Progress in Afghanistan

JALREZ VALLEY, Afghanistan — In this Taliban stronghold in the mountains south of Kabul, the U.S. Army is providing the security that will enable China to exploit one of the world's largest unexploited deposits of copper, earn tens of billions of dollars and feed its voracious appetite for raw materials.

U.S. troops set up bases last month along a dirt track that a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to gain access to the Aynak copper reserves. Some troops made camp outside a compound built for the Chinese road crews, who are about to return from winter break. American forces also have expanded their presence in neighboring Logar province, where the Aynak deposit is.

The U.S. deployment wasn't intended to protect the Chinese investment — the largest in Afghanistan's history — but to strangle Taliban infiltration into the capital of Kabul. But if the mission provides the security that a project to revive Afghanistan's economy needs, the synergy will be welcome.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Afghanistan also has more than 1.5 billion barrels of oil — almost untapped since soldiers of Alexander the Great discovered pools of oil in the north more than 2,000 years ago — and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

. . . “This is not simply to remove Taliban influence, but to replace that influence with security operations and reconstruction,” the officer said. “It is not simply about killing the enemy, but about protecting the population and improving their lives, which will help prohibit the return of insurgent elements.”
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Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here.

On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population.
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In Tactical Shift, Troops Will Stay and Hold Ground in Afghanistan

Soviet war in Afghanistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan

The question is why does Russia want to help America!!!?

Arghand was founded in May 2005, by Sarah Chayes, a former National Public Radio reporter who stayed behind in Afghanistan to help rebuild the war-torn country. She and a handful of loyal and daring Kandaharis decided to explore a notion for how to add value to celebrated local fruit crops, long the fame of the region. Given the explosion in international demand for fine natural skin-care products, and the abundance of their raw materials in the orchards of southern Afghanistan – almonds, apricots, pomegranates, the precious blossoms of Rosa damascena – Arghand members decided to try to carve out a place for Afghanistan in this young market.
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Arghand’s long-term objective is to contribute to the process of weaning southern Afghanistan off of its dependence on the opium poppy. This scourge is distorting the region’s economy, criminalizing its politics, and putting its people at the mercy of armed gangs and so-called insurgents. . . . .

Afghanistan has long had an outsized role in world affairs, first from an excess of interest, but now from an excess of neglect. The 1979 Soviet invasion launched the last major war of the 20th century, undoing the USSR and ushering in more than two decades of occupation, civil war, and Taliban rule for Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, the first major war of the 21st century began, with Afghanistan again at its center.

Six years on, Western promises and Afghan hopes are at great risk. Donor fatigue and strategic confusion afflict the governments and populations of many NATO contributors. Violence in the country is increasing, governance is fragile, and economic development is too slow to provide compelling alternatives to warlordism and the drug trade. There is widespread concern that Afghanistan’s 2009 national elections cannot be held if such conditions persist.

Afghanistan, however, is a long way from lost. The CNAS Afghanistan Project starts from the premise that Afghanistan can either become an anchor in the region and a counterweight to uncertainty, or it can accelerate the forces of fragmentation that imperil vital American and allied interests and regional stability. The next American administration—regardless of political party—will have a window of opportunity within which to adopt “breakthrough ideas” in Afghanistan that can set the right course for regional and global security.

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How many years will the American Troops stay in Afghanistan !?

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But now, as reports mount of widespread fraud in the balloting, including allegations that supporters of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, illegally stuffed ballot boxes in the south and ripped up ballots cast for his opponents, Mr. Obama’s early praise may soon come back to haunt him.

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received more than 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last week’s election. Mr. Karzai’s biggest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes himself.

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DASHT ROBAT, Afghanistan — U.S. assistance to Afghanistan often arrives in the form of cash, disbursed to local contractors through the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. But it also comes in the form of fertilizer spreaders, pesticide sprayers, shovels and rakes — and Midwestern common sense.

Perhaps nothing exemplifies the “Peace Corps with guns” approach to Afghanistan more than the U.S. Army’s Agribusiness Development Teams, or ADTs. As part of a relatively new experiment, Army National Guard volunteers from agricultural states have deployed here to train and advise Afghan farmers and agricultural officials on modern farming techniques and business practices. The first teams, fielded last year, were from Missouri and Texas; others have followed from places like Tennessee, Kansas and Indiana.

I recently spent time with the Nebraska National Guard’s ADT, which covers a sizeable chunk of north-central Afghanistan: Parwan, Kapisa, Bamiyan and Panjshir provinces. All of the team members, except one, are non-commissioned officers; in civilian life, they all work in agriculture or agribusiness. It’s an approach that seems to make sense: Military commanders can throw millions of dollars at their problems through reconstruction funding, but most are not trained development officers or engineers. All too often, money is poured into schools that can’t afford teachers, clinics that don’t have doctors, or roads that won’t be maintained.

British commandos freed a New York Times reporter early Wednesday from Taliban captors who kidnapped him over the weekend in northern Afghanistan, but one of the commandos and a Times translator were killed in the rescue, officials said.

Reporter Stephen Farrell was taken hostage along with his translator in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. German commanders had ordered U.S. jets to drop bombs on two hijacked fuel tankers, causing a number of civilian casualties, and reporters traveled to the area to cover the story.
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The Times reported that Farrell's Afghan translator, Sultan Munadi, 34, also was killed. Farrell was unhurt.
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Munadi was first employed by The New York Times in 2002, according to his colleagues. He left the company a few years later to work for a local radio station.

He left Afghanistan last year to study for a master's degree in Germany. He came back to Kabul last month for a holiday and to see his family, and agreed to accompany Farrell to Kunduz on a freelance basis. He was married and had two young sons.

In a New York Times Web blog this month, Munadi wrote that he would never leave Afghanistan permanently and that "being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate."

"And if I leave this country, if other people like me leave this country, who will come to Afghanistan?" he wrote. "Will it be the Taliban who come to govern this country? That is why I want to come back, even if it means cleaning the streets of Kabul. That would be a better job for me, rather than working, for example, in a restaurant in Germany."

RIP Sultan