Letting Poppy Kill the Counterinsurgency

Registan

'Gilded cage' lifestyle reveals the ugly truth about foreign aid in Afghanistan

By Patrick Cockburn in Kabul
Friday, 1 May 2009

Vast sums of money are being lavished by Western aid agencies on their own officials in Afghanistan at a time when extreme poverty is driving young Afghans to fight for the Taliban. The going rate paid by the Taliban for an attack on a police checkpoint in the west of the country is $4, but foreign consultants in Kabul, who are paid out of overseas aids budgets, can command salaries of $250,000 to $500,000 a year.

The high expenditure on paying, protecting and accommodating Western aid officials in palatial style helps to explain why Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178th on a UN ranking of countries' wealth. This is despite a vigorous international aid effort with the US alone spending $31bn since 2002 up to the end of last year.

The high degree of wastage of aid money in Afghanistan has long been an open secret. In 2006, Jean Mazurelle, the then country director of the World Bank, calculated that between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of aid was "badly spent". "The wastage of aid is sky-high," he said. "There is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal."

The dysfunctional reputation of the US aid effort in Afghanistan is politically crucial because Barack Obama, with strong support from Gordon Brown, has promised that a "civilian surge" of non-military experts will be sent to Afghanistan to strengthen its government and turn the tide against the Taliban. These would number up to 600, including agronomists, economists and legal experts, though Washington admitted this week that it was having difficulty recruiting enough people of the right calibre.

Whole districts of Kabul have already been taken over or rebuilt to accommodate Westerners working for aid agencies or embassies. "I have just rented out this building for $30,000 a month to an aid organisation," said Torialai Bahadery, the director of Property Consulting Afghanistan, which specialises in renting to foreigners. "It was so expensive because it has 24 rooms with en-suite bathrooms as well as armoured doors and bullet-proof windows," he explained, pointing to a picture of a cavernous mansion.

Though 77 per cent of Afghans lack access to clean water, Mr Bahadery said that aid agencies and the foreign contractors who work for them insist that every bedroom should have an en-suite bathroom and this often doubles the cost of accommodation.

In addition to the expensive housing the expatriates in Kabul are invariably protected by high-priced security companies and each house is converted into a fortress. The freedom of movement of foreigners is very limited. "I am not even allowed to go into Kabul's best hotel," complained one woman working for a foreign government aid organisation. She added that to travel to a part of Afghanistan deemed wholly free of Taliban by Afghans, she had to go by helicopter and then be taken to where she wanted to go in an armoured vehicle.

There have been numerous attacks on foreigners in Kabul and suicide bombings have been effective from the Taliban's point of view in driving almost all expatriates into well-defended compounds where living conditions may be luxurious but which are as confining as any prison. This means that many foreigners sent to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country and the state machinery seldom meet Afghans aside from their drivers and a few Afghans with whom they work.

"Risk avoidance is crippling the international aid effort," said one aid expert in Kabul. "If governments are so worried about risk then they really should not be sending people here and having them work under such restricted conditions."

The effectiveness of foreign advisers and experts in Iraq is often further reduced by the very short time they stay in the country. "Many people move on after six months," said one expatriate who did not want to be named. "In addition some embassy employees receive two weeks off work for every six weeks they are in the country, on top of their usual holidays."

Some officials working for non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan are themselves troubled by the amount of money which foreign government officials and their aid agencies spend on staff compared to the poverty of the Afghan government.

"I was in Badakhshan province in northern Afghanistan which has a population of 830,000, most of whom depend on farming," said Matt Waldman, the head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Kabul. "The entire budget of the local department of agriculture, irrigation and livestock, which is extremely important for farmers in Badakhshan, is just $40,000. This would be the pay of an expatriate consultant in Kabul for a few months."

Mr Waldman, the author of several highly-detailed papers on the failures of aid in Afghanistan, says that a lot of money is put in at the top in Afghanistan but it is siphoned off before it reaches ordinary Afghans at he bottom. He agrees that the problems faced are horrendous in a country which was always poor and has been ruined by 30 years of war. Some 42 per cent of Afghanistan's 25 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day and life expectancy is only 45 years. Overall literacy rate is just 34 per cent and 18 per cent for women.

snip

Go figure: The West's spending in Afghanistan

$57 The foreign aid per capita to Afghanistan, compared with $580 per capita in the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict.

$250,000 Typical salary of foreign consultants in Afghanistan, including 35 per cent hardship allowance and 35 per cent danger money. Afghan civil servants typically receive less than $1,000 a year.

$22bn The shortfall in donations compared to the international community's estimate of Afghanistan's need – around 48 per cent.

40 per cent Share of international aid budget returned to aid countries in corporate profit and consultant salaries – more than $6bn since 2001.

$7m Daily aid spend in Afghanistan. The daily military spend by the US government is around $100m.

Kim Gamel
Friday, 1 May 2009

Three US troops have been killed in fighting west of Baghdad, the military said today, making April the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since September.

At least 18 US soldiers died in April, a sharp increase from March's total of nine — the lowest since the war began in March 2003.

The deaths come as a series of deadly bombings in recent weeks has raised concerns that insurgents are stepping up their efforts to re-ignite sectarian bloodshed and derail security gains that have brought overall violence to its lowest levels in recent years.

Most of the violence has targeted Iraqis since the Americans have begun pulling back from inner-city outposts and letting Iraqis take the lead in security operations. But attacks have continued against US forces.

Two people were arrested following an anti-tank grenade attack against US forces Wednesday in a mainly Sunni neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, the military said.

The two US Marines and one sailor were killed Thursday while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, according to a statement. Anbar is a former insurgent stronghold that has been relatively calm since Sunni tribal leaders turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

April has been the deadliest month since September, when 25 American forces died.

The US military reported 17 Americans killed in February and 16 in January.

April also saw the most troops killed in combat so far this year, as opposed to other causes. Thirteen of last month's 18 deaths were in combat compared with four among the nine in March.

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bbc

Five coalition soldiers have been killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, Nato has said.

Four of the dead were from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force and one was a US soldier, it said.

They were killed in fighting that "included small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenade strikes", Nato said.

As of February, Isaf had 56,420 personnel from 41 different countries including the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Jordan.

A Nato spokeswoman told Reuters news agency the insurgents attacked an outpost in eastern Afghanistan earlier on Friday and struck an ammunition store, causing an explosion.

Afghan and Isaf troops called in air support after they came under attack, a Nato statement said.

The insurgents fled and Isaf-Afghan forces were in pursuit, it added.

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Philip Smucker | McClatchy Newspapers

ORGUN-E, Afghanistan — A 21-minute helicopter flight apart in the dusty mountains of eastern Afghanistan wasn't what Troy Yoho and Kelsey Tardieau had in mind when the couple arranged to be deployed together in Task Force Yukon (the 4th Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division) from their base in Alaska.

1st Lt. Tardieau, an intelligence officer who works with the Afghan Border Police, and 1st Lt. Yoho, a scout platoon leader — both 2007 West Point graduates — hadn't even expected to end up together in Alaska, where they'll be married in the summer of 2010.

They were dating at graduation, but neither of them expected it to last. Yoho, 25, of Tomball, Texas, thought he was going to Fort Bragg, N.C., and Tardieau, 24, from Grants Pass, Ore., to Fort Lewis in Washington. But fate interceded. Their first picks were taken, and the Army assigned them both, by mere chance, to Fort Richardson in Alaska. The romance was meant to be, and they sealed it with a kiss in West Point's famous "Firsty Pub."

Now, the two can't stand to be apart: They bought a house in Alaska even before their marriage. However, they'll have to get acclimated to the Afghan mountains that now stand between them, because Army regulations prohibit them from hopping on the 21-minute chopper flight — even for a romantic weekend.

There's one bright spot: Task Force Yukon commanders have agreed to allow the two lovebirds to take their leave together in about six months.

In the meantime, they discuss the challenges of their work on secure military phone lines that Uncle Sam can monitor, and flirt openly on the local Afghan cell phone network, on which anybody — including the Taliban — can eavesdrop.

"I tell her just about everything there is going on down here in Paktika and she tells me everything going on up there in Paktia," said Yoho, noting that the provinces they live in are separated by a "K," the first letter of his future wife's name.

Yoho and Tardieau are involved in the U.S. military's extensive counterinsurgency efforts in a nation still wracked by war and instability. Lt. Yoho is often out in the field, moving with his platoon from one mountain valley to another.

"The key is to try to bind small villages back to the district center," he said. "The British drew the line, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border divides a lot of the tribes."

While not dodging ambushes set by the Taliban and al Qaida, Yoho, who studied Islamic as well as American law at West Point, is trying to use his legal background to help the Afghans establish their own government.

"Ninety percent of the insurgents don't want to fight the greatest army in the world," he said. "They want to provide for their families, but if they can't they will sling bullets at us."

"Working here," he adds, "you often need to set aside what you think is right or wrong."

The motto of Yoho's 509 Geronimo Battalion is "It's the People, Stupid," meaning that the war can and will be won only by concentrating on helping the Afghan people and their security forces meet the challenges of good governance and stability.

"When I entered West Point, it was all — what should I say — boots on the ground and kill the bad guys for a better life at home," he said. "That is not what we do here."

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Non-COIN Afghanistan

One of my biggest complaints about all this talk in Afghanistan in the context of a counterinsurgency is that, despite much highfalutin’ rhetoric, the U.S. isn’t really conducting one. As one case in point (among dozens cataloged on this blog alone), I highly recommend John McHugh’s latest video.

So we see here a typical FOB in an insurgency-ridden area. The villagers feel trapped, exhibiting typical fence-sitting behavior. As with all other FOBs, the soldiers do not patrol at night, and the night is when the Taliban express power. It is an impasse, which in COIN is, technically, losing. And the soldiers seem to blame the villagers for this, instead of themselves for not taking advantage of their night vision goggles, GPS-guided air support, and the insurgents’ vitamin-starved eyesight to take back the night.

more at Registan

Shia minority determined to defend the first legislation to enshrine their rights

By Patrick Cockburn in Kabul

Saturday, 2 May 2009

Supporters of the Afghan law which critics claim legalises marital rape and restricts the rights of women say they will oppose amending the legislation significantly.

"A change in this law will be illegal and against democracy," said Sayed Abdul Latif Sajadi, a senior Shia cleric in Kabul who played a leading role in drawing up the legislation and pushing it through parliament. "Any change will be against the wishes of four million people." In an implied threat, he said that the Shia clergy had so far successfully dissuaded their followers from taking to the streets . "If the government understands the sensitivity of this they will not touch it."

The Shia Family Law, which has been denounced inside and outside Afghanistan, applies only to the four million Afghans who are Shia. It is the first time in predominantly Sunni Muslim Afghanistan that the Shia, mostly members of the long-oppressed Hazara ethnic group, have had their rights legally defined and recognised.

"Those Afghans who protest against the law just want to make the West happy," says Mohammed Sarwar Jahadi, a former prisoner of the Taliban and an MP for the Hazara heartland of Bamyan province in central Afghanistan.

He said the law was discussed in parliament over a two-and-a-half-year period and was whittled down from 750 to 249 articles. "During that time we didn't hear a single protest."

He asserts that it was only after foreign leaders like Barack Obama had come out against it that it became a political issue in Afghanistan.

Mr Jahadi is more open to amendments than the Shia clergy, but does not think there is much wrong with the law already passed.

"I don't accept that it is a violation of human rights," he said, claiming that the law's provisions had been misreported and were yet to be published in their final version.

Mr Sayed Sajadi, a Hazara, said the strength of protests against the law surprised him. "It was unexpected because already 99 per cent of Afghan women only leave the house with their husband's permission."

The Taliban are likely to be pleased by the outcry over the new law because it will make it more difficult for the US, the UK and the Nato powers to demonise them as the sole proponents of the subjugation of women in Afghanistan.

They have burned girls' schools, insisted on women wearing the burqa and murdered women's rights campaigners. Most pro-government Afghan leaders are unlikely – and often hypocritical – proponents of equality between men and women, since this is against the norms of Afghanistan's highly conservative and religious society.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier in the week blithely assured Gordon Brown that the law would be reviewed and amendments introduced.

But he is likely to find this difficult to do in practice, because the Shia community wants legal recognition and the new law, while undoubtedly oppressive to women, largely reflects their actual condition.

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As Afghan President Heads to Washington, No Challengers Emerge for Election

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 3, 2009

KABUL, May 2 -- With less than a week left before candidates must register for Afghanistan's presidential election, opposition forces remain so divided and appear so confused that the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, is looking more and more like a winner as he heads to Washington for a summit with President Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday and Thursday.

Although more than 60 people have formally expressed interest in the August presidential race, not a single candidate has registered with the Independent Election Commission.

Instead, an array of political strongmen and presidential hopefuls has spent the past week in backroom negotiations with onetime adversaries, either making last-minute attempts to form winning opposition tickets or bartering their presumed vote-getting influence for posts in a future Karzai administration.

"We tried to put together a team with a national agenda, but so far we have failed. As a result, Karzai is growing stronger by the hour," said Ali Jalali, a former interior minister and one of the still-undecided candidates. "The problem is ego. Everyone thinks he has the best chance of winning, so no one is willing to compromise."

Karzai is the unpopular president of a weak government besieged by a brutal Islamist insurgency, but the political disarray appears to leave him in a position to easily win reelection.

Yet if he wins essentially by default, analysts said, Karzai would need to rebuild the confidence of many Afghans who have become increasingly disappointed with his performance over the past seven years. He would also have to mend fences with Washington: The Obama administration has been increasingly skeptical of his abilities even as it continues to send thousands more troops to fight the Taliban insurgency.

"Karzai is in a very strong position now, but even if he is reelected, Afghanistan will badly need better governance and better leadership," said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "We need to look beyond who wins the elections. I am much more worried about the future of Afghan institutions and democracy."

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Ernesto Londoño and Dlovan Brwari
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 3, 2009

BAGHDAD, May 2 -- An Iraqi army soldier opened fire on American soldiers Saturday in northern Iraq, killing two and wounding three in an incident that raised fresh concerns about extremist infiltration of Iraq's security forces as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw.

The gunman, identified by local officials as Ali al-Dulaimi, approached some U.S. soldiers as they were working out at a combat outpost in Hamam al-Alil, a town 15 miles south of Mosul, Iraqi officials said. The assailant opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle. U.S. soldiers fired back and killed him, said Maj. Derrick Cheng, a U.S. military spokesman.
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Around the same time, another assailant opened fire on other U.S. soldiers on the compound, Cheng said. That gunman fled, he said. It was unclear whether any Americans were hurt in that incident.

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Jason Motlagh / Kabul

When Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office recently said it was holding peace talks with the Taliban, the Taliban countered with a press release. A spokesman for the militants dismissed Karzai's announcement as a propaganda ploy to suggest a schism within the Taliban's ranks. Not only was that not true, the press release that was subsequently sent to journalists announced the start of the Taliban's spring offensive, dubbed "Operation Victory." It was the latest exchange in a critical second front in the Afghan war — a war of words that U.S. and Kabul government officials privately concede they are losing.

The same Taliban that once banned television now boasts a sophisticated public relations machine that is shaping perceptions in Afghanistan and abroad. Although polls show the movement remains unpopular, the insurgents have readily exploited a sense of growing alienation fostered by years of broken government promises, official corruption, and the rising death toll among civilians from airstrikes and other military actions. "The result is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban," says a report from the International Crisis Group, a think tank that monitors conflicts. An American official in Afghanistan agrees: "We cannot afford to be passive [communicators] any longer if we're going to turn this around." (See Jason Motlagh's TIME.com video report from an Afghan village.)

The Taliban has a wide-range of propaganda weapons, spanning high and low technology. Since mid-2005, the militants have maintained a multilingual website that has repeatedly changed service providers to avoid being shut down. On April 9, The Washington Post reported that, for more than a year, a Houston-based firm had unwittingly hosted a site claiming to be the voice of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" (the name of Mullah Omar's regime, deposed by the 2001 U.S. invasion) before it was identified as such. It was updated with official messages and battlefield reports that were clearly and incredulous pieces of propaganda. (See a multimedia look at the war in Afghanistan.)

Meanwhile, on the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul and the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar, cheap, mass-produced DVDs feature footage of coalition atrocities: mud-brick Afghan villages leveled by allied attacks and ordinary citizens allegedly killed by coalition fire. Also popular: a montage from the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, part of a running effort to portray the current foreign troops as "invaders." Other discs show Taliban executions of so-called traitors and spectacular attacks against coalition forces.

The Taliban also know how to take advantage of Western media outlets. For instance, on Aug. 18, the Taliban ambushed a French patrol about 30 miles from the Afghan capital, an attack that left 10 soldiers dead. Several weeks later, militants involved in the attack appeared in a glossy, eight-page magazine spread in Paris-Match, a leading French newsweekly, flaunting the weapons, uniforms and personal effects of the dead soldiers. Back in France, support for the war dropped to a new low. Defense Minister Herve Morin noted that the Taliban "understood that public opinion is probably the Achilles' heel" of the international community.

High rates of illiteracy in rural areas compel the Taliban to rely on more traditional means of communication. Threatening phone calls to influential tribal elders are supplemented with pamphlets and audio cassettes containing pro-Taliban songs and poems. Those who would dare cooperate with the authorities are reminded they are likely to be killed.

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Are they trying to egg on a new sectartian war? I guess it would guarantee our presence for a long long time.

Iraqi forces arrest U.S.-allied militia leader
03 May 2009 14:23:28 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Corrects attribution of reason for arrest, paragraph 7)

TIKRIT, Iraq, May 3 (Reuters) - Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops have arrested a U.S.-allied Sunni Arab militia leader charged with murder, Iraqi officials said on Sunday.

The U.S. military said Nadhim al-Jubouri, leader of a government-backed local militia and a religious leader in the town of Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad, and his two brothers were seized from their home on Saturday.

Derrick Cheng, a U.S. military spokesman in northern Iraq, said "members of the Iraq National Police with coalition advisors arrested three individuals. Included in the arrest was ... Mullah Nadhim Mahmud Khalil and two brothers. The National Police presented warrants ... under the charge of terrorism."

The mostly Sunni Arab Awakening Councils, local guard units including many former insurgents who switched sides to fight al Qaeda in late 2006, have been key to cutting violence in Iraq.

As an Awakening leader, Jubouri was a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Qaeda in largely Sunni Salahuddin province, where Saddam Hussein's hometown is located.

Hussein Ibrahim Abdullah, a police lieutenant-colonel in Dhuluiya, confirmed Jubouri's arrest.

Ahmed Karim, the deputy governor of Salahuddin province, said Jubouri was accused in killings that took place in the largely Shi'ite town of Dujail during the height of Iraq's sectarian conflict in 2006-2007.

"People from Dujail brought charges against Mullah Nadhim for the murder of their relatives," Karim said.

He said that at the time the alleged crimes took place, Jubouri was a notorious al Qaeda operative.

The Awakening militias, which spread from western Anbar province across Iraq, were backed and paid by U.S. forces until the Iraqi government took control of them in recent months.

Payment of their salaries has fallen far behind schedule since the Iraqi government took control.

Many guards regard the Shi'ite-led government with suspicion and have been dismayed by salary delays, insurgent attacks on guard units, and a spate arrests of guards in recent months.

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upi
Published: May 1, 2009 at 3:36 PM

Charges filed against Iranian dissidents for supporting a terrorist group based in Iraq are complicated by alleged U.S. military cooperation with that group.

The U.S. Justice Department accepted guilty pleas Wednesday from six men and one woman for collecting funds for the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a group listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California, which is representing some of the suspects, says it will challenge the claims on the grounds the PMOI poses no threat to U.S. national security. The ACLU also claims court documents show the U.S. government provided material support to the PMOI as well.

"It boggles the mind that these seven refugees would be charged with providing material support for a so-called terrorist organization, when the U.S. government has supported the same organization for years," said Ahilan Arulanantham with the ACLU.

There is widespread speculation the U.S. military had used the group to carry out attacks on Iran.

The PMOI received its U.S. listing in 1997 in part because of its violent opposition to the Iranian regime. Some observers suspect U.S. President Bill Clinton listed the group, however, as a favor to the moderate Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

The PMOI surrendered to U.S. military forces in Iraq shortly after the invasion of 2003, and it claims to stand as a democratic opposition to the clerical regime in Iran. It has won several delisting campaigns in Europe and is in the process of similar efforts in U.S. courts.

The sentencing hearing for the California case is scheduled for August.

Registan

Reuters

Monday, 4 May 2009

The US military denied on today it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

General Order Number 1 from the U.S. military's Central Command forbids active duty troops - including all those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan - from trying to convert people to their religion, considered a crime in many Muslim countries.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main US base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: "The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down."

But a US military spokeswoman, Major Jennifer Willis, said the comments from the sermon were taken out of context and chaplains were told to make clear to soldiers that they could not proselytise while serving.

She said the bibles had been mailed to a soldier by a church back home in the United States and were never distributed.

"That specific case involved a soldier who brought in a donation of translated bibles that were sent to his personal address by his home church. He showed them to the group and the chaplain explained that he cannot distribute them," she said.

"The translated bibles were never distributed as far as we know, because the soldier understood that if he distributed them he would be in violaion of general order 1, and he would be subject to punishment."

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A former Afghan prime minister has called for an inquiry after Al Jazeera broadcast footage showing Christian US soldiers appearing to be preparing to try and convert Muslims in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai said there must be a "serious investigation" after military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram were filmed discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/20095485025169646.html

...band. A good one at that; however, obviously we have absolutely no idea what in the hell we're doing there! Just another vat of quicksand. It swallows empires...

www.iauthorbooks.com
http://iauthorbooks.blogspot.com/

Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD, May 5 (Reuters) - An oil pipeline in northern Iraq has burst, spewing gallons of crude into the Tigris river and forcing Baghdad municipality to shut down three water treatment plants in the past two days, Iraqi officials said on Tuesday.

The pipeline was pumping crude from northern oil fields to Iraq's biggest refinery in Baiji, north of Baghdad, when it sprang a leak near Baiji on April 28, local oil engineers said.

"Because of the leak, crude spilled into the Tigris for a whole day. We only managed to repair the leak on April 30," one engineer said.

The engineers said the leak sprang at a joint in the aging pipeline. Rusting, corroded pipelines can be seen across Iraq, part of the legacy of years of sanctions and neglect in the country's promising, but underproducing, oil sector.

An oil slick spanning 4 km (2.5 miles) has travelled over 100 km (62 miles) down the Tigris, reaching Baghdad on Monday, officials said.

"Yesterday, we shut off a major water treatment plant supplying the Karkh (western) side of Baghdad to avoid contaminating our drinking water with oil," said Hakim Abdul Zahra, a spokesman for Baghdad municipality.

While officials had restarted the plant later in the day, two other water treatment plants in eastern Baghdad were shut. They have not yet reopened, Abdul Zahra said.

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* Death toll ranges from dozens to more than 100
* Taliban accused of using civilians as as "human shields"
* Joint U.S.-Afghan investigation launched

By Sharafuddin Sharafyar

HERAT, Afghanistan May 6 (Reuters) - U.S.-led air strikes killed dozens of Afghans, including women and children, the Red Cross said on Wednesday, appearing to confirm an incident that could overshadow a meeting between U.S. and Afghan leaders.

Rohul Amin, governor of Western Farah province where the bombing took place during a battle on Monday and Tuesday, said he feared 100 civilians had been killed. Provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar said the death toll could be even higher.

If confirmed, those even higher figures could make the incident the single deadliest for Afghan civilians since the campaign to topple the Taliban in 2001.

President Hamid Karzai, due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington later on Wednesday for the first time since Obama took office, sent a joint U.S.-Afghan delegation to investigate the incident, his office said. [ID:nSP67783]

"The president has termed the loss of civilians unjustifiable and unacceptable and will raise it with Obama," the presidential palace said in a statement.

Civilian casualties are a source of great strain between Washington and Kabul at a time of rising violence by Islamist Taliban insurgents and with U.S. troop numbers due to be more than doubled by the end of the year.

Obama has declared Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan to be Washington's main military focus. Karzai, Obama and Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari will discuss strategy for the region at the White House meeting later on Wednesday.

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Golnar Motevalli | Kabul | May 5

Reuters - Afghanistan's only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.

The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain.

"For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza," Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. "We've done this because people are worried about getting the flu."

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[Comment: Seriously, there has to be more than one pig in the country. Those mountains, surely they have pigs? ~ JPD]

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

Afghan anger at deadly US strikes

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Farah in western Afghanistan in protest at the deaths of civilians in US air strikes earlier this week.

Shots were fired into the air and stones were thrown at government buildings. A number of people are reported to have been injured.

Witnesses said the crowd chanted "death to America, death to the invaders", and demanded US forces leave Afghanistan.

The protest comes as President Hamid Karzai continues his visit to the US.

The air strikes overshadowed a summit in Washington on Wednesday between President Barack Obama, Mr Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she "deeply, deeply" regretted the deaths, adding that the US would work hard to avoid such "loss of innocent life".

Afghan officials say more than 100 civilians died in the attacks.

Protests 'violent'

Deputy provincial governor Mohammad Younus Rasouli described the protests on Thursday as "violent".

"Police tried to disperse them but they started throwing stones at police, who fired into the air," he told AFP news agency.

One protester, Haji Nangyalai, 42, said he was demonstrating to "show our anger at the crimes committed by the American forces".

"We ask the Afghan government to force the American forces to leave Afghanistan. They kill more civilians than Taleban," he said.

more at BBC

but from Presidents of Pakistan, Afghanistan Meet With Senators Weighing Aid

though, given the jackass comments in the article by all sides, perhaps it should be......

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

for my rambling, intemperate outburst here. The post violated two cardinal rules: no slagging off other contributors, and, never go on-line whilst legless, much to my regret and embarrassment. I'm afraid it's guilty on all charges of BUI - blogging under the influence - and it really, really is time to take a sabbatical leave. Again, my apologies for such insulting behaviour.

Cheers

The News (Pakistan), May 08

BAGHDAD - The Baghdad contract for the security firm once known as Blackwater Worldwide ended on Thursday, the US Embassy said, although the company will temporarily continue operations elsewhere in Iraq.

The confirmation of the end of the company’s operations in Baghdad was a major step toward ending the presence of the firm that has become a flashpoint for Iraqi anger after a deadly 2007 shooting by its contractors.

However, State Department officials have said the company will remain in some areas of southern Iraq into the summer and that its aviation service, Presidential Airways, will provide air security for US diplomatic convoys into September.

US Embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said the company’s task order for Baghdad ended on Thursday and a new security provider Triple Canopy was taking over.

Ziadeh wouldn’t comment on specifics, saying only that the company has other task orders that “will come to an end once they expire, which will be soon.” The Iraqi government denied the US company, which has changed its name to Xe, a license in January. But it has continued operations protecting American diplomats, raising questions over the strength of Iraq’s sovereignty as it remains heavily dependent on the US for security.

May 9th, 2009
Afghanistan’s civilians caught in the middle

Reuters correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison has written a moving and disturbing story about an 8-year-old girl badly burned by white phosphorous after being caught in the middle of a firefight in Afghanistan. Like everything else that happens in Afghanistan, the question of who fired the shell that exploded in her house is in dispute. Her family said the shell was fired by western troops; NATO said it was “very unlikely” the weapon was theirs; and a U.S. spokeswoman suggested the Taliban may have been responsible.

But beyond the dispute, what comes across powerfully in Emma’s account is the story of the girl.

“Life as 8-year-old Razia knew it ended one March morning when a shell her father says was fired by Western troops exploded into their house, enveloping her head and neck in a blazing chemical,” she writes. “Now she spends her days in a U.S. hospital bed at the Bagram airbase, her small fingernails still covered with flaking red polish but her face an almost unrecognisable mess of burned tissue and half her scalp a bald scar.”

Do read the whole story.

And now to the broader question of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

more w/links

Four troops died in three separate incidents, bringing number of UK service personnel killed since war began to 157

* Staff and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 May 2009 14.46 BST
* Article history

Tributes were paid today to four British soldiers, including a Gurkha, who died on one of the bloodiest days for UK forces in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Ben Ross, from 173 Provost Company, 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police, and Corporal Kumar Pun, from the 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, were killed by a suicide bomber during a patrol in Gereshk, in Helmand province, on Thursday.

Two others - Rifleman Adrian Sheldon, from 2nd Battalion The Rifles, and Corporal Sean Binnie, 22, from the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland - died in two separate incidents, bringing the number of UK service personnel killed in the country since operations began in 2001 to 157.

The death of Cpl Kumar, 31, comes as actress Joanna Lumley is leading a high-profile campaign over Gurkha residence rights. Lumley said his death showed the Gurkhas were giving up their lives for Britain and deserved the right to settle in the UK. "It just goes to show the Gurkhas are at the centre of the Army and are willing to fight for the British and give up their lives for this country," she told the Daily Mirror. "My heart goes out to this brave soldier's wife and family."

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Extremist on America's list of most-wanted terrorists is to hold talks with the Afghan government in coming weeks

The Times Of London, By Christina Lamb & Jerome Starkey, May 10

Kabul - One of Afghanistan’s most wanted terrorists is to be offered a power-sharing deal by the government of President Hamid Karzai as the country’s warlords extend their grip on power.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on America’s “most wanted” terrorist list, is to hold talks with the Kabul government within the next few weeks.

Hekmatyar is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been fighting Nato troops alongside the Taliban. The hardline group is responsible for many attacks in the eastern and central regions, including the massacre of 10 French soldiers in Sarobi last year. It controls Kapisa province, just 50 miles north of Kabul.

The party is expected to be offered several ministries and provincial governorships in return for laying down its arms and agreeing not to disrupt the presidential elections due in August.

Hekmatyar will not be offered a post but will be asked to go into exile in Saudi Arabia for three years, after which his name would be removed from the US list.

The controversial move follows the announcement of Mohammed Qasim Fahim, another former warlord, as Karzai’s running mate, a choice that had plunged diplomats into despair.