The United States could keep between 6,000 and 15,000 troops in Afghanistan after the official 2014 NATO withdrawal, say officials familiar with plans submitted to the Pentagon by the current U.S. commander in that country, Gen. John Allen.
Allen was tasked with developing an overarching plan for how U.S. forces will leave Afghanistan over the next two years, as well as solidifying a post-international combat troop presence. Now he has offered three distinctive options for the president, according to senior defense officials.
The officials said Allen's plans - created with input from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's office, the Joint Staff, the U.S. Central Command, and the White House - would give President Barack Obama options based on what he is looking to do in Afghanistan.
The plans are awaiting official approval from Panetta, the officials said.
According to the officials:
The low-end option calls for 6,000 to 6,500 troops that would be strictly for counterterrorism operations: hunting down Taliban and al Qaeda members and cells still operating around the country. This would require mostly Special Operations Forces, with a limited number of support troops and only a very small amount of training assistance for Afghan forces.
The mid-range option, involving around 10,000 troops, would still have the main focus on counterterrorism operations, but it would have a bigger training footprint for Afghan forces, with most of the focus on Special Operations troops and a limited amount of conventional troop training.
The 15,000-troop option would bring in a greater number of conventional troops for training Afghan Security Forces, as well as a bigger support element in addition to the counterterrorism forces.
The defense officials said planning for the post-2014 troop presence is still not complete, but it is very close. They said they expect next week's visit of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to involve conversations discussing these options. Officials said Karzai and Panetta are expected to meet at some point.
Last spring, NATO and the Afghan government agreed on a plan for the United States and international forces to end the NATO mission in Afghanistan and hand over full security responsibility of the country to the Afghan government. At the end of last September - as the final troops added during the "surge" that Obama ordered in December 2009 left Afghanistan - the president ordered Allen to assess the situation in the country and develop an exit strategy.
Defense officials said that Allen had to develop a post-2014 security plan before he could determine how fast troops could be withdrawn over the next two years, to ensure stability throughout the exit.
There are currently 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The capability of Afghan security forces has long been in question, with slow improvement in the military, and the Afghan police force lagging far behind. A December 2012 assessment of the security forces, which looked at a snapshot from between the spring and summer, showed that only one of the Afghan Army's 23 brigades was able to operate on its own, without U.S. military air or ground troop support.
Military analysts who closely watch Afghan operations say that while Allen has not yet made a recommendation for the pace of the force withdrawal, he is expected to suggest pulling troops out at a slower rate than the president would want.
One senior Defense official told CNN the United States is expecting the Afghan government to allow legal protections for U.S. troops who remain in Afghanistan after the NATO mission ends in 2014.
The refusal by the Iraq government to extend legal protections for U.S. troops after the end of the war in Iraq was a major reason the United States left the country with no residual military training force.
The Afghan plans come as Allen prepares to leave Afghanistan in early February in a regular command rotation. Taking over for him will be Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford.
Allen was nominated to take over as head of the U.S. European Command, becoming the top military commander for NATO forces. In that role, he was expected to be a key adviser on Afghanistan through its NATO allies. But his nomination is on hold while he is being investigated for alleged improper e-mail communications with a Tampa, Florida socialite, Jill Kelley.
Afghan census dodges questions of ethnicity and language
Door-to-door interviewers embark on controversial project to count population of country for first time since 1979
Emma Graham-Harrison in Chaghcharan The Guardian, Thursday 3 January 2013 17.47 GMT Jump to comments (16)
Afghan population data may prove a vital tool for cutting waste of development resources. Photograph: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters
There are two questions Hajera Bashir does not ask as she goes door to door gathering census data in Ghor province in Afghanistan's .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/afghanistan .. freezing central highlands: which ethnic group residents belong to, and what language they speak at home.
With these taboo topics set aside, she quizzes families about everything else: their income and how many wives each man has, whether they can read and if their sons and daughters are in school, domestic details such as how they heat their homes, whether they have a toilet and if they keep chickens.
The shy 18-year-old is part of a critical but controversial effort to count the Afghan population .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population .. for the first time since 1979. Expected to take at least six years on a slow, province-by-province basis, it is possible only because it sidesteps tangled questions about the country's ethnic balance. Asking about language is avoided because it can be used as a proxy marker for ethnicity.
"We don't ask for ethnicity or language spoken, this is on purpose," said Laurent Zessler, head in Afghanistan of the UN Population Fund, which is supporting the project. "This country has so many issues to address between the political process, the economy and security, why complicate it?"
Still, the complexity of Afghanistan's ethnic politics means any kind of counting is controversial. The first results, from normally calm central Bamiyan province, showed an actual population barely half official estimates. The area is mostly home to Hazaras, a Shia minority who have often been persecuted in Sunni-dominated Afghanistan, and many took the findings as another form of attack.
"Death to the enemies of Bamiyan! The statistics are wrong!" shouted more than 1,000 demonstrators as they marched on UN offices in the small town this summer, the Pajhwok news agency reported.
A previous attempt to end the decades-long wait for a count of the Afghan people, in 2008, was scrapped, with the government citing security problems. In December officials even dropped plans to unveil a new estimate of the population.
Although war has often put swaths of the country off-limits to statisticians, bitter ethnic politics have also played a role in slow progress, because of the risks that a population count might reduce the official size of some constituencies or expand those of rivals.
"If a politician sees that the ethnic group to which he or she belongs is less than expected, they will sometimes reject the data," said Abdul Rahman Ghafoori, head of the Central Statistics Office, who has the delicate job of balancing his country's need for decent data against the influence of groups who would rather details remain opaque or unchanged.
"We are not looking to reduce or increase population," he said, in an ornately carved office that survived years of violence better than the institution he heads. He is trying to capture his country in numbers with a staff of just 800, and an ambivalent population. "Statistics is a new thing for most people in Afghanistan," he said, "they don't feel it's a need, a necessity."
It is hard to overstate how few reliable numbers there are about population or anything else in Afghanistan, or what a problem this is for those trying to bolster the economy, distribute aid, decide where clinics should be built or how many teachers recruited, or do any other kind of long-term planning.
"The first step is to admit just how bad and conflicting many of the data now being used really are," wrote Anthony Cordesman, in a recent paper for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies .. http://csis.org/files/publication/120918_Afghan_Failing_Econ.pdf .. (pdf) on the economic impact of the departure of western troops.
The lack of reliable figures create "real world uncertainty levels that can easily reach 20-30%", he said, citing population figures from sources including the World Bank and Afghan and US governments that vary from 26 million to 32 million. The estimates are muddied by years of violence, death and exodus, to Pakistan, Iran or further afield; there are only educated guesses about how many people survived, how many returned and how many have since been born.
"For us this is historical because it's the first time since 1979 that we have a survey at the district level, from house to house," said the UN's Zessler. "We are convinced that if we continue to carry these out, province by province, that will give us the same result as a national census."
So far only three provinces have been counted, and they are among the most secure in the country. Security problems are likely to be added to political tensions as teams spread out in more restive areas. But the slow timetable, with the final provinces not due to be surveyed until 2016, may help limit political opposition to the project.
The government could not even consider using the data to change polling districts or the makeup of parliament until the whole country has been counted, UN and Afghan officials say, and that will be long after Afghanistan has chosen its next president and parliament.
The data that is stored up in the meantime may prove a vital tool for cutting corruption and waste, as the resources for development drop off in tandem with foreign troop numbers, supporters of the project say.
"If this survey had been done earlier, it could have changed the whole course of development here," said 28-year-old Abdul Sanjar, head of the provincial union of journalists in Ghor. "So much of the aid and money sent here was wasted as no one knew where or how to spend it. I hope this will be a step towards change." [ my emphasis ]
First Afghan female rapper seeks reason with rhymes
Last Updated: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:38 am (KSA) 07:38 am (GMT)
[ insert embed - The First Afghan Female Rapper-Soosan Firooz ]
This picture shows Soosan Feroz, 23, (R) Afghanistan's first female rap musician, looking on as she practices with Afghan pop musician Farid Rastagar at a recording studio in Kabul. (AFP)
By AFP - Kabul
Sporting a long leather coat and western jeans under a headscarf, Soosan Feroz looks like many modern women in Kabul.
But she is a surprising new phenomenon in this conservative Islamic country -- the nation’s first female rapper.
Her lyrics though are not unfamiliar for many of her fellow countrywomen -- she raps of rape, abuse and atrocities that Afghan women have endured during decades of war in a country gripped by poverty.
“My raps are about the sufferings of women in my country, the pains of the war that we have endured and the atrocities of the war,” Feroz told AFP in an interview in the office of a local company that is helping her record her first album, between local performances including at the US embassy in Kabul.
Like most fellow Afghans, the 23-year-old says her life is filled with bitterness -- memories of war, bombing and a life at refugee camps in neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
She was taken to Pakistan as a child by her parents and later to Iran, escaping a bloody civil war at home in 1990s.
Two years after the 2001 US-led invasion of her war-scarred nation that toppled the Taliban, the then-teenager returned home with her family.
She worked as a carpet weaver with her other siblings for a living until she discovered her new talent.
Told that rap and hip hop had become a way for many artists around the world to express daily hardships in their lives, Feroz says: “If rap singing is a way to tell your miseries, Afghans have a lot to say.
“That’s why I chose to be a rapper.”
She recalls her woes at Iranian refugee camps in her first recorded piece of music, “Our neighbours”, which has been posted on Youtube and viewed nearly 100,000 times:
“What happened to us in the neighbouring country? “We became ‘the dirty Afghan’ “At their bakeries we were pushed at the back of the queue.”
The lyrics are borne from personal experience, Feroz said. “As a child when I was going to bring bread from our neighborhood bakery, the Iranians would tell me, ‘go back, you dirty Afghan’.
“I would be the last one in the line to get my bread,” she said.
Millions of Afghans still live in Iran and Pakistan, which together hosted about seven million refugees after the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Feroz was too young to remember the bloody battles of the 1980s between the Russian soldiers and freedom fighters known as mujahedin but her first song is full of war tales, with one line proclaiming: “We went to Europe for a better life (but) in refugee camps we rotted.”
Thousands of Afghans put their lives on the line every year to reach Europe through dangerous and illegal routes on land and sea. Those who make it often spend years in isolated refugee camps.
Afghan pop star Farid Rastagar has offered to help the young artist release an album, the first song of which will be released in January.
One of the songs is called “Naqis-Ul Aql” which can be translated as “deficient-in-mind” -- a common belief about women among Afghan men.
“In this rap, she sings about the miseries of the women in Afghanistan, about abuses and wrong beliefs that still exists about women,” Rastagar told AFP.
Afghan women have made some progress since the fall of the Taliban but many still suffer horrific abuse including so-called ‘honour killings” for percieved sexual disobedience.
Feroz, the daughter of a former civil servant and an illiterate housewife who remarkably let their daughter sing, has already made scores of enemies not only among conservatives but within her own family.
After releasing her first song on the internet, Feroz’s uncles and their families have shunned her, accusing her of bringing shame on them.
Others, mostly anonymous callers, have threatened to kill her.
“What’s my fault?” she asks. “I always receive phone calls from unknown men who say I’m a bad girl and they will kill me,” she says, her dark eyes welling with tears.
Sitting next to her is her father, Abdul Ghafaar Feroz, who says he prides himself on being her “personal secretary”.
“I’m not deterred,” Feroz said, her father nodding his head in agreement. “Somebody had to start this, I did and I don’t regret it and I will continue. I want to be the voice of women in my country.”
(Reuters) - An assembly of Afghan elders endorsed a crucial security deal on Sunday to enable U.S. troops to operate in the country beyond next year, but President Hamid Karzai left the matter up in the air by refusing to say whether he would sign it into law.
The gathering, known as the Loya Jirga, had been convened by the president to debate the pact outlines the legal terms of continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan .. http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan . It voted in favour and advised Karzai sign it promptly.
But Karzai, in his final remarks to the four-day meeting, said he would not sign it until after a presidential election due next April.
"If there is no peace, then this agreement will bring misfortune to Afghanistan .. http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001 ," he said. "Peace is our precondition. America should bring us peace and then we will sign it."
The president did not elaborate, but has previously said a free and fair vote is needed to guarantee peace in the country and his spokesman later said Karzai had not changed his mind.
As the meeting ended, assembly chairman Sibghatullah Mojeddedi told Karzai: "If you don't sign it, we will be disappointed." Karzai responded "Fine!" and left the stage.
Failure to clinch the deal could mean a full U.S. pullout, leaving Afghanistan to fight the Taliban insurgency on its own. U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan .. http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001 .. since leading a drive to remove the Taliban in late 2001.
U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said the deal must be signed by year-end to begin preparations for a post-2014 presence.
Kerry said in a statement that the Loya Jirga's endorsement was a "compelling affirmation" and urged a signing of the agreement in "short order."
In his remarks, Karzai acknowledged there was little trust between him and U.S. leaders while saying signing the pact was broadly in Afghanistan's interests. Backing from the Jirga, handpicked by his administration, had been widely expected.
Most speakers were muted in their criticism of the thorniest issues in the document, including a U.S. request for immunity for its troops from Afghan law.
Critics say Karzai's recalcitrance on the date might reflect his desire to distance himself from any deal with the United States and avoid speculation that he has sold out to the West.
A former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, said Karzai is known to use 11th hour demands to press for concessions from the United States during negotiations.
"He has to be the one ... to sign off on this loss of Afghan sovereignty. He knows intellectually that this is in Afghanistan's interest, but at the same time it's distasteful to him," Neumann said.
HE'S DONE IT AGAIN
The deal took a year to bash out and Karzai's about-face threw the entire process into doubt just hours after both sides announced they had agreed on its terms.
Even in Afghanistan, where some view the security agreement with the United States with contempt, many officials were unsettled.
Some believe Karzai is simply concerned that the United States and other Western countries may attempt to interfere in next year's presidential election. Having served two terms, he is ineligible to run again.
By withholding his signature until after the vote, Karzai could also use ratification as leverage to ensure the United States does not try to back a candidate not to his liking.
Opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah, who dropped out of a run-off against Karzai in the 2009 elections, citing concerns about fraud, was among those who shared this suspicion.
"What he is asking for is a guarantee about the elections and most probably his favourite candidate," Abdullah told Reuters.
Karzai accused the international community of meddling during the 2009 election that he won, saying they had tried to encourage Afghans to vote for an opposition candidate.
Others were concerned that Karzai's reluctance to sign the agreement could jeopardise Afghanistan's relations with its international allies and its economic future.
"If we keep talking about signing the agreement after the election, we will lose our biggest ally," said Freshta Amini, an MP from southwestern Nimroz province. But some Loya Jirga members supported Karzai's comment about delaying ratification.
"If the Americans want to sign this pact with Afghanistan, then they should also respect our demands for a transparent election, and peace and security in the country," said Farid Alokozai, provincial council chief in Wardak, outside Kabul.
One cabinet minister close to Karzai said many members of the president's team were unhappy with his decision.
"There are people who want this pact to be signed immediately after the Loya Jirga. But there are spoilers too, who have a lot of influence over the president."
(Additional reporting by Katherine Houreld, Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi, Dylan Welch and Caren Bohan; Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Maria Golovnina, Ron Popeski and Jackie Frank)
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
