NATO general regrets bold predictions

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a further step toward reconciling with insurgents, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday he will soon name the members of a council tasked with pursuing peace talks with rebels willing to break with al-Qaida and recognize the government in Kabul.
Karzai's announcement was given added poignancy by comments from the departing deputy commander of NATO forces in the country that commanders promised too much when they predicted quick success in taking the key Taliban-held town of Marjah last winter.

While British Lt. Gen. Nick Parker now sees signs of a turnaround in the turbulent area, he said the military will be more restrained in forecasting success in the future.

The formation of the High Peace Council was approved in June at a national peace conference in Kabul. Karzai's office said members will include former Taliban, jihadi leaders, leading figures in Afghan society and women, but gave no other details. They will be prepared to negotiate with insurgents who renounce violence.

The Taliban have rejected peace talks while foreign troops remain in the country. Talks held in Kabul and the Maldives with an insurgent group led by ex-Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar produced no breakthrough.

Foreign governments working to stabilize the Afghan government and economy have welcomed the peace moves, especially given U.S. plans to begin withdrawing some of its forces next July.

"We warmly welcome today's announcement," the British Foreign Office said of Karzai's move. "We will not bring about a more secure Afghanistan by military means alone. ... We have always said that a political process is needed to bring the conflict in Afghanistan to an end."

Calls for talks have increasingly echoed among policy analysts and Afghan politicians, growing louder since the February campaign to take Marjah, in Helmand province, ended without a clear victory.

U.S. Marines and Afghan troops overran the area and announced plans to put in place an effective Afghan administration in hopes of inspiring local populations to rise up against the Taliban.

Instead, the Taliban have fought back with hidden bombs, ambushes, assassinations and intimidation. That has fueled doubts on Capitol Hill and among the American public that the Afghan war can be won.

KABUL, Afghanistan - THE government of President Hamid Karzai may be awash in corruption, venality and graft, but if you walk the tattered halls of the ministries here, it is remarkably easy to find an honest man.

One of them is Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, who last month took the politically risky course of trying to prosecute senior members of Mr. Karzai’s government. Two weeks ago, Mr. Faqiryar was fired from his job as deputy attorney general — on the order, it appears, of Mr. Karzai himself.

“The law in this country is only for the poor,” Mr. Faqiryar said afterward.

The ouster of Mr. Faqiryar illustrated not just the lawlessness that permeates Mr. Karzai’s government and the rest of the Afghan state. It also raised a fundamental question for the American and European leaders who have bankrolled Mr. Karzai’s government since he took office in 2001:

What if government corruption is more dangerous than the Taliban?

Since 2001, one of the unquestioned premises of American and NATO policy has been that ordinary Afghans don’t view public corruption in quite the same way that Americans and others do in the West. Diplomats, military officers and senior officials flying in from Washington often say privately that while public graft is pernicious, there is no point in trying to abolish it — and that trying to do so could destroy the very government the West has helped to build.

The Central Intelligence Agency has carried that line of argument even further, putting on its payroll some of the most disputable members of Mr. Karzai’s government. The explanation, offered by agency officials, is that Mother Theresa can’t be found in Afghanistan.

“What is acceptable to the Afghans is different than what is acceptable to you or me or our people,” a Western official here said recently, discounting fears of fraud in the coming parliamentary elections. He spoke, as many prominent Western officials here do so often, on the condition of anonymity. “They have their own expectations, and they are slightly different than the ones we try to impose on them.”

Perhaps. But the official’s premise — that the Afghans are more tolerant of corruption than people in the West — has fulfilled itself. Afghanistan is now widely recognized as one of the world’s premier gangster-states. Out of 180 countries, Transparency International ranks it, in terms of corruption, 179th, better only than Somalia.

The examples are too legion to list. Take a drive down the splendorous avenues of Palm Jumeira in the United Arab Emirates, where many Afghan leaders park their money, and you can pick out the waterfront villas where they live. Or look at the travails of Kabul Bank, whose losses threaten the Afghan financial system; officials say the bank’s directors spent lavishly on Mr. Karzai’s re-election campaign and lent tens of millions to Mr. Karzai’s cronies.

Worse, the rationalization offered by the Western official — that Afghans are happy to tolerate a certain level of bribery and theft — seems to have turned out terribly wrong. It now seems clear that public corruption is roundly despised by ordinary Afghans, and that it may constitute the single largest factor driving them into the arms of the Taliban.

You don’t have to look very hard to find an Afghan, whether in the government or out, who is repelled by the illegal doings of his leaders. Ahmed Shah Hakimi, who runs a currency exchange in Kabul, had just finished explaining some of the shadowy dealings of the business and political elite when he stopped in disgust.

“There are 50 of them,” Mr. Hakimi said. “The corrupt ones. All the Afghans know who they are.”

“Why do the Americans support them?” he asked.

Mr. Hakimi, a shrewd businessman, seemed genuinely perplexed.

“What the Americans need to do is take these Afghans and put them on a plane and fly them to America — and then crash the plane into a mountain,” Mr. Hakimi said. “Kill them all.”

You hear that a lot here — that the kleptocrats are few in number; that most Afghans know who they are; and that the country would be better off if this greedy cabal met a violent end. Why not get rid of them?

Sometimes, it seems, American and Afghan leaders exhibit a kind of willful blindness. In June, President Karzai flew to Kandahar to speak to a gathering of about 400 local tribal elders about a pending military operation. He was accompanied by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of American and NATO forces.

Mr. Karzai may have been in Afghanistan, but his appearance seemed to have been scripted by the same people who run political campaigns in the United States. The Afghan tribal elders assembled in a large room, most of them sitting on the floor, and Mr. Karzai, after much delay, strode in, gave a quick and rousing speech, and promptly left the room. Neither Mr. Karzai nor any of his aides — nor any of the Americans — seemed especially interested in what these tribal leaders had to say.

As it happened, they had plenty to say. In interviews afterward, one after the other told stories that were both disheartening and remarkably similar. None of the men (they were all men) harbored any love for the Taliban. But they had even less love for their Afghan leaders.

Typical of the Afghans was Hajji Mahmood, a tribal leader from a village west of Kandahar. Earlier this year, Mr. Mahmood explained, he bought a plot of land from the local administration and invested several thousand dollars to build some shops on it.

Then, a few months later, government agents arrived, bulldozed Mr. Mahmood’s shops and reclaimed the land. The local agent Mr. Mahmood had paid, it turned out, had pocketed the money and failed to record the sale.

Retelling the story, Mr. Mahmood shook his head.

“Not many people support the Taliban, because they don’t really have a program,” he said. “But believe me, if they did, many people would.”

It’s not as if the Americans and their NATO partners don’t know who the corrupt Afghans are. American officers and anti-corruption teams have drawn up intricate charts outlining the criminal syndicates that entwine the Afghan business and political elites. They’ve even given the charts a name: “Malign Actor Networks.” A k a MAN.

Looking at some of these charts—with their crisscrossed lines connecting politicians, drug traffickers and insurgents — it’s easy to conclude that this country is ruled neither by the government, nor NATO, nor the Taliban, but by the MAN.

It turns out, of course, that some of the same “malign actors” the diplomats and officers are railing against are on the payroll of the C.I.A. At least until recently, American officials say, one of them was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother. Mr. Karzai has long been suspected of facilitating the country’s booming drug trade.

Ahmed Wali Karzai denies taking any money from the C.I.A. or helping any drug traffickers. But consider, for a second, the other brother: President Karzai. When he receives that stern lecture from the American diplomat about ridding his government of corruption — and he receives a lot of them — what must President Karzai be thinking?

One possibility: That the Americans aren’t really serious.

The real difficulty, American commanders say, is that taking down the biggest Afghan politicians could open a vacuum of authority. And that could create instability that the Taliban could take advantage of.

American officers have every right to worry about stability. But the trouble with this argument is that, increasingly, there is less and less stability to keep. And, if Afghans like Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Hakimi are to be believed, it’s the corruption itself that is the instability’s root cause.

As for Mr. Faqiryar, he has become, at age 72, a national icon. A recent editorial in Kabul Weekly, a local newspaper, urged Mr. Faqiryar to carry on his fight against the gangster-state that his country has become. But the editorial struck a tone that was less angry than poignant, as if time were running short.

“We are a nation,” the editors said, “in desperate need of more heroes.”

Bank in corruption scandal to get $200m lifeline from state as thousands of customers queue to withdraw savings

The Afghan government is preparing a $200m (£130m) bailout for the country's biggest commercial bank, which is mired in a corruption scandal that has prompted a rush by thousands of customers to close their accounts.

Officials at the country's Central Bank confirmed that regulators asked the Ministry of Finance on Saturday for permission to make the huge loan from the country's reserves to help prop up Kabul Bank.

There are widespread suspicions that the payment has already been made. Large queues continued to form outside Kabul Bank branches across the country on Sunday as desperate customers tried to withdraw their money.

Security guards put up razor wire in front of the largest branch in Kabul to prevent anxious customers getting in.

Although the Central Bank has reserves worth $4.5bn (£2.9bn), the $200m figure is an enormous amount for one of the world's poorest countries. The Afghan government's entire tax revenues are just $1.2bn a year.

At the weekend the US Treasury department insisted that no US money would go into the bailout of a bank that got into financial trouble in part by buying luxury properties in Dubai, which were then used as the private homes of shareholders and other friends of the bank's management.

Earlier, Mahmoud Karzai, a brother of the president, who owns 7% of the bank's shares, had called for a US financial guarantee. Today the bank's spokesman said he had no information about a bailout.

The prospect of so much public money being used to prop up a bank reeling from allegations of corruption prompted an angry response from Abdullah Abdullah, the leader of the opposition movement, who competed against Karzai in last year's fraud-marred presidential election.

"Mr Karzai himself assured the citizens of Afghanistan that we were going to save the bank. Which money?" he asked. "The money belongs to the people of Afghanistan – it is not anybody's private entity."

He said he feared the cash would be used to prop up the bank, which would then continue with "business as usual". That has included unorthodox business practices, such as the flouting of rules designed to prevent risky lending.

Abdullah demanded to know how the bailout money would be repaid to the state's coffers, and lambasted the government and regulators for failing to stop the looming disaster earlier.

He claimed that Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the Central Bank governor who has ultimate responsibility for regulating the financial system, had last year admitted to him that he knew the bank was breaking banking rules by using depositors' money to invest heavily in risky ventures, including the luxury property market in Dubai.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, out of a total cash pile that before the bank run stood at more than $1bn, was used to buy up properties, which then crashed in value after the global financial crisis.

Money was also lent to the loss-making business ventures of the main shareholders, including Sherkhan Farnood and Khalilullah Frozi, the former chairman and chief executive, who were both ordered to step down this week.

Abdullah also alleged that the bank had used its financial clout to buy favours from politicians, including the president, who received millions of dollars from the bank for his re-election campaign

He said that those payments coincided with the decision to award to Kabul Bank the contracts to run the accounts of the country's soldiers and policemen, who have all been given accounts for the payment of their salaries.

It is not clear how much money has so far been withdrawn. On Friday Mahmoud Karzai said $160m had been withdrawn from Kabul Bank's cash reserves of about $400m. But frantic withdrawals continued at the start of the new business week on Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan's largest bank remained solvent Sunday after a nearly weeklong run on the troubled institution, according to the governor of the nation's central bank, which is being criticized for looking the other way at the bank's mismanagement problems for too long.

Nervous depositors continued to make withdrawals, but Central Bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat said the Kabul Bank was on sound footing. He said no decision had been made about whether the central bank would use money in its coffers to shore up Kabul Bank, partly owned by President Hamid Karzai's brother.

"It's stabilized. The bank is already stabilized, and hopefully in the next few days it will become 100 percent normal," Mr. Fitrat told the Associated Press. "It is almost 60 percent to 70 percent returned to normal. Most of the branches are now empty (of customers). People have taken their money and gone home. It's very good today. The operation is becoming very normal."

Abdullah Abdullah, who challenged Mr. Karzai in last year's presidential election, criticized the government, saying it should have acted more quickly to correct management problems at Kabul Bank. The run on the bank began on Wednesday following a change in leadership and reports that tens of millions of dollars had been lent for risky real estate investments involving the political elite.

"The extent of the problem seems to me to be massive, and the misconduct seems to be a very prolonged one," Mr. Abdullah said.

"Why wasn't it dealt with earlier?" he asked reporters gathered at his home for a news conference, in which he also questioned whether central bank reserves should be used to bolster the bank's balance sheet.

Uncertainty about the bank's future has further destabilized the war-torn country and efforts by the central government to build an efficient political and financial system to drag Afghanistan out of poverty. If not resolved, problems at the bank could have wide-ranging political repercussions.

Kabul Bank handles the pay for Afghan public servants, soldiers and police in this unstable nation, which is beset by a Taliban insurgency and is awash in drug money and billions in international aid. Kabul Bank's woes further underscore entrenched problems with cronyism and corruption, with millions of dollars allegedly lent to relatives and friends of the ruling elite to buy property in Dubai.

Sherkhan Farnood, former chairman of Kabul Bank, and Khalilullah Ferozi, former chief executive officer, resigned because, under new reforms, only banking professionals can hold the top operating positions at banks. Mr. Farnood, a world-class poker player who raised money for Mr. Karzai's re-election campaign, and Mr. Ferozi each own 28 percent of the bank's shares. Mr. Karzai's brother, Mahmood Karzai, is the bank's third largest shareholder, with 7 percent.

Mr. Karzai said the government will guarantee every penny of the deposits in the bank.

"Yes, government officials, including Mr. Karzai himself, assured the citizens of Afghanistan that they were going to save the bank. . . . fair enough," Mr. Abdullah said. "You'll save the bank, in which your brother is a shareholder . . . fair enough. But with which money? Whose money?

"The money belongs to the people of Afghanistan. It's not anybody's private entity. . . . Which money will be channeled or is being channeled to the bank? How much money, for what reason and how will it be refunded to the government?"

"We strongly urge the government of Afghanistan and the shareholders as well as the authorities with the central bank to provide clear answers — not to put dust in the eyes of the citizens."

Mr. Abdullah said he had heard the central bank already has given the bank $200 million. Mr. Fitrat said that was not true — no decision had been made on whether central bank funds would be used to help Kabul Bank.

Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said Saturday while American officials were providing technical assistance to the Afghan government: "This is an Afghan issue. They are taking immediate steps to ensure the stability of Kabul Bank and to protect the financial assets of the Afghan people. . . . No American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank."

Mahmood Karzai said the bank, which he said lost $170 million during the first two days of the run, got in trouble for three reasons.

"First of all, it was lending over the limit of the bank," he said. "Second was investing in Dubai's property. Third was lending to shareholders. These were the three areas where the bank violated central bank regulations.

"I'm sure that the bank has learned the hard way that this is not acceptable," he said.

He said the bank's former chairman said $155 million was invested in two business properties and 18 villas in Dubai.

"Right now, the value of the property is about $160 million, so in principle there is no loss, but the loss is in the accumulated interest," Mahmood Karzai said.

He said he had been living in one of the villas but planned to move to escape from the controversy over the properties.

"I'm moving out this week," he said. "I rented another place. I never owned that villa. It was in the name of Sherkhan Farnood, the chairman. I was there, and I'm moving out just to get rid of all this talking on this."

Afghans have continued to withdraw money from the country's largest bank, Kabul Bank, over fears it may collapse.

Government and bank officials have given repeated assurances that the bank will not fail.

The run on the bank began earlier this week after allegations of corruption and mismanagement among executives.

The government says it has transferred $100m (£65m) to the bank to cover salaries for soldiers, police and teachers who are paid through the bank.

Branches of the bank across the country were crowded on Saturday as people concerned about their savings queued to withdraw money.

"For the time being I want to withdraw my money and then I will wait to see what will happen next," said Mohammad Habib Angar in Kabul.

"If the bank is able to create confidence, for sure I will put my money back in Kabul Bank because I do not want to close my account."

Some officials have suggested the long lines at the bank's branches were attributable to customers withdrawing cash for Eid ul-Fitr, the upcoming Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
Dubai property

Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhailwal sought to reassure customers, saying the bank had the government's full backing.

On Saturday he said money was being delivered to branches across the country to pay the salaries of the tens of thousands of government workers, including soldiers and police, who hold accounts with Kabul Bank.

The scale of Saturday's withdrawals has not been announced and the the size of the bank's debts remains unclear.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Kabul Bank's losses could exceed $300m (£194m) - and that the figure is more than the bank's assets.

The newspapers reported that two senior executives - chairman Sherkhan Farnood and chief executive Khalilullah Ferozi - had been replaced and Mr Farnood ordered to surrender $160m worth of property purchased in Dubai.

The governor of the Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, said that the two executives had voluntarily resigned because, under new reforms, only banking professionals can hold the top operating positions at banks.

The two each own 28% of the bank's shares, making them the largest shareholders.

KABUL, Afghanistan - In a bid to fend off the threat of a nationwide financial crisis, the Afghan and U.S. governments tentatively agreed Saturday to bail out Afghanistan's largest bank, according to Afghan and U.S. officials.

Details of the deal, including how much each government would contribute, were still being worked out Saturday between the Central Bank of Afghanistan and the U.S. Treasury Department, officials said.

Meanwhile, thousands of nervous Afghan depositors, unaware of the bailout and unconvinced of the bank's solvency, stampeded the central branch of the beleaguered Kabul Bank to withdraw their savings. But the teller drawers were largely empty and most customers left empty-handed.

The planned injection of cash into Kabul Bank is meant to slow the run on the bank by its customers, who have withdrawn more than $200 million in the past few days amid fears of a wider economic collapse. The panic began last week when the Central Bank ousted the chairman and the chief executive officer of Kabul Bank, after discovering that the bank had acted recklessly, lending millions of dollars to allies of President Hamid Karzai and pouring money into risky investments.

A major shareholder in the bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president, said Saturday that he was unaware of a bailout. He said such intervention would be unnecessary considering that the bank still retained half of its $600 million in assets.

The American official, who also requested anonymity, said that the U.S. contribution would not be large.

The bailout comes several days after Karzai and other top government officials pledged that they would guarantee deposits. But those assurances failed to curtail the rush of withdrawals.

related news

KABUL, Afghanistan | In a further step toward reconciling with insurgents, President Hamid Karzai said Saturday he will soon name the members of a council given the job of pursuing peace talks with rebels willing to break with al-Qaida and recognize the government .

The formation of the High Peace Council was approved in June, and Karzai's statement that its membership would be announced next week marks a "significant step toward peace talks," according to a statement issued by Karzai's office. The Taliban have so far rejected peace talks so long as foreign troops remain in the country.

Armed police in pick-up trucks have been stationed outside the main branch of Kabul Bank as customers continue to withdraw money amid fears the Afghan bank may collapse.

Barbed wire has also been placed across the road to hold back the crowds.

The run on the bank began earlier this week after allegations of corruption and mismanagement, although officials have maintained the bank will not fail.

Meanwhile the US Treasury has denied it is preparing to bail out the bank.

"While we are providing technical assistance to the Afghan government, no American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank," Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said.
Customer fears

The BBC's Mark Dummett said that queues started forming outside the main branch before dawn.

Customers have been told that the branch is the only one that holds US dollars but they can only withdraw a maximum of $10,000.

"I am withdrawing my money because I am taking a trip and I also believe my money will not be safe in this bank," said 26-year-old Waheed Shirzoi.

The governor of the Central Bank, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, told the BBC the queues were only slightly bigger than normal. Most people wanted to withdraw their salaries or take out money to pay for presents before the Eid festival, he said.

Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest commercial bank, is reported to have run up huge debts that it cannot afford to pay.

Last week, newspaper reports said the bank's two top executives - chairman Sherkhan Farnood and chief executive Khalilullah Ferozi, who each own 28% of the bank's shares - had been replaced and Mr Farnood ordered to surrender $160m worth of property purchased in Dubai.

However, Mr Fitrat has said the men resigned voluntarily as new regulations did not permit shareholders to hold executive positions.

The Taliban vowed Sunday to attack polling places in Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, warning Afghans not to participate in what it called a sham vote.

Meanwhile, two coalition troops, one British and one from the Republic of Georgia, were killed in fighting in the turbulent south, while a political rival of President Hamid Karzai questioned his approach to pending talks with rebels who might be persuaded to abandon the insurgency.

The threat issued Sunday comes just under two weeks before the vote and follows the announcement of a final list of polling places to be opened around the country.

"It is only to the benefit of foreigners who want to maintain their existence in the country by holding such a process and we believe that the people will not get any benefit out of it," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"That's why we announced to the local people that all Afghan people should boycott this election and they should not participate on the polling date," Mujahid said.

The Taliban position is consistent with those it has taken in the past. The insurgents seek to topple the government in Kabul and drive foreign troops from the country, and have boycotted or sought to sabotage all aspects of the political process.

Taliban threats and intimidation drove down voter turnout in last year's fraud-marred presidential election, especially in rural areas where security is harder to ensure, and many Afghans this time say they won't vote for fear of attacks.

Election officials plan to open 5,897 voting sites, having discarded more than 900 locations because of security concerns. Last year, 6,167 voting centers nominally operated.

Voters will choose 249 members of the lower house of parliament from among more than 2,500 candidates, including dozens of women.

Afghanistan's government and its foreign partners say they hope the elections will further consolidate the country's shaky democracy and put it on a path toward long-term political stability, allowing the withdrawal of the roughly 140,000 NATO-led foreign troops in the country.

The two deaths Sunday bring to seven the number of foreign fighters who have fallen in Afghanistan this month, five of them Americans. The Ministry of Defense identified the British soldier as belonging to 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and said he died in a blast in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand province during an operation against insurgents. His name has not been released.

A total of 88 British troops have died in Afghanistan so far in 2010 - a particularly bloody year for the 10,000 British forces in the country - bringing the total number of British deaths since the start of the war in 2001 to 333.

Georgia's Deputy Defense Minister Nodar Kharshiladze said a 28-year-old battalion commander was killed, and a 25 year-old corporal was wounded early Sunday in an unspecified location.

Georgia, a devoted U.S. ally, has deployed more than 1,000 troops to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

NATO gave no details on the second soldier killed, saying only that he died in fighting in the south.

The southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar have seen some of the heaviest fighting between insurgents and coalition forces seeking to uproot the Taliban from their long-held strongholds.

With the conflict entering its ninth year, Karzai is hoping talks with weary insurgents could help divide the Taliban between hardcore members unwilling to compromise and those who might consider abandoning the insurgency.

However, Abdullah Abdullah, who withdrew from last year's presidential election, complained that the process was opaque and goals unclear.

"It is being discussed behind the doors and the people of Afghanistan, they are not aware of what they are up against," Abdullah told reporters at a meeting in his Kabul home.

"While the majority, an absolute majority, of the people of Afghanistan would like to see a peaceful situation ... at the same time they want to know what will happen to them in terms of achieving this. What are the steps that will take us there?" he said.

Karzai said Saturday he would soon name the members of the High Peace Council, whose formation was approved in June at a national peace conference in Kabul. A statement released by his office said the move marks a "significant step toward peace talks."

The statement said members will include former Taliban, jihadi leaders, leading figures in Afghan society and women, but gave no other details. They will be prepared to negotiate with insurgents who renounce violence, honor the Afghan constitution, and sever ties with terrorist networks.

The Taliban have so far rejected peace talks while foreign troops remain in the country. Talks held in Kabul and the Maldives with an insurgent group led by ex-Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar produced no breakthrough.

Though some observers have expressed concern about cutting any sort of deal with insurgents, foreign governments working to stabilize the Afghan government and economy have welcomed the move, especially given U.S. plans to begin withdrawing some of its forces next July.

LONDON — The former head of the British Army has accused former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of forcing the military to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan without adequate funding.

Gen. Richard Dannatt said in book extracts published Sunday that Blair "lacked the moral courage to impose his will" on Brown, who was his Treasury chief and succeeded him as Labour prime minister in 2007.

He accused Brown of having a "malign" influence on funding of the Iraq and Afghan campaigns.

"History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown's malign intervention ... by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the entire process from the outset," Dannatt wrote.

Extracts from the book were published by the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
Dannatt told the newspaper in an interview that trying to get the government to understand the pressures the army was under was like "pushing a rock up a steep hill."

He also was quoted as saying that the campaign in Afghanistan would have to be completed by 2014 or 2015, because "you couldn't ask an organization to go on taking this level of casualties for 10 years."

Dannatt was head of the army from 2006 until 2009. He was later an adviser to the then-opposition Conservative Party, which now leads the government.

The new government has said the military faces cuts as part of plans to reduce Britain's deficit.

Former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who is running for leadership of the Labour Party, rejected Dannatt's criticisms.

"We have armed forces fighting in some of the most dangerous parts of the world with the best equipment they have ever had," he said.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Spc. Patricia Fowler says the Taliban got a lucky shot off, but she was glad to take the bullet.

Fowler, a crew chief and door gunner on a Black Hawk medevac helicopter in southern Afghanistan, earned the Purple Heart after that incident in May in which she was fractions of an inch from a much more serious injury, or death.

"I was just doing my job, and they happened to get a lucky shot off," she said in an phone interview from Afghanistan with The Leaf-Chronicle.

Fowler is part of Task Force Shadow and B Company, 5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. In May, she was on a helicopter that was in the role of "medical chase," providing air support to another helicopter sent to pick up wounded Marines.

"I feel worse for those guys than I do for us," she said of her fellow aviators, who landed under Taliban gunfire to rescue the wounded Americans.

Fowler's helicopter was circling the rescue site at about 300 feet when gunfire started pinging off the helicopter. The helicopter began to climb, and Fowler described a sensation of being hit in the back of the head and scratches on her neck.

What she would later learn is now a remarkable story of luck and bravery.

A bullet from an enemy fighter had bounced off the helicopter, into her helmet and back out, effectively navigating around her head, thanks to a bracket in the helmet.

"I had no idea at that time I had been shot," she said.

Her fellow crew members could see a gaping hole in her helmet caused by the ricocheting bullet.

"(A fellow crew member) poked the other crew chief, and I was like 'What's going on?'" she said.

She took off her helmet and saw the hole, and "a good chunk of Styrofoam" missing. Fowler had no idea what had happened, having never lost communication with the radio device mounted in the helmet.

"Amazingly, the helmet still worked," she said.
Shrapnel struck arm

Fowler's helicopter made it to a base, where she could be seen by doctors. She had severe pain in her shoulder, which turned out to be shrapnel embedded in her arm from the bullets. "I thought, 'Cool,'" she joked.

She admits she had a small breakdown, realizing the narrow miss she faced.

"If I'd have been sitting a half an inch further back, it'd have gone through my neck," she said.

And though Fowler admits she missed serious injury or death by fractions of an inch, "it justifies to me that I was doing my job."

"We took fire away from them," she said of her fellow aviators and Marines, who were in the heat of battle below.

Fowler and her commanding officer, Capt. Nick Horn, laughed while discussing the event and camaraderie in the unit, a sign that morale with them is high.

"Sometimes I guess these guys are really amazing, but I have my few friends that keep me grounded," she said.

She also shrugged off the notion of being a sort of pioneer for women in the military. "I'm a soldier first," she said. "I'm not the first female (to be a door gunner), I'm not the last. I just work."

The public-private partnership meet in October shall focus on investment opportunities

Due to his dedication to the promotion of stability and development in Afghanistan, the President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has called upon a public-private partnership conference to be held at the end of October.
The conference shall focus on investment opportunities in Afghanistan in various sectors such as agriculture, as well as infrastructure-related projects.

Among the participants will be representatives from the private sector of donor countries.

The one-day conference shall be attended by the UAE and Afghanistan foreign ministers. It is set to be opened and guided by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to give his full-fledged support during the dialogue between the public and private sectors.

India's spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's Mossad, through their "strong network in Afghanisatan", were behind the suicide attack on a Shia procession in Quetta that killed 73, an editorial in a Pakistani paper said Sunday.

"The suicide attack on the Yaum-al-Quds (Jerusalem Day) in Quetta appears to be a carefully considered conspiracy and it must be borne in mind that both the Indian agency RAW and Israeli agency Mossad have set up a strong network in Afghanistan. It is through this network only that the Quetta rally was targeted," the editorial in the Nawa-i-Waqt said.

"It was thus that after the devastation of the floods, a new chapter of a tragedy began in Baluchistan," it added.

At least 73 people were killed and more than 150 injured in a blast that ripped through a Shia procession near Meezan chowk in Quetta Friday. The banned Sunni radical group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility for the attack.

The editorial cited informed sources as saying that preliminary investigations into the explosions outside Karbala Gamay Shah in Lahore Wednesday in which 35 people were killed, also indicated a conspiracy by "external agencies" and clues had been found that suggested "forces inimical to Pakistan" had joined hands to start a new campaign of destabilisation.

It said all political parties and leaders of Pakistan must take serious note of these incidents, which are a series of a "new wave of tension and terrorism" and acknowledge that their "wrong political policies" were responsible for the difficult phase the country is passing through.

Noting that former president Pervez Musharraf had cited the growing network of Indian agents in Balochistan striving to misguide the population and turn them against Pakistan, it said the present dispensation is not ready to admit to the possibility of a "foreign hand" in even the biggest terrorist outrages happening in the province.

"A move to restore rights to the people of Balochistan and to bring them in the mainstream was begun but fell hostage to the political tug-of-war between various parties and ultimately petered out. Meanwhile Indian and Israeli agents are working day and night in Balochistan to foment trouble, under the clear supervision of America, which is also helping them in this endeavour," it said, calling on all politicians to get their act together and seriously take up the challenges facing the nation.

Cartoons By Zahid Khan