Reforming the Taliban: US aims to teach Afghan fighters new livelihoods (The Christian Science Monitor)

Bagram, Afghanistan – Down a back road, past old, still-active minefields and blown-out Soviet tanks, US military officials are trying to bring former insurgents back into the fold of the Afghan government.

The US official who runs the program calls it "tactical detoxifying" – offering captured former foot soldiers a skill that could help them make a legal living once they are released. Since March, the Parwan Detention Center at Bagram Air Base near Kabul has offered beekeeping workshops, language labs, and tailoring classes.

Yet the process of reintegration has been fraught with suspicion and roadblocks.

Afghan efforts at reconciling with elements of the Taliban have virtually come off the rails since the September assassination of lead negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani. Moreover, Afghan critics say the US effort at Bagram is undermining the government's outreach.

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Dividing the United States and Afghan governments are fundamentally different views about the Taliban. Is it a cohesive ideological movement that must be dealt with through its leaders, as the Afghans believe, or are the Taliban rank and file merely underemployed Afghans who will abandon the cause and thus contribute to the collapse of the insurgent group if taught proper job skills, as the US believes?

Either way, this program is an effort that US commanders would like to see gather steam. Doubts linger about what reintegration can accomplish until coalition forces gain the upper hand on the Afghan insurgency. But the reintegration of former Taliban fighters, commanders say, is crucial to a secure Afghanistan.

"Frankly, one of the key areas where we have to gain momentum in the coming weeks is reintegration," says Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division and of US forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials say they expect US military pressure on the ground to aid them in the process by the end of this winter. But they acknowledge that, for now, the number of Taliban fighters willing to lay down their weapons remains modest.

Some 2,350 former fighters have pubicly joined the Afghan reintegration program, according to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The process is designed to be deliberate, says Maj. Gen. Phil Jones, director of ISAF's reintegration cell. "There's a vetting that has to be taken seriously. Some are genuine insurgents. Some are criminals. Some are freeloaders."

At times, interest in reintegration has outpaced the ability of the AfA-ghan government to carry out these steps, holding up the process. Others complain that they laid down their arms but have received none of the benefits they were promised.

"I do know that we have a number who have expressed interest and as yet have not followed through for a number of reasons. Part of it is they have a single minister that is controlling the process," Allyn says. "So it is a process that is in need of more decentralization."

The officials who run the Parwan Detention Center see it as part of the solution. In part, the program is intended to counteract the notorious reputation that Bagram's first prison a€“ now being demolished a€“ has for the abuses that took place there early in the war. Rehabilitation is the primary focus, though.

The program's size is modest a€“ there are currently 276 prisoners in the program, out of the thousands being held by US forces. But US military officials hope to expand it in the months to come, as they work through the files of individual fighters.

Prison officials are primarily on the lookout for "simple farmers" and others who have taken up arms for cash, "the low-hanging fruit," says Col. David Draeger, chief of rehabilitation and reintegration at Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435 at Parwan.

The key, he says, is to take what US military officials refer to as the "$10-a-day Taliban" – the one doing it just for the money – and "give him a skill, which cuts down on the possibility of him lashing out again."

Of those detainees in the program, more than 70 percent are illiterate. Most opt for reading and writing courses in their native Dari or Pashto, though some do take English courses as well, Draeger says.

The emphasis is on vocational skills that can lead to licit livelihoods. Detainees taking tailoring courses, for example, are permitted to send clothes they make back to their families. There are job-placement counselors at the facility to help prisoners find work.

Parwan officials are debating adding advanced vocational training – carpentry, electrical wiring – to the class offerings but say they worry about the threat of jailbreaks or violence that might accompany such additional training.

"What you're really talking about is small tools, and what you're worried about is the possibility of these getting back into the [prison] facility," Draeger says.

But the track record so far appears to be good. Of the 1,000 detainees who have been through the program and released, there has been only one known recidivist, according to Draeger.

The hope is that the program grows to become "a catalyst for a wider social movement for peace," says Jones. The progression from insurgent to productive citizen is perhaps the most difficult transformation to achieve, though. "The country has fracture lines all over the place," Jones says, "and huge deficits of trust."

The Parwan program itself is a point of some distrust between the US and Afghanistan. Members of the Afghan central government and the country's High Peace Council often warn that reaching out to fighters is angering insurgent leaders and undercutting chances of national reconciliation.

"I don't see any significant progress in the process of reconciliation," says Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a former Taliban official and first deputy of the High Peace Council.

Efforts to bring lower-level fighters into the fold will be more effective after some agreement is reached with Taliban leaders, he says. In the meantime, he says, such programs are counterproductive. That's because these Afghan officials "see the Taliban as a much more unified body than perhaps we see them – who need to be dealt with as a recognized armed opposition," says Jones.

There are also "a lot of people who believe that reintegration can't happen on any greater scale at the moment – which is low-level, small groups – until you get some political traction," Jones adds. "And to a degree I would agree with that. The two are inextricably linked."

IN PICTURES: Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan

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Afghan peace council head killed in Kabul (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – A Taliban suicide bomber on Tuesday killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and head of a council tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, in what analysts called a blow to peace efforts.

The killing underscored doubts over the ability of fledgling Afghan security forces to protect even the most prominent politicians as U.S.-led forces ready to pull out by 2014.

"A Taliban member who went to Rabbani's house (in the heavily guarded diplomatic enclave) for peace talks detonated a bomb hidden in his turban," a statement by the Kabul police chief's office said.

President Barack Obama called the killing of Rabbani, head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, a tragic loss but said work needed to continue to bring elements of Afghan society together to end the years of violence.

A police source said Masoom Stanekzai, a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai, was badly injured in the attack.

It was the highest profile assassination in Afghanistan since the younger half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed at his home in July by a highly trusted family security guard.

It also came just a week after a deadly 20-hour siege by militants in the fortified capital, which illustrated the strength of the Taliban after nearly a decade of war.

"The killing of Rabbani is a serious blow against President Karzai and the government's peace and reconciliations efforts. It also underscores the inability of the government to protect even the most prominent Afghan politicians," one diplomat said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility, saying that the killer had gone to Rabbani's home for talks.

"As soon as Rabbani came three steps forward to hug Mohammad Masoom, he triggered his explosive-filled jacket killing Rabbani, (another) Taliban militant Wahid Yar and four security guards present at the house," he told Reuters.

Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen, called the killing "another outrageous indicator that, regardless of what Taliban leadership outside the country say, they do not want peace, but rather war."

"WILL NOT DETER US"

President Karzai, at the start of talks with Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, said Rabbani's death "will not deter us" from continuing the quest for peace.

Karzai, meeting Obama for the first time since the U.S. president announced a troop drawdown plan earlier this year, planned to cut short his New York visit to return home.

"It is a tragic loss," Obama said with Karzai at his side. "We both believe that despite this incident, we will not be deterred from creating a path whereby Afghans can live in freedom, safety and security and prosperity."

"It is going to be important to continue the efforts to bring all of the elements in Afghanistan society together to end the senseless cycle of violence," he said.

Rabbani, a former leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, was chosen last October by Karzai to head the High Peace Council.

His plan included offering amnesty and jobs to Taliban foot soldiers and asylum in third countries to leaders.

The assassination comes after a series of suicide bombings and other major attacks believed to be the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent faction based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

One analyst said the peace council had not been seen as effective and that Rabbani himself was viewed by many as an impediment to a deal because he was so loathed by the Taliban.

"But, his assassination might mean that the networks Rabbani led or influenced within Afghanistan .... may resist a deal with the Taliban even more," said Caroline Wadhams, a security expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

"It could make it that much more difficult to get greater buy-in from key Afghan leaders, who have been deeply skeptical of talks with the Taliban for some time."

Vali Nasr, a former senior official in the State Department's Afghanistan/Pakistan office, said: "The Taliban wants to send a very powerful message that the Karzai government is not in charge."

"That is important because people begin to waver and shift their allegiances ... And it makes it very difficult to say the Taliban is serious about negotiations if they keep killing people they should be negotiating with," Nasr said.

Rabbani served as president in the 1990s when mujahideen factions waged war for control of the country after the Soviet withdrawal.

As a leading figure among Tajiks, the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, there were also concerns his death could worsen ethnic tensions.

The assassination comes a week after a 20-hour gun and grenade attack on Kabul's diplomatic enclave by insurgents, and three suicide bomb attacks on other parts of the city -- together the longest-lasting and most wide-ranging assault on the city.

Last week's siege was the third major attack on the Afghan capital since June.

All three of those attacks are believed to be the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent faction, based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul, Laura MacInnis in New York, and Missy Ryan in Washington, Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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Bomb at US base reminder of raging Afghan war (AP)

By PATRICK QUINN and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Patrick Quinn And Rahim Faiez, Associated Press – 1?hr?47?mins?ago

KABUL, Afghanistan – A powerful Taliban truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers and killed five Afghans outside a combat outpost served as a reminder on Sunday that 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are still fighting a war that shows no signs of slowing down.

No U.S. troops were killed when the massive bomb loaded on a truck filled with firewood exploded Saturday night just outside the gates of Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in eastern Wardak province. Officials said four of those killed were civilians, including a 3-year-old girl. Another 17 people — 14 civilians and three policemen — were wounded. The provincial governor said the blast was so powerful it damaged about 100 shops in the Sayed Abad bazaar, located near the military base.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Earlier, they had issued a statement vowing to fight until all foreign troops leave. The radical Islamic movement, which gave shelter to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida when it ruled Afghanistan, also stressed that it had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, and it accused the U.S. of using them as a pretext to invade the country.

"The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war," the statement said. "Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other empires of the past."

The attack occurred just 43 miles (70 kilometers) from Kabul in an increasingly lawless district that is just an hour's drive from the capital and is in a key province that controls a strategic approach to Kabul.

Sayed Abad is seven miles (12 kilometers) east of the Tangi Valley, where the Taliban on Aug. 6 shot down a U.S. military helicopter, killing 30 Americans. Many of the dead belonged to the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 — the same elite unit that killed bin Laden during a May 2 cross-border raid into Pakistan, where al-Qaida's leadership was driven. It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in the decade-old war.

"Some back home have asked why we are still here," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said at a 9/11 memorial at the embassy in Kabul. "It's been a long fight and people are tired. The reason is simple. Al-Qaida is not here in Afghanistan, and that is because we are. "

"We're here so that there is never again another 9/11 coming from Afghan soil. We, with our Afghan partners, figured out that the best way to ensure that is to work together and with the international community for a stable, secure, democratic Afghanistan."

The Taliban continues to launch regular attacks and orchestrate assassination campaigns against those allied with the government. In addition to the attack in Wardak on Saturday, 10 Afghan civilians were killed in two separate roadside bombings.

Two Afghan security guards were also killed late Saturday when an insurgent rocket slammed into a part of the sprawling U.S. base at Bagram air field outside Kabul, the U.S. military said. Two NATO service members and two Afghans were slightly wounded.

Although Saturday's truck bombing occurred outside the base, the numbers of injuries it caused was significant. Combat outposts usually base about 200 troops.

"Most of the force of the explosion was absorbed by the protective barrier at the outpost entrance," NATO said, adding that the damage was repairable and that operations were continuing.

NATO also said Sunday that one of its service members was killed in an insurgent attack a day earlier in eastern Afghanistan. That brought the death toll to 13 this month — and 417 this year — for coalition forces. At least 307 of the dead were Americans, and despite U.S. reports of progress on the battlefield the number of troops dying this year is at about the same level as 2010.

While the overall international death toll dropped by 14 percent in the first half of the year, the number of Americans who died remained virtually unchanged, 197 this year compared with 195 in the first six months of last year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

In a midyear report last July, the U.N. said 1,462 Afghan civilians also lost their lives in the first six months of this year in the crossfire of the battle between Taliban insurgents and Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces. During the first half of last year, 1,271 Afghan civilians were killed.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, after the Taliban, who then ruled the country, refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The late al-Qaida leader was at the time living in Afghanistan, where the terror network had training camps from which it planned attacks against the U.S. and other countries.

Although the Taliban were swiftly driven from power by the U.S.-led coalition, they managed to use the years of the Iraq war — when America focused its military strength on the conflict against Saddam Hussein — to regroup, rearm and reorganize.

They began winning back ground lost to the international military coalition until President Barack Obama decided to send in 30,000 more troops last year to help.

Although the coalition has made some gains in the Taliban's traditional southern strongholds, violence has not abated around the country.

The battle against al-Qaida has also spread across the border with Pakistan, where a suspected U.S. missile strike on a house Sunday killed three people in an al-Qaida and Taliban safe haven along the border, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.

The United States has fired scores of missiles into northwest Pakistan since 2008, trying to keep al-Qaida operatives there on the run.

The U.S. has begun withdrawing some of its 100,000 troops from Afghanistan and will send home 33,000 by the end of next year. The international military coalition has already begun transferring security responsibilities to newly trained Afghan forces with the aim of removing all their soldiers by the end of 2014.

"We are and will remain committed to Afghanistan and the region," Crocker said. "We are in this for the long haul. We are transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, but transition does not mean disengagement."

There were 9/11 commemoration ceremonies at many U.S. and NATO military bases around the country.

___

Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt in Kabul and Rasool Dawar in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

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Half a trillion dollars of broken Afghan dreams (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – In the decade since U.S.-led troops streamed into Afghanistan, girls have gone back to school, elections have been held, clinics have been built and shops and media empires have sprung up. There is even a property boom in Kabul.

To the nations that poured money, lives and hope into rebuilding the country, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States propelled it back onto the international agenda, progress like this is proof of time and money well spent.

"We just have to continue the process, and recognize again: you don't build Rome or Kabul in a day, or a decade," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said in a recent interview, discussing improvements in education and healthcare.

But corruption is rampant, violence is spreading fast even in once-peaceful areas, and every month an average of over 200 civilians die in the conflict.

Safety fears stop people traveling to hospitals, or even to schools -- so much so that some conservative Afghans still hark back to the security and values that the Taliban offered.

And looming over any development gains is the prospect, for a country that has already endured nearly 30 years of war, of a slide back into chaos once foreign troops hand over to Afghan forces -- which they have promised to do by the end of 2014.

"The most striking thing that stands out, whatever people feel about what has happened, whether it was good or bad, is they aren't sure about their future," said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts' network.

"There have of course been achievements, but it doesn't balance out the sense that everything could fall apart. And there is a strong sense that the achievements are not proportionate to all the money and focus that has been given to Afghanistan."

At stake is not just Afghanistan's future, but U.S. security. A country engulfed in civil war could easily become a refuge again for groups looking to attack America.

"HERE FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT"

The rivers of cash that have flooded through Afghanistan have left many wondering why they still live in one of the poorest countries in the world, and questioning where it went.

"The foreigners are here for their own benefit. They came here by force and they will leave here by force," said Sayed Mujtaba Mahmoddi, a Kabul university student who says the September 11 attacks have overall been bad for his country.

"Afghanistan has developed a lot during the past years, but the development does not match the money spent. So I think the international mafia, together with the Afghan government, spent all this money improperly."

For the nearly $450 billion Congress estimates the U.S. alone has spent waging war there, every Afghan man, woman and child could have been handed $15,000. That sum is 10 years' earnings for an average Afghan, according to U.N. estimates.

Life expectancy is under 45 years, and around a quarter of children don't even live to see their fifth birthday. Even for those who survive, expectations are low.

Just one in four adults can read or write and, while unemployment is hard to measure in a rural country beset by an insurgency, it is believed to run as high as 40 percent.

The West's aid and military spending, while well-intentioned, was overwhelming for Afghanistan -- with its security problems, tiny pool of educated workers, and infrastructure devastated by years of war.

"The enormous ambition to get quick results has led us to pour in more external resources than society can absorb," said one senior Western diplomat working in Kabul.

So instead of funding growth, much of it has been diverted -- into the pockets of both the elite and insurgents -- helping to fuel a culture of rampant corruption. Everything from justice to electricity supply is tangled up in demands for bribes

Graft costs Afghans $2.5 billion a year, according to U.N. estimates; Transparency International rated it the world's third most corrupt country, behind only Myanmar and Somalia.

DEATH AND HATRED

For some, the war has spelt not just uncertainty, but catastrophe. Abdullah, from eastern Nangarhar province, dreamt of being an interpreter and got good grades until U.S. soldiers arrived at night and shot his father and elder brother.

Village elders and a local member of parliament say the men were not insurgents; now Abdullah, who was also detained briefly, works in a brick kiln to support his family.

"The U.S. troops freed me and they said that your brother and your father were innocent. What they said to me did not satisfy me. If I had the power I would behead them all," he told Reuters in the courtyard of the family's mud house.

Nationwide, the toll on civilians is getting higher. The first six months of this year were the deadliest since the overthrow of the Taliban; 368 were killed in May alone.

The vast majority of the deaths were caused by insurgents, but it is the foreign killings that most often spark outrage.

"Afghans don't expect not to be killed by the Taliban, but they do expect not to be killed by international forces," said Heather Barr, of Human Rights Watch Afghanistan.

"So even if only 20 percent of the deaths are caused by foreigners, it can still be a public relations loss."

Not only does that anger sap support for the war among voters back home, it is also helping prolong the conflict.

There is a common perception that Western forces seeking quick results have been used by commanders to settle personal scores, or by given false tips by informers seeking payment.

"They have killed and detained many innocent people; they raided and searched ordinary people's houses based on wrong intelligence," said Afghan political analyst Waheed Mojda.

"As a result people...felt that sooner or later we will get killed or detained by foreign troops so they decided to get guns and fight against the foreign troops."

A decade ago, after 9/11, many welcomed those troops for helping overthrow the Taliban.

But although the West rushed into Afghanistan with money, forces and talented officials, years of relative neglect meant they lacked one critical commodity: understanding of the complexities of the country they wanted to transform.

"The huge optimism, the sense of a clean state, the idea that you could build a country and a government from zero -- that was the biggest mistake," van Bijlert said.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni)

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Obama honoring US forces killed in Afghan attack (AP)

By BEN FELLER, AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller, Ap White House Correspondent – 1?hr?1?min?ago

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – Assuming the grimmest role of his job, President Barack Obama on Tuesday prepared to privately honor the remains of the fallen returning home from war, this time the troops killed in a helicopter attack that claimed more American lives than any other incident of the Afghanistan war.

Obama arrived at Dover Air Force Base to preside as the remains of U.S. forces were carried off a military cargo plane in flag-covered cases. His unscheduled afternoon trip here was kept secret to ensure the security of his helicopter flight to Delaware. Members of the media covering the trip agreed in advance not to report on it until he had landed.

After about a half-hour flight from Washington, Marine One touched down at the base. Obama was greeted by Col. Mark Camerer, commander of the 436th Airlift Wing, before climbing into a waiting limousine. The president's first stop was a private meeting with the families of the fallen.

An entrenched wartime president, Obama has been here before.

In the dark of an October morning in 2009, Obama watched solemnly as 18 Americans killed in the Afghan war came home, a visceral reminder of a war that has long slipped from the forefront of American debate. He would later call it the most powerful moment of his young presidency.

Obama is now honoring the U.S. forces killed in Afghanistan Saturday when their helicopter was shot down by a Taliban insurgent using a rocket-propelled grenade.

A total of 30 U.S. troops, seven Afghan commandos and an Afghan interpreter died.

They had been packed into a twin-rotor chopper, en route to help coalition ground forces in a battle with insurgents. Many of the Americans who died were members of the Navy's SEAL Team Six, the elite unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan three months ago. None of the SEALs killed in the crash took part in the bin Laden mission.

The devastating loss comes just ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America that prompted the war in Afghanistan.

Some of those killed had been motivated to join the Special Forces by the 9/11 attacks that bin Laden masterminded.

Two C-17 aircraft carrying the remains of 30 killed in a weekend helicopter crash arrived at the air base east of Washington.

Three days after the downing of the aircraft by insurgents, the Defense Department has not released the troops' names. Officials said it is taking time because there were so many killed. Others said privately there is hesitancy to release the names because the majority were from secretive special operations forces.

But the stories of the fallen have been emerging in the days since the crash. Those killed included young fathers, accomplished athletes and people of deep faith. One had dreams of becoming an astronaut after military service. All were deeply committed to the cause.

To Americans focused on economic crises at home, the death toll is a reminder that tens of thousands of U.S. forces will be in harm's way in Afghanistan through at least 2014.

Obama's other trip to Dover left searing images of a president standing in salute on a cold tarmac in the dead of night. One family had allowed media coverage.

In this case, reporters won't see what Obama does.

The Pentagon ruled there will be no media coverage at the Dover base because the badly damaged remains from the horrific crash are mingled and still being identified.

"We will press on, and we will succeed," Obama said Monday in his first public comments about the helicopter crash. "But now is also a time to reflect on those we lost and the sacrifices of all who serve, as well as their families. These men and women put their lives on the line for the values that bind us together as a nation."

Obama scrambled his schedule to be at Dover when the bodies returned home. He canceled an event in Virginia.

The military calls the process of moving the remains a "dignified transfer." Cases draped in American flags are carried off a giant plane, one by one, by a team of military personnel from the fallen member's respective service. Each case is placed in a vehicle and then taken to a mortuary.

Top civilian and uniformed leaders will attend the proceeding, and so will some family members.

___

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

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U.S. wastes $34 billion in Afghan and Iraq contracting (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study being finalized for Congress.

The findings by a bipartisan congressional commission were confirmed to Reuters by a person familiar with the draft of the study, which is due to be completed in coming weeks.

The analysis by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, details of which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, offers the most complete look so far at the misuse of U.S. contracting funds in Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than $200 billion has been doled out in the contracts and grants over nearly a decade.

It also gives the most complete picture of the magnitude of the U.S. contracting workforce in the two countries.

The source, who declined to be named, said more than 200,000 contractors have been on the U.S. payroll at times in Iraq and Afghanistan -- outstripping the number of U.S. troops currently on the ground in those countries.

The United States has fewer than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and some 46,000 forces in Iraq.

The tally of private sector contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan can be surprisingly difficult to obtain since many U.S. contractors are outsourced to subcontractors who depend on temporary labor, the source said.

The report blames a lack of oversight by federal agencies for misuse of funds and warns of further waste when the programs are transferred to Iraqi or Afghan control as the United States withdraws its troops.

The U.S. military is on course to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by the end of the year and started drawing down its force in Afghanistan this month.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Afghan leader sobs alongside slain brother's body (AP)

By MIRWAIS KHAN and SOLOMON MOORE, Associated Press Mirwais Khan And Solomon Moore, Associated Press – 2?hrs?38?mins?ago

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Pushing through a ring of his security men, President Hamid Karzai climbed into his slain half brother's freshly dug grave Wednesday and sobbed alongside the coffin at a funeral attended by thousands of mourners.

Overcome with grief, the president appealed to his countrymen to stop the violence.

Hours later, a bomb attack killed five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian in the east of the country.

The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was shot a point blank range by a close confidant a day earlier, left Afghanistan's leader without a powerful ally in the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and site of recent military offensives by the U.S.-led military coalition.

The radical Islamic movement claimed responsibility for the killing, and the president, speaking later at a somber press conference, challenged his insurgent adversaries to give up violence.

"My message for them (the Taliban) is that my countrymen, my brothers, should stop killing their own people," Karzai said. "It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives."

In a land of big men, warlords and gangsters, Wali Karzai was all of these. He was the president's bulwark against the Taliban's forces in the south and the enforcer of Karzai's tenuous rule over the Pashtuns who predominate the insurgency.

To the international community, Wali Karzai offered indispensable reach and ruthlessness, but he was also an embarrassment — a partner whose other partners included opium dealers and smugglers.

On Tuesday morning, a sea of mourners surged toward the grave in the Karzai family's home village of Karz in the south. The large wooden casket holding Wali Karzai's body was filled with red flowers.

A tearful President Karzai appeared at the fringe of the throng of thousands and pushed toward the lowered coffin.

He paused at the edge of the open pit, then climbed down in it, partially disappearing from view, and wailed.

He remained there for at least a minute, his grief overwhelming other cries and prayers. Relatives and guards were unable to coax him out, but two men locked their arms underneath Karzai's and pulled their leader out by force.

As Karzai left, his phalanx of guards again powering through the masses, a stream of people dropped fistfuls of dust on the casket.

Wali Karzai's death will transform power relations in the south, where the international military coalition has few friends of stature and none with the sweeping influence of the president's powerful sibling. Karzai will struggle to find an ally resourceful enough in balancing alliances with tribal and political leaders, drug runners and militias in a province where the Taliban still hold much sway.

The assassin was from Wali Karzai's tribe and hometown and traveled with and worked beside him for seven years.

Afghan officials said it's not clear whether he was killed by insurgents, as the Taliban claimed, or died as the result of an internal dispute.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid issued a statement Wednesday saying that insurgent fighters killed Wali Karzai because he cooperated with U.S., British and Canadian forces in the south.

"He was aligned with foreign occupiers," who bombed Afghan villages, Mujahid said.

The Taliban spokesman called Wali Karzai a "puppet" of the West and alleged that he was on the CIA payroll and profited from the illegal seizure of government and private land.

Wali Karzai had denied working for the CIA or being involved in shady business dealings.

Mujahid warned that if other Afghan officials fail to support the insurgency and befriend those aligned with the Afghan government and U.S.-led coalition, they will face the same fate as the slain Wali Karzai.

In Wednesday's insurgent strike in the eastern Kapisa province, an attacker detonated a bomb near a meeting of local leaders that was being guarded by French troops. Five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian were killed, the French president's office announced in Paris.

Four other French soldiers and three other Afghan civilians were seriously injured in the attack in the village of Joybar.

Afghan security forces were a conspicuous presence at the burial, with troops and intelligence agents dispersed around and within the crowd.

Despite heightened security, two members of the Afghan intelligence service traveling to Wali Karzai's funeral with Helmand provincial governor Gulab Mangal were injured when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Kandahar's Maiwand district, said Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand.

Rustam Shah, former Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan, said Wali Karzai's death exposed the fragility of the security infrastructure in the southern provinces, particularly Kandahar where the Americans have boasted of progress in wresting territory from the Taliban.

"It will be a big blow to the government's image in the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan," he said.

"The president will have to be very careful to move quickly to consolidate and maintain his power structure in Kandahar."

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Moore reported from Kabul. Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Afghan president's brother assassinated (AFP)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother, the government's key powerbroker in the south of the country, was assassinated on Tuesday, depriving NATO of a vital if controversial ally.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for killing Ahmed Wali Karzai in his own home, while a provincial police chief said he was shot dead by the long-serving commander of his family's personal protection force.

The president flew in the evening to Kandahar to pay respects to his brother and to attend the funeral, set to be held early Wednesday in the city amid tight security with the interior and defence ministers in attendance.

President Karzai earlier confirmed his brother's death at a news conference with visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"This morning, my younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai was martyred at his house," he said, reciting a Muslim prayer in Arabic.

"This is the life of the people of Afghanistan. Afghan families, every one of us, have suffered from it, and we hope, God willing, for our suffering to be over," he said.

The half-brother of the Afghan leader was for years a deeply controversial figure, dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to the nation's lucrative opium trade and private security firms.

But his killing raises disturbing questions about possible infiltration among those closest to the Karzai family and is also a severe blow to NATO and the Afghan leadership in Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.

The incident comes as coalition troops start withdrawing from the country and Western states search for a political solution after a decade of war.

Kandahar police chief Abdul Razeq identified the assassin as Sardar Mohammad, the commander of a force of 200 bodyguards who had provided security for the younger Karzai's family in Kandahar for seven years.

He said Mohammed showed a letter to bodyguards at the house in the upmarket neighbourhood of Bala Karz, saying he had "urgent" business with Karzai -- head of the Kandahar provincial council -- and was ushered into his study alone.

"Moments later the bodyguards hear the sound of gunshots and when they enter the room they find Ahmed Wali Karzai shot in the head and chest, and in a pool of blood," he said.

"The bodyguards riddle Sardar with bullets. Ahmed Wali Karzai died on the spot," he said, adding that the assassin and his victim, no one else died in the attack.

The police chief and an official at the hospital where Karzai's body was taken both said he had been shot in the head and the chest.

A senior official with Afghanistan's spy agency, the National Directorate for Security (NDS), confirmed the account of the killing by Mohammad who he said was an elder in Karzai's home village.

"They were meeting alone in a room," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Sardar takes off his pistol and shoots him twice." Describing the gunman as in "his late 30s or early 40s", he added: "Wali knew him from a long time ago."

The assassination came just before the Afghan leader received Sarkozy, who was on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers by the end of next year.

Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa said the killer was a "trusted guy".

"Every time Hamid Karzai and Qayoum Karzai (his brother) would come to Kandahar for a family visit, all the security responsibility would be given to Sardar Mohammad," he said.

Razeq said Mohammad's personal bodyguards were arrested after the attack and security ramped up in Kandahar city, with roads around Karzai's house blocked.

American documents leaked by Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks painted the younger Karzai as a corrupt drugs baron, lifting the lid on Western thoughts long kept private.

The top US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, who steps down next week before becoming head of the CIA, condemned the killing and pledged the support of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"ISAF will support the Afghan government in every possible way to bring to justice those involved," he said.

The US embassy in Kabul also condemned the assassination "in the strongest possible terms".

NATO's ambassador in Kabul, Simon Gass, and the Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan both issued statements of condolences to the president.

Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, where the United States has poured in thousands of extra troops to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.

In April, Kandahar's provincial police chief was killed in a suicide bombing by one of his own bodyguards, who was believed to have known him for 10 years.

The governor of the restive province told AFP last month that insurgents in the area had recently changed tactics, using assassinations to sow fear.

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Afghan president's half brother killed in south (AP)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai's half brother, the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan and a lightning rod for criticism of corruption in the government, was assassinated Tuesday by a close associate. His death leaves a dangerous power vacuum in the south just as the government has begun peace talks with insurgents ahead of a U.S. withdrawal.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar provincial council, was shot to death while receiving guests at his home in Kandahar, the capital of the province that was the birthplace of the Taliban movement and was the site of a recent U.S.-led offensive.

Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor of Kandahar, identified the assassin as Sardar Mohammad and said he was a close, "trustworthy" person who had gone to Wali Karzai's house to get him to sign some papers.

As Wali Karzai was signing the papers, the assassin "took out a pistol and shot him with two bullets — one in the forehead and one in the chest," Wesa said. "Another patriot to the Afghan nation was martyred by the enemies of Afghanistan."

The killing coincided with a visit to the capital, Kabul, by French President Nicolas Sarzoky.

"This morning my younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was murdered in his home," the Afghan president said during a joint news conference with Sarkozy. "Such is the life of Afghanistan's people. In the houses of the people of Afghanistan, each of us is suffering and our hope is, God willing, to remove this suffering from the people of Afghanistan and implement peace and stability."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination at the heavily guarded house, hidden behind 8-foot (2.5 meter) blast walls. The Interior Ministry said an investigation was under way, and Kandahar Police Chief Gen. Abdul Raziq said police have detained several men who were guarding Mohammad's home for questioning about his recent activities.

President Karzai arrived in Kandahar on Tuesday evening by helicopter to attend the funeral scheduled for Wednesday morning, according to Raziq.

Wali Karzai, who was in his 50s and had survived several previous assassination attempts, was seen by many as a political liability for the Karzai government after a series of allegations, including that he was on the CIA payroll and involved in drug trafficking. He denied the charges. The president repeatedly challenged his accusers to show him evidence of his sibling's wrongdoing, but said nobody ever could.

Wali Karzai remained a key power broker in the south, helping shore up his family's interests in the Taliban's southern heartland, which has been the site of numerous offensives by U.S., coalition and Afghan troops to root out insurgents. Militants have retaliated by intimidating and killing local government officials or others against the Taliban.

The United Nations said in a quarterly report issued June 23 that more than half of all assassinations across Afghanistan since March had been in Kandahar. In April, the Kandahar police chief Khan Mohammad Mujahid was killed by a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform who blew himself up beside the official's car.

According to a government official with knowledge of the investigation, Wali Karzai was holding a meeting in his home with five provincial council members and a number of local village elders, including the assassin. The official said Mohammad was a close friend and had represented Wali Karzai many times in their shared home village of Karz, the president's hometown. Mohammad was the village elder of Karz and was his emissary and travel companion throughout Kandahar, the official said.

At about 11:30 a.m. Mohammad asked Wali Karzai to speak with him privately and to sign some papers in an adjoining room, the official said. Three shots rang out, according to the official. Wali Karzai's bodyguards ran into the room and found him on the floor with bullet wounds to his head, hand and leg. The bodyguards shot and killed the assassin.

The government official said that it remains unclear whether the killing was the result of an internal feud or a Taliban plot.

Although tribal rivalries are common in Kandahar, bloodletting within tribes is fairly uncommon, he said.

Agha Lalai, deputy of the provincial council, said he was one of the first to respond to the sounds of shots.

Lalai said that he and several other men picked up Wali Karzai and attempted to carry him out of the house, but he died before they left the grounds.

In Kabul, the political elite reacted to the killing with shock and concern about the future of the country's southern region and beyond. Though Wali Karzai held an elected office in the provincial council, people who knew him said he seemed to float above the various political and tribal spheres dominating the south. Throngs of people came to Karzai's house on a daily basis seeking remedies for everything from family disputes, to tribal battles, to political intrigues.

Members of the international community had urged the president to remove his brother from his powerful provincial position, saying that it was essential if he was to prove to the Afghan people that he was committed to good governance. But despite his alleged forays into narco-trafficking, smuggling, and land theft, many Western officials also relied on him because of his unparalleled reach and understanding of the various players in the area.

Noorolhaq Olomi, a former parliament member from Kandahar, said Wali Karzai was the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — "more of a governor than the governor" and "everybody's leader in the south, not just Kandahar."

"I cannot say whether this was political or personal or some other matter," Olomi said. "But whoever did it, it shows the weakness of this government. The president needs to change things. He needs to change himself and build a government that is real. Right now, there is no government. It's all a fraud."

Condolences flooded into the president palace throughout the day.

Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, condemned the murder and said the coalition would support efforts to prosecute anyone who played a role in the killing. "President Karzai is working to create a stronger, more secure Afghanistan, and for such a tragic event to happen to someone within his own family is unfathomable," Petraeus said in a statement.

Both Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called the president to express their sadness at his brother's death.

Abdullah Abdullah, the top opposition leader in Afghanistan who ran against Karzai in the latest presidential election, called it "an act against national personality and the ones who are at the service of the Afghan people."

Mohammad Yusuf Pashtun, a senior adviser to the president for construction, water, energy and mines, said the death will have a big impact on security in southern Afghanistan.

"My first impression is that in spite of all the negative propaganda against him he managed to be a source of stability in that area," he said. "When it comes to bringing people together in the south, this creates a vacuum. I don't know what will happen now, but something must be done by the local leadership."

Rangina Hamidi, a resident of Kandahar and daughter of the city's mayor, said Wali Karzai is survived by five children — two sons and three daughters. She says his youngest son was born about a month ago.

Wali Karzai has been the reported target of multiple assassination attempts.

In May 2009, a bodyguard was killed when his motorcade was ambushed by insurgents but Wali Karzai was not harmed.

That attack came less than two months after four Taliban suicide bombers stormed Kandahar's provincial council office, killing 13 people in an assault that Wali Karzai said was aimed at him, although he had left the building a few minutes beforehand.

Wali Karzai also survived a November 2008 suicide attack on the provincial council offices that killed six other people.

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Associated Press writers Amir Shah, Rahim Faiez, Solomon Moore, Heidi Vogt and Deb Riechmann in Kabul and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Afghan insurgent attacks dip for first time: Petraeus (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – Insurgent attacks against Afghan and NATO forces in Afghanistan have started to decline on an annual basis for the first time in up to five years, defying predictions by intelligence analysts, General David Petraeus said on Saturday.

The number of insurgent attacks is one of the key measures used by the military to assess the success or failure of the nearly decade-old war in Afghanistan, the focus of a massive U.S. troop buildup which will start to come home this month.

Petraeus, who is due to step down as the top commander in Afghanistan in mid-July, said the number of attacks declined in May and June by "a few percent," compared to the same months in 2010. July is trending in the same direction, he said.

That compares to intelligence estimates that had predicted insurgent attacks to spike up by 18 to 30 percent this year over last Year.

"Obviously it is what we have wanted to see -- rather than the year-on-year-on-year increase that has taken place for some four or five years," Petraeus told reporters, in what was expected to be his last media briefing before he steps down.

Petraeus is due to take over as CIA director in September.

Asked whether he believed that the declining violence was a sign of the success of the "surge" of more than 30,000 forces that President Barack Obama ordered into Afghanistan in 2009, Petraeus was hesitant.

"I'm not making that pronouncement," Petraeus said. "Again, it is an important development but we need to see if it is sustained our not."

Obama is withdrawing the first 10,000 of the nearly 100,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year, followed by another 23,000 by the end of next summer.

The drawdown is faster than the one that Petraeus had originally recommended but he has since voiced his support for the strategy and said he intends to carry it out.

Still, Petraeus suggested that the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan would be able to keep up the pressure on militants, taking away their strongholds.

Usually, that process causes a spike in violence, he said, adding that although there had been no rise in overall incidents this year, the insurgents were still a dangerous enemy.

"Typically when you have a lot more friendly forces, and when you go on the offensive, violence goes up because you have to fight back," Petraeus said.

"And they're fighting back, don't get me wrong," Petraeus said, acknowledging, for example, heavy use of homemade bombs -- the number one killer of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)

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NATO air strike kills 13 civilians: Afghan police (AFP)

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) – Up to 13 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike on Thursday in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, provincial police chief Mohamad Zazai said.

The coalition said those killed were family members of insurgents who also died in the strike that was called in after Afghan-led forces came under fire.

The deaths triggered protests blocking the main highway to Kabul nearby, with civilian casualties in Western military operations extremely sensitive in war-torn Afghanistan, where the Taliban have waged a decade-long insurgency.

"Unfortunately eight women, four children, and one man were killed in a NATO air strike on a residential house in Dowamanda district early this morning," Zazai said, adding that four Taliban-linked Haqqani militants were also killed.

"The body of a Haqqani commander and three fighters have also been recovered from the vicinity of the house. A delegation has been sent to investigate the incident," he said.

A spokesman for the provincial governor confirmed that civilians had been killed in the incident but gave no further details.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said those killed were family members of the Haqqani network, which is a target of the alliance force. It did not say how many civilians were among the dead.

A spokesman for the coalition said Afghan-led forces had gone in search of the insurgents when they came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

"Responding to the insurgent attack, the security forces returned fire and called in an air weapons team. The subsequent air strike killed several insurgents and unintentionally a number of associated family members," he said.

The air strike came a day after provincial authorities in southern Ghazni province said two civilians were killed and one other injured in another military incident. NATO said it was looking into the allegations.

Eight Afghan policemen were meanwhile killed Thursday when their vehicle struck a mine in Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan, police in the province said.

Police also said that six Afghan policemen and a civilian were killed in another landmine blast in the restive southern province of Uruzgan late Wednesday.

The Taliban were not available to comment on the attacks but roadside bombs are one of their most widely used weapons against the Western-backed Afghan government.

Civilians are the biggest casualties in the near 10-year war in Afghanistan, where 150,000 foreign forces are stationed.

Last year was the bloodiest yet for civilians, with the United Nations recording 2,777 fatalities.

In May this year alone, a total of 368 civilians were killed, 301 of them in insurgent attacks, according to figures released by the UN mission in Afghanistan, making it the deadliest month for civilians since at least 2007.

The UN has blamed insurgents for more than three-quarters of the civilian deaths last year, but the issue enflames anger among ordinary Afghans toward foreign forces, as they blame NATO's presence for the increased danger.

The latest civilian deaths are a reminder of the depth of the task facing the Afghan government as it takes increasing responsibility for security following the announcement of the first wave of foreign troop withdrawals.

The United States has announced that 33,000 "surge" forces will leave the war by the end of next summer, while Britain has said another 500 troops will return next year. France and Belgium have also announced limited withdrawals.

Civilian casualties are a huge bone of contention between foreign forces and President Hamid Karzai who issued a "last warning" to the military in early June to avoid "arbitrary and unnecessary" operations that kill civilians.

Those comments came after he said 14 people died in an air strike in southern Helmand province. NATO said nine civilians were killed in the strike.

In another high-profile case this year, two NATO helicopters killed nine Afghan boys as they collected firewood in northeastern Afghanistan, leading to a rare apology from the US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

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Afghan war's deadly toll on US forces hasn't eased (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – Despite U.S. reports of progress on the battlefield, American troops were killed in the first half of this year at the same pace as in 2010 — an indication that the war's toll on U.S. forces has not eased as the Obama administration moves to shift the burden to the Afghans.

While the overall international death toll dropped by 14 percent in the first half of the year, the number of Americans who died remained virtually unchanged, 197 this year compared with 195 in the first six months of last year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

Americans have been involved in some of the fiercest fighting as the U.S. administration sent more than 30,000 extra troops in a bid to pacify areas in the Taliban's southern heartland and other dangerous areas. U.S. military officials have predicted more tough fighting through the summer as the Taliban try to regain territory they have lost.

President Barack Obama has begun to reverse the surge of American forces, ordering a reduction of 10,000 by the end of the year and another 23,000 by September 2012. But the U.S. military has not announced which troops are being sent home, or whether they will be withdrawn from any of the most violent areas in the south and east.

Rear Adm. Vic Beck, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, said he couldn't comment specifically on the U.S. death count, but noted that the casualties were unchanged despite the surge in forces. He attributed the overall decline in the international toll to coalition progress on the battlefield, including the discovery of a rising number of militant weapons caches. He also said Afghan security forces are increasingly taking the lead, although recent violence has raised concerns about their readiness to secure their own country.

Beck said insurgents were shifting their focus to attacking civilians, pointing to last week's attack against the Inter-Continental, a luxury hotel in Kabul, that left 20 people dead, including the nine assailants.

"The enemy is taking the fight more to innocent Afghan civilians because we're taking it to them pretty hard on the battlefield," he said.

According to the AP tally, 271 international troops, including the Americans, were killed in the first half of the year — down 14 percent from the 316 killed in the first six months of last year.

With the American deaths virtually unchanged, the decline reflects a drop off in deaths of troops from other contributing nations. In the first half of the year, 74 of these troops — from countries like Britain, France and Australia — died compared with 121 in the first six months of last year.

In the most recent deaths, NATO said two coalition service members were killed in roadside bombings — one Saturday in the west who was identified as an Italian, and another Friday in the south whose nationality was not available.

By contrast, a recent U.N. report found that May was the deadliest month for civilians since it began keeping track in 2007, and it said insurgents were to blame for 82 percent of the 368 deaths recorded. The U.N. does not usually release monthly civilian casualty figures but said it was compelled to do so in May because of the high number.

The Taliban have denied targeting civilians and insist coalition claims that insurgents have suffered heavy losses at the hands of foreign troops are false.

Monthly death tolls of foreign forces have varied so far this year, but they fell dramatically in June.

Overall, 65 international troops, including Americans, died last month. That's down 37 percent from the 103 who died in June 2010 — the deadliest month on record for foreign forces. More than 25 died last month in Helmand province in the south where fierce fighting continues in some hot spots, the AP tally showed.

"In the areas that we believe were pretty secure, there has been very little violence," U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Toolan Jr., the commander in Helmand province, said at a recent Pentagon briefing. He said he's still concerned about northern districts like Gereshk and Sangin.

He said his forces are working with their Afghan partners to try to keep hold of security gains made in recent months.

"I'm pretty sure, pretty confident we'll be able to do that, but it won't be without a fight," Toolan said. "But it will not be as big a fight, in my estimation, as it has been in the past."

Underscoring the dangers, a roadside bomb ripped through a van carrying a family Saturday in southern Afghanistan, killing all 13 on board — the deadliest incident in a string of attacks since Friday that killed 18 civilians, according to Afghan officials.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks, saying in a statement that "bombings that kill innocent civilians are the work of people who don't want the nation to have a life without sadness."

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NATO air strike kills fighter linked to Afghan hotel attack (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO aircraft killed an insurgent leader linked to a deadly hotel attack in the Afghan capital this week, the coalition said on Thursday, a raid that raised questions about whether Afghan forces are ready for the looming security transition.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Intercontinental, one of two major hotels used by foreigners and Afghan government officials, a rare night-time raid that began on Tuesday and ended five hours later with 12 killed.

However, the NATO-led Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network had also been involved in the assault by nine suicide bombers and gunmen.

ISAF identified the Haqqani network leader killed in an air strike as Ismail Jan, who it described as a deputy to the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan.

It said he and "several Haqqani fighters" were killed in the air strike in the Gardez district of Paktia province south of Kabul on Wednesday.

"The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban operatives, was responsible for the Tuesday night attack on the Kabul Intercontinental hotel which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge," ISAF said in a statement.

The brazen raid came only a week after President Barack Obama announced a phased withdrawal of combat troops, with 10,000 to leave by the end of this year and another 23,000 by the end September 2012.

Obama's announcement preceded the start of a gradual transition of responsibility to Afghan forces from next month that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

With that transition process to begin in seven areas next month, the hotel raid raised serious questions about whether Afghan forces, particularly the police, were ready to take over.

"It shows one of the concerns is that the Afghan security forces are growing in quantity, not in quality," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

SNIPERS

The attack ended when snipers on board a NATO helicopter killed the last three attackers fighting from the roof of the hotel. Earlier television footage showed Afghan forces firing wildly into the air.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that some police had refused to fight back.

ISAF has been training members of the 126,000-strong Afghan National Police since 2009.

Afghan police, who will be at the front line of the security transition in villages and towns across Afghanistan, have long been viewed as inept and lagging behind the training of the better-equipped army, which had been the focus of training efforts since the Taliban were toppled in late 2001.

Violence has risen to record levels across Afghanistan over the past 18 months as NATO troops, especially U.S. forces, hit back against a growing insurgency, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south.

A quarterly report by the United Nations secretary-general to the Security Council about Afghanistan found that the number of security incidents since March had risen 51 percent on the same period in 2010, with suicide attacks rising sharply.

Attacks in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar were especially worrying. "The city of Kandahar and its surroundings registered the majority of the incidents during the reporting period, with a quarter of the overall attacks and more than half of all assassinations recorded countrywide," the report said.

But Ruttig said the attack also highlighted other problems confronting Afghanistan before the transition process, which also includes handing the running of civil institutions and projects over to Afghans, begins.

Not the least of those is the political paralysis that has gripped the country for months.

"The fact that neither NATO nor the Afghans were able to prevent it says something -- that transition needs to be something more than just security," Ruttig said of the hotel attack.

"Security forces are only part of transition. There also needs to be a strengthening of political institutions and, at the moment, the parliamentary crisis has brought politics to a standstill," he told Reuters.

Last week, a special poll court set up by a decree by President Hamid Karzai overturned the results for a quarter of the seats in parliament from elections last year, effectively throwing out 62 MPs who had been declared winners.

The move, and the court itself, have been branded unconstitutional and illegal by Afghan and Western officials and observers. Critics have said the court was set up by Karzai to further his own political agenda and silence opposition.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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US: Pakistan must show it wants Afghan peace (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan said Monday that Pakistan must prove it wants an end to the war by preventing militants from hiding out on its soil and enabling those who launch attacks on the Afghan side of the border.

Marc Grossman, U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Kabul that discussions among Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States being held this week in the Afghan capital are important to coordinate efforts to find a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.

He said they also are an opportunity to clearly convey to Pakistani officials that part of their responsibility for bringing peace is to stop supporting insurgent safe havens and those who attack Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan.

"We've been pretty clear that going forward here, we want the government of Pakistan to participate positively in the reconciliation process," Grossman said at a news conference. "Pakistan now has important choices to make."

Grossman and representatives from more than 40 nations are attending a meeting of the International Contact Group. The group's 11th meeting comes after President Barack Obama announced last week he was ordering 10,000 U.S. troops home by year's end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012. That would leave 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The 33,000 total to be withdrawn is the number Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the Taliban's momentum and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The U.S. and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.

Michael Steiner, German representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said at the news conference that the international community's engagement will not end in 2014, when Afghan security forces are to have the lead responsibility for security across the nation, a process he said is on track.

"I think we have a strategy which is working despite the difficulties we have," Steiner said. "I am not painting here any illusions. We will have problems ahead. But I think we have a realistic strategy."

Separately, the U.N. World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country's 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.

The U.N. agency said it had planned to help feed more than 7 million people in Afghanistan this year, but a shortage of donor funds means only 3.8 million people will be helped through meals provided at schools and training and work programs. It said it needed an additional $220 million to continue its work in Afghanistan at the level originally planned.

The program will focus food assistance on helping the most needy Afghans, especially women and children, said Bradley Guerrant, the agency's deputy country director.

"We are working hard to raise the funds needed to restart these activities as soon as we can," he said.

Also, two roadside bomb blasts killed seven civilians Monday in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said. A vehicle struck one of the bombs in Qarabagh district, killing four civilians, including two children, the ministry said. Another vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Ghazni city, killing three civilians.

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Intelligence shift shows change in Afghan war aims (AP)

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier, Ap Intelligence Writer – 2?hrs?30?mins?ago

WASHINGTON – Military intelligence officers were scrambling a year ago to collect and analyze the social, economic and tribal ins and outs of each valley and hamlet in Afghanistan.

This information wasn't the kind of secret or covert material many military intelligence specialists were used to. But it was seen as crucial to helping commanders tell the good guys from the bad, learn what Afghans really needed from their government and undermine the Taliban-led insurgency by winning hearts and minds over time.

Since last fall, top intelligence leaders in Afghanistan shifted their focus back to targeting the enemy in the more traditional way, by mapping their networks and analyzing what made the Taliban tick.

They didn't stop collecting the other information. But their goal now was helping tell commanders what they needed to know to kill insurgents and drive the enemy to the negotiating table.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United States will start bringing home U.S. troops next month. His announcement is part of a gradual scaling back of American operations and ambitions in Afghanistan that's expected to emphasize raids over governance, making tracking Afghan culture and bolstering the government less important, three current officials in Afghanistan said.

The White House has been frustrated by Afghanistan's corruption and the inability of President Hamid Karzai's government to provide competent officials to serve far-flung provinces. That has helped shrink U.S. goals, and the new bottom line is a government strong enough to prevent terrorists' safe havens from returning.

Targeting insurgent leaders and their support networks is seen as an important part of the U.S. exit strategy. The thinking is that Taliban leaders will be more ready for a deal if they feel threatened personally.

The U.S. has confirmed preliminary outreach to the Taliban, but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that fruitful talks probably are a long way off.

These developments come as the man in charge of military intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Steve Fogarty, has shifted his focus to how the U.S. gathers social, economic and tribal data, and how troops are getting access to it.

But he may now face a closing window of opportunity to bolster those programs, with the looming drawdown of manpower and resources as ordered by an administration fed up with the war's $10 billion-a-month cost.

A secret U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan issued in February said raids and small-scale special-operations-led stability operations were showing progress, but projects meant to bolster Afghan governance were not yet taking hold, according to the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

That assessment was one factor in Obama's decision to withdraw all but a small contingent of the current approximately 100,000 forces by 2015, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic discussions.

In early 2010, now-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal's mission was to keep the population safe, in addition to the traditional hunt-the-enemy role. That meant understanding enough about a town or village to know whether the insurgency was best combated by killing a key leader, giving out loans to build a factory and provide jobs, or in many cases both, according to a senior intelligence official in Afghanistan.

The drawbacks of focusing solely on the enemy were laid out in a paper published by then-senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn. He called his work "Fixing Intel" and he bypassed traditional Pentagon channels to get it published by a Washington think tank.

After publication, Flynn put in place new layers of collection and analysis that included the Stability Operations Information Centers, whose staff members function like news reporters. They travel to field locations to collect intelligence that others didn't have time to share with the rest of the NATO-led effort.

Analysts also gathered "atmospherics." They asked Afghans what the man on the street was talking about, trying to get a sense of everything from sentiment about Karzai to whether they believed NATO troops were staying beyond 2014.

Flynn also championed the Human Terrain System, which uses anthropologists to study village and social networks throughout Afghanistan.

Most important, intelligence officials say, was his move to build district-by-district assessments to provide an encyclopedia of information readily available to the troops in the field.

Flynn left last fall. His successor, Fogarty, reorganized those three components — the information centers, atmospherics, and human terrain — into one location, at a base outside NATO headquarters.

That move was seen by some who had helped Flynn establish those operations as a rejection of the need for social, civil and tribal intelligence. They also pointed to a turnover in leadership at some of the stability centers and the dismantling of one center in eastern Afghanistan.

Two senior intelligence officials involved in the reorganization say it was simply a response to Gen. David Petraeus' priorities, when he took over from now-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Knowing the White House clock was running out, Petraeus knew he had limited time to show his troops had weakened the Taliban.

The top U.S. commander did try to send the message that social intelligence was important in tracking enemy networks, and he asked officers to count things such as the number of cellphone towers in an area, as a measure of success equal to the number of insurgents killed, the official said.

But some military intelligence teams in the field still interpreted the change in leadership from Flynn to Fogarty and the reorganization of some of Flynn's top projects as a shift back to what they had studied in school: targeting the enemy over protecting the population.

In parts of Afghanistan, they embraced the shift wholeheartedly, two U.S. officials say.

For instance, Kandahar's military intelligence center merges social and cultural data, satellite weather data and information gleaned from special operations raids. But the focus on the enemy is reflected in the souvenir coins the center hands out. Beneath the traditional counterinsurgency slogan, "Winning hearts and minds," is a picture of an armed insurgent, with a rifle-sight superimposed on him.

"People are still comfortable with what they know," said Douglas Ollivant, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who just returned from a year serving as the senior counterinsurgency adviser in eastern Afghanistan.

"There's a level of synchronization between unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft, and forces on the ground when it comes to targeting the enemy that simply isn't there, when we talk either about knowing which key leaders to talk to, or aid is needed and where," he said.

That doesn't mean leaders don't want or need the more detailed information, Ollivant said, "just that they haven't yet perfected the best way to get it."

Flynn remains influential. He was just promoted to the three-star rank and appointed to a high position advising the director for national intelligence. One of Flynn's co-authors, Marine Corps Capt. Matt Pottinger, says his paper "Fixing Intel" is all but required reading at military intelligence courses.

For those who think Fogarty's focus excludes social intelligence, a senior intelligence official points out that he set up his own version of human terrain analysis of Afghanistan two years ago, when he was Petraeus' intelligence officer at U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

In Fogarty's previous time in Afghanistan, he didn't have the staff to gather the kind of data Flynn advocated because the bulk of the resources were going to Iraq, according to a senior official in Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

With Petraeus on the way to being confirmed as CIA director, 33,000 U.S. troops headed from Afghanistan over the next 12 months, and a new focus on pounding the Taliban into peace talks, he may be facing that fight for resources all over again.

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Dozier reported from Washington and Kabul, Afghanistan.

___

Online:

Flynn's paper: http://tinyurl.com/y8ckrrr

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Car bomb outside Afghan clinic kills at least 35 (AP)

By RAHIM FAIEZ and SOLOMON MOORE, Associated Press Rahim Faiez And Solomon Moore, Associated Press – Sat?Jun?25, 10:49?am?ET

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber blew up his sport utility vehicle outside a small clinic in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, bringing the building down on those inside, Afghan authorities said. At least 35 people were reported killed.

Would-be rescuers were frantically digging through the rubble in search of survivors trapped in the collapsed 10-bed clinic, said Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail, the provincial health director.

The Taliban, authors of many bombings in this war-ravaged land, denied responsibility for this one. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the movement, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that "this attack was not done by our fighters."

Health Director Nayebkhail said guards had tried to prevent the attacker from driving his SUV into the medical compound, in the mountainous Azra district of Logar province, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Kabul.

"The driver didn't stop and he entered the compound and reached the main building of the health center, where the truck detonated," he said.

Nayebkhail said at least 35 people were killed and at least 53 were wounded in the blast.

He said an Afghan army helicopter was dispatched to the area to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals. He said the clinic had recently been expanded to meet the health needs of the far-flung district's population.

Late Friday, another blast — this one caused by a bicycle rigged with explosives — had ripped through a bazaar in the Khanabad district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people, including a police officer. At least 24 people were wounded in the attack, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The bombings were the latest episodes in a recent escalation of violence in Afghanistan. They followed President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that he plans to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. NATO officials say Afghan armed forces will be ready to take over more security duties, and by 2014 the Afghan government will be prepared for full sovereignty.

The French government reported, meanwhile, that a French soldier was killed after coming under fire from insurgents while on a reconnaissance mission east of Kabul.

The death brings to 47 the number of NATO service members killed in June, and to more than 200 those killed this year, slightly fewer than last year's six-month total.

But as violence raged in the provinces, Kabul plunged deeper into a constitutional crisis as Afghanistan's legislature, upset over a controversial electoral investigation, passed a no-confidence resolution on Saturday against the nation's most senior judges, two days after doing the same for the attorney general.

Both votes were protests of the findings of a special investigative tribunal that invalidated the victories of 62 lawmakers because of alleged improper voting procedures and fraud.

The tribunal was requested by the attorney general, endorsed by the supreme court and approved by President Hamid Karzai.

Some parliament members characterize its findings as an unconstitutional power grab by Karzai and his appointees.

Two-term parliament member Fawza Kofi, not among those named in the tribunal's report, supported the no-confidence votes.

"The tribunal didn't deal with any criminal issues, rather it just invalidated the votes of the people," she said.

She acknowledged the parliamentary vote was largely symbolic, since the body has no power to remove the judges or attorney general. Abdul Malik Kamawi, chief executive of the supreme court, said the votes were unconstitutional and would be ignored.

Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazery also dismissed the no-confidence votes as illegitimate, since some of the lawmakers had been discredited by the special tribunal. Nazery said his office will refer the tribunal's findings to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which will have the final word on whether to replace the lawmakers.

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At least 20 dead in Afghan hospital bomb attack (AFP)

PULI ALAM, Afghanistan (AFP) – A bomb at an Afghan hospital on Saturday killed at least 20 people including women and children, days after President Barack Obama said 10,000 US forces would leave the country this year.

The suicide car bombing in Logar province, about 75 kilometres (45 miles) south of the capital Kabul, also wounded over 20 people and officials warned the death toll could rise.

An eyewitness described horrific scenes of victims on fire and body parts scattered in all directions after a sports utility vehicle (SUV) blew up in the remote district of Azra, close to the border with Pakistan.

The attack was condemned "in the strongest terms" by the United Nations, which said the hospital's maternity ward was badly damaged in the attack and many of the victims were women and children.

Underlining chaos and confusion at the site, the ministry of public health initially put the death toll at 60 but later corrected its own figures.

"At least 20 of our countrymen have been martyred and around 25 are wounded," the ministry said. The interior ministry also said 20 people were killed including hospital staff and patients, and 23 other civilians wounded.

But provincial health director Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail told AFP the death toll could still be significantly higher as many people came to the scene quickly after the blast and removed the bodies of their relatives.

One man who lives near the devastated hospital, Abdul Rahman, told AFP that he lost seven relatives in the explosion.

"Seven members of my family including three women and two children went to that hospital this morning," he said, through tears.

"I was at home, then I heard a big explosion. When I rushed to the site, I saw many dead and injured people.

"Many of them were burning, on fire. There were body parts everywhere. My family is dead, I can't find them, they are under the rubble."

The Taliban denied it was behind the attack, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying: "We condemn this attack on a hospital... whoever has done this wants to defame the Taliban."

Staffan de Mistura, the special representative of the United Nations secretary-general for Afghanistan, called the blast "despicable".

"Much of the damage was in the maternity ward of the hospital, and many of those killed and injured were women and children," he said in a statement.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also stressed that attacks on hospitals were prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The blast came at the end of a week when Obama announced that 33,000 US forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer.

All foreign combat forces are due to pull out of the country by the end of 2014. There are currently up to 150,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan, including about 99,000 from the United States.

Some analysts fear that Afghan security forces may struggle to contain the Taliban-led insurgency, which has hit record levels of violence after nearly ten years, as withdrawals begin.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "savage and ignorant" in a statement released by his office.

Meanwhile, Karzai told a counter-terrorism summit in Tehran that militancy was on the rise in his country.

"Not only has Afghanistan not yet achieved peace and security but terrorism is expanding and threatening more than ever Afghanistan and the region," he said.

The two-day summit was attended by the heads of state of six regional countries, including Afghan neighbours Iran and Pakistan.

The blast in Logar is the second major attack in Afghanistan in two days.

On Friday, 10 people were killed by a bicycle bomb which exploded in a busy bazaar in the Khad Abad district of the northern province of Kunduz.

Militants in Afghanistan frequently target the Afghan police, army and other government employees as well as foreign forces in their near decade-long insurgency.

But civilians are the biggest casualties in the war, with 2,777 killed last year, according to the United Nations. That was the biggest total since the war started in 2001.

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With Afghan withdrawal, US focus turns to Pakistan (AP)

ISLAMABAD – As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaida and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.

They argue that threat has been effectively neutralized in Afghanistan, a key justification for President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because al-Qaida used it as the base to launch the 9/11 attacks.

Afghanistan could take on new significance for the U.S. as a base to launch unilateral strikes against militants inside neighboring Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-armed country that many analysts say is more strategically important than Afghanistan.

That future has become more likely as the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. has deteriorated following the American raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden not far from the Pakistani capital last month. The operation humiliated Pakistan, which cut back on counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S., a popular move in a country where anti-American sentiment is rife.

"We haven't seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years," said a senior administration official in a briefing given to reporters in Washington before Obama's speech. "The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer."

One of the most high-profile attempted attacks against the U.S. homeland coming from Pakistan recently was by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square last year. He allegedly traveled to Pakistan's tribal areas and coordinated his attack with the Pakistani Taliban.

Since Pakistan effectively prohibits American troops inside the country and has been a reluctant ally in targeting militants the U.S. deems a threat, Washington has increasingly relied on covert CIA drone missile strikes to target al-Qaida and Taliban fighters holed up in Pakistan's mountainous border region with Afghanistan.

The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but Obama alluded to its effectiveness in his speech, saying "together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al-Qaida's leadership."

But the future of the drone program in Pakistan could be threatened by pervasive anti-American sentiment and anger over the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2.

The drones are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and lawmakers took the opportunity to demand the government, which is widely believed to allow the drones to take off from bases inside the country, halt the program.

That demand found resonance with Pakistanis, nearly 70 percent of whom view the U.S. as an enemy despite billions of dollars in American aid, according to a recent poll conducted after the bin Laden raid by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the U.S., according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

If Pakistan were to prevent drones from taking off from inside the country, the U.S. would have to launch them from Afghanistan, an act that would further increase tensions in the region, said Riffat Hussain, a defense professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

"The staging area would then become Afghanistan, which would be totally anathema to Pakistan because then you are using another country's territory for attacks against Pakistan," Hussain said. "That will not only escalate tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it means America has declared war on Pakistan."

The U.S. has also made it clear that if it obtains intelligence on future high-value terrorist targets inside Pakistan, it could stage special forces attacks from Afghanistan like the one that killed bin Laden.

The raid infuriated Pakistan because the government wasn't told of it beforehand. U.S. officials have said they kept the Pakistanis in the dark because they were worried that bin Laden would be tipped off by extremist sympathizers in the Pakistani military.

Pakistan responded to the raid by kicking out more than 100 U.S. troops training Pakistanis in counterterrorism operations and reduced the level of intelligence cooperation — something that could make it more difficult for the U.S. to target militants in the country.

One of the primary causes of U.S. frustration with Pakistan is its unwillingness to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies in the country who launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan says its troops are stretched too thin by other operations, but many analysts believe the government is reluctant to attack groups with which it has historical ties and could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.

Hussain, the defense professor, said the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama's admission that the U.S. would support reconciliation talks with the Taliban made it even less likely that Pakistan would target militants deemed a threat by Washington.

"If you are talking to the Taliban, then you can't expect Pakistan to go after them," Hussain said.

Obama said he would press Pakistan to tackle the militant threat inside the country, but also implied the U.S. would not hesitate to go it alone when its security was endangered.

"For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us," Obama said.

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