taliban

Lori Pottinger: Grand Illusions for African Energy in Davos

by on January 31, 2011

The ongoing World Economic Forum — the annual gathering of global decision-makers and business leaders — is the place to discuss big ideas for economic development. Some African participants are using the forum to promote the gigantic Grand Inga hydropower dam , proposed for the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The South African water minister told a reporter in Davos that “the sooner we do something about [building Grand Inga], the better.” The mantra that this project will “light up Africa” was repeated. No mention was made of the huge risks this dam poses, especially for the people of Congo. DR Congo is one of the world’s riskiest places to invest. To build the world’s biggest dam here and expect it to light the entire continent is like building the world’s biggest nuclear plant in the land of the Taliban — or the world’s biggest medical marijuana farm in Mexico’s borderlands. The great tagline notwithstanding, Grand Inga doesn’t have much of a chance of “lighting up Africa,” much less lighting up Congo. The biggest obstacle to the project succeeding in a way that benefits ordinary Africans is corruption. Decades of plundering state coffers and natural resources in DR Congo have institutionalized corruption. Public officials systematically misuse their offices for private gain. In the mining sector alone, at least $200 million of annual taxes go uncollected due to illicit negotiations and corrupt oversight. And despite the huge power supplies that Inga could generate, most Africans still live too far from national grids to take advantage of a big, centralized project in a faraway country. Building necessary distribution systems to make use of the dam’s electricity would be cost-prohibitive to say the least. If built, the dam will power big mines and industries, not small businesses, homes and hospitals. DR Congo’s state power utility, SNEL, is at this writing on the verge of bankruptcy. The utility has long been marked by corruption and unaccountability. In 2008, two of SNEL’s top directors were interrogated after the disappearance of $6.5 million earmarked for Inga 2 rehabilitation. The scandal triggered a parliamentary inquiry into SNEL’s management and finances. SNEL’s revenues reportedly plunged by 30% thereafter. In a country of 66 million people, currently, less than 6% of DRC’s population uses electricity from the grid. “The challenge for African policy makers who participate in the World Economic Forum is to work out strategies of translating the forum’s initiatives into policies that benefit the ordinary people,” writes Sam Makinda. The US$80 billion Grand Inga would buy a lot of clean cook stoves, micro-hydro turbines, small solar panels, drip-irrigation systems, clean LED lanterns, malaria nets and the like. These are the kinds of investments that would help ordinary Africans. Ritzy Davos might not be the best place to encourage this kind of “small is beautiful” thinking. Maybe future talks on “lighting up Africa” should be held in Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest slum. Or in a typical village, 20 kilometers and a century away from being connected to the electricity grid. Or in a rural hospital, where doctors deliver babies in the dark. Bring your own solar panel and clean cook stove.

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Lori Pottinger: Grand Illusions for African Energy in Davos

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Afghan Security Contractors Trashed In Senate Report

by AP on October 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — Heavy U.S. reliance on private security in Afghanistan has helped to line the pockets of the Taliban because contractors often don’t vet local recruits and wind up hiring warlords and thugs, Senate investigators said Thursday. The finding, in a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, follows a separate congressional inquiry in June that concluded that trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars a year to local warlords for convoy protection. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate panel, said he is worried the U.S. is unknowingly fostering the growth of Taliban-linked militias at a time when Kabul is struggling to recruit its own soldiers and police officers. “Almost all are Afghans. Almost all are armed,” Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said of the army of young men working under U.S. contracts. “We need to shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests and contribute to the corruption that weakens the support of the Afghan people for their government,” he added. The Defense Department doesn’t necessarily disagree but warns that firing the estimated 26,000 private security personnel operating in Afghanistan in the near future isn’t practical. This summer, U.S. forces in Afghanistan pledged to increase their oversight of security contractors and set up two task forces to look into allegations of misconduct and to track the money spent, particularly among lower-level subcontractors. The Defense Contract Management Agency has increased the number of auditors and support staff in the region by some 300 percent since 2007. And in September, Gen. David Petraeus, the top war commander in Afghanistan, directed his staff to consider the impact that contract spending has on military operations. But military officials and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee warn that ending the practice of hiring local guards could worsen the security situation in Afghanistan. They say providing young Afghan men with employment can prevent them from joining the ranks of Taliban fighters. And bringing in foreign workers to do jobs Afghans can do is likely to foster resentment, they say. Also, contract security forces fill an immediate need at a time when U.S. forces are focused on operations, commanders say. “As the security environment in Afghanistan improves, our need for (private security contractors) will diminish,” Petraeus told the Senate panel in July. “But in the meantime, we will use legal, licensed and controlled (companies) to accomplish appropriate missions.” Levin says he isn’t suggesting that the U.S. stop using private security contractors altogether. But, he adds, the U.S. must reduce the number of local security guards and improve the vetting process of new hires if there’s any hope of reversing a trend that he says damages the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. His report represents the broadest look at Defense Department security contracts so far, with a review of 125 of these agreements between 2007 and 2009. The review concludes there were “systemic failures” in the management of the contracts, including “widespread” failures “to adequately vet, train and supervise armed security personnel.” The panel’s report highlights two cases in which security contracting firms ArmorGroup and EOD Technology relied on personnel linked to the Taliban. Last week, EOD Technology was one of eight security firms hired by the State Department under a $10 billion contract to provide protection for diplomats. A statement released by EOD Technology said the Lenoir City, Tenn.-based company had been encouraged to hire local Afghans and that it provided the names of its employees to the military for screening. The company said the military has never made it aware of any problems with its handling of the contract. In the case of ArmorGroup, the Senate panel says the company repeatedly relied on warlords to find local guards, including the uncle of a known Taliban commander. The uncle, nicknamed “Mr. White” by ArmorGroup after a character in the violent movie “Reservoir Dogs,” was eventually killed after a U.S. raid that uncovered a cache of weapons, including anti-tank land mines. ArmorGroup, based in McLean, Va., lost a separate contract this year protecting the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after allegations surfaced that guards engaged in lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup’s parent company, said the company only engaged workers from local villages upon the “recommendation and encouragement” of U.S. special operations troops. Pitcher said that ArmorGroup stayed in “close contact” with the military personnel “to ensure that the company was constantly acting in harmony with, and in support of, U.S. military interests and desires.” The allegation that contractors rely on warlords for local hiring is not new. Last June, a Democratic House investigation led by Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney concluded that trucking companies had “little choice” but to pay local warlords “in what amounts to a vast protection racket.” Army criminal investigators are examining the allegations, specifically looking at whether companies hired under a $2 billion Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and ammunition to troops were paying up to $4 million a week to insurgent groups. In August, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year. The workers, he said, would have to either join the government security forces or stop work because they were undermining Afghanistan’s police and army and contributing to corruption. U.S. officials responded that they shared the goal but wanted to move slow enough that military efforts weren’t impacted. Levin says he blames lost money to the Taliban on a lack of government oversight until this year. He previously has blamed the Bush administration for not devoting enough resources to the war in general. Led by Arizona Sen. John McCain, committee Republicans endorsed the investigative findings in a voice vote last month. But in a statement included in the report, they said Levin’s investigation “falls short of providing a more robust discussion of how slim our options were at the time.”

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David Isenberg: Taliban to PSC: How May We Serve You?

October 2, 2010

Today we have news straight out of Mario Puzo. It seems the Taliban made local Afghan private security contractors an offer they could not refuse. Yesterday the Inspector General’s office at the U.S. Agency for International released a report that found that millions of dollars in American taxpayer funds may have been paid to Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan to provide security for a U.S. development project. The report says subcontractors hired to protect a development project near Jalalabad may have paid more than $5 million to the militants through local authorities. According to news reports the report examined payments for security under a $349-million contract awarded to a U.S. contractor, Development Alternatives Inc. , for a small-scale infrastructure and community development project. Because the Taliban fighters are entrenched in the area and it is deemed too dangerous there for the contractor to visit regularly, Development Alternatives left it to local subcontractors to negotiate security arrangements. The report says local authorities often demand a 20% “protection tax” in such circumstances. Under those deals — along the lines of extortionist protection rackets in the U.S. — the Taliban sends security guards with promises that they won’t attack the subcontractors or their equipment and won’t try to halt the contract work. Often local authorities will try to renegotiate the agreement just before the work begins to further jack up the price, the report says. Officials from the agency and the contractor told the investigators that the development work was not being directly monitored because it was taking place in a war zone, so there was no way they could provide assurances that U.S. taxpayer money paid to subcontractors didn’t end up in the hands of the insurgents. Note that what we are discussing is not an audit but a review report titled ” Review of Security Costs Charged to USAID Projects in Afghanistan .” The actual review provides a more nuanced view of what happened than some of the news reports, although the situation still merits serious concern. The summary says: The Regional Inspector General/Manila conducted a review of Edinburgh International’s security costs charged to the following three USAID-funded projects in Afghanistan implemented by Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI): • Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprises Development (ASMED) • Incentives Driving Economic Alternatives for the North, East, and West (IDEA-NEW) • Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) The objective of this review was to determine whether there has been any indication that Edinburgh International misused USAID funds to pay the Taliban or others in exchange for protection. The review covered the period from January 1 to December 31, 2009. The review found no indication that Edinburgh International had misused USAID funds to pay the Taliban or others in exchange for protection. However, there were indications that Afghan subcontractors working on the LGCD project had paid insurgents for protection in remote and insecure areas of Afghanistan. The payments were allegedly made as part of a security arrangement with local communities that very likely included the Taliban or groups that support them. We also found indications of pervasive fraud in DAI’s LGCD office in Jalalabad and indications of endemic corruption in Nangarhar Province, where Jalalabad is located. The background to this is that USAID/Afghanistan relies on private security contractors (PSCs) to supply various security services for contractors and grantees that implement USAID-funded projects in Afghanistan. USAID practice has been to delegate responsibility and oversight for security to its implementing partners and factor the cost of security into their program budgets. These implementing partners typically subcontract their security services to PSCs. USAID indirectly pays for PSCs when the implementing partners submit their invoices for payment, which include the cost of security services. In the past year, news reports have said that U.S. Government funds paid to contractors for reconstruction projects were being siphoned off to Taliban insurgents in exchange for “protection” to prevent attacks. For example, one news article reported that USAID funds were ending up in the hands of the Taliban through a protection racket for contractors. Another article said that in southern Afghanistan, no contract can be implemented unless the Taliban takes a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way. Other news reports said that PSCs were involved in the negotiations with insurgents. The good news, according to the report is that: A review of Edinburgh’s accounting system and financial records revealed that the firm had employed a strong system of internal controls over cash transactions. These controls reduced the risk of illicit payments, since such payments are often made in cash. Further, an examination of supporting documentation for expenditures of $3.85 million (34 percent of the total spent by Edinburgh in 2009) revealed no unusual or suspicious payments. Finally, the field staff’s authority to make payments was strictly limited, reducing the possibility that the staff could make extortion payments to the Taliban or other insurgent groups without the knowledge of supervisory staff in Kabul. Edinburgh International provided an armed guard force and security management staff for DAI’s project offices and guest houses, as well as security for moving expatriate staff on the ground. However, Edinburgh International did not provide security for DAI’s project activities, such as road construction, canal rehabilitation, or other construction activities where Taliban insurgent violence was a risk. As a result, Edinburgh International would not be in a position to negotiate with or make payments to Taliban insurgents or others in exchange for protection at these work sites. But, USAID, U.S. intelligence, and DAI officials expressed concerns that insurgents may have extorted protection payments from DAI subcontractors implementing stabilization and community development activities. During the review, the IG also received allegations of fraud involving employees at DAI’s LGCD office in Jalalabad. In October 2006, USAID/Afghanistan awarded DAI a 3-year, $95 million contract to implement the LGCD project. The contract was subsequently increased to $349 million and extended to April 30, 2011. The project was meant to work in partnership with local communities to create a stable environment for medium- and long-term political, economic, and social development. The LGCD project looks for communities in insecure areas who are willing to work with local government authorities to implement small-scale infrastructure and community development activities. The contract states that one important responsibility of the communities is to guarantee security during the implementation phase of development activities. Yet some individuals said that the local communities who were supposed to guarantee security very likely included the Taliban or groups who support the Taliban. The original contract itself stated that dispute mediation and community security are “services” that the Taliban is providing. Interviews with personnel from USAID, U.S. intelligence, and DAI indicated that, for LGCD subprojects, Afghan subcontractors would meet with local community leaders before the implementation phase and negotiate the terms of community support, including employment opportunities and security arrangements. The subcontractors would also negotiate security terms with insurgents either directly or indirectly through community leaders. Insurgents could demand from the subcontractor a “protection tax” of up to 20 percent of the total subcontract value in exchange for protection. “Protection” might include Taliban-provided security guards for the activity site and a promise not to attack the subcontractor’s personnel and equipment and not to halt the activity. Sometimes insurgents would try to renegotiate the terms of the security arrangement shortly after the subcontractor began implementation. Their intent was to extort more money from the subcontractor, and they would threaten violence if the subcontractor did not comply. The report also noted that Afghan subcontractors used several methods to recoup the money paid to insurgents. The most common method was to include the amount in the total cost of the subcontract up front, because subcontractors knew that the tax would have to be paid before implementation. Subcontractors allegedly considered such protection taxes as “mobilization costs” and billed them to DAI through normal invoicing procedures; the costs were then passed on to USAID for payment. Specific line items in the project budget might be inflated, or subcontractors might recoup costs by substituting low-quality, cheap materials for promised high-quality materials. Subcontractors might also stage a security incident at the project site and ask for more money from DAI to pay for security. And what exactly is a security incident? In 2009, DAI suspended or cancelled 27 LGCD subprojects totaling about $1.4 million because of security incidents in the southern, southeastern, and eastern regions of Afghanistan. According to a DAI report, the security incidents mostly involved Taliban insurgent threats and violence around the subproject construction sites. For example, in June 2008, DAI awarded a 6-month, $718,000 subcontract to an Afghan construction company to improve about 7.5 kilometers of gravel road in Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan, just north of Nangarhar Province along the border with Pakistan. About 2 months after construction started, the subcontractor’s bulldozer was set on fire by unknown arsonists, according to DAI’s account of the security incident. DAI asked the subcontractor to suspend work in October 2008 and informed USAID of the situation. The subproject remained suspended until it was finally canceled in April 2009. Further inquiry by USAID personnel in August 2009 revealed that Taliban insurgents from the local community had been involved with the arson. Apparently, insurgents had been requesting payment for security instead of providing it as part of their community contribution as originally agreed with the subcontractor. According to unclassified information obtained from U.S. intelligence officials, this incident fits the pattern of attempts by insurgents to renegotiate the terms of the security arrangement shortly after the subcontractor begins implementation. Their intent is to extort more money from the subcontractor, and they threaten or commit violence if the subcontractor does not comply. This type of activity is endemic in Taliban stronghold areas, and the LGCD incident in Kunar Province is representative of such occurrences in these areas, the officials said. DAI ended up paying the full amount of the subcontract plus idle-equipment fees amounting to about $740,000–costs that were passed along to USAID. The length of the subcontract was 6 months, yet the subcontractor worked for only about 2 months and, as calculated from the time actually spent at the job site, completed only 33 percent of the construction. We concluded that this subproject was not only a casualty of Taliban insurgent actions and violence but also was a waste of USAID money. One wonders if PMSC trade groups factor that in when making their usual claims about the inherent cost effectiveness of PSC use?

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Karzai Family Ties Shielded Flailing Afghan Bank

September 7, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — In early 2009, as President Hamid Karzai scanned the landscape for potential partners to run in his re-election bid, he was approached from an unusual corner: a bank. The president’s brother, Mahmoud, and another Afghan businessman, Haseen Fahim, were shareholders in Kabul Bank, one of the freewheeling financial institutions that had sprung up over the past decade since the Taliban’s fall.

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First Afghan Railway Will Draw Taliban Fire as It Boosts Economy, War Goal

May 5, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada and James Rupert May 5 (Bloomberg) — Workers are laying track across north Afghanistan’s rolling grassland for the country’s first rail line, a project that will boost the economy, supply NATO troops and become a target for Taliban bombs. The railway, being built by Uzbekistan’s state railroad , will run 75 kilometers (45 miles) from the Uzbek border to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said Craig Steffensen, Kabul-based Afghanistan country director for the Asian Development Bank , who has inspected the work. The line, to be completed this year, will more than double shipments of fuels, food grains, consumer goods and construction materials through a border crossing that handles half of the country’s imports, the bank says. “Railroads can reduce our isolation,” said Hamidullah Farooqi, a Kabul University economics professor and former transport minister, in a phone interview. “This is just the first line for a network that we hope can turn our country into a new trade route. That is what we need to create stability.” More than a century after Afghan monarch Amir Abdurrahman banned rail lines as potential invasion routes, physical isolation and war have left Afghanistan the second-least developed of 182 countries measured by the United Nations’ Human Development Index . The line not only will help develop the north, which holds most of the country’s known gas, oil and coal , it is the first step in linking Central Asia to seaports in Iran, Steffensen said. Needing Pakistan The link to Uzbekistan and onward to Kazakhstan and Russia also will reduce the dependence of Afghanistan and of U.S.-led NATO forces on Pakistan, where local Taliban have hijacked or burned trucks carrying U.S. military supplies. The railway will connect to a new U.S. supply network from the north and so “will be particularly helpful in bringing goods into the country for our needs,” said U.S. Colonel Wayne Shanks , a spokesman in Kabul for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force. Thus the Taliban plan to strike, said movement spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a mobile-phone interview. “If NATO uses this railroad to import their supplies we will attack them 100 percent, and we’ll block the railroad,” he said. That may be difficult. The rail line passes west of the Pashtun districts in the north that the Taliban, a movement of ethnic Pashtuns, recently have taken over. Ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks who live nearer the line are “not sympathetic,” to the Taliban, said Zabi Wahab, a native of the region who is the business development manager at the Dubai- based Kefayat Group . First Step The Manila-based Asian Development Bank is paying $165 million , 97 percent of the line’s cost, because “this is the first step of a development that will benefit the whole region” of Central Asia, Steffensen said in a telephone interview. The Afghan government is paying another $5 million. More rail construction may follow. A separate line partly built by Iran into Afghanistan’s northwest, plus two projects being studied by China and the development bank, could give north Afghanistan the shortest rail link yet from Central Asia to Iranian seaports, and the first standard-gauge line from the Pacific Ocean to Europe, said Steffensen and Farooqi. A standard-gauge route would eliminate the need for trans- Asian trains to stop at the Chinese-Kazakh border and in Eastern Europe to change their wheel assemblies to fit the broader ex- Soviet rail gauge. Beijing-based Metallurgical Corp. of China Ltd. agreed to help build a railway to export ore in 2007 when it won the license for Afghanistan’s biggest copper mine. Afghan and Chinese officials have discussed a route north through Tajikistan to western China, Farooqi said. Oil and Gas Reports show Afghanistan has more than 150 million barrels of oil reserves and more than 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, the U.S. Geological Survey says. The first Afghan rail line may turn Mazar-e-Sharif, a city of more than 300,000 people, into an Afghan transport hub, promoting business development in the north that “is crucial to Afghanistan’s economic development and stabilization,” said Anne Benjaminson, an economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Companies suffer as much as a month’s delay in getting rail shipments transferred to trucks at the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton. Uzbekistan “often closes the border for two weeks at a time, saying it is because of congestion at Hairaton,” said Wahab in a phone interview. Trade at Hairaton is expected this year to reach 40,000 tons a month, Steffensen said. The greater efficiency of the railroad may boost demand for haulage across the border to 5,000 tons per day, according to the development bank. Rail Bed In northwest Afghanistan, Iran has built two-thirds of a 190-kilometer rail bed from the Iranian town of Khaf to the northwestern Afghan city of Herat. The Afghan government is seeking funds to build the rest, deputy public works minister Ahmad Shah Waheed said. The development bank is funding technical surveys for a line of more than 700 kilometers (430 miles) to connect the two Afghan spurs under construction. That would offer the five, landlocked Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan , Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which have a combined Malaysia-sized GDP of $187 billion — their most direct trade route to Iran’s Gulf or Indian Ocean ports. To contact the reporters on this story: Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net ; James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net .

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Karzai, Singh to Discuss Efforts to Halt Taliban Attacks on Indian Workers

April 25, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada and James Rupert April 26 (Bloomberg) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in New Delhi today for talks likely to focus on security for 3,500 Indian workers in Afghanistan who have become targets for attacks by Taliban guerrillas. Karzai will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an overnight stop before both leaders travel to Bhutan tomorrow for a South Asian summit. The talks come two months after suicide bombers killed at least 17 people in Kabul, including Indian government officials. “President Karzai will talk with Prime Minister Singh about counter-terrorism matters,” including the Feb. 26 attack, presidential spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters yesterday. Seventeen Indians have been killed in Afghanistan since 2008, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told parliament in New Delhi last week. The Indian and Afghan governments have accused Pakistan’s military intelligence of backing at least some of those attacks, which come as Pakistan opposes the breadth of India’s role in aiding its western neighbor. India has “no plan to scale down” its presence in Afghanistan, Krishna said, according to a statement on a Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs Web site. India has been a main backer of Karzai’s government, providing $1.2 billion in aid since 2002 that has included the construction of highways, power lines and Afghanistan’s new parliament building. India provides 1,000 scholarships each year for Afghan students to study in India, the biggest such education contribution, Omar said. Karzai has maintained close ties with India since his own university studies there in the early 1980s. Neighboring Pakistan supported his foe, the Taliban movement, until the U.S. forced it to break relations after the September 2001 attacks. Pakistani politicians complain that India’s four consulates in Afghanistan are used to covertly destabilize Pakistan, which India denies. Pakistan in turn rejects Indian and Afghan assertions that intercepted communications showed Pakistan’s military intelligence network helped its longtime ally, Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani , launch attacks on Indians in Kabul. Haqqani’s faction claimed responsibility for the October 2009 suicide bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, which killed the mission’s defense and press attachés. That strike, and a July 2008 bombing killed a total of 75 people. Indians in Afghanistan, many of whom work on road-building or other technical assistance projects, now live under tightened security, advised by their embassy to vary routes and schedules. To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net ; Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net .

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Petraeus Says U.S. Is Stepping Up Commando Raids on Afghan Taliban Leaders

April 15, 2010

By Tony Capaccio and Lizzie O’Leary April 15 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. military has “substantially increased” its specialized counter-terrorism teams in Afghanistan designed to kill Taliban leaders, General David Petraeus , the head of U.S. Central Command, said today. The “operational tempo” in Afghanistan of so-called special mission units “is going to increase in the months ahead,” Petraeus said in an interview in Washington. Alongside that military effort, the U.S. is working with President Hamid Karzai on his plan for a loya jirga, or tribal assembly, next month to discuss possible reconciliation with some Taliban loyalists, the commander said. The U.S. has “increased our special mission unit effort there, which substantially increased the numbers of our ‘special’ special operations forces, our counter-terrorist forces,” he said. The increased missions are part of a strategy intended to deny Taliban leaders unlikely to give up the fight any sanctuary in Afghanistan. The U.S., NATO and Afghan allies are seeking to secure population centers and train the country’s police and soldiers to take control starting in July 2011. U.S. special forces “have been going after the Taliban leaders and the leaders of the other extremist elements that cause problems for our troopers and Afghanistan partners at a higher operational tempo in recent months,” Petraeus said. “I don’t think you should ever assume that there is a location in Afghanistan that is beyond the reach of our forces,” Petraeus said. ‘Fusion Cells’ The U.S. has set up “intelligence fusion cells” in Afghanistan similar to those established during the 2007 surge of forces in Iraq. The cells integrated commando and conventional forces with intelligence agencies to carry out quick attacks on suspected terrorists, Petraeus said. These cells “help everyone — not just to help special mission units, that was to help all forces,” he said. The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal , directed the Iraq efforts and has consolidated all special operations — including special mission units — under his authority. U.S. intelligence agencies and elite special-forces units in Iraq worked in “fusion cells” that consolidated and analyzed real-time information from informants, satellites and eavesdropping on top al-Qaeda operatives. The strategy enabled quick, focused strikes. ‘Decapitation’ Strikes McChrystal, in a Dec. 10 interview, said the most effective approach to attacking al-Qaeda is not to strike solely at the leaders – “decapitation” strikes such as the U.S. endorsed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “What I have come to believe is you take the middle of the network — experienced professionals,” he said on PBS Television’s Charlie Rose show. The U.S. also is working more with Karzai on his plan to move toward a peace agreement with the Taliban. Petraeus said Afghan leaders persuaded him and other U.S. officials including special envoy Richard Holbrooke during a meeting in Kabul earlier this week that they had a plan for reaching a “national consensus” on terms for reconciliation. The process would include interests such as those of women in Afghanistan, the commander said. National Consensus “A light came on for a number of us about the importance of the peace jirga and the importance of national consensus,” Petraeus said. “There’s a very sophisticated analysis on the Afghan side.” Actual reconciliation, or bringing members of the Taliban into the government, isn’t likely until after they see the prospect of defeat, Petraeus said, referring to a position often expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates . “That’s not to say there shouldn’t be an effort to achieve national consensus on reconciliation, should the opportunity present itself,” Petraeus said. In the meantime, the country’s leaders need to agree on “what are the red lines for the different communities within Afghanistan,” he said. To contact the reporters on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net ; Lizzie O’Leary in Washington at loleary2@bloomberg.net

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Afghanistan-Based NATO Troops Fire on Bus, Killing Four Civilians in South

April 12, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada April 12 (Bloomberg) — Four Afghan civilians were killed when international troops opened fire today on a bus in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland where coalition forces are preparing a new offensive. A patrol of International Security Assistance Force soldiers attempted to warn off an approaching vehicle traveling at speed before dawn using flares, flashlights and hand signals, NATO said in statement. When it failed to respond, they fired on the vehicle, it added. Afghan President Hamid Karzai “strongly condemned” the shooting, Agence France-Presse reported. Today’s killings in the province’s Zhari district come as Karzai’s ties with the United States have been strained by a series of anti-West comments by the president. In recent speeches, Karzai said the West was responsible for fraud in his country’s 2009 elections and threatened to join the Taliban if the international community continued to pressure him. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the remarks “genuinely troubling.” Eighteen people wounded in the attack had been taken to NATO and Afghan hospitals, Fazl Ahmad Sherzay, a security official with the local police force, said by telephone. Following the shooting incident, three Taliban militants, including a suicide bomber, attacked the regional security office wounding five Afghans civilians, Sherzay said. Nine-Year Insurgency Overseas forces are deployed in Afghanistan to help the Western-backed Afghan government defeat a near nine-year insurgency by Taliban guerrillas. The bus was heading for western Herat province, AFP said. U.S.-led forces are pursuing Taliban leaders in Kandahar to lay the groundwork for an offensive on the militant stronghold planned for mid-year, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said March 30. Preparations for the offensive include discussions with tribal leaders and helping organize community meetings to build support for the offensive, Morrell told reporters at the Pentagon. A NATO air strike in central Uruzgan province in February killed as many as 33 civilians, triggering Afghan government protests over noncombatant deaths that undermine the fight against the Taliban. To contact the reporter on this story: Eltaf Najafizada at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net

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Taliban Attacks at U.S. Consulate in Pakistan, Government Rally Kill 26

April 5, 2010

By Anwar Shakir and Khalid Qayum April 5 (Bloomberg) — Taliban guerrillas attacked the U.S. consulate in Peshawar with bombs and gunfire in the heaviest assault on an American diplomatic mission in Pakistan since 1979. Militants exploded nearly simultaneous bombs at paramilitary police posts guarding roads to the complex and detonated a larger bomb that damaged the consulate and killed two of its Pakistani security guards. No U.S. casualties were reported. Amid the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Peshawar consulate is the U.S. diplomatic mission closest to the militants’ main strongholds along the Asian countries’ border. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. missions in Pakistan have been targeted by individual bombs or rockets, but nothing as complex as today’s assault. In Washington, President Barack Obama ’s spokesman said the violence is of “great concern.” “Extremists in Pakistan have succeeded in killing Pakistanis,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. “We strongly condemn the violence.” Guerrillas battled police in “a very coordinated, commando-style attack that involved many people,” said Imtiaz Gul, executive director of Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, the capital. After 14 months of escalated U.S. and Pakistani attacks that have forced the country’s Taliban out of several of their strongholds, violence today “showed that it will take many years to undermine the guerrillas’ capacities,” Gul said by phone. Rally Attacked In the day’s other attack, a suicide bomber killed more than 24 people at a pro-government rally 60 miles northeast of Peshawar, Mian Iftikhar Hussain , the provincial information minister, told reporters. The rally, in Lower Dir, was called by the Awami National Party, an anti-Taliban group that governs the North-West Frontier Province. “This attack and the one earlier today in Lower Dir which killed and wounded many others, reflects the terrorists’ desperation as they are rejected by people throughout Pakistan,” a statement from the U.S. consulate said. Four Explosions Shortly after 1 p.m., the guerrillas attacked some of several Pakistani police roadblocks that help protect the consulate and several Pakistani military installations nearby in the city’s Cantonment area. Four explosions jolted central Peshawar within 20 minutes, causing mobile phone networks to jam as residents made anxious phone calls to learn what was going on. A column of smoke rolled several stories high over the city and police threw up cordons around the area. The U.S. Embassy said several consulate guards were injured as well as the two killed. The attack was coordinated and involved a vehicle suicide bomb as well as attempts by attackers to enter the consulate using grenades and weapons fire, the statement said. The consulate expressed gratitude to Pakistan’s security forces in Peshawar “who responded quickly to the attack.” Militants last attacked the U.S. diplomatic presence in Peshawar in August 2008, ambushing the armored car of the consulate’s chief officer. While the diplomat, Lynne Tracy, escaped injury, gunmen killed a senior American aid worker in the city three months later. The only bigger attack on a U.S. mission in Pakistan was the 1979 assault by a mob that accused the U.S. government of backing an attack on Islam’s holiest shrine, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The mob burned the embassy, killing two Americans. Restricted Movement The Obama administration has stepped up U.S. missile strikes from Predator drone aircraft against Taliban and al- Qaeda militants along the Afghan border as Pakistan’s army has launched ground offensives against some Taliban groups since last year. Amid the fighting, “visits by U.S. government personnel to Peshawar and Karachi are limited and movements by U.S. government personnel assigned to the consulates in these cities are severely restricted,” the State Department said on its Web site. The 2008 attacks on Americans in Peshawar followed a Taliban buildup in the city, Pakistan’s eighth-largest, which is the capital of the North-West Frontier Province. The army deployed its paramilitary Frontier Constabulary in mid-2008 after armed Islamic militants appeared in its streets, warning residents to abide by Taliban strictures against playing music or selling entertainment videos. Starting in May, Pakistan’s army drove most Taliban out of the province’s Swat Valley and the tribal area of South Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan. The guerrillas have repeatedly struck back at Pakistan’s major cities, killing hundreds. To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Peshawar at Ashakir1@bloomberg.net ; Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net

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Four Peshawar Blasts Fail to Damage U.S. Consulate as Rally Bomb Kills 30

April 5, 2010

By Anwar Shakir and Khalid Qayum April 5 (Bloomberg) — At least four explosions struck near the U.S. consulate in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar today, an hour after a bomb killed as many as 30 people at a political rally in the region. Gunfire following the blasts in Peshawar, the northwest’s largest city, is preventing rescue services from reaching the wounded, Mujahid Khan, a spokesman for the Edhi ambulance service, said by telephone, adding one person is confirmed dead. Police are fighting militants after the bombings, AAJ television said, citing unidentified police officials. Earlier, a suicide bomber attacked a political rally of the Awami National Party in the district of Lower Dir, killing more than two dozen people, Mian Iftikhar Hussain , the information minister in the state government, told reporters. The party rules the North West Frontier Province. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad confirmed the attacks in Peshawar took place near the country’s consulate in the city, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a spokeswoman in Islamabad. The three explosions took place within 20 minutes, causing mobile phone networks to jam. One of the bombings sent a column of smoke several stories high over the city, according to images broadcast on local television. The attackers’ ability to reach the neighborhood of the U.S. consulate may have been eased after a police checkpoint nearby was recently moved, Mahmood Shah , a security specialist and retired army brigadier, said on Dawn News television. Last Attack Militants last attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission in Peshawar in 2008, ambushing the armored car of the consulate’s chief officer as she drove to work. While the diplomat, Lynne Tracey, escaped injury, gunmen killed a senior American aid worker in the city three months later. The 2008 attacks followed a Taliban buildup in Peshawar, which is Pakistan’s eighth-largest city. Pakistan deployed units of its paramilitary Frontier Constabulary in mid-2008 after armed Islamic militants appeared in its streets, warning residents to abide by Taliban strictures against playing music or selling entertainment videos. Pakistan’s army last year began offensives against Taliban militants in the Swat Valley and the tribal area of South Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan’s government said 80 percent of terrorist attacks were planned in the Waziristan area. The guerrillas have repeatedly struck back at Pakistan’s major cities, killing hundreds. Today’s attacks came hours before President Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to address lawmakers in Parliament. To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir in Peshawar at Ashakir1@bloomberg.net Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net

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Obama Visits Afghanistan, Presses Karzai to Root Out Government Corruption

March 28, 2010

By Hans Nichols March 28 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama landed in Afghanistan today on an unannounced visit to press for progress from Afghan leaders and get a first-hand look at U.S. progress in the eight-year-old war. While saying he’s “encouraged by the progress that’s been made” in Afghanistan, Obama said after meeting with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul that the Afghan government must do more to root out corruption and improve governance. In a later speech to U.S. troops, Obama said the battle in Afghanistan is “essential” to U.S. security because if the region slides into chaos, al-Qaeda and the Taliban will have a haven from which to attack America. “If I thought for a minute that America’s vital interests were not served I would order you home right away,” Obama told a crowd of soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force personnel at Bagram airfield. “You will have the support to get the job done and I am confident that you can get the job done right here.” Obama is in the country as the U.S. role there is growing with an escalation of forces that he ordered, and allied troops are engaged in an offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Obama’s visit, his first to Afghanistan since becoming president, is intended to emphasize U.S. calls for the Afghan government to crack down on corruption, fight drug trafficking that helps fund the insurgency and institute merit-based systems for government appointments, according to James Jones , Obama’s national security adviser. U.S. Expectations “We plan to engage President Karzai as we’re going to make him understand that in this second term that there are going to be certain things he has to do as the president of his country that have not been paid attention to almost since day one,” Jones told reporters aboard Air Force One. Obama invited Karzai for talks in Washington in May. “I want to send a strong message that partnership between the United States and Pakistan is going to continue,” Obama said. “We have seen already progress with respect to the military campaign against extremism, but we also want to continue to make progress on the civilian side.” Karzai said he wanted the U.S. partnership to continue “toward a stable, strong, peaceful Afghanistan” and he thanked the U.S. for its help in rebuilding. War Briefing While in Afghanistan, the president also got briefings from the commander he installed last June, General Stanley McChrystal , and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry , said press secretary Robert Gibbs . Landing in darkness at Bagram, Obama travelled the 50 miles to Kabul by helicopter to meet with Karzai at the presidential palace. He had a separate session with Karzai’s cabinet. The trip, kept secret because of security concerns, capped a week in which the president won a major domestic victory with passage of a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health-care system and announced completion of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Obama campaigned for office on a pledge to shift U.S. military resources to Afghanistan from Iraq. A year ago he ordered 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 trainers to the country ahead of Afghanistan’s elections. In December, Obama ordered another 30,000 forces be sent to the country, which ultimately will expand the number of military personnel to 100,000. At the same time he asked North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries to contribute more resources to the conflict. The escalation is intended to reverse Taliban gains and train Afghans to take control of their country so American forces can begin withdrawing in July 2011. U.S. Offensive The U.S. is leading a drive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. A 30-day offensive by 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops, including U.S. Marines and British forces, culminated earlier this month with allies taking control of the town of Marjah. It was the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaeda. Officials have said they are making plans for an even bigger assault on the Taliban heartland city of Kandahar. The increased tempo of the U.S. military campaign has brought higher casualties. In the first two months of the year, 54 U.S. personnel were killed in action in Afghanistan, compared with 27 in the first two months of 2009, according to Defense Department figures . In all, 1,018 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, 742 of them as a result of combat. Regional Approach As part of the Obama administration’s strategy, the U.S. also has strengthened its relationship with the government of neighboring Pakistan, whose army has been fighting a rise in terrorism after the Taliban and remnants of al-Qaeda fled Afghanistan and thousands of tribesmen joined their ranks. Jones emphasized the importance of a regional approach to Afghanistan’s stability and said the administration is encouraged by the role Pakistan is playing. In 30 days, Karzai will convene a peace council with Afghan tribal and regional leaders, Lute said. Then in early May he hopes to host a foreign ministers conference in Kabul. The effort has resulted in the capture of some top Taliban leaders in both countries and increased pressure on remnants of al-Qaeda hiding in tribal areas along the border with Pakistan. The U.S. is still deploying the 30,000 additional troops that Obama authorized. The U.S. will have 98,000 troops there by Sept. 30 for a total of almost 150,000 from all 34 countries in the NATO-led coalition that aims to reverse Taliban gains and train Afghan security forces to begin taking over by July 2011. Defense Secretary Robert Gates , testifying to the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 25 said the Afghan army is making “real strides” and that changes are being made to improve training of Afghan police officers. To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Afghanistan at Hnichols2@bloomberg.net ;

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Obama Makes Unannounced Visit to Afghanistan as U.S. Steps Up Taliban War

March 28, 2010

By Hans Nichols March 28 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama landed in Afghanistan today on an unannounced visit to meet with Afghan government officials and get a briefing from U.S. military leaders on progress in the eight-year-old war. “I’m encouraged by the progress that’s been made” in Afghanistan, Obama said after meeting with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. He called for more work by Afghanistan’s leaders to root out corruption and improve governance. Obama’s in the country as the U.S. role there is growing with an escalation of forces that he ordered and allied troops are engaged in an offense against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Landing at Bagram airfield under the cover of darkness, Obama travelled the 50 miles to Kabul by helicopter to meet with Karzai at the presidential palace. Obama also is holding a separate session with Karzai’s cabinet. Obama’s visit, his first to Afghanistan since becoming president, is intended to emphasize U.S. calls for the Afghan government to crack down on corruption, fight drug trafficking that helps fund the insurgency and institute merit-based systems for government appointments, according to James Jones , Obama’s national security adviser. “We plan to engage President Karzai as we’re going to make him understand that in this second term that there are going to be certain things he has to do as the president of his country that have not been paid attention to almost since day one,” Jones told reporters aboard Air Force One. Jones downplayed suggestions of tension between Obama and Karzai, saying, “I don’t think there’s any daylight between the two.” Karzai Invitation Obama invited Karzai for talks in Washington in May. “I want to send a strong message that partnership between the United States and Pakistan is going to continue,” Obama said. “We have seen already progress with respect to the military campaign against extremism, but we also want to continue to make progress on the civilian side.” While in Afghanistan, the president also plans to speak before U.S. troops and receive briefings from the commander he installed last June, General Stanley McChrystal , and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry , said press secretary Robert Gibbs . “One of the main reasons I am here is to just say thank you for the extraordinary efforts of our U.S. Troops,” Obama said. “All of us want to see a day when Afghanistan is going to be able to provide for its own security.” The trip, shrouded in secrecy because of security concerns, capped a week in which the president won a major domestic victory with passage of a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health- care system and announced completion of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Shift to Afghanistan Obama campaigned for office on a pledge to shift U.S. military resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. A year ago he ordered 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 trainers to the country ahead of Afghanistan’s elections. In December, Obama ordered another 30,000 forces be sent to the country, which ultimately will expand the number of military personnel to 100,000. At the same time he asked North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries to contribute more resources to the war. The escalation is intended to reverse Taliban gains and train afghans to take control of their country so American forces can begin withdrawing in July 2011. The U.S. is leading a drive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. A 30-day offensive by 15,000 Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, including U.S. Marines and British forces culminated earlier this month with allies taking control of the town of Marjah. Next Target It was the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaeda. Officials have said they are making plans for an even bigger assault on the Taliban heartland city of Kandahar. As part of the Obama administration’s strategy, the U.S. also has strengthened its relationship with the government of neighboring Pakistan as well as with the Afghans. Jones and Deputy National Security Adviser Douglas Lute emphasized the importance of a regional approach to Afghanistan’s stability and said they are encouraged by the role Pakistan is playing. In 30 days, Karzai will convene a peace council with Afghan tribal and regional leaders, Lute said. Then in early May he hopes to host a foreign ministers conference in Kabul. Some Progress The effort has resulted in the capture of some top Taliban leaders in both countries and increased pressure of remnants of al-Qaeda hiding in tribal areas of the border. The U.S. is still deploying the 30,000 additional troops that Obama authorized. The U.S. will have 98,000 troops there by Sept. 30 for a total of almost 150,000 from all 34 countries in the NATO-led coalition that aims to reverse Taliban gains and train Afghan security forces to begin taking over by July 2011. Defense Secretary Robert Gates , testifying to the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 25 said the Afghan army is making “real strides” and that changes are being made to improve training of Afghan police officers. To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Afghanistan at Hnichols2@bloomberg.net ;

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Gates Sees Afghan War Gains, Risks as Fight Expands in Taliban Heartland

March 9, 2010

By Viola Gienger March 9 (Bloomberg) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates heard from front-line participants in the Afghan war today, pinning awards for bravery on U.S. soldiers and Marines and shaking hands with farmers selling goods in a revived market. Gates flew to the southern province of Kandahar on his second day in Afghanistan to meet with commanders and visit a forward operating base that has borne heavy casualties and will play a role in the war’s next major offensive. He then traveled to a combat post in neighboring Helmand Province, where a re-opened mud-hut market in the town of Now Zad illustrates U.S. hopes of guaranteeing enough security in most of Afghanistan to restore commerce and a semblance of normal life. “Essentially for four years, that town was a complete ghost town. There wasn’t anybody there,” Gates told reporters traveling with him to the base flanked by mountains with patches of fertile, green farmland in a distant valley. U.S. Marines working with Afghan soldiers and British troops in Operation Cobra’s Anger in December wiped out the insurgents who controlled the area, according to commanders. The market, made of the adobe-like material common in rural Afghanistan, now has about 15 shops selling juice and produce such as potatoes. Residents are beginning to return to the town, once the second-largest in the province. The operation became a model for an offensive the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan is wrapping up in Marjah, farther south in Helmand Province. That, in turn, provides lessons for a bigger and more complex operation being planned in Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban. Security Worries Now Zad also shows the difficulties facing international organizations in supporting development after areas are cleared of insurgents and security improves. Gates heard appeals from the market stall operators in the town for faster demining of roads so they can get more of their goods to markets elsewhere and customers can come to them. “I feel reinforced the path we’re on is the right path,” Gates said after the visit. It also is “going to take a while, and it’s going to be complicated.” Afghan Brigadier General Muhiudin Ghori, who accompanied Gates on his tour, agreed change would take time, in part because of the low levels of education and literacy in his country. Afghan and American troops have formed a “brotherhood,” he said in an interview, speaking through an interpreter. They eat together, work together, fight together, and ties are growing “step by step.” Combat Intensifies The risks are climbing for American troops. Gates awarded two Silver Stars in Kandahar and a Purple Heart in Helmand Province. One of the Silver Star recipients, Lieutenant Colonel John Morgan of Virginia Beach, Virginia, led a group of attack and armed-reconnaissance aircraft in August to rescue an ambushed bomb-clearing patrol. The Pentagon chief also visited the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, which has lost 22 soldiers and seen 62 wounded in seven months on the ground. The unit was diverted from a planned mission in Iraq and was deployed last year to Afghanistan, said battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Neumann. The switch was part of President Barack Obama ’s shift of troops after taking office. The battalion’s new charge was to secure the northern approach to Kandahar City, which included the pomegranate- and wheat-growing Arghandab River Valley, the site of an irrigation dam built with U.S. funding in the 1950s. That meant scaling tall mud walls the farmers use to delineate the property so the soldiers could avoid roads and other areas littered with roadside bombs. ‘Fight Our Way’ “We really had to fight our way to get to the population,” Neumann told reporters traveling with Gates, illustrating his remarks with a computer-slide presentation. U.S. soldiers intercepted militants earlier today who were planting bombs on a route into a village that was going to be used by a medical unit to assist villagers, Neumann said. The action by the reconnaissance platoon prevented an aid effort “from being interrupted by Tommy Taliban,” Neumann said, using a nickname for the enemy fighter. Gates assured the soldiers that he had personally read a memo that their commander had written on improvements needed to the Stryker combat troop-transport vehicle, and he said he would move “urgently” on the recommendations. “You all have had a very tough tour here,” Gates told them in front of a cement block carved with the names of those who died. “You’re in an area that once again is going to be important, part of a decisive phase in this campaign, and once again you will be the tip of the spear.” Gates cautioned against raising expectations too fast. “It’s a poor country to start with and has been through 30 years of war,” he told reporters. “It seems to me, just looking at it, somebody having a roof over their head and being able to work their farm and send their children to school — for a lot of Afghans today sounds like a pretty good life.” To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Now Zad, Afghanistan, at vgienger@bloomberg.net

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Anti-Taliban Campaign May Be Bolstered by Revival of India-Pakistan Talks

February 24, 2010

By Jay Shankar and Khalid Qayum Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — India and Pakistan hold their first formal talks today since the 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, reviving regional peace moves the U.S. is counting on to support its strategy to defeat Afghanistan’s Taliban. After a 15-month impasse, the two sides’ senior foreign ministry officials meet in New Delhi far apart on an agenda India wants to focus on security and Pakistan insists must be broadened to include disputed Kashmir and water rights. Further attacks like the Feb. 13 bombing of an Indian cafe that killed 15 people may shatter even this new beginning. Terrorism is the priority, an official at India’s foreign ministry who asked not to be named said in a Feb. 18 interview, adding that the talks between Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir aren’t a revival of the overall dialogue paused after the Mumbai killings. Ties must not become “hostage” to terrorists attacking both nations, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the same day. A relationship bedeviled by 60 years of mistrust and three wars is a matter of concern to the U.S. as it seeks to prevail in a war with Afghan Taliban fighters in which 994 American troops have died. “The U.S. must have Pakistani cooperation if it hopes to gain an intelligence edge on al Qaeda and Taliban militants,” Stratfor , an Austin, Texas-based intelligence group, said in a report. “The last thing Washington needs is for Pakistan to be distracted from its counterterrorism obligations by a conflict with India.” ‘Indispensable Player’ For the U.S., Pakistan is an “indispensable player as far as a resolution in Afghanistan is concerned,” Zorawar Daulet Singh, an international relations analyst at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Alternatives , said. “This gives Pakistan a significant amount of leverage that they are trying to use to seek concessions” in disputes with India, he said. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month praised India’s restraint after the Mumbai raid while saying a repeat attack would test its patience. “While we would like to see India and Pakistan reach a stable relationship, they will do so on their own terms at the appropriate time,” Robert Blake , the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said in a Feb. 18 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh scrapped five years of peace talks after a rampage by 10 Pakistani gunmen killed 166 people in the November 2008 raid on India’s financial center. Singh demanded Pakistan close down militant groups plotting against India, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba organization India blamed for the three-day assault on Mumbai. Trade Boom Negotiations might help reignite growth in annual bilateral trade that had almost quadrupled to $2.24 billion four years after talks on Kashmir , economic and commercial cooperation, terrorism and drug trafficking began in 2003. Diplomatic, transport and sporting links between the two cricket-loving nations flourished. India is returning to talks despite making little progress in its efforts to get Pakistan to crack down on anti-India militants based there, Stratfor said Feb. 4. Pakistan has begun a secret trial of Lashkar members, one of the groups its military covertly used as proxies to destabilize India. “Under pressure and facing the threat of terrorism in its own country” Pakistan has taken some initiatives to “fight this scourge,” Indian Foreign Secretary Rao said in a Feb. 22 speech in London . “But these steps are selective.” She warned that drawing distinctions between the Taliban, al-Qaeda and terrorist groups like Lashkar was meaningless as the groups are “fused both operationally and ideologically.” Taliban Arrest Pakistan’s arrest of the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar , near Karachi may signal it’s ceding to U.S. pressure for tougher action against top guerrillas hiding there, analysts such as Michael Semple , who served as the European Union’s top political officer in Afghanistan, say. Still, banned militant groups are preaching their ideology with “full freedom” in their Punjab stronghold, Sherry Rehman , a lawmaker from Pakistan’s ruling party, said in Parliament on Feb. 23, the Daily Times reported. Today’s talks come almost two weeks after the bombing of a bakery popular with foreigners in the western Indian city of Pune triggered opposition calls to halt talks with Pakistan. Prime Minister Singh, who has stressed the inevitability of dialogue with Pakistan after meeting its leaders on the sidelines of regional summits, didn’t point fingers at India’s neighbor. Responsibility for deadly bombings in major Indian cities in 2008 was claimed by local militant group Indian Mujahideen, a group Rand Corp. analyst Christine Fair said has links with Lashkar. Beijing Postings Rao and Bashir are not strangers, overlapping as their countries’ respective ambassadors in Beijing for two years. “The two foreign secretaries go with different agendas and different approaches,” Lalit Mansingh , a former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to the U.S., said in a phone interview from New Delhi. “Informal discussions outside the formal sessions,” will help develop relations. Not talking only “widens the communication gap and increases mistrust,” Rashid Ahmad Khan, former chairman of the Department of Political Science at Punjab University said in an interview. That will only benefit hardliners on both sides, he said. For Related News and Information: Regional News: TOP INDIA India’s General News: TNI INDIA GEN BN Stories on Pakistan and India: TNI INDIA PAK BN Stories on terrorism in India: TNI INDIA TERROR Stories on Mumbai attacks: STNI MUMBAIATTACKS

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Afghan Government Decries Civilian Deaths in NATO Air Strike on Minibuses

February 22, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada and Mark Williams Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — A NATO air strike in Afghanistan killed as many as 33 civilians, triggering a government protest over noncombatant deaths that undermine a stepped-up offensive to defeat Taliban insurgents. Early reports of the “unjustifiable” attack on three minibuses in central Uruzgan Province said nearly three dozen people were killed, including four women and a child, Afghanistan’s Council of Ministers said in a statement. Twelve people were injured in the attack on a convoy traveling to the southern province of Kandahar, it said. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said 21 people were known to have died. “We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,” U.S. General Stanley McChrystal , the top commander in Afghanistan, said in a statement. “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.” The incident comes as an offensive by 15,000 Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in neighboring Helmand Province is seeking to wipe out a Taliban stronghold whose opium crop has helped fund the guerrilla movement. It is the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. Air Attack NATO said Feb. 15 that 12 civilians had been killed in a rocket attack as part of the offensive. McChrystal apologized for that attack as well, saying it undermined the mission’s stated goals of restoring security and stability in the region. The latest civilian deaths may be the worst such incident since a Sept. 4 air strike in the northern province of Kunduz, ordered by a German commander, killed as many as 142 people, including civilians. The fallout from that attack, which outraged Afghanistan’s leadership, prompted the ouster of a minister in German Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s cabinet and sparked a debate about Germany’s presence in Afghanistan. The Dutch government collapsed two days ago over the refusal by the coalition’s Labor Party to extend the country’s military deployment in Uruzgan province. NATO said aircraft yesterday fired on suspected militants in Uruzgan believed to be preparing to attack a unit of Afghan and international troops “resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement. Women and Children Women and children were later found at the scene of the attack, and the wounded were taken for medical treatment, it said, without giving further details. Afghan ministers have urged NATO forces to avoid civilian casualties “considered to be a major obstacle for an effective counterterrorism effort.” Bashary, the ministry spokesman, told Associated Press the minibuses had been carrying 42 civilians when they were attacked driving down a major road in the mountainous province. At least 13 NATO troops, one Afghan soldier, 16 civilians and about 120 insurgents have died during the Helmand fighting, according to news media including the Associated Press and Voice of America. Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged forces “to exercise absolute caution to avoid harming civilians” before the operation began Feb. 13. Obama Policy The Helmand offensive is the first major combat test of U.S. President Barack Obama ’s policy of sending in reinforcements to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train local forces to start taking over parts of Afghanistan in July 2011. The next stage will be to “roll eastwards into Kandahar,” British Major General Nick Carter, the top coalition commander for the area, said Feb. 18. More troops are scheduled to come into Afghanistan starting in March as part of the surge, aided by additional Afghan security forces. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Williams in New Delhi at mwilliams108@bloomberg.net

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NATO Air Strike in Afghanistan Kills as Many as 33 Civilians in Minibuses

February 22, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada and Mark Williams Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — A NATO air strike in Afghanistan’s central Uruzgan Province killed at least 21 civilians, including women and children, the country’s Interior Ministry said. Those killed were travelling in three minibuses, said Zemarai Bashary, the ministry ’s spokesman. “Fourteen wounded people have been found” at the scene, he said. NATO said aircraft yesterday fired on suspected militants believed to be preparing to attack a unit of Afghan and international troops “resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded.” Women and children were later found at the scene of the attack, and the wounded were taken for medical treatment, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement, without giving further details. “We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,” U.S. General Stanley McChrystal , the top commander in Afghanistan, said in today’s statement. “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.” Bashary told Associated Press the minibuses had been carrying 42 civilians when they were attacked driving down a major road in the mountainous province. The incident comes as an offensive by 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops in neighboring Helmand Province is seeking to wipe out a Taliban stronghold whose opium crop has helped fund the guerrilla movement. It is the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. Helmand Fighting At least 13 NATO troops, one Afghan soldier, 16 civilians and about 120 insurgents have died during the Helmand fighting, according to news media including the Associated Press and Voice of America. Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged forces “to exercise absolute caution to avoid harming civilians” before the operation began Feb. 13. The Helmand offensive is the first major combat test of U.S. President Barack Obama ’s policy of sending in reinforcements to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train local forces to start taking over parts of Afghanistan in July 2011. The next stage will be to “roll eastwards into Kandahar,” British Major General Nick Carter, the top coalition commander for the area, said Feb. 18. More troops are scheduled to come into Afghanistan starting in March as part of the surge, aided by additional Afghan security forces. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Williams in New Delhi at mwilliams108@bloomberg.net

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NATO Air Strike in Afghanistan Kills 21 Civilians in Minibuses, Injures 14

February 22, 2010

By Eltaf Najafizada and Mark Williams Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — A NATO air strike in Afghanistan’s central Uruzgan Province killed at least 21 civilians, including women and children, the country’s Interior Ministry said. Those killed were travelling in three minibuses, said Zemarai Bashary, the ministry ’s spokesman. “Fourteen wounded people have been found” at the scene, he said. NATO said aircraft yesterday fired on suspected militants believed to be preparing to attack a unit of Afghan and international troops “resulting in a number of individuals killed and wounded.” Women and children were later found at the scene of the attack, and the wounded were taken for medical treatment, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement, without giving further details. “We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,” U.S. General Stanley McChrystal , the top commander in Afghanistan, said in today’s statement. “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.” Bashary told Associated Press the minibuses had been carrying 42 civilians when they were attacked driving down a major road in the mountainous province. The incident comes as an offensive by 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops in neighboring Helmand Province is seeking to wipe out a Taliban stronghold whose opium crop has helped fund the guerrilla movement. It is the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. Helmand Fighting At least 13 NATO troops, one Afghan soldier, 16 civilians and about 120 insurgents have died during the Helmand fighting, according to news media including the Associated Press and Voice of America. Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged forces “to exercise absolute caution to avoid harming civilians” before the operation began Feb. 13. The Helmand offensive is the first major combat test of U.S. President Barack Obama ’s policy of sending in reinforcements to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train local forces to start taking over parts of Afghanistan in July 2011. The next stage will be to “roll eastwards into Kandahar,” British Major General Nick Carter, the top coalition commander for the area, said Feb. 18. More troops are scheduled to come into Afghanistan starting in March as part of the surge, aided by additional Afghan security forces. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Williams in New Delhi at mwilliams108@bloomberg.net

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General Petraeus Says U.S. Combat Losses in Afghanistan Will Be `Tough’

February 21, 2010

By Alison Vekshin Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) — General David Petraeus , the top U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, said U.S. losses in Afghanistan will be “tough” and the U.S. presence there is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. These types of military offensives “are hard, and they’re hard all the time,” Petraeus, 57, said today in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We’re there for a very, very important reason and we can’t forget that,” Petraeus, who heads U.S. Central Command , said. “We’re in Afghanistan to ensure that it cannot once again be a sanctuary for the kind of attacks that were carried out on 9/11.” An offensive by 15,000 Afghan and NATO troops, including U.S. Marines and Afghan and British forces, in southern Afghanistan is seeking to wipe out a Taliban stronghold whose opium crop has helped fund the guerrilla movement. It is the biggest operation against the Taliban since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks. While the Taliban forces are “a bit disjointed,” they are “formidable,” Petraeus said. “There’s still fighting going on, without question.” At least 13 NATO troops, one Afghan soldier, 16 civilians and about 120 insurgents have been killed during the fighting, according to news reports including the Associated Press and Voice of America. Petraeus said the joint Afghan-North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation in southern Afghanistan is the first step in a 12- to 18-month campaign. He called the battle in Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s Helmand province and one of the country’s biggest opium-producing areas, “the initial salvo.” Major Combat Test The offensive is the first major combat test of President Barack Obama ’s Afghan policy of sending in reinforcements to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train Afghan forces to start taking over parts of the country in July 2011. The next stage will be to “roll eastwards into Kandahar,” British Major General Nick Carter, the top coalition commander for the area, said Feb. 18. More U.S. and other troops are scheduled to come into Afghanistan from March onward as part of the surge, and additional Afghan security forces coming available every week will aid that next push. The Taliban and “other extremist elements” are fighting back in Marjah, Petraeus said today, comparing the offensive with the U.S. troop surge in Iraq. The al-Qaeda terrorist network is a “thinking and adaptive enemy” and the U.S. has to maintain pressure on it everywhere, Petraeus said. “This is an enemy that is looking for any opportunity to attack our partners and, indeed, our homeland,” Petraeus said. Nuclear-Armed Iran A nuclear-armed Iran is “certainly a ways off,” Petraeus said. The U.S., its European allies and United Nations inspectors suspect Iran is using its uranium enrichment program to build a nuclear bomb. The U.S. wants more UN sanctions aimed at halting the program, which Iran, with the world’s second-biggest oil and natural gas reserves, says is for peaceful uses such as power generation. After a year of trying to handle the issue diplomatically by engaging Iranian officials, the U.S. and other countries will pursue a “pressure track” to express concerns about its nuclear activities, Petraeus said. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Petraeus declined to respond to a question on whether he supports repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allows gays to serve as long as they don’t reveal their sexual orientation. He said he would answer the question when he testifies before Congress “if asked at that time.” Petraeus said he’s “not sure” whether U.S. troops care about the sexual orientation of their colleagues, and he supports the Defense Department’s plan to review the policy. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell , 72, rejected claims by former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney that Obama has made the U.S. less safe. “The nation is still at risk,” Powell said today on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts.” — With assistance from Viola Gienger in Washington and Eltaf Najafizada in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Editors: Ann Hughey , Joe Sabo . To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Vekshin in Washington at avekshin@bloomberg.net

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Allied Rockets Kill 12 Civilians in Afghan Fighting; McChrystal Apologizes

February 14, 2010

By James Rupert and Eltaf Najafizada Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — U.S.-led forces engaged in firefights with insurgents and uncovered stockpiles of explosives, as they sought to reestablish Afghan government control over a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. Troops from the Afghan government and North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries were involved in “clearing operations” on their second-day of a campaign in the district of Marjah, in the Helmand province, British Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant Wendy Wheadon said in an interview from Kandahar. Twelve Afghan civilians were killed today when an allied rocket went awry, according to a NATO and Afghan government statement. The use of mobile rockets was suspended after the accident, the statement said. “The current operation in Central Helmand is aimed at restoring security and stability to this vital area of Afghanistan,” General Stanley McChrystal , the top commander in the country, said in a statement. “It’s regrettable that in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost.” The offensive involves 15,000 troops, the biggest number since the war began, according to NATO, and aims to wipe out a Taliban stronghold whose opium crop has helped fund the guerrilla movement. Opium is refined into heroin. It’s the first major combat test for some of the 50,000 reinforcements President Barack Obama authorized for Afghanistan to reverse Taliban gains in the war that began in October 2001. Sending Shockwaves “Instead of clearing the area and leaving, as we frequently did in the past, our plans call for clearing, holding the area and then providing some building for the people there – - better security, better economic opportunity, better governance,” U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. The offensive also has what Jones called “a much bigger Afghan face,” with two Afghans for every one U.S. soldier involved. The operation ‘is going to make a big change in not only the southern part of Afghanistan but will send shockwaves through the rest of the country that there is a new direction, there is new commitment, and that we’re going to be successful,” Jones said on “Fox News Sunday.” The provincial government plans to move in “quickly” with “road construction and digging of wells,” Ahmadi said. “We want to have a government working as soon as the military operation to control Marjah is complete.” Bombs Everywhere Three caches of explosives, including 250 kilograms (551 pounds) of ammonium nitrate and 300 meters (984 feet) of detonation cord, were discovered in Marjah and surrounding areas, a NATO statement said. Bombs are “a concern — the Taliban has placed a lot of them everywhere,” said Lieutenant Commander Iain Baxter of the Royal Navy. “We need to try to find them and deal with them.” Twenty-seven Taliban have been killed since the NATO troops attacked before dawn Feb. 13, said Daud Ahmadi , a government spokesman for Helmand province. Two soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force, one American and one Briton, have been killed, said U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Sabrina D. Foster. While Helmand has been a guerrilla stronghold and a key Taliban supply route from nearby Pakistan, U.S. troops began operations in the province in the past 21 months. “Recent gains enjoyed by insurgents in Helmand have made a deliberate and properly resourced campaign by coalition forces that much more critical” in the province, said a report in September by Washington-based Institute for the Study of War . The U.S. presence in Helmand has improved security and the economy since July, said Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a tribal elder near Marjah, in a phone interview. Still, the accompanying aid effort — which provided millions of dollars worth of seed and fertilizer to encourage farmers to grow wheat instead of opium – - has been undercut by a corruption scandal in which several top provincial officials have been arrested. A Taliban commander in Afghanistan, Akhtar Mohammad, said before the fighting that such operations had been attempted before and failed. “The Taliban have never been defeated,” Mohammad said. To contact the reporters on this story: To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net ; Eltaf Najafizada in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net

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Afghan, U.S. Forces Drive to Oust Taliban From Helmand Province Stronghold

February 13, 2010

By Viola Gienger and Eltaf Najafizada Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Marines joined by British and Afghan soldiers assaulted a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan early today in what may be the biggest offensive of the war that began in 2001. About 15,000 troops participated, the NATO-led coalition said in an e-mailed statement. Troops were ferried to the plain of Marjah in Helmand province by helicopter beginning at about 2 a.m. local time. “Key objectives were secured with minimal interference,” U.K. Major General Gordon Messenger told reporters in London. He declined to discuss allied casualties and said there was a “low number” of insurgents killed. The offensive is the first major combat test for some of the 50,000 reinforcements President Barack Obama has authorized for Afghanistan since taking office. Their aim is to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train Afghan forces to start taking over parts of the country in July 2011. Coalition forces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have talked openly for weeks about the offensive in an effort to persuade Taliban militants to give up and warn the population so residents can flee. Marjah, an area centered about 28 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, is one of the biggest opium-production areas. Messenger said over the next 24 hours “the theme will be one of consolidation.” Daud Ahmadi , a spokesman for the province’s governor, said more than 450 families from Marjah have fled to Lashkar Gah, where authorities are providing food, blankets and other supplies. U.S. Goal The offensive is the allied forces’ effort to consolidate their biggest previous attempt, in July 2009, to establish government control in Helmand , where opium and smuggling trails to adjacent Pakistan have provided the guerrillas with revenue and supply routes. The capture of Marjah would connect areas seized by U.S. and British forces last year, according to U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal , the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. The Marines are driving into farmland cut by irrigation canals, built by a U.S. aid program in the 1950s, that are too deep to drive through. Authorities in Lashkar Gah cited fleeing Marjah residents as saying Taliban have laced the dirt roads and the mud walls of farm fields and residential compounds with remote-controlled bombs. The Taliban have “probably no better ground in Helmand on which to fight a defensive battle,” said a Feb. 4 report by Stratfor , an Austin, Texas-based strategic analysis company. Three Deaths Three U.S. troops were killed by an improvised bomb in the area, NATO said today. If the Marines capture Marjah, the greater challenge, as elsewhere in Helmand, may be for international donors to restart the farming economy to build support for the government and marginalize the Taliban, according to Richard B. Scott , a retired U.S. development specialist who has worked in the province since the 1970s. The U.S. presence in Helmand has improved security and the economy since July, said Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a tribal elder near Marjah, in a phone interview. Still, the accompanying aid effort — which provided millions of dollars worth of seed and fertilizer to encourage farmers to grow wheat instead of opium – - has been undercut by a corruption scandal in which several top provincial officials have been arrested. A Taliban commander in Afghanistan, Akhtar Mohammad, said such operations had been attempted before and failed. Taliban Claim “The Taliban have never been defeated,” Mohammad said. The offensive began a few hours after Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to the attack following discussions with McChrystal and U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry , the Washington Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials. Dubbed Operation Moshtarak, which means “Together” in the Dari language, the offensive will be the largest joint operation to date between Afghan and coalition forces, according to a Feb. 11 report by Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. Marjah, whose population is probably less than 50,000, became “a major command and control” hub for the Taliban and narcotics traders “after U.S. Marines drove insurgents out of their previous sanctuary” to the south in Garmser in May 2008, Dressler wrote. A three-day operation last May against one of two main bazaars that host the insurgency netted the largest drug cache in Afghanistan to date and resulted in the deaths of 47 militants, according to Dressler, who recently briefed a Marine Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, prior to deployment. Coalition and Afghan commanders have been meeting with local leaders to plan the operation and find ways of protecting the population. McChrystal said the planning for the offensive has been led by Helmand’s governor, Mohammad Gulab Mangal. To contact the reporters on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net ; Eltaf Najafizada in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net

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Afghan, U.S. Forces Swoop Down on Taliban Stronghold in Southern Offensive

February 12, 2010

By Viola Gienger Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Marines joined by British and Afghan soldiers began an assault on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan early today in what may be one of the biggest offensives of the war. A U.S. military official who asked not to be identified confirmed the operation was under way against insurgents in the town of Marjah in Helmand province. Coalition forces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have talked openly for weeks about the impending action in an effort to persuade Taliban militants to give up and warn the population so residents can flee. The town, located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, is considered one of the country’s biggest opium-production centers. U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal , the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said the offensive’s goal is to connect other areas of Helmand that the Marines and British, Danish and Estonian troops recaptured in the past year. “We’re expanding that, increasing the areas that will be under government of Afghanistan control,” McChrystal told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO defense ministers meeting in Istanbul on Feb. 4. The offensive is the first major combat test for some of the 50,000 reinforcements President Barack Obama has authorized for Afghanistan since taking office. Their aim is to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train Afghan forces to start taking over parts of the country in July 2011. “This is the next example of the evolution and, I guess, the maturation of the capacity” of coalition and Afghan forces,” McChrystal said. Karzai Meeting The offensive began a few hours after Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to the attack following discussions with McChrystal and U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry , the Washington Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials. The Associated Press reported earlier from the Marjah area on the beginning of the offensive, saying troops were ferried into the town by helicopter before dawn. Dubbed Operation Moshtarak, which means “Together” in the Dari language, the offensive will be the largest joint operation to date between Afghan and coalition forces, according to a Feb. 11 report by Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. The campaign may include as many as 15,000 coalition and Afghan troops, wrote Dressler, who recently briefed a Marine Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, prior to deployment. British Major General Gordon Messenger said Feb. 7 that the offensive probably will involve heavy fighting with insurgents. Taliban Hub Marjah became “a major command and control” hub for the Taliban and narcotics traders “after U.S. Marines drove insurgents out of their previous sanctuary” to the south in Germser in April 2008, Dressler said. Marjah’s population probably is less than 50,000, he said. A three-day operation last May against one of two main bazaars that host the insurgency netted the largest drug cache in Afghanistan to date and resulted in the deaths of 47 militants, according to Dressler. Coalition and Afghan commanders have been meeting with local leaders to plan the operation and find ways of protecting the population. McChrystal said the planning for the offensive has been led by the governor of Helmand Province and supported by the relevant government ministries. To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistani Taliban Say Leader Mehsud `Alive and Healthy,’ Refuting Reports

February 1, 2010

By Anwar Shakir Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s Taliban rejected reports that the leader of the country’s Taliban forces, Hakimullah Mehsud, was dead. Mehsud “is alive, and the reports about his death are propaganda of the pro-western media against the Taliban,” Azam Tariq, a Taliban spokesman, said in a written statement sent to Bloomberg today via fax from the South Waziristan agency. The Taliban leader is “healthy,” he added. To contact the reporter on this story: Anwar Shakir at ashakir1@bloomberg.net

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Karzai Says Afghanistan May Need Foreign Troops for Another 10 to 15 Years

January 28, 2010

By James Rupert and Thomas Penny Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — A $500 million plan to entice Taliban fighters to quit the growing insurgency in Afghanistan will form the centerpiece of a conference in London after President Hamid Karzai warned that international troops may be needed in his country for as many as 15 years. More than 60 foreign ministers are meeting top Afghan officials to approve a political strategy backing the U.S.-led troop surge. The ministers will show support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and resolve to stabilize his country, while countering falling public support for the war in Europe and the U.S. by offering a timeline for troops to come home. “This conference marks the beginning of the transition process, agreeing the conditions under which we can begin district by district, province by province, transferring the responsibility for security from international forces to Afghan forces,” U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a speech today opening the one-day meeting. Governments at the conference will pledge about $500 million, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, to provide jobs, homes and farming help for Taliban fighters who return to civilian life. Alexander Dobrindt, deputy leader of Merkel’s sister party, the Christian Social Union , dubbed the plan a “Taliban cash-for-clunkers” program. Conference attendees will also renew pressure on Karzai to reduce official corruption that has weakened his government. Karzai, in an interview with BBC television, said he’ll present a “new, invigorated” anti-corruption plan. The blueprint will include more deadlines, laws and regulations than previous plans, he said. Sanctions Lifted The reconciliation offer “goes to those who are not part of al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks who have accepted the Afghan constitution,” Karzai said. The United Nations Security Council this week lifted sanctions against five former Taliban officials, in what Afghan UN ambassador Zahir Tanin called “a message for anyone in the Taliban that wants to join the peace process.” The Taliban’s regional commander for southern Afghanistan, Akhtar Mohammad, dismissed the London conference as “nonsense that will do nothing to bring Taliban to the negotiating table.” In a telephone interview from an undisclosed location, Mohammad repeated the guerrillas’ demand that all foreign forces leave Afghanistan. In trying to stabilize the Afghan government before 2011, when the U.S. plans to begin reducing its military forces, governments may be hampered by Karzai’s political weakness. The Afghan leader has failed to get parliament to approve his full Cabinet 12 weeks after being declared the winner of a fraud- tainted election. ‘Loss of Momentum’ The conference, hosted by the British government , will try to reverse what “was essentially a loss of momentum in the whole Afghan project” last year because of distractions around the disputed elections, plus Taliban military gains, said Mark Sedwill , the British ambassador to Afghanistan, who was appointed this week as the top civilian North Atlantic Treaty Organization official in the country. In 2009, 520 NATO troops were killed in the Afghan war, a 76 percent jump over 2008, according to the casualty-monitoring Web site iCasualties.org . NATO is getting 38,500 reinforcements in Afghanistan that will bring its troop strength to almost 150,000 in the ninth year of the war. Foreign Troops Needed Afghanistan may need the support of international forces for as long as 15 years, Karzai told the BBC. For training the Afghan forces, “five to 10 years is enough,” Karzai said. “With regard to sustaining them, the time may be extended to 10 to 15 years.” Since 2003, several Afghan reconciliation plans have collapsed because the government failed to deliver on promises of land, money or jobs for Taliban who quit the war. “This time they have to be sure the money gets through,” said Shada Islam , an analyst at the European Policy Centre , a research institute in Brussels. The new effort has a better chance because it has greater international support, Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. The U.S. backs the plan, its special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke , told MSNBC this week in an interview. Germany will contribute $70 million, Merkel has said. Mullah Omar A reconciliation program should work at local and provincial levels to woo lower-level Taliban, and should exclude the Taliban leadership including its commander, Mullah Omar , former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told Bloomberg Television in an interview yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Afghanistan is seen as the world’s second-most corrupt country, according to the annual survey by Transparency International , a Berlin-based corruption-monitoring group. Graft has outstripped the country’s violence as the biggest worry for Afghans, 59 percent of whom called it their top concern in a survey released this month by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. To contact the reporters on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net ; Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net ;

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Pakistan Government, Tribesmen Close to Security Pact in Taliban War Zone

January 20, 2010

By Anwar Shakir Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s government is close to an agreement to hand back responsibility for maintaining order in the longtime Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan to tribal leaders after a three-month military offensive. “The tribal elders have accepted the government’s demands and we hope to work out the mode of implementation” in a meeting today, Syed Shahab Ali Shah, the government’s chief representative for South Waziristan , said in an interview in Tank, the tribal agency’s winter capital. Leaders of the Mehsud tribe, which dominates the area, failed to prevent the rise of militancy since the U.S. invaded neighboring Afghanistan in 2001 and removed the Taliban in that country from power. Thousands of Mehsud men then joined the Taliban to form the biggest terrorist threat in Pakistan, killing scores of pro-government tribal elders. Pakistan hopes that cooperation from the tribes will help quell violence that claimed more than 600 lives in nationwide suicide bombings and gun battles since 28,000 troops launched an offensive in South Waziristan in October. It would also pave the way for an eventual military withdrawal. “First the government has to completely wipe out the terrorists from the area,” said Syed Alam Mehsud, an independent analyst in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan. “Then the tribes will be willing and able to implement the government’s demands.” Pakistan has said 80 percent of attacks in its cities were planned by Mehsud Taliban. More than 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in the country last year, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad. Dispute Resolution Shah, the government’s political agent in South Waziristan, has held seven jirgas or meetings on a security deal since Dec. 15. About 400 elders from the Mehsud tribe, the main tribe in the northern half of South Waziristan, attended. Jirgas, which take place in the north and west of Pakistan and in Afghanistan, are the traditional Pashtun form of consensus building and dispute resolution. In the Jan. 3 jirga between the Mehsuds and the political agent, tribal elders wearing traditional turbans sat in a circle on the ground as a speaker announced the agenda and sought a show of hands to proceed. The end of the jirga was signaled by a prayer by the most senior tribal elder. In today’s gathering in Tank, the government will continue to press demands that the Mehsuds hand over 382 wanted militants and agree not to facilitate terrorism, Shah said. He also said the Mehsuds must not allow foreigners or Pakistanis from outside South Waziristan to enter the tribal agency. ‘Civil War’ “Why can’t the government get the wanted persons themselves,” said Zubair Khan, a professor of international relations at Peshawar University. “Making demands like this will lead to a civil war between factions of the Mehsud tribe.” The tribes will need to raise an army of fighters to resist militants, Shah said. The army and paramilitary troops will stay in South Waziristan “to protect the tribes and help reconstruct” the region, army spokesman Athar Abbas said. “We will facilitate the tribal army when needed.” The central bank said this month the nation may miss its fiscal deficit target of 4.9 percent of gross domestic product this year because of war expenses. Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has said the cost of battling militants in northwest tribal areas bordering Afghanistan is rising. The Mehsuds will be responsible for any militant activities in South Waziristan under a special law governing the region that dates back more than 100 years, Shah said. They will also be required to hand over all heavy weapons including rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns. Under the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulation, tribes are collectively responsible for any criminal acts in territory under their control. The three main factions of the Mehsud tribe dominate different areas of South Waziristan. Return Refugees There are an estimated 20,000 fighters in the federally administered tribal areas, of which 5,000 are in South Waziristan, according to Pakistan’s army. “We have accepted the demands in principle,” Salahuddin Khan Mehsud, general secretary of the Mehsud Peace Committee said in an interview. “The difficulty for us is that we are refugees right now and until we return home it’s very difficult for us to meet these conditions. We need time.” As many as 500,000 refugees from the Mehsud area of South Waziristan are living in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank, according to the government. Troops have cleared 80 percent of South Waziristan from militants and refugees will return within two months, according to the army. To contact the reporter on this story: Anwar Shakir in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan at 532 or ashakir@bloomberg.net

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U.S. Missiles Kill 13 Pakistani Militants Amid Report Taliban Head Escaped

January 14, 2010

By Khalid Qayum and Anwar Shakir Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Missiles fired from a U.S. drone aircraft killed 13 militants in Pakistan’s northwest, a government official said. Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud escaped the attack, Agence France-Presse reported. Four missiles struck a militant base in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan early today, Khalid Khan, a spokesman at the government’s political office in the region, said in a phone interview. Mehsud, who left the area before the attack, is “alive and completely safe,” AFP reported, citing Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq . Pakistan’s AAJ television also cited a Taliban spokesman as saying Mehsud had survived the strike. The television channel earlier reported Mehsud and three top commanders were killed, without saying where it obtained the information. The attack was at least the seventh by U.S. unmanned aircraft inside Pakistani territory this month. It comes after a suicide bomber killed seven CIA operatives at a base in the eastern Afghanistan province of Khost. In a video released on Jan. 9 by the Pakistan Taliban, the alleged Jordanian bomber is seen sitting next to Hakimullah Mehsud, IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Virginia-based organization that tracks Islamist videos, said in a statement. Hammam Khalil al-Balawi said in the video he was seeking revenge for the killing in a U.S. drone attack in August of Hakimullah predecessor Baitullah Mehsud , IntelCenter said. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi yesterday criticized drone attacks in the border area in a joint news conference with Richard Holbrooke , the U.S. representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan. The U.S. says North Waziristan is a stronghold for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants who are fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. Kill Civilians Such operations, which regularly kill civilians as well as militants, are counterproductive and the U.S. should instead focus on the war inside Afghanistan, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said on Jan. 7. Pakistan’s army in October sent 28,000 troops into South Waziristan to fight the Mehsud-led Taliban, triggering a wave of revenge suicide bombings and gun attacks that have killed more than 600 civilians and members of the security forces. To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net Anwar Shakir in Islamabad at ashakir@bloomberg.net

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Pakistan Suicide Bomb Kills at Least 80 at Volleyball Tourney in Northwest

January 1, 2010

By Farhan Sharif and Anwar Shakir Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) — At least 51 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a volleyball game in a pro-government town in northwest Pakistan , police and rescue workers said. At least 80 people were also wounded in the explosion, Edhi ambulance service spokesman Mujahid Khan said in a phone interview from Peshawar. “A building collapsed because of the blast, and we are busy trying to rescue the injured,” Police officer Mazher Hussain Shah said in a telephone interview from Lakki Marwat, where the incident occurred. The residents of the town have been supporting the Pakistani government’s efforts to suppress Taliban militants responsible for killing thousands of civilians in terror attacks in 2009, Lakki Marwat Police Chief Mohammed Ayub said in a phone interview. Pakistan’s military is battling the Taliban in South Waziristan and Swat Valley in the nation’s northwest border regions adjacent to Afghanistan. On Dec. 28 at least 43 people were killed and 100 were injured in a suicide bomb attack during a religious procession in Karachi. This was the deadliest bombing in the city since 170 people were killed in an attack on slain leader Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession in October 2007. To contact the reporter on this story: Farhan Sharif in Karachi, Pakistan fsharif2@bloomberg.net ; Anwar Shakir at ashakir@bloomberg.net

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Pakistan Suicide Bomb Kills at Least 51 at Volleyball Tourney in Northwest

January 1, 2010

By Farhan Sharif and Anwar Shakir Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) — At least 51 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a volleyball game in a pro-government town in northwest Pakistan , police and rescue workers said. At least 80 people were also wounded in the explosion, Edhi ambulance service spokesman Mujahid Khan said in a phone interview from Peshawar. “A building collapsed because of the blast, and we are busy trying to rescue the injured,” Police officer Mazher Hussain Shah said in a telephone interview from Lakki Marwat, where the incident occurred. The residents of the town have been supporting the Pakistani government’s efforts to suppress Taliban militants responsible for killing thousands of civilians in terror attacks in 2009, Lakki Marwat Police Chief Mohammed Ayub said in a phone interview. Pakistan’s military is battling the Taliban in South Waziristan and Swat Valley in the nation’s northwest border regions adjacent to Afghanistan. On Dec. 28 at least 43 people were killed and 100 were injured in a suicide bomb attack during a religious procession in Karachi. This was the deadliest bombing in the city since 170 people were killed in an attack on slain leader Benazir Bhutto’s homecoming procession in October 2007. To contact the reporter on this story: Farhan Sharif in Karachi, Pakistan fsharif2@bloomberg.net ; Anwar Shakir at ashakir@bloomberg.net

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Seven CIA Workers Killed in Afghanistan as U.S. Increases Its Spying Role

January 1, 2010

By Viola Gienger Jan. 1 (Bloomberg) — Seven CIA employees were killed and six others injured in a terrorist attack on a base in eastern Afghanistan as the agency steps up its presence in the country alongside thousands more U.S. military forces. President Barack Obama told Central Intelligence Agency employees yesterday that their colleagues who died Dec. 30 were “patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life.” “In recent years, the CIA has been tested as never before,” Obama, who is on vacation in Hawaii, said in the letter to agency employees. The attack occurred at a forward operating base in Khost Province, CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a separate message to employees. The names and details of the employees’ work won’t be released “due to the sensitivity of their mission and other ongoing operations,” the agency said. “Those who make a real difference often face real danger,” Panetta said. U.S. military doctors and nurses saved the lives of those wounded in the attack, according to the statement. The CIA statement on the Afghanistan blast didn’t provide specifics on how the assault occurred or who was responsible beyond saying it was “the result of a terrorist attack.” ‘Staggering’ Losses “This has to be one of the highest losses in a single bombing” in the agency’s history, said Mark Lowenthal , a former CIA assistant director for analysis and production. “To lose seven at one time, that’s a bit staggering.” The Taliban claimed responsibility, Agence France-Presse reported earlier. The chief of the CIA base, a mother of three, was among those killed, according to the Associated Press, which cited former agency officials. CIA officers operating from such a base regularly mingle with the local population as part of their job, so it wouldn’t be unheard-of that an attacker could slip through security, Lowenthal said. Obama has stepped up pressure on a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan by increasing the U.S. military force by 23,000 earlier this year, including 4,000 trainers, and authorizing 30,000 more to be in place next year. Panetta said in a Sept. 18 interview that the renewed strength of the Taliban insurgency prompted the CIA to establish more bases there. “We are increasing our presence” because the Taliban’s “capabilities have improved a great deal” in Afghanistan, he said. “The result is that I think everyone, our military and civilian operations, demand better intelligence.” Role of CIA Lowenthal, the former assistant director, said the incident isn’t likely to change the role of the CIA, which sent the first U.S. personnel into Afghanistan after the 2001 terror attacks. “They will not rethink the CIA’s role in the mission,” said Lowenthal, now president and chief executive officer of Intelligence & Security Academy LLC in Reston, Virginia. “What they’ll rethink is how can we do this more safely.” Obama lamented the loss of the CIA officers and praised the agency in his letter to employees. “Your triumphs and even your names may be unknown to your fellow Americans,” Obama said. “But your service is deeply appreciated.” The U.S. is pressing the government of neighboring Pakistan to cooperate more in combating militants on its own territory, and Obama has vowed to use all elements of U.S. power to destroy al-Qaeda and undermine its allies. Taliban Inroads American forces ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan for harboring al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. As the U.S. military’s attention shifted to Iraq in recent years, the Taliban made their biggest inroads in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is porous and largely out of the control of governing authorities in the two nations’ capitals. In the attack, an Afghan National Army officer wearing a suicide vest entered the base and blew himself up inside the gym, the AP reported, citing a statement from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid. A U.S. official briefed on the blast also said it took place in the gym, the AP reported. Reports surface periodically of CIA air strikes on militant hideouts in Pakistan by drone aircraft, a practice that Pakistani leaders publicly condemn. “Our operations in Pakistan, directed at al-Qaeda, have been very successful in disrupting al-Qaeda as far as their operations and their planning,” Panetta said in the September interview at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that U.S. officials are pressing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region to target Taliban leaders based in Quetta. The Pentagon and the State Department said Dec. 30 that preliminary information indicated that eight Americans had been killed. To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net .

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Eight Americans Killed in Suicide-Bomb Attack at Afghanistan Military Base

December 31, 2009

By Viola Gienger and Tony Capaccio Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — Eight American civilians died in a suicide-bomb attack on an American military base in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said. The terrorist assault occurred as the U.S. expands its involvement in the war in Afghanistan. A single attacker was responsible for the blast yesterday, which also caused an unspecified number of injuries, according to the official, who asked not to be identified. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Almarah Belk, said the Americans died at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province. Most, if not all of those killed, were probably CIA employees or contractors, the Washington Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials. The Central Intelligence Agency couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. An attack on a base is particularly threatening because the sites are regarded as sanctuaries, said retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane, a member of the advisory Defense Policy Board. “So when you’re able to penetrate that, you achieve a level of terror and intimidation that the attacks outside the bases, even though they happen daily, do not achieve.” Four Canadian soldiers and a Canadian reporter were also killed yesterday in a roadside bomb attack on an armored patrol vehicle south of Kandahar City, according to a military statement. Taliban Insurgency U.S. officials haven’t described the affiliations of the civilians killed at the base. The U.S. has been expanding the ranks of civilian aid experts in Afghanistan in parallel with the surge of military reinforcements aimed at the Taliban insurgency. Belk said she didn’t know what installations or agencies are located at the base. “We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in an e-mailed statement. The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development aim to strengthen the government of President Hamid Karzai and local officials to demonstrate to Afghans the benefits of backing elected leaders and defeating the Taliban. General Stanley McChrystal , the commander of U.S. and other NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, has said civilian aid will be pivotal in solidifying gains the military makes with the 30,000 additional troops that President Barack Obama authorized earlier this month. Health, Education The number of civilians working on reconstruction, improving governance and bolstering health and education services is due to triple to about 1,000 in January compared with a year earlier. As of October, U.S. civilians worked at about 52 locations in Afghanistan, according to Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew . “In some cases, they’re moving into areas that have just been cleared with the military as the clearing process is under way,” Lew told reporters in Washington on Oct. 26. “They go in groups of two to 10 to 15. They’re surrounded by locally employed staff, by Afghan nationals who are working in a civilian capacity and by” employees of non-governmental organizations, he said. Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician , a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force in Afghanistan, said the base explosion is under investigation. Border With Pakistan Khost is located in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. Southern and eastern Afghanistan are areas where the Taliban have made the biggest inroads. The additional U.S. troops will bring the number of American forces in Afghanistan to almost 100,000 in 2010. Obama’s strategy is to roll back the Taliban, which harbored al- Qaeda before being ousted from power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in time to begin a drawdown of troops in July 2011. In testimony to Congress this month after Obama announced his revised approach, officials including Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned that the increasing activity also was bound to lead to higher U.S. and allied casualties until the momentum turns. To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net ; Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net

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Eight American Civilians Killed in Suicide-Bomb Attack at Afghanistan Base

December 30, 2009

By Viola Gienger and Tony Capaccio Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — Eight American civilians died in a suicide-bomb attack on an American military base in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said. The terror assault occurred as the U.S. expands its involvement in the war in Afghanistan. A single attacker was responsible for the blast yesterday, which also caused an unspecified number of injuries, according to the official, who asked not to be identified. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Almarah Belk, said the Americans died at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province. An attack on a base is particularly threatening because the sites are regarded as sanctuaries, said retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane, a member of the advisory Defense Policy Board. “So when you’re able to penetrate that, you achieve a level of terror and intimidation that the attacks outside the bases, even though they happen daily, do not achieve.” U.S. officials haven’t yet described the affiliations of the slain civilians. The U.S. has been expanding the ranks of civilian aid experts in Afghanistan in parallel with the surge of military reinforcements aimed at the Taliban insurgency. Belk said she didn’t know what installations or agencies are located at the base. “We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in an e-mailed statement. The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development aim to strengthen the government of President Hamid Karzai and local officials to demonstrate to Afghans the benefits of backing elected leaders and defeating the Taliban. Civilian Strategy General Stanley McChrystal , the commander of U.S. and other NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, has said civilian aid will be pivotal in solidifying gains the military makes with the 30,000 additional troops that President Barack Obama authorized earlier this month. The number of civilians working on reconstruction, improving governance and bolstering health and education services is due to triple to about 1,000 in January compared with a year earlier. As of October, U.S. civilians worked at about 52 locations in Afghanistan, according to Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew . “In some cases, they’re moving into areas that have just been cleared with the military as the clearing process is under way,” Lew told reporters in Washington on Oct. 26. “They go in groups of two to 10 to 15. They’re surrounded by locally employed staff, by Afghan nationals who are working in a civilian capacity and by” employees of non-governmental organizations, he said. Blast Probed Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician , a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force in Afghanistan, said the base explosion is under investigation. Khost is located in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. Southern and eastern Afghanistan are areas where the Taliban have made the biggest inroads. The additional U.S. troops will bring the number of American forces in Afghanistan to almost 100,000 in 2010. Obama’s strategy is to roll back the Taliban, which harbored al- Qaeda before being ousted from power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in time to begin a drawdown of troops in July 2011. In testimony to Congress this month after Obama announced his revised approach, officials including Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned that the increasing activity also was bound to lead to higher U.S. and allied casualties until the momentum turns. To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net ; Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net

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Pakistan’s Army Broadens Taliban War to Target Bases of Suicide Bombers

December 18, 2009

By Anwar Shakir Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s army has expanded its war against Taliban militants to dismantle bases they use to launch suicide bombings in major cities, its spokesman said. “Those suicide bombers who are in the training pipeline will come out but our only option is to destroy their strongholds and hideouts,” Major General Athar Abbas said in a telephone interview from his office in Rawalpindi. Terrorist attacks surged after the military launched an offensive in October against the Tehrik-e-Taliban group in the tribal region of South Waziristan. Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, has been hit by 11 attacks killing about 200 people. Pakistan fears that a U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan will push more Taliban fighters across the border. “Peshawar is under siege by militants pouring in from the nearby Afghan border,” Jordan Sekulow , director at the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice said in an e-mail interview. “These terrorists are flexing their muscles and communicating to the public that the government cannot protect them.” Pakistani security forces have used fighter jets and ground troops to root out terrorists from the tribal areas of Kurram, Khyber and Orakzai beginning last month. “We conducted the operation in Khyber to secure Peshawar, which is now safe, to a great extent,” Abbas said. “We will take action against them in any part of the tribal areas that’s needed.” A bombing in Peshawar killed 10 people on Dec. 7. Taliban Leader Hakimullah Mehsud was the Pakistani Taliban’s operational head of the Khyber, Orakzai and Kurram agencies before he was appointed as overall commander to replace Baitullah Mehsud who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in August. Hakimullah Mehsud “could be” somewhere between North and South Waziristan, Abbas said in the interview. “He is definitely alive.” Troops have killed 635 militants and 79 soldiers have died since the operation began in South Waziristan, according to the army. Paramilitary forces have killed 85 militants since Nov. 14 in Khyber, the main supply route for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to the Frontier Corp. Terrorists have targeted Peshawar’s markets this year. At least 130 people were killed and 200 were wounded in a bomb attack in the Meena Bazaar on Oct. 28. Saddar Bazaar, Peshawar’s biggest, is largely deserted. Shopkeepers close their stores at 6 p.m., at least three hours earlier than normal. ‘Looking for Bombs’ “Instead of being on the lookout for customers, our habit has changed to keep watch for another bomb and how to escape it,” said blanket merchant Gul Zar Khan. By bombing Peshawar repeatedly, “the Taliban want to put a lot of pressure on us,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain , information minister for the province . “People are suffering with economic losses and a lot of tension.” As paramilitary forces step up the operation in Khyber, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Peshawar , the main market in Bara, Khyber’s major town, is a ruin of rubble and gutted shops. The Frontier Corp., a paramilitary unit, showed Bloomberg News on a Dec. 12 visit arms, ammunition, detonators, computers, militant literature and passports seized from guerrillas. Further signs of war are south in the Taliban headquarters of South Waziristan. Cellular phone towers, schools and houses are destroyed and the sound of gunfire is almost constant. Suicide Bomber Hostel At the village of Nawazkot, a 20-room building seized by the army was used as a hostel for trainee suicide bombers, officers told reporters flown in by military helicopter. Walls are covered with a series of images representing the bombers’ reward in the afterlife — rolling green hills, rivers of milk, cottages with red-tiled sloping roofs and female angels. Next to each painting, the name of the bomber is written in his own blood, Major Saleem, the area’s commanding officer, told reporters. “The suicide bombers under training were between 12 and 16 and these paintings were used to show them where they would go after blowing themselves up.” To contact the reporter on this story: Anwar Shakir in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan at paknews@bloomberg.net .

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U.S. Coordinating With Pakistan on Afghanistan Troop Surge, Holbrooke Says

December 12, 2009

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. is working aggressively with Pakistan to prevent the American troop surge in Afghanistan from driving insurgents across the border, a top diplomat said. Richard Holbrooke , U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, also said that while pressure on al- Qaeda has intensified under President Barack Obama , the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden shouldn’t be a “single factor” in fighting terrorism. Holbrooke, in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt ” airing this weekend, gave Pakistan credit for a “very intense struggle” that has resulted in arrests of terrorists that haven’t received attention. Pakistani authorities fear the U.S. troop increase in neighboring Afghanistan could undermine Pakistan’s own offensive to eliminate insurgents in its Waziristan border area and complicate efforts to find al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders hiding in the porous frontier, Holbrooke said. Top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Admiral Mike Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been told by Pakistani leaders that “if we don’t coordinate your military operation with ours, you will succeed in Afghanistan by driving Taliban east into our country and will cause a problem,” Holbrooke said. “It’s a legitimate concern,” he said. “So we’re coordinating in ways that I don’t want to go into in detail in order to deal with the problem.” Hunt for bin Laden Holbrooke’s comments on bin Laden contrasted with those of General Stanley McChrystal , the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who testified on Capitol Hill Dec. 8 that the defeat of the al-Qaeda terrorism network hinges on the capture or killing of bin Laden. McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee that bin Laden’s iconic prominence as a fugitive from U.S. justice underpins the global reach of Islamic terrorism. Holbrooke said in the interview that bin Laden’s capture wouldn’t solve the problem of terrorism. “Eliminating Osama bin Laden eliminates the head of this odious organization, but the problem would continue, and let’s not overly focus on a single man, although the pursuit of him has intensified after a long period of relative neglect.” Holbrooke said the U.S. was “gratified” by Pakistan’s efforts in the last six months to go after home-grown terrorists in its own tribal regions in Swat and Waziristan. ‘Real Efforts’ “The Pakistanis have made real efforts against the Pakistani branch of the Taliban. But as far as the Afghan branch” of the Taliban, whose leadership U.S. intelligence believes is hiding in Pakistan, “we think more can be done, and we’re talking to the Pakistanis about it.” On Dec. 1, Obama announced he would add 30,000 U.S. troops to the 69,000 currently in Afghanistan, with the aim of training and turning over authority to Afghan security forces. He plans to begin withdrawing those additional forces starting in July 2011. Obama’s troop surge, announced in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, won approval from 62 percent of Americans in a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7. Opinion is divided about setting a timeline to begin a drawdown, with 49 percent disapproving. Afghan Corruption On the question of corruption , which has dominated discussions of whether the Afghan government will be able to take over responsibilities, allowing for an eventual American exit, Holbrooke said U.S. officials were having private conversations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about individuals who have been suspected of abusing power. “We are well aware of these stories,” Holbrooke said. “They have been on my mind ever since I took this job.” Asked if the U.S. was pressuring Karzai to cut ties with warlords and government officials accused of graft or trafficking drugs, Holbrooke said “certain types of discussions really need to remain confidential in order to have any effect.” “At the same time, no single person can deal with the corruption issue in an entire country, not Hamid Karzai, not American leaders. It’s an endemic issue,” he said. “We are not fighting in Afghanistan to eliminate corruption,” Holbrooke said. “We are trying to eliminate or reduce corruption in order to succeed militarily.” To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Washington at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net

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Bombs Strike Pakistan’s Punjab Province for Second Day, Killing 12 People

December 8, 2009

By Khalid Qayum and Farhan Sharif Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Two bombs near a spy agency’s office in the Pakistani city of Multan killed at least 12 people today, taking the death toll from 16 hours of militant violence in the Punjab province to more than 50. The blasts minutes apart badly damaged the security building, rescue services and eyewitnesses said. At least 15 people were wounded. Several people may be trapped under the debris, Arshad Ali, a spokesman for the Edhi emergency service, said by telephone. GEO television said women and children were among those killed. Earlier, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said 40 people died and 100 were injured in twin market bombings last night in Lahore, Punjab’s capital. About 450 civilians and security officials have died in retaliatory bomb and gunfire attacks since Pakistan’s army began a military offensive on Oct. 17 against Taliban guerrillas based in the tribal region of South Waziristan. “The militants are going for civilian and security targets in a no-holds-barred manner and in a barbaric manner,” Mahmood Shah , a security analyst, said in a telephone interview from the northwestern city of Peshawar, repeatedly hit in recent terrorist attacks. “Terrorists have spread out and are taking advantage of a loose and untrained Pakistani security system.” Gunmen with bombs and grenades attacked a mosque near the Pakistani army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi Dec. 4, killing at least 36 people attending weekly prayer services including military officers, women and children. Mufti Wali Rehman, second in command of the Taliban in Pakistan, told GEO the group took responsibility. Economic Powerhouse Punjab generates more than half of Pakistan’s economic growth. While the province has seen fewer terrorist attacks than Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun northwest, guerrillas in Lahore attacked three police headquarters in October and ambushed the Sri Lankan national cricket team’s bus in March. The province is home to about half of the country’s 180 million people. As the army continues its Waziristan offensive, Taliban militants have fled to the Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai districts of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal zone along the border. They have fought escalating battles with security forces in the past month. The army will continue its attacks on suspected Taliban camps in those areas, military spokesman Athar Abbas said Nov. 30 in a telephone interview. President Barack Obama said on Dec. 1 that the U.S. will dispatch 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan next year, calling Afghanistan and Pakistan the “epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda.” To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net ; Farhan Sharif in New Delhi at fsharif2@bloomberg.net

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Bombs Strike Pakistan’s Punjab Province for Second Day, Killing 12 People

December 8, 2009

By Khalid Qayum and Farhan Sharif Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Two bombs near a spy agency’s office in the Pakistani city of Multan killed at least 12 people today, taking the death toll from 16 hours of militant violence in the Punjab province to more than 50. The blasts minutes apart badly damaged the security building, rescue services and eyewitnesses said. At least 15 people were wounded. Several people may be trapped under the debris, Arshad Ali, a spokesman for the Edhi emergency service, said by telephone. GEO television said women and children were among those killed. Earlier, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said 40 people died and 100 were injured in twin market bombings last night in Lahore, Punjab’s capital. About 450 civilians and security officials have died in retaliatory bomb and gunfire attacks since Pakistan’s army began a military offensive on Oct. 17 against Taliban guerrillas based in the tribal region of South Waziristan. “The militants are going for civilian and security targets in a no-holds-barred manner and in a barbaric manner,” Mahmood Shah , a security analyst, said in a telephone interview from the northwestern city of Peshawar, repeatedly hit in recent terrorist attacks. “Terrorists have spread out and are taking advantage of a loose and untrained Pakistani security system.” Gunmen with bombs and grenades attacked a mosque near the Pakistani army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi Dec. 4, killing at least 36 people attending weekly prayer services including military officers, women and children. Mufti Wali Rehman, second in command of the Taliban in Pakistan, told GEO the group took responsibility. Economic Powerhouse Punjab generates more than half of Pakistan’s economic growth. While the province has seen fewer terrorist attacks than Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun northwest, guerrillas in Lahore attacked three police headquarters in October and ambushed the Sri Lankan national cricket team’s bus in March. The province is home to about half of the country’s 180 million people. As the army continues its Waziristan offensive, Taliban militants have fled to the Khyber, Kurram and Orakzai districts of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal zone along the border. They have fought escalating battles with security forces in the past month. The army will continue its attacks on suspected Taliban camps in those areas, military spokesman Athar Abbas said Nov. 30 in a telephone interview. President Barack Obama said on Dec. 1 that the U.S. will dispatch 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan next year, calling Afghanistan and Pakistan the “epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda.” To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net ; Farhan Sharif in New Delhi at fsharif2@bloomberg.net

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Gates Arrives in Kabul for Talks With Karzai on Troop Surge in Afghanistan

December 8, 2009

By Ed Johnson Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Kabul today for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the Obama administration’s new strategy for combating the Taliban, the American Embassy said. Gates is the first member of the administration to visit Afghanistan since President Barack Obama announced last week he is sending 30,000 additional personnel to counter the insurgency. The aim of the surge is to reverse Taliban gains and ensure that Afghanistan doesn’t again harbor al-Qaeda, the terrorist network that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. The U.S. is also seeking 5,000 to 7,000 extra troops from NATO members and other allies in the 43-nation coalition in Afghanistan. To contact the reporter on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net .

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Gates Says Afghan Pullout to Be Gradual as Republicans Criticize Timeline

December 2, 2009

By Viola Gienger and Jonathan Salant Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. will thin its troops in Afghanistan gradually and based on conditions in local areas, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers today as he sought to deflect Republican criticism of a target drawdown date. The start of any withdrawal will be based on a review to be conducted in December 2010, and probably will occur district by district or province by province, as Afghan forces are ready to take over, Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington today. “The end state in Afghanistan looks a lot like what we see in Iraq,” Gates said. “This gradual transfer of security responsibility with a continuing role on our part as a partner for that country in the long-term is what I would call success in Afghanistan.” The setting of a target date for starting a pullout has divided members of Congress. Many Republicans say the timeline wouldn’t give troops enough time to make decisive headway against the Taliban. Democrats who want to limit American involvement in the war welcomed the schedule. Senator John McCain , the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, told Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen that setting a withdrawal date was a mistake. “Success is the real exit strategy,” not “some arbitrary date in July 2011, which our enemies can exploit to weaken and intimidate our friends,” McCain told the officials. Obama Speech President Barack Obama announced his decision to begin a pullout in July 2011 during an address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, late yesterday even as he described the planned deployment of 30,000 more troops next year in an attempt to reverse Taliban gains. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged an accompanying surge in civilians on the ground working alongside the increased military force to help Afghans develop their economy, especially by improving agriculture. That work will continue as American troops withdraw, Clinton told the Senate panel. “We will help by working with our Afghan partners to strengthen institutions at every level of Afghan society so that we don’t leave chaos behind when our combat troops begin to depart,” said Clinton, a former member of the committee when she represented New York in the Senate. Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the timeframe outlined by Obama will be sufficient to determine whether the 43-nation NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan can succeed. “We will know where we are by the summer of 2011,” Mullen told the House Foreign Affairs Committee later in the day. Iraq Pattern The surge in Iraq lasted only 14 months, Gates said. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, responsibility might be transferred to Afghan security forces in some districts and provinces even as other areas see “extraordinarily heavy combat,” he said. The goal is to demonstrate resolve while also stepping up pressure on the Afghan government to perform well enough to take over, Gates said. The three gave similar reassurances in a separate hearing later in the day before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. House Republicans need more information before providing “full support,” their leader John Boehner told reporters after a party caucus. Republicans want to know what “we hope to accomplish over the next 18 months” and how the benchmark of “conditions on the ground” would determine when to remove troops. McChrystal Prediction U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal , the commander in Afghanistan, told U.S. troops and Afghan officials today in Kandahar that the surge he requested would show results in less than a year. “I believe that, by next summer, the uplift of new forces will make a difference” that’s “significant,” McChrystal said in a briefing broadcast by CNN. “It will be decided, in my view, in the next one to two years.” A U.S. military surge in Afghanistan is needed to prevent a Taliban takeover of the country that could hand al-Qaeda a global propaganda victory, Gates told the congressional panels. “The Taliban and al-Qaeda have become symbiotic, each benefiting from the success and mythology of the other,” Gates said. “Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of al-Qaeda.” NATO Reinforcements In expanding the war, the U.S. is also seeking 5,000 to 7,000 extra troops from NATO members and other allies in the 43- nation coalition in Afghanistan, Gates said. In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today that U.S. allies will send an additional 5,000 troops to Afghanistan “and probably a few thousand more.” NATO reinforcements would focus on the northern and eastern parts of Afghanistan while U.S. soldiers and Marines would concentrate on the south, Gates said. Southern and eastern Afghanistan face the Pakistani border and is the area where the Taliban have made the biggest inroads. Insurgents are now dominant in 11 of 34 Afghan provinces, and the Taliban movement is operating “shadow governments” across Afghanistan, Mullen told the senators. Obama has made “the right decision” on the overall strategy of increasing the number of troops to provide security and train Afghan forces, McCain said, urging that all Americans support it. To contact the reporters on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net ; Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net .

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Al-Qaeda Terror Attack Threat May Be Waning, Former British Spy Chief Says

November 26, 2009

By Brian Lysaght Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — The al-Qaeda terrorist network may be losing its capacity to carry out large-scale attacks in the U.S. and U.K. because of improved security, Richard Dearlove , former chief of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, said. “It could be the movement is past the high point in its ability to mount mass-casualty events in the West,” Dearlove, 64, said in an interview in London late yesterday. “It’s because the bar has been raised, the door has been shut.” Dearlove served as chief of MI6, known officially as the Secret Intelligence Service, from 1999 to 2004, a period that included the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. “There is much more international security cooperation,” he said, though “the threat is not completely removed.” In a speech on defense issues at London’s Gresham College , Dearlove also said the British government sent troops to Afghanistan without sufficient equipment, and that a “surge” in North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, followed by a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, is the “only solution” to the war. “Our armed forces have been under-resourced, this is a basic fact from which there is really no escape,” he said. “The Treasury has been squeezing the defense budget for approximately eight years.” In the past two years, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has faced mounting criticism from lawmakers, members of the armed forces and military families who say the equipment supplied to U.K. forces in Afghanistan is inadequate, especially helicopters and armored vehicles. Support Declines British support for the war in Afghanistan has declined as the number of combat deaths increased, according to opinion polls. Dearlove also said the U.K. government has failed to adequately explain why British troops are in Afghanistan. The war is as much about ensuring stability in neighboring Pakistan and securing its nuclear arsenal as routing the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies, he said. Annual funding for the Afghan mission has been increased in recent years, and Brown and his cabinet ministers continue to make the case publicly for why British troops are in the country, a spokesman for the prime minister said in a telephone interview. The spokesman declined to be identified, in line with policy. U.S. Surge President Barack Obama is considering his military advisers’ request for as many as 40,000 extra U.S. troops to fight the Taliban. The U.S. contributes about 70,000 of the 110,000 members of foreign forces waging the Afghan war, which began in 2001. “If we want a negotiated settlement, we need a surge first to put pressure on the Taliban,” Dearlove said. “To leave prematurely, the price we must pay for that is extremely high and far higher than what we are paying now.” The U.K., which is mulling sending 500 more military personnel to Afghanistan, has 9,000 troops in the country, the second-largest contingent after the U.S. A total of 235 British personnel have died while serving there. Dearlove, who joined the spy agency in 1966, had postings in Nairobi, Prague and Washington. He is currently master of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge. MI6 gathers intelligence overseas and is the employer of author Ian Fleming’s fictional agent 007, James Bond. Dearlove said that “anxiety” about the threat from terrorism and natural disasters has become a fact of modern life. “We have probably never been safer but this sense of anxiety about threats both natural and manmade is a striking characteristic of our times,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Lysaght in London at blysaght@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistan’s Zardari May Face Corruption Charges as Political Crisis Deepens

November 25, 2009

By Khalid Qayum Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari may face renewed corruption charges once a law that protected him lapses this weekend, deepening a political crisis as the country’s army battles Taliban militants. Zardari, the widower of slain Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto , took office 14 months ago. More than a dozen criminal and graft cases against him were withdrawn under a National Reconciliation Ordinance drafted by former leader Pervez Musharraf to bolster a power sharing deal with Bhutto. Supreme Court judges ruled on July 31 that parliament must renew the ordinance within 120 days, something opposition legislators have refused to do, or it would cease to be valid. “The corruption cases will reopen in courts after the Nov. 28 deadline set by the Supreme Court,” said lawyer Qazi Muhammad Anwar, who is president of Supreme Court Bar Association, a body of advocates. Zardari, 53, is already under pressure from opposition parties to give up extraordinary powers that Musharraf added to the constitution. Any further weakening of his position could jeopardize a military offensive against guerrillas in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Militants have killed more than 400 people in gun and bomb attacks over the past five weeks. Junior Law Minister Afzal Sindhu on Nov. 21 named more than 8,000 people, including Zardari and his ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani , offered clemency under the law adopted in 2007. Survival Battle Haqqani’s office said in a statement from Islamabad that the ambassador denies the charge against him that he violated rules in awarding a television and radio license when secretary at the Information Ministry in 1994. “Zardari is facing a number of challenges including the challenge of his own survival,” said Zafar Nawaz Jaspal , assistant professor of international relations at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University . Lawyers and former bureaucrats plan to ask Supreme Court judges to open all corruption cases halted under the special ordinance, according to Nov. 22 report in the News newspaper. When his wife was assassinated at a rally in December 2007, Zardari took over the PPP. In August 2008, he joined hands with Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif and forced Musharraf to resign. He was elected president three weeks later. Zardari, who has spent a total of 11 years in jail since 1990, made enemies with his decision to appoint some officials who became political liabilities, Jaspal said. After initially agreeing to give up powers to appoint military chiefs and dismiss the government, Zardari backtracked, angering the opposition led by Sharif. Politically Motivated Adding to Zardari’s woes, a key ally, the Mutahidda Qaumi Movement, has objected to an extension of the clemency law. The government has rallied to his defense, with Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira saying the charges against Zardari are politically motivated, and arguing the president enjoys immunity from prosecution until his five-year term ends. Charges against Zardari relate to cases before he became president, nullifying any immunity, Supreme Court lawyer Anwar said. “The problem with Zardari is that he doesn’t do what he says, which essentially lands him in crisis,” said political analyst and former Pakistani general Talat Masood in an interview from Islamabad. “The people are disenchanted and looking for someone to lead them out of insecurity and economic turmoil, while he is hiding in the presidential palace. There is a huge trust deficit between the president and the military.” Army Rule The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half the period since independence in 1947. Its six-week offensive against the Taliban faction the government blames for 80 percent of terrorist attacks follows a similar campaign against militants in the northwestern Swat Valley after a truce collapsed. Differences between top generals and the government broke into the open last month when the army led by its chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani criticized conditions attached to a $7.5 billion U.S. aid deal for Pakistan as threatening the nation’s sovereignty. Zardari’s government described the accord as “landmark” legislation. Zardari “will quit powers quickly but cautiously,” said Hassan Abbas , a senior adviser at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. “The transition from a military to civilian rule is always a slow and complicated process. Military takeover under the prevailing international scenario is out of the question,” Abbas said. To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net

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Clinton Sees Encouraging Karzai Signs as U.S. Plots Afghanistan War Plan

November 20, 2009

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she is encouraged by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s promises to fight corruption and build up Afghan security forces to replace U.S. troops by the end of his new five-year term. Karzai’s inaugural speech yesterday “was a visionary outline of what he’d like to see happen by the time he finishes his second term,” Clinton said in an interview before she left Kabul after a two-day visit. As the most senior U.S. official to go to Afghanistan since the Aug. 20 election was marred by widespread fraud, Clinton used her trip to signal the Obama administration’s desire for a fresh start in a partnership that had become contentious. President Barack Obama’s decision on whether to boost U.S. military forces in Afghanistan beyond 68,000 troops has been complicated by worries that Karzai is too weak to sweep away graft and support an expanded effort to quell the insurgency in his country. Karzai’s speech, delivered before 800 guests including Clinton and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in the front row, attempted to answer points of discord with international partners who are pressing Karzai to appoint officials on merit, not political alliances. Clinton has said further civilian aid to Afghanistan will hinge on measurable results in preventing and prosecuting government graft. Analysts have suggested the U.S. may likewise stagger the deployment of additional troops contingent on Karzai’s cutting ties with warlords and extending government control to insurgent-plagued communities. Under Consideration “It’s one of the many factors that we’ve been examining and that the president has been testing as an assumption about how we can be effective,” Clinton said in the interview. While saying she wouldn’t speak for Obama “or preempt him from making the announcement,” on troop strength, Clinton said that the chances of success in destroying the al-Qaeda terror network sheltered under Taliban rule depend on “having good partners” in the Afghan government. Clinton is emerging as the Obama administration’s main conduit to Karzai. Unlike then Vice President-elect Joe Biden , who stormed out of a dinner with Karzai late last year, and special envoy Richard Holbrooke , who clashed with Karzai over election fraud, Clinton has avoided a strained relationship. She wields more influence over Karzai by accentuating the positive and politely expressing U.S. concerns, two administration officials said. Afghan View An Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said his government considers Clinton’s understanding of Afghanistan more nuanced than anyone in the Obama administration, and hopes she would take the leading role in shaping policy. In the interview, Clinton credited Karzai with progress in education, health and economic development and praised plans to stem bribery and prosecute corruption. Clinton said that during her private, 90-minute meeting with Karzai, she listened to his concerns about the U.S. in Afghanistan as much as she shared her views. “We need to do more on our side” to ensure that international aid is channeled effectively to high-performing government ministries and not wasted on overpriced contractors, she said. For his part, Karzai used his speech to address points of friction with the U.S. and NATO allies. He pledged to pursue peace with militants, fight corruption and drugs and expand a national army and police capable of taking over security operations in five years. That would allow the U.S. to exit a war going into its ninth year. Security Pledge With “continued international support,” Afghanistan will take “the lead in ensuring security and stability,” according to a palace translation of remarks he delivered in Dari and Pashtu, the two national languages. In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he favors handing responsibility for security in Afghanistan to that nation’s forces only when they are ready to handle it and possibly in phases, as is being done in Iraq. Gates said Afghan forces could take responsibility gradually — “on a province-by-province or even district-by- district level,” as in Iraq — and that “could come relatively soon.” In his inaugural address, Karzai demanded that security contractors be phased out. Within two years, the widespread use of private security companies must cease, and their duties delegated to Afghan security forces, he said. Reconciliation Effort “Security and peace cannot be achieved through fighting and violence,” and reconciliation with insurgents will top his agenda, Karzai, 51, said in a ceremonial hall under eight chandeliers, after taking the oath of office and kissing the Koran. His government will welcome any disenchanted “compatriots who are not directly linked to international terrorism” to return home from the battlefront and live in peace, a reference to the Taliban and other insurgent networks. Karzai extended an olive branch to electoral rivals Abdullah Abdullah , a former foreign minister, and Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister, inviting both to join rebuilding efforts. Abdullah, who pulled out of a planned Nov. 7 runoff election, saying a fair vote was impossible after monitors concluded that a fourth of the ballots in the first round had been faked, didn’t attend the ceremony. To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Kabul at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net

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Germany Will Dispatch 120 More Troops to Afghanistan as Violence Spreads

November 13, 2009

By Patrick Donahue Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Germany will send a company of 120 fresh soldiers to northern Afghanistan as the Taliban-led insurgency in the once relatively peaceful north of the country spreads, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg announced. The troops will arrive in Kunduz in mid-January and bring the overall number of German personnel in Afghanistan from its current level of about 4,365 closer to the maximum allowed by a parliamentary mandate, 4,500, a Defense Ministry spokesman said in Berlin today. Guttenberg arrived yesterday on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai and echoed U.S. and NATO demands that western engagement in the country be tied to a contribution by the Afghan government. Karzai was declared the victor of an election this year marred by fraud. The German minister traveled today to Kunduz, where German troops have increasingly faced off with Taliban insurgents. “It’s not all peace, joy and pancakes here,” Guttenberg said, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur newswire. In September, a German commander ordered a strike on two immobilized tanker trucks seized by Taliban militants near Kunduz, fearing they might be ferrying fuel for an attack on German troops. The strike left as many as 142 people dead or wounded, according to a NATO report, and prompted controversy in Germany about the country’s presence in Afghanistan. Last week, Guttenberg defended the attack, even though he acknowledged that civilians were likely among those killed. McChrystal Meeting Guttenberg yesterday met with General Stanley McChrystal , who has asked President Barack Obama to deploy as many as 40,000 more U.S. troops to the country, on top of 68,000 troops scheduled to be there by yearend. Administration officials said yesterday Obama is seeking an approach to eventually end U.S. involvement in the country even as he weighs an expansion. Germany’s military contingent in Afghanistan is the third largest among NATO countries, behind the U.S. and the U.K. Germany has sustained six fatal casualties so far this year, compared with 288 American and 95 British fatalities, according to icasualties.org , a private monitoring group. In Germany, Guttenberg sparked controversy this month by referring to “warlike circumstances” in parts of Afghanistan in an interview with Bild . That broke with a practice of his predecessors who didn’t want to identify the German mission overtly with war. To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistan Says U.S., NATO Should Share Intelligence on Afghanistan Border

November 11, 2009

By Anwar Shakir and Paul Tighe Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. and NATO should share intelligence with Pakistan to help “sanitize” the border with Afghanistan, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said. The “flow of weapons, drugs, illicit money and militants” must be prevented along the 2,430-kilometer (1,510-mile) frontier, Gilani told a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Islamabad yesterday, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported . The Obama administration should take Pakistan into its confidence over its revised security policy for Afghanistan, Gilani said. President Barack Obama is deciding whether to send as many as 40,000 additional soldiers to the country. Pakistan’s army is engaged in its biggest offensive against pro-Taliban militants in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , who visited Islamabad last month, this week praised the government’s “forceful response” to the Taliban. Improved intelligence cooperation will help Pakistan enforce security along the border, APP cited Gilani as telling the delegation headed by John Tierney , a Massachusetts Democrat in the House of Representatives. The U.S. should discuss its plans for Afghanistan with the government in Islamabad to ensure a military buildup doesn’t have an adverse effect on Pakistani regions where militants are operating, Gilani said without elaborating. Military Supplies Pakistan needs military supplies to help it bring the army’s offensive to a successful conclusion, the prime minister said. The government has called on the U.S. to provide technology so it is able to use remote-controlled drone aircraft against militant bases. The country has received about $7.6 billion in military reimbursements from the U.S. since 2001 for counterterrorism. Militants have retaliated for the South Waziristan offensive by staging suicide bombings and attacks that have killed more than 300 people since mid-October in towns and cities, including Islamabad. They are mounting a “desperate” guerrilla war after suffering defeats in the tribal area, Gilani said two days ago. The bombings and raids are a “direct attack on the authority of the Pakistani government,” Clinton said in a Nov. 9 interview with the PBS network. At least eight members of the security forces were killed yesterday when a mine exploded in Mohmand near the Afghan border. A suicide bombing at a market in Charsadda in North West Frontier Province two days ago killed 40 people and 17 others were killed in two separate bombings Nov. 8 and 9 in Peshawar, the provincial capital. The army’s operation in South Waziristan is targeting the Tehreek-e-Taliban, the group Pakistan blames for 80 percent of terrorist attacks on its territory. While the government says it’s aiming to complete the offensive before winter begins in the tribal region next month, the Taliban said earlier this month it is withdrawing its forces deliberately in order to draw soldiers into the region and engage them in a long war. To contact the reporters on this story: Anwar Shakir at ashakir1@bloomberg.net ; Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net .

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Brown Says U.K. to Press Ahead Training Afghan Police After Troop Murders

November 5, 2009

By Kitty Donaldson Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown will say the U.K. plans to press ahead training Afghanistan’s army and police even though five soldiers were murdered by a rogue officer earlier this week. “We will not give up this strategy of mentoring, because it is what distinguishes a liberating army from an army of occupation,” Brown will say in a speech in London today, according to excerpts released by his office. Support for the war effort in Britain has dissipated as the death toll mounted in Afghanistan. A total of 230 British forces personnel have died while serving there. Britain has about 9,000 troops in the nation. President Barack Obama is weighing whether to send as many as 40,000 more U.S. personnel in addition to the 68,000 due to be serving by the end of the year. A total of 57 percent of the 1,021 British adults polled by YouGov Plc on Nov. 4 said victory is no longer possible, while 33 percent said the war can be won. Two weeks ago, 48 percent thought Britain and its allies couldn’t defeat the Taliban. The deaths of the soldiers killed at an Afghan police base on Nov. 3 by a Taliban gunman have revived debate about the U.S. and British policy of “Afghanization,” where local forces are given authority over security. The gunman had infiltrated the force and also wounded six other soldiers near the Nad-e’Ali district of Helmand province. Police Training They were living and working in the compound as part of a strategy to train and mentor Afghan national police and army officers so that they can function on their own and U.K. forces can return home. Both the U.S. and U.K. administrations have also pressed other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to put more resources into the fight. Brown will argue today that it is an international mission. “We entered together eight years ago,” Brown will say. “We must persist together; in our different ways we must all contribute; in the end we will succeed or fail together.” Another stated aim of the operation is to prevent the use of Afghanistan as a training ground for terrorists who aim to take lives in the West. Al-Qaeda still uses the border region with Pakistan to plan attacks, Brown will say. To contact the reporters on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net or;

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Abdullah Withdraws From Afghan Presidential Run-Off Ballot Against Karzai

November 1, 2009

By Jay Shankar Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) — Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from Afghanistan’s Nov. 7 presidential run-off election against Hamid Karzai , saying a “free and fair” ballot wouldn’t have been possible. He urged his supporters “not to take to the streets” or demonstrate in two Kabul press conferences today broadcast by international networks including CNN. The former Afghan foreign minister said he was “absolutely not” calling for a boycott of the run-off, if it is now held. “The Afghan people deserve a better election” than the one that would have occurred, Abdullah said. He said the cost and potential violence connected with staging a second round were among his considerations in dropping out. “I will pursue my efforts to bring reform and change to this country for the rest of my life,” said Abdullah, who was born in 1960. “I will do my best to institutionalize democracy in Afghanistan. Our commitment is much deeper than what happens today or tomorrow.” Abdullah said he had consulted in recent weeks with U.S. President Barack Obama , Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry as well as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He said he took his decision to quit the election after a meeting last week with Karzai, 51, when the president ruled out dismissing the head of the election commission or meeting other demands Abdullah said were required to improve the fairness of the second-round ballot. Fraud Allegations A United Nations -backed partial recount of the initial Aug. 20 vote found more than 1 million ballots, most of them for Karzai, were suspect, putting his tally below the 50 percent needed to win and triggering the run-off. More than 200 of the 380 district election coordinators were fired for complicity in first-round fraud, and polling stations where irregularities occurred wouldn’t re-open, Aleem Siddique , a spokesman for the UN mission in Afghanistan said in a telephone interview on Oct. 21. Most allegations of fraud in August came from violence- prone areas in the nation’s south and southeast, where Karzai’s political base is. Allegations of voting fraud have complicated the Obama administration’s decision on whether to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan beyond the extra 21,000 the president approved earlier this year. About 68,000 troops are in Afghanistan today, the administration’s current goal, according to Pentagon data. More Troops Abdullah today said there is “no doubt” that more U.S. and Nato forces are needed to suppress the Taliban and stabilize his nation, though more than soldiers will be required for that task, he added. The UN said on Oct. 29 it was reviewing security in Afghanistan after Taliban militants raided a Kabul guesthouse and killed five UN workers a day before in a bid to disrupt the elections. To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net

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Clinton `Broke the Ice’ With Pakistanis Angry Over U.S. Actions in Region

October 31, 2009

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended a three-day visit to Pakistan in which she confronted intense anti-American sentiment in a nuclear-armed country that has become a central front for violent extremists. Wielding the celebrity she enjoys in Pakistan as a former first lady who first visited in 1995, Clinton tried to close the trust deficit that strains U.S.-Pakistani ties. She appeared on live television and in newspaper pages pledging to support democracy and development and praising the military for its five-month campaign against Taliban strongholds. Clinton “broke the ice” by risking her security to visit Lahore and Islamabad, two cities that have suffered terrorist attacks, and listening to “suspicion, anger and aggression” from Pakistani audiences, Jugnu Mohsin, publisher of the Lahore- based Friday Times newspaper group, said in an interview. Meetings with hundreds of Pakistani students, professionals, community leaders and journalists exposed Clinton to public ire over the use of air strikes on suspected terrorist hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas and over perceived heavy- handed conditions attached to billions of dollars of U.S. aid. Clinton’s willingness to hear out the tirades and try to explain the U.S. point of view won her respect, said Mohsin, who was among leading editors invited to air their opinions. “Whether the charm offensive works,” she added, “will depend on how consistent America’s commitment is to impact peoples’ livelihood.” $7.5 Billion In her remarks, Clinton sought to highlight the $7.5 billion in aid the U.S. has authorized for upgrading roads, electricity, education and other projects. The top American diplomat’s efforts to dispel the view that the U.S. is dictating to Pakistan and doesn’t care about its people or prosperity proved an uphill battle. An August survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed 64 percent of Pakistanis regard the U.S. as an enemy. On chairs arranged on red tribal carpets at an arts center in Islamabad yesterday, Clinton listened to leaders from border areas caught in the cross-fire between government and Taliban forces. Faiysal Alikhan, a community organizer in Dera Ismail Khan, an area hard hit by extremist violence, praised Clinton for holding a meeting in the circular format typical of a tribal council. “The way she interacted, looked everyone in the eye, her body language demonstrated a level of trust,” he said in an interview. A larger gathering that followed with female professionals was “a sort of hostile environment,” he said, “and she handled that in a very honest and straightforward way.” Terror Attacks At the forum hosted by women television anchors, Clinton sought to deflect criticism over what Pakistan’s government says have been 528 civilian deaths in an unspecified period from missile strikes on suspected terrorist targets by U.S. remote- controlled drone aircraft. Clinton told women who critiqued such strikes as an infringement on Pakistani sovereignty that al-Qaeda “is in league with the people who are attacking Pakistan.” Suicide bombings and commando raids by Taliban guerrillas have killed at least 280 people in the country this month. Just hours after Clinton arrived in Islamabad on Oct. 27, a car bomb shattered a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 117 people, many of them women and children, in the deadliest attack since October 2007. Sixty others are still missing. Some Praise After the forum, Begum Salma Ahmed, the founding president of the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said she felt Clinton’s “visit has gone down better than any by a U.S. official.” Clinton didn’t mince words when challenged about why the war on terror focuses so much on Pakistan. Clinton told editors in the eastern city of Lahore that al-Qaeda has a safe haven in Pakistan and she found “it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.” Pakistan’s army has launched its largest offensive yet against Taliban who control parts of the rugged, autonomous tribal zone along the Afghan border. The campaign is concentrated in South Waziristan, the base of the Taliban faction that Pakistan blames for 80 percent of terrorist attacks in the country. U.S. Spending Clinton asked her audience at the women’s forum how many knew that the U.S. had spent $300 million so far to help Pakistanis uprooted by their army’s assaults on the Taliban. Neither that contribution nor recently passed legislation to authorize $1.5 billion annually for economic development in Pakistan seems to have been taken in the cooperative spirit it was intended, she said. “We feel like we’re doing things and we are not getting through,” she said. One tribal leader complained to Clinton that Pakistan was “fighting your war.” Speaking in Pashto, Mufti Kifayatullah , a member of the local assembly in the North West Frontier Province, complained “the blood spilled is ours.” Talks, not military assaults, are needed, he urged. “I certainly hope there will be an opportunity for negotiations,” Clinton said, reminding him that the U.S. had tried to avert war in 2001 by urging the Afghan Taliban to hand over the al-Qaeda leaders who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks. To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Islamabad at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistan’s Deadliest Bombing in Two Years Kills 97 as Clinton Begins Visit

October 28, 2009

By Farhan Sharif and Indira A.R. Lakshmanan Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s deadliest bombing in seven months shattered a crowded market in Peshawar, killing at least 72 people as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began her first official visit to the country. The explosion ripped through Meena Bazaar, where small shops selling women’s clothes line narrow lanes, in Peshawar’s historic walled city. “Bodies are scattered and badly burned,” Mohammed Naeem, a spokesman for the Edhi Ambulance Service said by phone from Pakistan’s northwestern provincial capital. The bombing, plus two attacks by militants in the Afghan capital, Kabul, escalate violence that is complicating the Obama administration’s search for a strategy to contain the Taliban and allied jihadists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today’s bombing was the deadliest since March 27, when at least 70 people died in an attack on a mosque outside Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province. Pakistan’s military is engaged in a campaign to rout Islamic militants from strongholds in South Waziristan along the porous border with Afghanistan. The almost two-week assault has sparked retaliatory suicide bombings and assaults that have now claimed more than 220 lives, prompting tight security and secrecy around Clinton’s visit. Clinton, arriving in Islamabad on a three-day visit, is seeking to douse tension that flared this month over perceived conditions attached to a new U.S. assistance bill and back a military offensive against Taliban militants. She said in Washington last week the U.S. government has “not done a very good job” of countering what public opinion polls show are increasing anti-U.S. attitudes. ‘Turning the Page’ “We are turning the page on what had been in the past several years primarily a security, anti-terrorism agenda,” Clinton told reporters traveling with her. While security remains “our highest priority,” she said she’ll highlight U.S. support for the civilian government and initiatives on energy and economic development. Praising the resolve of authorities in fighting insurgents, she said it is “important for Americans and others to recognize the high price the Pakistanis are paying” in battling allies of al-Qaeda. Clinton traveled to Islamabad less than two weeks after a visit to Washington by Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi . He conveyed the anger of Pakistan’s military establishment, government opponents and media over perceived strings attached to a $1.5 billion annual U.S. aid package passed by Congress last month. Motives Questioned “It is unfortunate that there are those who question our motives who are perhaps skeptical that we are going to be there for the long term,” Clinton said. Language in the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act became a rallying point for opponents of the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari , and she said the outcry was misplaced. “There is misunderstanding,” Clinton said. “These aren’t conditions on Pakistan so much as they are metrics for measuring whether we think our aid is being productive.” The bill requires the Secretary of State to certify civilian control of Pakistan’s military, cooperation with counter-terrorism, protection of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and compliance with international non-proliferation standards. An unrelated U.S. defense bill passed last week requires the secretaries of State and Defense to report to Congress on whether payments to Pakistan are spent in line with U.S. interests and not diverted to military spending against India. Obama’s Challenge Clinton’s visit — to include meetings with tribal elders, women, journalists, civic leaders and government officials in Islamabad and Lahore — is intended to dispel fears the U.S. will abandon the region when counterterrorism objectives are accomplished. Polls show a majority of Pakistanis disapprove of U.S. policy, especially unmanned air strikes on suspected insurgent hideouts in tribal regions. Strong anti-American sentiment could “jeopardize the U.S. ability to partner with Pakistan effectively,” said Lisa Curtis , a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. The Kerry-Lugar-Berman civilian aid bill signed this month by President Barack Obama authorizes $7.5 billion over five years for road construction, schools, power facilities and livelihood projects. It’s in addition to about $7.6 billion in U.S. military payments to reimburse Pakistan for counterterrorism spending since 2001. Kabul Attack Obama is weighing how to address a worsening regional insurgency eight years after the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. and the retreat of its architects into tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border. In Kabul today, gunmen stormed a United Nations guesthouse and killed six UN workers in an attack the Taliban said was aimed at disrupting next month’s Afghan presidential runoff election. Eight more U.S. troops killed by bombings in Afghanistan made October the deadliest month for the U.S. since its 2001 invasion. Since May, the Pakistani army has cracked down on extremists who previously enjoyed some support from authorities. That has sparked an internal refugee crisis, suicide bombings, assaults on military bases and the assassination of an army brigadier this month. The attacks have diminished public sympathy for religious extremists. Collaboration Asked if Pakistani security services had ceased to collaborate with militant groups they have sponsored as proxies in skirmishes with India, Clinton said, “We are constantly assessing that, because it remains a concern. “The level of cooperation that we have received from the Pakistani military and intelligence services has increased geometrically” since Obama took office in January, she said. “Nine months is not a lot of time to turn around a relationship that has a lot of scars,” Clinton said. To contact the reporter on this story: Indira Lakshmanan in Islamabad at ilakshmanan@bloomberg.net

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Afghan Taliban Kill Six United Nations Staff in Raid on Kabul Guesthouse

October 28, 2009

By Ed Johnson and James Rupert Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) — Six United Nations international workers were killed and nine wounded when insurgents attacked a guesthouse today in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where officials are preparing for next month’s presidential runoff election. Gunmen opened fire outside the main gate to the Bakhtar Guesthouse at about 6:30 a.m. local time and forced their way inside, killing UN workers as they “were running to escape,” UN spokesman Aleem Siddique said by telephone from Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack that left 10 people dead, saying it was intended to disrupt preparations for the vote, the Associated Press reported. Militants also fired a rocket, which failed to explode, into the grounds of the luxury Serena Hotel, forcing guests and employees to flee to the basement, the news agency said. Kabul has been on alert for a militant assault as Afghans prepare to vote on Nov. 7 to choose between incumbent President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah . The capital has been hit several times in recent weeks, including a suicide bombing outside the Indian Embassy earlier this month that killed 17 people. The guesthouse is on a tree-lined street in Shahr-i-Nau, a central Kabul neighborhood where many government and international organizations have offices and residences. UN workers were injured, many with cuts and bruises suffered as they fled, Siddique said. “We’re trying to assure the safety of our staff, and we don’t know yet the identities of everyone who was killed,” he added. Machine Guns Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone call that three militants with suicide vests, grenades and machine guns carried out the assault, AP reported. Three militants wearing explosive-packed vests were killed, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the Interior Ministry. Kabul is under a “very significant threat” from the Taliban, who are escalating attacks against the capital, said Rohan Gunaratna , head of the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. “One successful attack like this in Kabul sends a powerful message to the Afghan people and the international community that the Taliban will continue to fight and will not give up,” Gunaratna said by telephone. The assault came a day after eight U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month for American forces in the eight-year conflict. President Barack Obama is reviewing his war strategy for Afghanistan and accusations of electoral fraud have complicated his decision on whether to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal , the commander of U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, to increase U.S. troop levels in the country. The runoff was triggered by a partial recount of the Aug. 20 vote that found more than 1 million ballots, most of them for Karzai, were suspect, putting his tally below the more than 50 percent needed to win in the first round. To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net ; James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net .

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October Becomes Deadliest Month for U.S. in Afghanistan With 8 More Killed

October 27, 2009

By Gregory Viscusi Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — At least eight U.S. troops were killed by bombings in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month for the U.S. since its 2001 invasion. The eight service members, as well as an Afghan civilian working for them, were killed in “multiple complex IED attacks,” the U.S. military said in a statement, referring to improvised explosive devices. There were also several injured, the military said. A phone call to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Kabul seeking more detail wasn’t immediately returned. One attack killed seven soldiers and the civilian, while the eighth soldier was killed by another bomb, Agence France-Presse reported, citing an unidentified NATO official. The deaths bring U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan so far this month to 55, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Air Force Major April Cunningham, overtaking the previous high of 51 in August. October’s death toll already exceeds the number of U.S. fatalities in each of the years from 2001 to 2004. President Barack Obama is currently considering an army request to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. Yesterday, 14 Americans were killed in two separate crashes involving three helicopters, NATO said. Helicopter Crashes Seven U.S. soldiers and three U.S. drug agents were killed when a helicopter crashed as a joint U.S.-Afghan force withdrew after a drug raid on a compound in western Afghanistan, NATO said. Another 14 Afghan soldiers, 11 U.S. military personnel and one American civilian were injured in the crash. In the other incident, two helicopters collided in midair in southern Afghanistan, killing four U.S. troops, NATO said. While the Taliban claimed responsibility for at least one of the downings, hostile fire doesn’t appear to be the cause of either incident, the alliance said. Separately, the U.S. military said it’s recovered the bodies of three civilian crew killed when their Army C-12 Huron crashed in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan Oct. 13. Obama will meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his top military advisers, on Oct. 30 as part of discussions to reach a decision on whether to increase the number of troops, an aide said. “The president requested a meeting with the Joint Chiefs because he wanted to consult with uniformed military leadership as a part of his policy review,” spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mailed response to a question. Obama has indicated he’ll hold off deciding on a military request for up to 40,000 extra troops until after the second round of Afghanistan’s presidential elections Nov. 7. To contact the reporter on this story: Gregory Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistani Army Brigadier Killed in Gunfire Attack in Islamabad, Police Say

October 22, 2009

By Khaleeq Ahmed and Khalid Qayum Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — Gunmen killed an army officer and his guard when they opened fire on a military jeep in the Pakistani capital, the second attack in Islamabad since the army launched an offensive on a Taliban stronghold. The shooting in a residential area of the city killed Brigadier Moinuddin Haider and his army escort, Police Superintendent Tahir Alam said in an interview at the scene. The officer’s driver was injured. One gunman “came on foot and fired at the moving jeep,” said local shopkeeper Naveed Haider. “Another man on a motorbike was waiting in the lane nearby and after firing” both fled. Militants have mounted increasing attacks on government and security targets, including an assault on the army headquarters earlier this month and commando-style raids on police complexes in the eastern city of Lahore. Seven attacks last week killed more than 150 people. Responding to the raids, Pakistan’s army at the weekend began its biggest offensive against the Taliban and its allies in the northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan, deploying 28,000 troops. They are seeking to destroy the Taliban faction that was led by Baitullah Mehsud until his death in a U.S. missile strike in August. Pakistan blames the group for 80 percent of terrorist attacks in the country. Authorities deployed 300 civil defense guards at schools and colleges in Islamabad, and extended security zones to suburban areas from the center in response to suicide bomb attacks at a university two days ago. The Oct. 20 bombings were the first to target a major university. Schools Closed The government set up a committee to recommend how to improve security, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said after meeting with heads of educational institutions in Islamabad yesterday, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported . Pakistan closed schools nationwide for five days yesterday after the two bombings at the International Islamic University killed five people. The closure is to allow security to be boosted and wasn’t ordered out of “fear of terrorists,” APP cited Malik as saying. The government’s committee will make its recommendations by Oct. 25, Malik said, according to APP. There has been no protection for public and private schools because no one thought such institutions would be targeted by extremists, he added. Guards at these establishments will now be properly trained and equipped, the minister said. The government-run International Islamic University, which has 18,000 students, is outside the security zones created in the city, Malik said. “We have also decided to extend the security zones,” he added. Swat Operation Troops are engaged in an “intense encounter” around the town of Kotkai, the base of a top Taliban commander, the army said yesterday. Fifteen militants were killed in South Waziristan in the past 24 hours, while three soldiers died, it said. Accounts of fighting can’t be confirmed as foreigners are banned from tribal areas and local reporters have been forced out by the government and Taliban. The military said it cleared Taliban militants from the Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province after a 10-week offensive that began in April. The fighting prompted an exodus of more than 2 million people, most of whom have returned to their towns and villages in the region. As many as 250,000 people may be displaced by the fighting in South Waziristan, Tariq Hayat, the government’s secretary for the tribal areas, said three days ago. The military says it expects to complete its offensive in six to eight weeks. To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net ; Khaleeq Ahmed in Islamabad at kkhan8@bloomberg.net

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Pakistan Braces for 250,000 Refugees From Assault on Taliban Strongholds

October 19, 2009

By Khalid Qayum and James Rupert Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan is bracing for as many as 250,000 refugees to flee the mountainous region of South Waziristan, as the army mounts its biggest offensive against the Taliban stronghold. Fighting is taking place over 2,200 square kilometers (850 square miles) near the towns of Ladah and Makin, said Tariq Hayat Khan, secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Area , which includes Waziristan and borders Afghanistan. A total of 97,000 refugees have already been registered, Tariq Hayat, the government’s secretary for tribal areas, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad today. Pakistan’s military said yesterday it killed 60 Taliban and gained ground in the first stage of operations while five soldiers died in the offensive. Soldiers secured “tactical heights” and destroyed six anti-aircraft gun positions in different regions, according to a statement on the military’s Web site . It said 11 of its soldiers were injured. Three columns entering the Taliban stronghold had advanced about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) and seized bombs and landmines, the army said. It said “terrorists are vacating their posts” and “leaving behind arms and ammunition.” The headquarters of Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban, now headed by senior commander Hakimullah Mehsud may contain about 1,500 guerillas, military spokesman Athar Abbas said, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan . Ground and air attacks by the military began on Oct. 16 and aim to dismantle the network of the Mehsud insurgents, Abbas said. The group accounts for 80 percent of terrorist activities in the country, he said. U.S. Pressure The offensive is Pakistan’s biggest yet against the Taliban and its allies, who have mounted increasing attacks on government targets since mid-2007 and this month attacked Pakistan’s army headquarters. The U.S. has encouraged offensives against Pakistan-based Taliban, saying Waziristan and other border districts are sanctuaries for jihadists who also attack American-led troops in Afghanistan. About 24,000 people left their homes in South Waziristan for the two neighboring districts of Dera Ismail Khan and Tank last week in anticipation of the offensive against the Taliban, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Oct. 16. U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry , who co-sponsored the new U.S. non-military assistance package signed into law last week by President Barack Obama , and General David Petraeus , the head of U.S. Central Command, will meet senior government and military officials on visits to Pakistan today, Richard Snelsire, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said. The meetings formed part of the two countries cooperation, he said without giving details. ‘Heavy Casualties’ Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq said the guerrillas had inflicted “heavy casualties” on the army, the Associated Press reported yesterday. “We will defend our land till our last man and our last drop of our blood,” the agency quoted him as saying. “This is a war bound to end in the defeat of the Pakistan army.” Accounts of the fighting couldn’t be confirmed, as Pakistan bars foreigners from the tribal areas and local journalists have been forced out by pressure from the government and Taliban. The army says it expects to complete the offensive in six to eight weeks. Still, “this fight could be longer and harder than any the army has taken on so far,” said Ashraf Ali, director of the FATA Research Center, an Islamabad think-tank that studies the Federally Administered Tribal Areas including Waziristan. Al-Qaeda “The Waziristan terrain is much tougher for the army and better for guerrilla-style fighters,” Ali said. He added that the Taliban targeted in the campaign “are more experienced and trained than the ones in Swat,” the northern valley the army recaptured in a 10-week battle that ended in July. And even a determined offensive may not crush the Mehsud faction or its al-Qaeda allies, counter-terrorism specialists said. The Taliban will “split into small groups and harass the strangers in a terrain which the Mehsuds know well,” said Bahukutumbi Raman at the Chennai, India-based Institute for Topical Studies. Pakistan is likely to face a new round of terrorist attacks in cities far from the fighting, he said. Working in the army’s favor is the fact that Pakistanis seem more supportive of a government strike on the Taliban than in previous years, said Ali. “The Taliban present themselves as fighting jihad against usurpers occupying Muslim lands, but this year they have been bombing mosques, marketplaces, the army and police, and this has reduced the public sympathy for them,” he said. ‘Way of Salvation’ The army operation, titled Rah-i-Najat, the “The Way of Salvation,” includes the largest force the army has assembled in Waziristan and is better prepared than three smaller offensives that failed there since 2004, said Mahmood Shah , an analyst and former army security chief for the tribal region. Militants loyal to Mehsud have led an escalating campaign against President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration. Taliban militants in South Waziristan have been surrounded by soldiers and all roads leading to the region has been closed, Abbas said. Civilians were not being targeted and in some areas people “raised white flags and they were left off after search,” the military said on its Web site. Autonomy South Waziristan is a mountainous land of 6,620 square kilometers with a population of about 500,000. Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf deployed troops in the tribal areas in 2003 after the U.S. said Taliban militants based in the region were launching attacks at coalition forces based in Afghanistan. The region is dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, who have had autonomy under an agreement with the government signed in 1948, a year after the country’s independence from Britain. The government said last week it had approved the offensive and given authority to the army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , to decide when to strike. The army says it has deployed 28,000 troops around South Waziristan. To contact the reporter on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net .

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Pakistan Battles Taliban in South Waziristan, Aims to Dismantle Network

October 18, 2009

By Jay Shankar Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan’s army is targeting the headquarters of a major Taliban faction in their stronghold of South Waziristan, where about 1,500 guerillas are based, a military spokesman said. The military, during its ground and air offensive that began Oct. 16, aims to “dismantle the network” of Tehrik-e- Taliban, Athar Abbas said, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan . The group’s militants, loyal to the late Baitullah Mehsud , account for 80 percent of terrorist activities in the country, he said. The offensive is the most direct attempt to end terrorist violence that has threatened to destabilize the government of the nuclear-armed state. The U.S. has encouraged offensives against Pakistan-based Taliban, saying Waziristan and other border districts are sanctuaries for jihadists who also attack U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan. “This offensive will not succeed,” Ajai Sahni , executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management , a New Delhi- based research group, said today in a telephone interview. “The army needs to engage the Taliban militants long-term on the ground. Taliban militants are regrouping elsewhere in the country and they are attacking security establishments.” Militants loyal to the late Mehsud have led an escalating campaign against President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration. Taliban militants in South Waziristan have been surrounded by soldiers and all the roads leading to the region has been closed, Abbas said. Families Displaced Northwest Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said on Oct. 16 that as many as 2 million families may be displaced as a result of the military operations South Waziristan. He didn’t say what plans the government has for housing the refugees. Four Pakistani soldiers were killed and 12 injured in initial clashes with militants, the military said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday. The government said last week it had approved an offensive and given authority to the army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , to decide when to strike. The army says it has deployed 28,000 troops around South Waziristan. Spokesmen for the Mehsud Taliban have claimed responsibility for a spate of bombings and guerrilla assaults this month against government, army and police targets. At least seven guerrilla attacks in the past week killed 140 people, including 11 who died in a car bombing Oct. 16 in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Pakistan has not been able to kill or capture any of the Taliban leaders, Sahni said. Mehsud died in a U.S. missile strike in August and Pakistan’s military campaign against the Taliban has not resulted in a “major success,” so far, he said. To contact the reporter on this story; Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net

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