Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) has set a November 7 runoff to settle the disputed August 20 presidential election. The order came at the direction of the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) after that body invalidated first round ballots from 210 polling stations (pdf, 64kb), one day after reaching its ballot audit decisions. The ballot recount, ordered by the ECC in September, dropped President Hamid Karzai’s vote tally below 50 percent, triggering an automatic runoff under Afghanistan’s electoral law (pdf, 78kb).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that the IEC and the ECC “have worked closely to ensure strict adherence to the Constitution and the Electoral Law of Afghanistan. The United Nations has supported the work of these institutions in their efforts to ensure that all valid votes cast in the elections of 20 August 2009 were taken into account and that the voice of the Afghan people was clearly heard.” He pledged that the UN “will do its utmost for the conduct of the second round of elections scheduled for 7 November 2009 in a free, fair, transparent and secure environment.”

A Congressional Research Service report, updated on October 1, summarized the August 20 vote and some of the implications for Afghan politics and US policy. The report said that allegations of fraud in the August 20 polling “have reportedly been a major factor in a high level US strategy reevaluation because of the centrality of a credible, legitimate partner Afghan government to US strategy.”

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, warned in his August 30 assessment that “many indicators suggest the overall situation is deteriorating.” In an unclassified version of the assessment, obtained and posted (pdf, 1.6mb or searchable text) by the Washington Post, McChrystal said the “situation in Afghanistan is serious; neither success nor failure can be taken for granted.”

McChrystal said ISAF is a “conventional force that is poorly configured” for counterinsurgency, “inexperienced in local languages and culture, and struggling with challenges inherent to coalition warfare.” While additional resources will be required, McChrystal said success “will not be attained simply by trying harder or ‘doubling down’ on the previous strategy … The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.”

“Pre-occupied with the protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us – physically and psychologically – from the people we seek to protect. In addition, we run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves.”

Accordingly, McChrystal wrote of the need to “[c]hange the operational culture to connect with the people. I believe we must interact more closely with the population and focus on operations that bring stability, while shielding them from insurgent violence, corruption, and coercion.”

McChrystal characterized ISAF’s mission as “both a short and long-term fight. The long-term fight will require patience and commitment, but I believe the short-term fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

Speaking to the need for additional resources, McChrystal wrote: “As announced by President Obama in his March 27, 2009 speech (pdf, 54kb) outlining the new U.S. Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the mission in Afghanistan has been historically under-resourced … Success is not ensured by additional forces alone, but continued under-resourcing will likely cause failure.”

The original document was a “confidential military assessment” delivered to NATO and US leaders on August 30 with “no plan to release it publicly,” according to Pentagon press coverage at the time. In a story accompanying the release of the document, the Post said that the assessment is “now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.” McChrystal “has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon,” according to the Post.

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has ordered a recount (pdf, 150kb) of selected polling stations in light of “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in the August 20 presidential election. The order said that at those polling stations where evidence of fraud was found, investigations turned up a “clear pattern” of “either an exceptionally high number of presidential votes cast per station in relation to the number of ballots available; an exceptionally high percentage of ballots cast for only one candidate; or both.”

Accordingly, the ECC ordered Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), which administers elections, to conduct audits and recounts of polling stations where 600 or more votes were cast, indicating a 100 percent turnout for that location, or where any single candidate received more than 95 percent of the vote.

The ECC is an independent, five-member commission established under Article 52 of Afghanistan’s electoral law (pdf, 78kb) with the authority (pdf, 87kb) to order recounts, impose fines, and bar offenders from holding elected office for up to 10 years. Two national commissioners – one appointed by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and one by the Supreme Court of Afghanistan – and three international members appointed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations make up the commission.

For the second year in a row, a United Nations survey measured a decline in opium cultivation and production in Afghanistan. Falling opium prices around the globe, along with more aggressive counter-narcotics efforts by Afghan and NATO forces and “an effective mix of sticks and carrots” in Helmand province, pushed production down 10 percent this year, and the number of poppy-free provinces rose from 18 to 20 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. All seven provinces in Afghanistan’s northern region were poppy-free for the first time in a decade, and the total area under opium cultivation across the country declined by 22 percent.

Despite those encouraging trends, the report warned of the growing role of the narcotics trade among anti-government insurgent groups.

“There is growing evidence – from tougher counter-narcotics and improved intelligence – that some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels. It has happened elsewhere in the world. In Colombia, for example, drug trafficking (by FARC and ELN) started as a means to a political end – a way of funding an ideologically motivated guerrilla movement. Yet, the world over, drug money eventually trumps ideology, and becomes as addictive as the dope itself. Afghanistan is approaching this point. After years of collusion with criminal gangs and corrupt officials, some insurgents are now opportunistically moving up the value chain: not just taxing supply, but getting involved in producing, processing, stocking and exporting drugs. The impact this has on the stability of Afghanistan, and the ways and means to oppose it, require attention.”

That warning was in line with the findings of a congressional report released last month about the need to refocus on the link between the drug trade and the insurgency, but the UN survey appeared to take issue with the practice of treating drug traffickers as battlefield combatants. The congressional report cited “two US generals in Afghanistan (who) said that the ROE (Rules of Engagement) and the internationally recognized Law of War have been interpreted to allow them to put drug traffickers with proven links to the insurgency on a kill list, called the joint integrated prioritized target list.” But the authors of the UN survey insisted that “major traffickers should be reported to the Security Council and brought to justice – not executed in violation of international law or pardoned for political expediency.”

The 2009 Afghanistan Opium Survey is the latest in a regular series prepared by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Last year’s survey reported a sharp decline in opium production after record harvests the previous two years.

United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan have placed a new emphasis on targeting the drug trade supporting the Taliban and other anti-government forces there, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report (pdf, 146kb). The new focus on “breaking the link” between drug traffickers and the insurgency replaces one that emphasized the eradication of opium poppies, an effort which “has proven an expensive failure,” the report said.

“The change is dramatic for a military that once ignored the drug trade flourishing in front of its eyes,” the report said. “No longer are U.S. commanders arguing that going after the drug lords is not part of their mandate. In a dramatic illustration of the new policy, major drug traffickers who help finance the insurgency are likely to find themselves in the crosshairs of the military.”

The report described how the Taliban, as it “reconstituted from a defeated government to an insurgency force,” developed an elaborate “protection racket” to extract money from poppy farmers and drug traffickers. “The money has played a critical role in financing the resurgence of the militants,” according to the report.

“Commanders on the ground and the Pentagon now view the war on Afghan drugs as an integral part of the mission, and it is being played out at several locations,” the report said. For example, the report described the new Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF), expected to begin operating soon from Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan, which will bring together police and intelligence agencies from the US and other coalition partners to “go after drug networks linked to the insurgency, interdict drug shipments, destroy heroin labs and identify and arrest their protectors in government.”

An American military officer with the project told the committee staff: “Our long-term approach is to identify the regional drug figures and corrupt government officials and persuade them to choose legitimacy or remove them from the battlefield.” The report said two US generals who spoke to the committee staff told them “that the ROE (Rules of Engagement) and the internationally recognized Law of War have been interpreted to allow them to put drug traffickers with proven links to the insurgency on a kill list, called the joint integrated prioritized target list. The military places no restrictions on the use of force with these selected targets, which means they can be killed or captured on the battlefield; it does not, however, authorize targeted assassinations away from the battlefield…”

“‘We have a list of 367 “kill or capture” targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and insurgency,’ one of the officers explained to the committee staff.”

State Department intelligence analysts believe Iran is unlikely to develop the technical capacity to develop weapons-grade material for a nuclear weapon before 2013. That is one of several newsworthy items which came to light in a document (pdf, 2.2mb) prepared in April by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to answer “questions for the record” posed by the Senate Intelligence Committee after ODNI’s February testimony on its annual threat assessment. (Archived video of the February 12 hearing is posted on the committee’s website.) The wide-ranging set of answers was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Federation of American Scientists, which posted its summary on its Secrecy News blog on August 6.

According to ODNI, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) “continues to asses it is unlikely that Iran will have the technical capability to produce HEU (highly enriched uranium) before 2013. INR shares the Intelligence Community’s (IC’s) assessment that Iran probably would use military-run covert facilities, rather than declared nuclear sites, to produce HEU. Outfitting a covert enrichment infrastructure could take years. The IC has no evidence that Iran has yet made the decision to produce highly enriched uranium, and INR assesses that Iran is unlikely to make such a decision for at least as long as international scrutiny and pressure persist.”

Another issue addressed at length in the document is the insurgency in Afghanistan (see Question 5, pages 9-13), where “the blurred identities of the numerous groups contributing to instability … along with the wide variety of factors motivating new recruits, complicate efforts to formulate a precise estimate of the size of the insurgency… Al-Qaida augments the Afghanistan insurgency by providing tactical, operational and ideological support as well as some fighters for attacks…”

“At a minimum, significant progress in Afghan National Security Forces, the judicial system, national and local governance, the economic sector, and improved regional relations remain necessary before Afghanistan is capable of providing security and basic services without significant foreign assistance…”

“While the Pakistani savehaven is important to the insurgency, the loss of this territory would probably not eliminate the Taliban’s ability to conduct an insurgency. The Taliban’s growing influence in southern and eastern Afghanistan offers insurgents an opportunity to shift many of their traditionally Pakistan-based activities to other venues. Relocating these activities will make the Taliban vulnerable to Coalition operations, but over time the Taliban probably can adapt to these new challenges. Thus, while the loss of the Pakistan safehavens probably could deal the greatest blow to the Taliban in the short term, its leaders and fighters remain capable of adapting to the environment…”

Iran, which seeks over the long term to establish a government in Afghanistan that is friendly to Iranian interests, “is covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government,” ODNI said.

In all, ODNI answered 23 questions on topics including Iranian support of Hamas and Hizballah; the security situation in Iraq; cybersecurity threats posed by China; the stability of Pakistan and the impact of its counterinsurgency measures; assessments of Russia’s economic situation, military capabilities, and ability to secure its nuclear and other weapons stockpiles; and security risks posed by the global financial crisis.

Ineffective oversight of contractors providing support in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to wasteful spending in the billions of dollars, according to the interim report (pdf, 5.8mb) of the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The Commission was established in 2008 to assess the management of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where, according to the report, more than 240,000 contractor employees – about 80 percent of whom are foreign nationals – support US military operations.

The report said those contractors are “doing vital work, generally to good effect, but the sheer scale of their operations and weaknesses in the federal contract-management and oversight systems creates plentiful opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse.” Military and civil acquisition workforces haven’t grown fast enough to keep up with the “enormous growth in the number and value of contingency contracts,” and the Pentagon “cannot provide a complete accounting of all the contracted support it relies upon.”

“The Department of Defense has failed to provide enough staff to perform adequate contract oversight. Inadequate oversight, poorly written statements of work, lack of competition, and contractor inefficiencies have contributed to billions of dollars in wasteful spending in the Army’s largest contract for support services, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program or LOGCAP contract,” the report said.

As the US draws down its military forces in Iraq, the need for contractor employees there will grow “to handle closing or transfer tasks and to dispose of government property… Strong government oversight will be required, but preparations for this major shift out of Iraq and into Afghanistan or other areas are sketchy.”

Photo provided by the Commission on Wartime Contracting of an inadvertently amusing sign marking the site of a $30 million construction project. The Commission said the need for the facility was not adequately assessed prior to construction.

The Commission’s final report is due in 2010, but this interim report identified several issues of immediate concern requiring “prompt action to avoid further undermining US objectives and wasting more taxpayer money.” Among them:

~ There is a critical shortage of qualified contract-management personnel in theater and those that are there are stretched too thin.
~ There is a need for greater accountability in the use of subcontractors. Subcontracts account for about 70 percent of the work, but government has very little visibility into their operations.
~ The effectiveness of contractor support of expanded U.S. operations in Afghanistan is compromised by the failure to extract and apply lessons learned from Iraq, particularly those about poor coordination among agencies.
~ The Department of Defense should accelerate its plans to establish a contracting command in Afghanistan. The troop surge in Afghanistan demands that contracting oversight be conducted in-country rather than from Iraq, which is currently the case.
~ The Department of Defense should take immediate steps to ensure that contractors providing security for our operating bases are well trained and equipped to provide strong force protection to our military.

The Commission’s co-chairs, Michael Thibault and Christopher Shays, presented testimony at a June 10 hearing before the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. The subcommittee also heard from Alan Chvotkin, representing the Professional Services Council, a contractor trade association. In his testimony, Chvotkin said that “the issues in Iraq and Afghanistan contracting are among the most complex ever experienced and are interrelated and interdependent among numerous (and often changing) government-directed missions, activities and priorities.”

“As we reviewed those elements of the interim report that did find their way into the public domain prior to today, we were struck by the fact that the examples cited did not, in fact, speak to abuse or fraud. Rather, they spoke to the structural challenges that are all too well known,” Chvotkin said.

A newly declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report provided new details to support the committee’s conclusion that harsh interrogation techniques used against detainees in US custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay had the approval of high-ranking Bush administration officials.

The newly released report (large pdf, 15.2mb), dated November 20, 2008 and released April 21, 2009, expands upon the 19 pages of executive summary the committee released in December. That executive summary traced how training methods developed for the Defense Department’s Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) program, created by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) to prepare US forces for interrogation tactics used by enemies which don’t observe the Geneva Conventions, instead became an important influence on the techniques authorized for use in the interrogation of detainees held by US forces. The newly released report reiterates the 19 conclusions in the December summary and provides 232 pages of new documentation.

In a Senate floor statement, committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) said the report “shows that senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques. Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses.”

Referring to a February 2002 memorandum (pdf, 16kb) written by President Bush stating, in the words of the report, “that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to POW status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention,” the report found:

“Several military officers, including members of the Judge Advocate General Corps, have described difficulties in interpreting and implementing the President’s February 7, 2002 order. A former Staff Judge Advocate for the Joint Forces Command stated that he thought the President’s order was a tough standard for the Department of Defense to apply in the field because it replaced a well-established military doctrine (legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions) with a policy that was subject to interpretation. The President’s order was not, apparently, followed by any guidance that defined the terms ‘humanely’ or ‘military necessity.’ As a result, those in the field were left to interpret the President’s order.”

Much of the report covers how SERE techniques were adapted to the treatment of detainees in US custody. In 2004, Captain Daniel Donovan, US Joint Forces Command’s Staff Judge Advocate, expressed his concerns about requests from US Central Command (CENTCOM) for JPRA’s assistance in developing interrogation techniques (p.226):

“JPRA and SERE folks will swear that the ‘water board’ does not actually physically harm subjects if it is administered by properly trained SERE instructors, under close supervision, etc. For that reason, some argue that the ‘water board’ does not technically constitute torture under domestic or international law. I can only say that in my opinion, that argument does not pass the ‘Washington Post test.’ I fail to see how anyone can reasonably say that employing such techniques against those in our custody is worthy of the United States, no matter how much we may need the information. In my view, for the U.S. to do this ‘lowers the bar’ and ensures, if there is any doubt, that similar techniques will be employed against any US personnel captured by our enemies. For this reason, there is risk involved in having JPRA ‘advise’ interrogators in CENTCOM – JPRA’s expertise concerns the effective techniques used by the BAD GUYS against us, and I frankly don’t believe that’s the kind of advice we should be giving to the US side. I see great potential for theater personnel to do it wrong, and to then say, ‘well JPRA said this was what we should do.’”

Civilian casualties from the fighting in Afghanistan were higher in 2008 than any year since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the United Nations reported. The Human Rights unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded 2118 civilian casualties in 2008, a nearly 40% increase over the 1523 casualties reported in 2007. The findings were reported in UNAMA’s Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (pdf, 622kb).

The UNAMA report said the fighting “intensified significantly throughout Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, with a corresponding rise in civilian casualties and a significant erosion of humanitarian space. In addition to fatalities as a direct result of armed hostilities, civilians have suffered from injury, loss of livelihood, displacement, destruction of property, as well as disruption of access to education, healthcare and other essential services.”

United Nations Radio posted a short summary of the report, available here in Real Media format.

Training techniques developed to prepare US forces for interrogation tactics used by enemies which don’t observe the Geneva Conventions were an important influence on the techniques authorized for use in the interrogation of detainees held by US forces, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report (pdf, 81kb). The report examined techniques developed in the Defense Department’s Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training – techniques “based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions” – and traced the development of similar techniques employed by US interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

A joint statement by Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that “SERE training is designed to teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law. . . The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in US custody. The Committee’s investigation found, however, that senior officials in the US government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of US and international law.”

“The Committee’s report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody,” Sen. McCain said in the statement.

Among the report’s 19 conclusions:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there. Secretary Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 approval (pdf, 308kb) of [Dept. of Defense General Counsel Jim] Haynes’s recommendation that most of the techniques contained in GTMO’s October 11, 2002 request (pdf, 4.0mb) be authorized, influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity, and stress positions, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Another conclusion noted that the failure to prevent the application of SERE resistance training techniques to the practice of detainee interrogations in Iraq was a “serious failure in leadership that led to the abuse of detainees. . . Iraq is a Geneva Convention theater and techniques used in SERE school are inconsistent with the obligations of US personnel under the Geneva Conventions.”

The report was critical of the notion that “a few bad apples” were responsible for the detainee abuse that occurred. “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” the report said.

“It is particularly troubling that senior officials approved the use of interrogation techniques that were originally designed to simulate abusive tactics used by our enemies against our own soldiers and that were modeled, in part, on tactics used by the Communist Chinese to elicit false confessions from US military personnel.”