Category: Foreign Affairs

Two days after America’s closest allies denounced it in the United Nations, a day after an Israeli air strike killed two in Gaza and hours after protests erupted near the US embassy in Lebanon, Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UN relayed his message to the world: “The sky’s still up there. It hasn’t fallen.”

Nikki Haley echoed that message across three televised appearances on Sunday, four days after the president announced that the US recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel. The declaration broke with international consensus, rattled allies across the Middle East, inspired riots and ended decades of US policy in pursuit of a peace agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Sporadic violence has broken out in the region since the announcement and four people have been killed, two in an air strike and two in clashes with the Israeli army.

On Friday, 14 of the 15 members of the United Nations security council, including close friends such as Britain and France, excoriated the president’s decision. The US found no solace with allies in the Arab League, which condemned the decision as a “dangerous violation of international law” that “deepens tension, ignites anger and threatens to plunge region into more violence and chaos”.

Allies in the Middle East warned of dramatic consequences. “Mr Trump, Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims,” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said before the announcement. “This could lead us to break off our diplomatic relations with Israel.”

A few days later, leaders with close ties to the US began to spar. In a speech, Erdoğan called Israel a “terrorist state” for its policies in Palestinian territories.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Sunday: “Mr Erdoğan has attacked Israel. I’m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza.”

Vice-president Mike Pence is due to visit the region later this month. Both the head of Egypt’s Coptic Church and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, have decided not to meet him. Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for Pence, said on Sunday it was “unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region”.

“The administration remains undeterred in its efforts to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” Farah said.

Haley argued that the decision has realpolitik logic. She suggested Israeli settlements and Palestinian poverty do not weigh as heavily on the minds of Middle East allies, especially Saudi Arabia, as does Iran’s growing influence in the region.

“We have a whole lot more in common with the Arab League than we have ever had before and mainly that’s because of our fight with Iran,” Haley told CNN’s State of the Union. “What they mostly care about and what is their top priority is Iran, and we are in lockstep with them.”

Asked about fears that the decision, an explicit step in favor of Israel, might inflame extremists in the region, Haley said: “I have no concern.”

The Trump administration and Saudi Arabia’s royals have courted each other since King Salman and the young crown prince gave the president a gilded reception in May.

Trump has continued Barack Obama’s military support for the kingdom’s war in Yemen, with a $110bn arms deal and generally supported the prince’s power plays at home and abroad. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, made an unannounced visit to the royals in October.

Kushner is tasked with leading peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders and visited Israel in June and August. Israel and Saudi Arabia have tentatively stepped into a more collaborative relationship, largely in response to Iran.

Haley argued that the president’s decision reflected his appreciation for facts on the ground. “You’ve got the parliament, the president, the prime minister, the supreme court [in Jerusalem], so why shouldn’t we have the embassy there?”

She insisted, without offering details, that the decision would advance peace talks. “When you recognize the truth, when both parties recognize reality, peace comes,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation. “We are living in the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

Making a similar argument that the Obama administration used in its decision to re-establish relations with Cuba, Haley argued that change for its own sake would be more productive than the status quo.

“The last 22 years, that was a bargaining chip and it got us nowhere closer to peace,” she said. “What if this actually moves the ball forward?”

In the two years after the 2014 Gaza conflict, in which the UN tallied 2,104 Palestinians and 72 Israelis killed, the Obama administration failed to resurrect peace talks. In his 2015 re-election campaign, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu abandoned his call for a two-state solution, then later took it up again while supporting new settlements.

In a February press conference with Netanyahu, Trump dithered on US policy, saying: “I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like.”

On Sunday, Haley said Trump administration policy was deliberately vague. “We did not talk about boundaries or borders for a reason,” she said. “Whatever is East Jerusalem or any other part, that’s between Palestinians and Israelis, that is not for Americans to decide.”

Yet she asserted that the president’s announcement “will go down in history” as “the move that finally got the two parties to come to the table”. Skeptics should return in five or 10 years to ask about the peace talks, she said, adding: “I’ll come back and tell you I told you so.”

ISLAMKOT, PAKISTAN — As the car speeds along gleaming blacktop highways in Pakistan’s southern desert of Tharparkar, it is clear the new roads were not built to serve the poor herders and nomads who live in cone-shaped straw homes and subsist on herding sheep and cattle.

Indeed, a few decades ago, the Tharparkar desert in Sindh province bordering India was accessible only by crab-shaped vehicles that crawled over sand dunes by day and under star-studded skies at night, to reach the people of a forgotten century.

That changed as international feasibility studies sanctioned by Islamabad found that nearly half the desert covered coal. The turning point came as China offered to excavate and convert the fuel to help Pakistan cover its electricity shortfall of 25,000 megawatts.

So while the world turned away from coal to cleaner fuels, the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) began digging a layered, rectangular trough near the town of Islamkot.

From above, the mining area looks like Pakistan’s 5,000-year-old archaeological site, Moen Jo Daro (Mound of the Dead). But with Pakistani and Chinese flags fluttering side by side — and the hustle-bustle of dump trucks — the excavation clearly looks to the future.

Across the barren hills, the State Power International Mendong (SPIM) and China Machinery Engineering Corporation’s power plants are poised to convert the coal to energy — reportedly 660 megawatts by the end of 2017.

Just outside the power plants sits a Chinese housing colony for the workers it has imported, a common practice for the country’s foreign projects.

It’s a stark reminder of just how far Pakistan has allowed China’s entry into sensitive border territory.

In April 1965, Pakistan fought a territorial war with India to retake parts of the desert’s marshlands, called Rann of Kutch. Pakistan lost the claim, but it alarmed India sufficiently to fence its Gujarat border and install watch towers to prevent further incursions. New Delhi has so far not objected to the Thar project.

General Pervez Musharraf, the former army chief, gave a militaristic response to India’s enhanced border security. In 2000, his government constructed roads to Tharparkar, instituted border checks and intensified the scrutiny of visitors.

More recently, Washington’s embrace of India — and its rivalry with China — has fostered new regional alliances.

As Pakistan’s friendship with China solidifies, including the multifaceted China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s projects, power generation is a big part of China’s $62 billion investment.

SECMC Director of Operations Syed Murtaza Azhar Rizvi said China would help extract 19 million tons of coal until 2030, using modern technology to counter the harmful effects of burning coal.

Partners in change
Meanwhile, Engro has a mandate from the Sindh government to ensure that the desert people, sitting atop the world’s seventh-largest coal reserves, become willing partners in the transformation of their habitat.

Already, Engro has created “Khushal Thar” (Prosperous Thar), training 694 people on monthly stipends to be supplied to their Chinese partners.

Armed with a strategy for social change, Engro trains women as dump truck drivers. Recruiter Jehan Ara said the corporation, initially concerned about a backlash, first discussed the community’s response to inducting women into an all-male profession, and only then made the positions official.

Interviewed in Islamkot, Marvi, 35, beamed at the prospect of driving dump trucks. Having six children was apparently no deterrent. Her husband, Ratan Lal, was on hand to cheer her, saying: “She is tough; she climbs trees to gather firewood and gets water from afar.”

Environmental Concerns
But the community has concerns that water from the mining process, discharged into Gorano village 28 kilometers away, could pollute drinking water sources. In Mithi town, people have repeatedly demonstrated to sound the alarm, with the fears echoed by Sindh’s civil society.

Attempting to assuage the community’s environmental fears, Engro has contracted with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography to treat the mined water and use it for farming.

In a biosaline farm outside “coal alley,” an oasis has sprouted amidst the desert, boasting grains and fruits.

For generations, the desert people have lived amid peacocks, sheep and camels. Engro plans to compensate and relocate them from their straw homes to model homes, fully equipped with schools and hospitals. Muslims and Hindus are to be resettled side by side, emblematic of the peaceful coexistence within the border community.

China’s coal reserves are declining, so it may get some of Thar’s production, and some of its out-of-work miners and engineers are putting their skills to use again.

But with unemployment also rampant in Pakistan, SECMC maintains it constantly negotiates with the Chinese to hire cheaper Pakistani labor, which has been a sticking point on some projects.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s sights are firmly set on the future. It expects that sustained coal excavation will eventually help get rid of deliberate power shutdowns aimed at preventing system failures, make electricity affordable and fire up its industries.

The stated goal is to put young people to work — and the nation on the road to prosperity.

https://www.voanews.com/a/coal-project-is-latest-sign-of-growing-pakistan-china-relationship/4125106.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — The labs themselves are simple, tucked into nondescript huts or caves: a couple-dozen empty barrels for mixing, sacks or gallon jugs of precursor chemicals, piles of firewood, a press machine, a generator and a water pump with a long hose to draw from a nearby well.

They are heroin refining operations, and the Afghan police and American Special Forces keep running into them all over Afghanistan this year. Officials and diplomats are increasingly worried that the labs’ proliferation is one of the most troubling turns yet in the long struggle to end the Taliban insurgency.

That the country has consistently produced about 85 percent of the world’s opium, despite more than $8 billion spent by the United States alone to fight it over the years, is accepted with a sense of helplessness among counternarcotics officials.

For years, most of the harvest would be smuggled out in the form of bulky opium syrup that was refined in other countries. But now, Afghan and Western officials estimate that half, if not more, of Afghan opium is getting some level of processing in the country, either into morphine or heroin with varying degrees of purity.

The refining makes the drug much easier to smuggle out into the supply lines to the West. And it is vastly increasing the profits for the Taliban, for whom the drug trade makes up at least 60 percent of their income, according to Afghan and Western officials.
“Without drugs, this war would have been long over,” President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan said recently. “The heroin is a very important driver of this war.”

At a time when the Taliban has been aggressively seizing territory from the government, particularly in opium-producing regions, the prospect of even more drug profits cuts to the heart of American commanders’ hopes of urging the Taliban to seek peace with the Afghan government.

“If an illiterate local Taliban commander in Helmand makes a million dollars a month now, what does he gain in time of peace?” one senior Afghan official said.

Another official, Gen. Abdul Khalil Bakhtiar, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the counternarcotics police, said the insurgents had used the growing insecurity of the past two years to establish more refining labs, and move them closer to the opium fields.

General Bakhtiar estimated last year that there were 400 to 500 labs in the country, mostly in regions controlled or contested by the Taliban. His forces have destroyed over 100 of them.

But then he admitted, “They can build a lab like this in one day.”

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the group “had nothing to do” with processing heroin, and denied that major laboratories existed in the areas under its control.

The Taliban have long profited from the opium trade by taxing and providing security for producers and smugglers. But increasingly, the insurgents are directly getting into every stage of the drug business themselves, rivaling some of the major cartels in the region — and in some places becoming indistinguishable from them.

The opium economy in Afghanistan grew to about $3 billion in 2016, almost doubling the previous year’s total and amounting to about 16 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The increase in processing means the Taliban have been able to take a greater share of the $60 billion that the global trade in the Afghan opium crop is estimated to be worth. Demand remains high in Europe and North America: Ninety percent of the heroin on the streets of Canada, and about 85 percent in Britain, can be traced to Afghanistan, the State Department says.

Despite the size of Afghanistan’s opium problem, not much is being done about it. Opium eradication or interception got little attention in the Trump administration’s new strategy for the Afghan war.

Various police forces bear the brunt of the drug war in Afghanistan, but are often complicit in the opium trade themselves, feeding corrupt networks within the Afghan government, both locally and nationally.

The fight to disrupt the flow of Afghan drugs to Western and regional capitals, and cash to the coffers of the Taliban, has largely fallen on a small police unit, the National Interdiction Unit, of about 450 to 600 commandos who are mentored by American Special Forces.

“We have to merge these two things together — the counterterrorism and the counternarcotics. It has to go hand in hand, because if you destroy one, it is going to destroy the other,” said Javid Qaem, the Afghan deputy minister of counternarcotics.

Mr. Qaem said the situation could improve if opium crop eradication efforts factored more into the planning of security operations. He gave the example of Helmand Province, where eradication operations were attempted, but only started after this year’s crop had been harvested.

“In Helmand, we were targeting to do more than 2,000 to 3,000 hectares of eradication,” Mr. Qaem said. “We couldn’t do anything there, none at all, because Helmand was almost an active battlefield, the entire province.”

At the provincial level, counternarcotics officials have proved far from trustworthy, their directors often appointed by local strongmen or vulnerable to their influence.

A senior counternarcotics official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, recounted how the elite unit was painstakingly following a network of money launderers in one opium-rich province who were helping to import the chemicals needed for refining heroin. The officers finally had enough evidence to make a high-level arrest, nabbing one of the network’s leaders — only to lose him when a powerful police commander personally stepped in to set the suspect free. There was no recourse.

In that environment, the small National Interdiction Unit, sequestered in a secure mountainside base in Kabul, has been one of the surest bets in striking against the opium and heroin networks. And even that has not been foolproof: Its top commander was replaced recently for failing a polygraph test and “was probably leaking information to hostile forces,” according to a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The force also has a one-stop-shop justice center, advised by the British.

A United States Army Special Forces member working with the unit said advisers accompanied the Afghan force on about 30 percent of its operations. Those usually end up as larger-scale raids in Taliban areas, requiring a more complex approach.

“The Taliban derives its funding from the narcotics taxing, sales and trafficking,” said the adviser, who, like other Special Forces members spoke on condition that his name not be used. “It is a priority: We are specifically after denying Taliban their revenue.”

The elite forces and their American advisers, often flying up to six helicopters from Kabul, operate at night. They land miles away from the target to avoid fire, and then make their way by foot.

Still, the raids rarely, if ever, result in arrests; the suspects often flee as soon as they hear the motors. The operations last no more than a few hours, culminating with the torching of the drugs and equipment after a process of documentation.

There are other indicators that more opium is being processed within Afghanistan, officials say, including data from the drug seizures and the amount of chemicals needed for the processing.

In previous years, the amount of opium seized in Afghanistan would far outnumber, by at least five times, the processed morphine and heroin. In 2015, for example, about 30,000 kilograms, or 66,000 pounds, of opium was sized, compared with a little over 5,000 kilograms, or 11,000 pounds, of heroin and morphine combined.

So far in 2017, the seizure numbers seem flipped, officials say: The amount of heroin and morphine, both requiring some level of processing, combined is almost double that of opium.

The Afghan government said that so far this year it had seized about 73 tons of the chemical precursors needed for processing. That number for all of 2015 was just a little over 1.4 tons of solid and close to 5,000 liters, or about 1,300 gallons, of liquid precursors. One recent shipment alone, which cleared customs and was caught being transferred to another vehicle when agents found it, could have made 15 tons of heroin.

If the initial data is any indication, the 2017 poppy harvest was another record year, Afghan officials say. Eradication was abysmal, with security forces unable to even raze fields in Sarobi, just 50 miles from the presidential palace in Kabul.

Mr. Qaem, the deputy minister, said that just as eradication efforts were about to begin in Kabul District, the district’s leadership was changed. And workers were hard to find: They had to be brought in from other provinces, as the local laborers would not destroy their neighbors’ fields.

But the biggest problem was hidden Taliban bombs, he said. Each day, before laborers could destroy the fields, demining teams had to first clear them of explosives.

“It seemed easy — it was Kabul,” Mr. Qaem said. “But it was tough. It was almost a war there, every day.”

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister pledged his country’s cooperation in fighting Islamist militants during talks here Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has insisted that Pakistan do more to curb support for terrorist groups or face U.S. reprisals.

“The U.S. can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror,” Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told Tillerson just before their closed-door talks began. Pakistan’s army and intelligence chiefs also attended the meeting.

Moments earlier, Tillerson alluded to U.S. concerns that Pakistan is providing safe haven to terrorist groups — a charge Pakistan has repeatedly denied. At the same time, he described Pakistan as having an “important role” in the Trump administration’s strategy and referenced “our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for [a] greater economic relationship.”

On Monday, during a brief and unannounced visit to Afghanistan, Tillerson struck a much harsher tone, saying he intended to make clear in his talks Tuesday that Pakistan’s relationship with the United States would suffer — including possible aid cuts — if it did not take specific actions to curb support for militant groups, including the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate.

Tillerson’s arrival in Pakistan was low key and heavily secured; he landed at a military air base in Rawalpindi, near the capital, at midafternoon with little official protocol or fanfare, and his only visits were to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister’s office in Islamabad. Traffic was blocked across the capital during the official convoy’s movements.

Pakistan’s Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, said Tuesday that Tillerson’s threatening message the day before “seems like that of a viceroy’s before they visit a country.”

Abbasi, though, appeared eager to assure Tillerson that he had heard the message, telling him when they met Tuesday that Pakistan’s government is committed to the war against terrorism. “We have produced results,” he said. “And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship.”

Despite the largely cordial tone of their opening remarks, followed by several hours of private talks in the prime minister’s office before Tillerson flew to India for a longer stay, the enormous gap between American and Pakistani concerns and priorities has been evident in comments by numerous Pakistani officials and opinion-makers in the past week.

The Trump administration has focused strictly on the demand for more Pakistani cooperation in curbing terrorism and in ending the 16-year conflict in next-door Afghanistan. Many Afghans view Pakistan — which once backed the Taliban regime in Kabul — as a source of violent Islamist militancy and a permanent threat to their country’s stability.

Pakistanis, on the other hand, are far more worried about the threat from India, their larger rival and neighbor to the east, which is led by a Hindu nationalist government. The two countries have fought four limited wars. Both claim the Himalayan border region of Kashmir, and Pakistan has repeatedly accused Indian troops of abusing protesters in the Indian-controlled portion.

Pakistani officials said they intended to raise the issue of India forcefully Tuesday, especially President Trump’s overture to New Delhi to become more deeply involved in developing Afghanistan. That gesture has been viewed here as a direct U.S. rebuke to Pakistan and an invitation to India to jointly dominate the conflicted region.

“Our job will be to show Tillerson that he is mistaken in thinking that the U.S. can ever defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan by relying only on India,” the editors of the News International newspaper wrote Tuesday. “Pakistan is still needed to negotiate a political end to the war,” they wrote, adding that Washington is “looking for scapegoats” to blame for its failures in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir, who participated in the talks with Tillerson, told a TV news show Tuesday night that “we told him the threat of India is very real” and that Pakistan wants “mutual respect and cooperation,” not economic aid, from Washington.

Dastgir said a single meeting was held with Tillerson, including senior civilian and military officials, “to give a united message” to Washington. Pakistan’s military establishment cooperates with U.S. intelligence agencies on terrorism issues but has bristled at suggestions from civilian leaders that it allow U.S. troops to operate in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is due to visit Pakistan soon and is expected to reinforce Tillerson’s demands; he has told Congress several times that Pakistan is still sheltering the Haqqani network, despite its denials. There has been no specific description of likely sanctions on Pakistan if administration officials decide they are not satisfied.

Ever since Trump accused Pakistan in August of harboring “agents of chaos,” officials here have made numerous efforts to restore American goodwill. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s military unexpectedly announced that its troops had rescued an American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children after five years in Taliban captivity, based on a U.S. intelligence tip. Trump hailed the release as a “positive moment” in the strained relationship.

But observers in both countries doubt that such efforts will do much to resolve the larger tension between the former Cold War allies, which now fear different enemies and seek contradictory solutions to regional conflict. Any smaller signs of cooperation, wrote columnist Huma Yusuf in the Dawn newspaper this week, are only “the piecemeal politics of placation.”

“Washington has now effectively read Pakistan the riot act,” said Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. If the Trump administration decides to take drastic measures, the relationship could “plunge into deep crisis,” he said. For the moment there is a “modest thaw,” as indicated by Tillerson’s visit, Kugelman said, but he added that U.S.-Pakistan relations will soon be “put to the test in a big way.”

Morello reported from Qatar. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

A US-Canadian couple freed in Pakistan this week, nearly five years after being abducted in Afghanistan, returned to Canada on Friday where the husband said one of his children had been murdered and his wife had been raped.

American Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, were kidnapped while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012 by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network. They arrived in Canada with three of their children.

“Obviously, it will be of incredible importance to my family that we are able to build a secure sanctuary for our three surviving children to call a home,” Boyle told reporters after arriving at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, wearing a black sweatshirt and sporting a beard.

Kidnapped US-Canadian couple returns to Canada
Pakistani troops rescued the family in the northwest of the country, near the Afghan border, this week. The United States has long accused Pakistan of failing to fight the Taliban-allied Haqqani network.

“The stupidity and the evil of the Haqqani network in the kidnapping of a pilgrim … was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter,” Boyle said, reading from a statement, in a calm voice.

“And the stupidity and evil of the subsequent rape of my wife, not as a lone action, but by one guard, but assisted by the captain of the guard and supervised by the commandant.”

the murder of my infant daughter,” Boyle said, reading from a statement, in a calm voice.

“And the stupidity and evil of the subsequent rape of my wife, not as a lone action, but by one guard, but assisted by the captain of the guard and supervised by the commandant.”

He did not elaborate on what he meant by ‘pilgrim’, or on the murder or rape. Coleman was not at the news conference. Boyle said the Taliban, who he referred to by their official name – the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – had carried out an investigation last year and conceded that the crimes against his family were perpetrated by the Haqqani network.

He called on the Taliban “to provide my family with the justice we are owed”. “God willing, this litany of stupidity will be the epitaph of the Haqqani network,” said an exhausted-looking Boyle.

He did not take questions form reporters. The family traveled from Pakistan to London and then to Toronto.

Boyle provided a written statement to the Associated Press on one of their flights saying his family had “unparalleled resilience and determination.”

AP reported that Coleman wore a tan-coloured headscarf and sat with the two older children in the business class cabin. Boyle sat with their youngest child on his lap. US State Department officials were on the plane with them, AP added.

‘Helping villagers’
One of the children was in poor health and had to be force-fed by their Pakistani rescuers, Boyle told AP. Reuters could not independently confirm the details.

They are expected to travel to Boyle’s family home in Smiths Falls, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Ottawa, to be reunited with his parents. Canada has been actively engaged with Boyle’s case at all levels and would continue to support the family, the Canadian government said in a statement.

“At this time, we ask that the privacy of Mr Boyle’s family be respected,” it said. The journey home was complicated by Boyle’s refusal to board a US military aircraft in Pakistan, according to two US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Boyle instead asked to be flown to Canada. But Boyle said he never refused to board any mode of transportation that would bring him closer to home.

Will couple rescue mark a new beginning in ties with US?

Boyle had once been married to the sister of an inmate at the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. The marriage ended and the inmate was later released to Canada.

The families of the captives have been asked repeatedly why Boyle and Coleman had been backpacking in such a dangerous region. Coleman was pregnant at the time.

Boyle told the news conference he had been in Afghanistan helping “villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker, and no government” had been able to reach.

The Taliban and Haqqani network share the same goals of forcing out foreign troops and ousting the US-backed government in Kabul but they are distinct organizations with separate command structures.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis offered the most detailed view of President Donald Trump’s strategy to turn the tide of war in Afghanistan Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mattis’s prepared testimony laid out an “R4+S” strategy, which stands for “regionalize, realign, reinforce, reconcile, and sustain.” The strategy hits upon larger themes of Trump’s Aug. 21 address to the American people, when he pledged to adopt a conditions-based approach for withdrawal from Afghanistan that focuses on pressuring Pakistan to crack down on terror safe havens.

The first three R’s emphasize the regional approach the administration intends to take, providing additional U.S. military advisers at lower levels of the Afghan National Security Forces, and pledging to stay in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. Mattis deployed an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan shortly after Trump’s address to carry out this mission.

The ultimate goal of the strategy is “reconciliation,” which entails “convincing our foes that the coalition is committed to a conditions-based outcome, we intend to drive fence-sitters and those who will see that we’re not quitting this fight to reconcile with the Afghan National Government.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford echoed to the committee, “this entire effort is to pressure the Taliban and make them understand they will not win a battlefield victory.”

The new strategy will face a significant challenge: The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since 2001. The Afghan National Security Forces have suffered historic casualties since the end of the full U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2015. Dunford laid some of the blame for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan on the Obama administration for establishing withdrawal timelines.

The Afghan government is suffering from deep corruption and the Taliban movement have indicated they have no realistic interest in negotiating an end to the conflict. Dunford countered their unwillingness saying that the new U.S. strategy will force the insurgents to give up its resolve and realize that a settlement is the only end to the conflict.

Republican Senator Bob Corker foreshadowed the daunting task Sunday telling NBCNews the U.S. is “likely to have troops in Afghanistan for the next decade.”

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi met US Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, with the two sides resolving to remain engaged and carry forward the relationship that has been on a downward trajectory since announcement of the US policy for Afghanistan and South Asia.

Abbasi’s meeting with VP Pence is the highest contact between the two sides since the policy was announced on Aug 21. Pakistan had after the policy announcement postponed the then planned bilateral interactions.

The meeting on the sidelines of the 72nd UNGA session in New York was held in a cordial atmosphere, a handout issued by the Foreign Office said.

“Prime Minister [Abbasi] shared Pakistan’s concerns and views with regard to the US strategy for South Asia,” it said.

Abbasi and Pence agreed to work together to carry forward the bilateral relationship and discussed matters relating to peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region.

“It was agreed that the two countries would stay engaged with a constructive approach to achieve shared objectives of peace, stability and economic prosperity in the region,” the FO statement said.

In his opening remarks, the US vice president greeted Abbasi on behalf of President Donald Trump. He recalled the strategy articulated by Trump on South Asia and said the US valued its relationship with Pakistan, a long term partnership for security in the region.

“We look forward to exploring ways so that we can work even more closely with Pakistan and with your government to advance security throughout the region,” he told Abbasi.

In response, Abbasi said Pakistan intends to continue efforts to eliminate terrorism in the area.

“We have made our contributions, we fought a very difficult war, we suffered casualties and have suffered economic losses and that is the message that we bring to the world,” he said. “We are partners in the war against terrorism.”

“It was a good meeting,” Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua told reporters after the 45-minute meeting that US had requested.

Responding to questions, she termed the progress made at the meeting as an “ice-breaker”. She said a US delegation will visit Pakistan next month to continue the process of bilateral dialogue, according to a Radio Pakistan report.

The foreign secretary said Abbasi during the meeting expressed concern over the greater role the new policy advocated for India.

Fractious Pakistan-US relations got further strained last month when President Trump unveiled his administration’s policy on Afghanistan and South Asia. The policy lays special emphasis on kinetic operations to subdue Taliban militancy in Afghanistan, envisions greater role for India in Afghanistan and the overall regional security, and has been particularly hawkish on Pakistan accusing it of being an insincere partner in the fight against terrorism.

The new policy, which was seen here as humiliating, disrespectful to Pakistani sacrifices in the fight against terrorism, and indifferent to Islamabad’s security concerns, prompted a re-assessment of ties at the highest level.

The process is yet to complete, but indications from different levels of government point towards an existing consensus that there is no other option, but to stay engaged with US.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Soon, American Embassy employees in Kabul will no longer need to take a Chinook helicopter ride to cross the street to a military base less than 100 yards outside the present Green Zone security district.

Instead, the boundaries of the Green Zone will be redrawn to include that base, known as the Kabul City Compound, formerly the headquarters for American Special Operations forces in the capital. The zone is separated from the rest of the city by a network of police, military and private security checkpoints.

The expansion is part of a huge public works project that over the next two years will reshape the center of this city of five million to bring nearly all Western embassies, major government ministries, and NATO and American military headquarters within the protected area.

After 16 years of American presence in Kabul, it is a stark acknowledgment that even the city’s central districts have become too difficult to defend from Taliban bombings.

But the capital project is also clearly taking place to protect another long-term American investment: Along with an increase in troops to a reported 15,000, from around 11,000 at the moment, the Trump administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan is likely to keep the military in place well into the 2020s, even by the most conservative estimates.

No one wants to say when any final pullout will take place, because the emphasis now is on a conditions-based withdrawal — presumably meaning after the Afghan government can handle the war alone. But President Trump has kept secret the details of those conditions, and how they are defined.

“Until he says what the conditions are, all that means is we’ll be there as long as we want, for whatever reason we want,” said Barnett Rubin, a longtime Afghanistan expert who advised the Obama administration. “And they don’t have to lie to do that, because the conditions will never be good enough to say we’re absolutely not needed.”

In practical terms, it means that the American military mission will continue for many more years, despite its unpopularity with the American public. Many military strategists, in America and Afghanistan, have already penciled in plans well into the ’20s, and certainly past any Trump re-election campaign.

At the NATO summit meeting in Warsaw last year, the allies, including the United States, agreed to fund the development of the Afghan security forces until the end of what was termed “the transition decade,” meaning from 2014, when Afghan forces began to take charge of their own security, until 2024.

“I would guess the U.S. has to plan on being inside Afghanistan for a decade or more in order for there to be any type of resolution,” said Bill Roggio, editor of Long War Journal. “It’s definitely past his first term in office, no two ways about it.”

The Green Zone expansion is aimed at making it possible for America and its NATO allies to remain in the capital without facing the risks that have in the past year made Kabul the most dangerous place in Afghanistan, with more people killed there than anywhere else in the country — mostly from suicide bombers.

Kabul’s security area had long been a Green Zone-lite compared with its fortresslike predecessor in Baghdad, where there are massive blast walls and a total separation from the general population, enforced by biometric entry passes.

In Kabul, thousands of Afghans still commute to jobs and even schools inside the zone, with only light searches for most of them, mindful of the resentment stirred by the Soviets’ heavily militarized central zone during their Afghan occupation. And the Green Zone in Baghdad has, its critics maintain, created an out-of-touch ruling class and Western community, and provided a magnet for protests while just moving enormous bombings elsewhere, further stoking popular discontent with leaders and foreigners.

The Kabul Green Zone expansion, which will significantly restrict access, was prompted, according to both Afghan and American military officials, by a huge suicide bomb planted in a sewage truck that exploded at a gate of the current Green Zone on May 31, destroying most of the German Embassy and killing more than 150 people. The loss of life could have been far worse, but Germany had evacuated its embassy a week before the bombing, apparently tipped off by intelligence sources.

The military recently appointed an American brigadier general to take charge of greatly expanding and fortifying the Green Zone. In the first stage of the project, expected to take from six months to a year, an expanded Green Zone will be created — covering about 1.86 square miles, up from 0.71 square miles — closing off streets within it to all but official traffic.

Because that will also cut two major arteries through the city, in an area where traffic congestion is already rage-inducing for Afghan drivers, the plans call for building a ring road on the northern side of the Wazir Akbar Khan hill to carry traffic around the new Green Zone.

In a final stage, a still bigger Blue Zone will be established, encompassing most of the city center, where severe restrictions on movement — especially by trucks — will be put in place. Already, height restriction barriers have been built over roads throughout Kabul to block trucks. Eventually, all trucks seeking to enter Kabul will be routed through a single portal, where they will be X-rayed and searched.

The process of turning Kabul into a fortress started before Mr. Trump took office, of course — security measures were tightened and an obtrusive network of blast walls was established in some places years before President Barack Obama left office.

Some of the plans for long-term American assistance in Afghanistan were already in place, too, and have been enhanced. An ambitious $6.5 billion program to build a serious Afghan Air Force is scheduled to take until 2023. In Brussels last October, the United States and other donor nations agreed to continue $15 billion in development funding for the country through 2020.

Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump has suggested that American forces would remain in Afghanistan until victory.

But even his own generals have conceded that a complete military victory in Afghanistan is not possible. The only solution most see is to persuade the Taliban to sit down to peace talks — something they have refused to do as long as American soldiers remain in the country. And with the insurgents gaining ground steadily in the past two years, the Taliban have even less incentive to negotiate.

“It seems America is not yet ready to end the longest war in its history,” said the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, after Mr. Trump announced his new policy. “As Trump stated, ‘Americans are weary of the long war in Afghanistan.’ We shall cast further worry into them and force American officials to accept realities.”

The Afghan ambassador to Washington, Hamdullah Mohib, said that talking about how much longer Americans may stay in Afghanistan obscures how different the years to come will be from the first 16 years.

“I think a lot of the discussions when people talk about American presence in Afghanistan, the memory comes of when they were actively involved in combat and bodies were coming back to the United States. That is no longer the case,” Mr. Mohib said. “The majority of those soldiers are helping us improve our logistics, organizational capabilities, putting systems in place. While yes, there is an element of counterterrorism operations, it’s largely airstrikes supporting the Afghan special forces.”

Despite the long-term scenario most military planners have embraced, there are still some dates that could disrupt the calendar. Next year, the country will hold elections for a new Parliament — three years late — but there are concerns that preparations for the elections will not be completed in time.

An even greater concern is the following year, 2019, when presidential elections are due. The last presidential election, in 2014, was a fiasco, and amid accusations of fraud and vote-rigging, the outcome ended up in an American-negotiated deal to form a shaky coalition government.

The United States may be willing to look past another tainted election, though the last one nearly devolved into factional conflict. Europe and the NATO allies, however, may be another matter; they have repeatedly insisted on clean and credible elections as a condition for continued support.

“This may be our last golden opportunity,” said Haroun Mir, an Afghan political analyst. “If we cannot solve our problems by 2019, if we move to an ethnic conflict, this may spread to the Afghan security forces, and that would undermine the entire U.S. effort in Afghanistan.” He doubts the United States would stay if that happened.

For now, though, the Americans and their allies seem ready to dig in.

The Taliban have been fond of quoting an old Afghan saying: “You have the watches, we have the time.”

After Mr. Trump announced his new strategy, the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, used a televised speech to turn that expression on its head: “The Taliban should go buy a watch,” he said, because time was now on the government’s side.

Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting.

ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: Pakistan on Thursday hinted at bringing a ‘paradigm shift’ in its foreign policy in view of the fast-changing situation on regional and international fronts, particularly after the new US strategy on Afghanistan and South Asia.

Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, while speaking at a news conference, said the change was necessitated by recent developments “which are perhaps the biggest since the World War II”.

While he said Islamabad was not seeking confrontation with the US, he made it clear that relations with Washington would now be driven by Pakistan’s national interests.

Asif spoke against the backdrop of Pakistan’s ongoing push to recalibrate its approach to respond to the latest challenges thrust upon the government by President Donald Trump’s new roadmap for Afghanistan and South Asia.

The new strategy, while seeking troops surge to break the stalemate in Afghanistan, has envisaged tough measures against Pakistan to change its alleged approach towards certain militant outfits, including the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network.

The government summoned the envoys posted in key world capitals to seek their input in the aftermath of the Trump’s strategy.

Trump’s exit strategy from Afghanistan

Diplomats stationed in the US, Russia, the UK, Afghanistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia among others presented their recommendations to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who attended the concluding session of the conference.

After three days of deliberations at the Foreign Office, the envoys advised the government to avoid any ‘knee-jerk’ reactions and prefer diplomacy to confrontation for sorting out differences with the US.

Although details were not made public, official sources said senior diplomats suggested that the government tread a careful path in determining the direction of the country’s foreign policy in the wake of the Trump’s new plan.
The crux of their input was: Pakistan must seek engagement with the US and avoid taking any steps that might pit the country against the super power.

However, they agreed that the time had come for Pakistan to put its foot down to protect its national interests and to not give in to undue pressure being exerted by the Trump administration.

At the press conference, the foreign minister said the envoys reviewed the foreign policy in view of the changing scenario.

“We are undergoing a seismic shift. This is perhaps the biggest change after the World War II,” he said, adding that in view of the new alignments, Pakistan would have to review the situation ‘pragmatically’ and adjust its policies accordingly.

When asked whether the ‘paradigm shift’ means Pakistan would now deal with the US differently, Asif clarified that Islamabad was not seeking any confrontation with the US.

“We want to remain engaged with the US. The Pakistan-US relations have survived many ups and downs in the past and will survive this time too,” he insisted.

However, he made it clear that relations with the US would now be driven by ‘Pakistan’s national interests’.

Clearly drawing the line, the foreign minister said Pakistan would not allow the US and other countries to make it a ‘scapegoat’ for their own failures in Afghanistan.

One of the key aspects of the new Pakistani approach “is to reach out to regional players” for a political solution to the Afghan imbroglio.

“Pakistan strongly believes that Afghanistan is the foremost problem of regional countries – including China, Russia and Iran,” said the foreign minister, adding that emphasis should be on seeking a regional solution to the Afghan problem.

And in order to garner support for such an initiative, the foreign minister on Thursday left for Beijing where he would hold crucial meetings. From there, he will travel to neighbouring Iran, and is also expected to visit Russia and Turkey.

The envoys, said Asif, also discussed how to change the world’s perception of Pakistan and its counterterrorism campaign. Despite its enormous sacrifices as well as the gains, the world views Pakistan’s success through a different lens, he conceded.

“We have discussed this aspect in detail and agreed to work towards bridging this perception gap,” he said, while hinting at the launch of a diplomatic initiative to sensitise the world about its successes in the war on terror.

The foreign minister went on to say “whether or not the world recognises that Pakistan is winning the war on terror, 200 million people of the country bear witness that the country, by and large, is peaceful.”

NA rejects Trump’s ‘hostile, threatening’ statements

He insisted: “Pakistan is the only country that is on the verge of defeating the menace of terrorism. Our national and educational institutions and places of worship are much safer now, as the security situation has significantly improved.”

Asif also played down the hype over the BRICS joint communiqué in which leaders of the emerging economies – including China and Russia – expressed concerns over the threat posed by groups allegedly based in Pakistan.
There was nothing new in the BRICS declaration, he said and referred to the Heart of Asia Conference in December 2016 where a similar declaration was issued which was also endorsed by Pakistan.