Passwords: How We Should Reinvent Them - Newsweek.com

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Tough to remember but easy to crack, passwords are the weak link in computer security. Billions hang in the balance.

By Nick Summers | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 9, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Oct 19, 2009

My password is gr8199. I've been using it for more than a decade, ever since a Web site first required me to create a string of six to 12 characters, with a mixture of letters and numbers. At that moment the only sequence I could think of had to do with the Wayne Gretzky vanity license plate my family happened to be considering: the Great One, No. 99, which yielded gr8199. As the requirements for passwords evolved over the years, I added extra nines, cobbled on a question mark, and blended it with my alternate password (which is, insanely, my Social Security number). Until last week, gr8199 and its descendants got you into my laptop, my e-mail, my Scrabble, my bank accounts, my blog, my work PC, my health insurance, Facebook, Skype, Snapfish, Hulu, my tax returns, and at least 39 other sites across the Internet. I can tell you my secret code because I'm changing it; I'm changing it because I'm telling you. My password system is a mess—and I bet yours is, too.

If you're a typical Web user—and these days, what office worker doesn't spend all day plugged in to the browser?—you have 6.5 passwords, each of which is used at four sites, and you're forced to type one eight times per day. Your employer likely makes you create a brand-new code every 90 days. At one point or another, you've probably scrawled a password on a Post-it, e-mailed one to yourself, or made other security-breaching concessions to the fundamental impossibility of memorizing so many strings of gobbledygook. Today we don't have passwords so much as coping systems.

Companies spend billions of dollars protecting their computer systems, and passwords are a linchpin. With so much riding on Americans' faulty passwords, there has to be a better way to make our technology secure—and it's taking shape inside Carnegie Mellon University's cyber-security-research department. There is no password 2.0 in the wings, no genius breakthrough to secure our stuff forever. But for the past five years a few members of CyLab, as it's known, have been studying not just the mathematical theory behind passwords but the way humans actually use them. Their findings suggest there's a lot we can do to make this part of our lives far less of a hassle—and in my case, to move far beyond gr8199.

Though it's housed in an otherwise nondescript building on the north side of Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus, parts of CyLab resemble James Bond's Q Branch. The biometrics lab in particular is hard at work taking the fiction out of science-fiction movies like Minority Report. The workspace is a hive of activity, with 15 students bent over all manner of gadgetry; it's like a high-school shop class, but with prototype face-tracking cameras instead of band saws. This is where Carnegie Mellon wows its visitors, with toys that can read a person's fingerprint from across the room, reverse-engineer a 3-D model of a face from a simple 2-D snapshot, and recognize a moving iris at 13 meters. Nearly every gadget here would give a civil libertarian a stroke.

With their futuristic sexiness and fat military funding, biometrics and bleeding-edge cryptography have long drawn the best minds in computer security. But for average consumers, biometrics has also been among the biggest letdowns in security. The fingerprint scanners available on some laptops are essentially novelties, for example, and voice authentication has never been reliable or secure enough to function on its own. Cost is also a huge obstacle: unless you work at the CIA, your employer isn't likely to buy you an iris reader any time soon. "Biometrics never caught on, and it never will," says Richard Power, a CyLab fellow who rails about the lack of progress—he calls it a "lost decade"—in computer security.

For regular people accessing Web sites and PCs, passwords are what we're stuck with, primarily because they're simple and cheap. Among computer researchers, passwords are a key aspect of a burgeoning field known as "usable security." At Carnegie Mellon, the scientists who've pioneered the discipline work not in a lab but upstairs in a wing that looks no different from most universities' English or history departments. Look closer, though, and you'll see signs that this is no ordinary place. The doors are all marked with 2-D bar codes; a professor enters his office by snapping a photo with his cell phone. Click! goes the phone; thunk! slides the bolt. It's more secure than a physical key, which can be stolen and copied, and no less handy.

The academics here are rethinking basic questions about what makes something—an office, a Web site—secure, without driving its owner crazy. And their findings call into question many of the recent security advances in the banking, e-mail, and other critical systems you log into every day. Researchers here fault virtually everything your corporate IT department tells you about strong passwords. And they take the radical stance that you, the user, should be listened to when passwords become overbearing, not yelled at when you forget them.

As an academic discipline, usable security—a blend of computer science and psychology—is only about five years old. "When we first started waving the flag, not many people paid attention," says Carnegie Mellon professor Lorrie Cranor. "It's gratifying that people are starting to." Cranor may be more responsible than anyone else for establishing the field. She founded CyLab's Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory and an annual symposium; she also edited the major textbook on the subject and teaches one of the few usable-security-specific courses in the nation. Polite and warm, Cranor strives to be user-friendly herself: when she gets too technical while describing her work to a decidedly non-Ph.D. NEWSWEEK reporter, she pauses, laughs ("Were you expecting a more usable definition?"), and resumes the discussion in geek-free English. Her interest in patterns and complexity extends outside the lab: she's a master quilter whose designs have been featured on the covers of textbooks and journals.

Much of Cranor's work involves poking holes in the conventional wisdom about how users should choose and remember passwords. Take one common tip that Internet users hear: to make a super-strong password, think of a phrase, and string together the first letter of each word. The result is called a mnemonic password. The famous Ghostbusters line "Dogs and cats, living together!" becomes, with a few substitutions, "D&c,lt!"—a sequence to make an IT director swoon. It's easy to remember, and who could guess it?

In fact, Cranor can. In a 2006 study, her team asked 144 volunteers to come up with mnemonic passwords. Guessing that the subjects would summon well-known phrases from memory, the researchers built a simple program to crawl the Web for famous quotes, ad slogans, song lyrics, and nursery rhymes, quickly amassing 249,000 entries. By security standards, that's a relatively small universe of phrases upon which to base passwords. Using that list, their crude program cracked 4 percent of the mnemonics, which weren't so unique after all—two subjects chose the Oscar Mayer wiener jingle—suggesting that motivated hackers could fare even better.

Instead of a mnemonic password, research suggests that users are better off constructing passwords out of the phrase itself—a passphrase. As the technologist Thomas Baekdal notes, a short but hard-to-remember string like "J4fS<2">

What drives Cheswick and other researchers particularly nuts is that the "dictionary" attacks that these complicated passwords are supposed to repel have been largely supplanted by "phishing," which tricks users through deceptive e-mails and look-alike Web sites into unwittingly handing over passwords directly to hackers. For all the hoops the users have to jump through, researchers say they're mostly fighting the last war. "Users have this secret feeling that they don't need these rules, and they're right," says Cheswick, who is known as one of the fathers of Internet security.

That hasn't stopped Web sites from continuing to foist increasingly complex requirements on users. And a natural consequence of passwords that are more complicated, and that require periodic resets, is that people forget them more frequently. To deal with that, many sites—notably free Web e-mail services—have adopted "security questions" such as "Where did you go to elementary school?" and "What is your pet's name?" In theory, answering such questions proves that you are you. In practice, it's riddled with flaws. Last fall, Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, gov.palin@yahoo.com, was hacked by a student in Tennessee who knew from rudimentary Web searches her birth date, ZIP code, and that she had met her husband in high school. And in July, Twitter executives were embarrassed by a similar attack, which resulted in the theft of some 300 internal documents, including strategy memos and financial forecasts. A May 2009 study from Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon eviscerated the -security-question strategies employed by three of the top four Web-mail providers, finding that subjects could guess their acquaintances' AOL and Yahoo challenges more than a quarter of the time. Hacking isn't the only problem caused by the spread of these questions: according to the study, one in five subjects forgot the answers to their own questions in six months.

One way humans deal with password overload is to rely on a single password and simple variants for nearly every electronic interface in their lives—as I did. That's highly problematic because if that all-powerful password is cracked at just one site, it gives a hacker the keys to the kingdom. That's why Adrian Perrig, the technical director at Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, promotes disposable passwords: generated by special devices, people use these passwords once, then throw them away. It used to be expensive for companies to give employees special fobs that could synchronize with a server and make one-time passwords possible, but nowadays we all carry a device capable of this task: a cell phone. RSA, the company that manufactured the most recognizable model of password fob, now bakes the technology directly into BlackBerrys.

Perrig's scheme is dubbed Phoolproof Phishing Prevention. Using this system, a user enters his log-in name at a given site, and in a moment, his phone beeps with a text message containing a temporary password. A criminal can steal your password silently. But if he snatches your cell phone, you'll know right away. Another benefit: if a hacker is listening in on an unsecured wireless network, or through a nasty piece of malware called a keylogger, the password is no good after the one session. Last December, Bank of America became the first major U.S. bank to let customers link mobile phones (or, for $20, a wallet-size card) to their accounts, a breakthrough in Internet banking. So far, though, only a fraction of customers have opted in.

Another promising direction might be image-based passwords. No, not that personalized icon that greets your log-in at Bank of America, Vanguard, and many other banking sites; it's a nice marketing trick, but has little security benefit. "We saw that and laughed at it right from the beginning," says Cranor; one study showed that all a phisher needed to do was insert a sentence like "Our image server is down; please log in anyway" into a fake Web page, and people would do so. Paul van Oorschot, a professor of computer science at Carle-ton University in Ottawa, has developed schemes that replace text entry with mouse clicks on certain pixels in an image—say, the headlight of a sports car. This approach has flaws, usable-security proponents say, and hasn't been tested enough. But it's cheap, and resistant to phishing.

As often happens with academic research, it has taken some time for the industry to take notice. But lately, people inside tech companies have begun paying more attention to the usable-security work being done at Carnegie Mellon and elsewhere. Cormac Herley, a Ph.D. at Microsoft Research, recently published two papers questioning the industry's accepted wisdom on security: "Do Strong Web Passwords Accomplish Anything?" (conclusion: sometimes, but not really) and "Passwords: If We're So Smart, Why Are We Still Using Them?" The latter paper concludes that in the short to medium term, passwords, flawed as they are, are here to stay. "Right now, we all agree that the password system is terrible, yet how much money is it costing companies?" van Oorschot asks. "Are they feeling enough pain that they're willing to do anything about it?"

For now, the answer is no. And as Bank of America's customers have shown, even if a more secure option exists, many won't opt for it. But as time goes on, the combination of a major security breach and users' growing fatigue at juggling so many passwords will likely make the world more receptive to the innovations being cooked up at Carnegie Mellon. Until then, we'll all have to keep on trying to remember our own variations of gr8199.

IRIN - Harrowing tales of flight from Waziristan

PESHAWAR, 22 October 2009 (IRIN) - Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled South Waziristan tell harrowing tales of rockets hitting roads or houses as they tried to leave areas where Taliban militants are fighting government forces.

“I watched my cousin’s home burst into flames after being hit by a bomb. Fortunately he had taken his family away last week,” said Miran Gul, an IDP from a village near Makine in South Waziristan.

Miran Gul said he had to “walk for over 12 hours” to reach the town of Razmak in North Waziristan, from where he got transport to Peshawar.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its latest situation report said: “The IDPs report hardships on their way out of the conflict area as all main roads are blocked and tightly controlled… there is a curfew imposed in all conflict-affected parts of South Waziristan.”

Dawn newspaper reported that 12 members of a family were killed after being hit by a bomb while trying to flee South Waziristan.

Access to the IDPs is a continuing problem, but help is being provided.

Billi Bierling, a spokesperson for OCHA in Pakistan, told IRIN: “Even though access is a problem due to the difficult security situation in the area, the UN agencies and their implementing partners are providing much-needed help to the IDPs. So far the IDPs are staying mainly with host families or in rented accommodation. However, the IDPs who are registered are receiving food and non-food items, such as bedding, kitchen utensils, towels, soap, etc.”

No IDP camps - yet

Citing the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government’s Social Welfare Department, OCHA’s situation report said 106,800 IDPs were now registered in neighbouring Tank and Dera Ismail Khan districts in NWFP, with 85,000 in Dera Ismail Khan.

Some 26,300 IDPs have arrived in the two districts since 13 October, whilst 80,500 came to the area between May and August 2009, it said.

“At present, the IDPs are accommodated with host families and no camps are set up, neither in Dera Ismail Khan nor Tank districts. However, the authorities might consider camps in the future, as more civilians leave the areas of conflict,” OCHA said.

Bierling said the aid community was expecting the current number of IDPs “to increase to 250,000 if military operations continue”.

Meanwhile, NWFP Relief Commissioner Shakeel Qadar Khan told IRIN: “Provision has been made for the IDPs to get Rs 5,000 [US$60] a month.”

Winter approaching

One of the main concerns of IDPs is how long they may be displaced for. “Winter is approaching fast. It will be hard to move back if roads close due to snow,” said Miran Gul. He is also concerned about what could become of their homes if “no one [is there] to clear away the snow on roofs”.

The fighting is reported by people who have come out of the area as being “fierce”, and people are concerned about relatives still trapped there.

“My brother is still based near Wana [principal town of Waziristan] with our parents, who refused to leave the family home. Contact is difficult, because telephone services are bad, and I worry constantly about them,” said Azam Khan, now in Peshawar.

The Chosun Ilbo - Two Koreas 'in Secret Singapore Meeting'

There were secret contacts between the two Koreas in Singapore during Oct. 15-20, possibly to discuss an inter-Korean summit, South Korean officials have admitted. Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials said Kim Yang-gon, the director of North Korea's United Front Department, secretly visited China and contacted a South Korean official. The official has not been identified but is believed to be unconnected to the Unification Ministry.

Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) on Thursday said a South Korean official secretly met with Kim in Singapore and discussed the summit question. Quoting an intelligence official, KBS said Kim arrived in Beijing on Oct. 15 but went to Singapore with Won Tong-yon, a ranking member of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, and contacted a high ranking South Korean official there. The contact was initiated by the North Korean side, it added.

The South Korean official told Kim that a summit would require a fundamental change in the North Korean nuclear issue, and that no economic assistance could be promised for the summit, the broadcaster claimed. He also insisted that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will have to visit Seoul this time as two previous summits took place in North Korea. The negotiations ended inconclusively as the North Koreans objected to the idea of Kim Jong-il traveling to the South for security reasons, it added.

A source in Beijing confirmed that the meeting took place. One key figure in the ruling Grand National Party said, "North Korea has long requested a meeting with a person who can speak on behalf of President Lee Myung-bak, and it is true that such a meeting was recently on the verge of happening, but since news of the meeting was made public, meetings of senior officials from both Koreas will be difficult to hold for some time."

Dollars Without Borders - Foreign Affairs

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Can the Global Flow of Remittances Survive the Crisis?

Dilip Ratha
DILIP RATHA is Lead Economist of the Migration and Remittances Team at the World Bank.

Between 2003 and 2008, on the back of a growing world economy, remittances more than doubled, reaching as much as $330 billion in 2008. Now, with the world's largest economies in steep decline, many fear that the flow of remittances will also take a hit, threatening the millions who depend on funds sent by relatives and friends working abroad to meet basic needs.

In fact, remittances are proving to be one of the more resilient pieces of the global economy in the downturn, and will likely play a large role in the economic development and recovery of many poor countries. Remittances provide the most tangible link between migration and development, a relationship that has only increased in importance since the crash. To ensure that these funds can move efficiently and easily around the globe, governments of rich and poor countries should attempt to make remittances as accessible and cheap as possible.

In the economic boom years of the last decade, the amount of remittances to developing countries grew to several times the size of official development aid. For many states, remittances are now the largest and least volatile source of foreign exchange, and for some countries -- such as Lesotho, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Tonga -- they exceed one-third of national income. Meanwhile, in many countries such as El Salvador and Nepal they help anchor the value of the national currency by bringing in the foreign currency required for financing imports and foreign debt. More locally, remittances provide funds for education and health expenses as well as capital for small businesses. In Sri Lanka, for example, the birth weight of children in remittance-recipient households is higher than that of children in other households.

Lant Pritchett, an economist at Harvard University, recently estimated that allowing 3,000 additional Bangladeshi workers into the United States would generate greater income gains than the annual income contribution of Grameen, the pioneering microfinance bank, to Bangladesh. Although private remittances cannot take the place of official aid efforts, this does suggest that an increase in remittance flows could be an effective way to continue development efforts in the face of shrinking national budgets.

Historically, remittances have tended to rise in times of financial crisis or natural disasters because migrants living abroad send more money to help their families back home. For example, remittance inflows increased to Mexico following its financial crisis in 1995, to the Philippines and Thailand after the Asian crash in 1997, and to Central America after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

But today's global economic crisis is different. The world's wealthier countries are also suffering, which, in turn, is causing employment opportunities for migrant workers to disappear and their incomes to fall. For the first time since the 1980s, remittances to developing countries are expected to decline between seven and ten percent in 2009.

The anticipated drop, however, will not be as dramatic as many fear. Despite growing economic hardship in host countries, many workers are choosing to remain, both because immigration controls have made reentry more difficult and because income levels back home are even lower. In order to continue sending remittances, many migrants are accepting lower compensation, switching jobs, sharing accommodation with other migrants, and cutting back on living costs -- one meal saved in Dubai or New York is worth several in Mumbai or Mexico City.

A shift toward stricter immigration and labor policies means that a large number of these migrants are losing their legal status -- which means they are increasingly forced to rely on unofficial agents to send money, such as couriers; informal traders; bus drivers; airline crew; trading companies; and hawala brokers, who use a paperless remittance system. This is a reversal of a previous trend that began after 9/11, when many countries cracked down on informal remittance channels and pushed migrants to use banks and registered money-transfer operators. With the return to unofficial means, official data may be understating the true size of global remittance flows by as much as 10-50 percent.

As the crisis deepens, a lack of jobs will force some workers home. But they will return with savings that are typically recorded in official statistics as remittance inflows. During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, for example, a large number of Indian migrants came back home from the Gulf, driving up the amount of remittances to India. Migrants not only bring back savings but also business skills. Jordan's economy performed better than many observers had expected between 1991 and 1993 because of the return of relatively skilled workers from the Gulf.

Return migration in the current crisis appears to be negligible so far, but if it happens, the workers coming back home should be provided with help in setting up small businesses and reintegrating into their communities, instead of being the object of envy or fear of job competition.

In the global downturn, fluctuations in currency rates have led to some surprising increases in remittance levels -- especially between India and the United States. Remittances meant for consumption will likely fall as the U.S. dollar appreciates against the Indian rupee, because the same basket of local goods and services in India can now be purchased with fewer U.S. dollars. However, the remittances meant for investment -- or the purchase of goods with long-term payoffs -- will rise as the depreciation of the rupee produces a "sale effect" for housing and other assets in India.

Indeed, as the Indian rupee has depreciated more than 25 percent against the U.S. dollar in recent months, there has been a surge in remittance flows to India. In March 2009, the World Bank revised its estimate of remittance flows to India in 2008 from $30 billion to $45 billion; a few months later, the official number for 2008 was reported as $52 billion. There are signs that a similar surge in investment-related remittance flows is happening in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Moldova, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tajikistan.

The crisis is also producing "reverse remittances" in the case of migrants who are left without work or with less work than before, but who choose to remain in their adopted countries. To fund their living costs, some of these migrants are forced to spend savings they have previously sent home. This phenomenon is most visible in the United States, where some workers from the Dominican Republic and Mexico are relying on such funds to stay put during the economic downturn.

With lower levels of foreign aid and investment likely over the short term, remittances will have to shoulder an increasing percentage of local development needs. Unfortunately, the greatest risk to remittance flows does not come from the economic downturn itself but from protectionist measures taken by many destination countries, including those in the developing world. Such measures include lower annual quotas, higher salary and skill requirements, and longer waiting periods for hiring migrant workers.

All parties -- national governments, private enterprises, and workers themselves -- would benefit from a market-based approach. In the face of falling revenue, businesses need flexibility in hiring decisions, not to be forced to fire or hire workers based on nationality. There is increasing evidence that migrant workers, especially the unskilled millions, do not compete for jobs taken by native workers. And if there is competition for skilled work, it is mostly a short-term effect; over the medium term, skilled migrants contribute to the growth of businesses and to the development of new products and processes. In the United States, for instance, migrant workers have made valuable contributions to the domestic health and information technology industries.

Many remittance providers currently charge fees of more than ten percent. That is too high. To facilitate the transfer of funds, source countries should make it easier for migrants to access cheap and reliable providers. This would require improving competition and transparency in the remittance market, applying a simpler and identical set of regulations across state and national boundaries, and greater use of postal networks and mobile phone companies. Onerous regulations intended to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism are a major impediment to cross-border remittances. Such regulations need to be balanced and simplified.

The exclusive partnership arrangements between money-transfer companies and the postal and banking networks of most countries are a hindrance to competition among firms offering remittance services. Instead of operating under these closed agreements, all providers should have access to global financial networks. A standard remittance is a simple financial transaction that -- if lightly regulated and processed using modern technology -- can cost as little as one percent. If funds were transferred through banks and other financial intermediaries, migrants and their beneficiaries would be encouraged to save and invest. Intermediary banks could also use remittance inflows as collateral to borrow larger sums in international credit markets for local investments.

To best leverage these flows for development, it is time to create an international body -- an "International Remittances Institute" -- that would monitor the flows of labor and remittances and oversee policies to make them easier, cheaper, safer, and more productive. The proposed African Remittances Institute, supported by the African Union and the European Union, is a small but important step in this direction. But a global institution can only be created with the support of the entire global development community -- as such, the forthcoming Global Forum on Migration and Development in Athens early next month should consider this proposal. It is not just a question of economic growth for the developing world but of economic recovery for the West.

Obama Must Get Afghanistan Right - Nation

by Katrina van den Heuvel

President-elect Barack Obama not only had the good judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, he argued for the need "to end the mindset that took us into" that war. So it's troubling that he ramped up his rhetoric during the campaign about exiting Iraq in order to focus on what he calls the "central front in the war on terror"--Afghanistan. His plan now calls for an escalation of 20,000 to 30,000 additional American troops over the next year--nearly doubling the current 32,000.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman criticized the Dems' position on Afghanistan as ill-conceived "bumper sticker politics." Too many of the leading Dems have become part of a poorly reasoned bipartisan consensus that threatens to entrap the US in another costly occupation--a war that New York Times columnist Bob Herbert describes as "more than seven years old and which long ago turned into a quagmire." It currently costs the Pentagon $2 billion per month to support the US troops in Afghanistan. An escalation would drain resources that are vital to President-elect Obama's goals for an economic recovery, health care, and social justice at home, while impeding other critical international initiatives such as the Middle East Peace process and a regional diplomacy in South Asia.

Once again, as in the run-up to the War in Iraq, too few people in Congress and the mainstream media are asking tough questions. There are some notable exceptions--see Friedman and Herbert--and in Congress, there's Senator Russ Feingold who writes in a recent op-ed:

Few people seem willing to ask whether the main solution that's being talked about- sending more troops to Afghanistan--will actually work. If the devastating policies of the current administration have proved anything, it's that we need to ask tough questions before deploying our brave service members--and that we need to be suspicious of Washington 'group think.' Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

There are strategic reasons to oppose a military escalation and occupation. On national security grounds, a US occupation would be counterproductive to the stated goal of defeating Al Qaeda. The moment for action against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was immediately after 9/11. Now, Al Qaeda operates out of Pakistan, and the key to reining it in lies with a democratic Pakistani government. Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, wrote about the "sinkhole" of Afghanistan in Newsweek:

The chief effect of military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications.... To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake."

US occupation is also exacerbating tensions in South Asia where the Kashmir conflict and Mumbai attacks have nuclear-armed Pakistan and India at "each others' throats."

At a moment when US diplomatic leadership is needed to pursue peace, and cooperation is required to take on Al Qaeda, major groups within Pakistan's military and intelligence services are now providing support to Islamic extremists with the aim of thwarting US policy. The US is viewed as propping up an unpopular and corrupt Karzai government that New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins describes as "seem[ing] to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it," and "contributing to the collapse of public confidence... and to the resurgence of the Taliban." The Karzai government also aids and abets a flourishing narcotics trade. All of these factors fuel anti-American/anti-government sentiment in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But perhaps nothing causes rage towards the US more than mounting civilian casualties.

According to a report from Human Rights Watch documenting airstrikes and civilian deaths, the majority of deaths caused by international troops come from airstrikes. Using statistics provided by the US Central Command Air Forces, the report noted that US aircraft have dropped about as many tons of bombs in June and July this year as during all of 2006. At least 321 civilians were killed in NATO or US aerial raids this year--triple the number in 2006. A UN report now estimates that up to 500 Afghan civilians are dying monthly from US cluster bombs, most of them children and teenage boys. Finally, a UN study shows that civilian deaths have not only increased Afghan resentment of foreign forces but also motivated many of the suicide bombings. As an Afghan vegetable stand owner told the Washington Post, "I never heard of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan until the Americans and this government came."

The other often cited national security objective--ensuring that Afghanistan doesn't become a haven for terrorists--doesn't call for this kind of escalation. First, it doesn't make sense to fight an unwinnable war to prevent Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan if they can operate relatively freely in Pakistan. Also, it would be difficult to find a less attractive place strategically than Afghanistan from which to direct an international terrorist network or threaten US interests or global commerce.

What is required in order to pursue peace in the region is better delivery of targeted aid and reconstruction that improves the daily lives of the Afghanistan people. In a recent statement, the international relief and development organization Oxfam America urged a change of focus: "Unless the next American President...builds on the existing commitments to help lift the Afghan people out of extreme poverty and protect civilians, it will be impossible for the country to achieve lasting peace." Many argue that only increased presence of US troops will create the security needed for delivery of aid, but the Karzai government is too corrupt and too weak outside of Kabul to ensure that the aid goes to the people who need it. A negotiated settlement with elements of the Taliban would create far greater stability than we could ever hope to achieve through an escalation, arming militias, and doling out Viagra to tribal leaders--as the Washington Post reported last month is the practice of US intelligence officials.

Some raise human rights concerns about the consequence of a US/NATO departure. In particular, some groups feel that US troops are needed to protect Afghan girls and women. But many Afghan women activists and organizations -- like former Afghan parliament member Malalai Joya and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)--have called for a withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. Here's how Joya put it: "Over 85 percent of Afghans are living below the poverty line and don't have enough to eat. While the US military spends $65,000 a minute in Afghanistan for its operations, up to 18 million people (out of a population of only 26 million) live on less than $2 US a day, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.... As soon as possible, the US/NATO troops must vacate our country. We want liberation, not occupation. With the withdrawal of occupation forces, we will only have to face one enemy instead of two." We currently spend $36 billion annually on military operations in Afghanistan which would climb with escalation. We've spent $11 billion since 2002 on non-military development. Withdrawal of troops doesn't end US aid--it allows resources to be spent more wisely, focusing on creating opportunities and rights for women, and alternatives to the narcotics trade for poor farmers. As Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of Afghan Women's Mission said, "For this, or any other idea to work, the US occupation must end. That's the first big step to recovery."

While President-elect Obama has the possibility of re-engaging with a world repulsed by the destructive polices of the Bush Administration, it is likely that escalating the war in Afghanistan will endanger that possibility. Escalation may cause a rift with European allies whose people have turned against this war, and our ability to extricate ourselves from the quagmire will only get harder. Consider the warning of former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski: "We are running the risk of repeating the mistake the Soviet Union made.... Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper." Russian military officers caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the US currently have in the country and with three times the number of Afghan troops that Karzai can deploy.

The best prospect for more concerted action against Al-Qaeda is a planned withdrawal of US forces, and for reconstruction to be taken over by a multinational coalition that has as few American fingerprints as possible. The fact that this is an American project is the principal reason why Pakistani groups support the Islamic insurgents. To be fair, President-elect Obama has spoken on the importance development aid and resolving the opium trade; but military escalation remains the centerpiece of his plan. The point of withdrawal is not to abandon Afghanistan, but to take a different approach to targeted aid, smart diplomacy, and intelligence cooperation. A regional solution will be tough--one that involves Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and Iran (who opposes the Taliban and also has its own fight with Afghan drug warlords on its border), as will a negotiated settlement between the Karzai government and the Taliban. But these should be the priorities of the Obama Administration, rather than sending more young men and women to die in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan and making this President Obama's War.

Remember the Women of Aghanistan? - Nation

Women are made for homes or graves. --Afghan saying

Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more American troops to salvage something like winning in Afghanistan and restore the country to "normal life." Influential senators want to increase spending to train more soldiers for the Afghan National Army and Police. The Feminist Majority recently backed off a call for more troops, but it continues to warn against US withdrawal as an abandonment of Afghan women and girls. Nearly everyone assumes troops bring greater security; and whether your touchstone is military victory, national interest or the welfare of women and girls, "security" seems a good thing.

I confess that I agonize over competing proposals now commanding President Obama's attention because I've spent years in Afghanistan working with women, and I'm on their side. When the Feminist Majority argues that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan will return the Taliban to power and women to house arrest, I see in my mind's eye the faces of women I know and care about. Yet an unsentimental look at the record reveals that for all the fine talk of women's rights since the US invasion, equal rights for Afghan women have been illusory all along, a polite feel-good fiction that helped to sell the American enterprise at home and cloak in respectability the misbegotten government we installed in Kabul. That it is a fiction is borne out by recent developments in Afghanistan--President Karzai's approving a new family law worthy of the Taliban, and American acquiescence in Karzai's new law and, initially, his theft of the presidential election--and by the systematic intimidation, murder or exile of one Afghan woman after another who behaves as if her rights were real and worth fighting for.

Last summer in Kabul, where "security" already suffocates anything remotely suggesting normal life, I asked an Afghan colleague at an international NGO if she was ever afraid. I had learned of threatening phone calls and night letters posted on the gates of the compound, targeting Afghan women who work within. Three of our colleagues in another city had been kidnapped by the militia of a warlord, formerly a member of the Karzai government, and at the time, as we learned after their release, were being beaten, tortured and threatened with death if they continued to work.

"Fear?" my colleague said. "Yes. We live with fear. In our work here with women we are always under threat. Personally, I work every day in fear, hoping to return safely at the end of the day to my home. To my child and my husband."

"And the future?" I said. "What do you worry about?"

"I think about the upcoming election," she said. "I fear that nothing will change. I fear that everything will stay the same."

Then Karzai gazetted the Shiite Personal Status Law, and it was suddenly clear that even as we were hoping for the best, everything had actually grown much worse for women.

Why is this important? At this critical moment, as Obama tries to weigh options against our national security interests, his advisers can't be bothered with--as one US military officer put it to me--"the trivial fate of women." As for some hypothetical moral duty to protect the women of Afghanistan--that's off the table. Yet it is precisely that dismissive attitude, shared by Afghan and many American men alike, that may have put America's whole Afghan enterprise wrong in the first place. Early on, Kofi Annan, then United Nations secretary general, noted that the condition of Afghan women was "an affront to all standards of dignity, equality and humanity."

Annan took the position, set forth in 2000 in the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, that real conflict resolution, reconstruction and lasting peace cannot be achieved without the full participation of women every step of the way. Karzai gave lip service to the idea, saying in 2002, "We are determined to work to improve the lot of women after all their suffering under the narrow-minded and oppressive rule of the Taliban." But he has done no such thing. And the die had already been cast: of the twenty-three Afghan notables invited to take part in the Bonn Conference in December 2001, only two were women. Among ministers appointed to the new Karzai government, there were only two; one, the minister for women's affairs, was warned not to do "too much."

The Bonn agreement expressed "appreciation to the Afghan mujahidin who...have defended the independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the country and have played a major role in the struggle against terrorism and oppression, and whose sacrifice has now made them both heroes of jihad and champions of peace, stability and reconstruction of their beloved homeland, Afghanistan." On the other hand, their American- and Saudi-sponsored "sacrifice" had also made many of them war criminals in the eyes of their countrymen. Most Afghans surveyed between 2002 and 2004 by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission thought the leaders of the mujahedeen were war criminals who should be brought to justice (75 percent) and removed from public office (90 percent). The mujahedeen, after all, were Islamist extremists just like the Taliban, though less disciplined than the Taliban, who had risen up to curb the violent excesses of the mujahedeen and then imposed excesses of their own. That's the part American officials seem unwilling to admit: that the mujahedeen warlords of the Karzai government and the oppressive Taliban are brothers under the skin. From the point of view of women today, America's friends and America's enemies in Afghanistan are the same kind of guys.

Though women were excluded from the Bonn process, they did seem to make strides in the first years after the fall of the Taliban. In 2004 a new constitution declared, "The citizens of Afghanistan--whether man or woman--have equal rights and duties before the law." Westerners greeted that language as a confirmation of gender equality, and to this day women's "equal rights" are routinely cited in Western media as evidence of great progress. Yet not surprisingly, Afghan officials often interpret the article differently. To them, having "equal rights and duties" is nothing like being equal. The first chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court, formerly a mullah in a Pakistani madrassa, once explained to me that men have a right to work while women have a right to obey their husbands. The judiciary--an ultraconservative, inadequate, incompetent and notoriously corrupt branch of government--interprets the constitution by its own lights. And the great majority of women across the country, knowing little or nothing of rights, live now much as they did under the Taliban--except back then there were no bombs.

In any case, the constitution provides that no law may contravene the principles of Sharia law. In effect, mullahs and judges have always retained the power to decide at any moment what "rights" women may enjoy, or not; and being poorly educated, they're likely to factor into the judgment their own idiosyncratic notions of Sharia, plus tribal customary laws and the size of proffered bribes. Thus, although some women still bravely exercise liberty and work with some success to improve women's condition, it should have been clear from the get-go that Afghan women possess no inalienable rights at all. Western legal experts who train Afghan judges and lawyers in "the law" as we conceive it often express frustration that Afghans just don't get it; Afghan judges think the same of them.

The paper foundations of Afghan women's rights go beyond national law to include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Treaty of Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). All these international agreements that delineate and establish human rights around the world were quickly ratified by the Karzai government. CEDAW, however, requires ratifying governments to submit periodic reports on their progress in eliminating discrimination; Afghanistan's first report, due in 2004, hasn't appeared yet. That's one more clue to the Karzai government's real attitude toward women--like Karzai's sequestration of his own wife, a doctor with much-needed skills who is kept locked up at home.

Given this background, there should have been no surprise when President Karzai first signed off in March on the Shiite Personal Status Law or, as it became known in the Western press, the Marital Rape Law. The bill had been percolating in the ultraconservative Ministry of Justice ever since the Iranian-backed Ayatollah Asif Mohseni submitted it in 2007. Then last February Karzai apparently saw the chance to swap passage of the SPSL for the votes of the Shiites--that is, the Hazara minority, 15-20 percent of the population. It was just one of many deals Karzai consolidated as he kept to the palace while rival presidential candidates stomped the countryside. The SPSL passed without alteration through the Parliamentary Judicial Committee, another little bunch of ultraconservative men. When it reached the floor of Parliament, it was too late to object. Some women members succeeded in getting the marriageable age for girls--age 9--revised to 16. Calling it victory, they settled for that. The Supreme Court reviewed the bill and pronounced it constitutionally correct on grounds the justices did not disclose.

The rights Afghan women stood to lose on paper and in real life were set forth in the SPSL. Parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhail alerted a reporter at the Guardian, and the law was denounced around the world for legalizing marital rape by authorizing a husband to withhold food from a wife who fails to provide sexual service at least once every four days. (The interval assumes the husband has four wives, a practice permitted by Islam and legalized by this legislation.) But that's not all the law does. It also denies or severely limits women's rights to inherit, divorce or have guardianship of their own children. It forbids women to marry without permission and legalizes forced marriage. It legalizes marriage to and rape of minors. It gives men control of all their female relatives. It denies women the right to leave home except for "legitimate purposes"--in effect giving men the power to deny women access to work, education, healthcare, voting and whatever they please. It generally treats women as property, and it considers rape of women or minors outside marriage as a property crime, requiring restitution to be made to the owner, usually the father or husband, rather than a crime against the victim. All these provisions are contained in twenty-six articles of the original bill that have been rendered into English and analyzed by Western legal experts. No doubt other regressive rules will be discovered if the 223 additional articles of the law ever appear in English.

In April a few women parliamentarians spoke out against the law. A group of women, estimated to number about 300, staged a peaceful protest in the street, protected by Kabul's police officers from an angry mob of hundreds of men who pelted them with obscenities and stones, shouting, "Death to the enemies of Islam!" Under pressure from international diplomats--President Obama called the law "abhorrent"--Karzai withdrew it for review. The international press reported the women's victory. In June, when a large group of women MPs and activists met with Karzai, he assured them the bill had been amended and would be submitted to Parliament again after the elections.

Instead, on July 27, without public announcement, Karzai entered the SPSL, slightly revised but with principal provisions intact, into the official gazette, thereby making it law. Apparently he was betting that with the presidential election only three weeks away, the United States and its allies would not complain again. After all, they had about $500 million (at least half of that American money) riding on a "credible" outcome; and they couldn't afford the cost of a runoff or the political limbo of an interregnum. In August, Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, observed that such "barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval." No American official said a word.

But what about all the women parliamentarians so often cited as evidence of the progress of Afghan women? With 17 percent of the upper house and 27 percent of the lower--eighty-five women in all--you'd think they could have blocked the SPSL. But that didn't happen, for many reasons. Many women parliamentarians are mere extensions of the warlords who financed their campaigns and tell them how to vote: always in opposition to women's rights. Most non-Shiite women took little interest in the bill, believing that it applied only to the Shiite minority. Although Hazara women have long been the freest in the country and the most active in public life, some of them argued that it is better to have a bad law than none at all because, as one Hazara MP told me, "without a written law, men can do whatever they want."

The human rights division of the UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) published a report in early July, before the SPSL became law, documenting the worsening position of Afghan women, the rising violence against them and the silence of international and Afghan officials who could defend them. The researchers' most surprising finding is this: considering the risks of life outside the home and the support women receive within it, "there is no clear distinction between rural and urban women." Commentators on Afghanistan, myself included, have assumed--somewhat snobbishly, it now appears--that while illiterate women in the countryside might be treated no better than animals, educated urban Afghan women blaze a higher trail. The debacle of the Shiite Personal Status Law explodes that myth.

The UNAMA report attributes women's worsening position in Afghan society to the violence the war engenders on two domestic fronts: the public stage and the home. The report is dedicated to the memory of Sitara Achakzai, a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council and outspoken advocate of women's rights, who was shot to death on April 12, soon after being interviewed by the UNAMA researchers. She "knew her life was in danger," they report. "But like many other Afghan women such as Malalai Kakar, the highest-ranking female police officer in Kandahar killed in September 2008, Sitara Achakzai had consciously decided to keep fighting to end the abuse of Afghan women." Malalai Kakar, 40, mother of six, had headed a team of ten policewomen handling cases of domestic violence.

In 2005 Kim Sengupta, a reporter with the London Independent, interviewed five Afghan women activists; by October 2008 three of them had been murdered. A fourth, Zarghuna Kakar (no relation to Malalai), a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council, had left the country after she and her family were attacked and her husband was killed. She said she had pleaded with Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, for protection; but he told her she "should have thought about what may happen" before she stood for election. Kakar told the reporter, "It was his brother [President Karzai], the Americans, and the British who told us that we women should get involved in political life. Of course, now I wish I hadn't."

Women learn to pull their punches. MPs in Kabul confessed that they are afraid of the fundamentalist warlords who control the Parliament; so they censor themselves and keep silent. One said, "Most of the time women don't dare even say a word about sensitive Islamic issues, because they are afraid of being labeled as blasphemous." Many women MPs have publicly declared their intention to quit at the end of the term. Women journalists also told UNAMA that they "refrain from criticizing warlords and other power brokers, or covering topics that are deemed contentious such as women's rights."

Other women targeted for attack are civil servants, employees of international and national organizations, including the UN, healthcare workers and women in "immoral" professions--which include acting, singing, appearing on television and journalism. When popular Tolo TV presenter Shaima Rezayee, 24, was forced out of her job in 2005, she said "things are not getting better.... We have made some gains, but there are a lot of people who want to take it all back. They are not even Taliban, they are here in Kabul." Soon after, she was shot and killed. Zakia Zaki, 35, a teacher and radio journalist who produced programs on women's rights, was shot to death in her home in Parwan Province on June 6, 2007. Actress Parwin Mushtakhel fled the country last spring after her husband was gunned down outside their house, punished for his failure to keep her confined. When the Taliban fell, she thought things were getting better, but "the atmosphere has changed; day by day women can work less and less." Setara Hussainzada, the singer from Herat who appeared on the Afghan version of American Idol (and in the documentary Afghan Star) also fled for her life.

Threats against women in public life are intended to make them go home--to "unliberate" themselves through voluntary house arrest. But if public life is dangerous, so is life at home. Most Afghan women--87 percent, according to Unifem--are beaten on a regular basis. The UNAMA researchers looked into the unmentionable subject of rape and found it to be "an everyday occurrence in all parts of the country" and "a human rights problem of profound proportions." Outside marriage, the rapists are often members or friends of the family. Young girls forced to marry old men are raped by the old man's brothers and sons. Women and children--young boys are also targets--are raped by people who have charge of them: police, prison guards, soldiers, orphanage or hospital staff members. The female victims of rape are mostly between the ages of 7 and 30; many are between 10 and 20, but some are as young as 3; and most women are dead by 42.

Women rarely tell anyone because the blame and shame of rape falls on them. Customary law permits an accused rapist to make restitution to the victim's father, but because the question of consent does not figure in the law of sexual relations, the victim is guilty of zina, or adultery, and can be punished accordingly: sent to jail or murdered by family members to preserve family honor. The great majority of women and girls in prison at any time are charged with zina; most have been raped and/or have run away from home to escape violence. It's probably safe to say, in the absence of statistics, that police--who, incidentally, are trained by the American for-profit contractor DynCorp--spend more time tracking down runaway women and girls than real criminals. Rapists, on the other hand, as UNAMA investigators found, are often "directly linked to power brokers who are, effectively, above the law and enjoy immunity from arrest as well as immunity from social condemnation." Last year Karzai pardoned political thugs who had gang-raped a woman before witnesses, using a bayonet, and who had somehow been convicted despite their good connections. UNAMA researchers conclude: "The current reality is that...women are denied their most fundamental human rights and risk further violence in the course of seeking justice for crimes perpetrated against them." For women, "human rights are values, standards, and entitlements that exist only in theory and at times, not even on paper."

Caught in the maelstrom of personal, political and military violence, Afghan women worry less about rights than security. But they complain that the men who plan the country's future define "security" in ways that have nothing to do with them. The conventional wisdom, which I have voiced myself, holds that without security, development cannot take place. Hence, our troops must be fielded in greater numbers, and Afghan troops trained faster, and private for-profit military contractors hired at fabulous expense, all to bring security. But the rule doesn't hold in Afghanistan precisely because of that equation of "security" with the presence of armed men. Wherever troops advance in Afghanistan, women are caught in the cross-fire, killed, wounded, forced to flee or locked up once again, just as they were in the time of the Taliban. Suggesting an alternative to the "major misery" of warfare, Sweden's former Defense Minister Thage Peterson calls for Swedish soldiers to leave the "military adventure" in Afghanistan while civilians stay to help rebuild the country. But Sweden's soldiers are few, and its aid organizations among the best in the world. For the United States even to lean toward such a plan would mean reasserting civilian control of the military and restoring the American aid program (USAID), hijacked by private for-profit contractors: two goals worth fighting for.

Today, most American so-called development aid is delivered not by USAID, but by the military itself through a system of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), another faulty idea of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Soldiers, unqualified as aid workers and already busy soldiering, now shmooze with village "elders" (often the wrong ones) and bring "development," usually a costly road convenient to the PRT base, impossible for Afghans to maintain and inaccessible to women locked up at home. Recent research conducted by respected Afghanistan hands found that this aid actually fuels "massive corruption"; it fails to win hearts and minds not because we spend too little but because we spend too much, too fast, without a clue. Meanwhile, the Taliban bring the things Afghans say they need--better security, better governance and quick, hard-edged justice. US government investigators are looking into allegations that aid funds appropriated for women's projects have been diverted to PRTs for this more important work of winning hearts and minds with tarmac. But the greatest problem with routing aid through the military is this: what passes for development is delivered from men to men, affirming in the strongest possible terms the misogynist conviction that women do not matter. You'll recognize it as the same belief that, in the Obama administration's strategic reappraisal of Afghanistan, pushed women off the table.

So there's no point talking about how women and girls might be affected by the strategic military options remaining on Obama's plate. None of them bode well for women. To send more troops is to send more violence. To withdraw is to invite the Taliban. To stay the same is not possible, now that Karzai has stolen the election in plain sight and made a mockery of American pretensions to an interest in anything but our own skin and our own pocketbook. But while men plan the onslaught of more men, it's worth remembering what "normal life" once looked like in Afghanistan, well before the soldiers came. In the 1960s and '70s, before the Soviet invasion--when half the country's doctors, more than half the civil servants and three-quarters of the teachers were women--a peaceful Afghanistan advanced slowly into the modern world through the efforts of all its people. What changed all that was not only the violence of war but the accession to power of the most backward men in the country: first the Taliban, now the mullahs and mujahedeen of the fraudulent, corrupt, Western-designed government that stands in opposition to "normal life" as it is lived in the developed world and was once lived in their own country. What happens to women is not merely a "women's issue"; it is the central issue of stability, development and durable peace. No nation can advance without women, and no enterprise that takes women off the table can come to much good.

About Ann Jones

Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, does humanitarian work in postconflict zones with NGOs and the United Nations

High Cost, Low Odds in Afghanistan - Nation

by Stephan Walt

Deciding what to do in Afghanistan requires a hard-nosed assessment of the costs of the war, the alleged benefits of victory and the likelihood of success.

We know the price will be high. The United States has spent more than $223 billion on the Afghan war since 2001, and it now costs roughly $65 billion annually. The actual bill will be significantly higher, however, as these figures omit the replacement cost of military equipment, veterans' benefits and other war-related expenses. Most important, more than 850 US soldiers have already been killed and several thousand have been seriously wounded.

And we are not close to winning. The Obama administration admits that the challenges are "daunting," and a recent pro-war report from the Center for American Progress said success will require "prolonged U.S. engagement using all elements of U.S. national power" for "as long as another ten years." Success also requires creating an army and police force larger than the Afghan government can afford, which means Kabul will need US assistance indefinitely.

The bottom line: staying in Afghanistan will cost many more dead American soldiers--and, inevitably, Afghan civilians--and hundreds of billions of additional dollars.

But might the benefits be worth the costs? President Obama says we have to prevent Afghanistan from becoming "an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." But defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan isn't the key to thwarting Al Qaeda. Indeed, even if our counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts exceed all expectations, the Afghan government will still have only limited authority over much of the country and will be unable to prevent Al Qaeda cells from relocating there.

Moreover, Al Qaeda doesn't need lots of territory or elaborate bases to plot attacks and other conspiracies; all it needs are safe houses in various parts of the world and a supply of potential martyrs. Al Qaeda clones already exist in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere; so denying its founders a "safe haven" in Afghanistan will not make that network less lethal. If Al Qaeda is our main concern, fighting in Afghanistan is increasingly a distraction.

Finally, America's odds of winning this war are slim. The Karzai government is corrupt, incompetent and resistant to reform. The Taliban have sanctuaries in Pakistan and can hide among the local populace, making it possible for them simply to outlast us. Pakistan has backed the Afghan Taliban in the past and is not a reliable partner now. Our European allies are war-weary and looking for the exits. The more troops we send and the more we interfere in Afghan affairs, the more we look like foreign occupiers and the more resistance we will face. There is therefore little reason to expect a US victory.

Fortunately, pulling US troops out of Afghanistan will not make Al Qaeda stronger. If the Taliban regain power, they may conclude it is too risky to let Osama bin Laden return. But even if they did, a backward and landlocked country like Afghanistan is a poor location from which to attack the United States, which is why the 9/11 plot was conducted out of Hamburg, Germany. If Al Qaeda's founders have to hide somewhere, better in Afghanistan than anywhere else.

And hide they will, because Afghanistan won't be a safe haven. Bin Laden could operate somewhat freely there before 9/11, because the United States wasn't going after him all-out. Those days are long gone. The Taliban will not be able to protect him from US commandos, cruise missiles and armed drones. He and his henchmen will always have to stay in hiding, which is why even an outright Taliban victory will not enhance their position very much.

In short, US victory in Afghanistan won't put an end to Al Qaeda, and getting out won't make it more dangerous. And if the outcome in Afghanistan has little effect on the threat Al Qaeda poses, there is little reason to squander more American blood and treasure there.

Obama's decision should be easy, given that the costs of the war are rising, the benefits are few and the odds of success are small. If he explains that calculus to the American people and says it is time to leave, most of them will agree.

How to Get Out of Afghanistan - Nation

by RobertDreyfuss

There is no likelihood that the current US war in Afghanistan can achieve its aims (a narrower goal, the elimination of Al Qaeda, has for the most part already been accomplished). The corrupt government of President Karzai and his cronies is no longer sustainable, whether or not there is a second round in the fraud-marred election. A new government in Kabul must emerge, in the process accommodating Pashtun nationalists, the Taliban and other insurgents. Those latter groups, along with tribal and ethnic leaders, various warlords and representatives of Afghanistan's myriad political factions, will need international support to underwrite a new national compact. That national accord will probably not be a strong central government but rather a decentralized federal system in which provinces and districts retain a significant degree of autonomy. To secure international support, the United States must defer to the United Nations to convene a conference in which Afghans themselves hammer out the new way forward. The world community must pledge its support of Afghanistan financially for years to come. And this must occur against the backdrop of an unconditional withdrawal of US and NATO forces.

Accordingly, the first step for Washington must be to abandon the idea of a decades-long counterinsurgency, fire its advocates--including Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual--and admit that the multiheaded insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan can't be defeated by military means. At the same time, the Obama administration will have to give up its massive nation-building project, dismantling the empire of US departments, agencies, provincial reconstruction teams and the rest now overseen by Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy. Instead, the United States should prepare to channel a substantial flow of international development assistance and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through a newly reconstructed, rebalanced Afghan government.

In addition, President Obama should declare that the United States has achieved its principal objective in Afghanistan, namely, the near-total destruction of Al Qaeda as an organization. With the agreement of the Afghan government, a limited US intelligence and counterterrorism mission designed to monitor the remnants of Al Qaeda can remain in Afghanistan. And Al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be dealt with by intelligence, law enforcement and US Special Forces personnel in cooperation with security agencies in those countries.

The president must also announce an unconditional timetable for the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, on the model of the US drawdown in Iraq, over, say, a period of two years or so. The goal should be a Status of Forces Agreement with a new Afghan government, pertaining to the role of US forces in training an Afghan national army far smaller than the bulky 400,000-man security force envisioned by General McChrystal.

Then comes the tricky part: the president should encourage the convening of an international Bonn II conference involving the UN, the major world powers and Afghanistan's neighbors--including Iran, India and Pakistan--to support the renegotiation of the Afghanistan compact. At the table must be representatives of all of Afghanistan's stakeholders, including the Taliban and their allies. In advance of that, the United States should join other nations and the UN to persuade President Karzai, his main electoral opponents and other Afghan politicians to form a coalition that would create an interim caretaker regime until the establishment of a more broadly based government.

At the same time, the United States must launch a diplomatic surge aimed at persuading, cajoling and bribing Afghanistan's neighbors to support the effort, including Taliban supporters, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and opponents, including Iran, India and Russia. Obama must recognize that Pakistan is a key part of the problem, not the solution: the Afghan Taliban are not a formless, leaderless group. They are an arm of Pakistan's army and its intelligence service, the ISI, and they have an address: Rawalpindi, the garrison city that is the headquarters for the Pakistani military. The message of the world community to the Pakistani military must be clear: Pakistan's legitimate interests in Afghanistan will be recognized, but Pakistani support of terrorist groups, whether aimed at Afghanistan or Kashmir, is simply not acceptable.

As a central part of the diplomatic effort, Obama must strongly encourage Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to bring key elements of the three interlinked insurgency movements--the Taliban, the Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network--to the bargaining table. Elements of those groups that opt not to participate are unlikely to present more than a nuisance challenge to the government in Kabul, if cut off from Pakistani support. China, Pakistan's ally, which has a vital interest in Central Asia, should be willing to use its influence in Pakistan to make sure Islamabad and Rawalpindi are on board.

Similarly, Obama will have to work to get Iran, India and Russia to help persuade the remnants of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance (mostly Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras) to make room in Kabul for an enlarged Pashtun role, including the Taliban, in what could become a stable power-sharing arrangement. The ongoing US-Iran talks can be a useful forum to reach agreement between Washington and Tehran on common interests in stabilizing Afghanistan.

Last, the United States must take the lead in creating a global Marshall Plan to help Afghanistan rebuild its war-shattered economy, build a passable infrastructure and establish the rudiments of a national government. The United States must be realistic about what it can accomplish--and what it cannot. It cannot remake Afghan society, change its cultural mores, modernize its religious outlook, educate its women or reshape the tribal system that prevails in its rural villages. It can break Al Qaeda and, as it exits, leave behind at least the possibility that Afghans will begin to create a sustainable society. But it must recognize, above all, that what it leaves behind won't be pretty.

"We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them" - Human Rights Watch

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"We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them"

Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests

October 20, 2009

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ISBN: 1-56432-556-3

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Table of Contents

• “We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them”
• Map of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
• Map of Urumqi
• Summary
• Methodology
• I. Background
• II. Official Data on Arrests and Due Process Concerns
• III. Enforced Disappearances and Unlawful Arrests
• IV. Legal Standards
• V. Recommendations
• VI. Acknowledgments
• VII. Appendix

China: Detainees ‘Disappeared’ After Xinjiang Protests - Human Rights Watch

Image by sheilaz413 via Flickr

Chinese Government Should Account for Every Detainee

October 20, 2009

(New York) - The Chinese government should immediately account for all detainees in its custody and allow independent investigations into the July 2009 protests in Urumqi and their aftermath, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on enforced "disappearances" released today.

The 44-page report, "‘We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them': Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang's Protests," documents the enforced disappearances of 43 Uighur men and teenage boys who were detained by Chinese security forces in the wake of the protests.

"The cases we documented are likely just the tip of the iceberg," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Chinese government says it respects the rule of law, but nothing could undermine this claim more than taking people from their homes or off the street and ‘disappearing' them - leaving their families unsure whether they are dead or alive."

Last week, Xinjiang judicial authorities started trials of people accused of involvement in the protests. Nine men have already been sentenced to death, three others to death with a two-year reprieve, and one to life imprisonment.

Human Rights Watch research has established that on July 6-7, 2009, Chinese police, the People's Armed Police, and the military conducted numerous large-scale sweep operations in two predominantly Uighur areas of Urumqi, Erdaoqiao, and Saimachang. On a smaller scale, these operations and targeted raids continued at least through mid-August.

The victims of "disappearances" documented by Human Rights Watch were young Uighur men. Most were in their 20s, although the youngest reported victims were 12 and 14 years old. It is possible that some Han Chinese also became victims of "disappearances" and unlawful arrests. However, none of the more than two dozen Han Chinese residents of Urumqi interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided any information about such cases.

According to witnesses, the security forces sealed off entire neighborhoods, searching for young Uighur men. In some cases, they first separated the men from other residents, pushed them to their knees or flat on the ground, and, at least in some cases, beat the men while questioning them about their participation in the protests. Those who had wounds or bruises on their bodies, or had not been at their homes during the protests, were then taken away. In other cases, the security forces simply went after every young man they could catch and packed them into their trucks by the dozens.

Twenty-five-year-old Makhmud M. [name changed] and another 16 men "disappeared" as a result of one of these raids in the Saimachang area of Urumqi. His wife and another witness told Human Rights Watch that at around 7 p.m. on July 6 a group of some 150 uniformed police and military sealed off the main street in their neighborhood:

They told everybody to get out of the houses. Women and elderly were told to stand aside, and all men, 12 to 45 years old, were all lined up against the wall. Some men were pushed on their knees, with hands tied around wooden sticks behind their backs; others were forced on the ground with hands on their heads. The soldiers pulled the men's T-shirts or shirts over their heads so that they couldn't see.

Police and the military were examining the men to see if they had any bruises or wounds. They also asked where they had been on July 5 and 6. They beat the men randomly, even the older ones - our 70-year-old neighbor was punched and kicked several times. We couldn't do anything to stop it - they weren't listening to us."

In this and other cases documented by Human Rights Watch, the families' attempts to inquire about their relatives proved futile. Police and other law enforcement agencies denied having knowledge of the arrests, or simply chased the families away.

Human Rights Watch called on the Chinese government to immediately stop the practice of enforced disappearances, release those against whom no charges have been brought, and account for every person held in detention. Human Rights Watch urged the Chinese government to allow for an independent, international investigation into the Urumqi unrest and its aftermath and called on the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take the lead in such an investigation.

"China should only use official places of detention, so that everyone being held can contact family members and legal counsel," said Adams. "‘Disappearing' people is not the behavior of countries aspiring to global leadership."

The protests of July 5-7, 2009, in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi were one of the worst episodes of ethnic violence in China in decades. The protests appear to have been sparked by an attack on Uighurs in the southeast part of the country, which became a rallying cry for Uighurs angry over longstanding discriminatory policies toward the Uighur minority. The initially peaceful Uighur demonstration quickly turned into a violent attack against Han Chinese, leaving scores dead or injured.

Instead of launching an impartial investigation into the incidents in accordance with international and domestic standards, Chinese law enforcement agencies carried out a massive campaign of unlawful arrests in the Uighur areas of Urumqi. Official figures suggest that the number of people detained by the security forces in connection with the protests has reached well over a thousand people.

Under international law, a state commits an enforced disappearance when its agents take a person into custody and it denies holding the person or fails to disclose the person's whereabouts. "Disappeared" persons are often at high risk of torture or extrajudicial execution. Family members and friends experience ongoing anxiety and suffering, as they do not know what has happened to the person.

"The United States, the European Union, and China's other international partners should demand clear answers about what happened to those who have disappeared in Xinjiang," said Adams. "They should not let trade relations or other political considerations lead them to treat China differently than other countries which carry out this horrific practice."

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