1. “A
Classified CIA Mea Culpa on Iraq,” Foreign Policy.com, Sep 2012.
This
remarkable CIA mea culpa, just declassified this summer and published here for
the first time, describes the U.S. intelligence failure on Iraq's non-existent
weapons of mass destruction as the consequence of "analytic
liabilities" and predispositions that kept analysts from seeing the issue
"through an Iraqi prism." The key findings presented in the first
page-and-a-half (the only part most policymakers would read) are released
almost in full, while the body of the document looks more like Swiss cheese
from the many redactions of codewords, sources, and intelligence reports that
remain classified even today, seven years after the Iraq Survey Group reported
to the Director of Central Intelligence how wrong the prewar assessments had
been…
2. Redacted
15-6 Investigation on the Improper Handling of the Quran. U.S. Central Command,
Aug 2012.
3. The
Citizens Archive of Pakistan
The
Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP) is a non profit organization dedicated to
Cultural and Historic Preservation. We seek to educate the community, foster an
awareness of our nation's history and instill pride in Pakistani citizens about
their heritage.
CAP
has focused its attention on the tradition of oral story-telling in Pakistan,
emphasizing the importance of such narratives in a dialogue on national
identity. Our organization has three main goals: to preserve and provide access
to the archive, to build and support educational programs, and to develop
educational products based on the testimonies collected.
4. “
‘Statisquo’: British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi Kurdish Question (1919-32)”,
Dr. Fuat Dundar, Jul 2012.
In
post-2003 Iraq, the Kurds have continuously appealed for territorial rights in
the regions where they claim to be the majority and have demanded a quota in
the Iraqi state apparatus. As a result, conducting a census has become one of
the most important battlefields in Iraq’s contemporary politics. In this Crown
Paper, Dr. Fuat Dundar traces the use of statistics as a political tool in Iraq
back to the exploitation of statistical data during the British mandate period
(1919-1932). He also examines sets of British, Turkish, Iraqi, and League of
Nations population data within the political context of its time. In
particular, Dr. Dundar illuminates how the population data on Kurds—collected
by the British—were used to protect the latter’s political and military
interests as well as to maintain the status quo. In this way, statistics,
ordinarily considered to be a scientific and objective tool, became a
subjective tool in the service of political disputes.
5. “Quarterly
Report to the United States Congress,” Office of the US Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Jul 2012.
6. “Afghanistan
Index,” The Brookings Institution, Aug 2012.
7. “Iraq
Index,” The Brookings Institution, Jul 2012.
8. “Prospects
for Indian-Pakistani Cooperation in Afghanistan,” Center for Strategic and
International Cooperation, Aug 2012.
9. “Country
Programme for Afghanistan: 2012-2014,” United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, Aug 2012.
Afghanistan
is the world’s largest producer of illicit opium and heroin. For the past
decade, the country has accounted for an estimated 90 percent of global illicit
opiate, fuelling local instability and insurgency, transnational organized
crime, local, regional and global drug consumption and HIV/AIDS. The
significant poppy cultivation and illicit trafficking of opiates create
multiple challenges for Afghanistan, and the alarming growth in the abuse of
illicit drugs results not only in human misery for families and individuals,
but is also a huge challenge for society. With more than 1 million drug users
and 5 percent of the population involved in drug cultivation, Afghanistan pays
a very high cost for the illicit drug problem in the country.
There
is a shared responsibility for the opiate problem in Afghanistan. It is
estimated that nearly two thirds of the opium is converted into morphine or
heroin in the country. This conversion requires more than 500 metric tons of
precursor chemicals, which are smuggled into the country each year by Organized
Criminal Groups. Afghanistan and the international community need to join hands
to strengthen border controls to prevent the trafficking of drugs and
precursors. Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries also need to stem
corruption, which fuels money laundering and weakens governance in the region.
10. “Afghanistan:
The Timetable for Security Transition,” UK House of Commons, Jul 2012.
NATO
assumed command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan in August 2003.
At
its Lisbon summit in November 2010, NATO agreed gradually to handover security
responsibilities to Afghan National Security Forces by the end of 2014. At its
summit in Chicago in May 2012, the Alliance confirmed ISAF’s mission will end
on 31 December 2014. It also mapped out the transition of security for
Afghanistan from ISAF to Afghan National Security Forces. Specifically, it set
the goal for Afghan forces to be in the lead for security nation-wide by
mid-2013.
Between
now and the end of ISAF’s operation at the end of 2014, ISAF will gradually
shift from a combat role to a training and assistance role. Forces will be
gradually drawn down in the intervening period – individual countries are
setting their own withdrawal plans within the overall framework of the 2014
end-date. Altogether there are nearly 129,000 personnel from 50 countries
currently serving in ISAF.
The
Government says British troops will move out of a combat role by the end of
2014 but will retain a combat capability until then. The British presence will
be reduced by 500 to 9,000 personnel by the end of 2012. The Prime Minister has
said the speed of further reductions between now and the end of 2014 will be
“in accordance with conditions on the ground.”
There
are five phases of the transition. The first was completed in 2011 and the
second and third are underway. 75% of the Afghan population live in areas
covered by the first three phases of transition. The fifth and final phase is
not expected to be announced until mid-2013.
11. “Justice
and State-Building in Afghanistan: State vs. Society vs. Taliban,” The Asia
Foundation, Aug 2012.
The
functional administration of justice is an essential aspect of state-building
and Afghanistan
is no exception. A typical pattern of state development sees the stateestablishing
control through the expropriation of the village communities’ ability to administer
justice themselves; and in a sense, this creates a natural competition between
state-administered justice and customary justice. This is particularly the case
of criminal justice. Dispute resolution, on the other hand, is somewhat more problematic
for the state to monopolise, both because of the huge workload and because if
mishandled it can leave too many people unhappy.
In
Afghanistan, the process of creating a state judiciary has developed slowly,
first through the gradual assertion of state control over sharia courts
starting from the reign of Abdur Rahman (1880-1900) and then with the
development of a state-trained judiciary during the 20th century. On the eve of
the 33-years-long series of conflict started in 1978, the state still did not
claim monopoly over the judiciary, let alone effectively own it. The series of
wars then inevitably reduced the reach of the state judiciary, particularly in
the countryside. Much of what had been done in terms of centralising the
judiciary under state control for a century was lost during the following
quarter of a century.
12. “Buried
Mines in Afghanistan, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,” The Carnegie
Endowment, Aug 2012.
Last
week American casualties in Afghanistan passed 2,000. But with the presidential
campaign in full tilt and heavily focused on domestic issues, this milestone
generated less interest than some that have gone before. A rash of attacks on NATO
troops by their Afghan comrades gained rather more attention.
In
a Q&A, Senior Associate Sarah Chayes, who lived for most of the past decade
in Afghanistan and served as an adviser to senior U.S. military leadership,
takes up these issues and their implications. She argues for a sober look at
the time bombs U.S. policy may be planting in Afghanistan, and for rigorous
planning to mitigate the potential damage. She also assesses candidates to
replace General John Allen as commander of international troops.
13. “Afghanistan
Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010-2011,” Central Statistics Organization
(Afghanistan), Jun 2012.
The
Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (AMICS) is a nationally
representative sample survey that presents data on the social, health, and
educational status of women and children in Afghanistan. It was conducted in
2010-2011 by the Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) of the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, with the technical and financial support of
UNICEF. The survey is based on the need to monitor progress towards goals and
targets emanating from recent international agreements such as the Millennium
Declaration and the Plan of Action of A World Fit For Children. It further
helps track progress towards the Afghan Government’s policy commitments to
reduce poverty and support the wellbeing of women and children, such as the commitments
made through the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS).
The
findings of the AMICS reveal the story of a country in transition, where many
significant improvements have occurred in the last decade, as Afghanistan
emerged from decades of war, poor governance, and widespread human rights
abuses. Many Afghans have improved access to drinking water, school attendance
is up for both boys and girls, and child mortality is relatively down, if still
unacceptably high when compared with global estimates. Yet, progress has come
more slowly in many areas, such as women’s literacy, and Afghanistan faces new
threats on the horizon, such as HIV/AIDS. Across all sectors covered in AMICS,
major disparities exist by the background characteristics of respondents. There
are often dramatic differences in indicators between urban and rural areas, by
household socio-economic status, and by region. Consistently, the education
level of women emerges as a reliable predictor of almost all indicators for
women and children. This finding is compelling evidence that investments in the
status and wellbeing of women are investments in children, and in communities
at large.
14. “Snapshots
of an Intervention: The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan’s Decade of Assistance
(2001–11),” Afghanistan Analysts Network, Jul 2012.
The
decade of state-building, reconstruction and development assistance in
Afghanistan has left many people confused. There have been undeniable changes:
Afghanistan now has an election-based, market-driven political system and many
socio-economic indicators are far better than they used to be under Taleban
rule or during the civil war (although that is, admittedly, not a very high
bar). There have been great, albeit unequal, opportunities in terms of
education, employment and enrichment. But there is also a strong sense of
missed and mismanaged opportunities, which many – Afghans and internationals
alike – find difficult to understand: how could so many resources have achieved
what feels like so little and so fleeting?
This
edited volume explores the question by taking a closer look at a variety of key
programmes and projects that were designed and implemented over the last
decade, or more. It consists of a collection of 25 articles by analysts and
practitioners with long histories in the country, who were closely involved in
the programmes they describe. The contributions present a rare and detailed
insight into the complexity of the intervention in Afghanistan – including the
often complicated relations between donors and representatives of the Afghan
government (with projects tending to be nominally Afghan-led, but clearly
donor-driven), the difficulties in achieving greater coherence and leverage
and, in many cases, the widely shared failure to learn the necessary lessons
and to adapt to realities as they were encountered.
15. “The
tug o' war at Bagram,” The AfPak Channel, Sep 2012.
On
Sunday [9 Sep 2012], there will be a "splendid ceremony" marking the
handover of the United States' Bagram prison. Yet despite the pomp, the
handover hides the real story - the Afghans wanted this to mark the end of U.S.
detention power in Afghanistan, while the U.S. has other ideas.
Remaking
Bagram: The Creation of an Afghan Internment Regime and the Divide over U.S.
Detention Power, a new report from the Open Society Foundations, revealed that
while Afghan officials say they will have complete control over the Bagram
detention facility-also known as the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP)-by
September 9, 2012, the United States is likely to continue to control a portion
of the facility. The Afghan government says that no detentions will be carried
out by the U.S. military, while the United States maintains that it "still
retains the authority to capture and detain."
16. “Owning
it: Time for the military to step up in Pakistan,” The AfPak Channel, Aug 2012.
As
Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was declaring the
"fight against extremism and terrorism" as his own war at the
Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) Kakul (located less than a mile away from the
now demolished bin Laden villa in Abbottabad) on August 13, militants were
planning two audacious attacks: One against a key security installation in the
country's heartland, and another on innocent civilians in the remote northern
areas.
Less
than 72 hours after Kayani's address, which many observers termed a landmark
speech because of its tone, wording and timing, nine armed men in uniforms
belonging to security forces mounted a daring attack on Minhas Airbase Kamra,
located less than 70 kilometers west of the country's capital Islamabad, on the
Grand Trunk (GT) Road leading to Peshawar.
The
second attack, more barbarous in nature, was carried out in the Bubusar area of
Mansehra district, located around 100 miles north of Islamabad, where armed men
wearing military uniforms forced 20 Shia Muslims off a passenger bus and shot
them at point blank range.
17. “Contingency
Contracting: Agency Actions to Address Recommendations by the Commission on
Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” U.S. Government Accountability
Office, Aug 2012.
Over
the past decade, the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of State (State),
and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have relied extensively
on contractors to help carry out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Between fiscal year 2002 and fiscal year 2011, these agencies reported combined
obligations of approximately $159 billion for contracts with a principal place
of performance in either country. Contractor personnel have provided a range of
services related to supporting troops and civilian personnel and to overseeing
and carrying out reconstruction efforts, such as interpretation, security,
weapon systems maintenance, intelligence analysis, facility operations support,
advice to Iraqi and Afghan ministries, and road and infrastructure
construction. The use of contractors in contingency operations such as these is
not new, but the number of contractors and the type of work they are performing
in Iraq and Afghanistan represent an increased reliance on contractors to
support agency missions.
Congress
established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan (CWC)
in 2008 to assess contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and provide
recommendations to Congress to improve the contracting process.
The
CWC was directed by Congress to assess contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan for
reconstruction, logistics, and security functions; examine the extent of waste,
fraud, and abuse; and provide recommendations to Congress to improve various
aspects of contingency contracting, including defining requirements and
identifying, addressing, and providing accountability for waste, fraud, and
abuse.
