Mediaboss Marketing

KABUL Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah on Saturday expressed hope that the United States would continue its support for the Afghan government after American President Donald Trump publicly spoke with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan after his inauguration on Friday.

"I want to congratulate the U.S president on behalf of myself, the Afghan government and the people of Afghanistan," Abdullah said at an event to launch a bid for $550 million in international humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, which remains locked in a bloody war between the Western-backed government and insurgent groups like the Taliban.

Trump, attending a post-inauguration ball in Washington, spoke by video link with American troops stationed at a base north of Kabul.

"I'm with you all the way... we're going to do it together," he told the troops. "The courage that you show is incredible."

As president-elect, Trump spoke by phone with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in early December, but has provided few details on whether he will continue the billions of dollars per year in military and development aid to Afghanistan, nor has he confirmed the future of the nearly 9,000 American troops still deployed there.

Abdullah, who shares power with Ghani after a 2014 U.S.-brokered political deal, said he interpreted Trump's comments to the troops as a positive sign.

"I watched the U.S. president's message to their soldiers... and he announced his support for them, which is a good and gracefulstep and I am sure that cooperation will continue in all aspects."

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

MOSCOW Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet U.S. President Donald Trump but preparations for the possible meeting may take months, not weeks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

KOBLENZ, Germany French far-right leader Marine Le Pen urged European voters to follow the example of Americans and the British and "wake up" in 2017 at a meeting of far-right leaders.

TOKYO, A day after Donald Trump became U.S. President and vowed to put "America First", Asian media decried his isolationist policies, fearing they will chill the global economy and sow widespread international discord.

Read the rest here:
Afghanistan's Abdullah welcomes Trump commitment to troops - Reuters

Afghan security forces patrol in Kunduz in April 2015. Omar Sobhani / Reuters

According to Curtis, Pakistan has not changed its ways enough, and she advised the new administration to "take certain risks" with the government there.

"I'm not talking about making an enemy out Pakistan (but) we need to start enforcing the conditions on [U.S.] aid and be willing to push the envelope to a certain degree."

She suggested aid to the country and its major non-NATO ally status a designation given to close military allies "may be in jeopardy if they don't demonstrate that they are in fact an ally in the fight against terrorism."

The majority of Afghans nearly 70 percent live in districts under Afghan government control or influence, according to U.S. military estimates in late 2016. Nearly 10 percent are under insurgent control or influence, while the rest of the country lives in so-called "contested areas" essentially up for grabs.

That the government in Kabul still does not control swaths of the country is a cause for alarm, said Haroun Mir, a political analyst at the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.

"We have tremendous security challenges," he said, pointing to the fact that the Taliban has challenged the Afghan security forces and gained the territory over the last few years especially since the U.S. officially ended its combat mission in the country in December 2014.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi dismissed these fears as overblown, however, saying the Taliban does not control "any strategic places" in the country.

The insurgents launch attacks on other areas from these low-population areas, he said.

"When it comes to control of the territory, of course the Afghan government, the Afghan people, they have full control of their territory," he said.

Sediqqi did acknowledge that the government has seen "an increase in the level of attacks by the Taliban."

Security cannot be discussed without also talking about corruption.

For one thing, as Kabul loses legitimacy through corruption, the Taliban often gains it through their own parallel systems of government and justice.

"That is a dangerous thing," said Mir, the analyst. That's because while extremely harsh, the Taliban are seen as more efficient and less corrupt than the Afghan government.

"They are famous for their delivery of justice," he said.

Mir is far from alone in sounding the alarm over graft and impunity.

Related:

John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) the government's leading oversight authority on reconstruction in the country has called corruption "widespread and rampant."

"Corruption and poor leadership go hand in hand in Afghanistan," he said

In 2014, Gen. John Allen, the ex-head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, called corruption not the Taliban the existential threat to Afghanistan.

While the U.S. ended its official combat role in Afghanistan in Dec. 2014, there are still around 8,500 U.S. troops there.

A U.S. soldier patrols across barren foothills outside of Forward Operating Base Shank near Pul-e Alam, Afghanistan, on March 30, 2014. Scott Olson / Getty Images

The Americans both advise Afghan troops in their fight against the Taliban and, separately, hunt and kill al Qaeda and ISIS-linked affiliated fighters.

This is down from more than 100,000 in 2010.

More than $115 billion taxpayer dollars have been spent in Afghanistan since 2002, with another $7.5 billion appropriated but not yet spent, according to SIGAR.

International donors have said they would provide financial support to the country and its security forces until 2020, with the U.S. making up the lion's share at around $5 billion per year.

The U.S. has stumped up more than $64 billion since 2002 $3.45 billion in 2016 alone to support the Afghan security forces.

Yes, lots of them. According to the U.N., the first six months of 2016 saw the highest number of civilian casualties on record since 2009 1,601 killed and 3,565 injured. Nearly one-in-three casualties were children, while more than 500 were women.

The Heritage Foundation's Curtis says the first thing the new administration needs to acknowledge is that "the security situation is extremely vulnerable" in Afghanistan and the strategy will have to be reassessed.

"We need to push the Taliban back and we can't afford to let them re-dominate the country," she said. "Both because that will turn back all the social and economic gains that have been made in the country but also because they will then provide safe havens for international terrorists intent on attacking us."

U.S. troops patrol the edge of a village near Pul-e Alam, Afghanistan, on March 29, 2014. Scott Olson / Getty Images

More here:
Obama's Afghanistan Legacy: What Trump Faces in America's Longest War - NBCNews.com

KABUL Afghanistan's continued descent into crisis is forcing the country to increasingly rely on humanitarian aid that can only provide short-term relief while leaving the underlying problems unsolved, international officials acknowledged on Saturday, even as they launched a request for $550 million in new funding.

Amid rising violence, economic stagnation, and social upheaval, the United Nations estimates at least 9.3 million Afghans, or nearly a third of the population, will need humanitarian assistance in 2017, a 13 percent increase from last year.

While praising the humanitarian workers who provide vital care around the country, Swedish ambassador to Afghanistan Anders Sjoberg said the continued reliance on their services is a sign of broader failures.

"Let us acknowledge that we've been doing this work in Afghanistan for too long," he said at an event with international and Afghan officials in Kabul on Saturday. "This is a failure in itself. Humanitarian aid is not short-term anymore, it has unfortunately become a Band-Aid for the unresolved conflict."

Since even before a U.S.-led military operation toppled the Taliban regime in 2001, international organizations have helped provide both more short-term humanitarian aid designed to address the most pressing and life-threatening problems, as well as long-term development support.

But last year saw record increases in the number of people displaced by fighting, with at least 626,000 additional people fleeing their homes, compared to around 70,000 in 2010, when the international military effort was at its height.

The number of refugees returning - in many cases forcibly - to Afghanistan from neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran also spiked dramatically, from 181,000 in 2015 to at least 618,000 in 2016, according to the U.N.

That has led the humanitarian community in Afghanistan to request $550 million to help an expected 5.7 million of the most vulnerable people in 2017, the highest amount of funding requested since 2011.

"We need to link humanitarian and long-term development aid much more effectively and we must not allow humanitarian aid to contribute to cementing the conflict," Sjoberg said, noting that the crisis highlights the need to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator, told Reuters in a recent interview that the prolonged violence has created a "vicious cycle" in which Afghanistan struggles to address the root causes of problems like economic malaise, limited access to medical care and education, and malnutrition.

(This version of the story corrects the year when displaced persons levels were at 70,000)

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

MOSCOW Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet U.S. President Donald Trump but preparations for the possible meeting may take months, not weeks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

KOBLENZ, Germany French far-right leader Marine Le Pen urged European voters to follow the example of Americans and the British and "wake up" in 2017 at a meeting of far-right leaders.

TOKYO, A day after Donald Trump became U.S. President and vowed to put "America First", Asian media decried his isolationist policies, fearing they will chill the global economy and sow widespread international discord.

The rest is here:
Humanitarian support 'Band-Aid' for unresolved Afghanistan conflict, officials say - Reuters

Stars and Stripes

From Tokyo to Afghanistan, world reacts to Trump's 'America first' speech Stars and Stripes "Trump did not mention a word about Afghanistan in his speech and the salaries of the Afghan army and police are paid by the U.S.," he said. He added that if the U.S. stops helping Afghanistan, "our country will again become a sanctuary to terrorists ... and more »

See original here:
From Tokyo to Afghanistan, world reacts to Trump's 'America first' speech - Stars and Stripes

Between Christmas and New Years, I led a congressional delegation to Kabul, Afghanistan, where I met with some of our soldiers, and with senior U.S. military and diplomatic leaders to discuss what progress we are or are not making in that war.

What I found is alarming: First, we need to abandon the Obama administrations false narrative that it has been able to reduce U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, now down to 8,400, because our strategy is working. Quite the opposite is true; our strategy is not working. The Taliban are gaining ground and Afghan security forces have suffered heavy casualties. So long as the Taliban sees a path to victory and is gaining territory, as it currently is, it will choose to fight rather than negotiate a peace deal.

As for the troop levels, the Obama administration knows that its self-imposed reduction to an 8,400-troop cap is unrealistic. The reality is that it is playing a shell game with the numbers. The trick is that the Obama administration has reduced our military presence by substituting civilian contractors, who are now performing the identical tasks that previously belonged to the soldiers they replaced. In fact, civilian contractors now greatly outnumber U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan at a much higher cost to the taxpayers and with unequal results.

One example concerns U.S. Army helicopter units. Flight crews are arriving in Afghanistan without their maintenance personnel to help keep under the troop cap. Meanwhile, their maintenance personnel, trained, ready and still on the payroll, are sitting in the United States, with no aircraft to maintain, while taxpayers are paying comparatively more for their civilian replacements to do the same work in a combat zone.

Second: We need to change the rules of engagement (ROE). ROE are the guidelines under which U.S. military forces are permitted to engage an enemy. Under the current ROE, the U.S. military in Afghanistan is free to target al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters, but they do not have the same latitude in attacking the Taliban, who pose an existential threat to the government of Afghanistan. The current ROE only allows the U.S. military to target Taliban fighters if they pose a direct and immediate threat to U.S. military forces. If they are a threat to Afghan security forces alone, wecannot target them, despite the fact that we are in Afghanistan to support the security forces of the Afghan government. The ROE were recently relaxed, but not nearly enough. They now allow U.S. forces to target the Taliban only if a provincial capital is in danger of falling to the enemy.

I believe Congress needs to address the ROE issue by modifying the current Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which is the legal basis for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The good news is that the Obama administration has long sought revisions to the AUMF, but the bad news is that addressing the Taliban threat is not one of the revisions it has sought.

This spring, the Taliban will, once again, begin to assemble its forces for the start of the fighting season. The U.S. military must have the appropriate ROE to target them as soon as they begin to mass their fighters and long before they can pose a direct threat to our forces or those of our Afghan allies, if we ever hope to bring this long war to an end.

Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. military history and given how this war has been conducted, between artificial troop caps and an ROE that makes winning seem impossible, its not hard to see why. The incoming Trump administration must be honest with the American people about how the war is going; stop playing the political numbers game with U.S. troop levels; and provide our military with an ROE that reflects a strategy for victory and not defeat.

U.S. Representative Mike Coffman is a Marine Corps combat veteran and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.

Read more:
Trump should update military policy in Afghanistan - The Denver Post