South Asia

The U.S. officers visited the school to promote the Village Outreach Program, a program devised by the local U.S. Army Civil Affairs team along with the Provincial Reconstruction Team and the District Governor of Zormat to battle Taliban influence on schools and curricula. The project, loosely modeled after McGruff the Crime Dog, a cartoon bloodhound used by the American police to build crime awareness in children, is meant to teach school children civic responsibilities and instill trust in the government and the police. Because of the program, Ganat Kahiyl High School heard Abdul Wahab, a District Chief of Police, publicly talk to the school children for the first time. "If your parents don't let you go to school, you should cry. Cry until they let you go to school because you are the future of Afghanistan!" This may not seem quite as revolutionary in America; however, given the relatively poor reputation of the Afghan National Uniformed Police in most parts of the country, a friendly and fatherly policeman may be revolutionary indeed.

Education could be the only lasting legacy that the United States will leave behind after a decade of war at the Hindu Kush. Yet, the challenges are still daunting. While school enrollment, according to statistics of the Ministry of Education, has increased almost eight times since 2001, demand is outstripping supply by far. By 2020, Afghanistan will require some 21,100 teachers, for an additional 7.8 million students at an added cost of almost USD $300 million. In addition to the question of who will pay for the increasing demand of education (the total tax revenue of the Afghan government for 2011 was USD $1.8 billion). The influence of the Taliban on school curricula is as strong as ever, especially in remote districts such as Zormat.

Zormat, the southernmost district of Paktia Province, always has been considered the stepchild of Paktia Province and for years has served as a safe haven for the Taliban, which continues to exercise considerable influence in the district villages and schools. The infamous Taliban commander, Saifullah Rahman Mansoor, is buried in the district and still widely admired by the local population. Consequently, the local Afghan government is fighting an uphill battle to dampen the influence of the insurgents and has implicated education as one of the principle battlefields.

According to the Director of Education, Muhamed Ali, Zormat District is home to 47 school -- 25 secondary schools, 30 primary schools, and five madrassas -- with 18,000 male and 12,000 female students enrolled. In a short interview, Muhamed Ali vehemently negated that the Taliban have any influence at all in the region. "We would never allow the Taliban to enter our school. We have security guards to keep them out, and we stick to the government curriculum!" Villagers and ISAF troops, however, tell a different story. Villagers mention that the Taliban carefully select teachers to suit their purposes and tightly control the school curriculum. U.S. forces retrieved a typical Taliban curriculum during a visit to a local school a couple months ago. The syllabus emphasized the study of the Quran, history of the Mujahedeen, Pashto, and math and science. English, the language of infidels, is naturally frowned upon.

Insurgent activity is, however, just one enemy in the uphill battle of education in Zormat. According to Major Lee, the United States "has created a culture of dependency. Many school officials still come to us rather than the District Governor for help and assistance, yet we are no longer in charge!" Major Lee is a member of the local Provincial Regional Construction Team (PRCT). The PRCTs used to be the shadow government of each province. Now, however, they have almost no budget for new projects, and their influence is waning. "PRCTs were originally set up as temporary solutions to kick start development in the various regions of Afghanistan. Over the years, however, they became the default address for most development projects," according to Lee. 85 percent of Afghanistan's education budget still is funded through foreign aid and donations.

According to Aschkan Abdul-Malek, of Altai Consulting "The operating and maintenance costs for education in Afghanistan in 2012 are estimated at $170 million, and expected to rise to $235 million in 2014. However, the current budget for operations and maintenance, which doesn't include teachers' salaries, is $38 million. As such, without operating and maintenance funding as a priority, much of the investment from the last decade may fall into disrepair or disuse very soon after the transition. Closing this funding gap is critical to the long-term sustainability of Afghanistan."

Kazyat Mohamed is a 30-year-old math teacher in Kharachi Village. He is happy with the school supplies provided by the Kabul government, but he complains that he has not been paid in three months. The Taliban also regularly visit his school, and this scares him. The Village Outreach Program is still in its early stages. More visits to schools are planned. How successful they will be in teaching the kids and whether they can convince someone like Kazyat Mohamed to teach the government curriculum remains to be seen.

Perhaps little by little as the value of education is more and more appreciated, the influence of the Taliban may start to wane gradually.

During an Afghan Army-led clearing mission in the village of Khotwi Khyl, the local pharmacist, Mohamed Anwir, told about how the Taliban came to his village and announced that the local school should no longer teach the girls, or they would shut the school down. The village elders, however, decided against it. "Afghanistan will need female doctors in the future! We will keep our girls in school!" The Taliban threatened to come back and burn the school down. To this date, however, girls are still taught in the village of Khotwi Khyl.

Click here to read this piece in The Huffington Post.

Sehgal writes, “Those who govern over us must take corrective and remedial steps to correct the fault lines in our national psyche before those with vested interest use what could be essentially genuine protest as a pretext to permanently scar the future of the country. For those in power at every level of governance, dereliction of that responsibility is catastrophic for the nation they have the responsibility to govern.”

Read the full column in The News International.

Click here to read this piece at Business Standard.

Here are excerpts from the interview, conducted by Santosh Tiwari:

Why has India become so important in terms of cyber crime and security?

Spam and botnets are the core pieces of cyber crime.  Our study shows that China has been quite good in fighting them. The data from five sources that track spam globally, shows that India is a problem area and two of them ranked India as the worst in spam and others ranked it number two about a year ago. In the latest study, two more sources have put India as number one. So, four out of five think that India is a major problem area in case of spam. This is the initiation point of cyber crime and this is where the work has to start.

Why is India at the top of this list?

A day before the summit, we will be organizing an interactive day-long session between global experts and Indian companies. The main reasons for India facing major spam and botnets problems is use of vernacular language in which you don’t have products to prevent them and also mobile becoming the biggest communicating device. So, I would put this as priority number one.

According to you what should the companies, not just the IT or telecom but any business,  and government do to rectify the situation?

Businesses need to realize that spam can be the primary vehicle for malicious code that can infect their internal networks, and possibly compromising the security of their operations or that of their customers.

There are two basic steps that service providers should perform. One, detect abusive messages and share the data with peers. Detecting is accomplished by having the right software and intelligence in the operations of networks and applications.  Sharing is done by local and international cooperation.

Putting in place the preventive mechanism would mean additional cost for the companies. Isn’t it?

Realizing the value of secure networks in their enterprise, there is a need to select service providers that are aggressive in implementing world-class best practices.This means that they do not select their service providers based on lowest cost only.

They should also have policies in place to avoid unlicensed software and keep their software updated with the latest patches to keep known security flaws patched.

Service providers should take advantage of abusive message reporting mechanisms that their subscribers can use.

Obviously, these issues will be discussed in detail at the summit. Which are the other areas of focus in dealing with cyber crime?

During the Summit and in a special October 29 FICCI-hosted workshop, world-class talent is being convened in New Delhi for intense, interactive working meetings that will focus on engaging Indian ICT and broader business communities with the international spam and botnet fighting efforts. ICT development supply chain integrity, the role of international companies in cloud computing and storage, reliability of global undersea communication cable infrastructure  and proposals for establishing a system of priority international communications are the other areas on which the conference would focus.

Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said today that it had arrested or fired hundreds of Afghan soldiers in an attempt to stem insider attacks against NATO troops that threatens to undermine Western withdrawal plans.

Over the weekend, US officials announced that the US had suspended training for Afghan police recruits in order to vet existing members as insider attacks grow more common: Afghan troops have killed at least 45 foreign troops so far this year.

The future of Afghan security increasingly rests on the shoulders of Afghan troops as they slowly assume security responsibility from foreign forces. But clashing military cultures and the resulting misunderstandings and frustrations raise questions about the success of the transition.

“US forces have been placed in an extremely difficult situation,” says Seth Jones, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation and former senior adviser to US Special Operations in Afghanistan. “They are being asked to quickly train and mentor Afghan forces in a situation where they are withdrawing but the war is far from over.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, more than half of the US foreign assistance to Afghanistan goes into training the Afghan military and police. At a summit in Chicago in May, NATO member states pledged their support for a force of 228,500 with an estimated annual budget of $4.1 billion. There are currently 350,000 Afghan soldiers and police battling the ongoing insurgency.

Frustration 

At Combat Outpost Zormat in Paktia Province this summer, a general sense of frustration has set in among most troops.

“That’s all we are — big brothers with guns making sure that the big bully doesn’t beat up our little brothers on their way to school,” says Staff Sgt. Anderson, describing the attitude of many soldiers in his company. 

Despite such frustration, many soldiers point out both the gradual progress as well as the ambiguity in dealing with Afghan Security Forces. According to a US corporal, “It’s hit and miss with the Afghan National Army. There are some good units, and then there are some units who run at the first shot.”

Afghan National Army units engaged in continuous skirmishes with the Taliban are better trained and disciplined than units stationed in more secure areas, he says. “The ANA in hot areas are solid. They know that they have to fight or die.”

Click here to read the rest of this piece at the Christian Science Monitor.

Photo: "Deployed troops reflect on 9/11 during m" (CC BY 2.0) by DVIDSHUB

URUZGAN, Afghanistan—Two days before Afghanistan’s election in September 2010, some 1,200 Afghans stormed a NATO coalition outpost named Firebase Mirwais on a hillside outside Chora in the central province of Uruzgan, where I was the senior military commander. Inside were 200 Afghan soldiers, supported by 60 Australian soldiers and a U.S.–Australian team devoted to reconstruction and development in the province. Soldiers watched from guard towers as the crowd breached the first of two 15-foot adobe walls, opened a storage container, and set fire to a stash of U.S. and coalition military uniforms.

A young American soldier manning a guard tower on the inner wall spotted one of the attackers with an AK-47 assault rifle. After gaining permission from his sergeant to engage the enemy threatening the base, he fired two shots, killing the assailant. Incensed, some in the crowd charged the inner gate. If the central areas of the base were breached, there could have been an enormous loss of life. The coalition soldiers would have been forced to defend themselves and prevent the protesters from seizing NATO weapons. But before that could happen, an Australian soldier fired several rounds at the gate with a .50-caliber machine gun. The crowd saw the sparks fly off the metal gate and heard the deafening report of the coalition’s most powerful machine gun. They immediately retreated and dispersed.

The crowd regrouped outside the military camp and headed for the Chora district central office a half-mile away. Mohammad Dawood Kahan, the district chief, was in his compound guarded by Afghan police. There, two or three other protesters were killed by Afghan officers as they tried to breach the governor’s walls. The crowd disbanded and went home soon after the fight. This ended the demonstrations for that day, but insurgent leaders were able to feed off the unrest and reassemble the following day.

Although some Taliban were present in Chora, most of the crowd consisted of local citizens who had been convinced by insurgents and local leaders that coalition soldiers were infidels who had no respect for their religion and beliefs. More than 7,500 miles away two months earlier, Terry Jones, an obscure pastor with a tiny congregation in Gainesville, Florida, declared he would burn dozens of Qurans to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In Afghanistan, that news emboldened local insurgents in a way that not only cost the lives of civilians in Chora but also threatened to derail plans for peaceful elections.

Elections in 2010 were actually conducted in a much smoother fashion than those in 2009. This was the result of improved capability of the Afghan Security Force, more trust between Afghan Security and coalition forces, and the general population’s feeling of security as they went to their polling stations. With the next national election due in 2014, the challenge is for Afghan authorities to plan, prepare, and conduct the balloting largely on their own. Coalition forces will only provide support from afar. This will not be easy. The first elections after the majority of our combat forces have gone will be the ultimate test of our success in planting a democratic system that can flourish in some quite fallow ground.

Click here to read the rest of this piece at the World Policy Journal.

A new debate has started on the nature of a redefined Indian foreign policy that takes into account the country’s transformed relations with the United States of America. The latter is openly seeking a close political, economic and security relationship with India. The rhetoric is at times high-flown, calling US ties with India indispensable for the 21st century and describing India as a lynchpin of America’s ‘re-balancing’ towards the Asia-Pacific region.

Some experts would prefer a ‘non-alignment 2.0’ policy for India to deal with the reconfiguration of geo-politics caused by the relative decline of the US and the West and the rise of China. While this nomenclature may arouse misgivings in some quarters because of its ideological overtones and, more so, its political irrelevance in a world no longer divided into rival alliances, in reality the authors of this concept propose issue-based collaboration with diverse partners depending on the confluence of interests. This seems pragmatic and non-ideological.

Many advocate a foreign policy of ‘strategic autonomy’ for India. This implies that India retain its independence in foreign policy making, and not be obliged to follow any powerful actor or a set of actors in any course of action that does not conform to its long term national interest. Rather than be caught in strategic rivalries between countries that are hurtful to its interests, it should have the freedom to engage with opposing sides if that is useful.

This debate would suggest that India’s foreign policy remains in a fluid state and is seeking to discover its moorings, with the implication that India has not yet come to terms with the radically altered global situation of today. It carries the nuance that India is under pressure to tilt towards one side (the US), which India should not succumb to.

In reality, there should be no need to define Indian foreign policy in core conceptual terms. Defining it thus does not give it a coherence, a sense of purpose and clarity that might be otherwise missing. The big powers do not seem to need to define their foreign policies for conceptual clarity. They just conduct their foreign affairs, based on certain broad principles and practical considerations. An analysis of their positions on a range of international issues would bring out the prominent features of the policies they pursue, but encapsulating them in one or two words would hardly be enlightening.

How would one, in any case, define US or Chinese foreign policies? No single-word definition is possible. US foreign policy, for instance, is full of contradictions. It is supposedly anchored in the promotion of democracy worldwide but it supports some of the most anti-democratic regimes in the world. Military intervention to support human rights in one country is contradicted by military protection to other countries that suppress the fundamental human rights of their population. Religious extremism is fought on the one hand and promoted on the other. Overdependence on China is coupled with hedging strategies against its rise that is seen as adversarial.

China claims that its rise is not a threat, that it wants a peaceful periphery, yet it is developing powerful military capabilities, asserting extensive land and maritime claims in the South China Sea, thriving on Japanese investments but has a visceral hatred of Japan, it is benefiting hugely from its partnership with the US even as in East Asia it is US power that it principally confronts. In other words, it, too, manages contradictions.

In this background, only confusion is caused by seeking to define in political shorthand India’s foreign policy as non-alignment 2.0 or strategic autonomy. India’s foreign policy can simply be loosely described as protecting its national interests as effectively as possible in a globalized world that demands cooperative solutions and a competitive world that demands management of conflicting interests without confrontation. This would eliminate the implicit intrusion of the US factor in explaining the core of our foreign policy objectives. In a situation where India can, by skilful handling, gain much from its improved relations with the US, it would be undesirable to frame its foreign policy objectives in terms of the strategic distance it wants to maintain from the US.

In actual fact, this debate about strategic autonomy is behind the times. India’s post Cold War policies testify to its desire to maintain ‘strategic autonomy’ in a situation of strategic shifts in global power equations. India, for example, has established strategic partnerships with several countries that include, besides the US, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Japan and so on. It has a strategic dialogue even with China, its principal geo-political adversary. By establishing such partnerships with countries with key differences and conflicting interests amongst themselves, India is, in fact, expanding its strategic room for manoeuvre.

India is member of the Russia-India-China or RIC dialogue, with member countries opposing regime change policies and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries, and supporting multipolarity. It is member of BRICS, which, by including Brazil and South Africa, extends strategic understandings on some basic norms of international conduct to key countries in South America and Africa. India supports the US led Community of Democracies, capitalizing on its democratic credentials, even if the sense of the grouping is directed against countries like China and even Russia. India has agreed to a trilateral US-India-Japan dialogue, including naval exercises, with its anti-Chinese thrust quite clear although officially denied. The intensive US-India naval exercises in the Indian Ocean have a China related strategic purpose, even as India is open to maritime cooperation with China in the Indian Ocean area. India cooperates with China in the climate change and World Trade Organization negotiations because it serves a common purpose of countering the US/European attempts to avoid equity in agreements.

India respects Russia’s special interests in Central Asia but is open to US strategic moves to promote strategic energy links between Central Asia and South Asia. It is willing to strengthen its role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization even if the US sees it as an arrangement to limit US influence in Central Asia. India supports an extended US presence in Afghanistan even though Iran is opposed to it. India is avoiding getting caught in the Shia (Iran)-Sunni (Saudi Arabia) conflict building up in the Gulf. It successfully resisted Western pressures to reduce its engagement with Myanmar.

India’s independent posture explains why it has obtained support for its Security Council permanent membership from both the West and Russia. Russia’s position as India’s biggest partner for defence supplies has not prevented India from now expanding its defence ties with the US. The US seems reconciled that India will not be an ally and will want to retain its independence in foreign policy decisions. It will nevertheless seek to tie India closer to itself in a way that India’s pragmatic choices will pull India in that direction. If India continues to have a clear-sighted view of its longer term interests, it will be able to balance its relationship with all the major players in a constructive way. But without a domestic defence manufacturing base, high rates of economic growth and improvement in decision-making, our independent foreign policy will always have weak foundations.

Photo: "Indian Flag - The Mall - Shimla - Himach" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Adam Jones, Ph.D. - Global Photo Archive

The 8th Worldwide Security Conference in Brussels held last October by the EastWest Institute (EWI), one of the world’s leading think tanks, focussed on (1) sharpening appreciation of the existing security dynamics in Southwest Asia, with particular emphasis on Afghanistan, (2) analysing new means of promoting collective security in the region, and (3) and develop consensus for the enhancement of security.

There was consensus among the participants of the event, held in collaboration with the World Customs Organisation (WCO) and The Financial Times, was that in the climate of uncertainty and high risk, the Western world must prepare itself to manage more complex emergencies. Notwithstanding a broad agreement about a durable security policy, there was realisation that the Western nations are not geared to address some of the challenges that exist and/or are anticipated in the future. The situation almost one year later is described in a relevant paper as “a sense of disarray and retreat, rather than a commitment to continual reassessment and policy innovation.”

The negative factors influencing the present situation in Afghanistan include (1) weak commitment among the states in the region to cooperate, so as to prevent, reduce and/or contain imminent violent conflict, (2) economic growth not consistent with the required standard of living, (3) governance remaining weak with power shifting to local actors – i.e., warlords in the sub-regions, (4) with outside commitment weakening, political leaders in the region face domestic pressures and are reluctant to stake their political future on cooperation.

The risk factors are (1) conflicting requirements of modernisation and tradition (especially religious fundamentalism) (2) a likelihood of regional and internal conflicts with a potential for nuclear confrontation, and (3) increasing dependence of Europe, Japan and China for energy on this region.

Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason claim that the insurgency continues due to three inter-related factors: lack of a state apparatus and the inability of the government to exert a national level of control; failure of both the Coalition troops and the emerging Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police to secure the rural areas to facilitate development and reconstruction; and the lack of any real progress made to help the majority of the Afghan people, particularly those in the south and southeast.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey may have erred on the side of excess in his article for Russia’s daily Pravda in August 2010. “When it all started nine years ago in Afghanistan, Nato was supposed to breeze into Afghanistan, sweep the Taliban from power and install a nice, stable government. In 2005, the Human Development Index for Afghanistan was 173 out of 178 countries. At the end of 2010 it was 181 out of 182.

In simple terms, it means that Afghanistan slipped down the UN human development index, which ranks it 181 out of 182 countries, with only Niger lower. There has been a 40-fold increase in opium production and drug income represents over 60 percent of the economy. Afghanistan has the worst record in infant deaths and has a life expectancy of 44 years. Most of the roads remain un-built and many Afghans remain without access to basic utilities, unemployment is rife, and the country ranks lower and lower in terms of human and economic development indices.”

A report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (the 2010 Mid-year Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict) also had shocking statistics: the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2010 rose by 31 percent over the same period last year due to an increase in the number of hostile actions by armed elements. Human casualties in this period totalled 1,271 dead and 1,997 injured, of which 76 percent of the 3,268 were attributed to the activities of anti-government elements (a rise of 53 percent) and 12 percent were caused by the actions of pro-government elements (a decrease of 30 percent). The number of children killed or injured increased by 55 percent.

The report said aerial bombardment by the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was the main cause of the casualties inflicted by pro-government elements, namely 69 of the 223 civilian deaths and 45 injuries, although the number of victims of these attacks had decreased by 64 percent over the course of the year.

Almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Every time the Taliban were believed to have been routed, they have managed to regroup and resume hostilities. Instances of militants or their supporters wearing uniforms and attacking coalition soldiers have increased. Paramilitary forces and policemen have defected in droves.

With billions of US taxpayers’ money going into the war effort there is a rising tide of anger at home about the cost and the continuing needless sacrifice of American lives, very much like in the later stages of the Vietnam War. There is widespread public opposition to the war among the Nato nations that make up the coalition, further aggravated and complicated because of their financial woes.

By the end of 2014, when much of direct Western security involvement in Afghanistan will cease, they will be leaving behind malfunctioning governance, mounting insurgency, deteriorating security and ever-spreading corruption. With lack of political and counterinsurgency progress in Afghanistan, even though the rhetoric suggests otherwise, the Barack Obama administration is pushing more actively for the end of the US military presence in its current form. The US-Afghan treaty signed in May 2012 says US troops – mainly consisting of US Special Forces, training teams and their operational and logistical support – will stay in Afghanistan in several military bases after 2014.

Both the US and Nato are determined to shed a significant share of responsibility for security that they had assumed in the aftermath of the 2001 intervention into Afghanistan. It is both incongruous and strange but the effort to train and equip the Afghan security forces is following the same pattern as in South Vietnam, except that in South Vietnam the forces were far better trained, more combat-oriented and more capable than the present Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). When push came to shove, the South Vietnamese military machine disintegrated like a house of cards. The lessons learnt from Vietnam makes it all the more important that military withdrawal amidst the unabated violence has to be graduated and accompanied by definitive moves towards some form of political settlement. The political process in turn requires direct involvement of the same insurgents.

The world must recognise that Pakistan is central to a solution in Afghanistan, conversely Pakistan must come to terms with the fact that without a solution in Afghanistan there can be no peace in Pakistan. As a superpower the US has core strategic interests in the region, a fact Pakistan must reconcile with. The US in turn has to qualm Pakistan’s fears for the future. Only pragmatic engagement with the home truths prevailing will provide for a credible and lasting solution to the Afghan conundrum.

Photo: "Marines, Afghan National Police Stay Vig" (CC BY 2.0) by DVIDSHUB

Click here to read Danila Bochkarev's column in New Europe

“Interrogations, isolations, mental games, etc, those are all part of one's existence as a POW and we went through the whole gamut,” writes Sehgal in a column published last November on his escape.

A launch event was held on July 12, at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Lahore, Pakistan, and featured keynote remarks by Imran Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, as well as comments from AR Siddiqi, a fellow columnist at The News International, and Muhammad Taj, who had been Sehgal’s commander at the time.

“What you went through, 99 days… I just cannot comprehend how anyone can spend that much time in captivity,” said Khan, who had himself spent eight days in jail following a 2007 protest.

Imran Khan's remarks on Ikram Seghal's "Escape from Oblivion"

Click here for full coverage of the launch event at The Express Tribune.