KABUL — The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has warned that President Hamid Karzai is putting the lives of Western troops in danger with his anti-American rhetoric.

A leaked, confidential memo sent by General Joseph Dunford to officers in Afghanistan said recent comments by Karzai could be "a catalyst for some to lash out against our forces."

---

Dunford said Karzai’s "inflammatory speech" about the controversial Bagram Prison could prompt members of Afghan government forces to stage insider attacks on American troops and other Western allies.

And he warned that the Afghan president himself "may also issue orders that put our forces at risk."

The New York Times, which first reported the emailed memo, said it was sent Wednesday after Karzai warned on Tuesday that his forces might seize control of Bagram from the U.S.

The facility was supposed to have been transferred on Saturday, but the deal collapsed at the last minute after Karzai objected to a clause allowing the U.S. to have final say over who were considered “high-value” prisoners and whether they would have to stay in prison.

Dunford admitted that Afghanistan and the U.S. were "at a rough point in the relationship."

And he warned that the Taliban and other insurgent groups would be "watching and will look for a way to exploit the situation — they have already ramped up for the spring."

'Vigilance'
Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, confirmed that Dunford’s memo was not intended for public consumption and had been leaked.

He said the memo was an informal email sent "to his subordinate commanders to outline his view of what is going on in the country, in light of recent attacks."

"ISAF routinely conducts assessments and adapts its protection posture to ensure our forces are prepared to meet potential threats and that they have a common understanding of the situation here in Afghanistan," Collins said in an email. "This advisory was prudent given increased Coalition casualties in recent days. General Dunford's email is simply an example of this vigilance."

Two U.S. service members were killed and at least eight others injured on Monday in what officials described as a possible insider attack at a Special Forces operations outpost in Wardak province, eastern Afghanistan. Three Afghans also died.

Last month, Karzai ordered all U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province. A spokesman for the Afghan president said in a statement that "armed individuals named as U.S. special forces stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people."

On Sunday, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of colluding to convince Afghans that foreign forces needed to stay in the country after 2014, when NATO is due to withdraw most of its troops.

"Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost [on Saturday] were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come," Karzai said in a speech reported by Reuters. "In fact those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the two bomb attacks, which killed 17 people.

Karzai’s comments marred a visit by newly appointed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s trip to Afghanistan.

Hagel dismissed the remarks, telling reporters it “wouldn’t make a lot of sense” for the United States and Taliban to conspire together.

And Dunford told reporters traveling with Hagel that "we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years … to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KABUL — In his opening statement released at the start of his first Afghanistan visit since being named defense secretary, Chuck Hagel reminded everyone, "We are still in a war." By the time his official visit ended, after a planned joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was cancelled over "security concerns," it was clear that war’s second front, the war of words, was as volatile as ever.

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The press conference cancellation was announced hours after Karzai had gone on national television with another blast of criticism over the U.S. role here. He said the U.S. and the Taliban were "negotiating daily," and working in concert to ensure that coalition combat forces would remain in Afghanistan beyond the scheduled pullout in 2014. Karzai added that two deadly suicide attacks Saturday — one explosion in Kabul that Hagel actually heard from his safe location more than a mile away — were intended by the Taliban to show that U.S. and coalition forces would not be able to withdraw as planned.

"Categorically false," said the commander of coalition forces, U.S. General Joseph Dunford. A Taliban spokesman also rejected all of Karzai’s assertions unequivocally.

By Sunday night, Dunford was compelled to say the U.S. "does not have a broken relationship (with Karzai)," or a lack of trust. And Hagel told reporters that as a former politician himself he "can understand the kind of pressures national leaders are always under," and that the two countries will be able to move forward together.

Still, the dust-up over the busted joint press conference was evidence of the stubborn distance yet to be covered — and that seems in some ways to be widening — between an emerging new Afghanistan and the U.S., its chief protector and stakeholder.

One illustration of that distance — the cancellation on Saturday, even as Hagel began his round of briefings, of the planned handover to Afghan control of the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base. To the Karzai government the ceremony would be welcome evidence of his administration’s authority and autonomy.  But the ceremony was spiked and delayed at least temporarily when it was learned the U.S. would insist that detainees it considered high risk or high value would not be included in the prisoner releases Karzai has said are essential if reconciliation with the Taliban is to go forward.

Another example of the stubborn distance between the Karzai government and its primary benefactor — Karzai’s order that U.S. and coalition special forces withdraw from the Kabul suburb of Wardak because of unconfirmed allegations of attacks and abusive tactics employed against civilians. Karzai had announced a two-week deadline for compliance with his order; it’s now two weeks later, with no evidence those special forces have retreated as ordered.

And Karzai’s new allegation Sunday that the U.S. and the Taliban are "negotiating daily" — in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban have set up an office, and elsewhere — was denied by both parties but was a signal too that the Afghan leader feels the endgame might be played out in forums and in discussions in which he won’t be the controlling voice.

Despite unequivocal denials by both the U.S. and a Taliban spokesman that any negotiations are taking place, Karzai did not back off his remarks when he met privately with Hagel after their press conference was called off and replaced by a mere photo op.

"I told him it was not true ... that the U.S. unilaterally is not working with the Taliban to negotiate anything," Hagel later told reporters.

What would Karzai’s goal be in asserting the existence of a back-channel alliance between the U.S. and the Taliban?

"Political," a NATO official said, asking not to be identified. "I mean Karzai has always been a bit paranoid, and he’s got a control reflex that seems more apparent now, as he’s speaking to Afghans and to his legacy … but these comments about the U.S. and the Taliban might end up killing all possibilities for real negotiations. It’s difficult to see where (Karzai) is going."

But though the Karzai/Hagel press conference was scrapped, the two sides did issue final statements of continued solidarity.

"We talked about everything (in our private meeting)," Hagel said, "I told him that he could and should call me directly if there’s anything I can do to facilitate the resolution of any of these issues."

Karzai’s chief spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said that both Hagel and General Dunford had been responsive to President Karzai’s views. "They understand our concerns," Faizi said. "Hagel noted that both sides should learn from their mistakes."

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US Ambassador: Afghanistan chapter not 'closed' yet

KABUL, Afghanistan —  I wondered, approaching Kabul over the snow-shrouded Hindu Kush mountains, what the story of the moment would be in the teeming city below. 

It had been six years since I’d last visited Afghanistan’s capital, a short visit then that included an interview with President Hamid Karzai as part of the last of six long reporting assignments since 9/11— that one stretching from Paktika and Gardez in the southeast to Herat in the west.

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More than 11 years had passed since my first Afghan assignment, over the Kyber Pass from Pakistan and then into Jalalabad days after the Taliban had fled;  the arc of America’s longest war.

"Not much different," offered my seatmate, a senior NATO official from one of the 40 countries remaining in the coalition that has alternately steered or suffered through Afghanistan’s bloody march toward stand-alone status as a reconstituted nation.

"You’ll see some new construction under way in the city, but on the surface it’ll be little changed from what you saw before."

Driving to our quarters, I found myself playing an old game: peering at the cars huffing and puffing along the city’s crowded streets, I counted the number of women drivers.  And got the same answer I’d counted on most days, 11 years ago.

Zero.

* * * * *

That so few women drive — cars, bicycles, any conveyance where they are unaccompanied by men — is a relatively small fact of life here but it’s emblematic.  

Afghanistan is still waiting for the changes that will signal that a threshold has been reached, and a fundamental change in the status of women, and in their prospects after the 2014 withdrawal of most coalition combat troops, is one of the changes that matter.

It’s women who will suffer most after the withdrawal, said Kimberly Motley, an American lawyer living and working in Afghanistan for the past five years as an advocate for abused women. 

"I’ve been surprised that it’s been mostly men now clamoring desperately for a way to leave, when it’s women who will be affected so profoundly," she said.  

With NATO forces gone they’ll have far less protection, she told us, while even under the limited protection that now exists there have been attacks against women so savage as to have commanded headlines worldwide. 

It’s been a consensus in the international community that this poorest and most corrupt of countries may yet be welcomed fully as a sovereign nation, but only when its women are treated with dignity and as equals under law and custom. While serving as secretary of state in 2001, Colin Powell stressed that women's rights were “non-negotiable.”

* * * * * 

As for negotiations for peace and reconciliation with the Taliban, they are, for all practical purposes, non-existent.  A handful of self-described representatives of Taliban leadership have set up office space in Doha, Qatar, and overtures have been made with the goal of starting substantive talks.

"But here’s the problem," a highly placed Western diplomat told me, asking that he not be identified. "Karzai only wants face-to-face discussions with the Taliban, at the negotiating table — and not with interlocutors who may or may not represent Mullah Mohammed Omar and the true Taliban leadership.  He’s not interested in discussing theoretical possibilities, if nothing of consequence is going to happen."

The Taliban, meanwhile, seem uninterested in discussing any possibilities short of a return to complete power in Afghanistan. 

Said Maulvi Shahabuddin Dilawar, one of the Taliban's "negotiators" in Doha, there will be a "snowball effect" after the 2014 withdrawal, the Taliban waiting patiently to make their move. 

"Anything short of a total victory,” he said, “is unacceptable." There’s a saying here, attributed to the Taliban: "They have the weapons; we have the time."

Still, the Western diplomat said, "We’ve opened a door in Doha, and hopefully there will be an answer and real negotiations might begin."

I reminded him of the timeworn political cliché, "Hope is not a strategy."

He smiled. "Well, it’s more than mere hope," he said.

The diplomat talked about advances on the periphery of the central questions about peace talks and post-2014 security: an imminent new mining law that will encourage foreign investors to ante in for a stake in the trillion dollars in copper, iron, gold and oil reserves within reach beneath this country’s battered landscape;  advances despite notable setbacks in the training and readiness of Afghanistan’s army and national police forces; real improvements in the prospects for some women — in medicine, law and even the armed services.  

"It’s not just hope," the diplomat repeated.

* * * * * 

An old friend named Shirzad came by to visit on Saturday.  He had worked for NBC News in the past and asked that we not use his family name for security reasons.  

We talked about the days and months just after 9/11, when we first met, when in his home city of Jalalabad the Taliban had suddenly fled under the punishment of American bombing raids, and the eventual insertion of American special forces chasing Bin Laden and his surrogates through the mountains and caves of Tora Bora. 

There were so many signs of optimism then: little girls lining up giddily to go to school, some women braving the markets having shed their burqas, talk among the men about a new future when none had seemed possible for so many years.

But that future had not arrived, Shirzad said. The Taliban were a "shadow government" in so many villages and neighborhoods, in control by implication and threat, just waiting.

"My family, and many of those I work with, we have been threatened with death." So he’s leaving, he says, having spent months negotiating a labyrinth of paperwork to gain approval to take his family of nine to the U.S. and take his chances there if he can. 

His brother, with his family of eight, is trying for the same option. "It is the only way for me," he told me. "The local police, they will not protect us when NATO soldiers are gone — many are Taliban or support them."

He offered a sad smile: "No more for me, in Afghanistan."

What there is, he said, is corruption and danger in every direction.  Away from Kabul there were still drug lords ruling over fiefdoms fueled by flourishing poppy fields. Even in Kabul, he said, travel can be treacherous, trust unwise.

And attorney Motley has more clients than she can handle.

And 30 local police died in a two-day period last week in three suicide attacks for which the Taliban claimed credit.

And President Karzai complains about not getting enough American weapons and support, while at the same time ordering that American and NATO forces withdraw from a Kabul suburb because of unconfirmed rumors of harassment and attacks against civilians.

And in my third trip through the streets of a city I hadn’t seen in years, I looked again for any women drivers.

And couldn't find a single one. Again.

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents poisoned, then shot and killed 17 people as they slept at a local police post in eastern Afghanistan, one of two attacks in as many days targeting Afghan security forces, an official said Wednesday.

It's unclear how the militants were able to drug people inside the post before firing bullets into their incapacitated bodies Tuesday night, said Abdul Jamhe Jamhe, a government official in Ghazni province.

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Ten members of the Afghan Local Police, a village-level defense force backed by the U.S. military and Afghan government, and seven of their civilian friends died in the attack, said Provincial Gov. Musa Khan Akbarzada. He said there was a conspiracy of some sort but declined to confirm if poison was involved.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in Andar district. He told The Associated Press by telephone that the attackers fatally shot the men in their sleep, but denied they had been poisoned.

Residents of Andar took up arms last spring and chased out insurgents. The villagers don't readily embrace any outside authority, be it the Taliban, the Afghan government or the U.S.-led NATO military coalition.

The lightly trained village defense force, which is overseen by the Interior Ministry, is tasked with helping bring security to remote areas. But President Hamid Karzai has expressed concern that without careful vetting, the program could end up arming local troublemakers, strongmen or criminals.

In other violence, a suicide bomber slid under a bus full of Afghan soldiers and blew himself up in Kabul, wounding 10 in an attack that underscored the insurgency's ability to attack in the heavily guarded capital. Kabul police said at least six soldiers and four civilians were wounded. The suicide attacker died.

The bomber, wearing a black overcoat, approached the bus purposefully in heavy morning snow as soldiers were boarding, set down his umbrella and went under the chassis as if to fix something, according to a witness. Watching from across the street, office worker Ahmad Shakib said he thought for a moment the man might have been a mechanic.

"I thought to myself, what is this crazy man doing? And then there was a blast and flames," that engulfed the undercarriage, he said. "It was a very loud explosion. I still cannot really hear."

Bakery owner Mirza Khan said the blast shattered the windows of his nearby shop where people were waiting to buy bread, leaving six wounded.

The Afghan government uses buses to ferry soldiers, police and office workers into the city center on regular routes for work, and the vehicles have been a common target for insurgents.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, also claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing.

The attack occurred three days after a would-be car bomber was shot dead by police in downtown Kabul. That assailant was driving a vehicle packed with explosives and officials said he appeared to be targeting an intelligence agency office.

It also comes as the U.S.-led military coalition in the country is backing off from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.

Some 100,000 international troops are helping secure Afghanistan at the moment, but most, including many of the 66,000 Americans, are expected to finish their withdrawal by the end of 2014.

Also on Wednesday, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss abuse allegations against American special forces and Afghan troops linked to them in the strategic eastern Wardak province.

The allegations led Karzai to issue an order on Sunday calling for U.S. special forces to be expelled from the province within two weeks despite fears that the move would leave the restive area and the neighboring Afghan capital more vulnerable to al-Qaida and other insurgents.

Karzai and Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of all U.S. and allied forces, discussed the issue and agreed to work together to address the security concerns of the people of Wardak, a coalition statement said.

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KABUL - Shortly after Friba joined the Afghan National Police, she gave herself the nickname "dragon" and vowed to bring law and order to her tormented homeland.

Five years later, she is tired of rebuffing the sexual advances of male colleagues, worries the budget for the female force will shrink and fears the government will abandon them.

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Women in the police force were held up as a showcase for Afghan-Western efforts to promote rights in the new Afghanistan, born from the optimism that swept the country after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Images of gun-wielding Afghan policewomen have been broadcast across the globe, even inspiring a television program popular with young Afghan women.

But going from the burqa to the olive green uniform has not been easy.

In Reuters interviews with 12 policewomen in districts across the Afghan capital, complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and bitter frustration were prevalent.

President Hamid Karzai's goal is for 5,000 women to join the Afghan National Police (ANP) by the end of 2014, when most foreign troops will leave the country.

UN calls for Afghanistan to protect women from rape, forced marriage

But government neglect, poor recruitment and a lack of interest on the part of authorities and the male-dominated society mean there are only 1,850 female police officers on the beat, or about 1.25 percent of the entire force.

And it looks to get worse.

Friba, who asked that her second name not be used, says it all when she runs a manicured finger across her throat: "Once foreigners leave we won't even be able to go to the market. We'll be back in burqas. The Taliban are coming back and we all know it."

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have improved significantly since the Taliban were ousted. Women have won back basic rights in voting, education and work since Taliban rule, when they were not allowed out of their homes without a male escort and could be publicly stoned to death for adultery.

Newlywed beheaded for her refusal to become a prostitute

But problems persist in the deeply conservative Muslim society scarred by decades of conflict. The United Nations said this month that despite progress, there was a dramatic under-reporting of cases of violence against women.

Some female lawmakers and rights groups blame Karzai's government for a waning interest in women's rights as it seeks peace talks with the Taliban, accusations his administration deny.

Almost a third of the members of the female force work in Kabul, performing duties such as conducting security checks on women at the airport and checking biometric data.

Friba sat in a city police station room decorated with posters of policemen clutching weapons to talk to Reuters.

"I am the dragon and I can defend myself, but most of the girls are constantly harassed," she said. "Just yesterday my colleague put his hands on one of the girl's breasts. She was embarrassed and giggled while he squeezed them. Then she turned to us and burst into tears."

Afghan woman police director gunned down

On the other side of Kabul, detective Lailoma, who also asked that her family name not be used, said several policewomen under her command had been raped by their male colleagues.

She complained about male colleagues: "They want it to be like the time of the Taliban. They tell us every day we are bad women and should not be allowed to work here."

Male colleagues also taunt the women, she added, often preventing them from entering the kitchen, meaning they miss out on lunch.

US, Afghan officials condemn public execution of Afghan woman

On several occasions, male colleagues interrupted Reuters interviews in what the policewomen said were attempts to intimidate them into silence.

One male officer entered the room without knocking three times to retrieve pencils; another spent 20 minutes dusting off his hat, only to put it back on a shelf. The women switched subjects when the men came in.

Rana, a 31-year-old, heavy-set policewoman with curly hair, said policewomen were expected to perform sexual favors: "We're expected to do them to just stay in the force."

The raping of policewomen by their male counterparts "definitely takes place," said Colonel Sayed Omar Saboor, deputy director for gender and human rights at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police. "These men are largely illiterate and see the women as immoral." 

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U.S. and Afghan officials on Sunday condemned the public execution of an Afghan woman accused of adultery, saying her death “is an unambiguous reminder to the Afghan people and the international community of the brutality of the Taliban.”

The woman’s death, which was recorded, shows the woman, named Najiba, crouched, her back to a man identified as her husband. He is handed an AK-47 assault rifle, which he uses to shoot her from behind. By the third shot, she collapses, but he continues to fire 10 more times as about 150 men on a nearby hillside cheer.

The video was obtained by Reuters.

“They are brutal people and like savage animals, they killed another human being,” Basir Salangi, the provincial governor of Parwan Province, told Reuters. The village in Parwan where the execution took place is about an hour north of Kabul, the Afghan capital. “It is clear that they are outlaws and must be delivered into the hands of the law,” he said.

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In a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, officials said the U.S. is committed to increasing “awareness of women's rights, to prevent and prosecute acts of violence against women, and to ensure that those responsible for such barbaric acts are brought to justice.”

6 Nato troops killed in roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan

"This cold-blooded murder, carried out in front of a crowd and recorded on video, is an unambiguous reminder to the Afghan people and the international community of the brutality of the Taliban," the embassy statement said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, addressing a world conference on Afghanistan's future, said Sunday: "The United States believes strongly that no nation can achieve peace, stability and economic growth if half the population is not empowered."

Such punishment is a reminder that, although there are 430,000 foreign and Afghan forces on the ground, the Taliban still controls large swaths of the country. Women’s rights activists in Afghanistan told Reuters they worry that violence against women may be on the rise as President Hamid Karzai’s administration focuses on 2014 – the date President Barack Obama has set for pulling out U.S. troops.

Afghan Taliban publicly execute woman accused of adultery; men cheer

Najiba, believed to be a mother, was found guilty of being sexually connected to two Taliban commanders – whether by rape or consensual sex is unclear, Reuters reported. Taliban officials then convened a quick trial and ordered her execution to settle the dispute between the two commanders.  The killing occurred in late June.

In the video, before Najiba is shot, a bearded man reads verses from the Quran condemning adultery.

"We cannot forgive her, God tells us to finish her," he says. "Juma Khan, her husband, has the right to kill her."

U.S. delivers 'powerful commitment to Afghanistan'

As Khan approaches Najiba, another man states, "Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it's the wrong way. It is the order of Allah that she be executed."

Najiba’s execution follows on the heels of the beheading of a 30-year-old woman and her two children last week in eastern Afghanistan by a man police say was her divorced husband. Their deaths, women’s activists told Reuters, is the latest in a string of “honor killings.”

There have been 16 recorded cases of these honor cases in March and April, according to Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission; last year, 20 were recorded for the entire year.

Commissioner Suraya Subhrang told Reuters she blamed the sharp rise on increased insecurity and weak rule of law.

"There are many that go unreported,” Subhrang told Reuters. “Men make a quick decision in their own courts to kill a girl and hold a prayer for her the next day."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The United States has named Afghanistan a "major non-NATO ally," a status that will make it easier for the Afghan government to acquire U.S. defense equipment, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that President Barack Obama had designated Afghanistan as a major non-NATO ally shortly after arriving in the country for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

---

 

The designation allows for streamlined defense cooperation, including expedited purchasing ability of American equipment and easier export control regulations. Afghanistan's military, which is heavily dependent on American and foreign assistance, already enjoys many of these benefits. The non-NATO ally status guarantees it will continue to do so.

"We see this as a powerful commitment to Afghanistan's future," she said at a news conference in the grand courtyard of Kabul's Presidential Palace. "We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan."
 
Clinton insisted that progress was coming incrementally but consistently to the war-torn nation after decades of conflict. "The security situation is more stable," she said. Afghan forces "are improving their capacity." 

At the news conference, Karzai welcomed Clinton to Kabul and thanked the U.S. for its continued support. 

Clinton repeated the tenets of America's "fight, talk, build" strategy for Afghanistan. The goal aims first to defeat dangerous extremists, win over Taliban militants and others willing to give up violence and help in the long reconstruction of Afghanistan ahead. 

Reconciliation efforts haven't gained steam, but Clinton said she was pleased to be meeting the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan together in Tokyo — a three-way relationship seen as key to stabilizing Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan becomes the 15th such country the U.S. has declared a major non-NATO ally. Others include Australia, Egypt, Israel and Japan. Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan was the last nation to gain the status in 2004.

The declaration was part of a Strategic Partnership Agreement signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Karzai in Kabul at the beginning of May.

On July 4, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, and the country's foreign minister announced that the two countries had completed their internal processes to ratify the Agreement, which has now gone into force.

From Kabul, Clinton is heading later Saturday to Japan for an international conference on Afghan civilian assistance. Donors are expected to pledge around $4 billion a year in long-term civilian support.

Clinton arrived in Afghanistan unannounced after travelling from Paris, where she attended a 100-nation conference on Syria. 

U.S. officials traveling with Clinton declined to say how much aid the United States would pledge at the Tokyo meeting, nor how much was expected to be committed overall as the international community seeks to back the Afghan economy and prevent the country from sliding back into chaos as foreign troops withdraw. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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