What went on behind closed doors?

According to Matthias Gebauer, reporting yesterday for Germany's Spiegel from Peshawar:

Once behind closed doors, though, Cheney didn't mince words. With CIA Deputy Director Steve Kappes by his side, Cheney threatened them US Congress, with its Democratic majority, could deny Pakistan its promised aid of $785 million if Musharraf didn't finally take action against the Taliban.

Who say's Mr. Cheney doesn't appreciate the Democrats once in a while?

Harrowing account of detention

The Washington Post this week printed a story documenting Marwan Jabour's account of detention. Suspected of ties to al-Qaida's chem and bio programs, he was held and abused in a secret detention facility he believes is in Afghanistan. (A Human Rights Watch report provided the account.)

Two years ago, in Mother Jones, Emily Bazelon (of Slate's Gabfest Podcast fame...) wrote that "Americans, and the world, have become accustomed to accounts like Mustafa’s in connection with Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. But his story hints at another scandal—one that has received little sustained media attention and sparked no public outrage. Over the past three years, numerous reports—from Afghan and American human rights groups, and from the Pentagon itself—have documented allegations of abuse inside U.S. compounds in Afghanistan." (See also the Salt Pit.) This could well be another such case -- and a bitter reminder of the continued absence of transparency in US detention policies.

Terror Suspect Gives Account of Detention
Feb 27, By Katherine Shrade (AP) WASHINGTON: While held incommunicado for more than two years by the U.S. and Pakistan, accused jihadist Marwan Jabour claims he was beaten, burned with an iron, held naked for a month and chained to the wall of his cell so tightly that he could not stand up...MORE

Photo: The CIA's largest CIA covert prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. Space Imaging Middle East.

Suicide bomber strikes Bagram during Cheney's visit

Cheney was symbolically targeted today as a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the first of three checkpoints at Bagram air base. While the the VP was in no danger, it is among the most lethal suicide attacks recorded in Afghanistan, leaving up to 23 dead and 11 injured:

Watch the scene at base where bomb went off

Cheney confronts Pakistan on intel

Cheney was in the region for an unannounced trip to Pakistan, in which he met with Musharraf and his top advisers, including a representative from the ISI. Accompanying Cheney was the #2 in the CIA, Stephen R. Kappes, who most likely presented US intel that Al Qaeda camps have been reconstructed on the Afghanistan border:

Cheney was accompanied on his trip to Islamabad by Stephen R. Kappes, deputy director of the CIA and a Middle East expert who has served in Pakistan. Intelligence officials said Kappes's presence was a sign of U.S. interest in increasing intelligence operations with Pakistan. They said there are indications that the al-Qaeda leadership, though moving constantly, has resumed training of outsiders in areas of Pakistan, though it is nowhere near the extent that occurred in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Some context here: Kappes has a history with Pakistan, as he was in charge of penetrating the AQ Khan network--where he uncovered the links to Libya's nuclear program. According to the NY TImes, "One of the biggest successes of Mr. Kappes's career came after he became the clandestine service's second-ranking official and was put in charge of coordinating the C.I.A's effort to penetrate the secret network of a Pakistani nuclear scientist, A. Q. Khan." So he may not be one to take Islamabad's statements at face value...

Photo: Vice President Dick Cheney shakes hands with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. (Pakistan Press Information Dept.)

Bruce Hoffman: AQ resurgent

This article is noteworthy because of its author. This warning would sound alarmist from almost anyone other than Bruce Hoffman, who is one of the most sober and incisive analysts of jihadist movements. If he's concerned about AQ's resurrection, we all should be. Here's an excerpt from his LA Times oped, Defeating Osama bin Laden's resurgent terrorist network requires far more than military might:

Rather than "Al Qaeda R.I.P.," we face an Al Qaeda that has risen from the grave. It has been able to adapt and adjust to the changes imposed on its operations by the U.S.-led war on terrorism and reestablish its command and control over international terrorism from the sanctuary it has established in Pakistan's North Waziristan.

Just last month, this alarming development produced a dramatic reversal in the Bush administration's public assessment of the Al Qaeda threat. In contrast to long-standing White House claims, the annual threat assessment presented by outgoing National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence painted a disquieting picture of a highly resilient terrorist movement that, he said, is cultivating stronger operational connections to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Al Qaeda's stunning resurrection, before the very eyes of American military forces stationed across the border in southern Afghanistan, begs the question of how the most powerful country in the world can launch a six-year, no-holds-barred, global war on terrorism — at great cost to its pocketbook and international standing — only to find the main target of these Herculean efforts still alive and kicking. MORE

Afghanistan sinks Prodi

If there is any doubt regarding the ambivalence in European capitals toward the Afghanistan mission, yesterday's vote in Italy--in which Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned in humiliation after losing a vote on Afghanistan--might be a good barometer. (Of course, with 61 governments in 61 years, it doesn't take much to shake things up in Italy.)...Read more here.

Al Qaeda--new approach in Afghanistan clip

Al-Qaida steps up propaganda with Afghanistan clip

Feb. 17 (AP) Al-Qaida posted a video showing what it claimed to be an attack by its fighters seizing a US-Afghan post in southern Afghanistan, in what experts said was a step up in the terror group's increasingly sophisticated propaganda. MORE

Video: For reference, a similar propaganda film is available through google video. 

New AfghanMark label certifies fair conditions

“This is a major humanitarian, educational and business development breakthrough by Afghan women for Afghan women in the post-Taliban era of our country’s history.”

  - Ms. Halima Kazem of The Afghan Women’s Business Federation, speaking on the inauguration of the AfghanMarkSM label, which certifies “fair trade” carpets.

For more details on the AfghanMark label, check out this news article, this website, and this press release.

Left: Afghan weavers at a certified studio. Below: An Afghan business woman with her child in a retail carpet market, Kabul.

Barton and Riedel on the president's speech

Rick Barton and Bruce Riedel commenting in the NYTimes on the President's speech:

“We underfinanced, undermanned and under-resourced the war in Afghanistan for the last four years, and now we face a serious threat that the Taliban will succeed in destabilizing the country enough in 2007 to make the Karzai government collapse at some point,” said Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning research organization in Washington. He called the speech “a long overdue recognition that we need to do a lot more.”

Tom Lantos: go after the drug kingpins

Tom Lantos, chair of the House International Relations Committee, spoke this morning at the hearing "Afghanistan on the Brink: Where Do We Go From Here?", timing his comments to coincide with the President's speech. Lantos focuses his attention on the narcotics issue, calling for a more aggressive campaign by the military to go after drug traffickers and corrupt officials within the Karzai government. This is a much better approach than eradication methods supported by many within the administration, but Lantos and his colleagues (including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) whose measured piece on narcotics appeared in Washington Times today) should be under no illusions that clipping some drug kingpins will resolve the insurgency or meaningfully bolster the Afghan government. His speech is reprinted below. MORE

The President’s Unbalanced Approach to Afghanistan

Yesterday’s presidential address at the American Enterprise Institute was advertised as a major speech on Afghanistan. It was the first time in years that the president made that country the focus of his comments, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the remarks were spliced into a speech on the global war on terror, in which the first five minutes were devoted to Iraq and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Nevertheless, the president had quite a bit to say on Afghanistan, and some of it was new.

The speech may earn the president some credit for returning his attention to the central front in the war on terror. However, the plan he articulated suffers from the same problems that have plagued our five-year effort: too few resources, and too much spending on military solutions to complex problems. The centerpiece of his announcement is $11.8 billion in new assistance to Afghanistan over two years. But when we delve further into the budget and supplemental requests, we learn that $10.1 billion of this money is earmarked for “training and equipping Afghan security forces.” Of the remainder, $370 million will be allocated for “emergency assistance programs that will complement U.S. military objectives.” Rebuilding Afghanistan’s army and police force is critical, and rapid-response budgets for military commanders can prove useful, but these measures are no substitute for rebuilding

Afghanistan’s roads, reforming its judiciary, developing its non-opium economy, and strengthening local governance. These tasks are equally important if Afghanistan is going to thrive. Yesterday they were allocated a sizable portion of the president’s speech, but tomorrow Congress will learn that they have been allocated only a tiny sliver of the administration’s budget.

The second big announcement is that the president has extended the stay of 3,200 American troops for four months, a boost that will be sustained “for the foreseeable future.” This is a sensible increase that military commanders have requested for some time, even as they acknowledge that it is only part of the solution. Reinforcements at this juncture raise a troubling question: if

Afghanistan had received the forces and the development resources it needed from the start, and if attention had not been diverted to Iraq, might the president today be announcing that he was starting to bring troops home?

In his speech, the president laid out a sensible plan with five pillars: train and equip security forces, boost NATO’s presence, strengthen provincial governance, fight poppy cultivation, and combat corruption. These are each worthy priorities, but with 90 percent of the funding focused on the first pillar, the president’s plan can be expected to function as well as a one-legged stool. MORE

Bush transcript available: new offensive will be NATO offensive

"The Taliban and al Qaida are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense but to go on the offense. This spring there’s going to be a new offensive in Afghanistan and it’s going to be a NATO offensive. And that’s part of our strategy - relentless in our pressure. We will not give in.”
                      -President Bush, Feb 15, from his speech at the American Enterprise Institute

Full transcript available here ...analysis to follow.

Bush speech on Afghanistan today

President Bush will speak on Afghanistan today. Stay tuned...

Doing Business in Afghanistan: the latest World Bank report

 

Today the World Bank released its annual "Doing Business" report, which compares the world's countries on a variety of variables related to the ease of operating a business.  You can download the complete report here or the portion on Afghanistan here.

To summarize the findings:

• Afghanistan is among the easiest places to open a business and has favorable tax conditions, but is otherwise mired in difficulties related to registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, enforcing contracts and import/export.
• While it is easy to register a business, start up costs (75% of income per capita) can be significantly lowered and many industry-specific barriers should be dispensed with.
• Registering property is a major problem, requiring an average of 252 days and 10% of the property value. The complexity of the process discourages formal registration. Moreover, because of 25 years of chaos, most land has no clear title. The result is that businesses can get less credit and are wary of investing. Reforming this system is possible, as Thailand has proven, and must be a priority for Afghanistan and the donor community.
• There are no credit registries to provide lenders with information on borrowers, and no working land registry to allow land as collateral. As a result, the formal lending system is hamstrung. A simple credit registry could be established for under $2 million. The government could also pass a collateral law for movable property, which makes up 70% of most small business assets. These steps would go a long way.
• Cross-border trade is costly and excruciatingly slow. Legally importing a container requires 88 days,  11 documents, and $2,100--the highest fees in the region. Cutting this red tape would discourage smuggling, reduce corruption, and raise revenues.

For more on this, read the complete report...

Insights from a military commander

Yesterday I saw a senior U.S military commander in Afghanistan speak in New York. The event was off the record, so I cannot tell you who he was or cite direct quotes. However, this individual was on his way to House and Senate committee hearings, so there should soon be on-the-record version of these insights soon...Here are some of the most noteworthy points of his presentation:

• On the narcotics problem, he argued that the issue is less about aggregate aid and more about coming making the fractured inter-agency process work. I was shocked to learn that the counternarcotics team has five people to manage a $1 billion project (by way of comparison, there are 450 army personnel for the program on training, which has approximately the same budget.) He also noted that...MORE

Breaking down Bush’s request for Afghanistan and Pakistan

This week the administration released its characteristically opaque budget requests. Here’s what the fine print says...

First is the requested State Department package. Here Afghanistan would receive a modest increase from last year (the real bump in proposed spending is on troop training, which falls under the Pentagon budget.) Nevertheless, much of this aid package is allocated for military purposes both for Afghanistan (for “for emergency assistance programs that will complement U.S. military objectives”). Pakistan will also receive a substantial bump in its aid allocation.

Afghanistan:

• FY 2008:  ~$1 billion (€770 million) + $370 million “for emergency assistance programs that will complement U.S. military objectives”
• FY 2007:  $968 million (€748.9 million)

Pakistan:       

• FY 2008:         $485* million (€607.4 million) + $300 million (€232 million) in military aid tucked into the aid budget.
• FY 2007:        $499 million    (€386 million)

See Department of State and Other International Programs and The Associated Press, Monday, February 5, 2007)

Pentagon package:

The Defense Department announced that it is requesting $481.4 billion for Fiscal Year 2008 along with a $141.7 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the supplemental includes a $50 billion “allowance” for 2009. The request also includes a $100 billion supplement to last year’s supplemental (!) for the rest of Fiscal Year 2007 (which ends on September 30). As Fred Kaplan, a Slate budget analyst reveals, “a squint through the fine print of the White House and Pentagon budget documents reveals that the true request for new military-spending authority comes to $739 billion.”

As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the real increase here is for “Training and equipping Afghan Security Forces” which over the next two years will average twice what is being spent today. Here’s the breakdown for new spending:

• FY 2008 $2.7 billion
• FY 2007: $5.9 billion in addition to the $1.5 billion already enacted
• FY 2006:  $2.2 billion

See the proposed budget for the Department of Defense.

We’ll be delving deeper in the next days and weeks…

A non-trivial distinction...

Strange field report from the Guardian today:

One interesting anecdote may indicate that some things in some areas are going in the right direction - or perhaps are not. On Jaid-e-Maiwand I spoke to a contractor from the eastern Paktia province, usually seen as a hotbed of warlordism. I asked him how security was in his hometown. "Not bad," he answered. Who is the local commander, I asked.

Previously, this was a standard inquiry as it was always the local warlord who was seen as the biggest power in any given location. However, the contractor, a craggy-faced elder with a henna-died beard and a superb turban, looked perplexed.

Then he gave me the name of the local police chief. Did he mean that the police chief was a warlord? Or that the police actually have some degree of authority where he lived? Difficult to say. What is clear however is that things, for good or ill, are changing in Afghanistan.

What's really difficult to say is why the Observer correspondent Jason Burke, who is traveling with the British troops, didn't follow up with the man to clarify. This is not a trivial distinction! And here we're left dangling with the truism that "for good or ill, are changing". Very disappointing end to an otherwise interesting piece (read his other two posts as well). . .

Canada to bolster Afghanistan's 'model' microcredit

Today Josée Verner, Minister of International Cooperation announced that Canada, the leading donor for microcredit, will give an extra $16 million to Afghanistan's national program, the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA).

While this is a modest budget by international standards, money spent in this way can have a big payoff. MISFA was launched in 2003 and currently funds 13 microfinance institutions that provide poor Afghans with access to loans and financial services. The program has doubled in reach in the past twelve months, and currently assists 300,000 Afghans, three-quarters of whom are women.

According to a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) press release, "Last year, an interim performance review of MISFA and the Afghan microfinance sector was commissioned by the Afghan Government and international donors including Canada. Published in October 2006, the report concludes that MISFA's design and implementation should serve as a model for building the microfinance sector in other conflict affected countries."

For more on microcredit in Afghanistan, click here.

Taliban take town that British left in October

A rocky turn for the British peace deal that some have said "should not be replicated. . .":

Militants 'overrun Afghan town'
KABUL, Feb 2(AP) -- Hundreds of Taliban militants overran a southern Afghan town that British troops left after a contentious peace agreement in October, destroying the government center and temporarily holding elders hostage, officials and residents said Friday.

The assault, days after a Taliban commander was killed outside the town of Musa Qala, raises doubts about the future of the peace deal, which has been criticized by some Western officials as a NATO retreat in hostile Taliban territory. MORE

• New development, Feb 5: "NATO forces launched an offensive to retake the town, killing the local Taliban chief in an air strike on Sunday"