By Dan Magnowski

For many in the West, Afghanistan and Iraq have much in common.
 Both are Islamic countries whose nasty regimes were kicked out by
the U.S. after September 11 2001; in both places, the Americans,
British and others stayed and spent huge amounts of money on nobody’s
quite sure what; and both were examples of ‘evil’, back when that was
a cornerstone of foreign policy thinking.

But Afghanistan isn’t just another Iraq. In many respects, it’s
much more like another country beloved of the international community:
Democratic Republic of Congo.

 In both, violence is so common that it’s practically background
noise, and only spectacular outrages win international attention.
Armed rebel groups continue to roam the east of Congo at will, while
the latest United Nations figures, to nobody’s great surprise, showed
the number of civilians killed in the Afghan war rose again last year.

Many Afghans and foreigners fear that, come the end-2014 exit of
the 100,000-plus foreign combat troops who, after more than a decade,
are still fighting to keep the Taliban at bay, attacks will grow even
more frequent, and civil war is always on the table as a possible
outcome.

 Both countries suffer from extreme border insecurity and outside
interference, in Afghanistan most notably from Pakistan. The Afghan
government has suggested Pakistan’s spy network backs the insurgents
who blow people up in its cities, plant bombs along its roads and
shoot its soldiers, a charge which is an article of faith among most
Afghans.

Pakistan strongly denies the allegations, but a fence-mending
visit to Kabul in early February by Pakistani foreign minister Hina
Rabbani Khar was totally overshadowed by a leaked U.S. military report
which repeated the claim, and many Afghans believe there will be no
peace in their country until Pakistan ceases meddling.

Domestically, thievery and disorder is the order of the day, from
the pettiest official to the upper echelons of the administration.
Transparency watchdogs rate both countries as among the most corrupt
in the world, and regard among the public for their governments is
pitifully low.

 Allegations of vote-rigging — hardly a new phenomenon in central
Africa — surrounded President Joseph Kabila’s re-election late last
year, while scandals like the 2010 Kabulbank collapse, in which senior
Afghan officials among others pocketed almost half a billion dollars
in undocumented loans, undermine domestic and foreign support for the
political classes.

 Public trust in the security forces is also fragile where it
exists at all: according to a recent survey, only two in ten Afghans
think their policemen can uphold law and order.

 The army, despite the best efforts of willing Western soldiers, is
dragged down by Afghan soldiers shooting their foreign
comrades-in-arms; in Congo, the police and army have been accused of
sex crimes and other atrocities.

Governments in Kabul and Kinshasa alike talk about natural
resources as the magic solution that’s going to employ their legions
of jobless people, and bring cash into state coffers that would by
near-empty without foreign aid.

Afghanistan, one of the most recent beneficiaries of Chinese investment in minerals, will have to careful how it manages
exploitation of its iron and copper: in Congo, many mineral deposits
still finance nobody but the armed gangs who control them, and the
corrupt officials who allow it to happen.

 All these things common to Congo and Afghanistan feed into a
general perception that the state does not serve the people but is
instead a mechanism for enriching officials, and that the country,
even when not actually at war, is ungovernable.

 Diplomats and the international community at large insist the
transition to full Afghan responsibility for security does not mean
foreign abandonment post-2014, and that the global commitment to a
secure, sovereign, well-governed Afghanistan is undiminished.

The voters back home aren’t interested though, and when
‘austerity’ is the watchword in a Europe that can barely pay for its
local excesses, let alone those in other parts of the world, appetite
for engagement is shrivelling daily: in January, France said it wanted
to get its boys out by the end of 2013, a year ahead of schedule.
    Privately, some foreigners posted in Kabul say Afghanistan is
neither worth the blood that’s been spilt nor the cash spent, and that
its problems are so great and so many that whatever is done will not
be enough.

 This echoes a line of thinking about Congo that began with
Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ and has taken root in literature,
perception and ultimately policy: that the place is so broken, so bad,
that fixing it is impossible.

 There are vast differences between the two of course, but trends
in Afghanistan suggest that the country it is becoming could end up
looking even more like Congo than it does now. Without the river.

The row over the Critical Infrastructure Protection program (CIP) launched in areas where there are not enough regular security forces threatens to open a new rift with President Hamid Karzai who sees them as parallel structures that undermine his authority.

A spokesman of the Afghan interior ministry said that the CIP, made up of local militia, was operating outside the Afghan police structure, and people have complained in the provinces where the force was launched to protect reconstruction projects and join the fight against the Taliban.

“We have requested NATO that it be disbanded, our people are not happy about it. They only want national police forces that they can recognize,” said Sediq Sediqqi.

Several armed groups have been set up in response to Afghanistan’s downward security spiral, aiming to capitalize on a demands to protect local communities — much like Iraq’s Awakening Council that helped turn the tide of the Iraq war.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said the CIP program was under review and would continue to operate.

“ISAF has not been asked to terminate CIP from functioning/providing critical infrastructure protection while the review is underway,” a spokeswoman for the ISAF’s regional command north said in an email.

“The CIP program has produced a reduction in insurgent significant actions (IEDs, small arms fire attacks, etc) where CIP has been emplaced,” she said, adding that the program was requested in writing by the Afghan provincial governors where they were deployed.

Human rights groups say that as NATO prepares to withdraw by the end of 2014 it is trying to build up Afghan national security forces as well as irregular units at top speed.

On Tuesday, 70 members of the team stood guard at the opening of a bridge built by a foreign run joint military-civilian team in Char Darah district of northern Kunduz province, a Reuters reporter said.

Besides Kunduz, the force operates in Faryab, Jawzjan, Sar-e- Pul and Laghman provinces, areas that Afghan national forces are not fully represented. The ISAF spokeswoman said CIP had 1544 members and that the ISAF had not issued any weapons.

The governor of northern Kunduz province said he was concerned about what the men will do if the local CIP unit was dismantled.

“Now that the government has decided to dismiss it, it has to provide them with jobs in the military field,” Mohammad Anwar Jigdalik said.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Ed Lane)

Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, in a note to foreign missions, has set out ground rules for engaging the Taliban after Kabul grew concerned that the United States and Qatar, helped by Germany, had secretly agreed with the Taliban to open an office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

It said that negotiations with the Taliban could only begin after they stopped violence against civilians, cut ties to al Qaeda, and accepted the Afghan constitution which guarantees civil rights and liberties, including rights for women.

The council, according to a copy of the 11-point note made available to Reuters, also said any peace process with the Taliban would have to have the support of Pakistan since members of the insurgent group were based there.

“The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations,” the council said.

The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said.

“We are saying Saudi or Turkey are preferable, we are not saying it has to be there only. The only condition is it should be in an Islamic country,” said a government official.

President Hamid Karzai’s administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of negotiations with the insurgent group.

Officials said Kabul was also deeply concerned about reports that the United States was considering the transfer of a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to the talks.

“We are a sovereign country, we have laws. How can you transfer our prisoners from one country to another. Already it’s a violation to have them in Guantanamo Bay,” the official said.

The Afghan government wanted the prisoners to be returned to its custody, the official said.

Reuters reported this month that the United States was considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into Afghan government custody as part of accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy.

“We have no problem with this. In fact we have been demanding this for a while. These are Afghan prisoners,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014.

Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

HARDENING OF POSITIONS

It led to a hardening of positions with Karzai saying the government could not talk to suicide bombers and that there should be an address for the Taliban so that negotiators know they are talking to the right representatives.

“We are committed to the reconciliation process, the experience of the last 10 years shows no military solution is possible. Talking to the armed opposition is the key in this regard,” said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.

The peace council, laying down the markers for engagement with the Taliban, said well known figures from both the Taliban and the government had to be involved in talks.

It said that “before any negotiations can take place, violence against Afghan people must stop and that the armed opposition must cut ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups”.

It also said that the Taliban must accept the constitution and honour the gains made in the last 10 years since they were ousted from power, conditions that the Taliban have shown no sign of accepting.

The Taliban do not accept the constitution and have vowed to carry on fighting until all foreign troops have left the country.

The peace council said Pakistani support was necessary for talks to take place, another condition that makes the task harder because of fraught ties between the United States and Pakistan which fears it is being shut out of the process.

Opening a Taliban office in a third country itself is seen as a way to create distance from Pakistan which has longstanding ties to the insurgent group.

But the government official said he did not think the peace council had laid down such tough conditions that the talks would fail even before they started.

“We don’t think it’s a deal breaker. We are quite optimistic,” he said.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, in a note to foreign missions, has set out ground rules for engaging the Taliban after Kabul grew concerned that the United States and Qatar, helped by Germany, had secretly agreed with the Taliban to open an office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

It said that negotiations with the Taliban could only begin after they stopped violence against civilians, cut ties to al Qaeda, and accepted the Afghan constitution which guarantees civil rights and liberties, including rights for women.

The council, according to a copy of the 11-point note made available to Reuters, also said any peace process with the Taliban would have to have the support of Pakistan since members of the insurgent group were based there.

“The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations,” the council said.

The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said.

“We are saying Saudi or Turkey are preferable, we are not saying it has to be there only. The only condition is it should be in an Islamic country,” said a government official.

President Hamid Karzai’s administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of negotiations with the insurgent group.

Officials said Kabul was also deeply concerned about reports that the United States was considering the transfer of a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to the talks.

“We are a sovereign country, we have laws. How can you transfer our prisoners from one country to another. Already it’s a violation to have them in Guantanamo Bay,” the official said.

The Afghan government wanted the prisoners to be returned to its custody, the official said.

Reuters reported this month that the United States was considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into Afghan government custody as part of accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy.

“We have no problem with this. In fact we have been demanding this for a while. These are Afghan prisoners,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014.

Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

HARDENING OF POSITIONS

It led to a hardening of positions with Karzai saying the government could not talk to suicide bombers and that there should be an address for the Taliban so that negotiators know they are talking to the right representatives.

“We are committed to the reconciliation process, the experience of the last 10 years shows no military solution is possible. Talking to the armed opposition is the key in this regard,” said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.

The peace council, laying down the markers for engagement with the Taliban, said well known figures from both the Taliban and the government had to be involved in talks.

It said that “before any negotiations can take place, violence against Afghan people must stop and that the armed opposition must cut ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”

It also said that the Taliban must accept the constitution and honor the gains made in the last 10 years since they were ousted from power, conditions that the Taliban have shown no sign of accepting.

The Taliban do not accept the constitution and have vowed to carry on fighting until all foreign troops have left the country.

The peace council said Pakistani support was necessary for talks to take place, another condition that makes the task harder because of fraught ties between the United States and Pakistan which fears it is being shut out of the process.

Opening a Taliban office in a third country itself is seen as a way to create distance from Pakistan which has longstanding ties to the insurgent group.

But the government official said he did not think the peace council had laid down such tough conditions that the talks would fail even before they started.

“We don’t think it’s a deal breaker. We are quite optimistic,” he said.

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

But the U.S.-led coalition’s supply lines that run through Pakistan remain closed since the November 26 incident and it is both in the interests of foreign forces as well as Pakistan that the routes be opened sooner rather than later, the alliance said.

Ties between the United States and Pakistan are fraught, with Islamabad blocking the Afghan supply line for one of the longest periods yet. Last week, U.S. lawmakers agreed to freeze $700 million in aid to Pakistan demanding it disrupt the movement of fertilizers used in making homemade bombs, the deadliest killer of foreign troops.

But the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General John Allen, had spoken to the Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and there were signs of progress over the last few days, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters.

“We have seen liaison officers, Pakistani officers, return to border coordination centers, General Allen has spoken to General Kayani, so we are moving in the right direction,” he said.

The border control centers were set up to help NATO and Afghan forces and their Pakistani counterparts on the other side of the porous border to coordinate operations against militants and avoid the kind of the incident that occurred last month in which two Pakistan army posts in Mohmand came under NATO fire.

Pakistan said the United States had carried out an unprovoked attack, an accusation rejected by Washington. An investigation has been ordered and Jacobsen declined to go into details of the incident ahead of the results.

But he urged Pakistan to reopen the two supply routes into Afghanistan, which carry just under a third of all cargo for foreign forces fighting in the landlocked nation.

“It is in our interest as well as Pakistan’s interests, for economic reasons that they reopen these routes sooner rather than later,” he said.

NIGHT RAIDS

Jacobsen also defended the use of night raids on Afghan homes to hunt down insurgents, despite yet another call overnight from Afghan President Hamid Karzai to end the practice, deeply hated by most Afghans.

“Night operations remain the safest form of operations conducted to take insurgents off the battlefield,” he said, adding that in 85 percent of such raids not a single shot is fired. The raids have accounted for less than one percent of civilian casualties, he said.

Karzai on Sunday asked NATO not to enter Afghan homes for such operations after a raid in eastern Paktia province in which he said a woman was killed and four people wounded.

Foreign forces fighting in Afghanistan have become more accurate in conducting night-time raids on homes, but they have stepped up the number and scope of the operations so they affect more civilians, a report by the Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office said in September.

Jacobsen said the way forward was greater involvement of Afghan Special Forces in these raids.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Ron Popeski)

It’s rarely a nice thing for a foreign country to figure high in a U.S. presidential election campaign. If it is China, it is more likely to be about currency and trade disputes with Beijing, and how each of the candidates was going to tackle it than any bouquets. Or if it is Iran, you can be sure there would be some shooting from the hip as each candidate seeks to outbid the other in trying to convince voters he or she means business with the perceived threat from that country’s nuclear programme.

And so if you were a Pakistani, last weekend’s Republican presidential debate would be just as worrisome even though you know this is election season and candidates are given to competitive sabre rattling. The country was mentioned 55 times in the debate in South Carolina, notes Sadanand Dhume in a piece on The Enterprise blog. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the leading candidate, said Pakistan was nearly a failed state with multiple centres of power  including  a weak civilian leadership and a powerful military.

 Texas governor Rick Perry suggested cutting U.S. aid to Pakistan to zero because it was putting American lives in jeopardy and the Newt Gingrich   pulled few punches either, criticising the country for hosting Osama bin Laden “for at least six years in a military city within a mile of their national defence university.”

Another candidate couldn’t decide whether Pakistan was an enemy or a friend, which itself is quite telling in the way the country where Osama bin Laden was found living in relative comfort ten years after the Sept 11 attacks is perceived in America. Quite a far cry from the time President George W. Bush had trouble recalling the name of Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharaf during his election campaign.  But that was before the attacks in New York and Washington and from then on the focus turned to Afghanistan where bin Laden was initially holed up and to Pakistan later.

A lot of the tough-talk has to be seen as part of the election season as we said before, but equally its hard to dismiss the statements altogether  because any one of these candidates could be the next commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military.  Even more so, you have to consider the impact of the steadily escalating campaign rhetoric on the incumbent administration.  Its clearly harder for President Barack Obama to strike a conciliatory note with regard to Pakistan, even if the situation arises, in such an atmosphere when his opponents are turning up the heat.  Some people are already seeing it insofar as China is concerned, attributing Obama’s exhortations last weekend that it should behave as a grown-up economy to political posturing aimed at weary voters.

Candidates are only reflecting what they think are voter concerns and if the polls are any indication they are reading the mood right. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 40 percent of Americans consider Pakistan to be America’s enemy, according to Pakistan’s ambassador Hussain Haqqani. 

A strategic partnership agreement between India and Afghanistan would ordinarily have evoked howls of protest from Pakistan which has long regarded its western neighbour as part of its sphere of influence.  Islamabad has, in the past, made no secret of its displeasure at India’s role in Afghanistan including  a$2 billion aid effort that has won it goodwill among the Afghan  people, but which Pakistan sees as New Delhi’s way to expand influence. 

Instead the reaction to the pact signed last month during President Hamid Karzai’s visit to New Delhi, the first Kabul had done with any country, was decidedly muted. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani  said India and Afghanistan were “both sovereign countries and they have the right to do whatever they want to.”  The Pakistani foreign office echoed Gilani’s comments, adding only that regional stability should be preserved. It cried off further comment, saying it was studying the pact.

It continued to hold discussions, meanwhile, on the grant of the Most Favoured Nation to India as part of moves to normalise ties. Late last month the cabinet cleared the MFN, 15 years after New Delhi accorded Pakistan the same status so that the two could conduct trade like nations do around the world, even those with differences.

And on Thursday, Gilani met Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the margins of a regional summit in the Maldives and the two promised a new chapter in ties, saying the next round of talks between officials as part of an engagement on a range of issues will produce results. Afghanistan or the pact, was scarcely mentioned in public, although it is quite conceivable that the two would have talked about it.

Is there a shift in the ground, in both India and Pakistan ?  Pakistan is battling multiple  crises, including ties with the United States that at the moment certainly look worse than those with India. It is also struggling to tackle a melange of militant groups that have metastasized into a mortal danger for the Pakistani state itself and a deep economic downturn that a nation of 180 million people can ill-afford at this time. While it continues to invest time and energy in Afghanistan, a large part of the war has come home too and it is struggling to enforce its writ on its side of the Pasthun-dominated lands that straddle the two countries. A lessening of tensions with India can only help at this point.

India, meanwhile, has shot out of the blocks building a trillion-dollar economy  that dwarfs everyone else’s in the region, not just in size but also growth rates even if  it is slowing down now. It still has a long way to go to meet the aspirations of a billion plus people and realise its own potential, though. It needs peace within and on the borders and it needs closer economic ties with  all its neighbours.  Its economic stakes are rising across the region including Afghanistan where Indian firms, along with the Chinese who preceded them, are the only ones prepared to risk blood and treasure to exploit its mineral resources. Conversely if a pomegranate farmer in southern Afghanistan- the Taliban heartland – wants to sell his produce to the booming Indian market,  New Delhi wants to do whatever it can to try and make that possible.

A hostile Pakistan until now has balked at trade and transit, but  if India and Pakistan begin to have normal trade ties following the breakthrough on MFN, then easier flow of goods from Afghanistan seems a natural possibility. The long-running project to pipe gas from Turkmenistan and through Afghanistan, Pakistan and then India may seem less of a dream as the economies of India and Pakistan begin to interlock and both sides develop stakes in the well being of the other to protect their investments and trade.

Indeed, Sajjad Ashraf, a former Pakistan ambassador to Singapore and now a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, cautioned against a knee-jerk Pakistani reaction to the Indo-Afghan treaty. In a paper for the Institute of South Asian Studies, he said that  a careful reading of the pact suggests that the countries involved want to develop Afghanistan as a hub linking South and Central Asia since it sits in both regions.  Which isn’t such a bad thing  for the countries of south Asia but especially Pakistan which by its geography as landlocked Afghanistan’s neighbour with the longest  border has a key role to play.Ashraf said :

“If the three countries can reach an understanding and let India develop Afghan capacity leading to regional economic integration, Pakistan too becomes a winner. In the age of globalisation, following any other course will result in Pakistan lagging behind.

For India, peace in Afghanistan is important to be able to exploit the vast economic potential of the Central Asian states. It shares Afghanistan’s concerns about the security of the nation after the western withdrawal from a combat role in 2014. Ashraf wrote :

India is concerned, which everyone should be, at the return of a medieval Taliban like regime in Kabul that could become the staging ground for cross border extremism into India.

It makes little sense for India to keep the borders with Pakistan tense, least of all turning up the heat on its western flank with Afghanistan, Ashraf said. India doesn’t have a contiguous border with Afghanistan and the last thing it needs is a costly entanglement there.   Besides, it is obvious to everyone, including the stategic community in India, that there cannot be lasting peace in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan.  

 Pakistan’s security establishment would worry about potential security cooperation between India and Afghanistan flowing from the strategic pact. ( A separate one is under negotiations with the United States) But so far New Delhi had been sensitive to Pakistani concerns, according to U.S. Under Secretary of Defence  for Policy Michele Flournoy.   She said New Delhi had avoided a playing  a major role in the training of Afghan security forces.

Ultimately, the key to Afghanistan’s future was unlocking its potential, tying it into the economies of its neighbours and hope that it will strengthen the state to stand firmly on its feet once its powerful backers retreat three years from now.  

I

India may also provide light weapons to the Afghan army and train pilots and ground staff for Afghanistan’s small air force under a strategic partnership agreement signed last month.

Up until now India has mainly provided discreet training to Afghan security forces in an unstructured manner, with officers attending largely theoretical courses. Once, in 2007, two platoon-sized units of 30 men each were trained.

But the new agreement sets the stage for a formal Indian involvement in boosting Afghan security forces beyond 2014, when foreign combat troops will withdraw, leaving Afghans to fight a Taliban insurgency now at its most potent in 10 years of war.

“The Afghanistan initiative, so far as I understand it, will be training, including future trainers, in such places as the Army War College in Mhow,” said an Indian security official, referring to a top institution in central India.

“This is about … military exercises designed to enable them to engage in actual combat operations,” he said.

A greater and more overt Indian role in boosting Afghan security preparedness, on top of a $2 billion civil aid effort building highways, power transmission lines and dams, marks an intensification of a regional struggle for post-2014 influence.

It also represents a re-ordering of regional alliances, with the United States seen to have backed the India-Afghan pact after the fraying of its relationship with Pakistan, which it blames for sheltering militants fighting in Afghanistan.

“I think it’s a huge deal. It confirms a lot of Pakistan’s worst fears about Afghanistan. Moreover, given how many ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) join to fight Pakistan, adding Indian mentorship into the mix strikes me as a terrible idea,” said Joshua Foust, a security analyst at the non-partisan think tank the American Security Project in Washington.

“But I think a lot of the decisions are driven by wanting India to pick up this slack the U.S. will be leaving,” he said. “This has high-level backing in Washington and Delhi, so it’s a done deal. They think there won’t be a blowback. I disagree.”

RACING THE CLOCK

NATO is racing against the clock to train a force of 350,000 Afghan police and soldiers to take over the battle against the Taliban and other insurgents.

As domestic support for the war falls, U.S. President Barack Obama could be looking at even faster withdrawals, sources said last month after the White House asked the Pentagon for 2014 scenarios that included 2013 troop levels.

Pakistan, which sees itself as the central player in shaping a political solution to the conflict, has warned repeatedly against what it describes as destabilizing Indian involvement.

It also worries about Afghan officers being trained in India because it could mold them into an anti-Pakistan institution.

The Indian embassy in Kabul has been attacked twice, with U.S. and Indian officials blaming the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network. U.S. officials say the Haqqanis have close ties with Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.

India, riding one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, has signaled it will stay the course despite the threat of a backlash. It also has a wary eye on China’s growing investments in Afghanistan’s potentially rich mining sector.

“The door has been opened for the training of Afghanistan’s army, air force and police in India,” said retired Indian army Major-General Ashok Mehta.

He said the Afghans want to build their army on the Indian model of a secular, national force that draws recruits from across the country and from different religious and ethnic backgrounds and turn them into a cohesive fighting unit.

The Afghan army is still seen as a force dominated by the minority Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups, with the Pashtuns who make up the majority of the population under-represented.

“They didn’t want to go to Pakistan, even though the Pakistanis have repeatedly offered … , because they said they didn’t want to ‘Islamise’ the army,” Mehta added.

GIVING WEAPONS, TRAINING PILOTS

Mehta said the Afghans were expected to send company-sized units of 120 men for training at Indian bases, including a respected counter-insurgency school in northeastern Vairengte.

Afghan infantry units are also expected to train at a high- altitude warfare school in Kashmir, where Indian forces have had plenty of experience battling revolts over 20 years.

Part of the Soviet Union’s exit strategy after its disastrous campaign in Afghanistan relied on training troops, and some pilots, in then Soviet-Uzbekistan. Some soldiers were also flown to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Under the India-Afghan pact, weapons such as rifles, rocket launchers and artillery would help fill equipment gaps and pilots would be trained on simulators in India.

Kamran Bokhari, vice president of Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs at global intelligence consulting firm STRATFOR, said intelligence sharing would be the biggest, yet least talked-about, part of the India-Afghanistan partnership.

He said military cooperation between the two countries had to be limited because they don’t share a border and that a hostile Pakistan lies in between.

“But intelligence is something that doesn’t require borders and they can do quite a lot in that area,” Bokhari said.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

India may also provide light weapons to the Afghan army and
train pilots and ground staff for Afghanistan’s small air force
under a strategic partnership agreement signed last month.

Up until now India has mainly provided discreet training to
Afghan security forces in an unstructured manner, with officers
attending largely theoretical courses. Once, in 2007, two
platoon-sized units of 30 men each were trained.

But the new agreement sets the stage for a formal Indian
involvement in boosting Afghan security forces beyond 2014, when
foreign combat troops will withdraw, leaving Afghans to fight a
Taliban insurgency now at its most potent in 10 years of war.

“The Afghanistan initiative, so far as I understand it, will
be training, including future trainers, in such places as the
Army War College in Mhow,” said an Indian security official,
referring to a top institution in central India.

“This is about … military exercises designed to enable
them to engage in actual combat operations,” he said.

A greater and more overt Indian role in boosting Afghan
security preparedness, on top of a $2 billion civil aid effort
building highways, power transmission lines and dams, marks an
intensification of a regional struggle for post-2014 influence.

It also represents a re-ordering of regional alliances, with
the United States seen to have backed the India-Afghan pact
after the fraying of its relationship with Pakistan, which it
blames for sheltering militants fighting in Afghanistan.

“I think it’s a huge deal. It confirms a lot of Pakistan’s
worst fears about Afghanistan. Moreover, given how many ANSF
(Afghan National Security Forces) join to fight Pakistan, adding
Indian mentorship into the mix strikes me as a terrible idea,”
said Joshua Foust, a security analyst at the non-partisan think
tank the American Security Project in Washington.

“But I think a lot of the decisions are driven by wanting
India to pick up this slack the U.S. will be leaving,” he said.
“This has high-level backing in Washington and Delhi, so it’s a
done deal. They think there won’t be a blowback. I disagree.”

RACING THE CLOCK

NATO is racing against the clock to train a force of 350,000
Afghan police and soldiers to take over the battle against the
Taliban and other insurgents.

As domestic support for the war falls, U.S. President Barack
Obama could be looking at even faster withdrawals, sources said
last month after the White House asked the Pentagon for 2014
scenarios that included 2013 troop levels.

Pakistan, which sees itself as the central player in shaping
a political solution to the conflict, has warned repeatedly
against what it describes as destabilising Indian involvement.

It also worries about Afghan officers being trained in India
because it could mould them into an anti-Pakistan institution.

The Indian embassy in Kabul has been attacked twice, with
U.S. and Indian officials blaming the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani
network. U.S. officials say the Haqqanis have close ties with
Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.

India, riding one of the world’s fastest-growing economies,
has signalled it will stay the course despite the threat of a
backlash. It also has a wary eye on China’s growing investments
in Afghanistan’s potentially rich mining sector.

“The door has been opened for the training of Afghanistan’s
army, air force and police in India,” said retired Indian army
Major-General Ashok Mehta.

He said the Afghans want to build their army on the Indian
model of a secular, national force that draws recruits from
across the country and from different religious and ethnic
backgrounds and turn them into a cohesive fighting unit.

The Afghan army is still seen as a force dominated by the
minority Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups, with the Pashtuns who
make up the majority of the population under-represented.

“They didn’t want to go to Pakistan, even though the
Pakistanis have repeatedly offered … , because they said they
didn’t want to ‘Islamise’ the army,” Mehta added.

GIVING WEAPONS, TRAINING PILOTS

Mehta said the Afghans were expected to send company-sized
units of 120 men for training at Indian bases, including a
respected counter-insurgency school in northeastern Vairengte.

Afghan infantry units are also expected to train at a high-
altitude warfare school in Kashmir, where Indian forces have had
plenty of experience battling revolts over 20 years.

Part of the Soviet Union’s exit strategy after its
disastrous campaign in Afghanistan relied on training troops,
and some pilots, in then Soviet-Uzbekistan. Some soldiers were
also flown to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Under the India-Afghan pact, weapons such as rifles, rocket
launchers and artillery would help fill equipment gaps and
pilots would be trained on simulators in India.

Kamran Bokhari, vice president of Middle Eastern and South
Asian affairs at global intelligence consulting firm STRATFOR,
said intelligence sharing would be the biggest, yet least
talked-about, part of the India-Afghanistan partnership.

He said military cooperation between the two countries had
to be limited because they don’t share a border and that a
hostile Pakistan lies in between.

“But intelligence is something that doesn’t require borders
and they can do quite a lot in that area,” Bokhari said.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

Last month driving up Afghanistan’s magnificent Panjshir valley, you couldn’t help thinking if the resurgent Taliban would ever be able to break its defences, both natural and from the Tajik-dominated populace. With its jagged cliffs and plunging valleys, Panjshir has been largely out of bounds  for the  Taliban, whether during the civil war or in the past 10 years when it has expanded a deadly insurgency against western and Afghan forces across the country. But on Saturday, the insurgents struck, carrying out a suicide bombing at a provincial reconstruction team base housing U.S. and Afghan troops and officials.

They were halted outside the base, but according to the provincial deputy governor they succeeded in  killing two civilians and wounding two guards when they detonated their explosives. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the first suicide bombing in a decade was a message to Western forces that they were not secure anywhere in the country. They said the  bombers came from within Panjshir, which if true  would worry people even more  because that would suggest the penetration was deeper and there could be more attacks.

The Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio wrote that the bombing was a propaganda coup for the Taliban. Panjshir is the home of the legendary Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated by two days before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. Under Massoud’s leadership the Panjshir Valley held out against not only against the Taliban, but famously the Soviet before them.

All along the drive by the side of the rushing Panjshir river on way to Massoud’s hilltop mausoleum, the relics of the war against the Russians have been preserved : rusted tanks on roadsides and an overturned  armoured personnel carrier in the river. There were giant Massoud posters everywhere and because it was the anniversary of his assassination at the hands of a pair of men who pretended to be journalists, the ceremonial gates to the valley were draped in black.

And yet there were concerns even then . Security was tight at each of the gates on the narrow and winding highway through the tall mountains, and the Afghan police who stood guard said if Panjshir had been spared the kind of attacks the Taliban had mounted in the rest of Afghanistan,  it wasn’t for lack of trying . They had already carried out attacks in neighbouring Nuristan province and according to a local Afghan police commander responsible for security at one of the checkpoints, American helicopters had been spotted in the area a few days before the anniversary, firing rockets over a hilltop. It wasn’t clear who they were targeting, the commander said.

Even the proud Panjshiris were worrying about the expanding Taliban influence, especially concerned at the time about government attempts to seek reconciliation with them.  One Afghan elder who lost his son in the war against Russians said his village was fully armed to fight  the Taliban.  There was no way they were going to accept the Taliban in the Panjshir, he told me.

Another local who ran an eating house by the side of the river said he was worried about the growing number of outsiders in the valley. Many, including a group of people from the southern Kandahar province we met at Massoud’s mausoleum, said they were visiting the  area attracted by its cooler climes.   But there were also others,  including a militia commander surrounded by gun-toting guards who swept up to the restaurant the day we were visiting in a cavalcade of vehicles and demanded food. Those were the ones that worried the owner  Jamaal Mohammed the most.