America's Afghanistan

[muse]

A nation as yet unbuilt

Afghanistan has never been a successful state. Our involvement there is based on a delusion

Peter Preston The Guardian, Monday June 23 2008
Article history

Francis Fukuyama posed the basic Afghan dilemma as the supposed triumph of western invasion began to fall apart. Afghanistan has never een "modern", he observed, chillingly. "Under the monarchy that existed until the beginning of its political troubles in the 1970s, it largely remained a tribal confederation with minimal state penetration outside Kabul". And the subsequent years "of communist misrule and civil war eliminated everything that was left" of that feeble entity. History wasn't dead, in short; Afghans were dead.

And now, many killing fields later, we can put that even more starkly. Afghanistan isn't a "failed" state, because Afghanistan has never been a successful one. Afghanistan is a crossroads, a traffic island, a war zone, a drug den, an exotic doormat, and an eternal victim.

But it is not, in any coherent sense, a nation. We cannot see peace, harmony and freedom "restored" there, because such concepts have no roots in its essentially medieval past, or present. Afghanistan has always been a disaster waiting to happen, again and again.

Did John Reid, pausing briefly at the Ministry of Defence on his routemarch through Whitehall, know this when he vowed that we would "be perfectly happy to leave in three years without firing one shot, because our job is reconstruction"? One hundred body bags back at Brize Norton, that question answers itself. Of course, he didn't know. Nobody who ordered the troops in to flush out al-Qaida knew. Nobody dreamed that Kabul and Kandahar would be tougher nuts to crack than Baghdad and Basra. But they ought to realise it now.

Reid thought that the American mission was "chasing the terrorists who did so much to destroy the twin towers", while our happy boys could get by with a little roadbuilding. Which delusion seems greater today?

Osama bin Laden is still somewhere out there, chased but uncaught. Even Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban government, hasn't been brought to book. And Helmand province, these past few days, has seen only roadside bombs blowing up our boys (and one natural front-page girl). You couldn't have a greater failure of intelligence, or expectation.

What's gone wrong? See the official excuses pour in. Of course the porous border with ungovernable Waziristan and Baluchistan doesn't help. Of course, Iran can be blamed for almost anything too. And, of course, corruption, both central and local, weighs everything down. (Guess which one world commodity crop isn't shrinking ...) But the crippling difficulty, nullifying all efforts, seldom breaks cover.

You'd suppose, from press and ministerial briefings, that the Taliban and al-Qaida were somehow synonymous - alien forces implanted among loyal, struggling Afghans. It's a convenient delusion, one that chimes with a similar yarn in Iraq (where bombings and kidnappings are blamed on stray Saudis or Egyptians, not indigenous Iraqis). But that's clearly rubbish as the suicide attacks proliferate. Taliban patrols do, indeed, pass back and forth across Pakistan's non-frontier. But they are also an Afghan presence with Afghan support. They are part of the Afghan scenery (just as they were when Mullah Omar ruled).

This isn't a war against invaders. This is a war pitting Afghan against Afghan, as usual, as ever: an uncivil conflict. Which is why it is a war we cannot win. If there is no structure, no authority beyond ad hoc tribalism, then there is no victory that can last. The past few decades here, like the centuries that went before as the Mongols and Genghis Khan stormed by, have been years of splitting and slaughtering: one tribe against another, one warlord against his neighbour, one communist against another, the peripheries against Kabul.

The irony is that, left alone to stew, the Taliban would have gone the way of the Parcham and the Khalq before. There was no need to try to destroy them: Afghan anarchy would have done that in time.

But because we persisted in thinking of al-Qaida as some disciplined "terrorist army" pitted against our armies, because we talked in conventional terms that seemed to turn this wreck of a non-state into a nation like any other, we thought that conventional tactics could work. They won't. They have no foundations.

Afghanistan is a nation yet unbuilt, a black hole of hope defying calculation. It kills outsiders; it kills the insiders who seek to rule it. Its great game, over generations, knows only failure; and the only way not to become a loser is to resolve - at last - not to play.
p.preston@guardian.co.uk

 

[muse]

U.S. starts major review of Afghanistan policies
By Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
WASHINGTON: Four months before President George W. Bush leaves office, his top civilian and military aides are conducting four major new reviews of the war strategy and overall mission in Afghanistan, which have exposed internal fissures over U.S. troop levels, how billions of aid dollars are spent, and how to cope with a deteriorating security situation in neighboring Pakistan.

The most ambitious of the assessments, run by the White House, begins in earnest this week, administration officials said. Officials have been directed to produce detailed recommendations within two weeks for Bush and senior advisers on a broad range of security, counterterrorism, political and development issues. Many of the dozen aides interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because the reviews are continuing.

Some of the issues being studied could have far-reaching consequences for the next administration.

Last week, General David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said he needed as many as 15,000 combat and support troops beyond the 8,000 additional troops that Bush had recently approved for deployment early next year. The general's announcement came after he sent his request to the Pentagon; it has not yet been acted on.

It was only last December that the administration ended its last major reassessment of Afghanistan policy. The administration recently announced a series of changes, including plans to double the size of the Afghan Army, restructure the U.S. military command there and put more intelligence analysts on the ground to help hunt down militants.

But administration officials express concern that the earlier adjustments have either failed or been overtaken by changes on the ground. Among other things, they note that the violence by militants in Afghanistan has risen 30 percent this year; that deaths are rising among allied and U.S. forces and in recent months have outnumbered those in Iraq; and that any successful policy must consider the security and economic conditions in neighboring Pakistan.

Related to McKiernan's request, one of the other assessments proposes a military campaign plan for Afghanistan for the next 5 to 10 years, creating long-term requirements for troop levels in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where most of the fighting is taking place, according to one participant in the study. But some U.S. officials say that European allies may balk at these long-term force commitments, potentially leaving the United States to supply an even larger share of the troops.

The reviews will also examine how and where the nearly $6 billion in annual U.S. assistance to Afghanistan is being spent; how to improve the effectiveness of small teams of allied civilians and troops seeded throughout the Afghan provinces to spur economic growth; and how to strike the right balance between taking military action against Qaeda fighters in Pakistan and providing more development aid to that country.

More broadly, many of these assessments seek to improve synchronization across the military and the rest of the government, suggesting that seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States still cannot marshal all its power effectively to prevail in Afghanistan.

"I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this month. But, he added, "I am convinced we can."

As the Bush administration enters its twilight months, many senior national security policy officials and military commanders say there is a new urgency to put the mission in Afghanistan on the right path. Among the reasons are the standard updates required of military strategy in a time of war. But officials acknowledge that there are aspects of legacy-building, an effort to make sure the next president, whoever he is, cannot accuse the Bush administration of leaving Afghan policy in disarray.

Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, emphasized that the analysis under way for Afghanistan was not as sweeping as the review of Iraq policy by the administration in late 2006 that resulted in the "surge" strategy in Iraq.

Other reviews under way within the military will ultimately feed into the White House's broader assessment.

This summer, the acting commander of the Central Command, Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, sent a top-level team of planners to assist McKiernan in assessing operations there. Senior officers said that the review was a full strategy review in everything but name, looking at the proper deployment of troops, the chain of command and even bandwidth requirements for communications and surveillance.

At the same time, the senior NATO military commander, General John Craddock, has undertaken a review of the foundering NATO security mission in Afghanistan. Craddock's review, which a senior Pentagon official said would be completed before the end of the month, was meant to take on the central question of whether NATO has supplied sufficient troops and equipment to fulfill the mission

 

[muse]

U.S. forces release Afghan journalist


KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military has freed an Afghan journalist after holding him for nearly a year without charge, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.

The 22-year-old Jawed Ahmad, who worked for four years for Canadian network CTV, was detained last October by U.S. forces outside a U.S. military base in the southern province of Kandahar.

Jawed was freed this week from the main jail of U.S.-led forces at Bagram, north of the capital Kabul. Human rights groups said he was detained for having contacts with Taliban insurgents and possessing videos of the militants.

"I am free from hell ... After 11 months of being held in a cell that was a like a grave, I want to tell the world the story of my detention and I hope that the stories of others held at Bagram will also see the light of day," a journalist body quoted Ahmad as saying.

Prior to joining CTV, Jawed served as a translator for U.S. Special Forces and was wounded while working for them in Kandahar, a hotbed of militant activity.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) welcomed Jawed's release.

"When reporting in conflict zones, journalists need to be able to gather information from all sides without threat of being labeled an enemy by one side or another," the IFJ said in a statement.

"Jawed Ahmad was held for a year without charge because he was doing his job as a journalist, which is to gather information from all sides to provide balanced and fair coverage. He should never have been detained, and his long-overdue release proves it."

(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jerry Norton)

 

[muse]

From The CS Monitor


In Afghanistan, hit 'em where they aren't
MacArthur's tactic worked in WWII. It could work again.
By F. Jordan Evert
from the September 29, 2008 edition


Washington - Faced with the daunting prospect of fighting the Japanese among the jungles, swamps, and volcanic rocks of the islands of the south Pacific, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's tactic of "island-hopping" isolated his enemies and rendered them strategically irrelevant. His unorthodox principle: Hit 'em where they aren't.

As US policymakers reassess how best to use American and NATO troops, money, and political capital in light of a 30 percent increase in violence in Afghanistan and a worsening situation in Pakistan, they would do well to keep this principle in mind.

Recent US attacks inside Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) follow the prevailing, conventional logic: To win in Afghanistan, kill, coerce, and capture in Pakistan.

A successful strategy must attack the insurgency's true center of gravity: the protection, well-being, and state of mind of each Afghan. Secure these and you win; fail and you lose.

How to go about accomplishing this?

First, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should work to protect a 30-mile wide corridor along Afghanistan's Ring Road, which passes through four of Afghanistan's five major cities and where two-thirds of all Afghans live.

Instead of relying on overwhelming conventional forces, ISAF should build up solid logistic bases in the cities and towns along the road, particularly in the violent southern region between Kandahar and Kabul inhabited by a third of the population. From these bases, special operations forces and civil action teams can partner with Afghan National Security Forces to improve the security situation in the countryside while maintaining a light military footprint.

Second, ISAF must use a similar mix of Special Operations Forces and qualified advisers to improve the well-being of Afghans by strengthening institutions, curbing corruption, and enabling legitimate local leaders to govern. ISAF needs to integrate these issues in the context of Afghanistan's drug-based economy, which destroys institutions from within, spreads violence and fear, and lavishes weapons and political power upon the insurgents.

Good governance is inextricably linked with a solid counternarcotics strategy. Only a coordinated program of opium eradication and interdiction with simultaneous crop substitution and diversification can begin to create conditions favorable to free, fair, and transparent market activity.

Third, public diplomacy must accomplish on an intellectual level what protection and good governance achieve at the elemental level. Soldiers and advisers do not need to engage in a "war of ideas." Rather, they must expose the insurgents' ideology of fear, violence, and repression – an ideology that offers Afghans no hope for the future.

Public diplomacy is the responsibility of every soldier and adviser working at the local level. They should use education and support to enable Afghans to bolster their own unique conceptions of open markets, transparent politics, and international engagement.

Though MacArthur's island-hopping strategy faced considerable opposition from conventionally minded politicians and generals, he succeeded despite a paucity of resources. And he suffered fewer casualties in his entire campaign than Dwight Eisenhower did in the Battle of the Bulge.

Once again, America's leaders need to recalibrate their strategy to defeat a group of implacable foes. They can continue to further the cycle of violence in Afghanistan and undermine stability in Pakistan through a stubborn adherence to the kill, coerce, and capture strategy, or they can pursue a strategy designed to improve the well-being of the ordinary Afghan.

If political leaders in Washington and Europe help the new civilian leadership in Pakistan undertake similar endeavors, we will isolate the enemy. Hit 'em where they aren't, and the insurgency will wither away.

F. Jordan Evert serves as a presidential administrative fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute, George Washington University. The views expressed here are his own

 

[RabzonKhan]

Shouldn’t this thread be in the War on Terror forum?


Ex-diplomat: US supplies arms to Taliban

Mon, 29 Sep 2008

An Afghan ex-diplomat says the US supplies arms to the Taliban to jeopardize the security situation and have an excuse to stay in Afghanistan.

Vahid Mujda, a former official with the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIB that during the past two years there have been reports indicating that NATO-led forces have been helping the Taliban in some troubled areas.

On December 2007, Michael Semple, the deputy head of the EU mission in Afghanistan, and Mervyn Patterson, another EU official, were ordered out of the country after reports showed that they had offered aid and development incentives to tribal elders in the Taliban heartlands.

Mujda said the US invaded the country on the pretext of fighting terrorism but Washington actually wanted to create a base in the area to exercise pressure on its rivals and on the surrounding countries.

He continued that as the next Afghan presidential election is due next year, there are reports that Washington has started direct talks with the Taliban to secure the event, adding that some meetings have been held in the UAE who is mediating the process.

Mujda did not dismiss the rumors that the US would give the Taliban an important role in the next Afghan administration.

He said that the US has faced many problems in Afghanistan in fighting terrorism and drug trafficking. Moreover, the Bush administration has faced financial problems at home, thus it is possible that Washington is seeking another solution to the Afghan problem, namely through dialogue.

Meanwhile, both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have repeatedly said that they would agree to initiate peace talks on the condition that the foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

The diplomat added although, Pakistan has disappointed Washington in brokering a peace deal with the insurgents, the US needs to remain friends with Islamabad for it is the only way logistic supplies could reach the coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, one way to jeopardize the security situation in Afghanistan is for the US to encourage more cross border attacks by the Taliban from Pakistan's territory, Mujda concluded.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Afghan policeman opens fire on US troops, kills 1

September 30, 2008. KABUL: An Afghan policeman opened fire on US troops inside a police station in eastern Afghanistan, killing an American soldier and wounding several other people, officials said on Monday. US soldiers subsequently killed the policeman. The shooting took place on Sunday in Paktia province. Paktia provincial police chief Gen Esmatullah Alizai confirmed that a policeman had shot an American soldier. A statement from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) issued on Monday said that an ‘altercation’ took place in the station. “While at the district centre, there was an altercation during which an ANP (Afghan National Police) officer and one ISAF soldier were killed,” the statement said. ap

 

[RabzonKhan]

Why we’re losing in Afghanistan

Anand Gopal
Oct. 10, 2008 |

A bit past midnight on a balmy night in late August, Hedayatullah awoke to a deafening blast. He stumbled out of bed and heard angry voices drawing closer. Suddenly, his bedroom doors banged open and dozens of silhouetted figures burst in, some shouting in a strange language.

The intruders blindfolded Hedayatullah and, screaming with fury, forced him to the ground. An Afghan voice told him not to move or speak, or he would be killed. He listened for sounds from the next room, where his brother Noorullah slept with his family. He could hear his nephew, 8 months old, crying hysterically. Then came the sound of an automatic rifle, after which his nephew fell silent.

The rest of the family -- 18 people in all, including aunts, uncles and cousins -- were herded outside into the darkness. The Afghan voice explained to Hedayatullah's terrified mother, "We are the Afghan National Army, here to accompany the American military. The Americans have killed one of your sons and his two children. They also shot his wife and they're taking her to the hospital."

"Why?" Hedayatullah's mother stammered.

"There is no why," the soldier replied. When she heard this, she started screaming, slamming her fists into her chest in anguish. The Afghan soldiers left her and loaded Hedayatullah and his cousin into the back of a military van, after which they drove off with an American convoy into the black of night.

The next day, the Afghan forces released Hedayatullah and his cousin, calling the whole raid a mistake. However, Noorullah's wife, months pregnant, never came home: She died on the way to the hospital.

Surging in Afghanistan

When, decades from now, historians compile the record of this Afghan war, they will date the Afghan version of the surge -- the now trendy injection of large numbers of troops to resuscitate a flagging war effort -- to sometime in early 2007. Then, a growing insurgency was causing visible problems for U.S. and NATO forces in certain pockets in the southern parts of the country, long a Taliban stronghold. In response, military planners dramatically beefed up the international presence, raising the number of troops over the following 18 months by 20,000, a 45 percent jump.

During this period, however, the violence also jumped -- by 50 percent. This shouldn't be surprising. More troops meant more targets for Taliban fighters and suicide bombers. In response, the international forces retaliated with massive aerial bombing campaigns and large-scale house raids. The number of civilians killed in the process skyrocketed. In the 15 months of this surge, more civilians have been killed than in the previous four years combined.

During the same period, the country descended into a state of utter dereliction -- no jobs, very little reconstruction, and ever less security. In turn, the rising civilian death toll and the decaying economy proved a profitable recipe for the Taliban, who recruited significant numbers of new fighters. They also won the sympathy of Afghans who saw them as the lesser of two evils. Once confined to the deep Afghan south, today the insurgents operate openly right at the doorstep of Kabul, the capital.

This last surge, little noted by the media, failed miserably, but Washington is now planning another one, even as Afghanistan slips away. More boots on the ground, though, will do little to address the real causes of this country's unfolding tragedy.

Revenge and the Taliban

One day, as Zubair was walking home, he noticed that the carpet factory near his house in the southern province of Ghazni was silent. That's strange, he thought, because he could usually hear the din of spinning looms as he approached. As he rounded the corner, he saw a crowd of people, villagers and factory workers, gathered around his destroyed house. An American bomb had flattened it into a pancake of cement blocks and pulverized bricks. He ran toward the scene. It was only when he shoved his way through the crowd and up to the wreckage that he actually saw it -- his mother's severed head lying amid mangled furniture.

He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered.

When one decides to become a suicide bomber, it is pretty easy to find the Taliban. In Zubair's case he just asked a relative to direct him to the nearest Talib; every village in the country's south and east has at least a few. He found them and he trained -- yes, suicide bombing requires training -- for some time and then he was fitted with the latest model suicide vest. One morning, he made his way, as directed, toward an office building where Americans advisors were training their Afghan counterparts, but before he could detonate his vest, a pair of sharp-eyed intelligence officers spotted him and wrestled him to the ground. Zubair now spends his days in an Afghan prison.

A poll of 42 Taliban fighters by the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this year revealed that 12 had seen family members killed in airstrikes, and six joined the insurgency after such attacks. Far more who don't join offer their support.

Under the Bombs

In the muddied outskirts of Kabul, an impromptu neighborhood has been sprouting, full of civilians fleeing the regular Allied aerial bombardments in the Afghan countryside. Sherafadeen Sadozay, a poor farmer from the south, spoke for many there when he told me that he had once had no opinion of the United States. Then, one day, a payload from an American sortie split his house in two, eviscerating his wife and three children. Now, he says, he'd rather have the Taliban back in power than nervously eye the skies every day.

Even when the bombs don't fall, it's quite dangerous to be an Afghan. Journalist Jawed Ahmad was on assignment for Canadian Television in the southern city of Kandahar when American troops stopped him. In his possession, they found contact numbers to the cellphones of various Taliban fighters -- something every good journalist in the country has -- and threw him into prison, not to be heard from for almost a year. During interrogation, Ahmad says that American jailers kicked him, smashed his head into a table, and at one point prevented him from sleeping for nine days. They kept him standing on a snowy runway for six hours without shoes. Twice he fainted and twice the soldiers forced him to stand up again. After 11 months of detention, military authorities gave him a letter stating that he was not a threat to the U.S. and released him.

Starving in Kabul

If you're walking his street, there isn't a single day when you won't see Zayainullah. For as long as he can remember, the 11-year-old has perched on the sidewalk at one of Kabul's busiest intersections. Zayainullah has only one arm; the Taliban blew the other one away when he was a child. He uses this arm to beg for handouts, quietly in the mornings, more desperately as the day goes on. Both his parents are dead so he lives with his aunt, a widow. Given the mores of modern-day Afghanistan, she can't work because a woman needs a man's sanction to leave the house. So she puts young Zayainullah on the street as her sole breadwinner. If he comes home empty-handed she beats him, sometimes until he can no longer move.

He sits there, shirtless, with a heaving, rounded belly -- distended from severe malnutrition -- as scores of other beggars and pedestrians stream by him. No one really notices him, though, because poverty has become endemic in this country.

Afghanistan is now one of the poorest countries on the planet. It takes its place among desperate, destitute nations like Burkina Faso and Somalia whenever any international organization bothers to measure. The official unemployment rate, last calculated in 2005, was 40 percent. According to recent estimates, it may today reach as high as 80 percent in some parts of the country.

Approximately 45 percent of the population is now unable to purchase enough food to guarantee bare minimum health levels, according to the Brookings Institution. This winter, Afghan officials claim that hunger may kill up to 80 percent of the population in some northern provinces caught in a vicious drought. Reports are emerging of parents selling their children simply to make ends meet. In one district of the southern province of Ghazni last spring things got so bad that villagers started eating grass. Locals say that after a harsh winter and almost no food, they had no choice.

Kabul itself lies in tatters. Roads have gone unpaved since 2001. Massive craters from decades of war blot the capital city. Poor Afghans live in crumbling warrens with no electricity and often without safe drinking water. Kabul, a city designed for about 800,000 people, now holds more than 4 million, mostly squeezed into informal settlements and squatters' shacks.

Washington spends about $100 million a day on this war -- close to $36 billion a year -- but only 5 cents of every dollar actually goes toward aid. From this paltry sum, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief found that "a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries." The economy is so underdeveloped that opium production accounts for more than half of the country's gross domestic product.

What little money does go for reconstruction is handed over to U.S. multinationals who then subcontract out to Afghan partners and cut corners every step of the way. As a result, the U.N. ranks the country as the fifth least-developed in the world -- a one-position drop from 2004.

The government and coalition forces may not bring jobs to Afghanistan, but the Taliban does. The insurgents pay for fighters -- in some cases, up to $200 a month, a windfall in a country where 42 percent of the population earns less than $14 a month. When a textile factory in Kandahar laid off 2,000workers in September, most of them joined the Taliban. And that district in Ghazni where locals were reduced to eating grass? It is now a Taliban stronghold.

Biking in Kabul

A spate of suicide bombings and high-profile attacks in recent years have turned Kabul into a sort of garrison state, with roadblocks and checkpoints clogging many of the city's main arteries. The traffic is, at times, unbearable, so I bought a new motorbike, an Iranian import that can adroitly weave through traffic. I was puttering along one day recently when a police commander stopped me.

"That's a nice bike," he said.

"Thank you," I replied.

"Is it new?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to have it. Get off."

I stared at him in disbelief, not quite grasping at first that he was deadly serious. Then I began threatening him, saying I'd call a certain influential friend if he laid a finger on the bike. That finally hit home and he stepped back, waving me on.

Journalists may have influential friends, but ordinary Afghans are usually not so lucky. Locals tend to fear the neighborhood police as much as the many criminals who prowl Kabul's streets. The notoriously corrupt police force is just one face of a government that much of the population has come to loathe.

Police are known to rob passengers at checkpoints. Many of the country's leading members of parliament and cabinet officials sport long, bloody records of human rights abuses. Rapists and serious criminals regularly bribe their way out of prison. Warlords and militia commanders run wild in the north, regularly raping young girls and snatching the land of villagers with impunity. Earlier this year newspapers revealed that President Hamid Karzai pardoned a pair of such militiamen accused of bayonet-raping a young woman.

What Karzai does hardly matters, though. After all, his government barely functions. Most of the country is carved up into fiefdoms run by small-time commanders. A U.S. intelligence report in the spring of 2008 estimated that the central government then controlled just 30 percent of the country, and many say even that is now an optimistic assessment.

Drive a few miles outside Kabul and the roads are controlled by bandits, off-duty cops, or anyone else with a gun and an eye for a quick buck. The Karzai government's popularity has plummeted to such levels that, believe it or not, many Afghans in Kabul wax nostalgic for the days of Dr. Mohammad Najibullah, the country's last communist dictator. "That government was cruel and indifferent, but at least they gave us something," an Afghan friend typically told me. The Karzai government provides almost no social services, expending all its efforts just trying to keep itself together.

Shadow Government

Power abhors a vacuum, and so, in those areas where central government rule has crumbled, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan -- the Taliban government -- is rising in its place. In Wardak, a province bordering Kabul Province, the Taliban has a stable foothold, complete with a shadow government of mayors and police chiefs. In Logar, another of Kabul's neighboring provinces, some "government-controlled" areas consist of the home of the district head, the NATO installation down the road -- and nothing else.

With the rise of the Taliban in these areas comes their notorious brand of justice. Shadow courts now dispense Taliban-style draconian judgments and punishments in many districts and ever more locals are turning to them to settle disputes, either out of fear or because they are far more efficient than the corrupt government courts. The Taliban recently chopped off the ears of a schoolteacher in Zabul province for working for the government. They gunned down a popular drummer in Ghazni simply for playing music in public. Even the infamous public executions are back. The Taliban recently invited journalists to watch the execution of a pair of women on prostitution charges.

The Taliban are as uninterested in social services and human rights as the Karzai government or the international forces, but they know how to turn a world of poverty, insecurity and death from laser-guided missiles to their advantage. This is how the Islamic Emirate spreads, like so many weeds at first, poking out of areas where the government has failed. As the central government spins toward irrelevancy, the whole south and east of Afghanistan is becoming a thicket of Taliban before our very eyes.

A War to be Lost

One night the Taliban raided a police check post near my Kabul home, killing three policemen. The following morning, when a police contingent arrived on the scene to investigate, a bomb that the rebels had cleverly hidden at the site exploded and killed two more of them. I arrived shortly afterward to find pieces of charred flesh littering the ground and a mangled, burnt-out police van sitting overturned on a pile of rubble.

The raid didn't make much news at the time, but it was actually the deepest the insurgents had penetrated the capital since they were overthrown seven years ago. They have dispatched many individual suicide bombers into the capital and rocketed it as well from time to time, but never had they marched in as an attacking force on foot. When I told an Afghan colleague that I couldn't believe the Taliban were coming into Kabul this way, he responded: "Coming? They've been here. They were just waiting for the government and the U.S. to fail."

Failure is a notion now preoccupying the Western leadership of this war, which is why they are scrambling for yet another "surge" solution.

Of course, the Taliban won't be capturing Kabul anytime soon; the international forces are much too powerful to topple militarily. But the Americans can't defeat the Taliban either; the guerrillas are too deeply rooted in a country scarred by no jobs, no security and no hope. The result is a war of attrition, with the Americans planning to pour yet more fuel on the flames by throwing in more soldiers next year.

This is a war to be won by constructing roads, creating jobs, cleaning up the government and giving Afghans something they've had preciously little of in the last 30 years: hope. However, hope is fading fast here, and that's a fact Washington can ill afford to ignore; for once the Afghans lose all hope, the Americans will have lost this war.

 

[muse]

Readers with memory of the events that brought the Talib to power in 1996, will find in the piece below an unsettling echo - at least it should be unsettling:



Some Afghans live under Taliban rule – and prefer it

In provinces just south of Kabul, the insurgents have a shadow government that polices roads and runs courts.
By Anand Gopal | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 15, 2008 edition

Porak, Afghanistan - After a gang of thieves had continually terrorized an Afghan neighborhood near here months ago, locals decided they'd had enough. "We complained several times to the government and even showed them where the thieves lived," says Ahmad, who goes by one name.

But the bandits continued to operate freely. So the villagers turned to the Taliban.

The militants' parallel government here in Logar Province – less than 40 miles from Kabul, the capital – tried and convicted the men, tarred their faces, paraded them around, and threatened to chop off their hands if they were caught stealing in the future. The thieves never bothered the locals again.

In several provinces close to Kabul, the government's presence is vanishing or already nonexistent, residents say. In its place, a more effective – and brutal – Taliban shadow government is spreading and winning local support.

"The police are just for show," one local says. "The Taliban are the real power here."

Widespread disillusionment with rampant crime, corrupt government, and lack of jobs has fueled the Taliban's rise to de facto power – though mainly in areas dominated by fellow ethnic Pashtuns. Still, the existence of Taliban power structures so close to Kabul shows the extent to which the Afghan government has lost control of the country.

"This is a major problem for them," says Habibullah Rafeh, a political analyst with the Afghanistan Academy of Sciences. "Even though the Taliban can't capture Kabul militarily because of the strength of the international forces there, the government can't stop them from operating freely just outside of the city."

When President Hamid Karzai's government first took power in 2001, "authorities gave every family in Logar two kilos of food," says a local resident who works with an international nongovernmental organization and identifies himself as Abdel Qabir. "When that ran out each family received $200 assistance. But that, too, ran out, and people had no money and there were criminals everywhere.

"So people turned to the Taliban," Mr. Qabir continues. "They may not provide jobs, but at least they share the same culture and brought security."

Villagers say that almost every household in Logar Province has Taliban fighters. By day the area is quiet – most people stay indoors behind large mud walls or tend to their fields. A tiny roadside market sells dried fruits and soft drinks, and the shops often go unattended for hours.

As nightfall approaches, Taliban fighters slowly emerge from the houses and surrounding hillsides, some lugging rocket-propelled grenade launchers over their shoulders, ready to begin a night's work. The guerrillas set up checkpoints along Logar Province's central highway, stopping trucks and taxis to check IDs.

A few miles away sits a police checkpoint, but the police say they don't dare enter the Taliban-controlled areas. Yet many villagers say they don't need the police, since crime has almost vanished.

The foreign troop presence in Logar and neighboring provinces remains limited, too. NATO forces tend to only patrol some areas and focus their efforts on specific operations, usually at night.

The Taliban now have a strong presence in all seven of Logar's districts, including outright control of four of them, locals say. "In these districts the Taliban patrol openly in the daytime and there is no government presence at all," says Qabir.

In neighboring Ghazni Province, the Taliban is in full control of 13 of the 18 districts, according to locals. Similarly, in Wardak, which neighbors Kabul, the insurgents have control of six of eight districts. None of the six districts in either province dominated by ethnic Hazaras, however, are run by the Taliban.

In areas under their control, the Taliban has set up their own government, complete with police chiefs, judges, and even education committees.

An Islamic scholar heads the judicial committee of each district under Taliban control and usually appoints two judges to try cases using a strict interpretation of sharia law, according to locals and Taliban members. "We prefer these courts to the government courts," says Fazel Wali of Ghazni city, an NGO worker. Taliban courts have a reputation of working much faster than government ones, which often take months to decide cases and are saddled with corruption, he says.

The Taliban's parallel government is also involved in local education. Employees with Coordination for Afghan Relief, an Afghan NGO that works in Ghazni city and trains teachers, say Taliban authorities recently gave them a letter detailing the "allowed curriculum" in local schools.

Abdul Hakim, a Taliban "Emir of Education and Culture" in Ghazni Province, says his group checks all schoolbooks to ensure that they adhere to their version of sharia law. "We want to ensure that our youth are trained in Islamic education," he explains. "First, they should learn sharia law and religious studies. Then comes science and other subjects.... But we don't burn or close down schools if they are in accord with Islam."

However, locals say that the number of schools in Taliban-controlled territory is dwindling fast. Of the 1,100 schools operating three years ago in Ghazni, only 100 are left, according to the Ministry of Education. Almost no girls' schools remain, except nearly a dozen in the government-controlled provincial center.

The group also brings its austere interpretation of Islam to the areas they control, banning nonreligious music and flashy wedding parties. In Logar, guards at Taliban checkpoints regularly stop vehicles and beat drivers playing music.

The government police often refuse to enter Taliban territory. In Logar Province, when the Taliban set ablaze the homes of suspected government sympathizers during the middle of the night a few months ago, the locals called the police, desperate. "But the police actually told us to wait until morning, since they don't like to come out at night," recalls one resident. The houses burned to the ground.

Mozafaradeen Wardak, chief of police in Wardak Province, denies the allegations and says that, while the insurgents may have control in places like Logar and Ghazni, the police still regularly patrol.

Independent political analyst Waheed Muzhda says the Taliban's advance from the south toward Kabul resembles their progression when they first took power 12 years ago. In both cases, he says, they won support by bringing law and order.

"We have no TV. We can't listen to music. We don't have parties," says Abdul Halim of Ghazni Province, who, like others in the area, is a Taliban supporter. "But at least we have security and justice."

 

[muse]

Two items from the IHT to add to the discussion and debate:


More troops mean more war
By Stephen Kinzer Published: October 17, 2008

Despite their differences over how to pursue the U.S. war in Iraq, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama both want to send more American troops to Afghanistan. Both are wrong. History cries out to them, but they are not listening.

Both candidates would do well to gaze for a moment on a painting by the British artist Elizabeth Butler called "Remnants of an Army." It depicts the lone survivor of a 15,000-strong British column that sought to march through 150 kilometers of hostile Afghan territory in 1842. His gaunt, defeated figure is a timeless reminder of what happens to foreign armies that try to subdue Afghanistan.

The McCain-Obama approach to Afghanistan, like much of U.S. policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia, is based on emotion rather than realism. Emotion leads many Americans to want to punish perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They see war against the Taliban as a way to do it. Suggesting that victory over the Taliban is impossible, and that the United States can only hope for peace in Afghanistan through compromise with Taliban leaders, has been taken as near-treason.

This knee-jerk response ignores the pattern of fluid loyalties that has been part of Afghan tribal life for centuries. Alliances shift as interests change. Warlords who support the Taliban are not necessarily enemies of the United States. If they are today, they need not be tomorrow.

In recent weeks, this elemental truth has begun to reshape debate over Western policy toward Afghanistan. Warlords on both sides met quietly in Saudi Arabia. The Afghan defense minister called for a "political settlement with the Taliban." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would not go that far, but said he might ultimately be open to "reconciliation as part of the political outcome."

Gates, however, struck a delusionary note of "can-do" cheeriness by repeating the McCain-Obama mantra: More U.S. troops can pacify Afghanistan. Speaking days after a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the United States was caught in a "downward spiral" there, Gates asserted that there is "no reason to be defeatist or underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run."

In fact, long-run success in Afghanistan - defined as an acceptable level of violence and assurance that Afghan territory will not be used for attacks against other countries - will only be possible with fewer foreign troops on the ground, not more.

A relentless series of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan has produced "collateral damage" in the form of hundreds of civilian deaths, which alienate the very Afghans the West needs. As long as the campaign continues, recruits will pour into Taliban ranks. It is no accident that the Taliban has mushroomed since the current bombing campaign began. It allows the Taliban to claim the mantle of resistance to a foreign occupier. In Afghanistan, there is none more sacred.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan also serves as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. It is attracting a new stream of foreign fighters into the region. A few years ago, these jihadists went to Iraq to fight the Great Satan. Now they see the United States escalating its war in Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan, and are flocking there instead.

Even if the United States de-escalates its war in Afghanistan, the country will not be stable as long as the poppy trade provides huge sums of money for violent militants. Eradicating poppies is like eradicating the Taliban: a great idea but not achievable.

Instead of waging endless spray-and-burn campaigns that alienate ordinary Afghans, the United States should allow planting to proceed unmolested, and then buy the entire crop. Some could be turned into morphine for medical use, and the rest destroyed. The Afghan poppy crop is worth an estimated $4 billion per year. That sum would be better spent putting cash into the pockets of Afghan peasants than firing missiles into their villages.

Deploying more U.S. troops in Afghanistan will intensify this highly dangerous conflict, not calm it. Compromise with Al Qaeda would be both unimaginable and morally repugnant, but the Taliban is a different force. Skillful negotiation among clan leaders, based on a genuine willingness to compromise, holds the best hope for Afghanistan. It is an approach based on reality, not emotion.

Stephen Kinzer is author of "A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It

 

[muse]

Don't rush for the exitBy Haroun Mir Published: October 17, 2008


KABUL, Afghanistan:

The situation in Afghanistan in 2008 resembles that of the late 1980s, when the former Soviet leaders started looking for an exit.

Today, a number of Western diplomats and NATO generals are doing the same thing. The recent negotiations with the Taliban reflect a revision of U.S. and NATO strategy from the initial goal of creating a stable Afghan democracy to the present objective of simply finding a pretext to declare victory and get out of Afghanistan.

In late 1980s, Soviet leaders explored various bilateral and multilateral diplomatic channels, including direct engagement with a number of mujahedeen leaders.

U.S. and Soviet authorities had agreed on the concept of "negative symmetry" - banning arms sales to both sides - while working for a negotiated settlement once the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989. However, before a solution was reached, circumstances changed: The Soviet Union ceased to exist, U.S. attention to Afghanistan faded, and UN peace plans fell apart.

The consequence of abandoning Afghanistan was the rise of Islamic radicalism - the emergence of a new breed of terrorism such as Al Qaeda and a Taliban movement that rejected all internationally accepted human rights values.

Afghanistan in 2008 is not better off than it was in 1988. The government's authority is reduced to the immediate peripheries of big cities, and insurgents are closing in on Kabul. Afghans have lost their trust and confidence in the Afghan authorities.

The pessimistic and gloomy picture of Afghanistan in the international media over the past year has certainly boosted the morale of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Western public opinion has become irritated by the lack of progress and could eventually accept the reintegration of Taliban as a political entity in Afghanistan.

We Afghans fear that NATO's rush to find an exit strategy will give an incentive for regional countries to reactivate their hidden agendas in Afghanistan.

Afghan security institutions, such as the army and the police, will need at least an additional decade of direct military support before they can defend Afghanistan from internal and external threats.

The consequences of a premature exit from Afghanistan will certainly be worse than what Afghans experienced in the 1990s. If NATO abandons Afghanistan, galvanized terrorist groups will not be content to stay inside the country. They will continue fighting NATO - only on NATO's turf.

The current situation in Afghanistan is indeed grave, but it's not lost. We could still manage the situation and defeat the Taliban if NATO agreed to reconsider its failed strategy in Afghanistan.

NATO's policy of building a small Afghan Army and police force was arbitrary and flawed from the beginning. Building Afghan security forces of 500,000 soldiers is still more cost efficient and affordable over a long period of time than maintaining 50,000 NATO soldiers in Afghanistan for the next several years.

In fact, many Afghan soldiers, who were disbanded from the army under the failed "Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration" policy, are able to effectively escort NATO's supply trucks through the Taliban's heartland for a $500 monthly salary paid by private security companies. If private security companies can make efficient use of Afghan fighters, why can't NATO?

The Afghan administration has remained corrupt and dysfunctional, and it is highly unlikely to improve in the coming months because it will dedicate all of its available resources for the re-election of President Hamid Karzai in 2009.

NATO is left with two choices: to seek a quick exit and let history repeat itself in Afghanistan, or invest over the next two decades in building a strong Afghan military and police as a reliable partner in the fight against terrorism and radical Islamic groups.

Haroun Mir was a special assistant to the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's former defense minister. He is co-director of Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Call for international support to Parwiz Kambakhsh

October 23, 2008

The outcomes of the “judicial reform programme” run by the Italian government in Afghanistan: The case of journalist Parwiz Kambakhsh
Last October 2007 the criminals who are sitting in the Afghan government put in jail young journalist Parwiz Kambakhsh, in Balhk province (Northern Afghanistan). Parwiz was charged with blasphemy for having circulated an article downloaded from the Internet. This article focused on the women’s rights in Islamic countries.

Parwiz was sentenced to death by the obscurantist Council of the Elders from Balkh province. After that, Parwiz spent a year in jail waiting for the court of appeal to attend his sentence. Now, his sentence to death has been turned into 20 years’ imprisonment. His lawyers want to file an appeal to the Supreme Court, but Parwiz’s conviction is likely to be upheld, if there is no mobilization from the international community supporting Parwiz.

The defamatory accusations against Parwiz by the Afghan religious courts show that the freedom of speech is still totally denied in Afghanistan seven years after the US invasion, and that no justice is actually enforced.

A similar case was that of brave journalist Naseer Fayyaz, who dared to speak up against the Afghan government and was therefore threatened to death by well known criminals such as Ismail Khan and Qasim Fahim, who are currently holding higher government offices. Moreover, he has been prosecuted by the Afghan intelligence (KHAD) so that he had to leave his country.

Today the law of the strongest is the only law ruling in Afghanistan. Whoever dares to oppose the fundamentalists in power and the religious authorities is punished with harsh sentences, threatened, pushed to leave the country, killed, prosecuted by the secret intelligence.

Italy right wing government (2005-2006) set up a very expensive programme to help rebuild the judicial system in Afghanistan, following the 2001 Bonn conference and the 2006 London Conference on Afghanistan. This programme worth about 50 million euro, paid by the Italian taxpayers, involved hundreds of Italian law experts.

The ridiculous sentence against Parwiz Kambakhsh shows that the justice programme designed and run by the Italian government has completely failed. This failure looks even worse if we consider the huge amount of money spent. In addition, this is also a defeat for Karzai and for Western governments that have dressed some well-known criminals with jacket and tie, named them "democratic" and put them in power.

We call for international support to Parwiz Kambakhsh by all possible means. Particularly, we are addressing all truly democratic people to speak up and take action. We count on those people who do not believe that there are two justices: one first-class justice for the Westerns, and one second-class justice for the others. We struggle for freedom for Parwiz Kambakhsh, and we ask for freedom of speech to all Afghan journalists and to the democratic people of Afghanistan.

 

[muse]

Afghan officials aided July attack on U.S. soldiers
By Eric Schmitt

Tuesday, November 4, 2008
WASHINGTON: An internal review by the American military has found that a local Afghan police chief and another district leader helped Taliban militants carry out an attack on July 13 in which nine United States soldiers were killed and a remote American outpost in eastern Afghanistan was nearly overrun.

Afghan and American forces had started building the makeshift base just five days before the attack, and villagers repeatedly warned the American troops in that time that militants were plotting a strike, the report found. It said that the warnings did not include details, and that troops never anticipated such a large and well-coordinated attack.

The assault involved some 200 fighters, nearly three times the number of Americans and Afghans defending the site.

As evidence of collusion between the district police chief and the Taliban, the report cited large stocks of weapons and ammunition that were found in the police barracks in the adjacent village of Wanat after the attackers were repelled. The stocks were more than the local 20-officer force would be likely to need, and many of the weapons were dirty and appeared to have been used recently. The police officers were found dressed in "crisp, clean new uniforms," the report said, and were acting "as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred."

The attackers were driven back after a pitched four-hour battle, in which American artillery, warplanes and attack helicopters were ultimately called in. Still, the militants fought in ways that showed imaginative military training, if not sophisticated weapons.

In the midst of the battle, American soldiers were at times flushed out into the open when they fled what they thought were grenades, but were in fact rocks thrown by Taliban attackers, the report said. The day before the attack, the militants began flowing water through an irrigation ditch feeding an unused field, creating background noise that masked the sounds of the advancing fighters.

The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 48 American troops and 24 Afghan soldiers. Nine Americans died and 27 were injured, most in the first 20 minutes of the fight. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.

The intensity of the attack was so fierce, the report said, that American soldiers shot at insurgents as close as about 15 yards away, often until their weapons jammed, and at militants who shinnied up trees overhanging their positions to shoot at the Americans.

The attack on the outpost, near Wanat, caused the worst single loss for the American military in Afghanistan since June 2005, and one of the worst over all since the invasion in late 2001. It underscored the vulnerability of American forces in Afghanistan, as well as the continuing problem posed by uncertainties over the loyalties of their Afghan allies, especially the Afghan police.

The military investigating officer, an army colonel whose identity was not disclosed in a redacted copy of the report provided to The New York Times, recommended that the police chief and the district governor be replaced, if not arrested.

But the senior American commander in eastern Afghanistan, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, decided after conferring with American forces that relieved the unit, that the district governor had probably been acting under duress and had been cooperative with American troops, according to the general's spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green.

Nielson-Green said in a telephone interview on Monday that while the governor had been absolved, it was unclear whether the police chief in Wanat was complicit.

A spokesman for Afghan Defense Ministry officials said the Americans had never discussed these complaints with them.

Hajji Abdul Halim, deputy governor at the time of the Wanat attack, and now the acting governor of nearby Nuristan Province, said Monday that both officials had been detained briefly and then released.

"We suspected them after the incident, but the American forces released the district governor after two days of custody," he said in a telephone interview.

The report, which was completed on Aug. 13 and declassified in recent days to allow military officials to brief family members of those who were killed, did not assign blame to any commanders of the unit involved — the Second Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team — a unit that was in the final days of a 15-month deployment when the attack took place.

"The actions by leaders at all levels were based upon sound military analysis, proper risk mitigation and for the right reasons," the report said.

It concluded that despite reports earlier in July that 200 to 300 militants had been massing to attack another remote outpost in the vicinity, the commanders at Wanat had no reason to expect such a large frontal assault.

"The enemy normally conducts probing attacks prior to conducting an all-out, large-scale attack," the report said, quoting the investigating officer as concluding that it "was logical" to think that an initial probing attack would involve only about 20 militants seeking to gauge defenses and the reaction of American and Afghan forces.

However, the report criticized the "incredible amount of time" — 10 months — it took the NATO military authorities to negotiate arrangements over the site of the outpost, giving adversaries plenty of time "to plan coordinated and complex attacks."

Some details of the attack have been described in recent months by publications including The New York Times, The Army Times and Vanity Fair. But the 44-page report offers the most extensive account so far.

At the time of the attack, American and Afghan forces were still building fortifications of sandbags and earthen barriers around the main outpost and a small observation post about 100 yards away. In some places, those troops were protected only by strands of concertina wire and a ring of gun-mounted, armored Humvees, the report said.

The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved to exploit it. On the evening of July 12, the militants slipped into the village, undetected by the Americans, ordered the villagers to leave and set up firing positions inside houses and a mosque.

At 4:20 a.m. on July 13, the militants struck with a fusillade of heavy machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the Americans' most potent weapons: 120-millimeter mortars and a TOW missile launcher.

At the same time, the militants blasted the observation post with rifle fire and more grenades. Within 20 minutes, all nine Americans inside the observation post were dead or wounded.

Three times, teams of soldiers from the main base ran a gantlet of hostile fire to resupply the observation post and carry back the dead and wounded. Within 30 minutes, American fighter-bombers were blasting the militant positions, followed by Apache helicopter gunships.

Just days after the attack, American forces abandoned the outpost at Wanat, but Nielson-Green said the military continued to patrol in the region from a larger base four miles away.

"This was a complex attack carried out by militants who clearly knew the terrain and maintained radio silence," she said.

 

[S-2]

Some of this was known quickly thereafter. The notes about local warnings and the technique of masking movement by a irrigation system becoming activated was new for myself.

Somebody might have wondered about the irrigation. Water is immensely valuable, even in Kunar and irrigating an untended field should have raised some eyebrows.

Two weeks left in-country. I'm sure they were professional and the battle conduct sounds superb. Still, was fatigue a factor in not raising their mental antennaes a bit higher.

Some signs were there it seems.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Obama vows new deal for Afghanistan

2 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US president-elect Barack Obama called for a grand new approach to fighting terror in South Asia starting with the promise of a better life for dirt-poor Afghans.

Military means alone would not suffice, he said in an NBC interview broadcast Sunday, while pressing India and Pakistan to heal their divide over Kashmir following the recent massacre by extremists in Mumbai.

"If a country is attacked, it has the right to defend itself," Obama said on "Meet the Press," while evading a question on whether India has the right to go in hot pursuit of militants over the Pakistan border.

Obama, who has reserved the right to strike Pakistan-based militants if Islamabad is unwilling or unable, said the new civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari "has sent the right signals."

"He has indicated that he recognizes this (terrorism) is not just a threat to the United States but it is a threat to Pakistan as well," Obama said, citing a deadly bombing Friday in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near Afghanistan.

Obama called for an "effective strategic partnership with Pakistan that allows us in concert to assure that terrorists are not setting up safe havens in some of these border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan."

But the United States needed also to build a strategic partnership across all of South Asia, Obama said ahead of his inauguration on January 20, as he vowed to take the fight "fiercely" to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

"We can't continue to look at Afghanistan in isolation. We have to see it as part of a regional problem that includes Pakistan, includes India, includes Kashmir, includes Iran," he said.

Suspicion over the Mumbai carnage, which left 172 dead, has fallen on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that has fought Indian rule in Kashmir and was blamed for a 2001 attack on the New Delhi parliament.

Pakistan's foreign ministry Sunday dismissed as "rubbish" a Washington Post report that it had agreed to a 48-hour timetable imposed by the United States and India to take action against Pakistanis accused of involvement in the attacks.

"We are going to have to make sure that India and Pakistan are normalizing their relationship if we are going to be effective in some of these other areas," Obama said.

Afghanistan was going to require additional troops and more effective coordination among NATO allies on the ground, said Obama, who plans to divert troops from Iraq as he winds down the war there.

"And we've got to really ramp up our development approach to Afghanistan. Part of the problem that we've had is the average Afghan farmer hasn't seen any improvement in his life," the president-elect said.

Despite promises of a new dawn for Afghanistan by President George W. Bush, Obama said infrastructure and security remained parlous, the rule of law was feeble and drugs trafficking rampant.

"If we combine effective development, more effective military work as well as more effective diplomacy, then I think that we can stabilize the situation," he said, without going into details.

Asked if he would designate a presidential envoy for South Asia, Obama said his focus was to draft a comprehensive strategy for his national security team headed by secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton.

"I have enormous confidence in Senator Clinton's ability to rebuild alliances and to send a strong signal that we are going to do business differently and place an emphasis on diplomacy," he said.

At a news conference Sunday unveiling retired army general Eric Shinsheki as his pick for veterans affairs secretary, Obama said he wanted "a new national security strategy that uses all elements of American power."

Obama reaffirmed plans to command his military chiefs to "design a plan for a responsible drawdown" from Iraq, stressing that both Baghdad and the Bush administration were already eyeing an exit for US troops under a new pact.

On NBC, he refused to say how many troops he might leave in Iraq as part of a residual force to guard US diplomats and prevent a resurgence in terror. But the stress must lie on the "central front" of terrorism -- in Afghanistan and in its border regions with Pakistan.