Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, deputy commander of US forces and the head of the NATO-led force's joint command, acknowledged that Afghan army and police still had a way to go before overseeing security without major assistance from foreign troops.

But he rejected a more pessimistic view voiced by some in and outside the US military, including US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who accused his superiors of glossing over the failings of Afghan forces in an article published this week.

Some US soldiers in the field have been critical of their Afghan partners, Scaparrotti told a news conference, but the Afghan forces have been built up over a short period and could not be compared to a US standard.

"At times, a (US) private will tell me they're not that good. But a private's looking at it from the perspective of how he's trained, or the Marine's trained, and the standards are very different," the general said.

"I can tell you personally from experience and from feedback from others, these soldiers will fight, particularly at the company level. There's no question about that," he said.

"And they're going to be good enough, as we build them, to secure their country and to counter the insurgency that they're dealing with now," he said.

The state of Afghanistan's security forces has taken on growing importance as the United States and its allies pursue a troop drawdown and after Washington announced last week it would shift from a combat to a training role as early as mid-2013.

President Barack Obama was briefed on efforts to build "capable" Afghan security forces at a meeting on Wednesday that focused on Afghanistan, including efforts to broker a possible peace settlement with the insurgency, the White House said in a statement.

The discussions also covered preparations for a NATO summit in Chicago later this year, when the alliance plans to present more details of its plan to hand over security for the whole country by the end of 2014.

At the Pentagon, Scaparrotti said 29 Afghan army battalions and seven police units -- only about one percent of Afghan forces -- could now conduct operations independently, with support from coalition advisors.

"So it's a very low number," he said.

But about 42 percent of Afghan forces were ranked as "effective" with help from coalition advisers, said the general, calling it an encouraging sign.

The transition effort that will put Afghans in the lead was still in its "early stages," said the general, adding the security forces remained reliant on NATO-led troops for logistical support and maintenance of equipment.

He said the Afghan army and police had growing pains after a dramatic expansion, with the force doubling in about 18 months.

NATO allies hope to have the Afghan security forces grow to 352,000 by October, including 195,000 in the army and 157,000 in the police.

The Afghan forces came in for harsh criticism from Davis, the whistleblower officer who has openly questioned the Pentagon's portrayal of the war effort and the efficacy of the local army and police.

Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, which is not an official publication of the military, Davis described incidents during his 12-month tour that portrayed Afghan troops as reluctant to fight or even colluding with the Taliban.

Scaparrotti said the article represented only one person's view and that war commanders draw on a broad range of information. But he said military leaders are taking a realistic view of the war and not trying to avoid uncomfortable facts.

"We have to ...try to be very accurate about what we see, and what we understand the battlefield to be, and not treat it as we want it to be," he said.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Islamabad (AFP) Feb 8, 2012 - Islamabad said Afghan, NATO and Pakistani commanders were holding talks Wednesday to improve border coordination, more than two months after a lethal NATO attack flung relations into a major crisis.

It was the latest sign that Pakistan is moving to repair relations with Afghanistan and the United States, which plummeted to an all-time low after US air strikes on November 26 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The Pakistani army said representatives of the Afghan and Pakistani armies, and NATO's US-led force in Afghanistan were meeting at a border coordination centre at Torkham on Wednesday.

Major General Ishfaq Nadeem Ahmed, the Pakistan army's director general of military operations, was attending the talks, it said.

"The meeting is part of tripartite engagement to discuss and improve various coordination measures on the Pakistan-Afghan border," the army added.

General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, told AFP he was unaware of the talks.

Last week, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar went to Kabul on a fence-mending visit and then indicated that Islamabad could shortly re-open its Afghan border to NATO supplies, reversing a blockade imposed on November 26.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Washington (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - A US Army officer has accused the American military of painting a misleading picture of progress in the war in Afghanistan while glossing over the Kabul government's many failings.

Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis deliberately broke ranks with the official portrayal of the war after spending a year in the country, issuing a grim assessment and accusing his superiors of covering up the harsh realities that plague the mission.

"What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by US military leaders about conditions on the ground," Davis wrote in an article published in Armed Forces Journal, a private newspaper not affiliated with the Pentagon.

"Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level," he wrote under the headline, "Truth, Lies And Afghanistan: How military leaders have let us down."

Local Afghan government officials are failing to serve the Afghan population and their security forces are reluctant to fight insurgents or are colluding with the Taliban, he wrote.

"How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by US senior leaders in Afghanistan?" he said in his article.

Davis has also reportedly shared his pessimistic view with some members of Congress and written a classified version of his article for the Defense Department, a highly unusual move that he expects will anger his commanders and short-circuit his professional career.

"I'm going to get nuked," he was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

The Pentagon politely disagreed with Davis's portrayal of the war but stopped short of suggesting any disciplinary action.

"Lieutenant Colonel Davis is obviously entitled to his opinion," spokesman George Little told reporters, adding that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "has very strong confidence in his commanders in Afghanistan, as they provide assessments of what's happening on the ground in the war."

The military's evaluation of the war effort is based on "rigorous analysis" from a myriad of sources and does not depend on one person's view, he said.

Working with the US military's Rapid Equipping Force, Davis said he traveled 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) around Afghanistan and spoke with more than 250 soldiers during his 12-month deployment.

His comments and anecdotes reflect opinions often expressed by American and coalition troops, who make no secret of their frustrations with Afghan security forces.

Davis recounted a conversation with an Afghan police officer in eastern Afghanistan in Kunar province less than three hours after an insurgent attack.

Through an interpreter, Davis asked the police captain how his forces usually responded to such an incident and if his squad would go after the insurgent fighters.

The Afghan police officer gave him an incredulous look, laughed and said: "'No! We don't go after them,' he said. 'That would be dangerous!'"

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Kabul (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - NATO sought to reassure Afghans Monday that despite talk of an early end to combat missions, foreign troops would fight "shoulder to shoulder" with local soldiers whenever needed until the end of 2014.

The reassurance came after confusion over remarks by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta suggesting that Washington wanted to shift from a combat role to a "train and advise and assist role" by the end of 2013.

Defence ministers meeting in Brussels last week were, however, completely committed to the strategy already in place, a spokesman for NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Simon Gass, told a news conference.

"And what that means is that right up until the end of the transition process, the end of 2014, NATO troops will be continuing to conduct combat missions wherever they are needed, shoulder to shoulder with Afghan troops."

Panetta, seeking to clear up any confusion, told reporters in Brussels that NATO troops "will have to be fully combat-ready" and will fight "as necessary" even as Afghan forces assume the security lead.

"We hope that the Afghan security forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan some time in 2013," the Pentagon chief said, adding that the final plan will be decided by NATO leaders at a Chicago summit in May.

NATO spokesman Dominic Medley told the Kabul news conference that the capability of the Afghan security forces was growing quickly throughout the country -- "and that is why the transition is proving to be a success".

NATO has some 130,000 soldiers in Afghanistan fighting an insurgency by the hardline Islamist Taliban, but is training Afghan forces to take responsibility for security by the end of 2014 when it plans to pull out its combat troops.

"By the end of the year, we will have 352,000 members of the Afghan security forces," the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Mission (ISAF), Brigadier-General Carsten Jacobson told the news conference.

"We are focusing on the training of the Afghan forces in order to be capable, sustainable and affordable," he said.

Despite NATO assurances that insurgents are on the back foot, a leaked secret NATO document, based on thousands of detainee interrogations, showed the Taliban believe they can reconquer Afghanistan once Western forces are gone.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Kabul (AFP) Feb 5, 2012 - A US soldier shot dead an Afghan guard outside a military base in northern Afghanistan, apparently believing he was about to attack him, a local official said Sunday.

The incident on Thursday in Sari Pul province came less than a fortnight after an Afghan soldier shot dead four unarmed French troops at a base in the east of the country.

"A US soldier has shot dead an Afghan guard three days ago", Sari Pul provincial security chief Sayed Jahangir said on Sunday.

"The American shot dead his Afghan colleague due to a misunderstanding. Apparently he thought the guard was trying to attack him."

The victim was named as 22-year-old Abdul Rahim. He had been newly appointed as a guard by a private security company, Jahangir said.

A spokesperson from NATO's International Security Assistance Force refused to comment when contacted by AFP, saying the investigation was ongoing.

The January 20 incident prompted French President Nicolas Sarkozy to say his country would end its combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2013 -- instead of the planned NATO deadline of the end of 2014.

Violence between foreign and Afghan soldiers has been growing more frequent, and is increasingly linked to "cultural incompatibility" and arguments, rather than Taliban influence, according to a NATO report.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Washington (AFP) Feb 4, 2012 - The United States plans to maintain special forces in Afghanistan after it winds down its combat operations in the country, using them to hunt down insurgent leaders and train local troops, The New York Times reported.

Citing unnamed senior Pentagon officials, the newspaper Saturday said these forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

NATO defense ministers, meeting in Germany this past week, voiced hope that Afghan forces can take the lead across the country in 2013, while foreign troops shift to a backup role.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had caused a stir before arriving in Europe on Wednesday when he suggested that the United States hoped to wind down the combat mission as early as mid-2013.

Under the emerging plan, thousands of US special forces will remain after the bulk of US conventional troops leave, The Times said.

Pentagon officials and military planners say the new plan for Afghanistan is not a direct response to the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, the paper said.

Even so, the shift could give US President Barack Obama a political shield against attacks from his Republican rivals, who have already begun criticizing him for moving too swiftly to extract troops from Afghanistan, The Times noted.

The new focus builds on a desire to use the elite troops to counter any residual terrorist threat as well as to devote the military's top trainers to the task of preparing Afghan security forces, the report said.

The plan would put a particularly heavy focus on Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, noted the paper.

They would be in charge of training a variety of Afghan security forces, according to The Times. At the same time, the elite commando teams within special operations forces would continue their raids to hunt down, capture or kill insurgent commanders and terrorist leaders and keep pressure on cells of fighters to prevent them from mounting attacks.

Under the plan, Americans would no longer be carrying out large numbers of patrols to clear vast areas of Afghanistan or holding villages and towns vulnerable to militant attacks, the paper noted.

Those tasks would fall to Afghan forces, with special forces soldiers remaining in the field to guide them, The Times said.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Brussels (AFP) Feb 3, 2012 - NATO military commanders will beef up security measures to prevent insurgents from infiltrating the Afghan army after French troops were killed by a renegade soldier, the alliance chief said Friday.

NATO defence ministers endorsed a French proposal to task military authorities with devising new plans before the end of the month as they wrapped up two days of talks focused on the decade-old war in Afghanistan.

"We have already taken a lot of steps," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference. "But in light of recent events we agreed to strengthen those efforts."

Six percent of overall NATO deaths in Afghanistan have been attributed to attacks by Afghan security forces, according to a confidential alliance report leaked to the media last month.

Some 130,000 NATO troops work with more than 300,000 members of the Afghan security forces.

"There is a realisation about the need to better control the recruitment to prevent infiltrations in the army," French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet told reporters.

"These events are rare but they are symbolically important for the credibility of the Afghan army," he said. "Quantitatively, they are marginal. Media-wise, they are unbearable."

Some 40 attacks were committed by Afghan forces against NATO troops in the last four years, including 18 last year, Longuet said.

NATO did not provide details about the plans but they are expected to focus on better controlling the recruitment of Afghans, deeper investigations into potential recruits and the use of biometric technology.

The killing of four French unarmed soldiers at the hands of an Afghan they were training last month prompted French President Nicolas Sarkozy to end his country's combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2013.

France will gradually withdraw its 3,600 troops, eventually leaving behind around 400-500 military trainers at the end of 2014, when NATO is scheduled to end its combat mission, Longuet said.

NATO defence ministers voiced hope on Thursday that Afghan forces will take the lead by the end of next year, while foreign troops move to a backup role until their combat mission ends at the end of 2014.

The ministers turned their attention to the future size of the Afghan army, and cost of maintaining it, on the second day of talks Friday.

The goal is to increase the size of the security forces to about 350,000 by October. But some allies say the future size of the force could be smaller, with Longuet suggesting 230,000 as a good number.

The United States has forecast that the annual price tag of training and equipping Afghan security forces in coming years to be around $6 billion (4.6 billion euros).

NATO leaders are due to decide on the future size and cost of maintaining Afghan forces at a summit in Chicago in May.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Ankara (AFP) Feb 3, 2012 - Turkey's military jets on Friday hit Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq where members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) are holed up, the army said.

"Three targets belonging to the separatist terrorist organisation in the Zap region... were effectively hit by Turkish air force planes," the General Staff said in a statement posted on its website.

The army did not provide any details about casualties from the air strikes, which occurred on the same day as five Kurdish rebels were killed in another army operation in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey.

In Iraq, PKK spokesman Bakhtiar Dogan confirmed the air raids but said information on casualties was not available.

"Turkish aircraft have since yesterday (Thursday) bombed the Zap and Abshin areas from time to time," he told AFP.

Fighting between Turkish forces and PKK rebels has escalated in recent months.

In December, Turkish air strikes killed 34 Kurdish smugglers near the Iraqi border in an attack which the government said had been a military blunder, as commanders had mistaken them for PKK fighters.

Most of the victims were less than 20 years old.

Meanwhile, in Turkey's Batman province, Kurdish rebels clashed with Turkish troopss who carried out a raid early Friday in a rural area near the town of Kozluk, local sources said.

The gun battle, which lasted about an hour and a half, began after PKK rebels refused to heed a call from security forces to surrender, they added.

Turkey in October launched a major air and land offensive against the rebels in the southeast of the country and in neighbouring northern Iraq after 24 of its troops were killed in a night-time ambush by rebels.

In recent months, the government has also intensified pressure on alleged sympathisers of Kurdish separatist rebels.

The drive is part of a crackdown on the banned Kudish Communities Union (KCK), suspected to be the political wing of the PKK.

Turkish authorities accuse the group of trying to topple state institutions in the south and southeast and trying to foment a rebellion.

Since 2009, about 700 people -- including lawmakers, intellectuals and mayors -- have been arrested for alleged links to the KCK, according to the government. Kurdish sources however put the number at around 3,500.

The PKK took up arms in southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives. It is labelled a terrorist outfit by Ankara and much of the international community.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Kabul (AFP) Feb 3, 2012 - Sitting cross-legged on a blood-red Afghan carpet in a house perched on a Kabul hillside, the bearded man gazes out across the sprawling city where he was once one of the most feared men in town.

Now, Maulavi Qalamuddin, former chief of the Taliban's "vice and virtue" squad which whipped women without burqas and jailed men without beards, lives behind a battered green door set in a mud wall at the top of a narrow track.

The low-slung city that he looks over towards snow-covered mountains is not the same one that he policed with such ferocity from 1996 until the Taliban were overthrown by a US-led invasion after the 9/11 attacks.

Not far from his door women in high-heeled boots and jeans step briskly through the icy streets -- hair covered and curves hidden by coats but provocative enough to have outraged the old Qalamuddin.

And young girls carry schoolbooks, exercising a right to education that was denied them under the Taliban, where a woman's place was at home or under an all-enveloping light-blue burqa.

Qalamuddin, relaxed in a lavishly carpeted room centred on a wood-burning stove and hung with curtains bearing a striking similarity to burqa blue, says he has changed too.

"The Taliban had a lot of positive achievements, but there were mistakes made," says the heavily bearded 60-year-old, wearing a traditional loose-fitting shalwar khameez, dark pin-striped waistcoat and grey turban.

With Washington and its NATO allies preparing to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan in 2014, fear of a Taliban return is widespread in Kabul and refugee agencies say increasing numbers of people are fleeing abroad.

Asked whether they are right to be afraid, Qalamuddin contemplates the gently twitching intertwined thumbs in his lap and says no.

"The people should not be afraid at all. There are only a small number of people who are afraid, and those are the ones who don't like the Islamic laws," he told AFP in an hour-long interview.

Qalamuddin, who was jailed for two years after the Taliban were routed, is now a member of President Hamid Karzai's government-appointed High Peace Council seeking to end the brutal, decade-long Taliban-led insurgency.

He says the mistakes the Taliban made while in power could be put down to the fact they were either peasants or uneducated former mujahideen fighters during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the subsequent civil war.

"I for instance did not know what a computer was, but now I have almost learned computers," he said, as one of his three sons -- all university students -- served green tea and sweets.

"The tape recorder in front of me -- when first someone placed it in front of me I was afraid of it."

Asked about the small television set standing in a corner like an accusatory ghost from his past, Qalamuddin said television had been banned because the Taliban thought "bad movies were shown on TVs".

Now, he confesses to watching political, social and news programmes "and sometimes entertainments".

Qalamuddin says that since the collapse of the Taliban government, under the onslaught of a US military thirsting for vengeance over Al-Qaeda's airborne attacks on New York and Washington, he has had no official links with them.

He does, however, "see them" sometimes when he goes to his home province of Logar, south of Kabul, and he believes the Taliban generally share his new acceptance that not all things modern are evil.

"Now everything has changed. I can say their attitude has changed 80 percent toward everything."

The fundamentalist Taliban government was recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the extent to which the movement is reforming has become a key question this year.

The Taliban, led by US arch-enemy Mullah Omar and accused of sheltering Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during the 9/11 attacks, are setting up a political office in Qatar ahead of possible talks with Washington.

Combined with NATO's promised pullout of combat troops, the possibility of a new role for the Taliban in government is making Kabul jittery.

A NATO report leaked this week said "many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban".

"Once (NATO force) ISAF is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable."

Part of the militia's strategy, some reports suggest, is to present a softer image.

But the new Qalamuddin's answer to a question about whether his views on women's rights have changed carries more than a hint of the past.

"We know human rights better than you guys as we have been told of human rights by God.

"We do respect the women rights, we know the women rights in an Islamic framework," said Qalamuddin, who also has two daughters, who are "at home".

As for the beardless men on Kabul's streets -- by far the majority -- they are all sinners, he says.

"A beard is mandatory in Islam, all prophets including Christ had beards. Those who don't grow beards are sinners."

Down the muddy track outside his home, past bazaars full of mobile phones, DVDs and other signs of modernity, is the Ghazi stadium, notorious in Qalamuddin's heyday for the public execution of those considered serious sinners.

Now it is used for football and other sports.

And if he wishes, the new Qalamuddin can watch the games on the TV set in the corner of the room with the strangely blue burqa curtains, as he and the rest of Kabul await the next episode in Afghanistan's war-ravaged history.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Munich, Germany (AFP) Feb 4, 2012 - US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta urged the international community on Saturday to help pay for strong Afghan security forces despite worldwide economic pressure.

The United States is spending around $12 billion a year (2.3 billion euros) to train the Afghan security force (ANSF), which is expected to rise to 352,000 men in order to take over security when NATO combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014.

"To sustain sufficient security, the ANSF requires adequate financial support," Panetta said in a speech in Munich, recalling that the international community committed to helping Afghanistan at a Bonn conference in December.

The United States has forecast that the annual price tag of training and equipping Afghan security forces in coming years to be around $6 billion.

Washington wants the international community to contribute $1 billion per year after 2014 in addition to the US share, said a senior US defence official.

"I know we face intense pressure to reduce that support given the budget constraints all ISAF nations are facing," Panetta said, referring to the 50 countries in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

"But even as we will work to find ways to reduce ANSF costs over time, we cannot shortchange our commitment, nor count on other nations to fill the gap. We must do everything we can to support this force."

The long-term size of the Afghan force and cost of maintaining it will be a key topic at a NATO summit in Chicago in May.

NATO defence ministers voiced hope during talks on Thursday and Friday that Afghan forces can take the lead across the country in 2013, while foreign troops shift to a backup role.

Panetta had caused a stir before arriving in Europe on Wednesday when he suggested that the United States hoped to wind down the combat mission as early as mid-2013.

But he has since insisted that US troops would still be involved in combat through 2014, a point he emphasised on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of world leaders and security experts.

"Based on progress in the Afghan forces, we believe they will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan some time in 2013. When they do, we will shift naturally to a support role," he said.

"Of course, ISAF will continue to be fully combat capable, and we will engage in combat alongside the Afghans as necessary thereafter," he said.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:27 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D