, he spoke at the military hospital where he was being closely monitored for signs of traumatic brain injury.

For American troops, July was the deadliest month of the nearly 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. At least 66 U.S. service members were killed, surpassing what had been a record 60 American fatalities in the previous month.

The means of death were as varied as the hazards of war: helicopter crashes, firefights, ambushes, sniper fire and, especially, the kind of homemade bombs that nearly claimed the 32-year-old sergeant.

But the pattern of combat deaths in July pointed up an overarching truth that is likely to endure as the conflict grinds onward: More and more each day, this is an American war.

With their numbers approaching 100,000 as a consequence of the troop buildup ordered by President Obama in December, U.S. troops now comprise about two-thirds of the NATO force in Afghanistan. And American deaths are commensurate with that dominance, accounting for more than two-thirds of Western military fatalities in July, according to figures provided by icasualties.com, an independent website.

With North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies distancing themselves from the notion of an open-ended stay in Afghanistan, the American aspect of the war comes increasingly to the fore.

In the United States, the rapidly rising combat toll in Afghanistan is feeding congressional doubts about the war’s aims. But such qualms are rarely heard in the ranks, particularly in units that have arrived in the last six months as part of the buildup.

“You know it’s a possibility, getting killed; but honestly, I don’t think we think about it as much as the public does,” said Capt. Alain Etienne, a 37-year-old from Brooklyn with the 10th Mountain Division’s 1-87 Infantry Brigade in the northern province of Kunduz. “You do your job.”

Although most of the arriving U.S. troops are being deployed in the south, the spiritual home of the Taliban and the scene of near-constant fighting between NATO forces and insurgents, American forces are also pushing into parts of the country where they have never been present in large numbers.

That includes a wide swath of Afghanistan’s north, where until just a few months ago German troops made up the bulk of foreign forces.

The north was once considered a quiet corner of Afghanistan. But Taliban fighters have ensconced themselves in Kunduz and another strategic province, Baghlan, a threat that commanders are seeking to quell with the deployment of about 2,500 troops with the 10th Mountain Division.

A morning battle briefing Saturday at Forward Operating Base Kunduz, just outsid
e the provincial capital, reflected a quickening tempo of hostilities: a suspected sighting of the Taliban “shadow governor”; small-arms fire aimed at a German aircraft; three mine-resistant vehicles knocked out of commission in 24 hours by improvised bombs; rockets fired into Kunduz city, though they did not explode.

In the base’s windowless tactical operations center, with the glow of computer screens providing almost the only light, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Russell Lewis, fired questions: Can we speed up the outfitting of ground-penetrating radar? How long will it take to repair the damaged mine-detection vehicles?

The U.S. commanders described the German force as a reliable partner in the fight, though both NATO and Afghan officials have conceded that the security situation in the north has deteriorated sharply in the last 18 months.

But Germany, like other NATO allies, is paying heed to unmistakable antiwar sentiment at home, putting further pressure on U.S. forces. Canada has announced plans to bring its troops home from Afghanistan in 2011. Britain handed over a particularly dangerous district of Helmand province to American control.

And the 1,600-member contingent from the Netherlands, based mainly in the province of Oruzgan, heads home this week, a development greeted with satisfaction by the Taliban. Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid congratulated the Dutch for what he called a wise decision.

With greater overall visibility than other national contingents, the United States and its forces often become a lightning rod for Afghan resentment over civilian suffering, even if American troops are not involved in a particular incident.

Angry anti-U.S. protests broke out Friday in Kabul, the capital, after a vehicle driven by American contractors with DynCorp International was involved in a traffic accident that killed at least four Afghans, police said.

In the north, the Americans are sometimes welcomed, but with a distinct undercurrent that the people believe the fight could go either way.

A week ago, troops based in Kunduz went on patrol in the district of Aliabad, fanning out in a village they were visiting for the first time. Trailed by a gaggle of giggling children, they spent two hours walking dusty lanes, meeting with the most important village elder, asking residents what kind of help they needed: wells dug, or seed for crops.

But the Afghan commander of a police checkpoint at the village’s entrance sounded a note of caution.

“The Taliban are right over there, just across the river,” he said pointing with his chin toward a line of trees a few hundred yards away.

“We are five police in this checkpoint, and they are 50. They have enough munitions, but we do not. And if they want to come, they will.” https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-war-deaths-20100801,0,1599375,print.story

'Afghan governor buys Maliks abandoned by Pakistan'

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