Af-Pak -> Pak-Af Watch

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 30 Apr 2013 20:21

Al Guardian reports:

US Decomissioning airfields in Afghanistan

US forces tearing down unwanted bases in Afghanistan nearly destroyed the only runway in a restive eastern province, even though major supply roads are riddled with Taliban bombs.

The base was slated for destruction because of fears that the Afghan army would struggle to secure a perimeter over 20km (12 miles) long. A US policy that unwanted bases must be totally cleared doomed the runway, and with foreign troops set to leave this year, work began in early spring to return it to dirt.

Logistics teams had already dismantled nearly one-tenth of Forward Operating Base Sharana, the main US and Nato headquarters in eastern Paktika province, when local Afghan commanders and officials raised the alarm in Kabul and a delegation was hastily put together to visit the site.

Some of the larger bases in the country have to go because Nato estimates it would cost $250m (£160m) a year just to operate and maintain them all, according to Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister and now head of the national commission on "transition", Nato's term for the handover of security from foreign to Afghan forces.

"The issue from the [Nato coalition] side is the number of soldiers needed to protect these bases," Ghani told the Guardian, shortly after returning from an inspection of FOB Sharana that confirmed its future as an airstrip, rather than a few more acres of farmland.

"[Lieutenant] General [Nick] Carter, deputy commander of Isaf [the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force] got an order issued that they should stop destruction. They had already destroyed 8% of the base, but fortunately they had begun from very marginal areas," Ghani told the Guardian.

Carter said the impact of that destruction had been limited and the core of the base was not affected by the teams preparing for the departure of foreign troops.

"What they were doing was taking out those things they regarded as such temporary structures they were of no value to the Afghans," he told the Guardian.

But US officers who planned the withdrawal from Paktika had originally decided to totally abandon Sharana, apparently ignoring its key role in opening up the isolated and restive border region to the government in Kabul and its forces.

Just a few years ago FOB Sharana was considered so important that US forces started work to put in a second runway. They had expanded the perimeter fence to its current length before abandoning the expansion plans when the US president, Barack Obama, began bringing troops home.

"Sharana is a strategic airfield; all kinds of aircraft can land, and they have good modern equipment. In the long term our government will need that equipment," said General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, commander of Afghanistan's 203rd Thunder Corps, stationed in the area.

It is large enough to take all military and most civilian planes that would want to fly into an area just a few dozen kilometres from Pakistan's Waziristan region, a lawless Taliban stronghold. Home to around 1 million people, the province has become a favoured insurgent infiltration route as border controls in neighbouring Khost are tightened, and roads can be perilous.

On Ghani's trip to the province, senior Afghan officials and Nato commanders travelled the few kilometres from Sharana to the provincial headquarters by helicopter rather than taking the base's armoured military vehicles.

"The airstrip is very important in the future," provincial governor Mohibullah Samim told Ghani at a meeting to discuss security in the province, before the tour of Sharana.

"Paktika is a gate for Kabul, once people get through Paktika it's going to be hard to stop them in other areas of the country. We need air assets so we can feel confident that we have everything on board in this fight," Samim added.

Although Afghanistan does not have a functioning air force at present, the Nato-led coalition has promised to build one up.

After Ghani's trip, Afghanistan's national security council ordered the ministry of defence to accept the transfer of FOB Sharana, with a promise that Nato and US forces would help scale back its perimeter and other ministries would discuss possibly shifting some of their offices into the base, freeing up security forces elsewhere.

"Once we have a fully developed plan, and aren't being rushed to destroy it, we could recycle some of the things towards schools, health facilities and development of the market, because a lot of these things are multipurpose," Ghani said.

He is also optimistic that a more rational use of Afghanistan's tens of thousands of soldiers will free them up to keep on more of Nato's well-built bases over the coming year.

"The ministry of defence was just able to release 7,000 people by reallocating functions. If you look at the 170,000 soldiers and officers, at least half of them are in support duty, and this means considerable rationalisation needs to take place," he said.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 30 Apr 2013 22:19

French Ambassador speaks on Afghanistan

Departing French Envoy Has Frank Words on AfghanistanBy ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 27, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — It is always hard to gauge what diplomats really think unless one of their cables ends up on WikiLeaks, but every once in a while, the barriers fall and a bit of truth slips into public view.

In a farewell speech, Bernard Bajolet outlined the challenges facing Afghanistan. That is especially true in Afghanistan, where diplomats painstakingly weigh every word against political goals back home.

The positive spin from the Americans has been running especially hard the last few weeks, as Congressional committees in Washington focus on spending bills and the Obama administration, trying to secure money for a few more years here, talks up the country’s progress. The same is going on at the European Union, where the tone has been sterner than in the past, but still glosses predictions of Afghanistan’s future with upbeat words like “promise” and “potential.”

Despite that, one of those rare truth-telling moments came at a farewell cocktail party last week hosted by the departing French ambassador to Kabul: Bernard Bajolet, who is leaving to head France’s Direction Génerale de la Sécurité Extérieure, its foreign intelligence service.

After the white-coated staff passed the third round of hors d’oeuvres, Mr. Bajolet took the lectern and laid out a picture of how France — a country plagued by a slow economy, waning public support for the Afghan endeavor and demands from other foreign conflicts, including Syria and North Africa — looked at Afghanistan.

While it is certainly easier for France to be a critic from the sidelines than countries whose troops are still fighting in Afghanistan, the country can claim to have done its part. It lost more troops than all but three other countries before withdrawing its last combat forces in the fall.

The room, filled with diplomats, some senior soldiers and a number of Afghan dignitaries, went deadly quiet. When Mr. Bajolet finished, there was restrained applause — and sober expressions. One diplomat raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly; another said, “No holding back there.”

So what did he say?

That the Afghan project is on thin ice and that, collectively, the West was responsible for a chunk of what went wrong, though much of the rest the Afghans were responsible for. That the West had done a good job of fighting terrorism, but that most of that was done on Pakistani soil, not on the Afghan side of the border. And that without fundamental changes in how Afghanistan did business, the Afghan government, and by extension the West’s investment in it, would come to little.

His tone was neither shrill nor reproachful. It was matter-of-fact.

“I still cannot understand how we, the international community, and the Afghan government have managed to arrive at a situation in which everything is coming together in 2014 — elections, new president, economic transition, military transition and all this — whereas the negotiations for the peace process have not really started,” Mr. Bajolet said in his opening comments.

He was echoing a point shared privately by other diplomats, that 2014 was likely to be “a perfect storm” of political and military upheaval coinciding with the formal close of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan.

As for the success of the fight on the ground, which American leaders routinely describe now as being “Afghan-led,” Mr. Bajolet sounded dubious. “We do not have enough distance to make an objective assessment,” he said, “but in any case, I think it crucial that the Afghan highest leadership take more visible and obvious ownership for their army.”

His tone — the sober, troubled observations of a diplomat closing a chapter — could hardly have been more different from that taken by the new shift of American officials charged with making it work in Afghanistan: in particular, with that of Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the new American commanding general here. This week, General Dunford sent out a news release cheering on Afghanistan’s progress, noting some positive-leaning statistics and praising the Afghan Army’s abilities.

“Very soon, the A.N.S.F. will be responsible for security nationwide” General Dunford said, referring to the Afghan National Security Forces. “They are steadily gaining in confidence, competence, and commitment.”

At his farewell party, Mr. Bajolet wound up his realpolitik with a brisk analysis of what Afghanistan’s government needed to do: cut corruption, which discourages investment, deal with drugs and become fiscally self-reliant. It must increase its revenues instead of letting politicians divert them, he said.

Several diplomats in the room could be seen nodding as he said that drugs caused “more casualties than terrorism” in Russia, Europe and the Balkans and that Western governments would be hard-put to make the case for continued spending on Afghanistan if it remains the world’s largest heroin supplier.

The biggest contrast with the American and British line was Mr. Bajolet’s riff on sovereignty, which has become the political watchword of the moment. The Americans and the international community are giving sovereignty back to Afghanistan. Afghanistan argues frequently that it is a sovereign nation. President Hamid Karzai, in the debate over taking charge of the Bagram prison, repeatedly said that Afghanistan had a sovereign responsibility to its prisoners.

His implicit question was, what does that really mean?

“We should be lucid: a country that depends almost entirely on the international community for the salaries of its soldiers and policemen, for most of its investments and partly on it for its current civil expenditure, cannot be really independent.”

From epic times of Shakuni Mama in Mahabharat to the historic times from the rein of Ashoka and later period till the Mughals, Afghanistan or Gandhar depended on subsidy from Indo-Gangetic plains. And they often decided the political fate of Indo-Gangetic plains by swinging with the invaders or opposing the invaders.

That subsidy ended with Mahraja Ranjit Singh and was reinstated by the British as part of the Afghan Wars Treaty with Shah Shuja and Dost Mohammed. The Partition of India into India and Pakistan ended the subsidy and has led to this mess.

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 30 Apr 2013 22:42

And for the NYtimes, this is profound.

svenkat · Post by **svenkat** » 01 May 2013 11:25

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10029511/Three-British-soldiers-killed-by-roadside-bomb-in-Afghanistan.html

The soldiers were from The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Major Richard Morgan, said.

They died after their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province.

The deaths come just two days after the Taliban launched its spring offensive, saying it would take aim at British, US and other foreign military bases and diplomatic areas.

The militant group's leadership vowed that "every possible tactic will be utilised in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors."

A total of 444 British soldiers and 2,207 US troops have died since fighting began in the country back in 2001.

svenkat · Post by **svenkat** » 01 May 2013 12:03

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/29/civilian-cargo-aircraft-crashes-at-bagram-air-field-in-afghanistan/

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 01 May 2013 20:10

ramana wrote: From epic times of Shakuni Mama in Mahabharat to the historic times from the rein of Ashoka and later period till the Mughals, Afghanistan or Gandhar depended on subsidy from Indo-Gangetic plains. And they often decided the political fate of Indo-Gangetic plains by swinging with the invaders or opposing the invaders.

That subsidy ended with Mahraja Ranjit Singh and was reinstated by the British as part of the Afghan Wars Treaty with Shah Shuja and Dost Mohammed. The Partition of India into India and Pakistan ended the subsidy and has led to this mess.

+1.

GoI's investments in Afghanistan is an extension of this subsidy business. The biggest fault like is Islamism. GoI cannot it see this nonsense for it wears secular-green glasses.

Afghanistan must be brought back into Bharatiya control, of course by giving subsidy. But it should be part of a larger project which includes de-secularization of Bharatiya society and recapturing of PoK.

For next couple of decades Af-Pak may continue to pay for the bad-karma it accumulated by going against Bharatiya interests.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 01 May 2013 20:14

RamaY, Afgahnistan fell into Islamist hands just as India was emerging from the long Buddhist millenia.

I had many times supported the idea to make Afghanistan, Indian FTA member and have a line item in the budget. A few crores from politicians loot would give much needed boost to the ties. India needs to make the Afghans prefer them to all othre malaises :islam, West etc.

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 02 May 2013 13:21

@bashirgwakh: Pic: 1000s gathered for the funeral of Afghan border police officer who was killed in clashes with Pak army. http://t.co/LUB1DFkgNM

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 02 May 2013 15:30

why the rush to destroy an airstrip? who'se going to use it? taliban-air-wing? russians? chinese?

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 02 May 2013 17:25

@ReutersWorld: Taliban kill senior peace envoy in south Afghanistan http://t.co/VhGV7Y1uMK

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 02 May 2013 17:49

I have some doubt about buddhism weakening indian societal resolve to fight. In every other major place where buddhism is a known force today like sri lanka, thailand, myanmar, cambodia, laos, vietnam, china, japan , korea, tibet it has not acted as a impediment to high levels of warfare and violence.

Barbarian societies like the mongols and arabs who were mobile, equipped with good stock of horses and fired by zeal for loot and plunder have always held an advantage against settler societies like the greeks, persians, indians, phoenicians...a continguous patch of desert land sahara, arabia , grasslands from hungary to northern edge of china has given birth to these fast moving locust hordes in history. Add to that the special lootera mentality of early islamic expansion and you have a potent mix.

At crucial periods in indian history we were deprived of strong centralized rule that permitted these inroads to happen. Lack of conscription of able bodied males and sparing farmers from war duty also led to a aloofness that only kshatriyas were supposed to shoulder burden and rest got a free ride...instead of converting into a peoples war.

manjgu · Post by **manjgu** » 02 May 2013 18:42

Buddhism NEVER weakened indian societal resolve to fight.

a) India was never predominantly buddhist to begin with. the countries in SE asia were predominantly HIndu at some point in history and converted to Buddhisim. and some converted to islam from hinduism ( indonesia, malaysia...)

b) i think Hindus were never a homogenous society , badly divided on many lines mainly caste, clan and region. we never could put a united fight and maybe too generous to our opponents ( a disease which we still carry till date) !!

RSoami · Post by **RSoami** » 02 May 2013 21:21

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/world ... .html?_r=0

Afghans claim they overran a a Pak post.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 02 May 2013 21:25

I am taking Buddhism posts to Future Scenarios thread for further discussion.

svenkat · Post by **svenkat** » 05 May 2013 06:55

http://dawn.com/2013/05/05/seven-nato-troops-killed-in-bloody-afghan-attacks/

A roadside bomb killed five US troops Saturday in Afghanistan and two other Nato soldiers were shot dead in an “insider attack,” a week after the Taliban launched their spring offensive.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 05 May 2013 15:05

More cannon..sorry IED fodder.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma ... istan-bomb

Seven US soldiers killed in Afghanistan bomb blast
Renewed violence comes as President Hamid Karzai confirms CIA payments to Afghan government would continue

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 09 May 2013 23:31

@NATOSource: Putin: Russia needs stronger defense against Afghan threats http://t.co/pfJ7Ox0TOb via @reuters

RoyG · Post by **RoyG** » 10 May 2013 00:49

shyamd wrote:@NATOSource: Putin: Russia needs stronger defense against Afghan threats http://t.co/pfJ7Ox0TOb via @reuters