JOHN FENZEL

Operation Dreamseed: A Success Story in Afghanistan

Cast members from the FX show "Rescue Me" congratulate Army Maj. Todd Schmidt during the Microsoft Above and Beyond Awards ceremony in New York City, Nov. 12, 2007. Schmidt, a member of the headquarters Army staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., received the award for providing school supplies for children in Afghanistan. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Adam M. Stump, USAF

Here is a National Review article about a philanthropic and humanitarian organization called "Operation Dreamseed," started by a good friend of mine, Army Lieutenant Colonel Todd Schmidt. I believe it's efforts like these, far more than the kinetic solutions, that will ultimately endure in Afghanistan. It's a cause that I fully endorse. To visit, Todd's website and learn how you too can contribute, CLICK HERE.

Science Class for Kandahar Girls: Winning hearts and minds.

By Stephen Spruiell

For U.S. Army Major Todd Schmidt, it all comes back to a quote attributed to Joan of Arc: “All battles are first won or lost in the mind.” Preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in 2004, then-Captain Schmidt knew he would encounter poverty and illiteracy on a scale unknown to most Americans, and he figured he would want to do something to help for humanitarian reasons. When he got there, he found that helping made strategic sense as well.

Schmidt is the founder of Operation Dreamseed, a nonprofit organization that started as an effort to distribute school supplies to kids in Afghanistan. Schmidt said he talked to his mother, an Indiana schoolteacher, before his deployment about organizing such an effort. Once deployed, he saw that the need was clear.

“No chalkboards, no desks, no chalk, no tablets of paper, nothing,” he says, recalling the first schoolhouse he saw in Afghanistan. “They’re literally sitting in rows on the floor, no glass panes in the windows, drafty schoolhouse that’s been gutted. We knew there was a real need here, and if we started providing basic school supplies, we’d be making an impact.”

Schmidt says he saw a way to meet that need by tapping into the generosity of the thousands of Americans who send care packages to the troops. “We were receiving these care packages,” he says, “and everybody that sent us something, we’d send them a note back saying, we truly appreciate your patriotic support for us and what we’re doing over here. You don’t know us, but you took your time and your energy to contribute this great gift. But if you really, truly are committed to helping us, we’d appreciate if you send school supplies.”

Schmidt says that American soldiers “really do have everything we need over there . . . we have Burger King, we have Pizza Hut, we have Subway, Green Beans coffee . . . they do everything they can to make sure that soldiers have a little taste of home. Even soldiers that are in some of the more remote forward operating bases . . . we still have much more than the locals have.”

Schmidt says that shortly after he started asking for school supplies in his thank-you notes, they started arriving in large quantities. “Before we knew it, we had filled a metal shipping container with school supplies,” he says. “We’d take them out on missions and distribute them to the schools.”

Operation Dreamseed grew from there, and at a fundraiser in New York City last month, Schmidt announced that the nonprofit is now sending school supplies to Iraq, Kosovo, Nicaragua, and Colombia, and has broadened its work in Afghanistan to include bigger projects.

One of those projects is the construction of science lab at a girl’s school in Kandahar. On this project, Operation Dreamseed has partnered with another nonprofit working in Afghanistan called Afghans for a Civil Society. ACS was founded by Qayum Karzai (Hamid’s brother). His wife Pat Karzai volunteers as the organization’s U.S. administrator.

“There are a few girls’ schools in Kandahar, but none of them have a science lab,” Pat Karzai says. “So we’ve been working with Operation Dreamseed on getting some budgets together and talking to some science teachers to learn what would be needed to supply it, what it would take to build it, and my husband is in Kandahar looking for a location — to choose the best girls’ school.”

Both Schmidt and Karzai spoke of the resistance they’ve encountered from factions in Afghanistan that remain opposed to girls’ education. “It’s very unfortunate, especially in the south,” Karzai says, “but if more NGOs and aid agencies came into the area and started doing more work, it would help with the insurgency. As long as people stay away and don’t help with development process, nothing can change.”

Schmidt insists that efforts like Operation Dreamseed engage a crucial battle space in the war on Islamic extremism. “To begin to break down the walls and begin to build the kinds of personal relationships we needed to build with the [Afghan] villagers,” Schmidt says, “my thought was, let’s reach out to the children. Children will make a friend at the drop of a hat, and it might be easier if we were to interact with kids and use that as a bridge to the adults.

“When you’re fighting for the minds of Muslim youth, education is one of your biggest tools for that,” Schmidt says. “We’ve received as much support from liberals as from conservatives because they get it, they understand that Joan of Arc quote, that ‘All battles are first won or lost in the mind.’ When people can question authority, and they can begin to express ideas, and they are connected to the rest of the globalized world . . . that offers a measure of prevention against tyranny.”

— Stephen Spruiell is an NRO staff reporter.

Wall Street Journal: The Last Letter Home

Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, has lost 12 men since arriving in Afghanistan in May 2007. At his office in Paktika Province, Col. Fenzel has taken on the tradition of writing letters to parents and loved ones of soldiers who will never see their sons again.

This article about my brother's infantry battalion, now deployed in Afghanistan, appeared on the front page in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal....

The Last Letter Home
When a soldier falls, commanders face a profound task: Accounting for a lost life to the family
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
March 8, 2008; Page A1

ORGUN-E, Afghanistan -- "How do you start a letter like this? How do you end it?"

On a raw November morning here, along the wild frontier bordering Pakistan, Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel spoke those words as he sat down to write to a father who would never see his son again.

Images ran through the colonel's mind. His own two toddler boys, growing up quickly every day he is away at war; the parents of Private First Class Jessy Rogers, whose own child would be forever 20 years old, his age when insurgents detonated a bomb under his Humvee.

Lt. Col. Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, started writing, then stopped again. He pressed his forehead into his palms. "Jesus, this is hard," he said.

Many things have changed during hundreds of years of American warfare. But much as they did during the Revolution, Army commanders still write letters, often by hand, to soothe the bereaved, share stories of the good times and -- perhaps -- describe the circumstances of death.

The letters began as a common courtesy among militiamen fighting for independence from England in the 18th Century. Shortly after World War II, the task became obligatory. After the next of kin is notified, via telegram or a knock on the door, the dead soldier's commander is to write a detailed letter explaining what happened.

"The letter should show warmth and a genuine interest in the person to whom it is addressed," instructed the 1948 Bureau of Naval Personnel Manual, in its concise, six-paragraph passage on the matter.

These days, Chapter Eight of Army Regulation 600-8-1, "Preparation and Dispatch of Letters of Sympathy, Condolence, and Concern," has grown to eight pages. The rules can be chillingly specific. "Avoid unfitting compliments and ghastly descriptions," they say. "Do not send photographs depicting casualties."

That's not much help to a commander who sent a soldier to his death.

Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel, commander of the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, looks at the photos of seven of his soldiers who died in combat.

Each time a man goes down, Lt. Col. Fenzel finds himself struggling for words to ease the pain. Was the death meaningful? Was a life cut short still lived to its fullest? Had the Army turned boy into man? What consolation is there in knowing that a son or husband died not alone, but surrounded by friends?

"Sir, we are so very fortunate to have known and served with your son," the colonel wrote to PFC Rogers's father, David Rogers, a 46-year-old construction worker in Alaska. "We all know the irreparable loss you and your strong family have suffered, and we also know there is very little any of us can say that will provide you any comfort."

Lt. Col. Fenzel, the 40-year-old son of a suburban Chicago car dealer, has already notched tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. On previous deployments, he was the No. 2 in his unit. This time he's in command.

Crested Stationery

So before coming here from his battalion's home base in Italy, he bought some parchment stationery bearing the wing-and-sword crest of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He knew he would likely have to write letters such as these. He didn't want to use printer paper.

The first page of a four-page letter Col. Fenzel sent to the mother of one of his soldiers.

His 800-strong battalion has lost 12 men since it arrived last May. The U.S. has lost 485 troops overall in Afghanistan since 2001. Last year was the coalition's most deadly since the war began.

PFC Rogers died in July, along with three of his comrades, in a roadside bombing -- one of the most common causes of death here. A fifth soldier in the Humvee, badly burned, later died from his injuries.

Soon after the death, Lt. Col. Fenzel invited four of PFC Rogers's squad-mates to his office. They crowded onto a small sofa, where they talked about their friend for an hour and a half.

It gave the colonel a better sense of the young man. He and other soldiers had already phoned the family to offer immediate comfort. Still, months passed before the colonel was ready to write the letter that would stand as a more permanent record.

"I wait to find the words, and they will come," he says.

Leaders have long struggled with the ambiguity of simultaneously commanding and consoling. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln wrote to Lydia Bixby of Boston, whose five sons were believed killed in the Civil War. "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming," President Lincoln wrote. "But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save."

Lt. Col. Fenzel found his words in November. One evening he returned from a mission, eased off his body armor and savored some new photos of his two boys sent by his wife. He was struck by how much they had grown since he had left for Afghanistan just six months earlier.

The next morning, he knew it was time to give PFC Rogers's parents a glimpse into their son's military life.

PFC Rogers grew up in Chickaloon, an Alaskan village of 200 people, 12 of whom were his brothers and sisters. He was the fourth child, home-schooled with his siblings by their mother, Donnetta.

The family lives on a mountainside, 450 steps above the glacial Matanuska River. As a child, Jessy and his siblings would play on the riverbank.

In his letter to the mother of Pfc. Thomas Wilson, 21, of Woodstock, Va., Col. Fenzel spoke of his battalion's loyalty to the dead soldier.

"Please also know that you have gained nearly 800 of Thomas' brothers as your sons, if you'll have us," he wrote to the private's mother, Julie Hepner, who owns a small cleaning business in Woodstock. "He was our brother and our country's hero.

"Jessy always enjoyed the double-take any of us would give him the first time we found out just how big his tight-knit family really was," Lt. Col. Fenzel wrote to Mr. Rogers.

In his letter, the colonel described PFC Rogers's adventures with his D Company buddies, snowboarding in Italy's Dolomite Mountains, forging the bonds that would carry them into combat together. (See a copy of letter.)

Mountains, Memories

The Italian slopes reminded the private of home, Lt. Col. Fenzel wrote. "We all knew that Jessy's heart was right there in Alaska."

Jessy joined the Army because he was angry about the Sept. 11 attacks. But he also hoped to see a bit of the world. "I want to do something different," his mother remembers him saying after he returned from the recruiter.

He always told his mother that, after his eventual discharge, he would return to Alaska, build a cabin on the family property and work construction with his father and four brothers, who roam the state from project to project, living in rustic camps.

"The only thing that gives any of us any real comfort -- and I've said this to myself over and again -- is knowing that he gave his life fighting for our great country, as a hero and alongside men that he loved and respected," Lt. Col. Fenzel said in his letter.

Photos of the twelve men from Col. Fenzel's battalion who were killed in Afghanistan hang inside the tactical operations center at Orgun-E.
From left, top row: Pfc. Jacob Lowell, 1st Sgt. Michael Curry, Sgt. Travon Johnson and Pfc. Adam Davis; second row: Pfc. Jessy Rogers, Pfc. Thomas Wilson, Pfc. Mathew Taylor, Capt. David Boris; bottom row: Sgt. Adrian Hike, Sgt. Joshua Blaney, Staff Sgt. Michael Gabel and Pfc. Brian Gorham.

As he wrote that morning, the colonel stopped and read his own words aloud. His voice broke.

After Jessy's death, the Rogers family received a boxful of condolence letters. The ones that meant the most came from Lt. Col. Fenzel and other servicemen.

"They're in a war, and he takes the time to write a hand-written letter to us," says Mrs. Rogers, 46. "That's what I noticed right off the bat."

The letter helped her envision her son's Army life, his friends, pleasures and hardships. "We are Christian, and we believe in a living God. ... Death is something that doesn't bother us," Ms. Rogers says.

"This leaves a huge gap, but I know where he's at," she says. "I had this fear for Jessy, and I'm glad he's out of harm's way now."

The Army assigns responsibility for writing condolence letters to battalion commanders such as Lt. Col. Fenzel. But other individuals, up and down the chain of command, are free to send notes of their own.

The most intimate ones are often penned by younger, lower-level officers who knew the fallen soldier best. Officers such as 30-year-old Capt. John Gibson of Shreveport, La.

Capt. Gibson, a West Point graduate whose cheeks are sunburned from the Afghan sun, commands a company of 180 or so of the soldiers in Lt. Col. Fenzel's 800-strong battalion.

Ever since he first saw combat in Iraq five years ago, Capt. Gibson says he has prayed that he would never have to write a condolence letter. In his fatigues he carries a piece of paper that reads: "A dead soldier who has given his life because of the failure of his leader is a dreadful sight before God."

His first and, so far, only such letter was sent to the mother of PFC Thomas Wilson, a quick-witted 21-year-old from Woodstock, Va., who dropped out of a college wildlife-and-fisheries program to enlist. (See a copy of the letter.)

PFC Wilson was in charge of the armory at Orgun-E, maintaining the unit's rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons. It's a job that could keep a soldier in the relative safety of a well-defended base.

Instead, PFC Wilson talked his way onto patrols. On one occasion he asked his sergeant to go on a mission with the scouts. He started readying his gear even before he got a reply, pre-empting a possible "no" with a loud "Roger, first sergeant."

The paratroopers patrol along dried riverbeds and steep mountainsides, a landscape painted in every shade of brown. Just 20% of the 300,000 residents of Paktika province are thought to be literate, and most of those can only read verses of the Koran. The troops try to win good will by providing mosque-refurbishment kits that include solar-powered speakers and new prayer rugs for the mullahs.

But the Americans also engage in frequent firefights with insurgents who cross the border from nearby Pakistan.

A memorial wall at the parade ground at Orgun-E lists the fallen soldiers from 1st Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, as well as those from units previously deployed to Paktika Province since the Afghanistan war began in 2001.

Ambush Near Orgun-E

When PFC Wilson's convoy was ambushed near Orgun-E last summer, he was manning the turret machine gun in a Humvee. He fired off two cans of ammunition. When he bent over to grab a third, an insurgent's armor-piercing round drilled through the Humvee's protective metal and into his head.

The private died at the scene. His fellow soldiers placed a blue tarp over his body.

Capt. Gibson is keenly aware that his decisions carried PFC Wilson to the place where he died. He doesn't doubt his own orders. But the shock of losing his first man was sharp.

The captain recalls pulling back the tarp and putting his hand on PFC Wilson's forehead to gently close the private's eyes. "I feel like I've let you down," he remembers saying.

Later, he decided to write to PFC Wilson's mother, Julie Hepner. His intention was to describe what a fine soldier her son had been. Yet he wasn't comfortable describing the precise circumstances of his death.

"Do you include the little things? The smell?" he says. "Do I include that I still have a pair of gloves that have his blood on them?"

Capt. Gibson says he decided to leave those details out. Instead, he told Ms. Hepner, a single mother with four children, that the other paratroopers spent five days hunting down the insurgents responsible for the ambush.

Capt. Gibson says he read his letter aloud to himself, and crunched up two drafts before feeling he had struck the right tone.

Only later did he learn that Ms. Hepner had never received the letter from him. So, recently, Capt. Gibson sat down to write it again.

'Your Brave Son Thomas'

Meantime, last October, Lt. Col. Fenzel had written his own letter to Ms. Hepner, 47, who owns a small office- and house-cleaning business in Woodstock. "It has been almost a month since we lost your brave son Thomas to enemy fire," it began. "And the days that pass in between don't make it any easier to be without our brother, your son."

The colonel went on to describe how, during the fatal ambush, PFC Wilson manned his machine gun "bravely and brilliantly" in an intense, 30-minute firefight, before he was shot. His actions saved the lives of 10 other paratroopers, the colonel wrote.

"Please also know that you have gained nearly 800 of Thomas's brothers as your sons, if you'll have us," he wrote to Ms. Hepner.

It was the message she wanted to hear. "What more can a mother ask for," she says, "than knowing that he died in the arms of people who loved him?"

Memorials to fallen soldiers are common in the military. Left, the recreation center at Orgun-E carries the names of Pfc. Jessy Rogers and Spc. Adam Davis, who were killed along with two of their comrades in a roadside bombing. A fifth soldier in the vehicle died later of his wounds.

Pfc. Rogers, of Chickaloon, Alaska, was the fourth of 13 children, all home-schooled by their mother.

To read the full text of Michael's letter of condolence CLICK HERE

A final note: I spoke to my brother last night via instant messaging and learned of this article. Michael told me that he would not give Michael Phillips, the journalist who authored this article, the letters of condolence that he'd written to his fallen soldier's families, telling him it was not his place to provide them--only the soldiers' families could do that. Undaunted, Phillips spent four to five months contacting the families and secured the letters from them. In our conversation, my brother confided that while he felt uncomfortable being close to the center of this article, he also believed it was an excellent tribute to his soldiers who had died serving their country and the country of Afghanistan....

UPDATE: The following letters to the editor appeared in the 18 March edition of the WSJ:

Fallen Soldiers Live in Hearts of Comrades

I know that Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel and other commanding officers have a difficult time writing the "last letter home" ("The Last Letter Home: When a Soldier Falls, Commanders Face a Profound Task," page one, March 8). However, as difficult as that task may be, it is immeasurably easier to write such a letter than to read it. As recipients of one such letter and many, many others written after our daughter Maj. Megan M. McClung was killed in Ar Ramadi on Dec. 6, 2006, we have come to know her through the eyes and hearts of her friends, fellow Marines, soldiers and those who only knew her from a distance but all of whom loved her. We now know her in a detail that is usually never afforded to the parents of grown children. Thank you for the article.

Mike and Re McClung
Coupeville, Wash.

Nearly 60 years ago, I faced similar challenges as Lt. Col. Fenzel, and they were tough. The 382nd General Hospital received wounded soldiers from Korea's battlefields. As the hospital registrar, I was also the commanding officer of all patients. A decorated sergeant was flown to our hospital with severe burns over most of his body. His prognosis was bad. A 14-year-old daughter was his nearest of kin and, according to him, his only relative. The hospital commander found me at my desk late one night with a pencil and blank pad trying to compose that Last Letter. He told me that there was a form I could use in the Army Regs. "Just have your clerk copy it and sign it," he said. I couldn't do that, and I finally drafted the very best message I could that a child might understand and perhaps treasure.

I thought my flashbacks from World War II and Korean service were long gone, but at the end of your article, tears were streaming down this 88-year-old veteran's face. Lt. Col. Fenzel and his fellow commanders face hard tasks that never change.

Edward F. Littlehales
Venice, Fla.

My hat is off to reporter Michael Phillips for an amazing article on a delicate and sensitive subject. Your article was a simple but moving piece of journalism about our brave men and women in uniform. Such articles are a big reason for my continued subscription to the Journal.

Bal Narang
Pittsford, N.Y.

Larry Goodson :: AFGHANISTAN’S ENDLESS WAR: STATE FAILURE, REGIONAL POLITICS AND THE RISE OF THE TALIBAN (2001)

Written prior to 9/11, the article outlines four of the main reasons why Afghanistan was struggling as a nation and how a door was opened for the Taliban to exert control. The following is an executive summary of the article....

The emergence of a strong state following the Afghan-Soviet conflict has been quite difficult which has prevented rebuilding a strong nation in Afghanistan. The four main factors are:

- Population is characterized by deep cleavages
- Religious framework based on many different interpretations of Islam with local customs
- Social system is based more on local loyalties
- Rugged topographical features

Afghanistan became formally independent from British control in 1919, after that it has rarely been fully unified. It has been a collection of disparate groups divided by ethnic, linguistic, religious and racial lines. There are 25 distinct ethnic groups in Afghanistan, these are broken up into 5 major groups. Pashtuns are the largest at 45% of the population, Tajiks who are 25% of the population, Uzbeks are 10%, Hazara are 10%, and Aimaq who are 10%. None of these groups is entirely indigenous and overlap across borders of neighboring countries. The most significant of these is the Pashtuns which has significant overlap into Pakistan.

Afghanistan has had a high propensity for violence between the various ethnic groups and seems to unite only when there is an outside threat. After external threats are gone they tend to rapidly return to their regular patterns of warfare.

Afghans have a complex and often contradictory attitude toward their sources of religious authority. The primary religious figure is typically the village mullah (preacher). Local authority is typically exerted by the local Khan (landowner) and/or Maliks (village headmen). The core of the social system is the local communal group, known as a qawm which is typically governed by the Shura or Jirga which is a council of elder males.

Afghanistan has some of the world’s most forbidding terrain including the Kush mountains and the High Pamirs which average 15,000-20,000 feet high with some peaks as high as 24,615 feet. Many remote valleys exist that are virually inaccessible to the outside world, there is no railroad and only one major road.

These combined factors have undermined state building throughout Afghanistan. Despite this Kabul had been able to extend some governing power over most of the territory until the war with the Soviets eliminated or damaged nearly all government institutions. Following the war, the only country wide faction has been the emergence and empowerment of the Taliban. Their emergence has included some unsavory elements including ethnic cleansing of northern minority groups and a harsh social policy toward females.

In conclusion, Afghanistan is a fractured society with individual loyalties focused on small local tribes and clans.

PAKISTAN: "THE TALIBAN'S GODFATHER"?

Documents Detail Years of Pakistani Support for Taliban, Extremists

Covert Policy Linked Taliban, Kashmiri Militants, Pakistan's Pashtun Troops

Aid Encouraged Pro-Taliban Sympathies in Troubled Border Region

For More Information Contact: Barbara Elias: 202/994-7000 - belias@gwu.edu

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington DC, August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan--effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.

Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Islamabad denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban, but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces." Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban."

Highlights include:

* August 1996: Pakistan Intelligence (ISID) "provides at least $30,000 - and possibly as much as $60,000 - per month" to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). Despite this aid, the group is reaching out to sponsors of international terrorism including Osama bin Laden for additional support, and may in the near future become a threat to Islamabad itself as well as U.S. interests. HUA contacts have hinted they "might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners." [Doc 10]

* October 1996: A National Security Agency document classified Top Secret SI, Umbra comments on recent Taliban military successes noting that even Pakistan "must harbour some concern" regarding the Taliban's impressive capture of Kabul, as such victory may diminish Pakistan's influence over the movement and produce a Taliban regime in Kabul with strong links to Pakistan's own Pashtuns. [Doc 14]

* October 1996: Although food supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban are conducted openly through Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISID, "the munitions convoys depart Pakistan late in the evening hours and are concealed to reveal their true contents." [Doc 15]

* November 1996: Pakistan's Pashtun-based "Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat" alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

* March 1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years [Link Doc 16], and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests. [Doc 26]

* September 1998 [Doc 31] and March 1999 [Doc 33]: The U.S. Department of State voices concern that Pakistan is not doing all it can to pressure the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has not been responsive to our requests that it use its full influence on the Taliban surrender of Bin Ladin." [Doc 33]

* September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban has reached "unprecedented" levels, including recent reports that Islamabad has possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations. Furthermore the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors." [Doc 34]

ELIZABETH RUBIN: "In the Land of the Taliban"

Here is a summary of Elizabeth Rubin's excellent article, “In the Land of the Taliban” in the October 22, 2006 edition of the New York Times Magazine . Rubin's intent is to try to understand how and why the Taliban were making a comeback five years after they were driven from power....

Key Points:
• Mullah Omar and his followers formed the Taliban in 1994 to bring justice to Afghanistan and fight predatory warlords. In the eyes of many Taliban supporters, these regional warlords have re-established themselves under the Karzai government, with American financing, to fill the power vacuum that coalition forces and fledging Karzai government are unable to fill.
• Taliban (also labeled as Anti-Coalition Militias – ACMs) are using propaganda extensively not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan in order to garner support. Video disk and tapes in the markets invoke the nostalgia for the jihad against the Russians and inspire the viewers to now rise up again against the new invaders – the US and NATO. Turning today’s Taliban fighters into the folk heroes of yesterday.
• From 1994 to 2001, the Taliban were a cloistered clique with little interest in global affairs. Today they are far more sophisticated and outward looking. They are no longer concerned with just districts or provinces. Now they have links with other networks. While the current Afghan insurgency is still fueled by local grievances and power struggles, the propaganda and Taliban links now place their struggle within the larger struggle of the Muslim “umma” against the West. And are reputedly receiving support from Arabs – not only in terms o money but also in terms of IED tactics and procedures.
• While it is not clear whether Afghans really want the return of the Taliban but Afghans are fed up with the corruption of the warlords that are now in power and having their homes searched by Coalition forces with their young men rounded up in the name of a counterinsurgency. Many Afghans say that under the Taliban:
o Police officers and other government officials did not commit rape but pursued law and order.
o Ban on poppy growth was enforced – 2006 crop was the largest –6,1000 metric tons compared with 4,100 last year. Legitimate job holders (school teachers, govt clerks, etc.) took off from work to help harvest the crop – earning $12 a day versus $2 a day for wheat. Profits filter up through the local, provincial and national levels.
o Economics is driving the people and the Taliban to promote the poppy industry – warlords want their take. Both Afghan and Pakistani border police are paid off as opium and heroin is moved into Pakistan.
• While in the eyes of the Afghan smuggler, the US has turned a blind eye to the drug trade, Iran has steadily cranked up its drug war but the free flow of trade (both of drugs and guns) continues.
• Ethnicity plays a role – Pushtuns who have two main branches see Karzai’s Durrani tribe as the dominant ruling elite of both the Taliban and certain warlords. The Ghilzai are the ones who are being persecuted. The Taliban are playing on these ethnic schism and perception between “haves” and “have nots” to garner support.
• The new Taliban fighters are of three types – the old addicted jihadist second generation Afghan refugees (madrassa students mainly); young taliban that had jobs and prestige but now have nothing. Additionally old competitors are coming together in much the same way as the different mujahedin factions came together to fight the Russians. Mullah Omar named a 10 man leadership council and continues to consolidate groups from throughout the country but allegedly using Quetta in Pakistan as their base of operations and support.
• Many reasons why Pakistan may want to assist the Taliban – Disputes over the Durand Line that separates Pashtun tribes; supporting the Taliban allows Musharraf to appease the religious parties who support extension of his presidency; privileged military class in Pakistan want to retain power but also have a strong religious affiliation that causes them to have suspicion of the US and Afghanistan.
• Musharraf’s attempts to gain control Waziristan has been unsuccessful – elders supportive of the Pakistan Government have been killed; Taliban still provided sanctuary; attacks from Waziristan into Afghanistan have increased 300%.
• Musharraf must balance his role as a leader of a Muslim nation; desire to bring Kashmir into the fold; remain a check against Indian expansion of influence in Afghanistan; and, balance the US-Pakistan relationship with his domestic constituency. Pakistan and its leaders must look beyond both Karzai and American presence and support the jihad and their ability to control the region.

Conclusion: All players use the ungoverned spaces to Pashtun areas to their advantage. Each player has their own goals and loose alliances appear and disappear.

Establishing the Rule of Law in Afghanistan

Here is a summary of an article entitled, Establishing the Rule of Law in Afghanistan by Laurel Miller and Robert Perito (United States Institute of Peace). It's an excellent overview on our efforts to fix Afghanistan; but keep in mind that it was written three years ago, and as the AQ and Taliban resistance becomes more fierce and sophisticated, the challenges to the coalition have become manifestly more difficult....

SUMMARY: This article evaluates the progress that has—and has not—been made in establishing the rule of law in Afghanistan. The report assesses efforts by Afghan institutions and international donors to develop the apparatus of law enforcement and administration of justice necessary to ensure that the rights and protections guaranteed to Afghans in their new Constitution can be meaningfully implemented. Both the reform process and priorities are analyzed with respect to police, courts, judges and lawyers, law reform, legal education, and corrections.

THEME: Two years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is at a defining moment concerning its future.. The country faces the combined challenges of resurgent terrorism, factional conflict, and rampant narcotics production. In the south, U.S.-led Coalition forces are engaged in a running fight against al Qaeda remnants along the border with Pakistan and against a reconstituted Taliban that retains support among the Pashtun majority. In the north, the Afghan government is challenged by recurrent armed conflict among regional warlords, and by the refusal of provincial governors to turn over revenues to the center. Throughout the country, there is a near-explosion in the cultivation of poppy. With earnings from narcotics amounting to an about half of the country's gross domestic product, Afghanistan is in critical danger of becoming a "narco-state."

In most of Afghanistan, the rule of law has never been strong, but after 23 years of warfare it has been displaced almost completely by the 'rule of the gun.' In most of the country, regional power-holders, whether they hold official positions or not, effectively exercise political, police and judicial authority through their control of militia forces.

The justice system and law enforcement suffer from a very low level of human resource and physical infrastructure capacity. In addition, the discontinuity of regimes over the last quarter century has left a patchwork of differing and overlapping laws, and an incoherent collection of security structures. Rebuilding and reform will require the commitment of Afghan authorities and foreign donors over a long haul.

No national civilian police force yet exists in Afghanistan. The approximately 50,000 men working as police are generally untrained, ill-equipped, poorly paid, and illiterate, and they owe their allegiance to local warlords and militia commanders rather than to the central government. U.S. and German police training programs have begun efforts to shape a national force. No efforts appear underway to reform the parallel and secretive intelligence police under the control of the National Security Directorate.

Though Afghan and international officials often refer to rule of law development as a high priority, the necessary measures are not being treated with urgency, except for police training. In the justice sector, no strategy has been agreed upon for the reform and rebuilding process. Donors have left this task largely to "lead nation" Italy, whose performance and approach is seen by other donors and Afghan officials and observers as more narrowly focused.

Some progress has been made in law reform, some legal training programs are underway, and a minimal amount of infrastructure repair has been performed. Virtually nothing has been done to update the court structure, establish and apply qualifications for judicial personnel, ensure widespread access to legal texts for practitioners and students, develop court administration, improve the poor quality of legal education, or address deep-rooted corruption. Defense attorneys are essentially unheard of. The vast needs for improvement in the corrections system have been almost entirely ignored.

The burgeoning narcotics trade presents a fundamental challenge to the future of Afghanistan, and specifically to efforts to develop a culture of rule of law. The trade earns Afghan traffickers an amount equal to half the country's legitimate GDP and nearly five times the government's budget. Nearly all elements of local and regional power structures use the proceeds from trafficking to fund their activities and maintain their independence from the central government. Unless U.S.-led Coalition military forces become willing to undertake at least some counter-narcotics actions, traffickers will continue to operate with utter impunity, and the perceived message of tolerance of this activity will continue to undermine efforts to build the rule of law.

Warlordism—control of local populations through force and intimidation by provincial governors, militia commanders, police chiefs, and other power-holders—continues to destabilize Afghanistan and impede reform of justice and law enforcement institutions. The most powerful warlords continue to exercise influence over key ministries and institutions including the judiciary.

The slow pace of efforts to establish the rule of law has resulted in part from the inherent difficulties of conducting a post-conflict reconstruction operation in a country that has suffered over two decades of modern warfare. But it is also a consequence of the decision of the United States and United Nations to limit the international presence and to place primary responsibility upon the Afghans for providing their own security and directing their own reconstruction—responsibilities they have had little capacity to execute.

A corollary to the UN's "light footprint" approach has been to assign certain donors "lead nation" responsibility for particular sectors. In the rule of law area, this has not worked well. The United States already has significantly augmented "lead nation" Germany's efforts in police training, putting in place a much larger program. At the same time, Afghan authorities should undertake to reform the judicial reform process.

An integrated, holistic approach to establishing the rule of law is needed. Though significant funds are being put into police training, even a well-trained force will not be able to provide genuine law enforcement if there is no functioning criminal justice system or corrections system in which to place offenders. A substantial investment in one area of rule of law will not have a meaningful pay-off in terms of real democratic governance and stability unless other pieces of the puzzle are put in place as well.