White House eagerly highlights the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq

WASHINGTON As the White House eagerly highlights the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the small army of American diplomats left behind is embarking on a long and perilous path to keeping the volatile country from slipping back to the brink of civil war.Among the challenges are helping Iraq’s deeply divided politicians form a new government; refereeing long-simmering Arab-Kurd territorial disputes; advising on attracting foreign investment; pushing for improved government services; and fleshing out a blueprint for future U.S.-Iraqi relations.

President Barack Obama also is banking on the diplomats – about 300, protected by as many as 7,000 private security contractors – to assume the duties of the U.S. military. That includes protecting U.S. personnel from attack and managing the training of Iraqi police, starting in October 2011.The Iraq insurgency, which began shortly after U.S. troops toppled Baghdad in April 2003, is why the U.S. only now is entering the post-combat phase of stabilizing Iraq. Originally, the U.S. thought Iraq would be peaceful within months of the invasion, allowing for a short-lived occupation and the relatively quick emergence of a viable government.Although the insurgency has been reduced to what one analyst terms a “lethal nuisance,” it will complicate the State Department’s mission and test Iraq’s security forces.Much is at stake as the department negotiates with the Pentagon over acquiring enough Black Hawk helicopters, bomb-resistant vehicles and other heavy gear to outfit its own protection force in Iraq.

“Regardless of the reasons for going to war, everything now depends on a successful transition to an effective and unified Iraqi government and Iraqi security forces that can bring both security and stability to the average Iraqi,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In his view that transition will take five years to 10 years.

The question is whether progress will be interrupted or reversed once American combat power is gone.The U.S. will have 50,000 troops in Iraq when the combat mission officially ends Aug. 31; they are scheduled to draw down to zero by Dec. 31, 2011. Until then, they will advise and train Iraqi security forces, and provide security and transport for the diplomats.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believes Iraq’s security forces have matured to the point where they will be ready to shoulder enough of the burden to permit the remaining 50,000 U.S. soldiers to go home at the end of next year.”My assessment today is they – they will be,” Odierno said, according to an excerpt of the interview released Saturday by CNN.”We continue to see development in planning, in their ability to conduct operations,” he added. “We continue to see political development, economic development and all of these combined together will start to create an atmosphere that creates better security.”

Once the U.S. troops are gone, the State Department will be responsible for the security of its personnel.Obama administration officials say the diplomats are well prepared for what the State Department expects to be a three to five-year transition to a “normal” U.S.-Iraqi relationship.”We are fully prepared to assume our responsibilities as we move through this transition from a military-led effort to a civilian-led effort,” department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Iraq watchers have their doubts.Kenneth M. Pollack, a frequent visitor to Iraq as director of Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, says the administration is in danger of underestimating the difficulty it faces.”One of the biggest mistakes that most Americans are making is assuming that Iraq can’t slide back into civil war. It can,” Pollack said. “This thing can go bad very easily.”Pollack, who does not consider himself a pessimist on Iraq, said the historical record on civil wars around the globe shows that about half repeat themselves.

“So it is a huge mistake to assume it can’t” happen in Iraq, whose civil strife in 2005-07 was so violent that many Americans assumed the war was lost and believed U.S. troops should give up and go home.Pollack considers the State Department ill-suited for its new tasks – starting with the police training mission and including the complex developmental problems such as improving Iraq’s water system.”What the State Department is being asked to do isn’t in their DNA,” Pollack said.The department has been strongly criticized for its past work in Iraqi police training. An October 2007 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., said the State Department had so badly managed a February 2004 contract for Iraqi police training that the department could not tell what it got for the $1.2 billion it spent.

In May 2004 President George W. Bush put the Pentagon in charge of all security force development.The newly departed U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Christopher Hill, says he sees brighter days ahead for Iraq, but he also laments “woefully low” supplies of electricity and deeply ingrained tensions among the three main competitors for political power: Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.”There is a mountain of mistrust,” Hill said.The diplomats’ postwar task would have been much easier if, as the administration once hoped, Iraq had formed a new government by now, nearly six months after its March 7 national elections.Instead, the political stalemate   with no end in sight – has created another hurdle to the central U.S. goal in Iraq: translating hard-fought security gains into stability.Still, there is optimism in some quarters.

“While there are no guarantees, the prospects for Iraq’s security and stability beyond 2011 look as good or better than they have at any time in the recent past,” John Negroponte, who was U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 2004-05, wrote Thursday in a ForeignPolicy.com blog.Another complication is the shake up of key U.S. players in Baghdad.Odierno leaves Baghdad on Sept. 1 for a new assignment in the U.S., and Gen. David Petraeus, who was Odierno’s boss as head of Central Command, switched last month to take command in Afghanistan. Hill was replaced in Baghdad this past week by James Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey.(AP)

Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India

Kinshasa  Rebels killed three personnel of UN peacekeepers from India at their camp in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the military said India and the Congo, Wednesday.Besides seven Indian soldiers wounded in attack in Kirumba, the Indian military and local officials accused carried out by the Mai-Mai, a Congolese militia.

“At approximately 1:50 pm local time , under a dark situation, unity Operating Base in Kirumba approached by five civilians,” said the Indian military in a statement.”They asked for assistance in the post, while they’re bericara with guards on duty at the time, a group of about 50-60 pmberontak – possibly from the Mai-mai rebel groups – attacking the base, out of the woods,” the statement said.

The attack lasted about five minutes. Rebels had fled into the woods, in the midst of darkness.”In that incident, three Indian army personnel were killed and seven others injured.General Vainqueur Mayala, commander of military region VIII of the Democratic Republic of Congo says the attack motive is unclear.

“They did not use firearms, but machetes and knives, and they killed three Indian soldiers and three others were seriously wounded,” said the general was told AFP by telephone from Kinshasa.The victims were all serving in the Organization for the Stability in the Democratic Republic of the United Nations (MONUSCO).

MONUSCO is one of institutions and their heightened security so I do not see how the attackers entered the camp were using machetes, “he said and added that he” can not understand “why the attack was carried out.Kirumba located about 140km north of Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province.

Indian troops shot dead a Nord-Kivu in May this year, and another was killed in a firefight in the province in 2005.Leaders of the city, told the AFP Egide Karafifi that the attackers wore civilian clothes and sang songs Mai-Mai.MONUSCO spokesman, Madodje Maounoubai not be immediately reached to confirm the attack.The mission, which was previously identified natural French acronym MONUC its presence in Congo since the end of 1999 and its new mandate to consolidate peace barlangsung until June 30 next year.(AFP)

General Stanley McChrystal threatened withdrawn from duty because of insulting President Barack Obama

Washington, Force Commander United States (U.S.) in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal threatened withdrawn after he and his assistants “making fun” President Barack Obama and his senior advisers. The White House criticism of the commander of U.S. forces and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is displayed after the statement quoted a magazine article “Rolling Stone” which will be published Friday. A spokesman for the White House, Tuesday, said the general who was also architect of President Obama’s war strategy has also been called to Washington DC to explain the “big mistake in his assessment was” directly to the president.

Would President Obama would consider withdrawal of the general, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said all options are open. McChrystal himself had apologized for the article to be published in the magazine. Citing aides McChrystal, the magazine said an aide to President Obama as a “clown” and another as a “wounded animal”. General McChrystal own disparaging statement which also revealed the Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Government Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

The Pentagon criticized the general’s statement and lost confidence in his ability to continue the leadership of U.S. and multinational forces in the Afghan War that had lasted nearly nine years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, General McChrystal “already made keselahan big and bad assessment.” Admiral Mike Mullen who headed the joint chiefs also expressed “deep disappointment.” “General McChrystal has apologized to me or to people whose names are mentioned in the article,” he said.

In the midst of controversy over the general, President Hamid Karzai even defend him. President Karzai supports full-General McChrystal is believed to be the “commander of U.S. forces the best ever sent to Afghanistan over the last nine years.” About six months ago, President Obama will meet the demand for General McChrystal additional amount of U.S. troops to support the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Until mid-June 2010, the number of foreign soldiers who have died since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 reached 1831 people.

Arizona immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom

Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have successfully sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants.The American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center are set to announce in Phoenix on Thursday plans to challenge the measure.

The law, which is set to take effect in mid-summer, makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona, requires police to check for evidence of legal status and bars people from hiring or soliciting work off the streets.

The key legal issue, according to lawyers on both sides, will be one that also was at the center of the court fight over Proposition 187 in California whether the state law interferes with the federal government’s duty to handle immigration.The announcement of legal action, one of several expected as attorneys across the country scrutinize the law for weaknesses, comes after days of frantic e-mails, conference calls and lengthy strategy sessions. Attorneys haven’t finalized when a court challenge would be filed, but said it would be before the law takes effect.

“The entire country has been galvanized,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “People within the legal community are trying to figure out what we can do…. We have seen an enormous amount of energy responding to this.”

Attorneys who successfully challenged laws against illegal immigrants in California, Texas and elsewhere argue that the Arizona law faces a similar fate because of the federal/state issue. Immigrant advocates also argue that the law could violate guarantees of equal protection if selectively enforced against certain ethnic groups.”The Arizona law is doomed to the dustbin of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function,” said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles attorney who led both successful challenges to the 1975 Texas law denying illegal migrant children a free public education and the 1994 California initiative that would have barred public services to illegal migrants. Schey said he also planned to file a separate lawsuit.

But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues.Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of “concurrent enforcement,” he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, also dismissed claims that the bill will result in racial profiling. He said he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

“I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick,” Kobach said. “But this is consistent with federal law.”Indeed, immigrant advocates raise several legal questions. The portion of the law that prohibits laborers from soliciting work in public places is particularly vulnerable, said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF.

The organization has successfully challenged similar laws in Arizona and California. In 2008, a federal judge ruled that an Arizona town could not enforce an anti-solicitation ordinance that advocates said infringed upon the free speech rights of day laborers.In addition, there probably will be due process claims because police officers won’t know who would be eligible for immigration relief, Saenz said. Many arrested won’t have the opportunity to make their claims in immigration court.”There are a lot of people who are going to be arrested and swept into this dragnet who have every right to be in this country,” he said.

Even before lawsuits are filed, immigrant advocates are seeking a commitment from federal officials that they will not enforce the law.On Tuesday, Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee that the law could distract the agency from using its resources to go after serious criminals.”We have concerns that at some point we’ll be responsible to enforce or use our immigration resources against anyone that would get picked up in Arizona,” said Napolitano, who noted that she had vetoed similar measures as Arizona governor.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder also said this week that he was considering a possible legal challenge to the law.Another lawsuit may come from one of Arizona’s own elected officials. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said this week that he planned to file a lawsuit.”I have under the charter the ability given to me by the people to file a lawsuit on behalf of the people,” Gordon said Tuesday to cheers from a packed City Council meeting and one angry cry of “socialism!”

As both sides gear up for their legal battle, the wild card is the panel of judges who will end up deciding the case.Judges have ruled differently on key immigration questions. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that a Pennsylvania city couldn’t punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who hire them. A federal judge also ruled against a Texas measure that sought to ban landlords from renting to illegal migrants.Advocates didn’t succeed, however, in getting the courts to block another Arizona law, which shuts down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In 2008, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to stop the law before it took effect, saying that businesses and immigrant rights groups hadn’t shown an adequate need for delaying enforcement.

Schey said he is not confident that legal challenges against the Arizona case would prevail in today’s political and legal climate. The U.S. Supreme Court is a very different panel today than it was when a narrow majority of 5 to 4 struck down the 1975 Texas law denying free education to unauthorized migrant children.”It’s a far cry from a slam-dunk case,” Schey said. “It’s a very close call with the current composition of the Supreme Court. What’s really needed here is federal leadership.”

But Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Irvine’s law school dean, argued that the Arizona law is a far more brazen attempt to regulate immigration than either the Texas or Proposition 187 cases. The Texas law was overturned primarily on equal protection grounds while the California law was struck down as an unconstitutional attempt to usurp federal immigration responsibility.”It is so firmly established that only the federal government can control immigration that I don’t see it,” he said, referring to chances that courts would uphold the Arizona law. “Even with a conservative court and a lot of sympathy to Arizona’s concerns, I don’t see it.”

Arizona's strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom

Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants. The Los Angeles attorney who successfully challenged Texas and California efforts to bar illegal migrants from public services said this week that the Arizona law was similarly doomed because it unconstitutionally attempts to usurp federal jurisdiction to regulate immigration and could violate guarantees of equal protection with selective enforcement against certain ethnic groups.The law makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona and requires police to check for evidence of legal status.

“The Arizona law is doomed to the dustpan of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function,” said Peter Schey, president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues. Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of “concurrent enforcement,” he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by California, Arizona and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.

Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, said he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

“I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick,” Kobach said. “But this is consistent with federal law.” As both sides gear up for their legal battle, the wild card is the panel of judges who end up deciding the case. Judges have ruled differently on key immigration questions.

Even as judges have upheld state employer sanction laws, they have struck down laws banning illegal immigrants from renting property, most recently in Texas last month.Schey himself said he is not confident that legal challenges against the Arizona case would prevail in today’s political and legal climate. The U.S. Supreme Court is a very different panel today than it was when a narrow majority of 5-4 struck down the 1975 Texas law banning unauthorized migrant children from public schools, he said. “It’s a far cry from a slam-dunk case,” Schey said. “It’s a very close call with the current composition of the Supreme Court. What’s really needed here is federal leadership.”

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talk about the "Calls to boycott Arizona grow over new immigration law "

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that she had “deep concerns” with the law and said it could siphon resources needed to target criminals. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said he was considering “the possibility of a court challenge.”

“I think that that law is an unfortunate one,” Holder said. “It is, I fear, subject to potential abuse. And I’m very concerned about the wedge that it could draw between communities that law enforcement is supposed to serve and those of us in law enforcement.”The law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork. The legislation also bars people from soliciting work or hiring day laborers off the street.Gov. Jan Brewer cast the law in terms of public safety, saying, “We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels.” Brewer said she would order the state police training agency to formulate guidelines for law enforcement officers.

But critics said the law will result in racial profiling and discrimination.Calls for boycotts spread throughout California this week after the bill was signed by Brewer on Friday. The law is scheduled to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends this week.On Tuesday, seven members of the Los Angeles City Council signed a proposal for a boycott, calling for the city to “refrain from conducting business” or participating in conventions in Arizona. Councilman Ed Reyes, who coauthored the proposal with Councilwoman Janice Hahn, said he wants city officials to spend the next 90 days assessing the financial relationships that exist between various city departments and businesses based in Arizona.

“If Arizona companies are taking our money, I want to sever that,” he said.Hahn acknowledged that a boycott would be logistically complicated but said the city should not remain silent. “When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany,” she said.

A spokesman for City Controller Wendy Greuel identified at least 12 city contracts with Arizona companies that are worth an estimated $7.2 million.San Francisco supervisors introduced a similar resolution Tuesday, and Mayor Gavin Newsom imposed an immediate moratorium on city-related travel to Arizona, with limited exceptions. Newsom also announced the convening of a group to analyze how a boycott would affect city contracts and purchasing.

City Atty. Dennis Herrera said he hoped the city’s resolution would “be an impetus to others taking an aggressive stand in terms of scrutinizing the services they have with Arizona companies.”The leader of the California Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), called the law a “disgrace” and said the state also should consider a boycott. He sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asking for an inventory of Arizona businesses and government agencies with which California does business.

“The Arizona law is as unconscionable as it is unconstitutional, and the state of California should not be using taxpayer dollars to support such a policy,” Steinberg wrote.Already, several organizations have canceled planned conventions in Arizona. The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. announced that it is moving its fall convention, originally scheduled for Scottsdale in September.

“We just felt that given this new law signed by the governor that it would not be right for our association to meet and convene there and take on the issues of immigration in a state that passed such a misguided bill,” said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the group.Arizona was already reeling from a decline in tourism because of the recession, and the fallout from the law has taken hotel owners by surprise, said Debbie Johnson, president of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Assn.”Obviously our members are concerned,” Johnson said. “I thought there would be political issues. It has become so tourism-focused and that, to me, is the unfortunate side.”

Johnson said 200,000 people, many of them Latinos and legal immigrants, depend on a paycheck from the tourism industry. “They don’t want to lose their jobs,” she said.Barry Broome, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Development Council, compared the boycott resolutions to the aftermath of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant measure passed by California voters in 1994.”You didn’t see people in Arizona trying to leverage political gain from California’s issues,” he said.

Brewer said at a meeting in Tucson on Monday that she wasn’t worried about possible boycotts. “I believe it’s not going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think that it might,” she said.But Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who himself called for companies not to plan conventions in the state, said in an interview Tuesday that he expected the state to see declines in business and leisure travel, the trucking industry and retail shoppers from Mexico.

“There are political, legal and economic consequences that are going to hit the state,” said Grijalva, who has received death threats since speaking out against the law. “The disgust goes across state lines.”The concern about the law crossed international borders, with a travel warning posted by the Mexican government Tuesday. The post, on the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry website, urged Mexican citizens to be careful in Arizona and to expect harassment and questioning.

contractor attacks in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan  The message, very often, is sent with bloodshed.There was the suicide bombing last week on a fortified Kandahar guesthouse shared by Western contracting companies, killing four Afghans and injuring several Americans. There was the Afghan engineer, shot dead in March as he helped inspect a school not far from the Pakistan border. Or the Afghan woman, an employee for a U.S.-based consulting firm, shot by motorbike-riding gunmen as she returned home from work in this southern city.

As the United States presses ahead with an Afghan counterinsurgency strategy that depends on speeding up development of one of the world’s poorest countries, the U.S. contractors, construction companies and aid organizations needed to rebuild Afghanistan have faced a surge in attacks that puts the plan in jeopardy.

Overall figures for contractor attacks remain elusive, since the employees come from dozens of nations and work for hundreds of different organizations.But the death toll has jumped precipitously in the months since President Barack Obama launched a massive troop surge last December.

Of the 289 civilians working for U.S. contractors killed between the start of the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the end of last year, 100 died in just the last six months of 2009, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.To a degree, those killings have mirrored an increase in U.S. service member deaths, which roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.

Many of the recent attacks against civilian contractors have been around Kandahar, the one-time Taliban capital where the U.S. is poised to launch a major operation in the coming weeks, but the rash of violence has spiked across Afghanistan.”The insurgents are trying to say ‘You can’t do it,'” Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a speech last week in Paris, shortly after two bombings shook Kandahar. “I think we’ll see that for months as they make an effort to stop progress. But I don’t think that they’ll be successful.”

In some ways, though, they already have been successful.Although contractors say they are not leaving the country, the attacks have forced them to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

The attacks have forced many contractors, aid groups and Afghan officials to retreat even further behind blast walls and heavily armed security perimeters. The security drives up costs, makes it more difficult to interact with regular Afghans and slows reconstruction projects.

“We have become the targets of the Taliban,” said Azizullah, the owner of a construction company that builds bridges and irrigation projects in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, strongholds of the militant Muslim fighters. “If we travel, they try to kidnap us and hold us for huge ransoms. If we don’t pay, they kill us,” said Azizullah, who like many Afghans has only one name.

His workers now travel in U.S. military convoys whenever possible, he said, to give them additional protection.That doesn’t surprise Gulali, a tribal elder from Kandahar province.”Of course the Taliban are against any of these people working for the Afghan government or the Americans or other foreigners,” said the elder, who also uses only one name.

He believes many of the recent attacks are by militants simply looking for softer targets. While nearly all foreign companies in Afghanistan now work out of guarded compounds, they do not have the massive fortifications and overwhelming firepower found at nearly any American military installation.The Taliban “want to use the easiest option,” he said.But the attacks are challenging a key part of America’s aims in Afghanistan.

Washington’s counterinsurgency plans call for aggressive development to build up everything from Afghanistan’s roads to its sewer systems to its irrigation networks. Much of the actual work is paid for by USAID, the government’s main international aid agency, then contracted through corporations that often subcontract the actual the work to smaller companies. On the ground, many employees are Afghans overseen by small groups of Western administrators.

The attacks “are not about armed confrontation. They are about subversion of the government,” said Terrence K. Kelly, a senior researcher at the Washington-based RAND Corporation who has studied how rebuilding efforts work in war zones. America’s strategy counts on development work to increase the legitimacy and reach of the Karzai government. With these attacks the Taliban can “turn off the delivery of services – which makes the government look bad,” he said.USAID insists it will not scale back its work in Afghanistan because of the attacks, according to Rebecca Black, the agency’s deputy mission director for Afghanistan.

Contractors insist they are also staying.The Louis Berger Group/Black & Veatch, a joint venture building major infrastructure projects across the country, was among the companies based in the Kandahar guest house attacked last week.In a statement, the joint venture said they were “currently conducting a comprehensive review of the recent events in Kandahar to assess what changes, if any, are required to continue our work.”(AP)

KABUL International troops opened fire on a civilian bus early Monday in a southern Afghan city

KABUL International troops opened fire on a civilian bus early Monday in a southern Afghan city, killing four people and wounding 18, the local governor’s spokesman said.NATO was sending investigators to the scene but didn’t immediately say its troops were responsible for the shooting in Kandahar.The governor’s spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi, said the shooting occurred soon after daybreak and that international troops took 12 of the wounded to a military hospital.Ayubi said the provincial government strongly condemned the shooting.NATO spokesman Mst. Sgt. Jeff Loftin said the alliance had dispatched a team to the scene to investigate. He said the local command in Kandahar had no further information on what happened.

The top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has issued strict orders to his troops to try to reduce civilian casualties. But these still occur regularly, unleashing raw emotions that highlight a growing impatience with coalition forces’ inability to secure the nation after more than eight years of war.The support of the local population in Kandahar is seen as essential for the success of a long-anticipated allied operation to clear the biggest city in the south of Taliban insurgents.(AP)

U.S. led forces in Afghanistan will launch a new military operation later this year to get full control of Kandahar

WASHINGTON   U.S. led forces in Afghanistan will launch a new military operation later this year to get full control of Kandahar, the former “capital city” of the Taliban, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, had already flagged his intention to target Kandahar following an offensive, now in its third week, to retake control of the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in neighboring Helmand province.

“If our overall goal for 2010 in Afghanistan is to reverse the momentum (of the Taliban) … then we think we’ve got to get to Kandahar this year,” said the senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.Militants have over the past year made startling gains in the area around Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan from there before U.S.-led forces invaded in 2001.McChrystal described the city in his assessment of the war last August as the “key geographic objective” of the Quetta Shura Taliban, the main faction led by Mullah Omar.

The U.S. official was offering an assessment of the offensive in Marjah, which the administration views as key preparation for the potentially bigger battle of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city.

TEST CASE FOR BIG PRIZE

Marjah is one of the biggest operations in the more than eight-year-old Afghan war. It is also an early test of President Barack Obama’s plan to add 30,000 more troops to win control of Taliban strongholds and eventually transfer them to Afghan authority.”The way to look at Marjah is that it is the tactical prelude to larger more comprehensive operations later this year in Kandahar city,” the administration official said.

“Bringing comprehensive population security to Kandahar city is really the centerpiece of operations this year and therefore Marjah is the prelude,” he said.The British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan said last week that NATO forces would sweep toward Kandahar over the next six months.

On Thursday, Afghan authorities raised the Afghan flag over Marjah to signify the handover of control to the government from NATO troops led by U.S. Marines.The official said military commanders on the ground believed it would take several weeks yet to clear the remaining pockets of resistance in and around Marjah.”We are somewhere between clear and hold and that is pretty much on track. What is going to be more challenging than the clearing process will be the building process,” he said.

He acknowledged U.S. and Afghan security forces would not initially have the trust of Marjah’s residents.”It is not so much a matter of a physical contest about who controls the weapons, it’s a question of who controls the confidence of the people. That will only come after we are able to deliver,” he said.Washington hopes its latest offensive will decisively turn the momentum in a war that commanders say has been going the way of the Taliban.Under Obama’s new strategy, NATO and Afghan security forces are to secure population centers across Afghanistan so that the government can move in.(Reuters)

NATO airstrike in southern Afganistan killed at least 21 civilians

KABUL A NATO airstrike in southern Afganistan killed at least 21 civilians, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Monday, in an incident that could inflame already heightened sensitivities over noncombatant casualties.NATO forces confirmed in a statement that its planes fired Sunday on what it believed was a group of insurgents in southern Uruzgan province on their way to attack a joint NATO-Afghan patrol, but later discovered that women and children were hurt. The injured were transported to medical facilities.

The Afghan government and NATO have launched an investigation.Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said the Sunday morning airstrike hit three minibuses traveling on a major road near Uruzgan’s border with central Day Kundi province. There were 42 people in the vehicles, all civilians, Bashary said.The NATO statement did not say how many people died or whether all the occupants of the vehicles were civilians.

Afghan investigators on the ground have collected 21 bodies and two people are missing. Fourteen others were wounded, he said.”We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,” NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in the statement. “I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will redouble our effort to regain that trust.”

McChrystal apologized to President Hamid Karzai for the incident on Sunday, NATO said.On Saturday, Karzai had admonished NATO troops for not doing enough to protect civilian lives. During a speech to the opening session of the Afghan parliament, Karzai had called for extra caution on the part of NATO, which is currently conducting a massive offensive on the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah in neighboring Helmand province.

“We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties,” Karzai had said. “Our effort and our criticism will continue until we reach that goal.”NATO has gone to great lengths in recent months to reduce civilian casualties — primarily through reducing airstrikes and tightening rules of engagement   as part of a new strategy to focus on protecting the Afghan people to win their loyalty over from the Taliban.

This is the largest joint NATO-Afghan operation since the Taliban regime was ousted from power in 2001. It’s also the first major ground operation since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.But mistakes have continued. In the ongoing offensive against Marjah, two NATO rockets killed 12 people in one home and others have gotten caught in the crossfire. At least 16 civilians have been killed so far during the offensive, NATO has said, though human rights groups claim the number is at least 19.

Last Thursday, an airstrike in northern Kunduz province missed targeted insurgents and killed seven policemen.Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that Marjah was the opening salvo in a campaign to turn back the Taliban that could last 12 to 18 months.But the continued toll of civilian lives will only make it harder for NATO in its goal to win over the support of local Afghans against Taliban militants in the south.

The newly appointed civilian chief for Marjah arrived Monday to begin the task of restoring government authority after years of Taliban rule even though NATO troops are still battling insurgents in the area.District leader Abdul Zahir Aryan will be flying into Marjah for the first time since the massive NATO offensive began Feb. 13. He plans to meet with community leaders and townspeople about security, health care and reconstruction, he said in a phone interview Sunday.”The Marines have told us that the situation is better. It’s OK. It’s good,” Aryan said. “I’m not scared because it is my home. I have come to serve the people.”