1. Biden cautious about predicting Afghan troop cuts: The Washington Post, July 19

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is taking a more cautious approach when it comes to next summer’s planned military U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan.

He once predicted the drawdown next July would mean "a lot of people moving out," but he told ABC’s "This Week" on Sunday that the number of U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan "could be as few as a couple of thousand troops."

President Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan last December, bringing the U.S. total to about 100,000.

Mr. Biden said it’s too early to judge whether the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will succeed, but he said there is progress.

A record 103 NATO troops were killed in June, the deadliest month of the nearly 9-year-old war for international forces.

Mr. Biden also said he never viewed ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s mocking comment about him as a personal attack, but rather a reflection of policy disagreements over Afghanistan.

Mr. Biden said Mr. Obama’s decision to fire his military commander in Afghanistan over Gen. McChrystal’s remarks in Rolling Stone magazine was "the absolutely necessary thing to do." And he said others in the military agreed.

Mr. Biden said he was asked to survey six four-star generals to seek their opinions about whether Gen. McChrystal should stay or go.

"Every single one said he had to go," Mr. Biden said in the interview broadcast Sunday. The six generals included active-duty as well as retired four-stars, he said, but he did not identify them.

Mr. Biden said Gen. McChrystal viewed him as the "enemy" because he had argued for a strategy "different in degree" from the general’s counterinsurgency approach.

Gen. McChrystal was quoted as joking that he didn’t recognize Mr. Biden’s name.http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/18/biden-cautious-about-predicting-afghan-troop-cuts/print/

2. NATO intercepts letter from Mullah Omar

KABUL: The NATO has intercepted a letter from Taliban supreme leader Mullah Muhammad Omar in which he called for any Afghan supporting the government, led by President Hamid Karzai, to be captured or killed, Brigadier Josef Blotz, a spokesman for the NATO, said on Sunday.

Talking to reporters, he said that Omar had issued the directive in June.

“The message was from Mullah Omar, who is hiding in Pakistan, to his subordinate commanders,” he said, adding, the order was to fight coalition forces to death, and to capture and kill any civilian supporting or working for the government or the forces.

The letter also said that women should also be killed if found to be helping or providing information to the coalition forces. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010719story_19-7-2010_pg7_5

3. Jailbreak Precedes Afghan Conference: The NY Times, July 19

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents used a prison break, a suicide attack and homemade bombs on Sunday to make their presence felt just two days before a major international conference that is to bring dozens of foreign ministers here.

The Kabul conference on Tuesday, which will also be attended by the United Nations secretary general and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, is intended to showcase the Afghan government’s seriousness about improving its performance by laying out its plans to coordinate and improve government programs.

In return, the mostly Western countries, which support much of the government’s spending with billions of dollars in aid, appear likely to agree to send a larger proportion of the money through the Afghan budget rather than through individual ministries or nongovernmental organizations.

In Farah Province in western Afghanistan, a complex series of attacks inside and outside the provincial prison killed a police officer and allowed at least 20 Taliban prisoners to escape. At midday the local police and other security forces were still searching for the escapees, Afghan security officials said.

In Kabul, a suicide bomber on foot killed three people, blowing himself up along a heavily populated road that runs between two parts of a large Russian-built housing complex where several members of Parliament live, along with many professionals and government workers.

The blast occurred as schoolboys were walking home for lunch just a few minutes before noon. People in the area were shaken by the attack, which occurred in a place that is generally viewed as safe because it is heavily traveled by Afghan and NATO security forces.

“I just saw black smoke after a deafening bang very close to my taxi,” said Ahmad Bahar, a taxi driver, who was barely 25 feet away from where the blast occurred. “A civilian on a motorbike was thrown yards away and was badly wounded as four other passers-by collapsed immediately.”

At least 45 people were wounded, said Dr. Kargar Noor Oghly, the spokesman for the Afghan Public Health Department.

Shams Hamidi, a student from a nearby school, said that even boys who were wounded tried to flee. “I saw two bleeding schoolboys running away from the smoke of the blast,” he said.

The prison break in Farah was a sophisticated and highly coordinated operation that started at 11 p.m. Saturday, when a suicide bomber attacked a police patrol. He was killed by the police before he detonated his bomb, which created confusion and sent a number of police officers rushing to the site of that attack. An hour later the Taliban attacked four security checkpoints in two districts around the capital, said Gen. Faqir Askar, the provincial police chief.

Then at 3 a.m., the Taliban attacked the prison gate, blowing it up while Taliban prisoners used explosives that had been smuggled into the prison to blow the locks off their cell gates. One policeman was killed and four inmates were injured, General Askar said.

He blamed the Taliban for smuggling in the explosives, but provincial council members and elders said the police had done a poor job and corruption had played a major role in the Taliban’s ability to do so. In addition, the prison is extremely overcrowded and hard to manage, with more than four times as many inmates as it was built for.

“The prison has the capacity of 80 prisoners, but we have put 400 in, which is difficult,” General Askar said. “This prison belongs to the Justice Ministry, and they should think about this.”

Provincial council members and tribal leaders said many issues contributed to what occurred at the prison. “If police were not involved, it wouldn’t be possible to transfer even one thing from a visitor to an inmate,” said a Farah provincial council member, Hajji Abdul Basir.

“However, it is also true that we have made frequent visits to the prison and the conditions were not good,” Mr. Basir said. “We have also heard that there are some other drugs activities going on in the prison and we asked the ministry to find a solution for that.”

The insurgency is less prevalent in western Afghanistan, and while Farah has long had pockets of insurgent activity, it has few attacks compared with other parts of the country. Recently, however, the Taliban have become stronger and have begun to plant mines and stage attacks on checkpoints, said Hajji-Allauddin Khan, a tribal elder from Farah.

“The Taliban are getting strong in some areas like Pashtirod, Bakwa and Farahrod districts,” Mr. Khan said. “They have plans and strong commanders and a shadow governor.

“They have been receiving training, there is no doubt,” Mr. Khan said. “Without training, how could they manage such a plan to engage security forces and transfer such explosives inside the jail to set free their men? This needs good planning and an intellectual mind.”

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

In Kabul, the NATO spokesman, Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, said the military had obtained a message from the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar describing people he wanted assassinated. General Blotz would not give any details about the identities of the people or how NATO had authenticated that the information was actually from Mullah Omar.

A NATO service member was killed Sunday in southern Afghanistan when a homemade bomb exploded, according to an announcement from the military.

In the city of Kandahar, a homemade bomb exploded Sunday morning as the police were defusing it; the blast killed a policeman and child standing nearby. www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?ref=asia&pagewanted=print

4.  Kabul suicide attack kills three civilians

KABUL: A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck a bustling street in the Afghan capital on Sunday, killing three people and wounding dozens more two days ahead of a major international conference.

NATO and Afghan security forces are stepping up security in Kabul to guard against possible attack in the lead-up to what has been billed as the biggest international meeting in the city since the 2001 US-led invasion.

Sunday’s bombing was the deadliest suicide attack in the Afghan capital since May 18, when a bomber killed at least 18 people, including five US soldiers, in an attack on a Nato convoy. The blast also shattered windows of houses, gutted nearby vehicles and left the street littered with body parts, said an AFP photographer.

Describing the powerful explosion witness Jawid Wardak said: “It was heavy, it shattered the windows of buildings on both sides of the road. “I saw four or five people wounded. They were taken to hospital in civilian vehicles.”

The government said that a suicide bomber on a bicycle carried out the attack. “He was trying to get to a specific area but because of high security the bomber was forced to detonate on a street,” an Interior Ministry spokesman told AFP. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30170

5 .Afghan Govt wants donors to support its priorities: The Washington Times, July 18

By Deb Riechmann

KABUL (AP) — At an international conference on Tuesday, the Afghan government will ask donors to put 80 percent of aid money behind programs that the Afghans — not foreign capitals — deem important to development.

It’s a high-stakes meeting for the Kabul government, which wants to show the world leaders attending that it’s making strides toward running its own affairs.

Displaying a new streak of independence, Afghan officials are seeking to take the driver’s seat to guide their nation out of three decades of conflict. Having spent billions and lost so many troops in nearly nine years of war, the international community remains uneasy about letting go of the wheel. Still, the United States and other donor nations believe that strengthening the Afghan government is the only way to end their military involvement in Afghanistan.

"If, after the Kabul Conference, we do not embark on the delivery of the things that we promised to deliver, then the donors as well as everybody else has every right to complain about us and tell us we are not serious," Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said.

Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan who is co-chairing the meeting, said there is much work to be done to increase the capacity of the Afghan government. "The ministers know it . . . we all know it," he said. He called the conference a historic opportunity for the Afghan government to renew its commitment to the people of Afghanistan. "Realignment will not be overnight," he said. "It will be a process."

Mr. Zakhilwal and other key Afghan ministers, working with sparse staffs, have spent weeks writing papers, outlining a plan of action with benchmarks for agriculture, reintegrating insurgents back into society, and economic and social development.

They not only are battling international skepticism but also must prove themselves to the Afghan public, who have little trust in their government.

The conference is "useless," said Bissullah, a 43-year-old man from the north end of Kabul who goes by only one name. "I am not hopeful that this conference is going to benefit us in any way."

Afghan lawmaker and political analyst Shukria Barekzai in the capital called the Kabul conference just another international meeting.

"They are only speaking about nice and wonderful reports and big promises," she said. "We, as a nation, are tired of the lip service. We are tired of having more casualties. We are tired of living in war."

Thousands of Afghan soldiers and police have been deployed to secure the capital during the one-day meeting. Officials worry that Tuesday’s conference will draw a repeat of the violence seen at national peace conference in May when two militants were killed in a gunbattle with security forces and a rocket landed with a thud about 100 yards from the meeting site.

Just before noon on Sunday, a suicide bombing near a market killed three civilians and wounded dozens. On Friday night, a combined international and Afghan commando force captured a Taliban bomb-making expert in the capital.

Workers were busy sprucing up the city on Sunday: picking up trash, planting flowers and painting curbs red and white. A large banner has been hung near the airport to welcome U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and delegations from more than 60 nations plus a host of other diplomats and representatives from international organizations.

The conference comes at a critical juncture in the war. NATO and Afghan forces are moving into areas controlled by the Taliban, and the insurgents are pushing back. June was the deadliest month for U.S. and international forces with the deaths of 103 service members, including 60 Americans.

In his inaugural address in November 2009, President Hamid Karzai said Afghan security forces should take the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country by the end of 2014.

While those attending the conference are expected to adopt a paper that outlines how this turnover will occur, they are not expected to agree on where or exactly when Afghan forces would take over from coalition forces in certain provinces, said Mark Sedwill, the top civilian official with the NATO force.

The NATO summit in November in Lisbon is the earliest that the Afghan and international community will be looking to identify provinces where transition can begin to occur sometime in 2011, Mr. Sedwill said.

But readying Afghan security forces for such a handover is only part of the challenge in Afghanistan; the government also must take on more responsibility.

Since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, 77 percent of the $29 billion in international aid spent in Afghanistan has been disbursed on projects with little or no input from Afghan government officials, according to the Afghan Ministry of Finance’s 2009 donor financial review.

While grateful for massive international aid, Afghan officials lament that money spent since 2001 sometimes has financed temporary programs or unsustainable projects that will not make a long-term difference in the daily lives of Afghans.

At a January meeting in London, donor nations agreed to increase the amount of development aid delivered through the Afghan government to 50 percent in two years.

On Tuesday, Mr. Karzai will ask the international community to restate this commitment and to align at least 80 percent of development and governance assistance over the next two years to a list of more than 20 national priority programs being introduced at the conference.

In return for getting foreign assistance directed to Afghan priorities, Mr. Karzai’s government will pledge among other things to improve its financial management system, improve collection of revenues, fight corruption and adopt policies governing bulk cash transfers, according to a draft of the conference communique obtained by the Associated Press.

"The Afghans have made progress in some areas; there are other areas where they are going to make commitments," said Mr. Sedwill, the top civilian NATO official. "There are other areas where all of us would have like to see more achieved."

But Mr. Sedwill said there are several areas that the international area has to address, too, especially in the way it awards contracts, which both sides acknowledge has contributed to waste and corruption. The United States and NATO have set up anti-corruption task forces to address complaints that massive international contracts have led to too much subcontracting, which leaves little at the end for the Afghan people and undermines efforts to build up the Afghan government and private sector. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/18/afghan-government-wants-donors-support-its-priorit/print/

6 .Truckers’ tax protest halts NATO supplies: By Ali Hazrat Bacha in Dawn, July 19

PESHAWAR, July 18: The owners of goods transport have threatened to continue their wheel-jam strike against imposition of taxes for indefinite period if their demands are not met.

The drivers supplying fuel to Nato forces in Afghanistan have also stopped supply and parked their tankers in Azakhel, Taro and other areas.

The transporters have been observing strike for the last one week against imposition of toll tax at Ring Road and alleged extortion by local police and Khasadar Force in Khyber Agency and Afghan police.

The truckers have parked their loaded vehicles at different terminals on G.T. Road, Ring Road and truck stands in Peshawar.

The drivers said that they felt themselves insecure on the route as the law enforcement agencies in the limits of Afghanistan usually fired at them whenever they refused to pay the extortion money. The issue, they said, was so serious that so far about seven drivers had lost their lives in Afgha-nistan but Pakistan government did not take up the issue with the Afghan government.

All Sarhad Goods Transport Owners Federation vice president Mohammad Ashraf Khalil, when contacted, said that the transporters had time and again conveyed their grievances to the authorities of both Afghan and Pakistan governments but none of them paid heed to their problems.“We have completely stopped the Nato supplies and other goods. Only transportation of vegetables and families are allowed. The strike will continue till solution to our problems,” he said.

He said that each trucker had to pay toll tax of Rs300 at Hayatabad and then Rs500 to Khasadar Force in Khyber Agency. The truckers entering from the G.T. Road to Ring Road were bound to pay Rs2,000 to police as extortion, he alleged.

He said that the Afghan police were in the habit to demand at least Rs5,000 Afghanis. He said that police in Afghanistan were totally against the Pakistani number plates and even the Afghan transporters were also forced to pay the extortion money.

“We have already conveyed our demands to the interior ministry but no action has been taken so far in this regard,” he said and added that it seemed that the governments of both the countries were not in the favour of supplying goods to Nato forces.

Majority of the truckers, he said, unloaded their goods and returned to Karachi, Lahore and parked their vehicles. About 4,000 trucks were still waiting on different roads and stands for getting permission to go ahead.

Mr Khalil demanded of the federal government to remove all the hurdles including the toll taxes and take up the issue with the Afghan government so that smooth supply of goods could be resumed. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/peshawar/truckers-tax-protest-halts-nato-supplies-970