ISLAMABAD -- After a team of helicopter-borne U.S. Navy Seals stormed a compound in the densely populated Bilal Town neighborhood in the Pakistan Army town of Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden was dead. Pakistan was notified after the operation. The U.S. Congress and citizens alike are dumbfounded that America's archenemy was hiding in the plain sight of the Pakistan military and intelligence rather than in the mountainous frontier of the tribal areas. Former President George W. Bush famously declared that the United States would smoke him out of his cave.

However, Abbottabad is far from a cave. The small city is about an hour's drive from Islamabad, reached through roads that trace the modest altitude climb. The town is a hilly and verdant spot where many Pakistanis retreat for the summer when the plains are scorching. It's near some of the famous hiking spots such as Natiagali. Abbottabad is covered in most guidebooks for Pakistan, including Lonely Planet. Most notably, the hill-town is also home to Pakistan's Military Academy and indeed, Bin Laden's massive, albeit non-luxurious, lair was a mere kilometer from this prestigious institution and the security that accompanied it.[[BREAK]]

Analysts and U.S. officials speaking on and off the record have speculated about the possible support bin Laden had from Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies. It stretches credulity to the breaking point to believe that someone in Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies did not know about Bin Laden's whereabouts, and even afforded the world's most wanted fugitive a support network. John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said that it is inconceivable that bin Laden did not have some support network within Pakistan, though he stopped short of saying that this support was official.

It is possible that Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies succumbed to a profound level of incompetence. But ultimately such speculation is nonproductive. Judgment should be deferred until the numerous investigations are done.

Many good questions and no good answers

Whether this happened due to incompetence or complicity, Pakistan has much explaining to do. Nearly a year ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boldly declared, "I'm not saying that they're at the highest levels, but I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more co-operation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11." Pakistan has long denied that bin Laden was on Pakistani territory. Notwithstanding these demurrals, Clinton was right.

The bin Laden imbroglio is clearly a further strain on already-troubled U.S.-Pakistan relations. American legislators and other officials have grown wary of continuing to provide military and civilian support to Pakistan given that the state continues to aid and abet an array of U.S. foes including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, whose operatives are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans as well as the citizens of Afghanistan and NATO countries. Pakistan continues to aid and abet groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba. In light of this evidence, it is baffling that Clinton certified that Pakistan is cooperating to eliminate these groups and even cease state support of them, as required by the conditions on security assistance imposed by the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid legislation. She made this certification on March 18, 2011. We now know that she did so even while U.S. intelligence agencies and the White House were gathering a picture of this important al-Qaeda safe-house sprawled out comfortably amidst Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies.

The American Congress and citizens alike want answers. Since 9/11, Pakistan has been allocated some $20 billion in U.S. assistance and lucrative military reimbursements to compensate Pakistan's for its costs incurred in supporting the global war on terror -- all the while supporting U.S. adversaries in that same war.

In the wake of this outrage -- which is merely the last in a series of concatenated outrages --  Congress is considering cutting off assistance to Pakistan. While these urges are understandable, this would be a strategic blunder for several reasons, and the United States should remain committed to Pakistan despite the obvious temptations to retreat and take its checkbook with it.

First, bin Laden is dead. The threat posed by al-Qaeda and other international and regional terrorist groups is not. The United States must resist all immediate impulses and remain stone-cold focused on the longer term goal of regional stability.

Second, Pakistanis are not the same as their government and they are not interchangeable with their military and intelligence agencies. Withdrawing aid from Pakistan would hurt Pakistanis more than the Pakistani Army.

Third, even if someone in the Pakistani government helped bin Laden remain in Pakistan undetected, it is highly unlikely that the civilian government was involved. Indeed, Pakistan's civilian governments have been long left out of national security affairs, whether domestic or foreign. Foreign policy is set by Army General Headquarters, not by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It would be a mistake to again punish Pakistan's civilians for the crimes of omission and commission by the security agencies that have done much to vitiate these same institutions.

Fourth, Pakistan remains at the core of U.S. national security interests. Its security competition with India is dangerous. The United States has not yet learned the limits of diplomacy: it cannot engage India strategically (namely, the provision of the civilian nuclear deal) without considering the negative impact on its engagement with Pakistan. After the U.S. civilian-nuclear deal, Pakistan has set its own nuclear machinery into overdrive. It now has the fastest growing arsenal in the world. Equally important, Pakistan will remain a locus of terrorist groups operating in and beyond the South Asia region for time to come.

Engage civilians, civilians, and more civilians

Engaging and investing in Pakistan's civilian government and citizens is paramount and should not be held hostage to the evolving bin Laden drama. Pakistanis have generally been fed anti-American rhetoric infused with a stylized history of bilateral ties and outright fictions. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Islamabad seems incapable of affecting this discourse. Yet, it must. While Pakistanis decry America as the perfidious "Great Satan," the simple fact is that the United States has done more for Pakistanis than any other country. Americans should be proud that U.S. development assistance has helped educational outcomes and improved maternal and child health, among other development successes, in Pakistan. These successes have not been as dramatic as some would hope, but they are still important.

It is also a fact that the policies of the United States in the Muslim world and the way it has engaged Pakistan in particular gives credence to these most unfavorable depictions of the United States. Pakistanis have genuine gripes about U.S. policies towards Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, U.S. relations with Middle East dictators and Gulf State autocratic monarchs, and wars to promote democracy while simultaneously bolstering Pakistan's string of military dictators at the expense of its parliamentary democratic moorings. These legitimate grouses coexist comfortably with the baseless conspiracies and distorted versions of U.S.-Pakistan bilateral history. The United States needs to address these facts and fictions forthrightly. It cannot do so from the comforts of Fortress America and by engaging only Pakistan's English media.

The only way to disprove Pakistanis' deepest doubts about U.S. commitment to Pakistanis and their democratic development is to remain focused on the goal of a democratic, civilian-governed Pakistan, however elusive and fraught that goal may be. That is the most likely -- albeit far from certain -- route to a Pakistan that is increasingly at peace with itself and its neighbors.

The United States must also learn to help Pakistan in ways that are more economically productive. Pakistan needs more trade, not more aid. Pakistan has long asked for access to U.S. textile markets and has long been denied. It is an absurd commentary upon U.S. legislative functioning that the interests of U.S. textile lobbies have trumped those of U.S. national security interests. Pakistan also needs technical support to improve its bureaucracy, to help its national and provincial assemblies do their jobs better, to enable civilian institutions to over time take a larger role in security governance, and to help Pakistan's dilapidated civilian security agencies become capable tof handling the threats its country faces.

President Obama has shown courage, sagacity, and resolution in his decision-making thus far. He needs to work assiduously to ensure that the United States maintain its resolve to stay engaged with Pakistan. To abandon Pakistan because of the flawed and dangerous choices of its military and intelligence agencies is to miss the point: the United States needs to help Pakistanis help themselves. This is not be driven by altruism. The security of the United States and its allies depends on it.

C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and the author of Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States.

The death of Osama bin Laden will raise the inevitable question: What are we still doing in Afghanistan? The answer, of course, is that the mission in Afghanistan is about something bigger and more ambitious than eliminating Al Qaeda’s leaders—most of whom, in any event, are probably living in Pakistan, as bin Laden was when the United States finally tracked him down. No, the mission in Afghanistan isn’t about killing Al Qaeda members. It’s about stabilizing the country so that it can never again serve as the hotbed of extremism that it was until 2001, with all of the attendant national security and human rights problems that resulted.

But that in turn raises other questions: Is it worth prolonging a war that has stretched on for nearly ten years for that broader goal? And perhaps the most difficult question of all: Even if that goal is worth fighting for, is it actually achievable? 

Over the past few years, a consensus has formed in Washington that the answer to that last question is a resounding no. For years, war in Afghanistan has been portrayed as a hopeless failure. The government in Kabul, we have been told, is corrupt and predatory. The Afghan army is a mess. Tribal loyalties trump national loyalties. The Taliban is gaining in strength.

All of this rendered a decision made by President Obama last autumn rather odd—at least on the surface. Obama had long promised that American troops would begin leaving Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. As Vice President Joe Biden had explained: “In July 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.” But then, over the course of a week in November, the White House announced a major reversal of course: A large-scale troop presence would remain in Afghanistan for an additional three years, until 2014.

Only a handful of journalists seemed to realize the magnitude of the news. For its part, The New York Times characterized the new approach as “a change in tone,” a curious label for several more years of war.

But while Americans barely seemed to notice, people in Kabul certainly did. In December, a few weeks after Obama’s announcement, I met with Hedayat Amin Arsala, a courtly senior minister in the Afghan government and a confidant of President Hamid Karzai. We were seated in a basketball-court-sized office adorned with a massive chandelier in a nineteenth-century building in central Kabul. Arsala had been dismayed by Obama’s initial plan to begin withdrawing in 2011. “I was not very happy with it,” Arsala recalled, choosing his words carefully. “It gave the impression to the opposition that if they stick to their guns a little longer, they might be able to succeed after that.” Arsala, reflecting the views of many Afghans both inside and outside the government, expressed relief that Obama was now reversing himself. In fact, he hoped the American president would go even further, and hammer out a long-term agreement with Afghanistan so that American troops could remain in the country into 2015 and beyond. “Between now and 2014, we will be working on this together with the United States,” he told me. A range of other American and Afghan officials confirmed that such an agreement is currently being worked on.

Then came this month’s killing of Osama bin Laden—and while Americans rejoiced, many Afghans were, according to the Times, worried that the successful operation would hasten the departure of American troops. “This should not be used as a justification for premature withdrawal,” warned one former Afghan official.

What is going on here? First, Obama had concluded that a war which was widely believed to be failing was in fact still worth prosecuting. Then, Afghans had made it known that they were relieved the United States would be sticking around. Now, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, they were reminding the United States that they expected it not to renege on this promise. Is this a case of a stubborn American president—unwilling to admit defeat, egged on by Afghan allies—doubling down on a completely failed enterprise? Or is it possible that the Afghanistan war is actually succeeding?

Major Jim Gant of the Army Special Forces is a rangy, intense Pashto speaker with tattoos of Chinese characters on his right arm. Like many of his fellow Special Forces officers in the field, Gant sports a shaggy beard and wears an Afghan scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. He has been at the forefront of an unlikely transformation in counterinsurgency tactics, so much so that he’s been nicknamed “Lawrence of Afghanistan.” Gant’s rise to prominence started in late 2009, when he published a paper on the website of Steven Pressfield, a novelist and military veteran. The article was called “One Tribe at a Time,” and it drew on Gant’s experiences as a Special Forces team leader working with a Pashtun tribe—the Taliban’s historical base is among the Pashtuns—in eastern Afghanistan in 2003. Based on his experiences, Gant advocated that small units of autonomous Special Forces embed with Pashtun tribes and train them to fight the Taliban.

While most policy papers languish on desks or hard drives unread, Gant’s paper ricocheted around the upper echelons of the military. It even reached General David Petraeus, who called the paper “very impressive, so impressive, in fact, that I shared it widely.” After that, the Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, stepped back from “door-kicking” missions and instead began to advise and build up local forces. In what the U.S. military has termed “Village Stability Operations,” members of the Special Forces now live among the Pashtun tribesmen in remote areas where insurgents once had unfettered freedom of movement. The goal is to help train community militias, known to the U.S. military as Afghan Local Police (ALP). At present, the government of Afghanistan has authorized 10,000 ALP militiamen; American officers believe that the number will eventually rise to something more like 24,000.

Getting the ALP approved by Kabul required a significant concession from Hamid Karzai, who had feared that arming tribal militias might rejuvenate the warlordism that has plagued Afghanistan since the early 1990s. To address Karzai’s concerns, the ALP is administered by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, and everyone admitted to the program has to submit to biometric scans. On the ground, militia candidates are vetted by local village councils.

This December, at a base near Kabul, I bumped into Gant at a meeting with some senior Special Forces officers. Gant said he was pleased with the progress and noted that in the Pashtun language the community forces are known by the word Arbakai, a traditional term for forces that secure their own area. “The Taliban are very threatened by this,” Gant said. “It’s taking their safe haven away.” Other experts I spoke with affirmed that the community policemen have created “security bubbles” that didn’t exist before.

If Gant’s approach sounds familiar, it should. That’s because it draws on the same principles as the counterinsurgency tactics that worked for Petraeus in Iraq. Ultimately, the effort in Afghanistan will either succeed or fail based on the counterinsurgency practices, like Gant’s, that Petraeus has put in place. I recently got to see Petraeus—who took over the Afghanistan mission last year, and has just been nominated by Obama to head the CIA—in action during a briefing at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul. When he walked into the briefing room, it was precisely 7:30 a.m., and a bevy of generals and a couple dozen staff officers immediately stood up. He hurriedly motioned for them to sit down and images began to be projected onto screens around the room. Some screens showed the weather in various parts of Afghanistan, others the numbers of American soldiers recently killed, and others maps of insurgent activity. Over secure videoconference lines, commanders from around Afghanistan gave status updates about their sector of the war, with Petraeus alternately quizzing, cajoling, and complimenting them. The only interruption came toward the end of the briefing, when a scuffle broke out over a recalcitrant goat. A group of officers had dragged the hapless animal, a Navy mascot, into the room in honor of the upcoming Army-Navy football game. “Thanks fellows,” said Petraeus, sounding slightly impatient. “That was really cute.”

Counterinsurgency is often misunderstood as being mostly about winning “hearts and minds”; and, as Gant’s program shows, there’s certainly an element of that. But, at the most basic level, it’s really a set of common-sense precepts about how to avoid being hated while simultaneously applying well-calibrated doses of violence—that is, killing people. The importance of killing to counterinsurgency is an unpalatable truth that often gets disguised with Orwellian neologisms such as “kinetic operations,” but Petraeus clearly understands that reaching “hearts and minds” goes only so far on its own.

As a result of stepped-up operations, many of the Taliban’s longtime safe havens in Helmand and Kandahar have been eliminated, according to the U.S. military. Of course, the Pentagon has reason to give optimistic reports; but I was struck to see that the International Council on Security and Development, an organization long critical of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, is also echoing this assessment, based on its own on-the-ground research.

Meanwhile, operations by Delta Force and Navy Seals have decimated the ranks of mid-level Taliban commanders. This March, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, in a typical three-month period, 360 insurgent leaders were killed or captured. (According to a number of observers, the average age of Taliban commanders has dropped from 35 to 25 in the past year.)

On the administrative front, Petraeus has managed to put a stop to particularly senseless policies. At its worst, the Afghanistan conflict has been sustained partly by a contracting system under which U.S. funds take a perverse path from Afghan contractors to Taliban leaders. That is, a fair portion of the money paid out by Washington for a given project, such as the construction of a road, has made it into the pockets of insurgents in exchange for not attacking that road. Petraeus has put in place new contracting guidelines to try to tame this problem.

Petraeus also appears to be making progress in standing up an effective Afghan National Army. Currently, the army is the most well-regarded institution in the country, with approval ratings over 80 percent. While Tajiks are overrepresented in the officer corps, and Pashtuns from the south of the country are grossly underrepresented among the rank and file, overall, the army is ethnically balanced, retention rates (while hardly stellar) are rising, pay rates went up two years ago to $140 per month for a raw recruit (the average yearly income in Afghanistan is less than $400), and the army is on track to reach its November 2011 end-strength goal of 171,000.

But will all these changes in military strategy actually lead to long-term victory in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, anyone observing the country learns to live with alternating feelings of hope and despair. As heartened as I often felt when seeing the military progress, I found the corruption of key Afghan politicians to be deeply depressing. More significantly, the war is exacting a steep cost in American lives. Since Obama took office, some 890 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan. That’s around 60 percent of the total who have died there since the war began in the fall of 2001.

Most of the eastern provinces remain infested with insurgents, as do provinces near Kabul such as Ghazni. The so-called “reintegration” process, in which Taliban foot soldiers lay down their arms and reenter their communities, is largely moribund. Data from Indicium Consulting shows that incidents involving insurgent IEDs, small arms fire, rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks have more than doubled in recent years, from around 8,000 in 2008 to more than 17,000 in 2010. Efforts at striking deals with the Taliban have led nowhere. The most promising discussions occurred last year between the Karzai government and senior Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour—except that “Mullah Mansour” turned out to be a crafty Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials in order to make some quick money. Meanwhile, official meetings held between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in places like the Maldives to discuss “reconciliation” have produced nothing. One sardonic Afghan official offered me a simple reason for why the parties had agreed to meet for negotiations. “Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives,” he said.

When I was in Kabul, I asked a small group of leading American counterinsurgency experts if they could think of a case in which an insurgency was defeated under circumstances like the ones we see today in Afghanistan—where insurgents enjoy a safe haven, the government is corrupt, and a third-party military force is intervening on the side of the corrupt government. The experts could not think of a single example. I found just as little solace in How Insurgencies End, a rigorous RAND study, published last year, of 89 insurgencies fought around the world since World War II. Insurgents who have enjoyed a sanctuary have won almost half the conflicts where there was a clear victor. In countries with less than 40 percent urbanization, insurgents have won about three-quarters of the time. And pseudo-democracies, such as Afghanistan, have a particularly poor record of defeating insurgencies, because they neither have the stomach for total repression nor the capacity to offer accountable government. They lose about 85 percent of the time.

Then there is Pakistan, which has, to put it mildly, not always been a helpful player in Afghanistan. The Pakistani army has long sought a pliant Afghan state on its western border to balance its Indian neighbor to the east—a doctrine known as “strategic depth”—and it believes the Taliban served this purpose fairly well. Today, Pakistan’s economy is in bad shape: Its inflation rate hovers around 15 percent, and annual growth has fallen from 7 percent to 2 percent, which cannot remotely sustain what will be in 2015 the world’s fifth-largest population. Simultaneously, Pakistan is spending an astonishing 17 percent of its budget on defense and only 3 percent on education. All of these indicators are bad news for Pakistanis, but they’re also bad news for Afghans: In the long run, an unstable Pakistan means an unstable Afghanistan, since the border between the countries is basically ungovernable, and extremists can so easily drift back and forth. 

And yet, against this parade of depressing facts, one must balance some other realities. It helps to begin with some historical context. For all of Afghanistan’s problems, the country has come a long way since I first began visiting it almost two decades ago. I first came to Kabul in 1993, when it was a patchwork of vicious ethnic militias fighting block-to-block, Mogadishu-style. Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was routinely unleashing barrages of hundreds of rockets that had an unfortunate habit of landing on the heads of innocent Kabul civilians rather than on his enemies. I saw boys as young as ten fighting alongside the militiamen. Travel at night anywhere at all was out of the question, and brigands of all kinds roamed the countryside kidnapping and thieving at will. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died, and even more fled the country.

I next visited the country in 1997, a year after the Taliban had seized power. The streets were now quiet, and all women were covered from head to foot. Fierce, black-turbaned Taliban “vice and virtue” enforcers roamed around the cities, enforcing their ordinances in fast-moving pickup trucks, stopping to harass, beat, or arrest men whose beards were of improper length or women whose feet were visible. One day, I saw a man crumpled on the street as a Taliban enforcer beat him with a stick. The man had failed to pray at the appointed hour. Days in Taliban Afghanistan passed unbearably slowly. There was nothing to do, no place to go. There were no sounds of music, no films, no entertainment. The economy was in free fall. Kabul was a ghost town, with only 500,000 inhabitants left. The rest had fled. Streets were nearly devoid of cars. My only glimpses of women were when they flitted through the empty streets like wraiths dressed in blue burkas. When I stayed in Kabul in the winter of 1999, I was the only guest in the only functioning hotel in town, an Intercontinental that had long ceased to have anything to do with the brand. There was no heat or hot water, nor were there any telephones. I was lucky to have one of the few rooms with windows that remained intact from the war. When I visited Taliban cabinet officials, we would sit shivering in unheated rooms in their ministries while they told me what a misunderstood man Osama bin Laden was.

Today, Kabul has three million inhabitants. There are restaurants and bars and social venues—and people are friendly. (Among journalists, the guilty secret is that working in Kabul today is sort of, well, fun.) A decade ago, 9 percent of Afghans had access to basic medical care. Today, 85 percent do. Under the Taliban, about one million kids (almost none of them girls) were in school, whereas now about seven million children are being educated (more than one-third of them girls, with the proportion rising). Before the U.S. occupation, a telephone system barely existed in Afghanistan. Today, one in three Afghans has a cell phone. Afghans once had access to no media outlets apart from the Taliban’s Voice of Sharia radio network. Now there are, in the words of the BBC, “scores of radio stations, dozens of TV stations and some 100 active press titles.” More than five million Afghan refugees have returned home. Kabul has becom so crowded with cars and people that the city’s pollution is statistically more lethal than the war.

Afghanistan’s economy is also booming. Thanks to the improvements in security provided by the United States and NATO, GDP growth between 2009 and 2010 was a strong 22 percent. That’s just the start. According to a thorough study released earlier this year by the Pentagon, an estimated $900 billion worth of mineral deposits is waiting to be unearthed in Afghanistan, including enough lithium to make the country a world leader in raw materials for batteries. The Chinese have already paid $3 billion for the rights to a copper mine near Kabul, and last year JP Morgan put together a $50 million deal for a gold mine in northern Afghanistan. No wonder, then, that 70 percent of Afghans told pollsters for the BBC late last year that their country is now going in the right direction. (By comparison, in a New York Times/CBS News poll released in April, 70 percent of Americans said the United States is going in the wrong direction.) It’s also why Afghans give surprisingly high marks to the U.S. military, even after nearly a decade of often bungled occupation: 68 percent favorable, according to a BBC/ABC poll released in January 2010. (By contrast, a 2007 BBC/ABC poll in Iraq found that only 22 percent of Iraqis supported the U.S. military presence in their country.)

It’s true that overall security has deteriorated recently in Afghanistan, but much of that is due to stepped-up military operations. This is what happened at the start of the surge in Iraq. Afghanistan also remains a safer place than countries such as Russia or Mexico, where political conflict and criminal violence kill proportionately more people. Residents of New Orleans are five times more likely to be murdered today than Afghan civilians are likely to be killed in war.

Even the unhappy RAND study on the success of insurgencies contained some encouraging findings. One of the most important is that when a government has a significant force superiority ratio (9:1 or greater), it “correlated strongly with success” in defeating insurgents. The projected end strength of the Afghan army and police is 375,000, and the Taliban is around one-tenth of this size. That’s not including all of the outside military forces that are also involved on the side of the Afghan government. What’s more, according to the RAND study, “[c]ontrary to conventional wisdom, insurgents do not win by trying to simply outlast the government. In fact, over the long run, governments tend to win more often than not.” While the long run can be all too long—it took more than four decades for the Colombian government to effectively defeat the FARC—the fact remains that time is working against the insurgents, especially with the new lengthening of the U.S. commitment.

Although the White House’s pledge to remain in Afghanistan appears to be firm, calls to pull out have been increasing. One striking example of the new emerging consensus came out earlier this year, when George W. Bush’s ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, wrote in Foreign Affairs that “Washington should accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south and east”; he advocated de facto partition of Afghanistan as “the best available alternative to strategic defeat.” The plan was merely the most extreme expression of a now-common sentiment amongst the U.S. foreign policy establishment: Let’s just get it over with.

Partition or withdrawal sound simple and alluring; but Blackwill and others don’t seem to fully grasp the problems with such proposals. For one thing, with whom would we negotiate a partition? The so-called “moderates” in the Taliban reconciled with the Afghan government long ago. The remaining Taliban fighters have splintered into several groups, each more extreme than the next. And why would the Taliban honor their side of the bargain? Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan and in Swat were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing brutal “emirates,” regrouping, and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.

The human costs of partition or withdrawal would be horrific. When the Taliban took control of the Pakistani tourist destination of Swat between 2008 and 2009, they imposed a reign of terror, beheading policemen and leaving their bodies to rot in public, burning down schools for girls, and administering public lashings to women accused of adultery.

And, finally, there are the strategic costs. Yes, Osama bin Laden is dead, but Al Qaeda still exists, and there is no reason to believe that a reconstituted Taliban government would be any less hospitable to Al Qaeda than the Taliban rulers of the 1990s. After September 11, Mullah Omar lost everything to protect bin Laden, and since then he has said nothing to distance himself from that fateful decision.

Of course, just because it would be preferable to succeed in Afghanistan does not mean we actually can. But, when I look at the hopeful signs that are starting to emerge from the country, and when I consider these indicators in tandem with the likely consequences of a hasty exit, I do think the wise choice now is for the United States to stay. In war, perceptions tend to lag behind reality by a considerable distance. In Afghanistan, our efforts were widely thought of as successful for several years after things had clearly begun to deteriorate on the ground. Today, it appears that we have the opposite problem: improvements on the ground that are widely dismissed amid a narrative of defeat.

Staying in Afghanistan isn’t the politically obvious decision: The war is going to remain controversial, and it’s going to be criticized from both the left and the right. Arguably, it could even imperil Obama’s reelection. Still, the president has made his choice and he appears to be sticking with it. This, I am convinced, is good for Afghanistan. One day, I hope, we’ll also realize that it was good for the United States.

Peter Bergen is a contributing editor for The New Republic and the author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda. This article originally ran in the May 26, 2011, issue of the magazine.

by Marian Wang and Braden Goyette

The death of Osama bin Laden has sent news organizations scrambling for details on how it happened, where it happened, and what it all means. 

We’ve rounded up some of the best coverage, being careful to note what’s been said, what’s already being disputed, and what still remains to be seen.

How they found the most wanted man in the world:

The New York Times has a vivid account of the hunt for bin Laden in the weeks leading up to the strike, with dialogue straight from the situation room as the operation unfolded. As for the specific trail of intelligence, the Associated Press traces how detainees in both the CIA’s secret network of prisons and in Guantanamo provided clues about the trusted courier who ultimately led the United States to bin Laden’s hideaway. The AP cites former officials asserting that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, was not being waterboarded while discussing the courier, though that still leaves unanswered what interrogation methods were used on the other, tip-giving detainees—many of whom haven’t been identified.

But here’s the interrogation file of one detainee who may have proved useful: The file of Abu al-Libi contained an early clue as to the whereabouts of a bin Laden courier in Abbottabad.

What we actually know about the operation and what’s still fuzzy: 

Most accounts of the bin Laden operation at this point cite background briefings from the White House. Those transcripts are interesting for both the details they provide and the details that officials skirt around. Here’s yesterday’s and today’s.

Many of the blow-by-blows of the bin Laden operation are still fairly sketchy, and Obama administration officials already appear to be backing away from a few of the earlier descriptions of the circumstances surrounding bin Laden’s death. For instance, early claims that bin Laden was armed at the time of his death and had used his wife as a human shield have since been contradicted by officials, Politico reported.

Given this, Slate’s Jack Shafer has a must-read, pointing out several instances of vague sourcing and inconsistencies in some of the coverage of the bin Laden story.

Of course, some have taken that skepticism a step further and veered into conspiracy theories, seizing on the sea burial and the timing of the President’s announcement as suspicious. (Slate has more on why the sea burial is unusual.) The administration has said it’s considering releasing the photo of bin Laden’s body or videos of the raid and the burial to put these suspicions to rest.

The Joint Special Operations Command, whose elite team of Navy Seals executed the operation, costs the country more than $1 billion annually, according to National Journal. Despite some of its personnel having been involved in abuse of prisoners and rendition, JSOC has operated without much scrutiny since 9/11—read the piece for more helpful context.

About the town where he was found, Abbottabad:

Abbottabad is north of Islamabad, less than mile away from the Pakistani military academy—the Pakistani equivalent of West Point, as some have noted. ProPublica’s Scott Klein mapped it out.

Some useful people to follow on the ground in Abbottabad are CNN’s Nic Robertson (@NicRobertson), TIME journalist Omar Waraich (@Omar Waraich), and IT consultant Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual), the man who unwittingly live-Tweeted the U.S. operation as it unfolded and has since been tweeting photos and observations from the city.

The New Yorker’s Steve Coll notes that the location raises serious questions about what Pakistan knew about the whereabouts of the United States’ most wanted man:

It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in the Pakistani Army.

The initial circumstantial evidence suggests that the opposite is more likely—that bin Laden was effectively being housed under Pakistani state control. Pakistan will deny this, it seems safe to predict, and perhaps no convincing evidence will ever surface to prove the case.

What Pakistan knew:

The Obama administration has paid lip service to its robust counterterrorism partnership with Pakistan, but it also said that it planned and executed the operation without Pakistan’s prior knowledge. Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs has said that “U.S. helicopters entered Pakistani airspace making use of blind spots in the radar coverage.” Pakistan has also maintained that it had no idea that bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

Foreign Policy has a roundup of Pakistani officials’ past denials that bin Laden could be hiding in their country. An unnamed Pakistani intelligence official told the BBC that they’re embarrassed that they weren’t able to find bin Laden, and that, though they raided the Abbottabad compound while it was in construction in 2003, it was “not on our radar” since then.

In a White House press briefing yesterday afternoon, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said that bin Laden must have had some Pakistani support, though he refused to speculate who might have given it and how high it went.  

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have been complicated since 9/11—the recently leaked GITMO files showed that U.S. officials have been suspicious of Pakistan for years. Last week, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly accused the Pakistani military of supporting the Haqqani network, a wing of the Taliban with close ties to al-Qaida. We’ve covered how Pakistan’s intelligence service has been a frenemy in past cases. Last year, we laid out the evidence that officers in Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service collaborated on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

This mission also wasn’t the first time the United States has carried out a covert raid in Pakistan without alerting local officials. We have a look at past U.S. military operations in Pakistan in recent years and the tensions that have grown out of them.

As details continue to emerge, some good reporters and experts to follow on Twitter include our own national security reporter Dafna Linzer (@dafnalinzer), TIME’s national security correspondent Mark Thompson (@mthompsontime) and National Journal’s Marc Ambinder (@marcambinder), who authored one of the most detailed early stories on the team that killed bin Laden.

Background on bin Laden and his followers:

The New York Times obituary for bin Laden is six pages—a detailed retrospective on who he was and how he founded al-Qaida.

Check out Frontline’s bin Laden files—seems there’s a lot to dig through, including a chronology of his political life and a brief biography. Frontline’s also airing a show tonight about a band of bin Laden loyalists in Afghanistan, CIA kill raids in Pakistan, and new evidence of secret Pakistani support for elements of the Taliban.

The New Yorker’s 2005 piece on bin Laden has several interviews with former schoolmates about his childhood and his radicalization. Over the years, several pieces have been written about the U.S. trail on Osama going cold, including Jane Mayer’s 2003 piece in the New Yorker and the Washington Post’s 2006 piece. Peter Bergen, writing for the New Republic in 2009, gives an account of a failed attempt by the U.S. military to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora, a mountainous region in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border—crucial for the years of war it could have spared the United States had it succeeded.

The Daily Beast has a few more suggested long reads on the subject.

So, what happens next?

While national security officials are saying bin Laden’s death and the raid itself have been important blows to al-Qaida, the consensus seems to be that the threat isn’t over. The New Yorker’s Steve Coll writes that while this is the first time al-Qaida will have to face a change in leadership, it’s also a decentralized network—essentially an ideology—that can’t be dismantled by just picking off the leaders.  

Foreign Policy has a useful guide to all the major arguments being made about the implications of bin Laden’s death; the Atlantic has a good selection of post-bin Laden analysis and predictions; and the New York Times has a Room for Debate segment on what comes next in the war on terror.

Al Jazeera has a piece with reactions from Afghan officials and residents, some of whom fear for the long-term stability of the region if NATO and U.S. forces leave. The Guardian has a guide to bin Laden’s inner circle, a potential roadmap of who’s next in line.

For following all the developments, Al Jazeera and the New York Times have live blogs going, and Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel is continually rolling out analysis.

Bin Laden's death leaves prime minister facing tough questions despite American reassurance over Pakistan's cooperation

Pakistan's relations with the US had already been under serious strain before the revelation that Osama bin Laden had been hiding near a military facility less than an hour's drive from the capital.

But the dramatic nature of Bin Laden's discovery and death are deeply embarrassing for Islamabad – all the more so since the two sides need each other.

Still, president Barack Obama was careful to note "our counter-terrorism co-operation with Pakistan" and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, pointed out that the US remained committed to the partnership.

Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, hailed the attack as a "great victory" but prominent opposition voices reacted sourly, describing it as another example of subservience to America.

"This whole war was for Osama. So now they should leave us alone and let us live in peace," demanded Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician. Exiled former president Pervez Musharraf protested against "a violation of our sovereignty".

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, hinted that the Pakistani state itself was complicit in sheltering the terrorist leader, saying Bin Laden had "hidden himself in the military bases of Abbottabad".

The killing revived questions about alleged links between al-Qaida and elements in Pakistan's security forces.

An ISI official insisted Pakistan had no forewarning of the assault. Critics said the raid was at the very least an embarrassment for Pakistani intelligence, which failed to detect the presence of the al-Qaida leader in a major military town. It was "a failure on our part", the official said. "Unfortunate, but that's a fact."

Only 10 days ago Pakistan's army chief addressed cadets at Abbottabad military academy – the equivalent of Sandhurst in Britain or West Point in the US – claiming the army had broken the back of militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Islamabad had long insisted that Bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan.

"I think the Pakistani army and intelligence have a lot of questions to answer given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this facility was actually built for bin Laden and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army," said the US Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin.

Suspicions of complicity will centre on the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), Pakistan's security and spy agency, widely mistrusted by its western partners. "There will be a lot of tension between Washington and Islamabad because Bin Laden seems to have been living close to Islamabad," Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani security analyst, told Reuters. "Pakistan will have to do a lot of damage control."

Coverage on Pakistan's influential, and often rightwing, television stations focused on the issue of sovereignty, giving a taste of the likely flavour of the debate in days to come as questions are raised about what role, if any, the Pakistani government played in the raid.

In Kabul, Karzai seized on the news of Bin Laden's death to criticise the US-led coalition, complaining that it was focused on counter-insurgency operations in the Pashtun south of Afghanistan rather than Taliban safe havens over the border.

"Year after year, day after day, we have said the fighting against terrorism is not in the villages of Afghanistan, not among the poor people of Afghanistan," he said. "The fight against terrorism is in safe havens. It proves that Afghanistan was right."

Aminuddin Muzafary, secretary of the High Peace Council, said Bin Laden's death "removed the curtain from Pakistan's face." He added: "His death shows the unfaithfulness of Pakistan but it is also possible that it was a business deal between the CIA and the ISI."

The news was "very worrying," said Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's main opposition leader. "Just a few weeks ago the Pakistanis were insisting that the US military and intelligence operations should be stopped in Pakistan and their agents should leave the country."

Afghanistan's intelligence service has long believed that their Pakistani counterparts were harbouring Bin Laden.

Last year, shortly after he was sacked by Karzai, Amrullah Saleh, the former head of the National Directorate of Security, claimed the ISI knew exactly where the al-Qaida leader was hiding.

Saleh told the Guardian that the Pakistani state deliberately kept Bin Laden safe so that the west would ignore its nuclear programme. Elements within the ISI have long been accused of sympathy for militant Islamism and of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Kashmir as part of their regional rivalry with India.

India's home ministry issued a statement expressing "concern that terrorists belonging to different organisations find sanctuary in Pakistan".

In London the Pakistani high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, insisted that Islamabad had no idea of Bin Laden's whereabouts until the US operation. "Nobody knew that Osama bin Laden was there – no security agency, no Pakistani authorities knew about it," Hasan told BBC Radio 5 Live. "The fact is that the Americans knew it and they carried out the operation themselves and they killed Osama bin Laden and then later our president of Pakistan was informed that the operation was successful, and that's it."

But the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, Richard Ottaway, said: "Unfortunately, I am not sure that the government of Pakistan speaks for the whole of Pakistan. It is a divided country with lots of tribal loyalties, and there are clearly internal divisions within Pakistan's security services."

Allegations of complicity within Pakistani intelligence services after al-Qaida leader discovered to have been living near capital

Pakistan's government is facing deeply uncomfortable questions in the US and beyond over the presence of Osama bin Laden near a military facility less than two hours from the capital, Islamabad – and angry claims from Afghanistan that its own position has been vindicated.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, hinted that the Pakistani state itself was complicit in sheltering the terrorist leader, saying Bin Laden had "hidden himself in the military bases of Abbottabad".

The killing has revived questions about alleged links between al-Qaida and elements in the country's security forces.

Ironically, only 10 days ago Pakistan's army chief addressed cadets at that town's military academy – the equivalent of Sandhurst in the UK or West Point in the US – claiming the army had broken the back of militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Islamabad had long insisted that Bin Laden was not hiding in Pakistan but in neighbouring Afghanistan, but tensions with the US had mounted in recent months over cross-border drone attacks and the government's faltering efforts to tackle the Pakistani Taliban.

Pervez Musharraf ,president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008, described Bin Laden's death as a "positive step", but criticised the US for launching the raid within his country's borders.

Calling it a victory for the people of Pakistan, Musharraf said he also expected some short-term instability due to acts of revenge.

"It's a very positive step and it will have positive long-term implications," Musharraf told Reuters in Dubai, where he has a home. "Today we won a battle, but the war against terror will continue."

Musharraf said, however, that the operation infringed on Pakistan's sovereignty: "It's a violation to have crossed Pakistan's borders."

But suspicions of complicity will centre on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's powerful security and spy agency, which is widely considered untrustworthy by its western partners.

"For some time there will be a lot of tension between Washington and Islamabad because Bin Laden seems to have been living here close to Islamabad," Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani security analyst, told Reuters. "Pakistan will have to do a lot of damage control. This is a serious blow to the credibility of Pakistan."

In Kabul, Karzai seized on the news of Bin Laden's death to criticise the US-led coalition, complaining that it was focused on counter-insurgency operations in the Pashtun south of Afghanistan rather than Taliban safe havens over the border.

"Year after year, day after day, we have said the fighting against terrorism is not in the villages of Afghanistan, not among the poor people of Afghanistan," he said. "The fight against terrorism is in safe havens. It proves that Afghanistan was right."

Aminuddin Muzafary, secretary of the High Peace Council established by Karzai, said Bin Laden's death "removed the curtain from Pakistan's face." He added: "His death shows the unfaithfulness of Pakistan but it is also possible that it was a business deal between the CIA and the ISI. Time will reveal whether or not this was a deal or something else."

The news was "very worrying," said Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's top opposition leader. "Just a few weeks ago the Pakistanis were insisting that the US military and intelligence operations should be stopped in Pakistan and their agents should leave the country."

Afghanistan's intelligence service has long believed that their Pakistani counterparts were harbouring Bin Laden. Last year, shortly after he was sacked by Karzai, Amrullah Saleh, the former head of the National Directorate of Security, claimed the ISI knew exactly where the al-Qaida leader was hiding.

Saleh told the Guardian that the Pakistani state deliberately kept Bin Laden safe so that the west would ignore its nuclear programme. He said: "They built their nuclear bomb under the very watchful eyes of the west. How did they escape from that danger? By creating another crisis for you. If I make an analogy – you have a pain in your finger and pain in your kidney, which one [do] you go [for] first? They created a kidney pain for United States through Bin Laden and Taliban so you give up talking about the pain from the nuclear bomb."

Elements within the ISI have long been accused of sympathy for militant Islamism and of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Kashmir as part of their regional rivalry with India.

The Indian home ministry issued a statement expressing "concern that terrorists belonging to different organisations find sanctuary in Pakistan".

In London the Pakistani high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, insisted that Islamabad had no idea of Bin Laden's whereabouts until the US operation. "Nobody knew that Osama bin Laden was there – no security agency, no Pakistani authorities knew about it," Hasan told BBC Radio 5 Live. "The fact is that the Americans knew it and they carried out the operation themselves and they killed Osama bin Laden and then later our president of Pakistan was informed that the operation was successful, and that's it."

But the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee Richard Ottaway said: "Unfortunately, I am not sure that the government of Pakistan speaks for the whole of Pakistan. It is a divided country with lots of tribal loyalties, and there are clearly internal divisions within Pakistan's security services.

Major banks sanctioned

WASHINGTON -- Without assessing fines, federal banking regulators on Wednesday sanctioned the country's largest banks over "a pattern of misconduct and negligence" in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing.

"These deficiencies represent significant and pervasive compliance failures and unsafe and unsound practices at these institutions," the Federal Reserve said in a statement.

The action, taken jointly by the Fed, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, found banks didn't hire enough workers, didn't adequately supervise outside lawyers and other firms, didn't ensure they had accurate foreclosure documentation and didn't stop foreclosure proceedings when warranted.

The sanctioned banks are Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Ally Financial Inc., the HSBC North America unit of HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., MetLife Inc., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc., US Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co., Everbank Financial Corp., OneWest, Banco Santander SA's Sovereign Bank and Aurora Bank, which together represent 68 percent of the market.

Drone strike aggravates U.S.-Pakistan tension

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned a U.S. drone strike in its tribal area in another sign that the future of what the Obama administration has called its most effective weapon against al-Qaida is in doubt.

There was no allegation that any of the six people who died in the strike in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, were civilians. But Pakistan denounced it nonetheless.

"We have repeatedly said that such attacks are counterproductive and only contribute to strengthen the hands of the terrorists," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "Drone attacks have become a core irritant in the counter-terror campaign."

The drone program, which uses unmanned aircraft to attack suspected militants in Pakistan's wild tribal area, has been drastically reduced since late January, when Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier working for the CIA, was imprisoned for shooting dead two Pakistani men.

By wire sources

Along with troops, the UK is pouring aid into Afghanistan. But is it working? Jonathan Steele gets a first hand view of life inside Helmand province

Imagine a two-mile journey from Britain's military HQ in Helmand to the shooting range where Afghan police train under UK supervision. Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital, has hosted British troops for more than four years, so you might think the trip would be an easy commute.

Think again. Wedged into flak jackets with helmets at the ready, Guardian photographer Sean Smith and I sit in the front vehicle of a three-car convoy of armour-plated land cruisers with darkened windows driven by weapon-carrying security guards. The armoured glass in the front passenger's window sports an ominous perforated crack like a star burst. "I see you've taken at least one bullet," I comment after one of the guards finishes briefing us on how to operate the two-way radio in case he and his colleague are incapacitated.

"Actually, it was just a stone," he replies. "Small boys throw them. They take time to aim, so it's better to be in the lead vehicle. You usually get past before they're ready." As we set off on our 10-minute trip he picks up his handset to launch into a running commentary of potential threats for the benefit of the cars behind. "Static tuctuc [three-wheeler] on right. White Toyota, no licence plate, approaching from side road. Multiple pax [passengers]. Tuctuc on left, has eyes on us. No pax . . ."

It's our first morning in Lashkar Gah and I wasn't expecting this. Yes, the 18-minute helicopter ride from the huge transit airfield at Camp Bastion in northern Helmand had ended with swerves and tilts at little more than 15m (50ft) above Afghan family compounds before we reached Lashkar Gah. But I had thought the town itself might be safe.

We reach the shooting range. In light blue, knee-length coats and trousers, the women police look very smart, but what is most striking is the head gear – scarves covering the chin as well as the hair, and wraparound reflective sunglasses, giving them a totally anonymous, ninja-like appearance.

Piles of folded-up burqas lie on the bench beside them where we enjoy soft drinks before they take up the new pistols two British police trainers have brought. "Lashkar Gah has 16 policewomen but only three are willing to wear their uniforms to work," Roshan Zakia, the senior officer, explains. The Taliban sometimes attack people seen as collaborating with the government of Hamid Karzai and foreign forces.

Zakia is one of those who does not hide her job. Three men came to her door recently and beat her up until neighbours saved her. It was not the only case of intimidation we were to hear during our 10-day stay in Helmand.

But it is not easy to report my impressions of Helmand's challenges. I was invited by our own Department for International Development (DFID), but everything I write has to be submitted to the Ministry of Defence and cleared for publication. Britain is trying to bring good governance to the people of Afghanistan, among which I thought was respect for press freedom. But no journalist can travel with the British in Helmand if he or she has not given signed agreement to an annex to the MoD "Green Book" which sets out the procedures for coverage, including the requirement for pre-publication approval of all text, audio, and pictures. A soldier even sits in on my interviews. No wonder American journalists decline to report on the British in Helmand. Their own government makes no such demands of the embedded press. Astonishingly, I learn the Newspaper Publishers Association, the National Union of Journalists, the Society of Editors and the BBC were consulted in producing the Green Book.

A policy that aims to bring services to ordinary people within weeks of the military's advances

The last was strange, given that both the British and Americans can point to progress. Their counter-insurgency strategy of "shape, clear, hold, build, and transfer" aims to bring services to ordinary people within weeks, if not days of the military's advances. Before troops go into an area, the plan is to have a "district delivery package" geared up and ready to follow. Install a district governor and key officials, set up a community council, offer cash-for-work programmes, open health clinics and schools, appoint officials to handle local disputes and get police, judges and prosecutors in place to deal with crime.

Eleven of Helmand's 14 districts now have a governor and some officials, compared with only five two years ago. Schools have reopened with almost 80,000 children enrolled today, virtually double the number of 2007. Police are being trained at the rate of 150 new recruits every month.

British and US forces are trying to pave the way for economic development by removing IEDs, patrolling the main roads and making it possible for bazaars to reopen and commerce to revive. DFID is funding a programme to give farmers wheat seed to replace poppy production. Loans are going to small businesses.

The schemes are supervised by the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah, a mixed civilian and military enterprise. The US now has more troops in Helmand than Britain, but the PRT is still a UK-run affair of some 150 people, with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the MoD, and DFID all represented. The number includes a growing presence of US civilians, plus some from Denmark.

They live inside a heavily fortified compound of watchtowers, tents and air-conditioned trailers that also houses Task Force Helmand, the UK military headquarters. Overland travel for civilians is confined to armed convoys of the kind that took us to the police shooting range. Travel to any of Helmand's district centres is by helicopter only.

Claims that UK and US forces – and through them the Afghan government – now control most of Helmand are exaggerated. Until you visit the area, it is hard to envisage that their presence is actually confined to a few towns in this rural province. They sit in a series of security bubbles labelled "main bases", "forward operating bases" and "patrol bases", each of diminishing size, with the patrol bases home to anything from a dozen to 100 troops. The latest tactic is to set up "line of sight" checkpoints, mainly manned by Afghan police, on the roads between towns so that travellers are always watched. Local government offices are also located in guarded compounds where, for safety reasons, officials often live as well as work.

PRT officials and military spokesmen use various phrases to define success. The government has "extended its reach", or "can now exert influence" or "has a presence" in this or that new district. Every press release makes the same point. The unspoken assumptions are that they are playing a zero-sum game and territory won from the Taliban is territory denied to them. But this is asymmetric warfare and those Taliban – the majority – who are local farmers usually disperse before major operations begin. They pursue the struggle by other means: IEDs and rifle fire from ambush positions; intimidating government officials with assassinations; and "night letters" warning them of the risk of working with foreigners, just as the mujahideen did when Soviet troops were in Helmand 30 years ago.

The latest resistance pinprick seems to be the stoning of Afghan government and foreign vehicles. One day I sat in on an hour-long "Pashtu for Beginners" class for British troops. Offering language tips is an intelligent move and attendance was impressive. On a blisteringly hot afternoon almost 15 young men turned up, perhaps aided by the fact that their instructor, a fellow soldier in combat fatigues, was a pretty blonde. After we had rehearsed several standard phrases – How are you?, I'm not an enemy, I'm a British soldier – one squaddie asked: "What's the Pashtu for 'Stop throwing stones at us'?"

We had a more graphic illustration of the point on a visit to a girls' high school in Lashkar Gah. The school also teaches boys up to the age of 12. Dozens were racing round as our armoured convoy parked under the playground's only trees beyond a sign saying that USAID had helped to rebuild the school. Twenty minutes into my interview with the deputy head, a security guard came in and warned us that we might have to leave soon. Boys were starting to stone the land cruisers. He rushed back five minutes later and ordered us to don our helmets and run to the cars, which the guards had managed to move closer to the building. We beat a hasty retreat while the kids carried on stoning as the convoy moved off.

The stoning may have been spontaneous, but a source told us the widespread scale of it was new and appeared to be a tactic organised by the Taliban. On the local radio stations that they have set up, the British and Americans put out messages urging Afghans not to let their children help the Taliban.

Most Helmandis live in the province's fertile central area along the Helmand river and the adjacent irrigation canals. Expatriates call it the "green zone" because of the stark contrast with the khaki desert. But the name is also a reminder of Baghdad's Green Zone, where many of them did earlier service. The hallmarks of foreigners' lives in both places are insecurity and isolation from ordinary people.

Talking to Helmandis in the green zone's villages is as impossible for embedded journalists as it is for PRT officials and UK troops. But we asked to meet Afghan NGOs, though we knew conversation would be limited while a soldier sat beside us. The request ran into problems. "They won't come to the PRT and they don't want to have vehicles from the PRT coming to their offices," we were told.

The PRT's Afghan interpreters live in the compound and even they are afraid to go into Lashkar Gah when off duty in case of reprisals. They come mainly from Kabul, and on the job some wear baseball caps and scarves round their faces to avoid identification.

A survey found that the government's justice system was trusted by just 7% of Afghans

The survey found that many people are satisfied with the security and justice the Taliban provide. More than half the male respondents called them "completely trustworthy and fair". They did not demand bribes, though they took money in other ways, through taxes on farm crops, road tolls and zakat (donations for the poor). Women were far less positive, with only a quarter saying they trusted the Taliban.

The government justice system was heavily criticised for bribery and favouritism and was trusted by only 7% of men and women. "Most ordinary people associate the government with practices and behaviours they dislike: the inability to provide security, dependence on foreign military, eradication of a basic livelihood crop (poppy), and as having a history of partisanship (the perceived preferential treatment of northerners)", the survey reported.

To counter people's adverse perceptions of the government the rule of law team in the PRT is working with Afghan officials to build up a reformed justice system. It is part of what is called the Helmand Institutions Building Programme. They took us to Nad Ali, a district centre they consider a showcase and model for other centres to follow as they capture them from the Taliban. Here, too, insecurity was massive. Although Nad Ali is only 15km (9 miles) from Lashkar Gah, travel was by helicopter. Kicking up clouds of dust, we landed in a medieval compound of ancient mud-brick walls, now known as FOB Shawqat. Until the British arrived it was the town's livestock market, transformed now into a rectangular fortress of three tiers of Hesco barriers (wired sacks full of loose stones and other ballast), freight containers, tents, and camouflaged watchtowers.

Two weeks before our visit, the Taliban launched a two-hour attack on one of the watchtowers. Troops are warned that the risks of direct fire and suicide attacks on Shawqat are "substantial". Under heavy guard we were allowed to walk 45m from the base to a new bazaar built by the British for a ribbon-cutting ceremony by Habibullah, the district governor. But when we went to his office later, 180m away, it was in armoured vehicles. They also insisted this was necessary when they took us on a trip to the old bazaar, where we were allowed to dismount and walk around for stilted interviews with shopkeepers.

In the governor's offices, we met three newly appointed officials – a judge, prosecutor and investigator. The latter two told us they had started making trips to villages to explain their work but had only held two trials since August. They face a long road ahead.

The longest road of all is the effort to improve life for Helmand's women. After toppling the Taliban, George Bush and Tony Blair encouraged their wives to proclaim the arrival of a new dawn for Afghan women; liberation from the burqa and the chance for education again. The number of girls in school has become one of the regularly repeated measures of change.

Progress is substantial but what happens when girls leave school? Where are the jobs, and what are British and US aid programmes doing to encourage female employment? Are they taking steps to deal with some of the grim justice issues that women raised in the DFID-sponsored survey? Women complained of domestic violence, multiple marriages, honour killing and the archaic practice known as bad, under which young girls are given to other families in exchange for unpaid debts or as compensation if someone from the other family has been killed.

PRT officials arranged for us to see a group of women in Lashkar Gah. We meet in the Department of Women's Affairs, the only neutral venue they consider safe. About a dozen turn up. Their overriding concern is jobs: in conservative Pashtun society, many husbands refuse to let their wives go out of the house or family compound and if they do permit them, there are few jobs for women apart from teaching.

At the girls' high school, Rahela Safi, the deputy headteacher, said almost 10,000 girls were enrolled. They study for only two or three hours a day because teachers have to do three shifts. Some girls are in their early 20s, having missed out during the Taliban period. But though they study subjects from maths to biology and computer sciences, most end up – if they find a job at all – teaching the next generation of girls.

The provincial education department in Lashkar Gah has 70 employees. All are men. Money is being allocated to set up a women's education unit, which will be staffed by women, though again it will only be women working with and for women. The PRT itself employs no women interpreters. When I raised this, a (female) British civilian adviser suggested the question was culturally insensitive since it assumed there were women available who had language skills and permission from their families to work alongside men. To which one reply might be that the PRT could get the facts by advertising on the radio in Kabul or Lashkar Gah and seeing what response they receive.

The provincial council in Lashkar Gah has three women, but only one of Helmand's district community councils, selected by local elders under UK and US supervision and financed by the US and the UK, has women representatives.

Washington and London seem happy to try to alter Afghan culture when it comes to the economy, but when that culture undermines women's rights, there is less energy. "Is it our goal to change Afghan society or deliver basic services and security and make it able to have a representative government?" asks Arthur Snell, a Foreign Office man who serves as the PRT's deputy head. "It would play into the Taliban's hands if they could say the foreigners are here to undermine Afghan traditional society. You have to strike a careful balance."

An aid programme that will take years to deliver comprehensive results

First of all, it must be said it has come very late. "The key moment was the summer of 2008 with the decision to develop the districts outside Lashkar Gah," says Nick Abbott, head of DFID's Afghanistan team. But why wasn't this done in the spring of 2002 as soon as the Taliban were toppled? Remember Blair's boast that Britain would not walk away from Afghanistan? In the wake of Bush's rush to topple Saddam Hussein, he promptly did. This allowed the Taliban to recover and re-emerge, using the argument that the latest foreign occupiers had brought no benefit to ordinary people in the Pashtun heartlands.

Second, the aid programme will take years to deliver comprehensive results. Schools and health clinics can be built relatively quickly but giving people justice, honest police and officials who observe the rule of law – the issues on which the Taliban are seen as strong – will need much more time.

Third, it raises the question of the high cost of delivering aid in a war zone, given the huge danger facing foreigners who provide and try to monitor it. The same money would go much further if spent in needy developing countries that are at peace. Aid could return to Afghanistan once Afghans have settled their conflicts. Yet DFID is going in the opposite direction by planning to increase its spending in Helmand and the rest of Afghanistan next year.

Fourth, aid as counter-insurgency endangers the work – and lives – of independent NGOs by linking them with foreign forces in people's minds, a point frequently made by groups such as Oxfam as well as Afghan NGOs. While foreign governments' aid goes up, charitable aid diminishes.

Fifth, does aid really enhance the legitimacy of Afghan government representatives in Helmand? Under US counter-insurgency doctrine (Coin), which Britain endorses, "government-in-a-box" is supposed to drop in as soon as troops flood into an area and force the Taliban underground. The difficulty is that the US and UK do not choose the officials who arrive to fly the government flag, since the Karzai regime is supposed to be sovereign.

Much of the British and US effort in Helmand this year has gone on preventing a former provincial governor, Sher Mohammad Akhunzada, and a former police chief, Abdul Rahman Jan, from continuing to exert influence locally. On suspicion of corruption, the British persuaded Karzai to remove them four years ago, so they were furious when a delegation of Kabul ministers brought both men to a meeting of local elders in Nad Ali in February. Diplomats say Akhunzada, now a senator in Kabul, "still enjoys direct access to Karzai".

Less senior officials are also a concern. Officials who served in the PRT earlier this year say they believe several members of current Helmand governor Gulabuddin Mangal's team diverted British funds from a programme to get farmers to plant crops other than poppies. They bought low-quality wheat seeds and fertiliser in place of what they were supposed to give farmers, and pocketed the difference. The lists of beneficiaries were also said to have been rigged in favour of friends of Mangal's staff. When the British complained, the governor mobilised the National Directorate of Security and several staff were arrested.

Sixth, does aid undermine the Taliban? Most Taliban commanders seem to recognise that people want schools and health clinics and it is counterproductive to destroy them. In some places, they have even tried to get credit by saying their presence forces the foreigners to pay to build them. "There is huge pressure in newly cleared areas to open schools and we only do it with buy-in from the local population. The Taliban haven't been active in attacking schools. There have been no attacks on girls' schools in Lashkar Gah since 2005. There was one in Gereshk in April this year," says Brett Rapley, the PRT's education adviser.

Health clinics have also largely been spared. "Before I came here," says Dr Jonathan Cox, the PRT medical adviser who is a colonel in the regular army, "I thought the Taliban would be burning clinics down. That's not the case. They seem not to burn them down or blow them up. They don't even do it to clinics we've built."

"Women teachers who live in Taliban-influenced areas outside the security bubble and come in to work are sometimes intimidated," says Rapley. Medical staff appear to be better off. "There is surprisingly little intimidation of health and clinic workers in lonely places. If it's a local [as opposed to an out-of-area or foreign] insurgent, he must know his family must be using that clinic and when the war is over he will need one himself," says Cox.

Coin's key test is whether Taliban members are giving up. General David Petraeus, the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, has stepped up the use of drones and special forces to assassinate Taliban commanders, claiming substantial success. But critics say the supply of new Taliban is inexhaustible and new commanders may be more ruthless than those they replace.

If one aim is to frighten the Taliban into dropping their guns, the carrot is the "re-integration" programme, rolled out this year, which offers Taliban benefits for a return to civilian life. PRT officials in Helmand decline to give figures on how many have come forward but suggest it is only "dozens". There can be a problem if former Taliban get jobs or vocational training while there are no rewards for other Afghans in Helmand or more peaceful provinces.

Amnesty is also a difficult issue. Should a Taliban member who has killed Afghans or foreign troops escape retribution? If not, what of the anomaly that the Afghan government and parliament are full of men with blood on their hands from earlier phases in the country's three decades of war? And why would Taliban commanders give up if they know they're going straight to jail?

In Lashkar Gah, they showed us the DFID-funded new Afghan prison. Until September last year the old building was in chaos, controlled by its own inmates. The new one has carpeted cells where inmates sleep on two-tiered bunks or the floor. The Afghan governor, a jovial figure in vest and tracksuit, put his arms round inmates in avuncular style. One wing housed former Taliban, I was told. They let me select four to interview on why they had switched sides, but all denied any link with the movement.

A survey commissioned by DFID last year examined why Afghans join the Taliban and the other insurgent group, Hezb-i Islami, and how much local people support them. They interviewed 192 people in Kandahar, Wardak and around Kabul (but for security reasons not in Helmand). Only 10 supported the government. The rest saw it as corrupt and partisan. Most supported the Taliban, at least what they called the "good Taliban", defined as those who showed religious piety, attacked foreign forces but not Afghans and delivered justice quickly and fairly. They did not like "Pakistani Taliban" and Taliban linked to narcotics. But support for the "good Taliban" was expressed with no enthusiasm and mainly, it seemed, because of a lack of alternatives.

Few respondents said they understood why foreign forces were in Afghanistan. The majority wanted a lifting of UN sanctions on senior Taliban so the government could get them back into Afghan political life and negotiate a withdrawal of foreign forces. Older respondents said this should be gradual to avoid another collapse into civil war as happened when Soviet forces left.

The latest DFID-funded survey in April and May this year interviewed 450 people in various districts of Helmand as well as Kandahar, Kunduz and Nangarhar. They included pro-government people, others who were sympathetic to, or members of, armed groups, and fence-sitters. They were asked if they supported re-integration, whether it was feasible and how it linked to "reconciliation" (negotiations with Taliban leaders). Only two opposed it. The vast majority said re-integration at the local level would only work if combined with reconciliation at the top. The process would be long, they thought, but should start soon. Many repeated the earlier survey's point that foreign forces should not leave completely until there was agreement with the Taliban so as to avoid a relapse into civil war.

Full marks to DFID for commissioning these surveys, though officials may be disappointed that respondents had little to say for development aid. "There is no evidence from this study . . . that providing basic services in insurgency areas wins hearts and minds particularly if they are protected by foreign forces," last year's survey concluded. It is a powerful point, and nothing they showed me in Helmand disproved it.

Reaffirming their nations’ shared values and increasing convergence of interests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama resolved today in New Delhi to expand and strengthen the India-U.S. global strategic partnership.
 
The two leaders welcomed the deepening relationship between the world’s two largest democracies.  They commended the growing cooperation between their governments, citizens, businesses, universities and scientific institutions, which have thrived on a shared culture of pluralism, education, enterprise, and innovation, and have benefited the people of both countries.
 
Building on the transformation in India-U.S. relations over the past decade, the two leaders resolved to intensify cooperation between their nations to promote a secure and stable world; advance technology and innovation; expand mutual prosperity and global economic growth; support sustainable development; and exercise global leadership in support of economic development, open government, and democratic values.
 
The two leaders reaffirmed that India-U.S. strategic partnership is indispensable not only for their two countries but also for global stability and prosperity in the 21st century.  To that end, President Obama welcomed India’s emergence as a major regional and global power and affirmed his country’s interest in India’s rise, its economic prosperity, and its security.
 
A GLOBAL STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP FOR THE 21st CENTURY
 
            Prime Minister Singh and President Obama called for an efficient, effective, credible and legitimate United Nations to ensure a just and sustainable international order. Prime Minister Singh welcomed President Obama’s affirmation that, in the years ahead, the United States looks forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.  The two leaders reaffirmed that all nations, especially those that seek to lead in the 21st century, bear responsibility to ensure that the United Nations fulfills its founding ideals of preserving peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights.
 
            Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated that India and the United States, as global leaders, will partner for global security, especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years.  The leaders agreed that their delegations in New York will intensify their engagement and work together to ensure that the Council continues to effectively play the role envisioned for it in the United Nations Charter.  Both leaders underscored that all states have an obligation to comply with and implement UN Security Council Resolutions, including UN sanctions regimes.  They also agreed to hold regular consultations on UN matters, including on the long-term sustainability of UN peacekeeping operations.  As the two largest democracies, both countries also reaffirmed their strong commitment to the UN Democracy Fund.
 
            The two leaders have a shared vision for peace, stability and prosperity in Asia, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific region and committed to work together, and with others in the region, for the evolution of an open, balanced and inclusive architecture in the region. In this context, the leaders reaffirmed their support for the East Asia Summit and committed to regular consultations in this regard.  The United States welcomes, in particular, India’s leadership in expanding prosperity and security across the region.  The two leaders agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations on developments in East Asia, and decided to expand and intensify their strategic consultations to cover regional and global issues of mutual interest, including Central and West Asia.
 
            The two sides committed to intensify consultation, cooperation and coordination to promote a stable, democratic, prosperous, and independent Afghanistan.  President Obama appreciated India’s enormous contribution to Afghanistan’s development and welcomed enhanced Indian assistance that will help Afghanistan achieve self-sufficiency.  In addition to their own independent assistance programs in Afghanistan, the two sides resolved to pursue joint development projects with the Afghan Government in capacity building, agriculture and women’s empowerment.
 
            They reiterated that success in Afghanistan and regional and global security require elimination of safe havens and infrastructure for terrorism and violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Condemning terrorism in all its forms, the two sides agreed that all terrorist networks, including Lashkar e-Taiba, must be defeated  and  called for Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.  Building upon the Counter Terrorism Initiative signed in July 2010, the two leaders announced a new Homeland Security Dialogue between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security and agreed to further deepen operational cooperation, counter-terrorism technology transfers and capacity building. The two leaders also emphasized the importance of close cooperation in combating terrorist financing and in protecting the international financial system.
 
            In an increasingly inter-dependent world, the stability of, and access to, the air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains is vital for the security and economic prosperity of nations.  Acknowledging their commitment to openness and responsible international conduct, and on the basis of their shared values, India and the United States have launched a dialogue to explore ways to work together, as well as with other countries, to develop a shared vision for these critical domains to promote peace, security and development.  The leaders reaffirmed the importance of maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with relevant universally agreed principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and peaceful settlement of maritime disputes.
 
            The transformation in India-U.S. defense cooperation in recent years has strengthened mutual understanding on regional peace and stability, enhanced both countries’ respective capacities to meet humanitarian and other challenges such as terrorism and piracy, and contributed to the development of the strategic partnership between India and the United States.  The two Governments resolved to further strengthen defense cooperation, including through security dialogue, exercises, and promoting trade and collaboration in defense equipment and technology.  President Obama welcomed India's decision to purchase U.S. high-technology defense items, which reflects our strengthening bilateral defense relations and will contribute to creating jobs in the United States.
 
            The two leaders affirmed that their countries’ common ideals, complementary strengths and a shared commitment to a world without nuclear weapons give them a responsibility to forge a strong partnership to lead global efforts for non-proliferation and universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament in the 21st century.  They affirmed the need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and security doctrines.  They support strengthening the six decade-old international norm of non-use of nuclear weapons.
 
             They expressed a commitment to strengthen international cooperative activities that will reduce the risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or material without reducing the rights of nations that play by the rules to harness the power of nuclear energy to advance their energy security.  The leaders reaffirmed their shared dedication to work together to realize the commitments outlined at the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit to achieve the goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials in the next four years.  Both sides expressed deep concern regarding illicit nuclear trafficking and smuggling and resolved to strengthen international cooperative efforts to address these threats through the IAEA, Interpol and in the context of the Nuclear Security Summit Communiqué and Action Plan.  The two sides welcomed the Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership being established by India.
 
            Both sides expressed deep concern about the threat of biological terrorism and pledged to promote international efforts to ensure the safety and security of biological agents and toxins.  They stressed the need to achieve full implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and expressed the hope for a successful BWC Review Conference in 2011.  The United States welcomed India’s destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Both countries affirmed their shared commitment to promoting the full and effective implementation of the CWC.
 
            The two leaders expressed regret at the delay in starting negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament for a multilateral, non-discriminatory and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the future production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
 
India reaffirmed its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing.  The United States reaffirmed its testing moratorium and its commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and bring it into force at an early date.
 
           The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to diplomacy to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, and discussed the need for Iran to take constructive and immediate steps to meet its obligations to the IAEA and the UN Security Council.
 
TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, AND ENERGY
 
Recognizing that India and the United States should play a leadership role in promoting global nonproliferation objectives and their desire to expand high technology cooperation and trade, Prime Minister Singh and President Obama committed to work together to strengthen the global export control framework and further transform bilateral export control regulations and policies to realize the full potential of the strategic partnership between the two countries.
 
Accordingly, the two leaders decided to take mutual steps to expand U.S. - India cooperation in civil space, defense, and other high-technology sectors.  Commensurate with India’s nonproliferation record and commitment to abide by multilateral export control standards, these steps include the United States removing Indian entities from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “Entity List” and realignment of India in U.S. export control regulations.
 
In addition, the United States intends to support India’s full membership in the four multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement) in a phased manner, and to consult with regime members to encourage the evolution of regime membership criteria, consistent with maintaining the core principles of these regimes, as the Government of India takes steps towards the full adoption of the regimes’ export control requirements to reflect its prospective membership, with both processes moving forward together.  In the view of the United States, India should qualify for membership in the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement according to existing requirements once it imposes export controls over all items on these regimes’ control lists.
 
Both leaders reaffirmed the assurances provided in the letters exchanged in September 2004 and the End-Use Visit Arrangement, and determined that the two governments had reached an understanding to implement these initiatives consistent with their respective national export control laws and policies. The Prime Minister and President committed to a strengthened and expanded dialogue on export control issues, through fora such as the U.S. - India High Technology Cooperation Group, on aspects of capacity building, sharing of best practices, and outreach with industry.
 
The possibility of cooperation between the two nations in space, to advance scientific knowledge and human welfare, are without boundaries and limits.  They commended their space scientists for launching new initiatives in climate and weather forecasting for agriculture, navigation, resource mapping, research and development, and capacity building.  They agreed to continuing discussions on and seek ways to collaborate on future lunar missions, international space station, human space flight and data sharing, and to reconvene the Civil Space Joint Working Group in early 2011.  They highlighted the just concluded Implementing Arrangement for enhanced monsoon forecasting that will begin to transmit detailed forecasts to farmers beginning with the 2011 monsoon rainy season as an important example of bilateral scientific cooperation advancing economic development, agriculture and food security.
           
            The two leaders welcomed the completion of steps by the two governments for implementation of the India - U.S. civil nuclear agreement. They reiterated their commitment to build strong India - U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation through the participation of the U.S. nuclear energy firms in India on the basis of mutually acceptable technical and commercial terms and conditions that enable a viable tariff regime for electricity generated.  They noted that both countries had enacted domestic legislations and were also signatories to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation.  They further noted that India intends to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation within the coming year and is committed to ensuring a level playing field for U.S. companies seeking to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector, consistent with India’s national and international legal obligations.
 
            India will continue to work with the companies.  In this context, they welcomed the commencement of negotiations and dialogue between the Indian operator and U.S. nuclear energy companies, and expressed hope for early commencement of commercial cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector in India, which will stimulate economic growth and sustainable development and generate employment in both countries.
             
            Just as they have helped develop the knowledge economy, India and the United States resolved to strengthen their partnership in creating the green economy of the future.  To this end, both countries have undertaken joint research and deployment of clean energy resources, such as solar, advanced biofuels, shale gas, and smart grids.  The two leaders also welcomed the promotion of clean and energy efficient technologies through the bilateral Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE) and expanded cooperation with the private sector.  They welcomed the conclusion of a new MOU on assessment and exploration of shale gas and an agreement to establish a Joint Clean Energy Research Center in India as important milestones in their rapidly growing clean energy cooperation.
 
            The leaders discussed the importance of working bilaterally, through the Major Economies Forum (MEF), and in the context of the international climate change negotiations within the framework of the UNFCCC to meet the challenge of climate change.  Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated the importance of a positive result for the current climate change negotiations at the forthcoming conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Mexico and affirmed their support for the Copenhagen Accord, which should contribute positively to a successful outcome in Cancun. To that end, the leaders welcomed enhanced cooperation in the area of climate adaptation and sustainable land use, and welcomed the new partnership between the United States and India on forestry programs and in weather forecasting.
 
INCLUSIVE GROWTH, MUTUAL PROSPERITY, AND ECONOMIC COOPERATION
 
            The two leaders stressed that India and the United States, anchored in democracy and diversity, blessed with enormous enterprise and skill, and endowed with synergies drawn from India’s rapid growth and U.S. global economic leadership, have a natural partnership for enhancing mutual prosperity and stimulating global economic recovery and growth.  They emphasize innovation not only as a tool for economic growth and global competitiveness, but also for social transformation and empowerment of people.
 
Prime Minister Singh and President Obama celebrated the recent growth in bilateral trade and investment, characterized by balanced and rapidly growing trade in goods and services.  They noted positively that the United States is India’s largest trading partner in goods and services, and India is now among the fastest growing sources of foreign direct investment entering the United States.  The two leaders agreed on steps to reduce trade barriers and protectionist measures and encourage research and innovation to create jobs and improve livelihoods in their countries.
 
They also welcomed expanding investment flow in both directions.  They noted growing ties between U.S. and Indian firms and called for enhanced investment flows, including in India’s infrastructure sector, clean energy, energy efficiency, aviation and transportation, healthcare, food processing sector and education.  They welcomed the work of the U.S. - India CEO Forum to expand cooperation between the two countries, including in the areas of clean energy and infrastructure development.  They also encouraged enhanced engagement by Indian and American small and medium-sized enterprises as a critical driver of our economic relationship.  They looked forward to building on these developments to realize fully the enormous potential for trade and investment between the two countries.
 
Recognizing the people-to-people dynamic behind trade and investment growth, they called for intensified consultations on social security issues at an appropriate time.  The two leaders agreed to facilitate greater movement of professionals, investors and business travelers, students, and exchange visitors between their countries to enhance their economic and technological partnership.
 
To enhance growth globally, the Prime Minster and President highlighted both nations’ interests in an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda negotiations, and in having their negotiators accelerate and expand the scope of their substantive negotiations bilaterally and with other WTO members to accomplish this as soon as possible.  They agreed to work together in the G-20 to make progress on the broad range of issues on its agenda, including by encouraging actions consistent with achieving strong, balanced, and sustainable growth, strengthening financial system regulation, reforming the international financial institutions, enhancing energy security, resisting protectionism in all its forms, reducing barriers to trade and investment, and implementing the development action plans.
 
Building on the historic legacy of cooperation between the India and the United States during the Green Revolution, the leaders also decided to work together to develop, test, and replicate transformative technologies to extend food security as part of an Evergreen Revolution.  Efforts will focus on providing farmers the means to improve agricultural productivity.  Collaboration also will enhance agricultural value chain and strengthen market institutions to reduce post-harvest crop losses.
 
 Affirming the importance of India-U.S. health cooperation, Prime Minister and the President celebrated the signing of an MOU creating a new Global Disease Detection Regional Center in New Delhi, which will facilitate preparedness against threats to health such as pandemic influenza and other dangerous diseases.   
           
            Embracing the principles of democracy and opportunity, the leaders recognized that the full future potential of the partnership lies in the hands of the next generation in both countries. To help ensure that all members of that generation enjoy the benefits of higher education, the Prime Minister and the President agreed to convene an India - U.S. Higher Education Summit, chaired by senior officials from both countries in 2011, as part of a continued effort to strengthen educational opportunities.  They welcomed the progress made in implementing the Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative that is expanding links between faculties and institutions of the two countries and the expansion in the Nehru-Fulbright Programme for Scholars.
 
Noting that the ties of kinship and culture are an increasingly important dimension of India-U.S. relations, President Obama welcomed India’s decision to hold a Festival of India in Washington DC in 2011.  Recognizing the importance of preserving cultural heritage, both governments resolved to initiate discussions on how India and the United States could partner to prevent the illicit trafficking of both countries’ rich and unique cultural heritage.
 
A SHARED INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
           
            Consistent with their commitments to open and responsive government, and harnessing the expertise and experience that the two countries have developed, the leaders launched a U.S.-India Open Government Dialogue that will, through public-private partnerships and use of new technologies and innovations, promote their shared goal of democratizing access to information and energizing civic engagement, support global initiatives in this area and share their expertise with other interested countries.  This will build on India’s impressive achievements in this area in recent years and the commitments that the President made to advance an open government agenda at the United Nations General Assembly.  The President and Prime Minister also pledged to explore cooperation in support of efforts to strengthen elections organization and management in other interested countries, including through sharing their expertise in this area.
 
            Taking advantage of the global nature of their relationship, and recognizing India’s vast development experience and historical research strengths, the two leaders pledged to work together, in addition to their independent programs, to adapt shared innovations and technologies and use their expertise in capacity building to extend food security to interested countries, including in Africa, in consultation with host governments.
 
Prime Minister Singh and President Obama concluded that their meeting is a historic milestone as they seek to elevate the India-U.S. strategic partnership to a new level for the benefit of their nations and the entire mankind.  President Obama thanked President Patil, Prime Minister Singh, and the people of India for their extraordinary warmth and hospitality during his visit.   The two leaders looked forward to the next session of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in 2011.

The following is the joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United States President Barack Obama here today:

Reaffirming their nations’ shared values and increasing convergence of interests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama resolved today in New Delhi to expand and strengthen the India-U.S. global strategic partnership.

The two leaders welcomed the deepening relationship between the world’s two largest democracies. They commended the growing cooperation between their governments, citizens, businesses, universities and scientific institutions, which have thrived on a shared culture of pluralism, education, enterprise, and innovation, and have benefited the people of both countries.

Building on the transformation in India-U.S. relations over the past decade, the two leaders resolved to intensify cooperation between their nations to promote a secure and stable world; advance technology and innovation; expand mutual prosperity and global economic growth; support sustainable development; and exercise global leadership in support of economic development, open government and democratic values.

The two leaders reaffirmed that India-U.S. strategic partnership is indispensable not only for their two countries but also for global stability and prosperity in the 21st century. To that end, President Obama welcomed India’s emergence as a major regional and global power and affirmed his country’s interest in India’s rise, its economic prosperity, and its security.

A GLOBAL STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP FOR THE 21st CENTURYPrime Minister Singh and President Obama called for an efficient, effective, credible and legitimate United Nations to ensure a just and sustainable international order. Prime Minister Singh welcomed President Obama’s affirmation that, in the years ahead, the United States looks forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member. The two leaders reaffirmed that all nations, especially those that seek to lead in the 21st century, bear responsibility to ensure that the United Nations fulfills its founding ideals of preserving peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated that India and the United States, as global leaders, will partner for global security, especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years. The leaders agreed that their delegations in New York will intensify their engagement and work together to ensure that the Council continues to effectively play the role envisioned for it in the United Nations Charter. Both leaders underscored that all states have an obligation to comply with and implement UN Security Council Resolutions, including UN sanctions regimes. They also agreed to hold regular consultations on UN matters, including on the long-term sustainability of UN peacekeeping operations. As the two largest democracies, both countries also reaffirmed their strong commitment to the UN Democracy Fund.

The two leaders have a shared vision for peace, stability and prosperity in Asia, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific region and committed to work together, and with others in the region, for the evolution of an open, balanced and inclusive architecture in the region. In this context, the leaders reaffirmed their support for the East Asia Summit and committed to regular consultations in this regard. The United States welcomes, in particular, India’s leadership in expanding prosperity and security across the region. The two leaders agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations on developments in East Asia, and decided to expand and intensify their strategic consultations to cover regional and global issues of mutual interest, including Central and West Asia.

The two sides committed to intensify consultation, cooperation and coordination to promote a stable, democratic, prosperous, and independent Afghanistan. President Obama appreciated India’s enormous contribution to Afghanistan’s development and welcomed enhanced Indian assistance that will help Afghanistan achieve self-sufficiency. In addition to their own independent assistance programs in Afghanistan, the two sides resolved to pursue joint development projects with the Afghan Government in capacity building, agriculture and women’s empowerment.

They reiterated that success in Afghanistan and regional and global security require elimination of safe havens and infrastructure for terrorism and violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Condemning terrorism in all its forms, the two sides agreed that all terrorist networks, including Lashkar e-Taiba, must be defeated and called for Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Building upon the Counter Terrorism Initiative signed in July 2010, the two leaders announced a new Homeland Security Dialogue between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security and agreed to further deepen operational cooperation, counter-terrorism technology transfers and capacity building. The two leaders also emphasized the importance of close cooperation in combating terrorist financing and in protecting the international financial system.

In an increasingly inter-dependent world, the stability of, and access to, the air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains is vital for the security and economic prosperity of nations. Acknowledging their commitment to openness and responsible international conduct, and on the basis of their shared values, India and the United States have launched a dialogue to explore ways to work together, as well as with other countries, to develop a shared vision for these critical domains to promote peace, security and development. The leaders reaffirmed the importance of maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with relevant universally agreed principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and peaceful settlement of maritime disputes.

The transformation in India-U.S. defense cooperation in recent years has strengthened mutual understanding on regional peace and stability, enhanced both countries’ respective capacities to meet humanitarian and other challenges such as terrorism and piracy, and contributed to the development of the strategic partnership between India and the United States. The two Governments resolved to further strengthen defense cooperation, including through security dialogue, exercises, and promoting trade and collaboration in defense equipment and technology. President Obama welcomed India's decision to purchase U.S. high-technology defense items, which reflects our strengthening bilateral defence relations and will contribute to creating jobs in the United States.

The two leaders affirmed that their countries’ common ideals, complementary strengths and a shared commitment to a world without nuclear weapons give them a responsibility to forge a strong partnership to lead global efforts for non-proliferation and universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament in the 21st century. They affirmed the need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and security doctrines. They support strengthening the six decade-old international norm of non-use of nuclear weapons. They expressed a commitment to strengthen international cooperative activities that will reduce the risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or material without reducing the rights of nations that play by the rules to harness the power of nuclear energy to advance their energy security. The leaders reaffirmed their shared dedication to work together to realize the commitments outlined at the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit to achieve the goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials in the next four years. Both sides expressed deep concern regarding illicit nuclear trafficking and smuggling and resolved to strengthen international cooperative efforts to address these threats through the IAEA, Interpol and in the context of the Nuclear Security Summit Communiqué and Action Plan. The two sides welcomed the Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership being established by India.

Both sides expressed deep concern about the threat of biological terrorism and pledged to promote international efforts to ensure the safety and security of biological agents and toxins. They stressed the need to achieve full implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and expressed the hope for a successful BWC Review Conference in 2011. The United States welcomed India’s destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Both countries affirmed their shared commitment to promoting the full and effective implementation of the CWC.

The two leaders expressed regret at the delay in starting negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament for a multilateral, non-discriminatory and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the future production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

India reaffirmed its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. The United States reaffirmed its testing moratorium and its commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and bring it into force at an early date.

The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to diplomacy to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, and discussed the need for Iran to take constructive and immediate steps to meet its obligations to the IAEA and the UN Security Council.

TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, AND ENERGY

Recognizing that India and the United States should play a leadership role in promoting global nonproliferation objectives and their desire to expand high technology cooperation and trade, Prime Minister Singh and President Obama committed to work together to strengthen the global export control framework and further transform bilateral export control regulations and policies to realize the full potential of the strategic partnership between the two countries.

Accordingly, the two leaders decided to take mutual steps to expand U.S.-India cooperation in civil space, defense, and other high-technology sectors. Commensurate with India’s nonproliferation record and commitment to abide by multilateral export control standards, these steps include the United States removing Indian entities from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s "Entity List" and realignment of India in U.S. export control regulations.
In addition, the United States intends to support India’s full membership in the four multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement) in a phased manner, and to consult with regime members to encourage the evolution of regime membership criteria, consistent with maintaining the core principles of these regimes, as the Government of India takes steps towards the full adoption of the regimes’ export control requirements to reflect its prospective membership, with both processes moving forward together. In the view of the United States, India should qualify for membership in the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement according to existing requirements once it imposes export controls over all items on these regimes’ control lists.

Both leaders reaffirmed the assurances provided in the letters exchanged in September 2004 and the End-Use Visit Arrangement, and determined that the two governments had reached an understanding to implement these initiatives consistent with their respective national export control laws and policies. The Prime Minister and President committed to a strengthened and expanded dialogue on export control issues, through fora such as the U.S.-India High Technology Cooperation Group, on aspects of capacity building, sharing of best practices, and outreach with industry.

The possibility of cooperation between the two nations in space, to advance scientific knowledge and human welfare, are without boundaries and limits. They commended their space scientists for launching new initiatives in climate and weather forecasting for agriculture, navigation, resource mapping, research and development, and capacity building. They agreed to continuing discussions on and seek ways to collaborate on future lunar missions, international space station, human space flight and data sharing, and to reconvene the Civil Space Joint Working Group in early 2011. They highlighted the just concluded Implementing Arrangement for enhanced monsoon forecasting that will begin to transmit detailed forecasts to farmers beginning with the 2011 monsoon rainy season as an important example of bilateral scientific cooperation advancing economic development, agriculture and food security.

The two leaders welcomed the completion of steps by the two governments for implementation of the India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement. They reiterated their commitment to build strong India-U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation through the participation of the U.S. nuclear energy firms in India on the basis of mutually acceptable technical and commercial terms and conditions that enable a viable tariff regime for electricity generated. They noted that both countries had enacted domestic legislations and were also signatories to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation. They further noted that India intends to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation within the coming year and is committed to ensuring a level playing field for U.S. companies seeking to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector, consistent with India’s national and international legal obligations.

India will continue to work with the companies. In this context, they welcomed the commencement of negotiations and dialogue between the Indian operator and U.S. nuclear energy companies, and expressed hope for early commencement of commercial cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector in India, which will stimulate economic growth and sustainable development and generate employment in both countries.
Just as they have helped develop the knowledge economy, India and the United States resolved to strengthen their partnership in creating the green economy of the future. To this end, both countries have undertaken joint research and deployment of clean energy resources, such as solar, advanced biofuels, shale gas, and smart grids. The two leaders also welcomed the promotion of clean and energy efficient technologies through the bilateral Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE) and expanded cooperation with the private sector. They welcomed the conclusion of a new MoU on assessment and exploration of shale gas and an agreement to establish a Joint Clean Energy Research Center in India as important milestones in their rapidly growing clean energy cooperation.

The leaders discussed the importance of working bilaterally, through the Major Economies Forum (MEF), and in the context of the international climate change negotiations within the framework of the UNFCCC to meet the challenge of climate change. Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated the importance of a positive result for the current climate change negotiations at the forthcoming conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Mexico and affirmed their support for the Copenhagen Accord, which should contribute positively to a successful outcome in Cancun. To that end, the leaders welcomed enhanced cooperation in the area of climate adaptation and sustainable land use, and welcomed the new partnership between the United States and India on forestry programs and in weather forecasting.

INCLUSIVE GROWTH, MUTUAL PROSPERITY, AND ECONOMIC COOPERATION

The two leaders stressed that India and the United States, anchored in democracy and diversity, blessed with enormous enterprise and skill, and endowed with synergies drawn from India’s rapid growth and U.S. global economic leadership, have a natural partnership for enhancing mutual prosperity and stimulating global economic recovery and growth. They emphasize innovation not only as a tool for economic growth and global competitiveness, but also for social transformation and empowerment of people.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama celebrated the recent growth in bilateral trade and investment, characterized by balanced and rapidly growing trade in goods and services. They noted positively that the United States is India’s largest trading partner in goods and services, and India is now among the fastest growing sources of foreign direct investment entering the United States. The two leaders agreed on steps to reduce trade barriers and protectionist measures and encourage research and innovation to create jobs and improve livelihoods in their countries.

They also welcomed expanding investment flow in both directions. They noted growing ties between U.S. and Indian firms and called for enhanced investment flows, including in India’s infrastructure sector, clean energy, energy efficiency, aviation and transportation, healthcare, food processing sector and education. They welcomed the work of the U.S.-India CEO Forum to expand cooperation between the two countries, including in the areas of clean energy and infrastructure development. They also encouraged enhanced engagement by Indian and American small and medium-sized enterprises as a critical driver of our economic relationship. They looked forward to building on these developments to realize fully the enormous potential for trade and investment between the two countries.

Recognizing the people-to-people dynamic behind trade and investment growth, they called for intensified consultations on social security issues at an appropriate time. The two leaders agreed to facilitate greater movement of professionals, investors and business travelers, students, and exchange visitors between their countries to enhance their economic and technological partnership.

To enhance growth globally, the Prime Minster and President highlighted both nations’ interests in an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda negotiations, and in having their negotiators accelerate and expand the scope of their substantive negotiations bilaterally and with other WTO members to accomplish this as soon as possible. They agreed to work together in the G-20 to make progress on the broad range of issues on its agenda, including by encouraging actions consistent with achieving strong, balanced, and sustainable growth, strengthening financial system regulation, reforming the international financial institutions, enhancing energy security, resisting protectionism in all its forms, reducing barriers to trade and investment, and implementing the development action plans.

Building on the historic legacy of cooperation between the India and the United States during the Green Revolution, the leaders also decided to work together to develop, test, and replicate transformative technologies to extend food security as part of an Evergreen Revolution. Efforts will focus on providing farmers the means to improve agricultural productivity. Collaboration also will enhance agricultural value chain and strengthen market institutions to reduce post-harvest crop losses.

Affirming the importance of India-U.S. health cooperation, Prime Minister and the President celebrated the signing of an MOU creating a new Global Disease Detection Regional Center in New Delhi, which will facilitate preparedness against threats to health such as pandemic influenza and other dangerous diseases.

Embracing the principles of democracy and opportunity, the leaders recognized that the full future potential of the partnership lies in the hands of the next generation in both countries. To help ensure that all members of that generation enjoy the benefits of higher education, the Prime Minister and the President agreed to convene an India-U.S. Higher Education Summit, chaired by senior officials from both countries in 2011, as part of a continued effort to strengthen educational opportunities. They welcomed the progress made in implementing the Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative that is expanding links between faculties and institutions of the two countries and the expansion in the Nehru-Fulbright Programme for Scholars.

Noting that the ties of kinship and culture are an increasingly important dimension of India-U.S. relations, President Obama welcomed India’s decision to hold a Festival of India in Washington DC in 2011. Recognizing the importance of preserving cultural heritage, both governments resolved to initiate discussions on how India and the United States could partner to prevent the illicit trafficking of both countries’ rich and unique cultural heritage.

A SHARED INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT Consistent with their commitments to open and responsive government, and harnessing the expertise and experience that the two countries have developed, the leaders launched a U.S.-India Open Government Dialogue that will, through public-private partnerships and use of new technologies and innovations, promote their shared goal of democratizing access to information and energizing civic engagement, support global initiatives in this area and share their expertise with other interested countries. This will build on India’s impressive achievements in this area in recent years and the commitments that the President made to advance an open government agenda at the United Nations General Assembly. The President and Prime Minister also pledged to explore cooperation in support of efforts to strengthen elections organization and management in other interested countries, including through sharing their expertise in this area.

Taking advantage of the global nature of their relationship, and recognizing India’s vast development experience and historical research strengths, the two leaders pledged to work together, in addition to their independent programmes, to adapt shared innovations and technologies and use their expertise in capacity building to extend food security to interested countries, including in Africa, in consultation with host governments.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama concluded that their meeting is a historic milestone as they seek to elevate the India-U.S. strategic partnership to a new level for the benefit of their nations and the entire mankind. President Obama thanked President Patil, Prime Minister Singh, and the people of India for their extraordinary warmth and hospitality during his visit. The two leaders looked forward to the next session of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in 2011.

New Delhi
November 8, 2010

NNN

Reports of the possible collapse of attempts to prosecute the notorious, North Carolina-based Blackwater Worldwide company come at a time of renewed focus on the role of contractors in territories administered or formerly administered by the US and its coalition allies. The private military firm, which now operates under the name Xe Services LLC, has been under investigation by the US federal government for the last four years, following a string of accusations that it was responsible for numerous murders and other violent crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. In the most recent case considered, however, the US justice department has announced it will abandon the case against one of the company’s former employees, Andrew J Moonen, despite the efforts of federal prosecutors and the FBI. Moonen has been accused of killing a guard assigned to a senior Iraqi government official on 24 December 2006. According to the New York Times, lawyers involved in the case cited the difficulty of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civil courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by US officials at the scene.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in December, Moonen was interviewed by staff from the United States Embassy in Baghdad’s Regional Security Office, rather than the FBI. Critics of such actions have pointed to the fact that the Regional Security Office was itself a unit of the US State Department, in turn responsible for supervising Blackwater and other security contractors in Iraq. According to Moonen’s lawyer, however, even his statement at the Regional Security Office was given under duress. Stewart Riley said that not only was his client issued a so-called Garrity warning, threatening him with the loss of his job unless he talked, but that he was also promised immunity from prosecution for anything he said. Similar assurances are said to have been given to Blackwater personnel involved in the Nisour Square case.

On 16 September 2007, Blackwater employees escorting a US state department convoy on its way to a meeting with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officials shot and killed seventeen civilians in central Baghdad. Following the shooting, Blackwater’s licence to operate in Iraq was immediately revoked. In September this year a jury in Virginia was unable to reach a verdict against five former Blackwater employees accused of manslaughter and various weapons-related charges in the Nissour Square shooting. Justice Department officials have appealed against District Judge Ricardo Urbina’s declaration of a mistrial and a new trial has been set for March 2011. A sixth former employee had already pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and aiding and abetting.

In total, more than 120 companies have been charged by the Justice Department, with allegations ranging from contract fraud to violent assault, rape and murder in all three countries. The family of Moonen’s alleged victim, Raheem Saadoun, filed a civil lawsuit against both him and Blackwater. This was subsequently dropped following a financial settlement.

More water + more land = fewer guns?

Yemeni authorities have foiled what they say was an attempt to disrupt preparations for the twentieth Gulf Football Championships next month. According to a statement issued by the interior ministry, on Saturday police in Aden arrested a man carrying a plastic bag thought to contain 1,800 grammes of dynamite intended to destroy the city’s “vital installations”. Al-Arabiya report that, following the man’s arrest and confession, officers detained a further six suspects and were hunting for another two.

The football tournament – which involves Yemen, Iraq, and six Gulf states – is due to run from 22 November to 5 December, and will be held in Aden and the neighbouring Abyan province. Both have seen a rise in attacks attributed to Al Qaeda in recent weeks. Islamist militants have attacked both Western and government targets in the country, which many believe is on its way to becoming a “failed state”, riven by Shiite rebellion in the north and separatist revolt in the south. Earlier this month, one person was killed and several others wounded when a sports centre in Aden was hit by two bomb blasts.

Yemen is under considerable pressure from the West to resolve its domestic conflicts, not least because they are believed to detract from its ability to deal with the problem of increased ‘Al-Qaeda'-related activity in the country. Only a few days after the Aden plot was discovered, however, a report into the domestic effects of separatist and terrorist-related violence has found a far less headline-grabbing cause of loss of life. Produced by Yemen Armed Violence Assessment (YAVA), a research initiative administered by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Under Pressure: Social Violence over Land and Water in Yemen found that resource conflicts are responsible for at least 4,000 deaths per year, and that these shortages contribute significantly to social and political instability in the country, hindering economic development, and increasing secessionist and other forms of collective violence.

The Yemeni government’s inability to deal with the challenges facing it was also highlighted in a report issued by Chatham House, Yemen and Somalia: Terrorism, Shadow Networks and the Limitations of State-building. The Report's authors, Sally Healy and Ginny Hill, make a compelling case for reflecting critically on the efficacy of a Western approach that allows security-led interventionism to undermine efforts to build a viable state through the use of such longer-range strategic tools as diplomacy, development and defence investment. At the heart of attempts to prevent radicalism and the growth of such organisations as Al Shabab and Al Qaeda, they argue, should be a concerted attempt to disrupt the narratives around injustice and being ‘under attack’ which provide both groups with much of their appeal. One way to do this is to address more precisely the problems outlined in the YAVA report coupled with more conventional counter-terrorism and counter-piracy strategies. At the same time, the report stresses that these strategies must themselves adapt to the threat posed by covert multi-million-dollar shadowy business networks throughout the Gulf, and develop more comprehensive, incisive methods to deal with them.

Rocket launchers, grenades and explosives found at Nigerian port

Nigerian secret police say they have intercepted a large shipment of weapons believed to have been destined for militant groups operating in the Niger Delta. An SSS spokeswoman told the BBC that thirteen containers seized at the port in Lagos city had rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives hidden in the “floorboards”. Several arrests have been made, though the names of those detained have not yet been disclosed.

Surveillance at the country’s ports has been stepped up amid increased fears of an escalation in violence in the run-up to next year’s elections, and in the wake of the October bombings in Abuja in which ten people were killed. Those attacks were widely attributed to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, leading to the arrest and detention of MEND’s suspected leader, Henry Okah.  Okah is currently standing trial in Johannesburg, where he is accused of terrorism-related offences. Following a bomb threat issued by MEND on Friday, Okah’s brother Charles was also arrested in his home in Appa, a commercial district in the capital, Lagos. Charles Okah is suspected of having helped fund the October bombings, and is thought to have been operating under the pseudonym ‘Jomo Gbomo’ – the name used by MEND both to claim responsibility for the Independence Day bombings and in issuing the latest threat.

Nigerian newspaper Vanguard, meanwhile, has given its own account of the process that led to Charles Okah’s arrest. Were it not for Friday’s threat, it argues, Okah would probably not have been arrested at all, despite widespread suspicion regarding his likely involvement in MEND’s operations. Vanguard went on to report that news of Okah’s arrest had so shocked MEND it had decided henceforth to suspend all communication with Nigeria’s media. This, the papar said, “is the first time since MEND was formed in late 2005 that it is imposing self censorship, citing “security concerns” for the action. Through its email address, it had been no-holds-barred with both local and foreign media in the past six years”.

There are signs, Vanguard says, that MEND is also undergoing a certain amount of internal instability, with several ex-leaders of associated militant groups claiming that the organisation no longer exists, with individuals who once comprised MEND having already accepted amnesty. In dismissing these claims, MEND stated that it had new commanders and that the group is far stronger than its enemies in government, the security services and the region’s oil companies allege.

US voices disquiet at Karzai ban on private military companies, though NGO's claim they will be unaffected

Afghan Preseident Hamid Karzai has reiterated his commitment to ensuring that all foreign private security firms presently operating in the country leave by January 2011. Only those operating inside embassies, international organisations such as the UN, and military bases will, he says, be allowed to continue their operations, with the majority being replaced by Afghan police forces. Private security contractors have been accused repeatedly of violating the terms of their engagement, and of several serious breaches of human rights protocols. Up to 40,000 Afghans are also currently employed by dozens of foreign and local security firms, many of which have been accused repeatedly of colluding with armed opposition groups and criminal gangs.

Karzai first announced his intention to transfer greater responsibility for internal security over to local forces in August, although such a move had been expected for some time. Speaking in August, presidential spokesman Waheed Omer said "dissolving private security companies is a serious program that the government of Afghanistan will execute," adding, "very soon, the President of Afghanistan will set a deadline".

In response to the initial announcement, the United States attempted to play down the likelihood of such plans ever coming to fruition Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan expressed the view that while the US understood Afghan concerns over private security firms, strenuous efforts were being made to address the issue Karzai raised. Lapan also stressed that US security needs remained a priority, while appearing to cast doubt over the seriousness of such claims: “I don't know that it's a decision; it's concerns that President Karzai has expressed”, he said.

However, this latest step, signalled in remarks made during a speech Karzai gave on 20 October, suggests the president is still committed to such a move and that a deadline has been set. Responses, as one might expect, have been mixed. The US, which provides by far the majority of the security agencies and contractors in Afghanistan – and at the same time spends more on their services than any other interested party – has so far offered little more than a restatement of its previous position. Speaking two days after the speech, US State Department assistant secretary Phillip J Crowley suggested doubts still remain as to whether Karzai’s proposals will ever come into being. “We recognize that there’s a gap that presently exists, and we are working through - with the Afghan government and others within the international community - to try to figure out how to help Afghanistan implement its decree, but at the same time make sure that essential operations continue to function,” he said.

Others, however, have been much less equivocal. Speaking to IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), a news agency supported by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), one aid worker said that the closure of private security companies in Afghanistan “will have absolutely no impact on NGOs”. Laurent Sailard, director of ACBAR, a coordinating body of over 100 Afghan and foreign relief agencies, went on to say that of the NGOs who do work with security agencies, most used them for advice rather than protection; a view endorsed subsequently by Nic Lee, director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), who told IRIN, “NGOs don’t use weapons and don’t hire armed guards for security”.

Without addressing directly concerns in some quarters over the readiness and reliability of the Afghan police, Karzai also stated recently “Our foreign friends should not come asking us to allow these companies to continue their activities… Instead, they should help strengthen our police."

Here is a comment from Paula Broadwell, who is just your typical Army Reserve officer who is doing a PhD and writing a biography of General Petraeus on the side.

David Martin probably also should be on her corrections list.

By Paula Broadwell
Best Defense guest columnist

Some pretty smart columnists have written this week about a "shift in the strategic effort" in Afghanistan under Gen. David Petraeus from a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach to a counter-terrorism (CT) effort, but that strikes me as an overstatement.

Fred Kaplan of Slate states that "a shift in emphasis is… altering the character of the war." David Ignatius of the Washington Post writes, "Petraeus is experimenting with another mix," and says that over the last four months, he has become "a CT wolf in a counterinsurgent in sheep's clothing." He hypothesizes that the "protean" Petraeus has rewritten "the playbook." Time's Joe Klein cites the same alleged "change" from counterinsurgency (COIN) toward heavy counterterrorism (CT), stating that CT is separate from COIN. What these guys don't get: CT has always been a part of Petraeus's comprehensive COIN strategy.

Here's what Kaplan, Ignatius and Klein should actually be observing: Since Petraeus has arrived in Afghanistan, he has increased the intensity of every element of a comprehensive civil-military COIN campaign, not just the so-called CT element. After my trip to Afghanistan last month, during which I visited at the battalion, division, and ISAF headquarters levels, it is clear to me that the "shift" is not one of focus, but of energy and increased intensity across all lines of the counterinsurgency effort. The Kaplan, Ignatius and Klein observations are based loosely on a recent increase in both air strikes and Special Operations Forces (SOF) targeted killing -- and they are certainly right about that. But take a deep breath, guys: CT operations have always been a key part of the kinetic component of COIN. In his speeches, articles, and doctrine over the past nine years, Petraeus has always been clear on this point. It was evident during his command in Iraq, and is equally so now in Afghanistan. For the record: CT is a subset of COIN. Here's a visual explanation:

As the Anaconda Slide illustrates, there is more than just a CT effort. The COMISAF Anaconda Strategy's seven lines of effort include kinetics, politics, intelligence, detainee operations, non-kinetics, international issues, and information operations. Collectively, these efforts seek to "choke" the eight key "needs" of the insurgency

The following provides some evidence of Petraeus's increased initiatives along each of these critical lines of effort:

[[BREAK]]

The kinetic line of effort includes CT operations, and in this arena, as Kaplan, Ignatius and Klein point out, one cannot deny results. In a 90-day accumulated effects roll-up in late September 2010, ISAF SOF had conducted 2,795 "kinetic" operations (including targeted killing night raids and air strikes), captured or killed 285 insurgent "leaders," captured 2084 insurgents, and killed 889. As impressive as these numbers are, caution is always advised in determining their precise meaning when dealing with an insurgency as determined as the Taliban.

In any event, killing and capturing are not the only component of the kinetic line. From July to late September, ISAF SOF forces also conducted 1,823 population-centric non-kinetic operations. Petraeus's comprehensive COIN strategy clearly states that these CT and population-centric operations must be complemented by clear/hold/build operations of conventional forces, training of host nation elements, and local security initiatives. This comprehensive approach is a mantra Petraeus continues to push on his battlefield circulations and in his morning update briefs to field commanders. And ISAF troops appear to be doing it, though some would clearly prefer a steadier diet of kinetics.

During my visit with the 3/187th Rakkasans in Ghazni Province last month, a "CT plus conventional clear/hold/build approach" seemed very much in evidence. Task Force Iron, led by Lt. Col. David Fivecoat, has worked hard to clear the new area of operations and dismantle insurgent networks in the Ghazni area. They did this in cooperation with their Special Operations brethren, Task Force 3-10. But they quickly followed that CT and "clearing" efforts with "hold" and non-kinetic "build" initiatives right out of the Petraeus playbook. In the last eight months, the Rakkasans have spent over $150,000 in economic development, basic service provision, and jobs program efforts to rebuild Khezer Khell School, support Mata Khan Clinic, and institute other important capacity building efforts to empower the sub-district governors.

One potential capacity building "game changer," adopted this summer under President Hamid Karzai with Petraeus's "relentless prodding," is the Afghan Local Police (ALP) initiative. The long-term impact of this program remains to be seen, but early reviews seem encouraging as it moves toward a goal of 20,000 recruits. Along with the Village Stability Operations, Petraeus has pushed hard to promote the ALP. The ALP program, for which there are 68 sites identified in eastern and central Afghanistan, now has around 250-350 police located at each site. Run by the Afghan Ministry of the Interior and mentored by U.S. Special Forces teams, the ALP have already helped with the disruption of insurgency IED networks. The ALP has yet to hit a tipping point, but it is an important component of the stabilization and transition plans that didn't gain traction under previous ISAF commanders.

The training of host nation elements is another critical component of the Anaconda Strategy that Petraeus has promoted over the past 100 days, especially that of professionalizing the force. Again, there are signs of progress, though much still remains to be done. One of the big ideas Petraeus embraced when he moved to Afghanistan last summer was "the need to change the COIN math, to figure out how to increase the numbers of ISAF/ANSF and to reduce the numbers" of fighters. The kill/capture roll-up rate mentioned above is one side of that ledger, and the other side is the now-complete surge of ISAF troops and the increase in ANSF troops. Though questions remain regarding their quality, the military and police training program is, in fact, ahead of October 2010 goals (Afghan National Army, Goal: 134K, Actual: 139K; Afghan National Police, Goal: 109K, Actual: 122K). As Petraeus acknowledges in his own presentations, thanks are due in part to the ground work laid by General McChrystal and ongoing efforts by Lt. Gen William B. Caldwell, but Petraeus has also accelerated efforts on this front. His trip to Brussels, London, and Rome this past week, and his effort to rally international support (especially for military and police trainers) seem to be yielding results. Back in Kabul, staff officers in the CJ5 claim that while sometimes it feels like "NATO has culminated," Petraeus is working to energize and refocus the contributions of allied nations. Again, time will tell how successful he is. And he's certainly not going to bat 1.000, with Italy, Holland and Canada already having announced near-term departure dates. But his efforts seem to be having an effect with most other NATO members.

To garner additional international support, Petraeus has formed a healthy partnership with his civilian counterpart, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, as he did with Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Iraq. This week, the two conducted a "relentless communication" campaign in Europe, briefing NATO/ISAF Ambassadors in Brussels. Petraeus met with the Belgian and British prime ministers. He also met with the Belgian, British, and Italian ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs; and various chiefs of Defense in their respective countries. In Italy, he briefed the senior representatives for Afghanistan and Pakistan at an International Contract Group on Af-Pak in Rome. It appeared a dizzying pace, but maybe not for vintage Petraeus, who puts as much emphasis on diplomacy and strategic communications as he does on counterterrorism. This belief in communication continues in routine meetings with coalition ambassadors in Afghanistan.

These efforts have been complemented by an accelerated political line of effort that include reconciliation, reintegration, governance, and -- under Brig. H.R. McMaster -- a focus on inclusivity, transparency, and anti-corruption. One initiative where Petraeus has focused immense attention and effort, for example, is a focus on fixing COIN contracting. As Petraeus's new October COIN Contracting Guidance says, "With proper oversight, contracting can spur economic development and support collective Afghan and ISAF objectives. But by spending large quantities of international contracting funds quickly and with insufficient oversight, some of those funds have unintentionally fueled corruption, financed insurgent organizations, strengthened criminal patronage networks, and undermined our efforts in Afghanistan." Petraeus made anti-corruption efforts "commander's business" and has focused equal attention on this aspect of the campaign as he has the CT effort. Now, in partnership with Karzai, he's trying to hold contractors accountable. It's a task that has defeated most everyone who has taken on corruption in Afghanistan, but Petraeus remains determined to make progress.

Petraeus has also placed increased emphasis on reconciliation and reintegration efforts in his first four months. "Reconciliation" focuses on senior Afghan leaders, most of who are hiding in Pakistan leading by cell phone. News of recent negotiations with senior Taliban this week indicates that small reconciliation efforts may be underway. "Reintegration" is conducted with those who are on the ground in Afghanistan -- mid-level leaders including district shadow governors and below. The objective, Petraeus said in a recent interview, "is to take away as many of the rank and file, take them off the battlefield again turn them from bad guys to good guys" or at least prevent them from "trying to kill our troopers and our Afghan partners and civilians." Intel chatter interdicted via low-level voice intercepts has shown that some senior-level insurgents feel coalition force pressure across their networks. Some reports indicate they may be willing to "cut a deal," as the recent negotiations between the Afghan government and Taliban portend. Speculation about negotiations has cast some doubt in the minds of low-level insurgents who speculate that "senior insurgent leaders are defecting," according to a senior ISAF official in October.

Gathering that type of atmospheric about the Taliban has only been possible through increased intelligence efforts, another area of emphasis. Some of these intelligence initiatives were initiated under McChrystal while Petraeus was still CENTCOM Commander. These efforts included acquiring 2,000 more intelligence officials for the command, and pushing intelligence analyst out on raids because "if you want them to know what is going on, they have to know what is going on," according to CJ2, MG Mike Flynn. Petraeus has also promoted the "fusion cell" concept from the strategic to the tactical levels; he deems this more important even than the other enablers like ISR platforms, SIGINT intercepts, and full-motion videos. Additionally, the biometrics program, which overlaps with the detainee operations line of effort and now has over one million Afghans registered, has helped empower the Afghan government in its correction, detention, rule of law efforts, and local intelligence gathering efforts.

The comprehensive COIN effort would not be complete without credible voices and strategic communications plan, both of which fall under the information operations line of effort. In that vein, Petraeus's COIN guidance says simply that U.S. forces should "be the first with truth." His Information Operations Task Force has condemned the brutal Taliban killing of sub-district governors or Taliban attacks on sacred mosques, and he has ordered an investigation into the botched rescue attempt that killed Linda Norgrove. Petraeus is also candid about the many challenges in this war, admitting that his 15-hour days, 7 days a week are sustainable but he doesn't have "much of a reserve." Petraeus conscientiously avoids the word "optimistic," labeling himself instead as a qualified realist.

For the other realists who are watching Afghanistan, there has not been a shift in the war strategy. The strategy that President Obama sent Petraeus there to execute hasn't changed, and neither has Petraeus's momentum: this is a multi-pronged comprehensive COIN strategy, intensified across all lines of effort -- and Petraeus is "all in."

Paula Broadwell, a West Point graduate, is the author of the forthcoming book, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus (Penguin Press, 2011). The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or Derek Jeter.

For the first time

For the first time, Iran sent a representative to a meeting of the U.S. and NATO-dominated International Contact Group on Afghanistan, which convened yesterday in Rome and discussed coalition military and political strategy (NYT, Post, Tel, FT, Tolo, Reuters). The Iranian delegate, Mohammed Ali Qanezadeh, is the director of Asian affairs at Iran's foreign ministry, and also attended an in-depth PowerPoint briefing by top Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus, on NATO's strategy for transitioning control to Afghan forces. Bonus read: Behind the Lines on Iran in Afghanistan and Pakistan (FP). [[BREAK]]

Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission is expected to release preliminary results from the September 18 parliamentary contests tomorrow, with final results due in early November (WSJ, LAT). Ballots from around 10 percent of the country's voting centers have been thrown out because of complaints of fraud, and the number of disqualified ballots could be more than a million. And the Afghan government has reportedly decided to audit all of the country's private banks, after a corruption scandal nearly brought down the Kabul Bank (AFP).

As coalition forces focus on southern Afghanistan, the Taliban are making inroads in the north, where they have reportedly set up parallel local administrations and courts (WSJ). A NATO spokesman said yesterday that while the coalition is "chok[ing] insurgent supply routes in some parts of Afghanistan," Taliban fighters have adapted and are seeking to supplement their reduced resources by "expanding illicit taxation" of Afghan villagers (AP). And in Marjah, the southern Afghan town that was the site of a major coalition offensive earlier this year, one soldier described the insurgency by observing, "It's like fighting ghosts. They're in and they're out. They're quick. They've been doing this a long time ... (and) they're good at it" (AP).

The spy agency involved

Indian government documents about the interrogation of David Coleman Headley reportedly show that Pakistan's intelligence service the ISI was "heavily involved" in preparations for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai, though they also suggest that ISI supervision of the militants was "often chaotic" (Guardian). At one Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp, Headley reportedly said he received instruction from a member of the Pakistani Army, and claimed that every "major official within the group had a handler" from the ISI (AP). The sole surviving gunman in the Mumbai attacks spat on a camera and argued with prison officials earlier today during a hearing appealing his death sentence (PTI, AFP).

Pakistan's election commission has suspended more than 140 lawmakers for failing to disclose their assets, including several ministers (Dawn, AP, AJE). Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said yesterday that he believes Iran doesn't have a "justification to go nuclear" (AFP). Qureshi will be leading a delegation of Pakistani officials coming to Washington for meetings with the Obama administration this week, and the NYT has a look-ahead (NYT). CNN reports that the U.S. is expected to announce a $2 billion, five-year aid package to Pakistan aimed at bolstering the country's fight against militants (CNN). The funding comes in addition to the $7.5 billion, five-year Kerry-Lugar bill and military aid.

Targeted killings continue in Karachi, with 14 people killed since yesterday (ET, Daily Times, Dawn, AP). Pakistani authorities have arrested dozens of suspects in connection with the recent uptick in violence. For the second time in 24 hours, gunmen on motorbikes in Baluchistan attacked vehicles carrying NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan, damaging two tankers (AFP). And in North Waziristan, a suspected U.S. drone strike killed at least five (AFP, AP, ET, CNN).

Flood watch: The U.N. announced earlier today that at least seven million people are still lacking shelter in the aftermath of the summer's flooding (AFP). Nearly two million homes have been damaged and destroyed.

Flashpoint

Masarat Alam, a hardline separatist leader who is the general secretary of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and aide to Syed Ali Geelani, was arrested yesterday by police in Indian-administered Kashmir, and authorities have imposed a curfew in four districts of the valley in anticipation of possible protests (HT, ToI, AFP, CNN, BBC). Alam has been evading capture since he began the "Quit Kashmir" campaign in June that set off protests and curfews, some of which led to clashes with security forces in which more than 100 people have died.

The Afghan Wright Brother

A 10th grader from Ghazni has made what is called Afghanistan's first homemade plane is waiting for government permission and a technical inspection to fly it (Pajhwok). The two-seater, three-wheeled aircraft can fly about 20 kilometers, according to the teenage pilot, Sabir Shah.

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Asia

China insisted that it was actively applying U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.

An Indian government report blamed Pakistan's intelligence services for funding reconnaissance missions that were used to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

China raised interest rates for the first time in almost three years.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia said that it warned countries of a possible al Qaeda threat emanating from Yemen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the controversial loyalty pledge bill will be amended so that it applies to all immigrants, including Jews.

Israel said that Hamas has acquired anti-aircraft missiles.

Americas

Mexican drug cartels are bolstering their presence on the U.S. side of the border.

One of Canada's top military officers pled guilty to rape, murder, and dozens of cases of home break-ins.

A U.S. diplomat met with Cuba's foreign minister regarding an American that has been imprisoned by Cuba for 11 months on suspicion of spying.

Europe

French labor unions escalated their campaign against the government's plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62.

Gunmen attacked the Chechen Parliament on Tuesday, killing at least three.

The Russian spies deported from the United States this summer received awards for their service from the Russian government.

Africa

The United Nations redeployed some of its peacekeepers in Sudan to the volatile province of Abyei.

The U.N. special envoy for the Western Sahara described the current situation in the area as "untenable."

The International Criminal Court rejected an appeal by Congo's former vice president to have charges against him dismissed.

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images

Today I want to call your attention to two recent speeches, each by an experienced U.S. diplomat. Both of these men had lengthy, varied, and distinguished careers, both served as ambassadors to important U.S. allies, and both are solidly rooted in a realist view of foreign policy. For all these reasons, their remarks are well worth pondering.

The first is by retired Ambassador Charles ("Chas") Freeman, who served the U.S. government in a variety of capacities over more than thirty years. And he would be serving our country today as chairman of the National Intelligence Council had he not been the target of a vicious and baseless smear campaign by prominent figures in the Israel lobby. (Obama's failure to defend the appointment was an early warning sign of his spinelessness on this general issue).

In any case, Freeman recently gave a fascinating lecture at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entitled "America's Faltering Search for Peace in the Middle East: Openings for Others?" Apart from being beautifully written, it is also one of the clearest and most common-sensical analyses of our predicaments there that I have read recently. Here's just one small excerpt (you really owe it to yourself to read the whole thing):

In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all things. My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the Holy Land. To my mind, these interests include -- but are, of course, not limited to -- gaining security and acceptance for a democratic state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters, as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and freedom for Palestinians.

Needless to say, the fact that someone with his experience, insight, and independence of mind was blackballed from further public service tells you a lot about why U.S. foreign policy keeps spinning off the rails.

The second talk that I recommend is by Robert Blackwill, who served as U.S. Ambassador to India and on the National Security Council during the Bush administration. (Interestingly, both Blackwill and Freeman were aides to Henry Kissinger at earlier stages in their careers). Blackwill recently delivered the second annual Ernest May Lecture to the Aspen Strategy Group, on the topic of "Afghanistan and the Lessons of History." Not surprisingly, his talk draws on many of the insights that May and Richard Neustadt developed about the perils of misplaced historical analogies and sloppy historical reasoning, but he offers plenty of intriguing nuggets of his own. And the "lessons" he draws about our Afghan experience ought to be on the desk of every ambitious "nation-builder" in Washington. Here they are:

• Ensure that the U.S. commitment in blood and treasure is clearly commensurate with U.S. vital national interests and does not push aside more important strategic challenges.
• Keep U.S. policy objectives feasible. No dreams allowed.
• Take into account that local realities dominate global constructs.
• Stay out of long ground wars in general, and especially stay out of long ground wars in Asia.
• Reject the notion that America has the capability to socially engineer far-off societies fundamentally different from our own.
• Be cautious about making counterinsurgency the U.S. Army's core competence. Interacting with exotic foreign cultures on the ground, not to say dramatically changing them, is not exactly America's comparative advantage.
• Accept that diplomacy is almost always a better instrument of U.S. national purpose than the use of military force.
• Remember that often purported worst case consequences of U.S. external behavior don't ever happen, not least because we remain the most powerful and resilient country on earth.

There's a lot of wisdom in those two speeches, and I recommend them highly. Among other things, they remind us that while you don't have to be a realist to say smart things about foreign policy, it sure helps.

The recently concluded Sochi Summit has highlighted the return of Russia to a prominent, even strategically dominant, position in the Northern Tier, as the US Administration of President Barack Obama accepts the change.

On August 18, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted in Sochi a summit on the long-term posture in South Asia with the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. This was the second meeting of the four leaders. The previous meeting was held in Dushanbe in the Autumn of 2009. The declared focus of the Sochi summit was on efforts to stabilize the region in the long-term and jointly confront the spread of narco-terrorism.

[Originally, the summit was to include also the acting President of Kyrgyzstan given the centrality of the Fergana Valley to the crisis. However, with the growing instability in Bishkek and the Kremlin’s fury over the August 13, 2010, decision by the interim Government to deprive former President Askar Akaev of his immunity status in violation of signed agreements to the contrary and immediately after the same interim government had invited Akaev to return and help stabilize Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan was not invited to participate in the Sochi summit.]

Medvedev also held bilateral talks with each of the presidents. Medvedev told Pakistan’s Asif Ali Zardari that Russia was going to increase its assistance to Pakistan to help deal with the floods.

“This is a severe disaster which caused many deaths and unfortunately brought great damage. We mourn with you and are ready to provide assistance to the Pakistani people. You can count on us,” Medvedev said.  A second Russian Il-76 cargo aircraft with emergency relief was dispatched to Islamabad.

In the meeting with Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, Medvedev hailed the marked improvement in the bilateral relations. “There are all grounds to state major progress in relations between the two countries,” Medvedev noted. “Russia is ready to develop economic ties with Afghan partners.” (The key issues regarding Afghanistan were discussed by all four presidents.) Medvedev’s bilateral meeting with Tajikistan’s Emomali Rakhmon was pro forma only because Rakhmon was to stay in Russia for a three-day official visit.

The summit plenary session focused on fighting terrorism and drugs spreading from Afghanistan. Special focus was put on Russia’s willingness to assume a greater role in the dynamics of this volatile region. Medvedev emphasized that this was the second summit of the four. “This is very good, this is a normal, working regional format, and the more consultations we have the better it is,” he said. 

Medvedev articulated Russia’s approach to the regional challenge. “We would like to continue cooperating in fighting terrorism, drug trafficking and international crime. That’s why everything we discussed earlier could be continued, even though there is a good political dialogue, it is very important to develop economic ties,” Medvedev said. “I hope that we will be able to continue discussing this issue now in terms of bilateral economic cooperation and four-party cooperation in a number of projects.”

Toward this end, Medvedev proposed to rejuvenate and modernize numerous bilateral and multilateral social and economic projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan launched during the Soviet era. “Resolution of a number of social issues depends on the extent to which we will be able to restart these [social and economic] processes,” Medvedev explained. The Kremlin would like to focus first on a number of Soviet-era projects in energy and social development that proved successful at the time. “I believe it would be a good idea to revisit them so as to add momentum to economic development and tackle a number of pressing issues,” Medvedev argued.

In Afghanistan alone, Kremlin officials note, Russia is already involved in efforts to refurbish more than 140 Soviet-era installations, such as hydroelectric stations, bridges, wells, and irrigation systems. These deals are worth more than $1-billion. The summit agreed that Russia would also spearhead the World Bank-sponsored program to vastly expand the hydro-electric dams in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in order to supply surplus electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The summit also announced plans to build a highway and a railroad from Pakistan to Tajikistan, thus connecting into the all-CIS railway system.

In the plenary meeting, Karzai sought anew Medvedev’s long-term help. “Afghanistan will need the support of friends and from great countries like Russia,” Karzai said.

In response, Medvedev noted that the Kremlin was interested in bolstering Karzai’s ability to sustain power after the US withdrawal in the context of the Afghan-Pakistani peace plan. Addressing the problems of Afghanistan amounted to “discussing all regional problems, including domestic ones”, Medvedev noted.

The key to resolving the precarious domestic political situation in Afghanistan lay in bolstering “the Kabul process” - the transfer of all responsibility for both the security situation in the country and the international assistance to “the Afghan authorities”.

“Russia fully supports Afghan efforts to restore civil peace in the country,” Medvedev said. Russia “naturally supports the Afghan government’s fight against terrorism, and [is] ready to provide any help needed to tackle the problem.”

Medvedev stressed Moscow’s apprehension that a Taliban return to power would destabilize Central Asia entirely and threaten Russia’s own security. Medvedev reiterated that resolving Afghanistan’s narco-terrorism problem required strong international cooperation. “It’s our common problem, a problem for all countries of the region, and we must take consistent and coordinated actions,” he said.

In response to specific requests from the other three presidents, Medvedev promised to accelerate and expand helicopter — especially Mi-17 and Mi-35 — production in Russia in order to make more helicopters available for export to the region. In a subsequent meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the possible delivery of 27 Russian Mi-17 helicopters to Afghanistan.

“We are talking about a couple of dozen helicopters with the relevant equipment. I hope that in a month or month and a half there will be more clarity on the issue,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov explained that Russia was ready to deliver the first three helicopters for free in order to address Afghanistan’s urgent problems. The other 24 helicopters would be part of the Russian dialog with NATO over cooperation in Afghanistan. “We handed our proposals about how we would carry out the initiative to Brussels a few months ago. We are now waiting for a definite answer from our partners,” Lavrov said.

The summit also included expanded meetings with senior officials from the four countries. These were Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russian presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko, director of the Second Asian department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Zamir Kabulov and his deputy Alexei Dedov; Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi and the State Adviser on Foreign Policy to the President Erkin Rakhmatullaev form Tajikistan; Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul, the presidential national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the charge d’affaires ad interim in Russia Hafizullah Ebadi from Afghanistan; and Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, First Deputy Foreign Minister Salman Bashir, Deputy Foreign Minister Muhammad Haroon Shaukat, and the Ambassador to Moscow Mohammad Khalid Khattak from Pakistan.

More than anything, the Sochi summit signified the return of Russia to South Asia as a major power.

This was the beginning of implementation of the Kremlin’s decision earlier this (2010) summer to commit to long-term active involvement in the resolution of regional problems and challenges. The Kremlin was concerned by the spread of drugs and narco-funded terrorism, insurgency, violence and instability from Afghanistan via Central Asia into the heart of Russia.

The Kremlin concluded that only a comprehensive plan which not only recognized the imperative to resolve Afghanistan’s security and governance problems, but also addressed the issue of drugs-funded separatism, secessionism, and narco-terrorism at the Heart of Asia and the Greater Black Sea Basin as a major policy issue, had a chance of evolving into a tangible success.

Toward this end, the Kremlin embarked on a major initiative to secure long-term international commitment to resolving Afghanistan’s endemic narcotics problem, which meant consolidating a stable form of governance and thus eliminating the consequences of the region-wide narco-funded terrorism and destabilization.

On June 9-10, 2010, the Kremlin convened in Moscow the international Afghan Drug Production: a Challenge to the International Community forum as the launch of the international drive to resolve Afghanistan’s long-term challenges. Senior officials from all Central and South Asian states announced in the forum their governments’ whole hearted support for the Russian initiative. Thus, the Sochi summit should therefore be considered the beginning of Russia’s return to the region, significantly as a welcomed major power leading the implementation of long-term policies.

In the aftermath of the summit, Russian presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko summed up its outcome. The Kremlin’s original objective was for the four presidents “to discuss the issues in the political, trade, economic and other fields that are pressing for the participants”.

This objective was achieved, given that the presidents discussed and committed to “the stepping up of regional cooperation in the efforts to assist the stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan and on the Afghan-Pakistani border, with the participation of authoritative organizations, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Collective Security Treaty Organization”.

Prikhodko’s description of the summit outcome amounts to announcing anew Russia’s return to the region as a dominant power while virtually ignoring - but not challenging or confronting - the United States. 

Overnight on August 18-19, 2010, the United States reacted to the Sochi summit. Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, said that the US Barack Obama Administration welcomed Russia’s cooperation with Afghanistan and Pakistan in view of the US own limited capabilities.

“Afghanistan and Pakistan are both countries with profound needs,” Crowley said. “And the United States cannot meet these needs by itself.”

At the same time, Crowley explained, the Obama Administration has “a regional strategy for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Russia can play an important role along with other countries in the region. So we welcome this kind of interaction and we welcome the international commitment by Russia and other countries that is represented by this meeting,” Crowley said.

The Obama Administration’s reluctant and conditional welcome of the Russian return to South Asia nevertheless constitutes a major shift in US policy.

As late as the early June forum in Moscow, US senior officials acknowledged Washington’s reluctance to commit to the eradication of Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation and narco-economy, as well as objection to Russia or anybody else assuming this role for fear of engendering popular hostility and alienating the Kabul leadership.

However, with the US preparing to disengage from the region, and a Kabul-Islamabad-Taliban arrangement on the future of Afghanistan all but inevitable, the presence of Russia, given its commitment to fighting narco-terrorism and jihadism, no longer seems so threatening.

Hence, while Crowley formally welcomed a Russian participation in implementing Obama’s regional strategy, both Moscow and Washington seem cognizant that no such strategy exists.

Committed to disengaging from South Asia, the Obama Administration is suddenly discovering that a long-term Russian commitment to cooperation with the region’s states might, after all, ameliorate the profound consequences of the US hasty departure, and consequently even contribute to the Obama Administration’s own political interests.

Analysis by Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

(c) 2010 International Strategic Studies Association, www.StrategicStudies.org

The Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Zalmay Rassoul calling on the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi on August 24, 2010.

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassuol arrived here today on a three-day visit during which he will hold extensive talks with External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on bilateral relations as well as other issues of mutual interest.

Mr Rassuol, who reached here at noon, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his 7, Race Course Road residence this evening.

He will hold delegation-level talks with Mr Krishna tomorrow. He is also scheduled to hold a meeting with National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon before flying back home on Thursday.

This is Mr Rassuol's first official visit to India as his country's Foreign Minister though he has been here before as Afghan National Security Adviser. He had also made a transit halt here in April this year on his way to Thimphu, Bhutan for the SAARC Summit.

Mr Rassuol and Mr Krishna have met serveral times on the sidelines of various events, including on July 20 when the External Affairs Minister had visited Kabul for the Kabul Conference.

Mr Rassuol will be assisted at the talks with Mr Krishna by the Ambassador of Afghanistan in Delhi and the Director General of Foreign Affairs, among other officials. Mr Krishna will be assisted by Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, the Indian Ambassador in Kabul, among others.

Briefing mediapersons about the the visit, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash said the two countries were committed to deepen and strengthen their strategic partnership and the multi-faceted ties which, according to him, had been a factor for peace, stability and progress in the region.

He also pointed out that the two sides have been holding regular consultations at high levels to review and impart greater momentum to their ties.

Mr Prakash said Dr Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai had beeen meeting regularly and there were also regular meetings at the levels of the Foreign Ministers, National Security Advisers, Foreign Secretaries and other leaders and officials.

He said India had been extending unstinted support for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan and was already the sixth largest donor to the war-ravaged country. He said India's bilateral assistance to Afghanistan was close to $ 1.3 billion and its projects had reached out to the common man in all parts of that country.

He said the Indian Medical Mission had treated more than 310,000 people, mostly women and children, free of cost in 2009.

Mr Prakash said India had been contributing to development of infrastructure including the 218-kilometre Zaranj-Delaram Road and the power transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul.

He said India had also implemented some 50 small, quick-gestation, social and development projects in Afghanistan and a similar number was in the pipeline.

"We are playing an important role in capacity-building. Presently, 1350 scholarships, 675 each by ICCR and under the ITEC programme, are being made available annually in different disciplines to Afghanistan for capacity-building. Post London Conference, given the fact that the agricultural and related sectors are very important to Afghanistan, India has decided for a period of five years, to provide 100 fellowships annually to enable Afghans to pursue Masters and Ph.D. programmes and to 200 fresh graduates for degree programmes," he said.

"As significantly, despite the heinous attacks by forces inimical to India-Afghanistan friendship on our Embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and again in October 2009 and on Indian interests in February 2010, India remains committed to assisting the people and Government of Afghanistan, in their quest for a peaceful, pluralistic, democratic, and prosperous Afghanistan. This approach of India, this assistance of India that is being provided in Afghanistan, is positively reflected in a number of opinion polls conducted by independent agencies where the people of Afghanistan have spoken in very warm terms about what India has been doing," he added.

NNN

At least 32 people, including six members of the Somali parliament, were killed in an attack by gunmen on the Muna Hotel in Mogadishu on Tuesday. In a statement released by the Somalian information ministry it was revealed that five further government security personnel died when the gunmen blew themselves up. The gunmen, who are reported to have been wearing military uniforms and were also armed with hand grenades, burst into the hotel and began firing indiscriminately. Following the initial attack witnesses described seeing guests scrambling out of the hotel’s windows during a one-hour battle with security forces.

At least 70 people have died in Mogadishu in the last two days, following recent threats by al-Shabab, an organisation that proclaims and is thought to be allied with al-Qaida – of a “massive” war against African Union troops in Mogadishu, whom it sees as an occupying force. In claiming responsibility for the attack, Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage, a spokesman for the al-Shabab militia, said that members of the group’s “special forces” had carried out the attack against those “aiding the infidels.”

Seven foreign-born and three Somali al-Shabab fighters were killed in an explosion in a Mogadishu safehouse on Saturday. The building was part of a compound owned by Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour, believed to be one of al-Shabab’s top leaders. Its cause is not yet clear, though an unnamed al-Shabab member told Garowe that the building was being used to assemble car bombs. 

In May 2009 eleven al-Shabab fighters and three or four “foreign fighters” were reported to have been killed when a car bomb exploded in a compound belonging to Sheikh Muktar Abdelrahman Abu Zubeyr. Observers, however, claimed to have seen “missiles” strike the compound immediately beforehand. In recent years US special forces are known to have conducted a number of strikes against al-Shabab and al-Qaida leaders in Somalia.

Fears of militant attacks on Kyrgyzstan exaggerated, says senior Tajik official. 

Twenty-five Islamic militants serving sentences of between nineteen years and life in prison in a detention centre outside the Tajik capital of Dushanbe escaped on Sunday.  The group, which included at least six Russian citizens, attacked their guards, killing one and seriously wounding another, before seizing their weapons and fleeing. Security at both airports and local border controls was tightened amid fears the group would attempt to cross over into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or China. Several of the group are known to have been members of the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) group. Head of the Russian federal security service, Alexander Bortnikov, stated that Russia will give full assistance to the Tajik side in "tracking down and arresting" the escaped inmates. 

Earlier in the day General Adbullo Nazarov, head of Tajikistan’s National Security Ministry’s office in the south-eastern region of Badakhshan, had dismissed reports of Tajik militants infiltrating Kyrgyszstan. Instead, Nazarov claimed Kyrgyz security officials have no idea what is happening in the region, and were merely reacting to earlier reports of increased militant activity by “hitting the panic button”. General Nazarov’s scepticism is echoed by Tajik analyst Qosim Bekmuhammad, who believes reports of cross-border attacks are not only “fake”, but are being used by Russia to validate its growing secuirty presence in the region.

His comments come in response to warnings from Sultonbek Ayjigitov, head of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region, that additional security measures would need to be taken if further infiltration of militants from Tajikistan were to be prevented. Afghan forces, meanwhile, recently killed or detained several people suspected of being members of the IMU group close to the Tajik border. IMU fighters are also believed to be hiding in towns and villages in the Konduz province of Afghanistan. 

Top Caucasus Emirate leader killed 

Russian security forces in the Republic of Dagestan are reported to have killed a senior leader of the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamist organisation linked to Al-Qaida, on Saturday.

Amir Sayfullah, also known as Magomedali Vagabov, was one of five men killed after they were surrounded in a safe house in the village of Gubin. Sayfullah, who held the position of emir of the Caucasus Emirate in Dagestan, is widely believed to have been behind the Moscow Metro suicide bombings on 29 March that killed 39 people. One of the two female bombers, Mariam Sharipova, was Sayfullah’s wife. 

Sayfullah had been an outspoken supporter of Doku Umarov, leader of the Islamic Caucaus Emirate until his resignation earlier this month. That resignation was later retracted, and there is speculation that Sayfullah’s backing was an attempt to stem growing uncertainty and discord within the movement. Umarov, a Chechen, was instrumental in uniting Chechen and Caucasus jihadists following the death of Shamil Basayev and much of his leadership cadre at the hands of Russian security forces in 2006. Umarov himself was believed to have been killed in November 2009, but reappeared late that year to launch a series of suicide attacks. 

Fewer nukes would not compromise deterrence, argues new report 

Further cuts in the number of the United States and Russia’s nuclear warheads need not compromise either country’s national security interests. That’s the conclusion drawn in a report – written by both US authors and three former Soviet defence insiders – to be published in the next issue of Foreign Affairs.

At present the US and Russia are working towards reducing the number of nuclear warheads in their respective arsenals to 1,500, with a maximum 700 active launch sites on each side. In the report, however, Victor Esin (former chief of staff of the Strategic Rocket Forces), Valery Yarynich (a retired Colonel who served at the Center for Operational and Strategic Studies of the Russian General Staff), and Pavel Zolotarev (former section head of the Russian Defense Council) argue that new computer modelling has demonstrated these numbers can be cut to 1,000 and 500 respectively without posing a threat to either county’s security.

Such a conclusion is likely to contradict the opinion of those in the Pentagon who believe that any further rush to de-arm could precipitate destabilisation and create incentives to strike first. Whether or not the programme already agreed will actually come into being according to the timescale set out by the Senate’s New Start initiative remains to be seen; let alone whether the possibility of additional military spending cuts in the US and Russia will have any significant effect on the nuclear de-armament programme already in place. Yet the report’s authors hope that by conducting analysis more openly and more collaboratively it may yet be possible to shift attitudes away from entrenched Cold War positions, and towards a safer, more cost-effective alternative for all parties. 

Urination, vandalism, supermarkets - the threat to British war memorials 

Residents of the former mining village of Sacriston, County Durham, have failed in their bid to prevent the supermarket giant Tesco from opening a new Express store on the site of an existing war memorial. The memorial has already been fenced off prior to its removal to another site nearby, after the company donated £12,000 towards its relocation. Durham County councillors approved plans to redevelop the land – set forth after it was acquired by property developer Mark Warrior  - on the grounds that the new store would bring jobs and greater prosperity to the area. Locals, however, are not convinced; one has described the scheme as “an insult to all who fell in the war”, while MP Kevan Jones has demanded further explanation from the Council.

Meanwhile, in Blackpool, 32-year-old Wendy Lewis fled court before being sentenced for urinating on a war memorial and committing a sex act in public – incidents captured on CCTV- in June. The incident is apparently just one of a spate of memorial-related incidents reported in the last few months. In November nineteen-year-old Sheffield student Philip Laing was caught urinating against a World War One memorial. That same month, Leeds factory worker Ian Marshall, 49, admitted ‘outraging public decency’, in a similar fashion, while in July, Douglas Tullin, nineteen, was fined £50 urinating on the war memorial in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. The incidents have led Conservative MP David Burrowes to call for legislation making war memorial desecration a specific offence punishable by long jail sentences. At present general laws covering vandalism, public decency and drunken behaviour are used to punish offenders. 

As China Expands in Latin America, Tensions Fester at Its Mining Venture in Peru

SAN JUAN DE MARCONA, Peru — In its worldwide quest for commodities, China has scoured South America for everything from Brazilian soybeans to Guyanese timber and Venezuelan oil. But long before it made any of those forays, China put down stakes in this desolate mining town in Peru’s southern desert.

The year was 1992. Chinese companies had begun to look abroad. One steelmaker, the Shougang Corporation of Beijing, set its sights on an iron ore mine here and bought it in a move that seemed particularly bold. At the time, Peru was still plagued by attacks by the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path.

But the hero’s welcome for Shougang soon faded. Workers at the mine, which was founded by Americans in the 1950s and nationalized by leftist generals in the 1970s, began fomenting the unexpected: a revolt that has endured to this day, marked by repeated strikes, clashes with the police and even arson attacks against their nominally Communist bosses from China.

Afghanistan Says It Locates 1.8 Billion-Barrel Oilfield in Nation's North

Afghanistan discovered an oilfield containing an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of crude in the north of the country, a Mines Ministry official said.

“A huge oil resource, which looks like a triangle, with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil, has been discovered by Afghan geologists in cooperation with international geologists between Balkh and Sheberghan provinces,” Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the ministry, said in a phone interview today from the capital, Kabul.

Aramco invites bids for Shaybah gas plant - sources

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, Aug 15 (Reuters) - State oil giant Saudi Aramco has invited engineering firms to bid for the construction of a power plant related to a natural gas liquids (NGL) project at the kingdom's Shaybah oilfield, industry sources said on Sunday.

Aramco is shifting its exploration and production focus to developing gas output as it looks to meet rising domestic demand from power plants and the petrochemical industry.

Capital spending fuels revenue need

Increased spending by the Abu Dhabi Government is pushing up the level of oil revenue that the emirate needs to balance its budget, official documents show.

Iran offers three billion dollar bonds to fund gasfields

Iran in need of 40 billion dollars of investment to fully develop its South Pars gasfields.

Ex-BP boss Lord Browne did not discuss Lockerbie bomber release

Former BP chief executive Lord Browne has said he never discussed the release of the Lockerbie bomber when he held talks with Libya's leader.

Lord Browne, whose 12 years in charge at BP ended in 2007, said he had met Colonel Gaddafi twice to discuss gas and oil exploration in Libya.

But he told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival he had not lobbied the UK government for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in order to help BP land a deal.

BP’s Relief Well Delayed on Risk of New Oil Release in Gulf

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc needs to provide additional analysis and plans that will ensure no oil is released when the company drills a relief well and pumps mud and cement to the bottom of the Macondo well to permanently kill it.

BP determined there is 1,000 barrels of oil trapped in its Gulf of Mexico Macondo well after cement was poured from the top earlier this month. The London-based company will probably need until Aug. 17 to provide a method to perform the so-called bottom kill without an uncontrolled release of crude, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said during a conference call with reporters yesterday.

Fishermen take shots at BP skimming program

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Johnny Ray Harris hunted for oil in the gulf near his home for 45 days straight, radioing in coordinates to cleanup crews when he spotted large, inky patches floating in the choppy waters.

“I would call it in, but no one ever came. Not once,’’ Harris said, sitting on his 73-foot-long shrimp boat beside a box filled with unused rubber boots, gloves, and coveralls. “What a waste.’’

Energy world will miss you Matt!

Peak oil guru Matthew Simmons is dead. Considered a maverick in the close-knit world of energy finance and idolized by many, Simmons did more than anyone else to bring to widespread public attention the obscure theory of "peak oil."

Demand for energy has become a "runaway train that cannot be easily slowed or reversed," Simmons said in May at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. "We are in the early stages of a global train wreck when demand outstrips supply and shortages begin," he underlined.

Simmons was controversial — at the least — yet he enjoyed a global following. When he spoke, the world listened. "Single-handedly Matt set out on a crusade not to change the world but to wake us all up," said Lad Handelman, a colleague and friend.

Simmons put Maine on the green energy map

He will be missed here less for what he did than for the future he told us was possible.

Transition agriculture

DURHAM - We know that fuel prices will rise dramatically as they dry up in the near future, so what are farmers, who are so depend-ent on oil, going to do about it?

That is what a global initiative, begun in Ireland in 2002, called Transition Town is looking at specifically, and a big part of its perspective is agriculture.

‘Abandon affluence’ — 25 years on

In his influential 1985 book Abandon Affluence, radical Australian sociologist Ted Trainer made the argument that the capitalist economies of the rich world, and the wasteful consumer culture they spawned, were unsustainable and the ecological limits of capitalist growth were fast approaching. Trainer will speak at the November 5-7 Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne.

India Needs New Farm Methods to Boost Growth to 4%, Singh Says

(Bloomberg) -- India needs to invest in technology to cultivate dry areas and boost farm production lagging at the slowest pace of growth in five years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his Independence Day speech.

Playing for Columbus, but Fighting for the Lands Back Home

Growing up in the small southern Louisiana town of Gonzales, Jason Garey did not venture far for family vacations. Many of them were spent down in the marshes, where Garey and his three siblings learned to fish, shrimp and crab in the bountiful brackish waters.

But by the time he was in college, Garey began to notice that the landscape was changing. A small barrier island near the outpost of Grand Isle — a dirt mound, really — where he had landed his canoe six months earlier was no longer there. In other places, the shoreline was 30 feet farther back than the last time he had visited.

“That’s when it hit home that this is a huge, huge problem,” said Garey, a reserve forward for the Columbus Crew who has a goal and two assists this season. “You realize that it’s gone and it’s going to keep getting worse.”

A Battle in Mining Country Pits Coal Against Wind

LORELEI SCARBRO’S husband, Kenneth, an underground coal miner for more than 30 years, is buried in a small family cemetery near her property here at the base of Coal River Mountain. The headstone is engraved with two roosters facing off, their feathers ruffled. Kenneth, who loved cockfighting, died in 1999, and, Ms. Scarbro says, he would have hated seeing the tops of mountains lopped off with explosives and heavy machinery by mining companies searching for coal.

Critics say the practice, known as “mountaintop removal mining,” is as devastating to the local environment as it is economically efficient for coal companies, one of which is poised to begin carving up Coal River Mountain. And that has Ms. Scarbro and other residents of western Raleigh County in a face-off of their own.

German Government Considers Nuclear Power-Plant Operators' Fund Proposal

Germany’s government may drop a plan to tax nuclear fuels and instead accept an industry proposal to receive revenue from a fund, financed by nuclear power-plant operators, in exchange for extending reactors’ operating lives.

The government is considering alternative ways of collecting 2.3 billion euros ($2.9 billion) a year from nuclear- energy producers while also promoting renewable energy sources by diverting some of the profit utilities make by letting their nuclear reactors run longer.

'Green' gas could power up to 300,000 Irish homes

Around 300,000 Irish homes could be heated for a year by the natural gas produced from grass and household waste. A new study by Bord Gais, the Irish gas board, reveals that at least seven and a half percent of Ireland's annual natural gas demand could be met by processing waste into cheap, green and renewable energy.

Green means go as high-voltage vehicles hit isles

The movement to make Hawaii's roads greener passed a milestone yesterday.

The first high-voltage electric car that supports the 240-volt international charging standard J-1772, the Wheego, and its dedicated charging station were unveiled at the Green Energy Outlet's location in Kakaako. The cars were available for test drives and pre-orders.

U.S. Cancels Some of Brazil's Debt in Exchange For Forest Protection

On Friday, the Obama Administration announced that it will cancel debt from Brazil in exchange for forest protection. The U.S. has done the same for Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the Philippines. Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global warming emissions, making zero deforestation a priority in places like Brazil and Indonesia, which rank third and fourth for GHG emissions, respectively.

In total, the U.S. will cancel $21 million of Brazil's debt in exchange for protection of the Amazon. This won't cancel all Brazil's debt payments, but it will lesson them over the next five years.

India, Mexico to discuss climate change

Ahead of the global climate change summit in Cancun, Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa touches down in New Delhi on a three-day visit on Sunday that will explore views on evolving a strategy for negotiations at the Nov 29-Dec 10 UN meet on combating global warming. Espinosa will hold talks with External Affairs Minister SM Krishna on issues relating to climate change, intensification of economic ties and the UN reforms. She will also meet Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Indian officials involved in climate change negotiations.

In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming

The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma — and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.

The summer’s heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.

Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.

The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.

Jill Dougherty: Afghan Ministry of Interior launches investigation of killings of 10 international aid workers in Afghanistan.

(By @cnnjill - Foreign Affairs Correspondant - CNN Political Ticker, Politics)

Yousaf Raza Gilani's comments follow cancellation of trip to Britain by Pakistan's spy chief

Pakistan's prime minister hit back yesterday at remarks by David Cameron linking the country to the export of terrorism.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, the normally conciliatory premier, used a speech to make the highest level response from Islamabad so far to Cameron's comments during his trip to India. Reports suggest that an official from the British high commission in Islamabad, possibly the deputy chief of mission, will be summoned tomorrow by Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs for a formal dressing down.

Gilani's intervention follows the abrupt cancellation by Pakistan's spy chief, General Shuja Pasha, of a planned visit to the UK for talks with his British counter-terrorism counterparts.

Co-operation from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, headed by Pasha – which was accused of aiding the Taliban in the Afghan war logs published last week by WikiLeaks – had previously been presented as being crucial to stopping numerous terrorist plots aimed against Britain.

There are fears that a long-planned visit to the UK this week by Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, could be overshadowed by growing anger at Cameron's remarks among the one million people of Pakistani origin living in Britain. Media outlets in Pakistan are urging the president to cancel the trip.There is particular anger that Cameron made the comments during a trip to India.

Gilani focused on the issue in yesterday's speech in the Punjab province. "In India, he [Cameron] has given a statement that we in Pakistan promote terrorism," he said. "We want to say to him, we've had good relations with you for 60 years."

He contrasted the issue raised by Cameron with the situation in Kashmir, the Himalayan region mostly held by India, which has been in open rebellion for 20 years. "In India, you [Cameron] talk about terrorism but you don't say anything about Kashmir. You forgot about the human rights abuses going on there. You should have spoken about that too, so that we in Pakistan would have been satisfied."

While Pakistan has frequently been asked to do more in the battle against extremists, Cameron's remarks are seen in Pakistan as going further than any western leader in criticising the country's record and commitment.

An editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language daily, said: "No one, with the exception perhaps of New Delhi and Kabul, had ever accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism. In doing so, was Mr Cameron attempting to bracket Pakistan with countries that have been or still are anathema to the west?"

An officer at the ISI said: "Do you make such remarks when visiting a third country, a country we consider an enemy? It was done to appease [India]. You can sit in England and say what you want to, but sitting in India gives it a completely different connotation."

A senior Pakistani civilian official said: "Cameron's remarks show a political immaturity, lack of foreign policy experience and talk about a choosing a bad venue to deliver the message. Being the youngest British prime minister in two centuries isn't necessarily an advantage."

The Cameron intervention came as Pakistan was reeling from the disclosures in the US intelligence documents made public by WikiLeaks. The apparent evidence of ISI collusion with the Taliban from the WikiLeaks material had already been seized on with glee by Indian officials, as confirmation of New Delhi's charge that the Pakistani state sponsors terrorism.

In the UK, shadow foreign secretary David Miliband said: "Diplomacy is about making friends and influencing them. Today's announcement by the ISI sadly proves that Cameron has failed to make friends and failed to influence them. We need to support Pakistan's intelligence services, not undermine them – their work protects the people of Britain as well as the people of Pakistan. We have a strong Pakistani community in Britain and we have troops in Afghanistan – the stakes are simply too high to go hunting headlines with thoughtless remarks. We need a prime minister that understands the complexity of diplomacy and so far Cameron has failed to prove himself as the standard-bearer we need around the world."

Travel expert Riaz Dooley, who has worked to encourage British Asians to take a greater interest in political life, warned that Cameron risked alienating British-Pakistanis. He said: "David Cameron is going to lose the Pakistani vote over this, because he has not apologised. It is not fair to say that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism, he doesn't have any proof."

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood agreed that the Pakistani community in the UK was angry about Cameron's comments. He said the prime minister had failed to reflect how much the country had sacrificed in the war on terror. "They have taken a huge amount of casualties in the north-west province and there have been a huge number of bombings in Pakistan.

"They have suffered enormously in terms of their own people's lives and to suggest this counts for nothing is very, very insensitive. It will certainly overshadow the visit of President Zardari." He called on Cameron to apologise in order to salvage relations with Pakistan.

India today said the utilisation of territory under Pakistan's control to provide sanctuaries for recruiting and sustaining terrorist groups, and to direct terrorist activity against neighbours, must stop if the region were to attain its full potential for peaceful development.

"Sponsorship of terrorism, as an instrument of policy, is wholly condemnable and must cease forthwith," the official spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said in response to questions about the disclosure of classified information on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which, among other things, reveal the role of Pakistani agencies and the Taliban in fighting Western military forces and targeting Indian interests in Afghanistan.

The website has released close to 91,000 documents from the Afghanistan battlefront which also showed how NATO forces had killed scores of civilians in unreported incidents in Afghanistan and revealed the secret efforts of coalition forces to "kill or capture" senior Taliban and al Qaeda figures.

According to media reports, the documents point to the influence of foreign governments in the insurgency. They suggest that members of Pakistan's security forces, especially the Inter Services Intelligence, had met Taliban leaders to organise resistance against the US forces and assassinate US-supported Afghan leaders.

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WASHINGTON (Associated Press) - The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create deeper doubts about the war at home, cause new friction with Pakistan over allegations about its spy agency and raise questions around the world about Washington's own ability to protect military secrets.

The White House called the disclosures "alarming."

The torrent of more than 91,000 secret documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history, sent the Obama administration scrambling to assess and repair any damage to the war effort, either abroad or in the U.S. The material could reinforce the view put forth by the war's opponents in Congress that one of the nation's longest conflicts is hopelessly stalemated.

The leaks come at a time when President Barack Obama's Afghanistan war strategy is under congressional scrutiny and with polls finding that a majority of Americans no longer think the war there is worth fighting. Still, the leaks are not expected to prevent passage of a $60 billion war funding bill. Despite strong opposition among liberals who see Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, House Democrats must either approve the bill before leaving at the end of this week for a six-week vacation, or commit political suicide by leaving troops in the lurch in war zones overseas.

The Pentagon also was looking at possible damage on the ground in Afghanistan.

"Someone inadvertently or on purpose gave the Taliban its new 'enemies list,'" declared Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who said the White House indicated the disclosures compromised a number of Afghan sources.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs emphasized that the documents covered the period before Obama ordered a major increase in U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, and the administration denied they would cause any policy shift in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

Indeed, despite the furor over the publication of the reports on the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, the information did not reveal any fundamentally new problems in the war effort. Military officers, current and former, described the documents as mostly tactical spot reports, including hunches about possible suspects and bomb plots that couldn't be verified. Some of the reports contain errors; others appear to be based on flimsy evidence.

Still, much of the material is anything but encouraging.

Underscoring the difficulties the U.S. faces, the documents include the first publicly released indication that the Taliban has used portable surface-to-air missiles against U.S. helicopters. One report on a June 2005 incident said a Black Hawk helicopter used evasive measures to avoid getting hit east of Kandahar by what its crew chief identified as a portable missile.

The documents also report potential Iranian support of an Afghan terrorist group.

They said that on Jan. 30, 2005, Iranian intelligence agencies brought the equivalent of $212,800 in Afghan currency across the Iranian border and transferred it to a 1990s-model white Toyota Corolla station wagon occupied by members of Hizb-i-Islami, a Taliban-allied insurgent group led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The money trail was lost.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need "days, if not weeks" to determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the release of documents was just the beginning. He told reporters in London that some 15,000 more files on Afghanistan were still being vetted by his organization.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unflinching view of combat operations between 2004 and 2009, including U.S. frustration over reports that Pakistan secretly aided insurgents fighting U.S. and Afghan forces.

The material portrays Pakistan as playing a double game when it came to the struggle against Afghan militants, with security officials secretly providing insurgents with aid. Both the U.S. and Pakistan say that view is outdated, but one American analyst said it probably is correct.

"The Pakistan government gave up claiming that it could control its intelligence agencies around the time they invented them. I don't think they even try," said Paula R. Newberg, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the leaked documents "misplaced, skewed and contrary to the factual position on the ground." And it said that U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation against "our common enemies" will continue.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley argued that there is a "new dynamic" in the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan since the period covered by the leaked documents. He acknowledged, however, that the U.S. remains concerned about weaknesses in the relationship, including the problem of corruption in the Afghan government.

"These documents highlight issues we've long known about," Crowley said.

WikiLeaks, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted the reports to its website Sunday night. It did not say who provided the documents.

Crowley said it was unclear whether the leak was related to a U.S. military intelligence analyst who is being held in Kuwait, on charges of mishandling classified information on military computers in Baghdad.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the documents released so far "reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground."

The Taliban's resurgence led Obama to announce in December 2009 a major increase of forces to Afghanistan as part of a new civil-military strategy, Lieberman pointed out.

Shortly after the documents were posted on the Internet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they raised questions about whether the U.S. was pursuing a realistic policy with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said they showed the urgency of making the "calibrations" necessary "to get the policy right."

Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the leak disturbing.

"The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won't stop until we see more perpetrators in orange jump suits," Bond said.

The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.

• Coalition commanders hid civilian deaths, war logs reveal
• US, Afghanistan and Pakistan trade angry accusations
• Leak poses 'very real threat' to US forces - White House

Tensions between the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan were further strained today after the leak of thousands of military documents about the Afghan war.

As members of the US Congress raised questions about Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban, officials in Islamabad and Kabul also traded angry accusations on the same issue.

Further disclosures reveal more evidence of attempts by coalition commanders to cover up civilian casualties in the conflict.

The details emerge from more than 90,000 secret US military files, covering six years of the war, which caused a worldwide uproar when they were leaked yesterday.

The war logs show how a group of US marines who went on a shooting rampage after coming under attack near Jalalabad in 2007 recorded false information about the incident, in which they killed 19 unarmed civilians and wounded a further 50.

In another case that year, the logs detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000lb guided bombs on a compound where they believed a "high-value individual" was hiding, after "ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area". Locals said more than 20 villagers were killed in the bombing, including an eight-year-old boy.

Other files in the secret archive reveal:

• Coalition commanders received numerous intelligence reports about the whereabouts and activity of Osama bin Laden between 2004 and 2009, even though the CIA chief has said there has been no precise information about the al-Qaida leader since 2003.

• The hopelessly ineffective attempts of US troops to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.

• How a notorious criminal was appointed chief of police in the south-western province of Farrah.

Speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club in central London yesterday, Julian Assange, of Wikileaks, the website which initially published the war logs, said: "It is up to a court to decide clearly whether something is in the end a crime. That said, on the face of it, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material."

Four days after it was first approached by the Guardian, the British Ministry of Defence said it was still unable to give an account of two questionable clusters of civilian shootings by British troops detailed in the American logs.

They were alleged to have taken place in Kabul in a month in 2007 when a detachment of the Coldstream Guards was patrolling, and in the southern province of Helmand during a six-month tour of duty by Royal Marine commandos at the end of 2008. The MoD said: "We are currently examining our records to establish the facts in the alleged civilian casualty incidents raised."

The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that the leaked documents could "poison the atmosphere in Afghanistan" but at the same time insisted they would not affect British troops:

Writing in the Guardian, Eric Joyce, a former soldier and parliamentary aide to the former Labour defence secretary Bob Ainsworth, described the leaked documents as a "game changer", adding that some of the questions raised were "stunning in their enormity".

The former Liberal Democrat leader and spokesman on defence and foreign affairs, Sir Menzies Campbell, said the documents showed how difficult it would be for UK troops to leave Afghanistan in 2015, the date set by David Cameron.

"The leaked documents show just how awesome the task will be to bring the Afghan police and army to a condition where they can be responsible for security," said Campbell.

Amnesty International called for reforms to the recording of civilian casualties after a row broke out over an incident in which the Afghan government says 45 villagers were killed in a rocket attack. The coalition disputes that it was responsible. Amnesty called on Nato "to provide a clear, unified system of accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan".

Daniel Ellsberg compared the publication of the war logs to the Pentagon Papers, which he leaked to the New York Times in 1971. "The Pentagon Papers did not stop or even affect the war but affected public opinion a great deal. Are we really going to do better with another $300bn [spent on the war in Afghanistan] on more bombs, more special forces, more drones? The Taliban are not going to quit."

The director of the military thinktank the Royal United Services Institute, Professor Michael Clarke, said in London: "There is no doubt that the leaks are politically pretty damaging. The papers give an impression of a lack of military discrimination in how operations were conducted."

The Pentagon said it was conducting an investigation into whether information in the logs placed coalition forces or their informants in danger.

Last night President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, claimed the logs published by the Wikileaks website posed "a very real threat" to US forces: "It's not the content … there are names, there are operations, there are sources, all of that information out in the public domain has the potential to do harm."

The Guardian was allowed to investigate the logs for several weeks ahead of publication, along with the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel. The three have published excerpts from the documents which do not pose a risk to informants or military operations.

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency is accused repeatedly in the leaked Afghan war logs of supporting the insurgency

Pakistan's spy agency today dismissed as "unsubstantiated raw intelligence" claims in the leaked war logs that it was supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is accused repeatedly in the logs by coalition commanders of directing insurgent attacks or planning operations, though there is little evidence to to substantiate many of the most sensational allegations.

An ISI official said: "In the intelligence world, preliminary and final reports are two different things. Only once something is collaborated from multiple sources does it become a credible piece of information.

"The majority of these [documents] are preliminary reports, and they are mostly from Afghan intelligence, so you can imagine their credibility."

Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who is extensively cited in the documents as meeting and aiding the Taliban, reacted furiously, calling the material "a pack of lies, a fairly tale".

He denied having any contact with the Taliban, though he was happy to voice his moral support for them. "They are targeting Pakistan. I'm just the whipping boy," said Gul, who led the agency from 1987 to 1989.

"If a 74-year-old sitting in a small house in Rawalpindi is instrumental in defeating the world's biggest power, I don't mind if they say that. But it will put to shame American posterity."

Gul, who lives close to the military headquarters at Rawalpindi, offered to fly to the UK to answer the allegations, as long as it was done in public ("no Guantanamo"). But he added that he had been banned from the UK since November 2000. Though Gul retired from the military back in 1991, he is frequently accused of remaining active, along with other former intelligence officers, in a "shadow ISI".

"This is akin to Saddam Hussein having the bomb in the closet and Colin Powell telling the world about it," Gul added, referring to the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq put by the former US secretary of state.

Pakistan's foreign ministry in Islamabad called the leaks "far-fetched and skewed". Spokesman Abdul Basitsaid: "Pakistan's constructive and positive role in Afghanistan cannot be blighted by such self-serving and baseless reports."

The ISI, the Pakistani military's principal spy agency, has been deeply involved in Afghan affairs since the beginning of the 1980s, when it worked with the CIA to back an Islamist mujahideen uprising against the Soviet invasion.

The allegations come at an awkward time for Islamabad and the west. Last week, the government reappointed the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, to lead the military for another three years. Kayani previously led the ISI. The US has also just announced $500m (£320m) of civilian aid projects for Pakistan.

"The documents circulated by Wikileaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani said. "The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaida and its Taliban allies militarily and politically."

Kayani led the ISI from 2004 to 2007 before being appointed army chief, a period documented in many of the leaks as one of close collaboration between the insurgents and the ISI.

Respected as a soldier and a secular general, Kayani's supporters say he is determined to fight Islamist extremism. But the extension of Kayani's service exposed the weakness of the civilian government, which did not wish to grant him three more years. Analysts believe the government could not force Pakistan's military, which has ruled the country for most of its existence, to change its policy towards Afghanistan or investigate Afghan actions.

"We have a political establishment that does not have the authority to engage the military," said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc. "We don't have the mean to know how deeply the agency (ISI) was involved. All intelligence agencies have contacts.

"The leaks put pressure on Kayani, tell him what the Americans want him to do. But he also faces pressure from the rest of the [Pakistani] military high command. He is being embarrassed in front of his generals. He's caught in the middle."

Pakistan's critics have consistently questioned whether the country is ally or foe in the battle in Afghanistan. The truth appears, to many, that it has played both sides. Pakistan's military nurtured the Taliban in the mid-90s as a force to bring stability to Afghanistan and keep out the influence of its arch-enemy, India.

With uncertainly about the strength of the West's commitment to Afghanistan, the ISI has hedged its bets. "No amount of money, threats, incentives ... nothing can make the Pakistan army do something it doesn't see in its national interest," said Mosharraf Zaidi, a newspaper columnist based in Islamabad. "The Taliban are genetically an extension of the Pakistani security establishment. Those links have never been severed."

Behind-the-scenes help of the Taliban includes training, medical treatment and bribes

Iran is engaged in an extensive covert campaign to arm, finance, train and equip Taliban insurgents, Afghan warlords allied to al-Qaida and suicide bombers fighting to eject British and western forces from Afghanistan, according to classified US military intelligence reports contained in the war logs.

The secret "threat reports", mostly comprising raw data provided by Afghan spies and paid informants, cannot be corroborated individually. Even if the claims are accurate, it is unclear whether the activities they describe took place with the full knowledge of Tehran or are the work of hardline elements of the semi-autonomous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ideological sympathisers of the Taliban, arms smugglers or criminal gangs.

The Iranian government has repeatedly denied accusations that it is aiding militants fighting to oust President Hamid Karzai's pro-western government. It blames the presence of western forces for Afghanistan's instability.

Summaries of classified diplomatic cables produced by the US embassy in Kabul, contained in the war logs, reveal high-level concern about Tehran's growing political influence in Afghanistan. Senior US and Afghan officials appear at a loss over how to counter Iran's alleged bribery and manipulation of opposition parties and MPs whom Afghan government officials dismiss as Tehran's "puppets".

If the war logs are to be believed, Iranian involvement in Afghanistan has steadily widened from 2004 to today, amid record levels of military and civilian casualties and spreading violence.

A threat report originated by Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) headquarters in February 2005, covering Regional Command South, classified secret, says for example that Taliban leaders and former officials of the Taliban government toppled by the US in 2001 are planning a series of attacks in Helmand and Uruzgan provinces.

"This joint group currently resides in Iran. The group consists of eight main leaders, all of whom travel with seven bodyguards," the report says. "The leaders travel into Afghanistan to recruit soldiers … Initially, the joint group will attack NGOs and GOA [government of Afghanistan] officials … If these attacks are successful, they will start to attack US forces. The group will use hit-and-run tactics using AK-47 assault rifles and IEDs."

In addition, the report claims: "The Iranian government has offered each member of the group 100,000 rupees ($1,740) for any Afghan soldier killed and 200,000 rupees ($3,481) for any government official."

In January 2005 it is reported that Iranian intelligence has delivered 10 million Afghanis ($212,000) to a location on Iran's border. In the language of the war logs, "Iranian intelligence" usually appears to be a reference to Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami – the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

"The money was transferred to a 1990s model white Toyota Corolla station wagon … hidden with various foodstuffs. The Corolla was occupied by four members of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin [HIG] terrorist organisation [the al-Qaida-allied militia led by the former mujahideen leader and notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar]. The money was transported to an unknown location," it is claimed.

The war logs refer to other covert Iranian or Iranian-backed activities. Whether they carry official blessing is unclear. In June 2006 it is reported that two Iranian "secret service" officers have arrived in Syahgerd village in Parwan province with false Afghan identities. The two have been previously spotted in Kabul. Their cover names are provided. Abdul Jalil is about 37 and has a "short black beard"; Ahmaddin is about 25, "tall, white complexion, long hair and brown eyes".

The report, sourced to "humint" (human intelligence), continues: "These two Iranians are tasked to instigate local Afghan people into making propaganda against the Afghan government authorities and CF [coalition forces] members. Also they are helping HIG and Taliban members in carrying out terrorist attacks against the Afghan governmental authorities and CF members, especially against the American forces." No evidence is offered to corroborate this statement.

This report also claims: "In Birjand, Iran, there is an important base where Iranian officials train Taliban and HIG members. From that location they use [sic] to send to Afghanistan explosive devices and vehicles ready to be used as SVBIEDs [suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices]."

This is not the first time Iranian links to IEDs and suicide bombings have been alleged. In May 2006, a report from "Source NY-9013" claims Hekmatyar's men are equipping 200 vehicles to deliver IEDs after having bought the cars in Pakistan and Iran. "HIG members in Pakistan provide the remote control devices for these cars." In April, 2008, the Taliban are said to have received Iranian-made parts for 20 remote-controlled IEDs to be used against the British in Sangin.

If the war logs intelligence is to be believed, Iran is also ready to host Taliban leaders and their men, to offer treatment if they are injured in the fighting and act as a conduit for foreign insurgents anxious to join the fray. A report marked secret, and dated September 2005 , lists a number of Taliban commanders who have gathered in Mashhad, Iran, supposedly to plan future attacks. Another in October 2006 claims Iranians have "provided support on the ground by organising transports for injured people [meaning Taliban fighters] to Tehran". No corroboration is offered.

In March 2009 military intelligence reports that a party of more than 100 Afghan and foreign-born Taliban, including 15 Chechen fighters, have moved from Iran into Afghanistan with the intention of launching suicide attacks. In May 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the then US and Nato commander, appears to refer specifically to this intelligence finding. "The training [of insurgents] that we have seen occurs inside Iran with fighters moving inside Iran," he said.

If some of the more creative reports are to be believed, Iranian subversion also extends to alleged plans to slip poison into the tea of Afghan government officials, supposedly a tidier method of assassination than suicide bombs; and the fomenting of political unrest in the relatively stable northern provinces.

Summaries of US embassy diplomatic cables and situation assessments contained and distributed through the war logs offer firmer ground than some of the raw intelligence data, given that they are evidently written by American officials and represent an official record, or official evaluation, of high-level meetings.

The cables reveal deep concerns among the western allies and Karzai's government about Tehran's parallel attempt to extend its political leverage in Afghanistan, in part by allegedly proffering lavish bribes.

The cables include accounts of consultations between British Foreign Office officials and senior US counterparts such as Eliot Cohen, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's then special regional representative, the Pentagon's Eric Edelman, and former US ambassador to Kabul Ronald Neumann. They discuss, among other things, how best to handle Karzai and promote national reconciliation without talking to the Taliban.

"Over the past several months Iran has taken a series of steps to expand and deepen its influence," says a secret cable sourced to the US embassy in Kabul and written in May 2007 by CSTC-A DCG for Pol-Mil Affairs [combined security transition command deputy commanding general for political and military affairs]. The cable cites the creation of the opposition National Front and National Unity Council, which it claims are under Iranian influence.

These worries notwithstanding, the cables also reflect the Afghan government's continuing perception that it must maintain friendly relations with Iran, in order to "marginalise" pro-Iranian groups in the country but also because of its own chronic weakness.

A "non-combat event" intelligence report dated April 2007 says that "the [Afghan] ministry of foreign affairs [MFA] wants to keep the issue of the Iranian-made weapons recently found in Kandahar under the radar screen in the lead-up to the visit of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Afghanistan. According to MFA, President Karzai supports the plan to avoid additional friction with Afghanistan's neighbours". Anxious to avoid more problems with Karzai, the US apparently agrees to play along.

An Afghan official has claimed that a top Taliban official with close ties to Mullah Omar was detained during a raid in Ghazni province.

Mullah Abdul Hai Motma'in, a former Taliban spokesman in Kandahar province as well as the head of the Culture and Information Ministry during Taliban rule, is said to have been detained by Afghan and Coalition forces, according to reports in two Afghan news outlets today.

Sher Khan, the district governor of Andar in Ghazni, told Bakhtar News that Motma'in was likely detained along with two Taliban commanders known as Bismillah and Qadeem. Benawa, a prominent Pashto website, also reported that Motma'in was captured.

But, during an interview with Benawa, a Taliban commander who identified himself as Mullah Fateh denied that Motma'in was in custody. Fateh said that Motma'in was not in Ghazni province at the time of the raid.

US military and intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not comment on the status of Motma'in. ISAF stated today that two Taliban operatives were detained during a raid in Gelan district, but did not identify Motma'in.

The Andar district in Ghazni is a known Taliban and al Qaeda hub in the southeast. The US military has conducted seven raids against al Qaeda cells in Andar since October 2008, according to ISAF press reports compiled by The Long War Journal. Senior Taliban and al Qaeda foreign fighter facilitators are known to operate in the district.

Motma'in may be a member of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, its executive decision-making council, due to his close ties to Mullah Omar. The Quetta Shura is based in the Pakistani city of the same name, but many of its leaders, including Mullah Omar, are said to have relocated to the Pakistani city of Karachi, under the eye of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

Over the past seven months, Pakistan has detained several senior members of the Quetta Shura, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the shura's director; and Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the former leader of Peshawar Regional Military Council, one of four major commands. But Pakistan's motives in detaining the Afghan Taliban commanders remain unclear, as other leaders are known to operate in the open.

The Taliban have quickly filled the vacant leadership positions. Baradar was replaced by two commanders, Mullah Abdul Qayum Zakir and Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour. Zakir, the Taliban's former surge commander in the south as well as a former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, is now the top military leader. Mansour, the former Minister of Civil Aviation and Transportation and shadow governor of Kandahar, now handles the Taliban's administrative and financial affairs.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai poses with international representatives take part in a group photograph at the conclusion of the International Conference on Afghanistan at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Kabul on July 20, 2010 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday reaffirmed his commitment for Afghan police and soldiers to take charge of security nationwide by 2014 and urged his international backers to distribute more of their development aid through the government.

Karzai spoke at a one-day international conference on Afghanistan's future that comes at a critical juncture: NATO and Afghan forces have launched a major operation to drive the Taliban out of their strongholds, and the insurgents are pushing back. Rockets fired at the Kabul airport Tuesday forced the diversion of a plane carrying U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Sweden's foreign minister.

Wearing a traditional striped robe and peaked fur hat, Karzai said that Afghanistan and its Western allies share "a vicious common enemy." But, he said, victory will come in giving Afghans as much responsibility as possible in combatting the insurgency within its borders. He was flanked by international diplomats including Ban and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I remain determined that our Afghan national security forces will be responsible for all military and law enforcement operations throughout our country by 2014" — more than three years after President Barack Obama's date for the start of an American troop drawdown, Karzai said.

Karzai's reference to a "vicious enemy" appeared at odds with his recent more reconciliatory stance toward the Taliban and willingness to hold peace talks to end the nearly nine-year war amid growing recognition that the insurgents are unlikely to be defeated militarily.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance will never allow the Taliban to topple the government of Afghanistan. "Our mission will end when — but only when — the Afghans are able to maintain security on their own," he said.

The prolonged conflict has hobbled development in the impoverished country, and Karzai expressed Tuesday his government's desire to take charge of more of its affairs. He asked his international partners to channel 50 percent of their foreign assistance through the government within two years, and align 80 percent of their projects with priorities that have been identified by Afghans.

"It is time to concentrate our efforts on a limited number of national programs and projects to transform the lives of our people, reinforce the social compact between the state and the citizens," Karzai said. "Let us together focus less on short-term projects."

Since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, 77 percent of the $29 billion in international aid spent in Afghanistan has been disbursed on projects with little or no input from the government, according to the Afghan Finance Ministry. That figure does not include funds for the training of security forces.

Many donor countries, and particularly the United States, have been reluctant to give an Afghan government infamous for corruption and bloated bureaucracy authority over funds — and so distribute most of their aid through international development groups or contractors. It is widely believed that graft feeds frustration with the Afghan government and boosts support for the insurgency.

Clinton noted that Karzai's administration had taken steps to fight corruption, but said more needed to be done.

"There are no short-cuts to fighting corruption and improving governance," she said. "On this front, both the Afghan people and the people of the international community expect results."

Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing American troops in July 2011. Though he has stressed the timetable is dependent on security conditions, it has raised concerns in Afghanistan and the region that the U.S. is eager to exit the war.

Delegates will endorse the 2014 goal for Afghans to take charge of security, according to a draft conference communique obtained by The Associated Press — a reminder that Western countries expect to retain forces in Afghanistan for years to come. Even after the government takes over control of nationwide security, there will likely still be a large presence of international troops. Local forces formally took over security in the capital in 2008, for instance, but NATO troops continue to patrol its streets.

A military push in southern Afghanistan has seen violence and casualties rise in recent months. June was the deadliest month for U.S. and international forces with the deaths of 103 service members, including 60 Americans.

In the latest violence, a NATO service member was killed Tuesday in a bomb attack in the south. NATO said the dead service member was not American but did not provide the nationality or details on the death.

Also, a suicide bomber struck downtown Kandahar city, hiding explosives in a cart topped with bottles of juice for sale, said Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the head of security for the provincial police force. The explosion blasted out the windows of a handful of shops and injured two civilians, Sherzad said. The attacker's legless body lay on the ground in front of one of the shops.

It was not immediately clear if the bomber had a specific target.

Security forces virtually shut down Kabul for the conference. Police added checkpoints throughout the already heavily fortified city and closed major intersections to traffic.

Even so, rockets fire prevented a plane carrying Ban and Sweden's Carl Bildt from landing at the airport Tuesday morning, officials said.

"Rockets hit the airport just as we were on our way to land," Bildt wrote on his blog. The plane was diverted to the U.S. Bagram base, outside Kabul, then the diplomats traveled aboard Blackhawk helicopters to the capital, Bildt said. The Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed the account.

NATO forces confirmed rockets hit around the city overnight but would not say where.

Afghan and international forces raided a compound on the outskirts of Kabul on Monday night, killing several insurgents who were believed to be planning an attack on the conference, NATO forces said in a statement.

The international military coalition said its forces came under fire from men who were barricaded inside buildings in the compound. The statement said two people were arrested in the operation but not how many were killed. Spokeswoman Lt. Commander Katie Kendrick also declined to say how many people were killed in the operation.

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (Associated Press) - At an international conference on Tuesday, the Afghan government will ask donors to put 80 percent of aid money behind programs that the Afghans -- not foreign capitals -- deem important to development.

It's a high-stakes meeting for the Kabul government, which wants to show the world leaders attending that it's making strides toward running its own affairs.

Displaying a new streak of independence, Afghan officials are seeking to take the driver's seat to guide their nation out of three decades of conflict. Having spent billions and lost so many troops in nearly nine years of war, the international community remains uneasy about letting go of the wheel. Still, the U.S. and other donor nations believe that strengthening the Afghan government is the only way to end their military involvement in Afghanistan.

"If after the Kabul Conference, we do not embark on the delivery of the things that we promised to deliver, then the donors as well as everybody else has every right to complain about us and tell us we are not serious," said Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal.

Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan who is co-chairing the meeting, said there is much work to be done to increase the capacity of the Afghan government. "The ministers know it ... we all know it," he said. He called the conference a historic opportunity for the Afghan government to renew its commitment to the people of Afghanistan. "Realignment will not be overnight," he said. "It will be a process."

Zakhilwal and other key Afghan ministers, working with sparse staffs, have spent weeks writing papers, outlining a plan of action with benchmarks for agriculture, reintegrating insurgents back into society and economic and social development.

They are not only battling international skepticism, but must also prove themselves to the Afghan public who have little trust in their government.

The conference is "useless," said Bissullah, a 43-year-old man from the north end of Kabul who goes by only one name. "I am not hopeful that this conference is going to benefit us in any way."

Afghan lawmaker and political analyst Shukria Barekzai in the capital called the Kabul conference just another international meeting.

"They are only speaking about nice and wonderful reports and big promises," she said. "We, as a nation, are tired of the lip service. We are tired of having more casualties. We are tired of living in war."

Thousands of Afghan soldiers and police have been deployed to secure the capital during the one-day meeting. Officials worry that Tuesday's conference will draw a repeat of the violence seen at national peace conference in May when two militants were killed in a gunbattle with security forces and a rocket landed with a thud about 100 yards (meters) from the meeting site.

Just before noon on Sunday, a suicide bombing near a market killed three civilians and wounded dozens. On Friday night, a combined international and Afghan commando force captured a Taliban bomb-making expert in the capital.

Workers were busy sprucing up the city on Sunday, picking up trash, planting flowers and painting curbs red and white. A large banner has been hung near the airport to welcome U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and delegations from more than 60 nations plus a host of other diplomats and representatives from international organizations.

The conference comes at a critical juncture in the war. NATO and Afghan forces are moving into areas controlled by the Taliban, and the insurgents are pushing back. June was the deadliest month for U.S. and international forces with the deaths of 103 service members, including 60 Americans.

In his inaugural address in November 2009, Karzai said Afghan security forces should take the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country by the end of 2014.

While those attending the conference are expected to adopt a paper that outlines how this turnover will occur, they were not expected to agree on where or exactly when Afghan forces would take over from coalition forces in certain provinces, said Mark Sedwill, the top civilian official with the NATO force.

The NATO summit in November in Lisbon, Portugal, is the earliest that the Afghan and international community will be looking to identify provinces where transition can begin to occur sometime in 2011, Sedwill said.

But readying Afghan security forces for such a handover is only part of the challenge in Afghanistan; the government must also take on more responsibility.

Since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, 77 percent of the $29 billion in international aid spent in Afghanistan has been disbursed on projects with little or no input from Afghan government officials, according to the Afghan Ministry of Finance's 2009 donor financial review.

While grateful for massive international aid, Afghan officials lament that money spent since 2001sometimes has financed temporary programs or unsustainable projects that will not make a long-term difference in the daily lives of Afghan citizens.

At a January meeting in London, donor nations agreed to increase the amount of development aid delivered through the Afghan government to 50 percent in two years.

On Tuesday, Karzai will ask the international community to restate this commitment and to align at least 80 percent of development and governance assistance over the next two years to a list of more than 20 national priority programs being introduced at the conference.

In return, for getting foreign assistance directed to Afghan priorities, Karzai's government will pledge among other things to improve its financial management system, improve collection of revenues, fight corruption and adopt policies governing bulk cash transfers, according to a draft of the conference communique obtained by The Associated Press.

"The Afghans have made progress in some areas, there are other areas where they are going to make commitments," said Sedwill, the top civilian NATO official. "There are other areas where all of us would have like to see more achieved. "

But Sedwill said there are several areas that the international area has to address too, especially in the way it awards contracts, which both sides acknowledge has contributed to waste and corruption. The U.S. and NATO have set up anti-corruption task forces to address complaints that massive international contracts have led to too much subcontracting, which leaves little at the end for the Afghan people and undermines efforts to build up the Afghan government and private sector.

This week's installment of AfPak Behind the Lines covers southern Afghanistan's power brokers, border with Pakistan, and coalition operations with journalist Anand Gopal.

1. Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother, is a well-known and controversial power broker in southern Afghanistan. Aside from him, who are the other major players in the area? What are their relationships with the Afghan central government and the coalition, the insurgency, and each other?

Ahmed Wali gets most of the attention, and rightfully so, but there are in fact a host of other important figures in the southern Afghanistan scene. In the early years after 2001, the south was dominated by three formidable governors: Sher Ahmed Akhundzada of Helmand, Jan Muhammad Khan of Uruzgan and Gul Agha Sherzai of Kandahar. They were former mujahedeen commanders who were ousted when the Taliban came to power in the mid-nineties and subsequently reinstated following the U.S. invasion. All three had poor governance records and were repeatedly accused of human rights violations, exploiting tribal tensions, drug trafficking, running private militias, and more. In fact, many Afghans maintain that these men, and their associates, were partly responsible for fueling popular resentment towards the government and creating space for the Taliban's resurgence. 

While the three were eventually removed from their positions by 2007, they continue to attempt to project their influence in southern affairs today. [[BREAK]]A number of Jan Muhammad Khan loyalists staff government positions in Uruzgan, and his relative Matiullah Khan runs a powerful militia that commands the highway between Kandahar city and Uruzgan's capital Tirin Kot, a key supply route for foreign forces in the area. Ahmed Wali Karzai has long eclipsed Gul Agha Sherzai as the most important power broker in Kandahar, but Sherzai still maintains an influential network in the province through his brothers, who have been heavily involved in securing U.S. and NATO logistics and security contracts. He also wields influence through loyal commanders, who maintain militias in areas such as Dand district near Kandahar city. Some of these militias are nominally part of the Afghan National Police, although their true loyalty lies with Sherzai. Only Sher Ahmed Akhundzada, the former Helmand governor, seems to have had his influence nearly eliminated in recent years, although his loyalists have been trying (thus far without success) to win leverage in the new government in Marjah. 

In addition to these there are a number of smaller players who are important on a sub-provincial level. One example is Abdul Razzik, the commander of the border police in Spin Boldak, Kandahar, who exerts considerable authority in the area and is believed to profit significantly from cross-border trade and smuggling. Another is a commander named Rohullah, whose militia protects military convoys in the eastern part of Kandahar. 

All of these warlords and commanders enjoy a close relationship with the international troops -- in fact, it is largely through contracts and political support from the coalition forces that they became who they are today. Yet they have also been responsible for alienating many Afghans from the government, quite the opposite of the internationals' stated goals. Their relationship with the central Afghan government tends to be more fraught, on the other hand. For instance, Kabul has repeatedly tried to bring Matiullah Khan and his highway militia fully under the control of the Ministry of Interior, but to no avail. 

2. Kandahar shares a long border with Pakistan's Baluchistan province. What is the relationship between Pakistani and Afghan militants in southern Afghanistan, and how does the Chaman border checkpoint function on daily basis?

The majority of the Taliban-affiliated militants in Baluchistan are Afghan, along with some locals from tribes that straddle the border. While the area may be used by the Pakistani Taliban and other Pakistani Islamist groups as a transit corridor into southern Afghanistan, the province's role is primarily as a rear staging ground and safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. Although the Afghan Taliban's leadership rarely meets in one place and is scattered throughout Pakistan, a number of important figures from the group live in Quetta or in the refugee camps and small towns around it. Moreover, many field commanders from southern Afghanistan and other Taliban "bureaucrats" -- functionaries and mid-level figures who are involved in finances and other organizational work --maintain homes and offices in the area.

The Afghan Taliban have received assistance from Islamist Pakistani political parties, such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazal-ur-Rahman) and similar groups, which have provided shelter, logistics and even recruits at times. But beyond this there appear to be few connections between Pakistani insurgent groups and the Afghans in Baluchistan. In fact, neither the Pakistani Taliban nor any major Punjabi militant group appears to have a major presence in the province. Occasionally the Pakistani Taliban will distribute night letters or propaganda in Quetta, but for the most part they are confined to other parts of Pakistan. As the Pakistani militants come under military pressure in the tribal areas, however, it is possible that more of them could look to take refuge in Baluchistan. 

Large numbers of people and goods cross Chaman on a daily basis, much of it unregulated. The Afghan Taliban are active on both sides of the main border crossing there. They, like everyone else in the area, are involved in cross-border smuggling and drug trafficking. Moreover, there are some important Taliban commanders based in Chaman, who are there probably both for military and business purposes. 

3. Special Operations forces carry out an average of five raids per day, mostly in southern Afghanistan, one result of which is that the average age of Taliban fighters has dropped from mid-40s to mid-20s, according to the New York Times. What impact does this demographic change have on the insurgency, and what other effects does the increase in operations have?

This is quite a significant development for a number of reasons. First, the Taliban have taken a major hit from these raids and in some villages it has even thrown the group into temporary disarray. Local groups in some areas have been forced to completely alter their daily rhythms and in these places some locals say that the commanders no longer even sleep in the villages. Second, in some cases they have recently lost some able and experienced field commanders, fighters who have been with the movement since the nineties or earlier. The replacements are much younger than their predecessors and often from an entirely different generation. They tend to be more radical and less connected to or affected by the traditional levers of control in Afghan society, such authority of elders or kinship ties. This means that they are often more heavy-handed with the population than their predecessors. Third, the new generation is much harder for the Taliban's leadership to control. The older generation had more direct experience with the leadership, especially if they were active during the nineties' Taliban government. Some of the older members in Kandahar have even fought alongside some figures in the Quetta leadership, but the new generation has no such experience and often no interest in following orders that they don't agree with.

The overall effect could be that it becomes harder to negotiate with the Taliban or convince insurgents in the field to join the government's side. As time goes on and the demographic of the local-level leadership continues to change in this direction, we could be in a situation some years from now where the Taliban leadership's ability to enforce any agreement on its members is greatly diminished. On the flip side, if this trend continues it also likely means that the insurgency will grow less popular and legitimate in the population's eyes, creating much-needed space for the internationals and the Afghan government to try and win them over. In such a scenario the key will be whether the foreigners and the Kabul can provide security and governance, which as we've seen over the last eight years is easier said than done. 

Anand Gopal is a journalist currently based in Afghanistan, and the co-author of a New America Foundation ‘Battle for Pakistan' paper on militancy and conflict in North Waziristan.

Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 2 pm. I welcome your additions and comments below or please send suggestions for Wednesday's Top 10 at 10 via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz

1. The squeaky (old) wheel gets the health grease - Gareth Morgan comments in the NZHerald on the coming competition for public funds in the health sector and how the winners will be those who shout loudest, rather than those who should get it. This will become a debate we hear a lot more about. As competition for scarce public funds become more intense, allocation decisions will get political very fast. And guess who will win? The baby-boomers, who have a lot more clout...for now.

Because of the lack of a coherent and consistent framework for allocating resources - across conditions, patients and regions - we have an ugly situation where the loudest get served first. Put bluntly, it's an obscene abuse of universal health care.

Politicians tried, of course, to implement a rationing system via then-health minister Simon Upton's ill-fated core services committee of 1992, but its approach - to ask the public what it wanted the public health system to provide - was as flawed as asking an infant in a candy shop which sweeties they wanted. They wanted it all and they wanted it now - what a surprise.

Over the subsequent 18 years the problem hasn't gone away; there are still unmet health needs despite the boom in health sector spending. And the official forecasts are for that demand to keep soaring so the health spend rises from 9.6c in every dollar earned (GDP) to 18c.

Morgan then dips his toe into some hot political water and asks the question about rationing which no politician will even ask let alone try to answer. Good on Gareth.

In a world where all needs cannot be met, society has to decide what "greatest need" is. How do you decide between a 92-year-old and a 10-year-old in need of the same knee operation? Personally they both have equal need so that gets you nowhere, and the limited resources mean you have to make the choice. The 92-year-old has paid more taxes, the 10-year-old has more taxes to contribute, so that doesn't help decide either.

But we must make a decision, we must decide who it will be. This is the reality facing society and the reality several generations of politicians have run away from. The answer is very clear but we must have the courage to declare and stick to it. The 10-year-old gets the nod because from this point of time society will benefit more from them being fixed - they have far more quality-adjusted life-years to contribute to society than the 92-year-old has.

From society's perspective it's a no-brainer investment.

At least if it was clear, everyone would know that their entitlements would be diminishing as they age and so they would plan for that in their financial affairs. They would insure or self-insure or accept that being able to do the high jump when you're 92 is unrealistic.

But we're guilt-ridden; as a society we are too gutless to make that decision explicit. So we abdicate that responsibility and leave it to the ad hoc process, outlined above, to make it for us. The squeaky wheels get their heads in the trough and leave it dry for those without those advocates.

There is nothing equitable about that, nor is it anything that society should be proud of. It has to be changed

2. No bank tax - Ian Verrender at the Sydney Morning Herald makes the point that Australian bank lobbyists have won some big gains from the Australian government in recent weeks, including getting the Australians to work with the Canadians to put the kibosh on the idea of a global bank tax at the G20.

It is with some surprise that the federal government, facing an election and desperately keen to shore up a budget deficit, leapt in to the frontline to oppose the tax. Perhaps it figured taking on one powerful opponent was more than enough.

Swan successfully argued that a global policy was not appropriate. Australia's banking system had emerged not just intact from the crisis of 2008-09 but with rude good health. Taxpayer funds hadn't been used to bail them out.

3. 'We trashed a wonderful inheritance' - British baby-boomer Francis Beckett writes at The Guardian's excellent Comment is Free site about how politically powerful Baby Boomers are loading debt onto their children so they can have a nice life now. HT Rob Mackintosh via email.

Beckett makes a wider point about how today's Baby Boomers are actually more restrictive on their children than their own parents.

Not sure I agree with it, but interesting change in the tone of the debate. He also makes a potent point about the Vietnam War vs the Afghan and Iraq wars.

We are the first generation in which pretty well everyone can read and write fairly fluently. We had the freedom that comes from not having to fear starvation if your employer fires you: there were other jobs to go to, and a welfare state to fall back on. These things made possible the freedom of the 60s. And what did we do with this wonderful inheritance? We trashed it.

We created a far harsher world for our children to grow up in. It was as though we decided that the freedom and lack of worry which we had inherited was too good for our children, and we pulled up the ladder we had climbed. Most capital expenditure for education and health no longer comes from the present-day taxpayer, but from the next generation, because the baby boomers have been too stingy to pay for it.

This trick is done by means of the private finance initiative (PFI), a scam for getting the cost of public buildings such as schools and hospitals off the present government's books, and placing them on the books of governments 10 or 20 years hence. Harold Wilson saved the baby boomers from having to fight alongside young Americans in Vietnam.

When the baby boomer generation formed a government, its prime minister, Tony Blair, told lies to the young so that he could send them to fight alongside the Americans in Iraq. Opinion polls show that the now elderly baby boomers will use their increasing voting power to ensure that when the bad times come, the young are hit first, even though it is by a chancellor of the exchequer who was not even born until the 60s were over.

4. Mr Elliott Wave waves us lower - Bob Prechter's prediction yesterday of a massive slump in global stocks in line with his Elliott Wave theory certainly got people talking. Here's more, including a juicy chart. Click on the chart or this link to go to a fuller link to the embedded videos.

5. 'It's who you know in China' - John Garnaut from the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Chinese-Australian citizen Stern Hu is behind bars in China, convicted of taking bribes, while the well connected Chinese businessmen who paid the bribes are out and about buying a golf course north of Beijing. Garnaut's story is well worth a read for those wondering what really goes on behind the scenes in Chinese political/business circles, which are circles we will need to know and love in coming years.

Since admitting to bribing Rio Tinto's Wang Yong to the tune of $US10 million ($11.9 million), mostly via Macau casinos, the billionaire Du Shuanghua has not only avoided prosecution and indulged his passion for golf but also reversed the Shandong government's theft of his Rizhao Steel factory and set up a 3 billion yuan ($525 billion) private-equity construction fund.

At one stage it had looked like Du - worth 35 billion yuan in 2008 and a business partner of the cousin of the President, Hu Jintao, in Hong Kong - had been set up as one of the key targets of this investigation. It is now clear that he paid his bets wisely and has come out in front. In fact there has not been so much as a slap on the wrist for any of the 20 steel makers and traders on the bribe-paying list.

One year on, the Rio Tinto case shows how China can be simultaneously more sinister, more complicated and less effective than imagined.

6. Rising funding costs - The Australian reports Bank of Queensland saying funding costs are rising in Australia, which could force banks there to pass on mortgage rate hikes independent of a rise in the Official Cash Rate over there. We are hearing similar things behind the scenes over here. The European crisis is pushing up funding costs. This is starting to bake in higher margins in a way that means variable mortgage rates stay cheaper than fixed for a long time yet.

I wonder if people really understand what the Global Financial Crisis meant. It meant higher lending margins and lower bank leverage. It meant less debt-funded growth and more de-leveraging-driven slowdown.

The cost of wholesale borrowing for banks has come under renewed scrutiny after Westpac last week issued new five-year debt at a risk premium higher than some expected, highlighting fresh strains in the market on the back of Europe's debt crisis. Having enjoyed some improvement during the first six months of the year, risk aversion has returned to investors and an improvement in funding costs isn't expected in a hurry, said Bank of Queensland chief operating officer Ram Kangatharan

"All of the banks are starting to feel the pinch in terms of deposit margins." The net result of the rising pressures will likely prompt the major banks to raise their own lending rates, irrespective of whether the Reserve Bank of Australia moves the official target.

"As the pressure continues on the majors, they would want to move outside the RBA rates. I think what's holding them back is election year," Mr Kangatharan said.

7. 'It's different this time' - The research done by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart into episodes of deleveraging after financial crashes is proving to be very influential. It dominates my thinking on the inevitability of deleveraging and its effect on growth. Their book 'This time it's different' is a must read. This New York Times profile is well worth a read as a primer for their work and the book itself, which they started researching in 2003. Their conclusion is that growth slows by 1% per annum once public debt rises over 90%. It essentially says deleveraging is unavoidable.

Rogoff and Reinhart have been lauded for mining data to make their case, rather than just dreaming up a theory. Here is their academic paper.

 Microeconomics — the field that focuses on smaller units like households and workers, as opposed to big-picture questions about how national economies function — has embraced real-world data-mining. (Think “Freakonomics.”)

Macroeconomics has been slower to change, but the popular success of “This Time Is Different” and related work seems to be changing how macro practitioners approach their craft. It has also changed how policy makers think about their own mission.

Mr. Rogoff says a senior official in the Japanese finance ministry was offended at the suggestion in “This Time Is Different” that Japan had once defaulted on its debt and sent him an angry letter demanding a retraction.

Mr. Rogoff sent him a 1942 front-page article in The Times documenting the forgotten default. “Thank you,” the official wrote in apology, “for teaching the Japanese something about our own country.”

8. 'They're gettin' nervous' - Foreign investors and creditors are starting to ask more questions about Australia's housing market and the exposure of the big four banks to that housing market, BusinessDay reports. This may explain the rising funding costs for the Australian (read ours too...) in recent weeks. That and the non-trivial matter of the European financial crisis.

“It’s a constant question,” said Macquarie senior economist Brian Redican of his interactions with European and American investors.

“There are just lingering concerns about household debt levels and whether house prices are going to hold up in Australia.”

Overseas investors held A$645 billion in Australian wholesale debt and deposits in May, on Reserve Bank data, with local banks getting nearly 30 per cent of their funding from global markets. Should global markets for housing debt become stressed – if, for example, there is another leg to the Europe’s sovereign debt crisis - or should Australia’s household debt be singled out by global investors, the ability of banks to lend could be squeezed.

Tighter access to credit could reduce loan sizes, which would weigh on housing prices. Total outstanding mortgage debt in Australia was about $1.1 trillion in April, while other personal debt, including credit cards, stood about $141 billion, according to the RBA.

“Australia’s reliance on wholesale markets and offshore elements needs to be taken into account because you are more exposed to how other markets perceive the relative risks of Australia to other alternatives,” said Standard & Poor’s managing director rating services Fabienne Michaux.

“They’re not looking at Australia individually but in terms of their portfolio,” she said.

Hence, US-based investment fund GMO founder Jeremy Grantham, on a visit to Sydney in June, said interest rate rises will inevitably pop an Australian housing bubble.

9. Even Bloomberg has noticed - Nichola Saminather from Bloomberg has written a big long piece about Australian housing affordability for Bloomberg and BusinessWeek. Some people might work out what the elephant in the room is in this part of the world... Let's hope they don't look too close. She quotes Jeremy Grantham. I think his June 15 comments may be a signpost we look back on as the day the rest of the world woke up.

Grantham, chief investment strategist at Boston-based Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co., says higher rates may pop Australia’s housing bubble. The nation’s home prices need to fall 42 percent to “return to trend,” he said, without giving a timeframe or by how much interest rates would have to rise before that happens.

“It’s like a time bomb, just waiting for the rates to become increasingly impossible to support,” he said at a media briefing in Sydney on June 15. “All bubbles break, they’re the only thing that matter. They break because we live in a mean reverting world. Things go back to normal, even Australian housing prices.”

Christopher Wood, chief equity strategist at Hong Kong- based CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, said the first-home buyer incentives in 2008 and 2009 -- at a time when interest rates were at a half-century low -- may have put Australia on the path to its own version of the subprime mortgage crisis.

“In the long term, that policy will boomerang back on the Australian economy and the government because all they’ll have succeeded in doing is incentivizing people to buy houses who can’t afford them -- very similar to the subprime issue in America,” Wood said.

10. Ambrose is fearful - This is a must-read from Ambrose Evans Pritchard at The Telegraph on the debate facing policy makers oop north. Should they print or not? He says yes and pronto to avoid another depression.

Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output.

On Friday, Jacques Cailloux from RBS put out a "double-dip alert" for Europe. "The risk is rising fast. Absent an effective policy intervention to tackle the debt crisis on the periphery over coming months, the European economy will double dip in 2011," he said.

It is obvious what that policy should be for Europe, America, and Japan. If budgets are to shrink in an orderly fashion over several years – as they must, to avoid sovereign debt spirals – then central banks will have to cushion the blow keeping monetary policy ultra-loose for as long it takes.

The Fed is already eyeing the printing press again. "It's appropriate to think about what we would do under a deflationary scenario," said Dennis Lockhart for the Atlanta Fed. His colleague Kevin Warsh said the pros and cons of purchasing more bonds should be subject to "strict scrutiny", a comment I took as confirmation that the Fed Board is arguing internally about QE2. Perhaps naively, I still think central banks have the tools to head off disaster.

The question is whether they will do so fast enough, or even whether they wish to resist the chorus of 1930s liquidation taking charge of the debate. Last week the Bank for International Settlements called for combined fiscal and monetary tightening, lending its great authority to the forces of debt-deflation and mass unemployment. If even the BIS has lost the plot, God help us.

11. Totally relevant video - I'm happy to cite a Marxist when he/she says something interesting. This video of a cartoon of a speech about the crises of capitalism is well worth a read/listen/watch. "Capitalism never solves its problems. It just moves them around a bit."

What to do about insubordinate General Stanley McChrystal is not President Obama's only problem in Afghanistan. The war is the problem. It continues to be the problem. And in a bizarre case of reverse logic, the worse things get, the more the hawks want to stay. As the Los Angeles Times explained, last week:

Recent setbacks in Afghanistan have intensified debate over the wisdom of the Obama administration's plan to begin withdrawing U.S. military forces next summer and highlighted reservations among military commanders over a rigid timeline.

At a Senate hearing Tuesday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees U.S. forces in the Mideast and Afghanistan, offered "qualified" support for President Obama's plan to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011.

"In a perfect world, Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines," Petraeus said under questioning by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who wanted to know whether he supported the plan.

It's not just McChrystal. Conditions continue to deteriorate. From the Washington Post:

Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated markedly in recent months, with a spike in roadside bombs, complex attacks and assassinations, according to a U.N. report released Saturday.

The report comes as the U.S. military is deploying an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this summer in an effort to quell a rebounding insurgency.

The surge in violence has prompted U.S. lawmakers to ask pointed questions about the Obama administration's Afghanistan strategy, while U.S. commanders have urged caution, saying that they are making progress under difficult circumstances.

What progress? A war that can't be won, in support of an Afghan government that can't govern, and an Afghan military that can't fight? And the Afghan people just continue to suffer. And it's even worse.

Ten NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan yesterday. A helicopter crash. Multiple attacks by insurgents. At this pace, June will be the deadliest month yet for NATO troops, in the nine years NATO has been fighting in Afghanistan. And then there's this story, from McClatchy:

Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in "passage bribes" to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000.

Even Joseph Heller couldn't have come up with this. The worse things get, the more the hawks say we have to stay. And we're actually paying private "contractors" who are paying the very enemy that they and our official military are supposed to be fighting. Millions of dollars. A week.

McClatchy:

"This arrangement has fueled a vast protection racket run by shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials, and perhaps others," wrote Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., the chairman of the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. "Not only does the system run afoul of the (Defense) Department's own rules and regulations mandated by Congress, it also appears to risk undermining the U.S. strategy for achieving its goals in Afghanistan."

Yeah. So it would appear. That is, if there actually were such things as a strategy and goals.

Meanwhile, Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan is done. According to The Guardian:

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has taken "extended leave", a spokesman for the British high commission in Islamabad said today. He has been replaced on a temporary basis by Karen Pierce, the Foreign Office director for South Asia and Afghanistan.

News of his sudden departure comes as the Ministry of Defence confirmed the 300th British fatality in Afghanistan, a widely anticipated yet grim milestone in the nine-year war.

Of course, we passed our own grim milestone when we suffered our 1,000th fatality last month.

Cowper-Coles, who also had Pakistan in his remit as special envoy, clashed in recent months with senior Nato and US officials over his insistence that the military-driven counter-insurgency effort was headed for failure, and that talks with the Taliban should be prioritised.

At this point, it's hard to discern the difference between being headed for failure and having already failed. Because after Bush, this war was not winnable. But it's no longer Bush's war, tragically, on so many levels. It just goes on and on. There's no end in sight. A couple weeks back, Bob Herbert summarized:

In announcing, during a speech at West Point in December, that 30,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan, President Obama said: “As your commander in chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service.”

That clearly defined mission never materialized.

Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

Herbert's column was titled "The Courage to Leave." That it actually requires courage to leave a lost war should be worth considering. That we don't seem to have that courage should be, too.

The hawks won't ever make it easy for President Obama. Scolding or even firing one won't make a difference. At some point, he's going to have to confront them over the reality that they don't want to confront. The war is not winnable. It has to end.

The new foreign secretary can make the UK into a force for good in the world – he should start by reading Amnesty's new report

When the one-time foreign secretary Robin Cook became leader of the Commons in 2001 he famously "read himself into" his new role with a marathon 48-hour briefing session. As William Hague takes the measure of his new foreign secretary job, I urge him to steel himself for the challenges ahead with a little light reading: the new Amnesty International report 2010 (subtitled "The State of the World's Human Rights") published later this week.

Hague may not wish to devour our – often grim – 400-page opus in one weekend, but here are some reasons why he should place it on a handy bookshelf in his office.

First, Hague will naturally be seeking to put numerous bilateral and multilateral relations on "reset". Starting with the United States, the UK is re-establishing where it stands on key issues, always, of course, assessed against the UK national interest. The tools for this reassessment are many and varied – economic and military data are key – but "softer" indices of judgement play a major role. This realm, broadly "political", must, I believe, include human rights if Britain is to make the right choices in the world.

Take Afghanistan, Hague's avowed priority issue. Equipment for troops, dealing with the narcotics trade, assessing already complex relations with Pakistan and Iran, the US and Nato – each of these will play a part in policy formation. But what of human rights in Afghanistan? We've been told numerous times that UK forces are in Afghanistan to stop terrorists killing people on the streets of Britain. Yet politicians have readily cited human rights concerns – especially virulent anti-women policies from the Taliban – as further cause and justification.

As Afghanistan prepares for the "Peace Jirga" on 29 May, the question is increasingly: on what terms does the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai attempt a peace settlement with the "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban and other armed groups? The US and Nato view on this will be important, so the UK must consider this extremely carefully.

Hague will read on page 55 of the Amnesty report that in 2009 the Taliban and other anti-government groups actually "stepped up attacks against civilians, including attacks on schools and health clinics, across the country". Worryingly enough, the report makes clear, Afghan women and girls were targeted for attack by the Taliban and were also the subject of widespread societal discrimination, forced marriage, domestic violence and other abuse.

The danger now, then, is that a rush to stem Taliban violence through a "peace" deal will mean women's already fragile rights being traded away. The UK should have no part in this "trade-off".

Other enormous challenges ahead require the same human rights input for any informed foreign policy thinking. Iran is far more than a "nuclear issue", as the huge election protest movement last year demonstrated. If, for example, British personnel are again seized by the Iranian authorities, the Foreign Office needs to be thoroughly apprised of detention conditions, the risk of torture, the fairness of trials and a host of other human rights issues. Indeed the same applies to all countries: there is no clearer example of British interests intersecting with those of the citizens of other countries as when a British national is detained in a foreign jail next to political prisoners in, say, Burma, China or Saudi Arabia.

Diplomacy is a two-way street. But no meeting with a foreign leader or their foreign affairs ministers should take place without the foreign secretary being less than fully aware of what occurs in the police stations of that country (in some instances in the basement cells of ministry buildings themselves). It's as well to know that the smiling prime minister's own brother is accused of torture if you're about to sign a multimillion-pound trade deal.

Meanwhile foreign powers are adept at seeing the beam in our own eye if we broach their human rights failings. Getting our human rights house in order makes good sense internationally and domestically. The unpleasant fact is that the UK's involvement in "war on terror" secret detentions and torture left us exposed to justified criticism. Hague's announcement last week that there would be an inquiry into this is overdue but extremely welcome. Certainly we can have no claim to the moral high ground unless our record is significantly better than it has been.

The UK can be a force for good in the world in multiple ways – from firm support for the UN millennium development goals and an effective international criminal court, to continued championing of a global arms trade treaty and of lifesaving measures on maternal health and HIV/Aids treatments. In a speech to FCO staff on his first day in the job, Hague mentioned the importance of "international organisations", a promising enough sign that we'll be monitoring here in terms of support for human rights at the United Nations, the EU and elsewhere.

Hague and his Conservative-Lib Dem coalition colleagues have an opportunity to pursue an agenda of law, order and human rights at home and abroad. A well-informed, human rights-aware Foreign Office is a boon to good government and much will rest on the decisions taken in the first years of the new foreign secretary's tenure. As well as absorbing his FCO briefs, William Hague should read our report in full. I've already mailed him a copy.

KABUL - President Hamid Karzai's scathing attack on the West for its role in Afghanistan drew criticism from Afghan politicians after the White House described his remarks as genuinely troubling.

Despite Karzai's attempt at damage control, including a telephone conversation Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, his allegations laid bare the growing mistrust between the Afghan government and its international partners as the United States and NATO ramp up troop levels to try to turn back the Taliban.

Moreover, on the same day of Karzai's call to Clinton, he also held a private meeting with dozens of Afghan lawmakers where he "lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop," the Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side -- that is, the Taliban -- if the parliament did not back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three of those who attended the meeting, including a close ally of the president.

Karzai's earlier remarks, during a speech on Thursday, heightened an ongoing political power struggle between Karzai and an increasingly independent-minded parliament, which has refused to confirm nearly half of his Cabinet nominees because they were allegedly incompetent, corrupt or too weak to resist pressure from powerful people.

During the speech, Karzai lashed out against the U.N. and the international community, accusing them of perpetrating a "vast fraud" in last year's presidential election as part of a conspiracy to deny him re-election or tarnish his victory.

He also said foreigners were looking for excuses not to help fund the September parliamentary elections because they "want a parliament that is weak and for me to be an ineffective president."

Karzai also suggested that parliament members who threw out a presidential decree strengthening his power over the election process were serving foreign interests.

That drew a sharp rebuke Saturday from Yunus Qanooni, speaker of the lower house of parliament and a former Karzai Cabinet minister who finished second in the 2004 presidential election.

"This is the house of the people and all the members have been elected," Qanooni told parliament. "It's not possible that we would be influenced by foreigners."

Other lawmakers also expressed outrage over Karzai's remarks, which they considered a clumsy attempt to appeal to Afghan national pride which has been strained by the presence of thousands of foreign troops.

"This was an irresponsible speech by President Karzai," lawmaker Sardar Mohammad Rahman Ogholi of the northern province of Faryab told The Associated Press. "Karzai is feeling isolated and without political allies. ... The fight against terrorism, corruption, and narcotics requires a strong government. Unfortunately, the Karzai government is far too weak to fight all these elements."

Another lawmaker, Daoud Sultanzai of Ghazni province, said he was afraid the speech permanently damaged Karzai's relations with Washington, even though the president did not specifically mention the United States in his remarks.

Sultanzai said Karzai's allegation that some lawmakers take orders from foreign embassies was "total rubbish."

"He takes more directives from the U.S. Embassy," Sultanzai said of Karzai. "U.S. troops are protecting him, not us."

Karzai attempted to clarify his remarks, which White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called "genuinely troubling," during a telephone call Saturday to Clinton. She told him they should focus on common aims for stabilizing Afghanistan, according to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

"They pledged to continue working together in a spirit of partnership," Crowley said. "Suggestions that somehow the international community was responsible for any irregularities in the recent election is preposterous."

A U.N.-backed watchdog threw out nearly a third of Karzai's votes in the Aug. 20 ballot, forcing him into a runoff that was canceled after his remaining opponent dropped out saying he had no assurances that the second round would be any cleaner than the first.

The parliamentary elections had been set for next month but were pushed back until September, among other reasons to allow time to reform and restructure the government's election commission to prevent vote fraud.

Karzai delivered the speech to Afghan election workers, and it appeared the remarks were designed to set the stage for a shake-up in the Independent Election Commission rather than set a new foreign policy line. Karzai said he might have to replace two top commission officials because of international pressure.

Nevertheless, the tone of the speech reflected the strain in relations between Karzai and the Obama administration, which has been far more critical of his stewardship than former President George W. Bush -- especially his failure to curb corruption and improve governance.

A strong Afghan partner is key to the Obama strategy of winning over the civilian population and turning Afghans against the Taliban.

Karzai had been strongly critical of international troops for placing civilians at risk during military operations. U.S. and NATO commanders have been minimizing the use of airstrikes and heavy weapons if they threaten civilians. The new tactics have reduced the percentage of civilian deaths attributed to NATO, according to the United Nations.

But they have also complicated some military operations. On Friday, Taliban fighters attacked German troops on a bridge-building and mine-clearing operation in Kunduz province, triggering a gunbattle that left three German soldiers dead. Local government chief Abdul Wahid Omar Khil said German and Afghan troops were unable to use heavy firepower because the militants were firing from civilian homes.

On Saturday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said German soldiers rushing to the scene of the battle killed six Afghan troops when they mistook them for insurgents. The German central command confirmed the account but put the Afghan death toll at five. The German commander in northern Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Frank Leidenberger, called his Afghan counterpart to express "his profound dismay," the German military said.

German officials in Berlin say German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to express her condolences over the accidental killing of Afghan soldiers by the German military. The official said Karzai expressed sympathy regarding the deaths of three German soldiers in Afghanistan.

German forces were sharply criticized last September when they ordered an airstrike on two tanker trucks that had been captured by the Taliban. Up to 142 people died, many of them civilians.

The attack led to the dismissal of the head of Germany's armed forces and the deputy defense minister. The defense minister at the time of the airstrike, Franz Josef Jung, also quit his new job as labor minister.

• Islamabad calls for energy pact akin to US-India agreement
• Deal could persuade Pakistan to cut ties to jihadist groups

Pakistan wants the US to provide it with nuclear technology for a civilian energy programme and is to push the Obama administration this week for a deal.

Islamabad seeks a civilian nuclear deal to mirror the package granted to India by George Bush, a proposal that would prove contentious in Washington, given Pakistan's uneven record on combating extremist groups and its sale of nuclear technology to states hostile to the west, led by the former head of its programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

A spokesman for Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs, Abdul Basit, said today: "Pakistan is an energy-deficit country and we're looking for all sources, including nuclear, to meeting our requirements."

A team led by Pakistan's foreign minister that includes the country's army commander and spy chief is due to arrive in Washington on Wednesday for meetings with their US counterparts, including Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, in an effort to relaunch dialogue between the two allies. Afghanistan and help for Pakistan's near-bankrupt economy will also be on the agenda.

Many experts believe Pakistan holds the key to stabilising Afghanistan and it is trying to position itself as a sole conduit to talk to the Taliban.

The US meetings, are designed to restart talks that were last held in 2008.

Pakistan believes it has suffered from the violent fallout of US-led intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan and requires further assistance, despite a recent $7.5bn (£5bn) US aid injection.

A civilian nuclear deal, which would provide technology and fuel for power plants, could be the carrot required for Pakistan to finally cut its ties to jihad groups. A variety of incentives since 2001, including military equipment and civilian aid, have not worked, say experts.

Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington, said: "We need a big idea for Pakistan, to transform it from a source of insecurity for the region to a country committed to eliminating terrorism and ensuring that nuclear proliferation doesn't happen again.

"We're trying to get Pakistan to do things that are in our strategic interests but not in theirs."

Pakistan craves a nuclear deal because it aspires to parity with India, say analysts.

It bristles with indignation over the perceived special treatment accorded to India, which it believes has upset the regional balance of power in South Asia.

Prof Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, said: "Through the deal, India became a de facto member of the nuclear club and Pakistan doesn't understand why it wasn't offered the same thing. Pakistan has to position itself as an equal to India."

While Pakistan and India used to be bracketed together, Pakistan is now lumped in with Afghanistan under "Af-Pak", a diplomatic relegation, while India is lauded as a growing power.

Pakistan's past record of nuclear proliferation hangs over it, especially as its renegade scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, continues to make revelations about his secret arms sales. Khan was placed under house arrest in 2004 but has since been released.

David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who is president of Institute for Science and International Security, an independent thinktank in Washington, said: "Pakistan has a chance (for a civil nuclear deal) but it has to overcome some pretty serious roads. If there was a trial of AQ Khan and he was jailed, that would help."

A US-Pakistan deal could take several years to hammer out. The US-India agreement has not been not finalised, more than five years after negotiations began.

Hannah Allam

Posts from McClatchy reporters and editors covering Washington, Jerusalem, Afghanistan and beyond. Go to http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com

Middle East Diary

Posted by Hannah Allam, March 10

Election Day is over, and now comes the hard part: getting all of Iraq's disparate groups to settle on a new sovereign government that, one hopes, will not drain the treasury through corruption, allow death squads to operate in state-owned vehicles, turn the country into a battlefield for proxy wars or lapse into the authoritarianism and inefficiency of most other Arab states.

Here's just a handful of things to watch as results come in and the tense business of bargaining and coalition-building begins, as no one group or bloc is expected to win an outright majority:

• Iran – Early results and projections from various polling/monitoring groups show that the mostly Shiite Muslim alliance made up of parties backed by Iran didn't do that well, even in the majority-Shiite south. However, that doesn't mean we can say for certain that Iran loses just because Iraqis strayed from the religious parties. If Iran doesn't have a place at the table in the formation of the next government, Tehran could set conditions for a very uncomfortable exit for U.S. forces, who are scheduled to withdraw by the end of next year.

• Goran – The upstart Kurdish reformist movement, whose name is the Kurdish word for "change," is viewed as a serious threat to the balance of power up north, where the two traditional parties known by their acronyms, KDP and PUK, are keeping a close eye on the splinter group.

• President – Will the Kurds keep the presidency? Or will Sunni Arabs stake a claim? This is a biggie as long as the presidential office retains veto power, but it looks as if that's going to be gone this time around (I've been told there's no constitutional guarantee of the veto). Still, it's an important ceremonial position that comes with a lot of the trappings of power, if not actual influence.

• Prime minister – Many Iraqis are taking a devil-you-know attitude toward incumbent Nouri al-Maliki, supporting him not because they're thrilled at his decidedly mixed track record on security, corruption, sovereignty and services, but because the other contenders could be so much worse. One name that's cropping up: Bakr al Zubeidi. Doesn't ring a bell? He's the current finance minister, who went by Bayan Jabr when he was the interim interior minister and was dubbed "minister of civil war" for what's described as either complicity or criminal negligence relating to the days when death squads terrorized Iraq using ministry-issued guns, vehicles, and handcuffs. Funny thing is, the killings stopped as soon as Jabr left the post.

• Big Six ministries – Interior, defense, finance, justice, foreign affairs, oil. These are the cornerstone of the government, and there will be long, drawn-out battles for each post. Sunnis in particular are hoping for more Cabinet positions this time around, after they boycotted the last parliamentary polls in 2005 and found themselves sidelined and virtually powerless.

POTUS' wish: 'Luck of the Irish'

Planet Washington

Posted by Margaret Talev, March 17

President Barack Obama, speaking on St. Patrick's Day at the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon at the Capitol, said he'd been thinking lately about one of his favorite memories of one of Congress' most prominent Irish Americans, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Obama recalled it as being a St. Patrick's Day, most likely in 2005, and Kennedy cornered him on the Senate floor seeking support on some legislation. Obama said he'd vote yes but didn't think it had the votes to pass. When it did pass, then-Sen. Obama asked Kennedy how he'd done it. "I said, 'How did you pull that off?' And he just patted me on the back and he said, 'Luck of the Irish!' " As Obama works over reluctant Democrats this week one by one to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrangle the votes to pass his health care overhaul, he's obviously hoping for similar luck to strike.

After all, posited the multiracial, multi-ethnic president, he does have "a little Irish blood" in his veins.

"Prime Minister (Brian) Cowen was born in County Offaly, and I can trace my ancestry on my mother's side there as well," Obama told the luncheon.

"I believe it was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. This is true. He was a boot maker, if I'm not mistaken."

Obama said his Irish lineage was uncovered during the presidential campaign. "My first thought," he said to laughs, "was why didn't anyone discover this when I was running for office in Chicago? I would have gotten here sooner.

"I used to put the apostrophe after the 'O' but that did not work."

Margaret Talev

Hannah Allam

Posts from McClatchy reporters and editors covering Washington, Jerusalem, Afghanistan and beyond. Go to http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com

Middle East Diary

Posted by Hannah Allam, March 10

Election Day is over, and now comes the hard part: getting all of Iraq's disparate groups to settle on a new sovereign government that, one hopes, will not drain the treasury through corruption, allow death squads to operate in state-owned vehicles, turn the country into a battlefield for proxy wars or lapse into the authoritarianism and inefficiency of most other Arab states.

Here's just a handful of things to watch as results come in and the tense business of bargaining and coalition-building begins, as no one group or bloc is expected to win an outright majority:

• Iran – Early results and projections from various polling/monitoring groups show that the mostly Shiite Muslim alliance made up of parties backed by Iran didn't do that well, even in the majority-Shiite south. However, that doesn't mean we can say for certain that Iran loses just because Iraqis strayed from the religious parties. If Iran doesn't have a place at the table in the formation of the next government, Tehran could set conditions for a very uncomfortable exit for U.S. forces, who are scheduled to withdraw by the end of next year.

• Goran – The upstart Kurdish reformist movement, whose name is the Kurdish word for "change," is viewed as a serious threat to the balance of power up north, where the two traditional parties known by their acronyms, KDP and PUK, are keeping a close eye on the splinter group.

• President – Will the Kurds keep the presidency? Or will Sunni Arabs stake a claim? This is a biggie as long as the presidential office retains veto power, but it looks as if that's going to be gone this time around (I've been told there's no constitutional guarantee of the veto). Still, it's an important ceremonial position that comes with a lot of the trappings of power, if not actual influence.

• Prime minister – Many Iraqis are taking a devil-you-know attitude toward incumbent Nouri al-Maliki, supporting him not because they're thrilled at his decidedly mixed track record on security, corruption, sovereignty and services, but because the other contenders could be so much worse. One name that's cropping up: Bakr al Zubeidi. Doesn't ring a bell? He's the current finance minister, who went by Bayan Jabr when he was the interim interior minister and was dubbed "minister of civil war" for what's described as either complicity or criminal negligence relating to the days when death squads terrorized Iraq using ministry-issued guns, vehicles, and handcuffs. Funny thing is, the killings stopped as soon as Jabr left the post.

• Big Six ministries – Interior, defense, finance, justice, foreign affairs, oil. These are the cornerstone of the government, and there will be long, drawn-out battles for each post. Sunnis in particular are hoping for more Cabinet positions this time around, after they boycotted the last parliamentary polls in 2005 and found themselves sidelined and virtually powerless.

POTUS' wish: 'Luck of the Irish'

Planet Washington

Posted by Margaret Talev, March 17

President Barack Obama, speaking on St. Patrick's Day at the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon at the Capitol, said he'd been thinking lately about one of his favorite memories of one of Congress' most prominent Irish Americans, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Obama recalled it as being a St. Patrick's Day, most likely in 2005, and Kennedy cornered him on the Senate floor seeking support on some legislation. Obama said he'd vote yes but didn't think it had the votes to pass. When it did pass, then-Sen. Obama asked Kennedy how he'd done it. "I said, 'How did you pull that off?' And he just patted me on the back and he said, 'Luck of the Irish!' " As Obama works over reluctant Democrats this week one by one to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrangle the votes to pass his health care overhaul, he's obviously hoping for similar luck to strike.

After all, posited the multiracial, multi-ethnic president, he does have "a little Irish blood" in his veins.

"Prime Minister (Brian) Cowen was born in County Offaly, and I can trace my ancestry on my mother's side there as well," Obama told the luncheon.

"I believe it was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. This is true. He was a boot maker, if I'm not mistaken."

Obama said his Irish lineage was uncovered during the presidential campaign. "My first thought," he said to laughs, "was why didn't anyone discover this when I was running for office in Chicago? I would have gotten here sooner.

"I used to put the apostrophe after the 'O' but that did not work."

Margaret Talev

Next week, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials will meet in Washington for the first ever strategic dialogue between the two countries. The Pakistani delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but make no mistake: at least when it comes to the Pakistani side, this will be the Gen. Ashfaq Kayani show.

If there was any ambiguity remaining as to who's the principal architect of Pakistan's national security policy, then it should have dissipated on Tuesday, when Kayani chaired a meeting of federal secretaries -- the first time an army chief has done so under a civilian government. They met at the army's general headquarters, instead of the originally designated venue, the ministry of foreign affairs. Kayani sought to coordinate the government's agenda for the upcoming talks with the United States, which includes security issues as well as non-military topics, such as agriculture and energy.  

When Kayani and company roll into Washington, their objective will be to maximally capitalize upon Pakistan's peaking strategic value as it pertains to U.S. interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a closing window of opportunity to successfully press for its interests more assertively. The Pakistanis, with good reason, believe the United States has one foot out of Afghanistan -- even as it surges its presence there -- and is dependent on Pakistan to secure a favorable and efficient endgame. At the same time, they fear that an end to the Afghan war and a drop in Pakistan's utility for the United States will result in a colder, tougher approach by Washington toward Islamabad, combined with a warmer American embrace of arch-rival India. So, for the Pakistani establishment (its military, allied bureaucracy, and political fellow travelers), the challenge is to leverage its short-term utility for the United States to extract benefits that will stretch over a longer-term and insure against potential future losses.

Broadly, the Pakistani establishment seeks to secure Pakistan's influence in a post-American Afghanistan, deny India a strategic pivot there, and maintain a reasonable degree of strategic parity with rising India. More specifically, Pakistan seeks "tangible deliverances" [sic] -- the most ambitious, and perhaps improbable, of them being a civil nuclear deal with the United States akin to the one with India.

Despite statements to the contrary, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains transactional and wanting of a long-term vision. American officials frequently state that Pakistan must "do more" to combat militants in its border region with Afghanistan -- the phrase has been said so much that it's become a part of the local political lexicon -- and now Pakistani officials are returning the favor. Cementing a U.S.-Pakistan partnership will require forging a shared regional vision. And that will be difficult to develop as long as India remains intransigent on the issue of Kashmir, Pakistan continues to support anti-India insurgents and terrorists (some of whom, such as Lashkar-e Taiba, might have extra-regional ambitions), and both the United States and Pakistan deepen alliances with each other's rivals (respectively, China and India).

But progress could perhaps be made if Washington delicately reduces New Delhi's expectations for influence in Kabul, facilitates Pakistan's partial movement in favor of "good" actors in Afghanistan and push against the Afghan Taliban, and prods both India and Pakistan further along the negotiation table. There is no perfect formula for stability in South Asia, but it will require both India and Pakistan to learn how to share space and for the bigamous United States to carefully manage its relationship with its two warring wives.

Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He writes at the Pakistan Policy Blog (www.pakistanpolicy.com).

India today denied reports that it was planning to scale down its presence in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the February 26 terrorist attacks in Kabul in which seven Indians and ten others were killed.

Responding to queries on the reports, which also said India was advising its citizens in the strife-torn country to return home, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs categorically dismissed them as "baseless and factually incorrect".

"India's commitment to its development partnership with Afghanistan remains diluted," the spokesperson said.

Last week, India announced it had temporarily suspended the Indian Medical Mission (IMM) in Kabul after the attack which had targeted the IMM.

At that time, too, the Government had made it clear that it would not scale down its other operations in Afghanistan despite the extremely difficult situation in the country.

The Indians killed in the suicide and car bomb attacks included a doctor in the IMM, Kabul.

The IMMs in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazhar-e-Sharif are functioning normally.

Similarly, the Embassy of India in Kabul and its other offices in Afghanistan also continue to function normally.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon had visited Kabul last week to review the security for Indians and Indian facilities in Afghanistan after the latest attack. He had held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other leaders and also visited the scene of the attack - two guest houses popular with Indians and other foreigners.

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The Russian army today, like any other army, is an institution for organising and channelling violence in the pursuit of some concept of the national interest. But violence is not easy to control, and all armies have to cope with atrocities against the enemy and the civilian population; and with various kinds of military and civilian crime. They need to limit these excesses, lest they lead to a breakdown of discipline and a loss of function. They therefore all have military policemen and military courts to enforce order with greater or lesser severity. In Afghanistan the Soviet military authorities imposed severe penalties for looting, rape, and random violence against the population. By the end of that war over two thousand five hundred Soviet soldiers were serving prison sentences, more than two hundred for crimes of premeditated murder.

But commanders also have to preserve the morale of their men and their own idea of the “honour of the uniform”. Time and again, and in all armies, this leads to evasion and cover-up to prevent the stories of military crime emerging or to limit their consequences. That is what happened after the massacre of civilians by US troops at My Lai in Vietnam in 1968. And public opinion is often on the side of the military. There was a popular outcry in the United States against the sentence imposed on Lieutenant Calley, the only officer to be court-martialled for My Lai. The Russian military today and the Soviet military before them are of course no different. Both the Soviet government and the government of President Karzai passed amnesties for those imprisoned for the crimes committed on both sides during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Bullying and violence as a way of enforcing discipline can happen in all armies. It was common in the Tsarist army that preceded it, and indeed it was formalised in the British armed forces up to the middle of the nineteenth century. It is not unknown in the US Army. There was a great deal of it within the Red Army that won the Second World War. Though in theory the authorities disapproved, physical assault was a common means for enforcing discipline, used by many in authority from Marshal Zhukov downwards. It can be very difficult to eradicate.

Most armies have rites of passage for new recruits, this can degenerate into abuse, and scandals erupt from time to time even in the best-regulated armies. But most observers agree that the ritualised bullying, dedovshchina, the “grandfather system”, which emerged in the Soviet army in the late 1960s is an aberration from an unfortunate norm. Russian commentators give various reasons for that. By then the conscript army was demoralised. It was too large, and the soldiers were underemployed. The better off and better educated managed to evade service, so that many conscripts fell below the standards needed by a technically sophisticated force. Some were recruited from the prisons, and brought with them the bullying rituals of the criminal world. Under the “grandfather system” conscript soldiers were divided into four categories, depending on their length of service. In his last six months the soldier was known as a “grandfather” (ded). The new recruits were made to clean the barracks, look after the grandfathers’ kit, get them cigarettes from the shop and food from the canteen. Their few personal possessions and their parcels from home were taken from them. They were ritually humiliated, and beaten sometimes to the point of serious injury or death.

How bad it was depended on where you were. The Soviet army could not afford to employ substandard soldiers in the elite strategic rocket forces, where the grandfather system was much less brutal. It was the same in the KGB’s frontier forces, who had a real job to do. It was largely true among the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan. In the elite special forces and parachute units, morale was usually high. When the soldiers were not on operations, all they wanted to do was eat and sleep. Even in the less prestigious motor-rifle units, where the grandfathers still gave their juniors the run-around, it was hard to preserve the distinctions in battle: a bully risked being cut down by a bullet from his own side, as well as from the enemy: in the heat of the fight no one would bother to investigate. People who were there will tell you that the seasoned soldiers taught the new arrivals to keep clean, obey orders, and care for their equipment; and they looked after the juniors in battle. New recruits were kept from the difficult missions until they had acquired some battle experience. Some evidence supports this benign interpretation.

Most conscripts endured, and consoled themselves with the thought that they too would be grandfathers one day. Some broke under the strain: they deserted, mutilated themselves, or committed suicide. Some, of unusual physical as well as moral strength, stood up for themselves and were eventually left alone. Soldiers from the same republic or region stuck together in self-defence: the grandfathers in one unit serving in Afghanistan were warned that if anything happened to the only two Chechen soldiers serving with them, their other countrymen would take a merciless revenge.

Though there is a great deal of well-attested anecdotal evidence, reliable figures are hard to come by. Towards the end of the war in Afghanistan a senior officer told his fellow generals that the most common crime in the Soviet army there was “military bullying”. More than 200 soldiers had suffered in one year: some had been killed and others severely wounded. This appalling figure needs to be kept in proportion: it is 0.25% of the number of soldiers serving in Afghanistan at any one time. But that gives no idea of the overall level of dedovshchina in the Soviet army at that time, or in the Russian army today.

Though it pays to be cautious - not least because the appalling incidents reported in the Russian press today would not have seen the light of day in Soviet times - most observers agree that things have got worse since the war in Afghanistan, fuelled by the demoralisation that accompanied the break-up of the Soviet Union, the bungled war in Chechnya in the middle of the 1990s, lack of money for new equipment and proper training, and the failure to carry through a well thought-out and properly funded reform which would adapt the Russian armed forces to the threats and tasks of the twenty-first century. 

Even some of those who experienced Dedovshchina at first hand believe that despite its obvious negative features it has helped to maintain order and discipline. But in other armies the task of mentoring, controlling, helping and disciplining young soldiers is the task of experienced long service NCOs, sergeant majors, sergeants, and corporals. These used to exist in the Tsarist army, where military service lasted a lifetime. They did not and do not exist in the Soviet and Russian armies: the so-called praporshchiki, the professional warrant officers, are mostly employed on administrative tasks, and sergeants are selected from amongst the conscripts themselves. Until 1968, when the period of conscript service was reduced from three years, it was still possible to train up a reasonably competent sergeant and make use of him before he was demobilised. That became harder when conscription lasted for only two years, and is harder still now that the term has been further reduced. Until something is done about that, people argue, Dedovshchina fills a necessary gap.

That is why people pin their hopes on the military reform which is currently under way and includes measures for the proper training of long-service professional NCOs. That reform, too, is dogged by inadequate funding and dissension among the senior military. So far it seems to be making better progress than its predecessors. But however well it succeeds, it will take time before the presence of professional sergeants significantly changes the ingrained culture of dedovshchina.

Rodric Braithwaite is a writer and former diplomat , who has spent much of his career dealing with Russia. He was British ambassador in Moscow from 1988-1992. In 1992-3 he was Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Major and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

 He is currently Chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Moscow School of Political Studies and is working on a new project “Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan”, to be published in 2011.

India today said it had temporarily suspended the Indian Medical Mission (IMM) in Kabul in the aftermath of the February 26 terrorist attack targeting the IMM, in which seven Indians and ten others were killed.

But the Government has made it clear that it would not scale down its other operations in Afghanistan despite the extremely difficult situation in the strife-torn country.

The Indians killed in the suicide and car bomb attacks included a doctor in the IMM, Kabul.

The official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs said the IMMs in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazhar-e-Sharif were functioning normally.

"The Embassy of India and its other offices in Afghanistan continue to function normally in the face of extremely demanding and difficult circumstances," he added.

National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who is on a visit to Kabul to review the security for Indians and Indian facilities in Afghanistan after the latest attack, also said that India could not scale down its operations.

Mr Menon held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other leaders and also visited the scene of the attack - two guest houses popular with Indians and other foreigners.

The IMM in Kabul, comprising six doctors and an equal number of paramedical staff, were functioning out of the Indira Gandhi Child Care Hospital, set up with Indian aid.

Given the increased security threat to Indians in Afghanistan after last week's incident, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna told reporters in Bangalore that the Government would consider any transfer requests, though none of the staff in the Embassy wanted to come back.

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Labour peer faces sniping amid heavy workload as she creates EU's diplomatic service

Last week she was in Madrid and Moscow, Kiev and Bruges, as well as chairing a Brussels meeting of EU foreign ministers and wining and dining Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's pugnacious foreign minister. The week before it was Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, mulling over whether she can make the Balkans a better place. This week she is in Haiti grappling with Europe's role in resurrecting that benighted country after declaring she does not do disaster tourism.

Catherine Ashton is on the move. Yet despite her punishing schedule, the knives are out for the Labour peer, not because of the places she has been, but because of the meetings she has missed.

In Paris and Berlin, The Hague and Brussels, the whispering campaign against the former leader of the House of Lords is getting louder.

Ashton was thrust into the international limelight in November as Europe's first foreign policy chief. She did not ask for the job. She was taken aback when named as a result of a classic EU political fix that had nothing to do with merit or suitability for the post.

"Lady Ashton has come under an unusual amount of criticism and attack in the first few months," said Thomas Klau, head of the Paris office of the European council on foreign relations. "It was obviously one of her handicaps that she wasn't put in a position to expect the nomination."

At the weekend, Ashton marked 100 days since European leaders named her as the EU's first high representative for common foreign and security policy. She was not the only one who was surprised. Eurocrats gulped with incredulity that a neophyte with no foreign policy pedigree could be awarded the post.

It was said to be the best job going in Europe. It is rapidly turning into the worst.

"Baroness Ashton has been given an absolutely impossible task," said Alexander von Lambsdorff, a German liberal MEP on the parliament's foreign affairs committee.

The critics are already feeling vindicated. Early French vitriol is widening into stronger and more substantive reservations about her judgment and early policy moves.

Brave face

Three decisions in the past 10 days have sparked widespread discontent in Brussels and across Europe. Ashton is in charge of creating the EU's diplomatic service under the Lisbon treaty and of making the key appointments.

With decision-taking in Brussels in a vacuum, José Manuel Barroso, the European commission chief, moved deftly to place his longtime chief of staff and fellow-Portuguese João Vale de Almeida as the new EU ambassador in Washington.

Last Monday, Ashton sought to put a brave face on things, insisting she and not Barroso had made the appointment while admitting that "one or two" foreign ministers had complained about being bypassed on such a key job.

Diplomats said 12 foreign ministers had voiced their consternation. She was warned that the incident should not be repeated. "Ashton should not have let Barroso impose that," said an EU official. "It has undermined trust in her."

The other appointment she made was of Vygaudas Usackas, a former Lithuanian foreign minister, as the new EU envoy to Afghanistan. Usackas was supported by Britain. Diplomats from other countries complained that Ashton was doing Britain's bidding.

The official added that the biggest blunder came last Thursday when Ashton, juggling a busy travel schedule, was seen to have made the wrong call by staying away from a meeting of EU defence ministers and Nato officials in Majorca.

Ashton's job puts her in charge of European security policy. The Majorca meeting was the first under the new regime and under her auspices. Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, the Nato chief, was there. Ashton went to Kiev instead.

"A bit rich," complained the French. "Conspicuous by her absence," said the Dutch. "Regrettable," noted the Spanish.

"That was an extraordinary mistake," said the European official. "It reinforces the impression of a total lack of understanding of the job. I really hope she can recover."

Criticism

Ashton's defenders argue she is being subjected to a barrage of snide criticism that is quite unfair and vastly premature. "Cathy says it's a marathon, not a sprint, and she should be judged on the results," said her spokesman, Lutz Guellner. "She wants to be judged on what she achieves and not on the perceptions. She has a job that needs to be defined, that didn't exist before."

A sympathetic diplomat added: "She's been put in charge of the most profound institutional change in the EU for years and she does not yet have a machine she can rely on."

Ashton is a foreign minister without a foreign ministry, responsible for building one not exactly from scratch, but from very disparate elements of the EU apparatus in the commission, in the council of the European Union and in the diplomatic services of the 27 member states.

She has a private office of 12 officials working on different parts of the world headed by James Morrison, a former Foreign Office diplomat who has worked with her since she replaced Peter Mandelson 18 months ago as European trade commissioner.

Mandelson wanted the job Ashton has now, and some of the early bitching in November came from London. But the whispering campaign was quickly hijacked by the French, with Jean Quatremer of Libération, a prolific blogger who trades in high-grade Brussels political gossip, marshalling what many saw as a smear campaign delivered by French officials invariably speaking anonymously.

"Lady Qui?" was the headline of a two-page spread in the leftwing Paris paper in February.

Despite working in Brussels for 18 months, Ashton continued to live in hotel rooms, Quatremer scoffed. Perhaps sensitive to the jibe, she has for the first time rented a property in Brussels and is said to have accepted that she will be spending less time in Hertfordshire. But Ashton is also aggrieved that other new European commissioners who regularly dash home for the weekend are seldom subject to the same attacks.

Quatremer berated Ashton for her "amateurism, incompetence even", while Pierre Lellouche, France's outspoken Europe minister, complained of "the current impression of a void". The criticism is not confined to the French in Paris or Brussels, nor is it the preserve of male officials and diplomats, despite the suspicion that sexism is a factor.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, who wanted the job himself, complained bitterly, if privately, about Ashton's performance at an international security conference in Munich in February. The Germans are known to be sceptical, but are being more discreet.

Ashton attended the Munich conference to rub shoulders with the American, Chinese, Russian and Iranian foreign policy leaders. She was generally seen to have delivered a lacklustre speech.

"There is an issue here," admitted a supportive European commission official. "She's going to have to start prioritising and start performing."

French grumble

Such perceived failings aside, Ashton is handicapped by the magnitude of the job coupled with the lack of experience and the temporary absence of support systems.

While being EU foreign policy chief, she is also a vice-president of the European commission, in effect doing a job performed until November by three senior people – Javier Solana of Spain doing foreign and security policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria as European commissioner for external affairs, and the foreign minister of whatever country was holding the EU's six-month rotating presidency and chairing monthly meetings of EU foreign ministers.

If the workload is formidable, she is also burdened by being a relative unknown internationallyand not being plugged into the global foreign policy networks. There is also plenty of muttering in Brussels and beyond about the calibre of her staff. The French grumble, for example, that they have only one relatively junior person on her staff of 12. Only 100 days in, Ashton has not had the happiest of starts in one of the biggest jobs in Europe.

The burden of expectation is heavy, the mud-slinging is hurtful. Unlike the stellar crew of (male) European grandees who coveted her job, from Mandelson to Moratinos to Carl Bildt of Sweden, she is said to have little ego.

But in the chancelleries of Europe, especially in France, there is a palpable concern about the purpose of the new Lisbon regime and the possibility of chances lost.

"In Paris," said Klau, "there is a sense of mixed expectations and a sense of apprehension. The fear that Lisbon will not lead to a more forceful Europe is a real source of worry."

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna today said India fully supported Afghanistan's efforts and would not be deterred by terrorist attacks such as the suicide bomb blasts in Kabul which killed at least 18 people, including nine Indians.

Mr Krishna conveyed this to Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul who called him over the telephone this evening and condemned the attack.

Mr Rassoul told Mr Krishna that India and Afghanistan were facing a common enemy. He also assured Mr Krishna that increased security measures would be taken, including steps to ensure the safety of Indian nations in the country.

He hoped that the Government of India would continue to support the Government of Afghanistan in its efforts. He also strongly condemned the attacks and said India firmly stood by Afghanistan in confronting their common enemy.

Mr Krishna also deeply condoled the loss of Afghan lives in the attack, a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs said.

The attacks were carried out early this morning on two guest houses in the Afghan capital which were popular with Indians and other foreigners.

There were some Indians in the 32 others injured in the attacks, but most of them were reported to be out of danger.

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