Tag Archives: Taliban

Aid workers pay high price for USAID policy in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON –Security for aid workers in Afghanistan is deteriorating and nongovernment organizations blame U.S. development policies for putting more lives at risk.

The U.S. Agency for International Development requires that humanitarian aid projects in Afghanistan support the military’s war strategy, a policy that has made aid workers targets for the Taliban, nongovernment organizations say.

“There are more attacks on aid workers now,” said Ann Richard, vice president of government relations at the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernment organization with programs in Afghanistan. “Security for NGOs has gone in the opposite direction.”

USAID policies explicitly support the counterinsurgency war strategy in Afghanistan, and the agency allocates funding to nongovernment organizations based on how their projects “contribute to COIN goals,” according to agency guidelines. COIN is shorthand for counterinsurgency, the war strategy used in the Iraq and Afghanistan that coordinates military force with development and peacekeeping efforts to defeat insurgent groups.

USAID grants require aid organizations work closely with the military on projects such as “battlefield clean up,” where aid workers are sent to clean up post-conflict damage in communities where there was heavy fighting, Richard said.

Merging nongovernment aid projects with military operations has tarnished the apolitical, impartial image critical to the safety of aid workers, many organizations say. The general assumption among Afghans is that aid organizations are working for the U.S. military, said one aid worker who helps run medical programs for an organization that has worked in Afghanistan for more than 15 years.

“If there’s anger at the military, then often times the NGOs will have to pay for it,” said the aid worker, who asked not to be named for fear he might jeopardize the organization’s programs.

Three aid workers were killed in July when suicide bombers attacked the compound of Development Alternatives, a consulting group that helps implements USAID development projects in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which officials said was a response to the recent surge of U.S. troops.

“Even the perception of being tied to the military can have tragic results,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at Center for American Progress and a former State Department official.

Development aid has been tied to counterinsurgency since the war strategy was implemented in Iraq during the Bush administration, but only recently have nonprofits started to collectively push back. The Obama administration has ratcheted up aid efforts in Afghanistan, where the need for infrastructure and humanitarian aid far exceeds that in Iraq.

Safety concerns are paramount in Afghanistan, where insurgents are killing civilians at a rate three times higher than they did during the Iraq war, according to a paper released in July by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The Taliban’s murder of 10 members of Christian organization International Assistance Mission on Aug. 5 has escalated fears among aid workers.

“It’s not a good situation,” said Beth Cole, director of intergovernmental affairs at the U.S. Institution of Peace. “The Taliban are circling Kabul. The days are waning.”

Since the start of 2010, there have been 76 attacks on nongovernment workers in Afghanistan, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, an independent group that provides security information for humanitarian workers in the country. Fifteen of those incidents, which include violent attacks and abduction, occurred in July.

Several nongovernment organizations working in Afghanistan have stopped applying for USAID funding and are instead seeking more funding from private donors and the EU, aid workers reported. Still, many organizations say they cannot regain the trust they worked to earn in Afghan communities since long before the 2001 U.S. invasion.

Some argue that aid workers’ blame is misplaced. Because of the increased threat from insurgent groups, development organizations have to learn to work closer with the military, said Richard Owens, director for community stabilization at International Relief and Development.

“You cannot rely on your good relationship with the local communicates to keep you safe anymore,” said Owens, who has a background in coordinating military-civilian operations. “In a world where the Taliban exists, all bets are off.”

Nonprofits are “naive” to think association with the military puts them at greater risk, said Andrew Natsios, a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University and USAID administrator from 2001 to 2006. The Taliban target aid organizations because they are bringing development to Afghanistan, Natsios said.

“Whatever is not 12th century in their world view is regarded as the enemy,” Natsios said. “What the Taliban is fighting against is modernization.”

According to media reports, the Taliban killed the Christian aid workers earlier this month because they were “spying” for the U.S. and “preaching Christianity.” The international group included Afghan nationals and had worked in the country for more than 30 years.

A senior adviser at one high-profile aid organization working in Afghanistan said his organization had been doing development work in Taliban-controlled areas because aid workers spent years proving to insurgents that they did not have a political mission. The organization is rethinking where they can send workers and type of projects they can do under increased security threats.

Development efforts have shifted to areas in Afghanistan where U.S. military forces are concentrated. Health programs in other areas of the country have been shut down, replaced by new projects in the south and east, where fighting is the heaviest, said Leonard Rubenstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins and former U.S. Institute of Peace fellow.

The inequitable distribution of aid runs contrary to nonprofit development practices that stress equitable resources across ethnic groups and has created animosity among some communities “who feel they are being penalized for being peaceful,” according to research by Andrew Wilder, an expert on governance and aid in Afghanistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Some nongovernment organizations fear communities that have lost development projects may lash out at aid workers, creating new conflict in previously stable areas.

“It’s actually counterproductive,” Rubenstein said. “You’re really shooting yourself in the foot.”

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On WikiLeaks and Pakistan

Some Obama administration officials and congressional lawmakers in recent days
 have sought to downplay the significance of the massive leak of secret U.S.
military files by the organization WikiLeaks by saying it’s “old news,’’ or a 
rehash of what is already well known about the prolonged war.
 But why would they think such a dismissive characterization of the remarkable 
trove of documents makes things better, not worse?

If anything, what they are conceding is that top U.S. intelligence and 
policy-making officials know full well that at least some of the billions of dollars that they have given to Pakistan in recent years has gone to funding the very insurgency that they are trying to wipe out in Afghanistan – with little, if
 any success.

It’s true that Washington has long known that Pakistan has been playing such a
 double game, especially its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. The 
ISI essentially created the militant groups that became the Taliban to act as
their proxy fighting forces against India and, later, in Afghanistan. 
But the front-line troop reports and other documents posted online by WikiLeaks
 provide chilling and authoritative details about how U.S.-funded allied forces are
 literally at war with our own troops.

And they do so with the kind of specificity 
that the Obama administration and congressional lawmakers will find hard to 
ignore.
 The really smart counterterrorism officials in Washington – who don’t dare speak 
publicly because it could end their careers – are hoping the new disclosures will 
finally force those in charge of Pakistan policy to do something that they
 have been unwilling to do in the past.
 They’re hoping the White House and Congress tie the billions in aid money flowing 
to Pakistan to verifiable efforts by the Islamabad government to slash the ties
 between its intelligence and military services and the Taliban and other militant
 organizations that they are in collusion with.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, some of them acknowledge that such
 “tough love’’ could be risky. When Washington cut off some aid to Pakistan after 
it clandestinely developed nuclear weapons capability, the Islamabad government 
intensified its ties to jihadi organizations. 
But given the intensity of the Taliban insurgency, they say, that is a risk that 
Washington can’t afford not to take.

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Afghan prisons

Last summer, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was at the time the top commander of American forces in Afghanistan, identified one of the biggest problems in Afghanistan: The prison population. “There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan,” he wrote in an August 2009 report that was addressed to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. It was a chilling assessment – and yet should not have been surprising.

For years, the U.S.-run prison at Bagram had been reviled and feared, and at least two detainees died while being held there. Detainees were until recently “housed in primitive pens made from cages surrounded by razor wire,” says Jonathan Horowitz, a researcher who has visited the place and whose work is supported by Open Society Institute. The prison now has a new name, Detention Facility in Parwan, and detainees are given brightly lit rooms, neatly pressed sheets on their beds and prayer blankets. On a broader scale, Americans are trying to make the detention system more transparent, creating a FaceBook page to showcase work, and they are planning to turn the system over to the Afghans in the next year or so.

The military recently invited journalists to a trial at Parwan, the first one that the Afghan government had held at the prison. The chief judge sentenced four men to prison for bomb-making, as The New York Times’ Alissa J. Rubin reported, while American lawyers and officers in the next room watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television set.

Handing over the detention system to the Afghans is already underway in other quarters, and the results are mixed. Dozens of Parwan detainees are sent to Pul-e-Charkhi, a facility located outside Kabul that has been renovated with U.S. government funds. Afghan trials are held for some prisoners, although the trials are based on largely evidence collected by the Americans, and the justice is uneven: Afghan guards allegedly pulled 16 men out of their cells one night in 2007 and executed them. Human rights advocates believe that the problems with the detention facilities, and the trials that are being held at Pul-e-Charkhi, are emblematic of a weak justice system that lies at the heart of Afghan instability.

“We are funneling billions of dollars into Afghanistan, and one of the main points of focus is strengthening Afghanistan’s rules of law,” says OSI’s Horowitz. “One of the reasons Afghans have shown sympathy for the Taliban is because of the way they bring speedy, although brutal, form of justice to communities, so even if the U.S. wasn’t handing its detainees and evidence files over to Afghans, there’s strong reason to be concerned about fairness.”

Experts believe that the chances of having an equitable, Afghan-run justice system in place by next year is unlikely. Americans may choose to leave at that point, but afterward the justice system may well deteriorate, sending the country into another downward spiral.

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The recent evolution of the 'enemy combatant'

Since 2001, the term “enemy combatant” has been primarily applied to terror suspects associated with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Largely on the basis of its own executive orders, the Bush administration applied the term “enemy combatant” to former Chicago gang member Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was a U.S. citizen when he was captured in Afghanistan, reportedly fighting American forces with the Taliban.

In its 2003 World Report, advocacy group Human Rights Watch said, “The use of the ‘enemy combatant’ designation appeared to be intended to circumvent the U.S. criminal justice system and its safeguard of basic rights.”

Civil rights groups often cite the cases of Padilla, who was detained for more than three years without a trial for suspected connections with al-Qaida, and Hamdi. After Hamdi was detained without being charged, he became the subject of the 2004 Supreme Court case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The court ruled that while the government could detain unlawful combatants, detainees with U.S. citizenship have a right to challenge their detention.

In 2005, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, introduced the Detention of Enemy Combatants Act, which would permit the president to detain U.S. citizens with connections to al-Qaida but would also “guarantee [detainees] timely access to judicial review.” The bill never left committee, but it made the following statement about enemy combatants:

“The term ‘enemy combatant’ has historically referred to all of the citizens of a state with which the Nation is at war, and who are members of the armed force of that enemy state. Enemy combatants in the present conflict, however, come from many nations, wear no uniforms, and use unconventional weapons. Enemy combatants in the war on terrorism are not defined by simple, readily apparent criteria, such as citizenship or military uniform. And the power to name a citizen as an ‘enemy combatant’ is therefore extraordinarily broad.”

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which distinguished between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants. According to the law, lawful enemy combatants are those associated with an opposing government or other organized force who identify themselves in appearance and behavior. In short, unlawful enemy combatants are those who aren’t lawful enemy combatants.

Matthew Lippmann, a professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said Bush broadly defined enemy combatants as “people who fall outside the Geneva Conventions who are at war with the United States.”

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 also specified that unlawful enemy combatants could be tried in military courts and thus were not subject to rights including habeas corpus.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners have a right to habeas corpus, making that provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional.

The Obama administration officially abandoned the term “enemy combatant” last year, though it has continued holding some individuals without trial at Guantanamo Bay. It attributed continued detentions to Congressional and international law, including the Geneva Conventions.

“President Obama said no, I’m not really going to buy into the notion that this is a war,” Lippmann said. “We’re going to prosecute [detainees] in a civilian court and treat them as criminals.”

For a timeline of the history of the term “enemy combatant” in the United States, click here.

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U.S. Peace Institute takes Afghanistan discussion to web viewers

WASHINGTON–The majority of the public moments of Hamid Karzai’s recent four-day visit to the United States consisted of little more than ceremony, photographs, hand-shaking and smiles. The press had few opportunities to ask questions of the Afghan president or gain insight into what he and U.S. officials discussed during sessions held behind closed doors.

However, on May 13, the last day of his visit, Karzai and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not only took questions, they had a public discussion before an audience of hundreds–both in person and on the web. The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted the conversation between Clinton and Karzai, moderated by William Taylor, vice president of the organization’s Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations.

Not only was the structure of the event more casual than any of the events earlier in his visit, it was open and on display. The government-affiliated organization estimates that an audience of approximately 180 in-person attendees and hundreds of viewers of the real-time webcast of the event were party to the discussion.

“I think using the webcast was hugely important,” said Dida Atasi, online communications specialist at USIP. “[Karzai] having agreed to speak at a think-tank like USIP opens up [the conversation of peace] to begin with. Online is one small part. Proliferating that through different channels- reporters, people tweeting, members of the Afghan delegation watching- these factors come together to make it communication.”

Member of USIP were also live-tweeting the event. Many of the organization’s Twitter followers posted and re-tweeted questions and comments about the discussion and began analyzing and criticizing the conversation as it happened, and USIP was listening.

“People were interacting real-time on Twitter,” Atasi said. “When our moderator mentioned a report and we immediately put up a link to that report and sent it out through Twitter. A lot of people were re-tweeting and putting in their own commentary.”

Atasi said the online engagement was a really interesting way for people to feel engaged in discussions of peace strategy instead of watching from the outside. From issues of womens’ rights in Afghan culture to the controversial issue of reintegrating Taliban fighters into Afghan society, Twitter users across the web interacted with the conversation as it happened in DC.

“Short answer: they’re good boys, really! they were just misled! I think I saw this movie. It was called ‘west side story’,” said one commenter of Taliban reintegration. The comment spurred several responses and criticism.

“If you’re flipping through a channel and you see Karzai, you don’t think there’s anything you can do about it,” Atasi said. “When people see they can participate without having to leave their chair they do.”

USIP plans to continue providing webcasts of its events in the hope of providing a forum for a peace-centric discussion of national security. Their website http://www.usip.org/events has links to upcoming events and they can be found on Twitter at @USIP.

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Will the U.S. effort to buy off Afghan locals ever work?

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military appears to be realizing the limits of the “buy and hold” counterinsurgency strategy that it used so successfully in Iraq as it struggles to gain local support in Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines have pumped millions of dollars into the Marja agricultural district in southern Afghanistan, either as compensation for damages or to pay off military-aged males so they don’t join the Taliban. But as The New York Times detailed in an article earlier this month, the strategy is riddled with problems and unproven assumptions. Locals who take the money in good faith are often beaten by Taliban forces, the article states, while others use the funds to purchase automatic rifles for insurgents.

Not that this comes as a surprise to many experts within the U.S. national security community.

“There’s an enormous moral hazard. What you’ve basically done is created a class of rent seekers,” lining up for free money from Washington, said C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s security studies program and former  political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul. “­You’re trading off some presumed level of security today for less security tomorrow.”

Defense Department officials say the practice, which has been employed for several years, is not a security trade-off but rather a way of building long-term stability. But they have yet to answer a fundamental question posed by many counterinsurgency experts: what happens when the United States leaves and the money stops flowing?

The goal in the Afghanistan theater still is to produce some system of governance that keeps militant radicals out of Kabul without a potentially antagonizing public show of American troop support – a near impossibility given the country’s history, some experts said.

The best-case scenario would be to create a government seat in Kabul, the Afghan capital, but also have urban areas with loose agreements with provincial leaders, said Seth Jones, an Afghanistan policy expert for the Rand Corporation. Jones, the author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan,’’ has led numerous projects on stability operations and counterterrorism for the Department of Defense, FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.

“The question becomes how to deal with local actors,” said Jones. He added that development projects have proven successful in the past, but that they need to be done by local leaders such as Hajji Abdul Zahir, Marja’s newNATO-backed governor. ­

As the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan nears the 10-year mark, Washington continues to struggle with identifying any successful, or even promising, alternatives. Military brass have repeatedly stated that any long-term strategy will be based in local support and cooperation, but there is no indication that U.S. troops have gained the kind of widespread credibility on the ground that they need to achieve that.

In addition, there needs to be accountability built into the Pentagon strategy—especially given all of the U.S. taxpayer money being spent, Georgetown’s Fair said.

“These guys are never held responsible for conducting an evaluation of this program,” she said. “Just because they’re taking money from you, doesn’t mean they’re not taking money from the Taliban.”

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