Americans are not alone in worrying that their economic futures are headed in the wrong direction. Afghans, too, fear that the next several years will bring a business tailspin that will see recent gains eked out by small and medium companies dissolve amid security woes and a sharp pullback in international largesse and, of course, foreign forces.

The "light of a new day" may be "on the horizon," as President Obama announced this May from Bagram Air Base, but Afghan entrepreneurs want to make sure their start-ups survive the changes that will accompany whatever comes next. This Thursday 50 such business-owners, 12 women among them, will gather at an investment conference in New Delhi hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industries with support from the Confederation of Women Entrepreneurs in India (CWEI).

The goal is to promote private sector investment in Afghan firms that will increasingly be seen as growth anchors for their country going forward. Companies descending on India this week in search of dollars range from big mining entities to smaller but growing entities including software, carpet-making, and media ventures. Outside Afghanistan few may think of the war-plagued nation as a small-business or start-up hub, but the resourcefulness of the dogged entrepreneurs I have covered these past seven years matches that of any I have interviewed in other countries, rich or poor. Afghan businessmen and women will need every bit of this determination as they confront the uncertainty of the coming years. And it is in America's and NATO's interests that they succeed.

As President Obama noted at Bagram, "Americans are tired of war," and the military intervention in Afghanistan has plunged to new depths of unpopularity in the latest public opinion polls. But economic development is critical to promoting stability and U.S. security interests, and it is essential to making the President's laudable idea of bringing a "responsible end" to America's longest war more than just empty words. Research shows that negative economic shocks of five percent can increase the risk of a civil war by 50 percent in fragile environments . Bolstering entrepreneurs, particularly those running small- and medium-size enterprises, is part of fostering lasting growth that is in both Afghanistan and America's best interest.

Despite remaining on the list of the world's poorest nations, Afghanistan has logged economic successes and macroeconomic stability on which to build. The country's GDP has more than tripled in the last decade, averaging around nine percent a year, with notable gains in infrastructure, telecommunications, and financial and business services. The Ministry of Communications recently began awarding 3G licenses to cellular phone companies and internet usage is expected to climb as technology improves and prices drop. Mobile phone penetration has leapt from less than one percent in 2001 to well above 60 percent today.

And business growth has not been limited to large firms. Small companies have cropped up across sectors, creating desperately needed jobs in a country whose unemployment rate is estimated at well above forty percent. The non-governmental organization Building Markets, which ran a business matchmaking service that helped Afghan firms learn of and apply for international contracts, counted 3,400 companies in its business database in 2008. By 2012 that number had climbed to 8,300, with nearly 300 owned by women. According to the World Bank's "Doing Business" report, Afghanistan ranks 30th among 183 economies when it comes to the ease of starting a business, requiring four procedures and seven days to register a firm. Training programs such as the International Finance Corporation's "Business Edge," Goldman Sachs' "10,000 Women," and Bpeace's "Fast Runners" now work with entrepreneurs seeking management and marketing training. And Afghan export promotion officials proudly point to recent wins marketing their carpets and dried fruits and nuts to consumers in Europe and the Middle East.

Yet bad news and economic question marks threaten to swamp the small steps forward. In 2010, Afghanistan's economy received nearly the same amount in foreign aid as it counted in GDP, and the assistance tsunami, often routed around the rickety central government rather than through it, has hardly helped to bolster the country's already weak institutions. Graft remains rampant: Afghanistan shared the next-to-last spot with Myanmar in Transparency International's 2011 "Corruption Perceptions Index."  Meanwhile, the trade deficit looks to top $6 billion and fiscal health remains shaky at best, with estimates suggesting government revenues will cover only 60 percent of the Afghan operating budget in 2013.

President Obama pledged in the Strategic Partnership Agreement he signed with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai that the United States "shall help strengthen Afghanistan's economic foundation and support sustainable development." This promise was not made simply because America is a benevolent power, but because an economically stable and increasingly prosperous Afghanistan connected to the world is good for the United States. It will soon be up to Congress to decide how much continued economic aid and development assistance to offer Afghanistan, and the temptation will be great to follow the Iraq example of ever-smaller requests met by even smaller authorizations. But shoving Afghanistan off the economic edge would be both short-sighted and counter-productive. As the World Bank noted recently, "international experience and Afghanistan's own history show that an abrupt cutoff in aid can lead to fiscal crisis, loss of control over the security sector, collapse of political authority, and possibly civil war." 

America may be drawing down troops and withdrawing militarily from Afghanistan, but the Afghan entrepreneurs gathering this week in India remain worthy of U.S. support and investment. They are allies in the American quest to bring "sustainable stability" to a country and a region that desperately need it.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.

The death toll of Pakistani soldiers who were the target of a cross border Taliban raid into Pakistan on Sunday has risen to 13 (ET, Reuters, WaPo, NYT, BBC). Of those killed, seven are now said to have been beheaded according to Pakistani officials who discussed details of the violence on Monday. In response to the attack, which was conducted by at least 100 Taliban fighters in the north-western district of Upper Dir, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry has lodged an official complaint with a senior Afghan diplomat, calling the episode an "intrusion of militants from the Afghan side." New Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said he would also raise the matter soon with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Pakistan's claim of terrorist safe havens emanating from Afghanistan offers a counter-narrative to the frequent U.S. and NATO complaints about militant networks purported to be operating out of Pakistan's border lands whom they see as responsible for much of the violence in Afghanistan.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned organization made up of a number of different militant groups, claimed this week that it is operating out of the Afghanistan border areas and using the area as a launching pad for attacks into Pakistan (ET). A spokesperson for TTP's Malakand chapter going by the name Sirajuddin claimed that Maulana Fazlullah -- one of the top TTP leaders who Pakistani officials claim fled Swat in 2008 after a Pakistani military crackdown -- is currently commanding over a thousand dedicated fighters in Afghanistan.

Elsewhere, on Monday, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters attacked a Pakistani TV station in Karachi, injuring two people (Guardian, Dawn). TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan justified the attack by saying "we had informed the management of Aaj TV to include our view on issues, but the channel had become a mouthpiece of the government." He went on to threaten further attacks on TV stations should they not adequately represent the Taliban point of view.

Another roadblock for anti-polio efforts

A top Pakistani Taliban commander in the South Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan said on Monday that he would not allow any polio immunizations to take place in his territory until U.S. drone strikes ceased in the area (Guardian, ET, Dawn). According to a leaflet distributed by Maulvi Nazir's militant group, the anti-polio regimen is considered a Western front. The leaflet mentioned the case of Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who was running a bogus vaccination program in Abbottabad to help the CIA locate Osama bin Laden. The warning from Nazir comes less than a month after another Taliban commander in North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, issued an almost identical ultimatum about polio and drone strikes. Pakistan remains one of the three countries in the world where polio is endemic.

Meanwhile, General John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is scheduled to travel to Pakistan on Wednesday to meet with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Dawn). He is expected to conduct negotiations aimed at restoring NATO supply routes to Afghanistan through Pakistan. It is also expected that Allen will press the Pakistanis to take action against the militant Haqqani network, whose safe haven in the Pakistani tribal areas has recently become a thorn in the side of U.S.-Pakistani relations (ET).

Reincarnating Swat's Buddha

Through a joint project of the Italian Archaeological Mission and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Department of Archaeology and Museums, a 20-foot tall sculpture of Buddha that was defaced by the Taliban in Swat in 2007 has been restored (ET). The project in Jahanabad was completed using a debt-swap agreement between the Italian and Pakistani governments.

--Tom Kutsch

A remote-controlled bomb blast on Monday, June 18 targeted a university bus in Quetta, the capital city of the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan, killing five students and injuring more than 60 civilians. All the students killed belonged to the Shiite-Hazara ethno-religious minority group. An underground Sunni militant organization, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which is thought to have close ties with the intelligence agencies of the Pakistani military, claimed responsibility for the unprecedented attack. While ceremonies and mosques of Shia Muslims are often the target of deadly attacks, a university bus has never before come under such a robust attack.

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Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday picked party notable Makhdoom Shahabuddin to replace Yousaf Raza Gilani for Prime Minister (NYT, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Dawn, CNN, ET). Mr. Shahabuddin, a member of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, was the textiles minister when the Supreme Court invalidated the premiership of Gilani on Tuesday. According to one analyst speaking to the New York Times, "Mr. Shahabuddin is an experienced parliamentarian, but he will face a tough choice to balance loyalty to the president and deal with an assertive court and a restive opposition." However, on Thursday, a trial court in Rawalpindi issued a warrant for Shahabuddin's arrest over his alleged links to a drug scandal in 2010 which anti-narcotics forces have said entailed the illegal importation of the drug ephedrine. Shahabuddin served as health minister at the time. The court also issued the same warrant to son of the recently departed prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. It is unclear how the arrest warrant would impact matters when the lower house of parliament meets Friday to officially elect Gilani's replacement for Prime Minister.

Targeting corruption in Afghanistan

Speaking to a special session of the Afghan parliament on Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for a redoubled effort to tackle corruption and mismanagement in the country (Reuters, WaPo, AP, Dawn). Eyeing next month's international donors conference in Tokyo, Karzai lamented that "each government worker who reaches an important rank is respected not because of his position, but by how many armed men and cars he has with him." Karzai indicated that international donors would likely pledge around $4 billion next month in assistance at the Tokyo conference, though the Afghan Central Bank this week noted that the country will need $6-7 billion dollars per year in assistance for the next decade in order to sustain sufficient levels of growth. Despite being ranked as one of the most graft-ridden countries in the world by the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International, however, Afghanistan has yet to prosecute a single high-level corruption case. In an attempt to signal his seriousness on the anti-graft front, Karzai specifically called on the U.S. to return former Afghan central bank governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat to the country. Fitrat resigned while traveling in the U.S. a year ago after being embroiled in a scandal that saw nearly $1 billion in loans disappear from Kabul Bank in 2010.

The Pentagon's top watchdog in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), is currently investigating the Afghan government practice of taxing American companies who are involved in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan (WaPo, The Hill, BG). The SIGAR audit will specifically look at cases when American-funded services or goods in the country are subject "to tariffs, customs duties, and other taxes or similar charges by the Afghan government." In a joint statement released Wednesday, Representatives Peter Welch of Vermont and Walter Jones of North Carolina -- who have been leading the effort to investigate Afghan taxation of U.S. companies aiding reconstruction work since 2011 -- noted that the SIGAR move "is a step in the right direction."

The death toll of a suicide bombing in Afghanistan's Khost province on Wednesday increased to 21, with 3 U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter counted among the dead of an attack that killed mostly Afghan civilians (WaPo, AP, NYT). The bombing was the third strike in as many days specifically targeting U.S. forces.

"Battle of the bulge"

The police chief of Pakistan's Punjab province, Habibur Rehman, has ordered 175,000 of his personnel to refrain from exceeding 38 inch waists or risk losing their jobs (Dawn). Rehman is reported to have said to some of his colleagues in announcing the rule: "I'm on a diet and if I can do it, why can't you?" According to the police in Punjab, at least 50 percent of the force is currently overweight.

--Tom Kutsch

On Wednesday, Pakistani officials announced the capture of a "key French al-Qaeda operative" in an operation near Pakistan's border with Iran (BBC, CNN, FT, Reuters, Dawn). The man, a French national named Naamen Meziche, is said to be in charge of some of al-Qaeda's international operations and was a close associate of Younis Al Mauretani, the senior al-Qaeda leader who was believed to have been tasked with planning attacks in Australia, Europe and the United States before his apprehension by Pakistani authorities in September 2011. According to the BBC Meziche is thought to be part of the Hamburg terrorist cell that played a key role in masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His job there was to recruit jihadists to the same mosque that ringleader Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers attended (the mosque was later closed by German authorities in 2010). Pakistani officials who leaked details of the raid did not say precisely when or where the operation had taken place.

Late Monday night, popular Pakistani singer Ghazala Javed was murdered in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar (ET, BBC, VOA). The famous Pashto musician was killed alongside her father by men on motorbike after coming out of a beauty salon. The suspect in her shooting is her husband, whom she had tried to divorce in 2010 after she found out that he had another wife and also refused to let her keep singing. After the Taliban took control of the Swat valley in 2009, and after receiving threats to quit publicly singing, Javed fled to Peshawar, but any connection between the group and her death has not been established.

Suicide bomber targets military convoy

At least 11 people were killed after a suicide bomber in Afghanistan's Khost province attacked an Afghan and American military convoy on Wednesday (NYT, BBC, Dawn, CNN, AP). A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) acknowledged that there had been ISAF casualties but declined to add further details, while several Afghan police officers and civilians were among the dead. It is the second time this month that a suicide attack has targeted NATO forces in Khost, which sits near the Pakistani border and hosts mainly U.S. troops. Wednesday's incident comes after two attacks in Kandahar province on Tuesday: one in which several were injured after militants stormed a NATO base and another where three Afghan policemen were killed in a gun battle at a police checkpoint (AP, WaPo).

A U.S. military panel investigating the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan in February has recommended low-level, non-criminal punishment for as many as seven U.S. soldiers (LAT, WSJ, Al-Arabiya). In the aftermath of the burnings at Bagram Air Base, widespread violent riots and attacks in Afghanistan led to the deaths of at least 40 people including Afghan civilians and U.S. soldiers.

On Tuesday the head of the Afghan Central Bank, Noorullah Delawari, said that his country would need at least $6-7 billion in economic aid per year over the next decade to keep the country's growth at a sufficient rate (ET, Reuters). Ahead of a donors conference in Tokyo next month, the Afghan government also reiterated its desire to have any foreign assistance be routed through the Afghan government rather than international organizations. In November the World Bank forecast that the Afghan government would face a budget deficit of approximately $7 billion per year until 2021 after the 2014 withdrawal of international troops and aid. Currently, about 90 percent of Afghanistan's budget is made up of foreign assistance.

On the brighter side in Oman

The Pakistani Embassy in Oman is using the next several weeks to solidify the already strong relationship between the two countries by holding a number of initiatives to highlight Pakistan's cultural exports to the world. Events will include the touring of a docked Pakistani naval ship, a mango festival, and a showcase of the country's photography (Times of Oman).

--Tom Kutsch

On Sunday, the Afghan Taliban released a statement praising India for avoiding an entanglement in the affairs of Afghanistan (Dawn, ET). Speaking to Reuters, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid added that India is "aware of the Afghan aspirations, creeds and love for freedom. It is totally illogical they should plunge their nation into a calamity just for the American pleasure (Reuters)." While India is one of the largest donors to Afghanistan, it has generally refrained from any direct efforts to bolster Afghan security forces.

The Taliban praise comes after U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited India last month in an effort to encourage a more active Indian presence in Afghanistan, especially after the departure of NATO troops in 2014. Panetta subsequently had a number of tough words for Pakistan, urging the country to end their support for militant safe havens. However, according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, the trilateral forum of the U.S., India, and Afghanistan is not intended as a snub to Pakistan: "On the contrary, it's to talk about the situation inside Afghanistan (Dawn)."

Meanwhile, since 2008, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has declined by 40 percent (USA Today). U.N. and military officials attributed the decrease to a number of factors including NATO's efforts to secure key towns, increased eradication efforts by the Afghan government, and programs which encourage Afghan farmers to switch their crops to wheat and other legal yields. According to Regional Command Southwest, the troop formation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, cultivation in Helmand province dropped from 256,000 acres in 2008 to 143,000 today. The command said that a further 6 to 7 percent decline in poppy cultivation is expected this year as compared to last.

On Friday two NATO troops were killed in the south and east of Afghanistan according to U.S. officials (Fox, VOA). The casualties brought the NATO death toll in Afghanistan to 195 for 2012. Also on Friday, a two-day operation in Paktika province killed 34 insurgents including two Taliban commanders according to Afghan officials.

Taliban leader threatens polio immunization efforts

On Saturday, Hafiz Gul Bahadur -- a senior Taliban commander in Northwest Pakistan -- warned all polio vaccination teams operating in the area he controls to cease their immunization efforts until all U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan are halted (BG, VOA, ET, CBS). The warning, part of a pamphlet released by the Higher Council of Mujahideen, justified the edict saying that while "polio infects one child in a million...hundreds of Waziri women, children and elders have been killed in these [drone] strikes." Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio is endemic. A top health official in the region said that a new round of planned immunizations -- targeting 162,000 children -- which were slated to begin on June 20 were being delayed indefinitely.  

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) unveiled a new plan that will seek to repatriate 150,000 Afghan refugees in 2012 (ET). Currently there are more than 1.7 million documented Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, with an additional estimate of at least one million undocumented. Four Voluntary Repatriation Centers (VRCs) have already been established this year to aid the program of voluntary repatriation efforts. The plan calls on increased efforts from both host countries (which includes Iran as well as Pakistan) and the international community. For its part, Pakistan has also suffered from displacement issues, as a UNICEF press release from Friday indicated that more than 240,000 people have registered as displaced from Khyber Agency since the beginning of 2012 (UNICEF).

The European Union upgraded its trade relations with Pakistan over the weekend to give the country preferential access to European markets (ET, Dawn). The change in Pakistan's trading agreements mean that the country will, among other things, be eligible for zero-duty on its exports starting in 2014.

Elsewhere on Saturday, at least 34 people were killed in twin bombings in the Khyber tribal region (NYT, Reuters). While no militants claimed credit for the attacks, local officials expressed confidence that Lashkar-i-Islam was involved.

A mother's quest for the Presidency

Twice elected to the Afghan parliament, Fawzia Koofi is continuing her effort to run for the Afghan Presidency when the term of current President Hamid Karzai expires in 2014 (CNN). An outspoken women's rights advocate who has previously been a target for assassination by the Taliban, Koofi says that she is inspired by her daughters to continue a political journey dedicated to a different future for the country. "Our daughters are like the hope, the future of Afghanistan," she said, ""I think women have to stand up, they have to raise their voice, demonstrate that they have equal abilities in this country like many other people have."

--Tom Kutsch

The reported killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi in a U.S. drone strike on the morning of June 4 in the town of Mir Ali, North Waziristan, if confirmed, is a significant loss for Al-Qaeda Central (AQC), and comes at a tumultuous time for the militant organization. U.S. government officials announced a day after the missile strike that Abu Yahya, whose real name is Hasan Muhammad Qa'id, had been killed, though official confirmation has not yet come from AQC itself. Within the organization Abu Yahya served as its chief juridical voice, whose job was to justify, support, and defend its ideological positions. He was also at the forefront of the global jihadi movement as one of the juridical and ideological architects of AQC's positions, particularly vis-à-vis the Pakistani government and military. Abu Yahya's influence extends to AQC's regional affiliates such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Al-Shabab in Somalia. The United Nations Security Council noted in September 2011 when it added him to its sanctions list that he was also a key strategist and field commander for AQC in Afghanistan. His loss would be a significant blow to both AQC and the wider transnational jihadi current.

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On Tuesday Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for an end to all coalition airstrikes in his country -- even when coalition troops are under attack -- calling them an "illegitimate use of force" (NYT, LAT, WSJ, AP). The pointed words from Karzai came at a press conference in Kabul several days after NATO commander Gen. John R. Allen had announced changes to coalition guidelines in order to assure Afghan leaders that no airstrikes would target civilian dwellings going forward. The proximate cause of the NATO policy change was last week's killing of 18 people including civilians in Afghanistan's Logar province after NATO airstrikes targeted a house containing Taliban militants after they had started firing on coalition forces. While Allen's announced changes carried the caveat that airstrikes would still be permitted as an absolute last resort under the new rules, Karzai was unambiguous Tuesday that all strikes were in fact no longer permitted. "Airstrikes are not used in civilian areas," he said, "if they don't want to do it in their own country, why do they do it in Afghanistan?"

A small group of U.S. army soldiers returned to Afghanistan's Nuristan province this week in the Hindu Kush region, an area some have called the ‘lost province' after the U.S. pulled out following an October 2009 raid by over 300 insurgents that killed 8 U.S. soldiers (Reuters). The province, which U.S. troops have also labeled the ‘dark side of the moon', is seen by military planners as a likely location for a possible upcoming Taliban offensive. Around 2,500 Taliban are thought to be in the province and operate freely as they stage many of their attacks deeper in the country. The U.S. forces returning to Nuristan were hoping to bolster a meager Afghan security post with weapons and supplies.

Representatives from 29 countries are to meet for an international conference in Kabul on Thursday to hold talks about the country's future. At the conference, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected to press Pakistan over the issue of militant safe havens and emphasize that only a regional approach can find a solution to the problem of the militancy plaguing his country (ET).

NATO head optimistic on supply routes

Speaking in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that he was hopeful that a transit agreement with Pakistan would still be concluded "in a not too distant future" (ET, VOA). Rasmussen was in the country for talks with Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith and to sign a NATO-Australia political agreement with Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Australia remains the largest non-NATO contributor of troops to Afghanistan. Despite securing transit agreements last week with several Central Asian countries for supply routes to Afghanistan, the preferred Pakistan route, which has been closed since November, remains closed and U.S. negotiators have had no success thus far in convincing the Pakistanis to change their minds. While some U.S. officials have suggested that Pakistan is unwilling to consider reopening the routes unless the U.S. greatly increases the tariffs it pays, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar rejected that notion when speaking with reporters in Islamabad on Tuesday: "Pakistan is not in any sort of price-gouging debate right now. So these impressions are indeed incorrect, wrong and must be dispersed as soon as possible (Dawn)."

On Tuesday, a new video surfaced online of al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi, the organization's number two who U.S. officials declared dead after a drone strike last week in Pakistan (ABC). In the video al-Libi is seen discussing the ongoing situation in Syria, among other things, but it was not immediately clear when the tape had been made. It is not unusual for groups like al-Qaeda to release tapes of leaders after a person's death.  

A legend's passing

Pakistan's legendary classical singer Mehdi Hassan passed away at a hospital in Karachi on Wednesday. The maestro of the ghazal tradition, an "undisputed king" in the form, was not only popular throughout South Asia but has a large following throughout the world. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called Hassan "an icon who mesmerised music lovers" around the world (Dawn, ET).

-- Tom Kutsch

Publication notice: The New America Foundation's National Security Studies Program has just released a new database detailing drone strikes against militants in Yemen.

Amidst faltering relations between Pakistan and the U.S., the U.S. pulled out a low-level delegation of its negotiators from Islamabad on Monday after talks failed to produce a breakthrough on re-opening a major supply route for NATO in Afghanistan which goes through Pakistan (Dawn, ET, NYT). Pakistan has not allowed NATO to use the supply route since an errant U.S. airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November. U.S. officials stressed that by pulling out the team they were not intending to send any political message to the Pakistanis, and that higher-level political negotiations over the supply route are ongoing.

A suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan killed two and injured two on Tuesday after targeting anti-Taliban tribal leader Muhammad Fahim (Dawn). The victims were his security guards. Meanwhile, in Baluchistan province in southwestern Pakistan, a motorcycle bomb killed three and injured 40 on Monday after hitting a bus in the Mastung district of Quetta. A Pakistani official suggested that the attack was intended to target Shiite pilgrims traveling to Iran but hit the bus instead (CBS). The attacks came after a bomb hidden in a toy killed a mother and injured three young children in the Nasir Bagh area of Peshawar on Monday (AFP).

Meanwhile, two days of discussions between India and Pakistan in Rawalpindi over the disputed Siachen glacier have ended without any progress, though it was agreed that the talks would continue (NYT).

Taliban attacks in Afghanistan

In two separate Taliban attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday, at least eight people were killed and several injured. In one bombing a suicide bomber on a bicycle targeted a police patrol in the northern province of Balkh and killed at least three people (AFP). Elsewhere, a minivan hit a roadside bomb in Wardak province south of Kabul and killed five (ET, CBS). The incidents came after a separate roadside bombing Monday night killed seven in Farah province in western Afghanistan.

The Afghan government said on Monday that militia loyal to the army chief of staff General Abdul Rashid Dostum were interfering with oil exploration being done in northern Afghanistan by the Chinese firm National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) (Reuters). The company signed a deal last year with the Afghan government -- the first international oil deal with Afghanistan in decades -- for exploration of the Amu Darya basin, a move that is expected to accrue billions of dollars to the government over the coming decades. Afghan government officials complained that men loyal to Dostum were demanding a cut of the profits, though Dostum's National Front party denied the allegations.

Between 80 and 90 people are feared dead in a remote village in Afghanistan's Baghlan province after two earthquakes struck Afghanistan yesterday, triggering a landslide that destroyed their homes (CNN).

The Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service has launched a full-scale probe into one of the U.S. military's top private contractors, Leonie Industries (USA Today). The company, which is seen as the largest ‘propaganda' contractor for the U.S., stands accused of failing both to pay millions of dollars in back taxes and to provide services for its Afghan employees. Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts, who has led the effort at investigating Leonie and who is a senior member on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, said that "it is critical that we hold the Pentagon, and companies working with our government, to the highest standards...claims of ongoing lack of accountability in war zone contracting cannot be ignored."

Pakistani judicial commission reopens ‘memogate'

A judicial commission's report to the Pakistani Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., Hussain Haqqani, did in fact author a memo to members of the Obama administration warning against the possibility of a military coup against Pakistan's civilian leadership (ET, NYT). The Supreme Court also declared that Haqqani must come back to Pakistan. Messages from Twitter by Haqqani, an avid social media user, defended his innocence against the controversial commission: "One-sided proceedings of Commission that refused to hear me will be challenged by my lawyers", said one, with another noting: "Commission is not a court and those claiming it has determined guilt or innocence are wrong." Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessman whose initial claims about Haqqani's actions first led to the ‘Memogate' controversy, said the news vindicated the "truth he had been speaking from the day the case started. (ET)"

Bearish on mangos?

Mango crops in Sindh are showing a 30 percent production deficit this year, primarily as a result of last year's monsoon season which caused extensive crop damages. According to a Pakistani fruit wholesaler named Ziauddin who spoke about the reduced crop with Dawn, however, the downward trend may find some respite if an export ban to Iran -- which accounted for nearly 40 percent of Pakistani mango exports last year -- is overturned this year (Dawn).

--Tom Kutsch

NATO's plan to transition Afghanistan to Afghan security control by the end of 2014 offers an unexpected but potentially golden opportunity for the United States and its allies to rectify, or at least improve, their strategy towards Pakistan. In the midst of major budget cuts and a reorientation of our global footprint away from Iraq and Afghanistan, Western leaders -- and particularly the U.S. Congress -- are already tempted to reduce support to a country that can at best be considered a fair-weather friend.  But over the next several years, the United States and NATO will be offered a chance to help Pakistan establish a functioning civil society without the complications of a Western-led counterinsurgency campaign across the border.

One benefit of reducing NATO's military presence in Afghanistan is that it will make it easier for the U.S. and allied governments to support entities in Pakistan in addition to the Government of Pakistan itself, particularly non-governmental organizations. At the same time, it will make accepting that assistance more palatable to Pakistanis, many of whom believe NATO's war has wrought violence and destruction upon their country. While foreign aid is far from guaranteed to achieve its intended results in Pakistan (or anywhere), effective assistance to Pakistan's civil society, in combination with increased access to foreign markets and improvements in security, is the tool most likely to help Pakistanis slow the slide toward failed nuclear statehood.  With a fast-growing population of disenfranchised and radicalized youth, that scenario represents a clear threat to Western interests as well as Pakistan itself.

Over the course of a ten-year war in Afghanistan, the United States and allied governments steadily increased assistance to the government of Pakistan, reducing it only after the death of Osama bin Laden and Pakistan's indignant response. From the United States alone, direct overt aid and military reimbursements ballooned from $1.99 billion in 2002 to $4.29 billion in 2010.  This number dropped to $2.37 billion in 2011 following a slow deterioration of relations that hit rock-bottom with the bin Laden raid on May 2 and has continued to slip over issues like NATO supply lines and cross-border incidents. The majority of this decrease has been made up of security assistance, and specifically Coalition Support Funds (CSF), which are used to reimburse Pakistan for military operations undertaken in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. 

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the United States was explicit in its statements of expectations for Pakistani cooperation, and confidence in Pakistan's support for U.S. efforts ran high through early 2002. By early 2003, however, President Karzai was intimating that Pakistan might be behind some Taliban attacks inside Afghanistan, or at least that Pakistan harbored those who were conducting them.  The U.S. press was regularly reporting such accusations - including cryptic quotes from anonymous U.S. officials -- by mid-2004, and in July 2008, U.S. officials were all but confirming that Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was supporting Taliban groups.  

Thus, the majority of U.S. assistance was ultimately provided in spite of what many perceived as a contradiction between what Pakistan said ("we're on your side in Afghanistan; your terrorists are our terrorists"), and what their actions seemed to convey ("we are primarily concerned with our terrorists and may go as far as supporting those who attack your soldiers if it will protect our interests in Kabul"). These misgivings were felt broadly inside the U.S. government, reaching as high as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen who, after years of staunch support for Pakistan, famously called the Haqqani Network a "veritable arm of the ISI." But Pakistan's military cooperation along the border combined with critical assistance on counterterrorism made providing almost anything worth the cost, even while many knew the assistance relationship was deeply flawed.

This calculus must shift as NATO reduces its footprint in Afghanistan. The United States and NATO will still need the Government of Pakistan's cooperation on certain issues, particularly counterterrorism, but also ensuring supplies reach the Special Operations and intelligence personnel remaining in Afghanistan after the bulk of the forces withdraw. Maintaining good relations with the military and civilian leadership is critical, because they are important regional actors and arbiters of access for personnel, official and otherwise. Improving the Pakistan military's ability to control its territory will also remain important as long as insurgent groups - not to mention al-Qaeda - continue to use it as a safe haven.  But overall the United States and its allies will need those entities less, making it easier to diversify who receives aid in the country.  Certainly it will be a challenge to maintain these relationships while diverting assistance from the military and/or civilian government to other groups within Pakistan.  But as long as we are careful to avoid supporting groups that the Government of Pakistan views as active threats (i.e., opposing political parties, Christian groups, or organizations associated with India), there is no reason the United States, its allies, and private aid organizations cannot provide assistance to groups outside the formal government structure and/or military.  In fact, this is the United States' foreign assistance model in many other countries around the world.

The United States and its allies will also have more leeway to negotiate access for personnel who can oversee implementation and increase transparency.  For example, the Government of Pakistan has been circumspect about allowing U.S. and other foreign personnel to directly implement assistance programs and military training, with obvious effects on donors' ability to verify how and where money is spent.  Past efforts to use assistance as leverage to gain necessary access have been somewhat successful, but have floundered during periods of escalated tensions.  If the United States and NATO are less dependent on Pakistan to support operations in Afghanistan, and if Afghanistan-related tensions are even partially diffused, they will be better positioned to require access and transparency in return for aid.

The future stability of Pakistan is reliant on a viable civilian leadership capable and willing to address the needs of its people. With a population of more than 180 million growing by 50 million over the next 15 years, the political elite's inability to address a chronic lack of education and basic services is setting the conditions for major civil unrest accompanied by sectarian violence and instability. Current efforts to remedy these problems are underfunded and plagued by administrative and logistical problems, making the likelihood of effective progress slim without outside help.  And in a country with rampant Islamic extremism and a fast-growing nuclear arsenal, the current trajectory makes Pakistan - already a dangerous place - even more ominous on the world stage.

Western nations' ability to change Pakistan's overall course is limited.  There is, however, reason to be hopeful.  There were an estimated 100,000 non-profit organizations operating in Pakistan as of 2009, a large percentage of which are locally-funded and could have greater impact with the help of foreign funding.  In a less contentious future environment, the United States and its allies could provide assistance to some of these groups, as well as work through international organizations and encourage foreign investment and private donations.  While the U.S. Congress and allied governments are justified in remembering Pakistan's indiscretions over the course of the Afghan war, it is the responsibility of those nations' leaders to win over lawmakers and their constituents on why an unstable Pakistan only means more turbulence for the region and beyond.

These non-profit organizations and other parts of Pakistani civil society, including its long-stifled but not non-existent private sector, may have a chance of improving conditions in the country, drawing on the support of the moderate majority. Pakistani and international charitable organizations are making a small dent in the massive problem set Pakistani confronts, particularly in the realm of education.   But there is one fact that Western policy-makers are going to have to accept: many of these players hold Islamist and anti-Western views. As we learned in Egypt and other Arab Spring nations, we cannot expect entities to represent the people of a Muslim nation and not embody some Islamic values. This fact in itself does not make that group extremist or an enemy of the West.

Policy-makers should apply this new understanding to future engagement with Pakistan, while remaining aware of both the sensitivities of the Government of Pakistan and those of the U.S. Congress, who remain the stewards of U.S. tax-payer dollars.  If the United States, NATO, and Pakistan can use the Afghan drawdown to reduce tensions and improve security, if only marginally, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has the potential to more closely resemble the peace-time relationships maintained with other nations in South Asia and elsewhere.  This would encompass a balance of international assistance (both through government structures and non-profits, keeping in line with host nation priorities), free and balanced trade relationships, and help in developing a dynamic political and economic environment. 

Conveniently, the drawdown in Afghanistan also makes it easier for many Pakistani groups to work with Western groups and governments.  Many Pakistanis are quick to blame Pakistan's domestic problems on the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan's participation in it. Whether or not this is based in reality, those perceptions drive politics within Pakistan. As the United States and NATO reduce their military presence in the region, Pakistani officials will be less able to blame Western actions for their domestic problems.  At the same time, the population will increasingly focus on day-to-day survival rather than regional matters, and non-profits will increasingly seek civilian assistance for their country.  The West can meet those calls and gain much good will at a reasonable cost.

Based on its own national and strategic interests, Pakistan has been a tentative ally in the Afghan war.  But the United States and its allies cannot write off the population of Pakistan for the shortcomings of its political system.  In fact, to do so poses much greater long-term risks, the mitigation of which requires a nation moving towards economic viability whose problems are not spilling into the world around it. Failure to maintain international support to Pakistan means discarding a real chance for progress by walking away before the real work has begun.

Whitney Kassel is a former Assistant for Counterterrorism Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC), and now serves as a director at The Arkin Group.

When the U.S. and Afghan governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on handing over Bagram jail and its detainees, both of the governments and the media -- including myself -- saw the agreement as a real transfer of sovereignty and a victory for President Karzai. Now I am much less sure. It seems a system may be emerging where the gains in sovereignty are illusory and, though there is an Afghan face on security detentions, the U.S. military remains in control. 

There is another twist to the handover of Bagram prison, which is officially known as the Detention Facility in Parwan -- or DFiP. The MoU committed the Afghan state to using detention without trial for some security prisoners and both the United States and Afghanistan have moved swiftly to set up the system for doing this. However, the government denies having made any such commitment. The Presidential spokesman, Aimal Faizi, was unequivocal:

We signed the MoU... mainly to put an end to detentions without trial because they are not in accordance to the Afghan laws... The President has always been absolutely against detentions without trial and this is his stance today as well... We have not signed or agreed anything which allows detentions without trial.

The Bagram MoU was a response to President Karzai's ultimatum in January 2012 that the United States had a month to hand over both prison and inmates after reports of maltreatment. This MoU -- along with a second one on Afghan-izing special operations (dealing with the especially sensitive topic of night raids) -- were pre-conditions on the Afghan side for the signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement, which the United States wanted in place before the recently-held NATO summit in Chicago. 

The United States was worried about the possible release of men whom it considers the most dangerous in detention, as the 3,000 odd people currently held by the U.S. military without trial in Bagram could well be considered illegally incarcerated under Afghan law. Hence the Afghan and U.S. negotiators took recourse to the Laws of Armed Conflict. Both MoUs cite the 1977 Second Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (APII) as the legal basis for detention without trial. APII acknowledges that when a state is fighting a war, it may deprive its citizens of "their liberty for reasons related to the armed conflict."

Is it possible that President Karzai might not have understood what using APII entailed? The English version of the Bagram MoU says only that the Afghan government would be using "administrative detention" at Bagram, but the Dari version is more specific. It is "gheiri qazayi", or non-judicial, and the Afghan president's legal advisor confirmed at the time this would be without trial. A presidential decree on the handover also appears to have been passed. A reference to an undated, un-numbered, and as far as I know as yet unpublished decree appears in another document -- the (also unpublished) Procedure for the Transition and Management of Bagram[i] -- which was signed by the ministers of justice, interior, and defense, the head of Afghan intelligence (the NDS), the head of the Supreme Court, and the Attorney General on March 3 (read a translation here). The Procedure also cites APII. It is possible that the Afghan government does not want to admit it is now using internment because it would be politically unpopular, or because using APII means implicitly acknowledging that Afghanistan is fighting a civil war.

Getting information on what exactly is happening at Bagram is difficult, but from interviewing those involved in the handover, none of whom would speak on the record, and after getting hold of the Procedure, it has been possible to paint a fuller picture.

The mechanisms for handing over the prison have been rapidly established. Since at least mid-April, the U.S. military has been passing on detainees' case files (in English, with Dari translation) at a rate of 30-40 a day to an Afghan technical committee (made up of representatives from the ministries of interior and defense, from the NDS, Supreme Court and Attorney General's office). The Committee sends cases with prosecutable evidence to NDS for trial under Afghan criminal law. The remaining case files are passed to a review board (made up of representatives from the ministries of interior, defense, and NDS) which, for just over a week, has either assented to continued detention without trial, if it believes the individual is a continuing security threat, or has recommended release. There is no detail about the nature of the required evidence here, but according to the Procedure, continued detention can be ordered even if the Board believes the prisoner is only a "potential supporter of an armed group engaged in hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or international forces."  

If the review board recommends release, the file is sent back to the Bagram Transfer Commission (made up of five ministers), which can order a release. However, if the U.S. military believes an individual continues to be a terrorist threat, the MoU says this assessment should be "consider[ed] favourably." Such an (apparent) veto on release may not seem unreasonable given the way detainees frequently use influence, bribes, or intimidation to secure their freedom once inside the Afghan justice system. Still, it does not look like a transfer of sovereignty.

There are other indications that the U.S. military may still retain control. After initially reading the MoU, I assumed, like others (including the BBC) that, after six months, Bagram and its detainees would be handed over, once and for all, to the Afghans. The MoU says:

The United States Commander at the DFIP is to retain responsibility for the detainees held by the United States at the DFIP under the Law of Armed Conflict during the processing and transfer period, which is not to last more than six months. (Article 6c)

Re-reading all the documents and interviews, I rather think the U.S. military may intend to also have the option of retaining control of each freshly detained person for a maximum of six months before transferring him to the Afghan authorities. When asked about this, the U.S. embassy spokesman would only say: "We have nothing further for you on this topic at this time."

One can well imagine a scenario in which Afghan forces, working with the U.S. military, knock down the doors of Afghan homes and make the arrests (as per the second MoU on special operations), but the detainees, if considered interesting, stay in U.S. custody. The United States would still control initial detention, classification, and release, but the Afghan government would be in the firing line, either under pressure from the relatives of detainees wanting their people freed or criticized on human rights grounds relating to indefinite detention and the lack of legal recourse to evidence, independent counsel, and the like.

Now that the legal doors to internment have been opened, one can also imagine detention without trial spreading to other Afghan facilities. This must be a concern, given the many abuses, including torture, already staining the Afghan justice system, particularly for security detainees.  

The new arrangements in Bagram are not yet set in stone. The MoU itself makes clear that, "this arrangement is subject to review as part of the Bilateral Security Agreement to be negotiated between the Participants after the signing of the Strategic Partnership." Up till now, however, voices of protest about the nature of the handover have been few.  One belongs to MP Shukria Barakzai, chair of the Afghan Lower House Defense Committee, who has questioned the very legality of detention without trial. Otherwise, the start of the state interning its citizens has taken place quietly, with almost no comment in the media or in parliament.  Afghans are simply not aware of their loss of one of the most fundamental rights - for a prisoner to have his or her day in court.  The opportunity for an honest debate on detention without trial is not yet over, but there are no signs yet of the discussion even beginning.

Kate Clark is the senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network and is based in Kabul.

[i] ‘The Procedure for Transition and Management of Bagram Detention Facility and Pul-e Charkhi Detention Facility from the United States of America to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan'

This month's NATO summit in Chicago has provided many writers and analysts a moment to debate possible outcomes of the U.S. endeavor in Afghanistan.  Commentary ranges from David Ignatius "thinking the unthinkable" about the Taliban returning to Kabul, to former First Lady Laura Bush urging the international community to remember the women of Afghanistan.  The meeting provides a timely inflection point about the price paid in blood and treasure, and the future return on this costly investment. 

Yet there is a glaring gap in this conversation, one that ignores the on-the-ground reality of Afghanistan.  It is the role of religion and its influence on the trajectory of the Afghan government.  By paying it little or no heed, the United States is omitting a key piece of the complex jigsaw puzzle that is Afghanistan's future. 

My meeting with Afghan Minister of Justice Habibullah Ghalib in Kabul drove home the importance of religion and its influence on matters of state.  Our conversation in December 2010 quickly turned to the application of Islamic religious law to the affairs of men and women, especially the issue of apostasy, a topic which places core freedoms of religion and conscience at the center of government policy.  At the time, a convert to Christianity was being detained, but similar cases had arisen where Muslims were charged with "criminal" activity considered blasphemous.  He justified government actions on Islamic law, brushing aside my counterarguments for freedom of religion and belief based on international standards, the Afghan constitution, and even Qur'anic references. 

It wasn't surprising that the Minister was unmoved in his view that apostasy and blasphemy were crimes to be punished by the state, as it reflected past Afghan government actions against Muslims and non-Muslims to stifle freedom of thought and restrict expression.  However, it underscored the cost of not addressing the role of religious tenets in law and governance. 

Afghanistan's legal system is a big part of the problem, despite Article 7 of the Afghan constitution stating that the Afghan government "shall abide by" the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  In practice, Afghanistan has established a restrictive interpretation of Islamic law through the vague repugnancy clause in Article 3 that states that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."  Consequently, there are no protections for individuals to dissent from state-imposed orthodoxy, debate the role  of religion in law and society, advocate for the human rights of women and religious minorities, or question interpretations of Islamic precepts.

David Ignatius' "unthinkable" thought of a Taliban return to Kabul could happen, but perhaps even faster than he imagines.  The Afghan constitution's provisions referencing undefined notions of Islamic law give Taliban sympathizers legal cover to apply their regressive religious interpretations through laws against human rights, religious freedom, and women's rights.

Religion matters in Afghanistan, and promoting religious freedom and tolerance can help achieve human rights and security goals.  Repression of religious freedom strengthens the hand of violent religious extremists.  As I've written elsewhere, conditions of full religious freedom allows for the peaceful sharing of differing views and interpretations.  This openness can displace extremist influences from social and religious networks, thereby limiting their ability to influence populations of concern and turn them towards violence.  Recent studies and research are building an empirical case that limitations on religious freedom lead to more, not less, societal instability. 

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom -- where I work -- has documented Afghanistan's poor religious freedom record and placed Afghanistan on our Watch List.  USCIRF has described the situation as "exceedingly poor for dissenting members of the majority faith and for minority religious communities."  Regarding religious minorities, USCIRF reported how "the small and vulnerable Christian community experienced a spike in arrests, with Christians being detained and some jailed (and later released) for the ‘crime' of apostasy."  The Hindu and Sikh communities continue to face discrimination and violence, while the small Baha'i community operates basically underground, especially since a 2007 ruling by the General Directorate of Fatwa and Accounts decreed their faith to be a "form of blasphemy."  Even the much larger minority Hazara Shi'a community, which has experienced greater freedoms, was targeted by suicide bombers in late 2011. 

A string of events in recent months bears further witness to religion's unmistakable role in Afghanistan: 

Taliban response to Strategic Partnership Agreement - There were two Taliban responses to this agreement, one violent, but the other focused on religion.  The violent response received much greater attention, since this was the attack on Bagram Airbase after President Obama left the country.  However, the Taliban also issued a statement in April, immediately after the announcement of a deal, outlining five ways the Karzai government was caving.  Four of the five focused on issues relating to Islam - preventing a true Islamic government; bringing in secularism and liberalism; creating an army hostile to Islam; and being a continuous threat to Muslim countries in the region.  The Taliban believes this issue to be relevant to the Afghan populace.

Qur'an burnings - The accidental destruction of Qur'ans and other Islamic materials triggered a nationwide backlash, attacks on U.S. and ISAF personnel, and an apology from President Obama. Dozens were killed and scores more wounded.  Sensing a public relations bonanza, the Taliban pressed to exploit the situation to their advantage, issuing statements urging violence and offering this as further evidence of America's supposed war against Islam. 

Ulema Council statement and Karzai response - The Ulema Council, an influential body of clerics sponsored by the Afghan government, issued a "code of conduct" for women that permits husbands to beat their wives and promotes gender segregation.  If that wasn't alarming enough for human rights and women's rights advocates, President Karzai endorsed the statement.  He had other options, such as refuting the findings or at least ignoring them, but Karzai felt the need to endorse them, saying they were in line with Islamic principles.  Why?  Because the role of religion in politics and governance has a great influence in Afghanistan. 

Despite these developments, a response is not to be found in the Strategic Partnership or the recent NATO summit declaration.  No mention was made of promoting religious freedom and religious tolerance, key elements of any attempt to see human rights and women's rights protected and respected. 

While these high-level documents are silent, there is increasing recognition of this challenge in U.S. government policy.  The State Department has initiated a program to counter extremist voices, which looks to bring other Islamic perspectives into Afghanistan to help expose Afghanis to the broader Islamic world.  After 30 years of civil war and the impact of a narrow Taliban-imposed view, there is little understanding of how their religion can work successfully with democracy and human rights.  USAID is also doing interesting work with Afghanistan's informal justice system, introducing human rights into the centuries-old traditional system, and doing so through the lens of Islamic law.  However, these efforts, while positive, are not enough to have a lasting impact. 

In other words, the current level of programming won't move a needle that is pointing dangerously in the wrong direction.

It's getting late in the game, but it's not too late to move the needle.  There is still time for concerted action.  The U.S. government can ramp up its efforts to increase public diplomacy relating to religious freedom and religious tolerance, and bring more delegations of Afghan religious and NGO leaders to the United States and take American religious and NGO leaders to Afghanistan.  The United States can jump-start training about the balance between religion and state and the compatibility of Islam with human rights and religious freedom.  Continuing to press for greater freedoms in public and private is critical, as well as starting new initiatives, such as creating a special working group on religious freedom/tolerance in U.S.-Afghan strategic dialogues.  U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces should be trained to understand international standards when engaging with Afghan religious leaders, local government officials, or Afghan local police forces.  U.S. government personnel also need to increase their "religious IQ" on the role of Islam in Afghan society, as well as understand how religious freedom can promote stability and security.

As Afghanistan goes about building institutions as the international community departs, getting the religion question right will be a part of every answer.  The Taliban and the Afghan government talk about religion, apply religious law, and use it to their advantage.  Considering religion is the lens through which everything passes, significantly increasing engagement on religious freedom and tolerance will advance U.S. human rights and national security interests. 

Knox Thames is the Director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The views expressed here are his own and may or may not reflect the views of the Commission. He can be followed on Twitter @thames22.

It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.

"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"

All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. A delegation of 12 women from Aman-o-Nisa, sponsored in part by the Institute for Inclusive Security, recently traveled to Washington, DC to share their work with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington policymakers. The AfPak Channel sat down with three of the women -- Qadeem, the founder of Pakistan's first center for conflict transformation and peacebuilding,  Sameena Imtiaz, the founder and executive director of the Peace Education and Development Foundation, and Bushra Hyder, the founder and director of Qadims Lumiere School and College -- while they were in town for a conversation about why so few women work in counterterrorism, and the tactics they use to reverse the violent, extremist mentality.  

The interview is condensed and edited below.

Of course, Islamic extremism is a major problem in many other countries besides Pakistan. Why are there so few groups like Aman-o-Nisa, and so few women working to counter extremism?

Bushra Hyder: Most of the women are not even aware that they can play a positive role combating extremism. Secondly, there are security reasons involved. In our part of the country, if a woman goes out and starts getting involved in such activities, she is definitely going to be at risk. Naturally, the males of the household and family would not like their women and females...facing any kind of security threat. That could be the reason, but the fact is the majority of the women are not aware of it.

Sameena Imtiaz: [Women] are also not recognized by men as [people] who could play a very supportive role in combatting extremism in countries such as Pakistan. [In] the security sector in countries like Pakistan, for instance, women are hardly visible. They are not at the dialogue tables, they are not consulted and valued in the policymaking processes that are there.

Mossarat Qadeem: Extremism per se has never been recognized and debated upon in Pakistan as a threat. We feel that there is a foreign hand involved in the incidence of extremism that takes place in Pakistan. And ...we leave it to the government to respond to it. Even the men in the community and society have never thought that they can do something at their level to combat it or to address it. Everyone says it's the responsibility of the government , and they should respond to it because it's a foreign threat - it has nothing to do with Pakistanis, it's not our issue.

Why do Pakistanis see it as a foreign threat? Is it because the extremism in Pakistan isn't homegrown, as it tends to be in Morocco, for example?

MQ: In Pakistan...it's so unobtrusive. It's not obvious that someone is coming and asking the people to become Taliban, to become an extremist, unlike Morocco. That's why this invisible enemy, this invisible hand, is so dangerous, because you don't know who to counter and how to counter.

What are the origins of extremism in Pakistan?

SI: Talibanization and extremism are not new phenomena in Pakistan. We have to go back into the early 80s when many Pakistanis were fighting in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. There was a lot of money that was poured into Pakistan to help these militant groups who are now called Taliban and who have become a monster. They have been thriving on foreign aid.

A lot needs to be done to undo what has been done in the past. But what we are expecting from Pakistan at the moment is there should be a magic wand and all this disappears. It [requires a] change of mindset. You have for decades taught young people that they have to fight this fight in the name of Islam. If you have trained young people to become fighters and warriors, you cannot expect them to become mercenaries of peace immediately. You have to work with them...deradicalize the people who already have this mindset now, and to stop the slide of these young people into extremism. You have to provide them other opportunities, you have to open up avenues for alternative work opportunities for them. What do they do if they don't fight? If they don't become militants? Do they have then food to eat, places to sleep in? You have to look at them as human beings and treat them as human beings.

How do you go about trying to transform the mindsets of radicalized youth?

MQ: We use the Quranic verses -- the true interpretation of the Quran, and of course the teachings of the Holy Sunna. We give examples of the Prophet Muhammad. That's the best way to counter radicalization and extremism in Pakistan, because the [verses] have been misquoted and misinterpreted [by extremist trainers]. We use a lot from the history around the world, giving examples of why peace is important.

What are the subjects - or verses - that you bring up the first time you speak to a radicalized young person?

MQ: Before doing all of this, I conducted research [to find out] what tools have been used to transform these youth.  I came across certain verses that were misinterpreted and misused -- particular verses about jihad. And I had to take different sources and different interpretations of various religious scholars and accumulate them. I had to actually work with some of the trainers and scholars [who had radicalized the youth] because I wanted to know, what should be my approach?

How did you get these trainers to talk to you? And what did they tell you?

MQ: Two are transformed now. They told me, these are the verses we have been using, these are the tactics we have been using, this is the picture we used to draw for these students. I did it in a very different way. I used the same tactics, but it was real, it's what the Quran says.

What's an example of a verse that has been misinterpreted?

MQ: There is a particular verse in the Surah Maidah that says ‘go out and fight.' But the fighting in that particular verse was misinterpreted. That verse was used in a particular period of time when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was living in the state of Medina, and the people wanted to kill every Muslim. So they really had enemies to face - [they] were being killed, and [there was the risk that] Islam would [disappear].

Obviously, you all do very risky work. How often do you feel directly threatened?

SI: All the time. We are working in such a sensitive area.  The risk is always there. We have so many times received life-threatening messages. There have been attempts on many of us. So yes, that's part of the game.

Elizabeth Weingarten is an editorial assistant at the New America Foundation.

President Obama's surprise speech in Kabul on May 1 was a political stunt filled with the kind of mischaracterizations typical of a campaign, but the actual U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement that he signed while there was something of greater substance.

Much of the agreement echoed the language and intent of the earlier 2005 Strategic Partnership Agreement. Both agreements sought to reassure the Afghans of the United States' staying power, and articulate broad principles on which the bilateral relationship rests. They are both "executive agreements," which lack the power of formal treaties ratified by the Senate.  To that extent, the agreements are like cotton candy:  pleasant, fluffy, but easily torn apart. That may explain why the Afghans, having the 2005 agreement in hand, felt the need to pursue further reassurances once Bush left office.

According to some reports, the Afghans were looking for a full-fledged mutual defense treaty.  Such a treaty would have obligated the United States to treat an attack on Afghanistan as an attack on itself.  If so, the Afghans are surely disappointed, but they were also unrealistic in their hopes.  It is difficult to envision Americans accepting a defense treaty obligating American intervention in South Asia in perpetuity when most no longer welcome our actual intervention in Afghanistan to fight a war that two presidents have argued is vital to our national security. The Afghans probably got the strongest expression of support possible in the current U.S. political climate.

The crux of the long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan in the new agreement is this:  "The Unites States shall designate Afghanistan a ‘Major Non-NATO Ally.'" The Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) designation was created by Congress in 1989 as a way of identifying America's major strategic partners without the burdensome requirements of a formal treaty.  It confers a range of benefits, including participation in U.S. Defense Department research and development projects, preferential access to U.S. military surplus supplies, the use of U.S. loans to finance weapons purchases, and expedited applications for space technology exports.  More importantly, the designation has a powerful symbolic value: it is a public affirmation of a country's affiliation with the United States, a global badge of American approval.  Although the designation does not technically carry a security guarantee or legally obligate the United States to come to the defense of a designee, the label of "ally" implies as much. Only 14 states and Taiwan have been given the MNNA status.

Critics may argue that MNNA status is merely symbolic, but symbols are important.  Afghanistan is now in the same category as Japan, Australia, Israel, and Pakistan. And the agreement goes beyond the symbolic, stipulating that the United States will train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces "consistent with NATO standards and [will] promote interoperability with NATO forces." To cement relations between the newly-minted "allies," the Agreement commits the United States to negotiating a Bilateral Security Agreement with Afghanistan over the next year, and the administration is also initiating talks on a Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) and a defense cooperation memorandum of understanding (the timing allows the Obama administration to delay decisions on difficult issues like detentions and night raids until after the election).

Collectively, these provisions communicate a relatively strong U.S. commitment to Afghan security and begin to undo the damage done by the Obama administration's various and shifting deadlines for the Afghan mission. In a best-case scenario, in ten years or so the Afghan Army could become one of the key developing-world partners and force-multipliers for U.S. and Western military forces in contingency and peacekeeping operations. Afghanistan could become the next Bangladesh, providing the manpower for peacekeeping missions that Western nations are willing to fund but not man, in exchange for which the Afghans get valuable operational experience and funding. (The Agreement won't, however, be a help in any future U.S.-Iran war, as it expressly prohibits the U.S. from using Afghan territory to attack another country. The clause, reflecting an understandable concern by the Afghans, may also complicate the U.S.'s ability to attack terrorist targets inside Pakistan).

Of course, these assurances only matter if Kabul defeats the Taliban insurgency, a topic on which the Agreement is oddly silent. The Agreement affirms the joint goal of defeating "al-Qaeda and its affiliates," the closest it comes to referring to the Taliban. There is vague language restating the long-standing reconciliation policy-that unspecified "individuals and entities" must sever ties with al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and accept the constitution-but fails to identify at whom the policy is aimed. The United States just pledged a decade's worth of security cooperation to a country in the middle of a civil war, but managed to avoid talking about the civil war.

The silence is probably calculated to protect the Strategic Partnership in the event the Taliban join the government following a negotiated peace. Kabul and Washington can claim that the Agreement is not aimed at the Taliban, who therefore have nothing to fear from it. In other words, out of fear of what the Taliban might do in a hypothetical future scenario, the Americans and Afghans gave them a seat at the negotiating table in the Strategic Partnership talks, effectively rewarding them for their threat of continued violence. This is a poor negotiating strategy. Instead, the Agreement should have identified the Taliban, committed the parties explicitly to its defeat, and only then reiterated the reconciliation policy.

The Agreement has other weaknesses.  For example, it commits Afghanistan to providing the United States with continued access to military facilities through 2014 "and beyond as may be agreed," needlessly requiring Kabul and Washington to re-negotiate access to Afghan facilities again in two years. The 2005 agreement contained no expiration date on American access to Afghan facilities (like Bagram and Kandahar air fields), a much simpler arrangement that still respected Afghan sovereignty under the obvious understanding that the Afghans could ask the United States to leave at any time.

Similarly, the Agreement pledges the United States to "seek funds on a yearly basis" for Afghan assistance, a weak and unenforceable clause. The Agreement failed to commit the United States even to an aspirational target of financial aid to Afghanistan. For example, the United States could have promised to seek at least $2 billion per year for security assistance and $1 billion per year for civilian assistance, which would have afforded a small amount of protection for Afghan aid after 2014, when donor fatigue and Congressional inattention set in.

The most troubling aspect of the agreement, mirroring the overall weakness of the Obama administration's Afghan policy, is the evident imbalance between the military and civilian aspects of U.S. engagement there. For years, the United States has invested massively in building up the Afghan Army and police but comparatively little in building the Afghan government. The result is a strong Afghan Army and a weak Afghan state, a highly unstable and dangerous combination.  If the Afghan Army ever successfully defeats the Taliban, it could itself suddenly become the greatest threat to Afghan national security.

The new agreement only perpetuates this unhelpful dynamic. After several pages detailing U.S.-Afghan security cooperation and a decent section on economic assistance, it contains a brief, vague, throw-away section on governance. Afghanistan promises to improve itself, and the United States promises to help, with no details, no promise of new resources, and no promise of training up to international standards. The one or two solid ideas regarding governance in the agreement-that the U.S. will channel more of its aid through the Afghan government, and align its aid to Afghan priorities-may be unachievable precisely because the capacity of Afghan institutions continues to lag and suffer from endemic corruption.  Compared to the detailed, specific, and increasingly dense U.S.-Afghan security partnership, the U.S.-Afghan governance partnership is almost non-existent. The United States risks replicating the same error in Afghanistan that characterized U.S. policy towards Pakistan for the last six decades.

Nonetheless, as a whole, the new U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership is a strong signal of enduring American commitment to help one of the world's most failed states, and secure American interests in South Asia.  After more than ten years of effort with halting progress and fragile, reversible gains, such commitment is welcome.  The partnership is arguably one of Obama's best achievements on Afghan policy (after the 2009 military surge), and showed some political courage considering the increasing unpopularity of the war among the American electorate, especially in his own political base.  The very fact that there is a strategic partnership agreement will help to buy time for Obama, or his successor, to improve on its weaknesses in 2014 and beyond.  That will go a long way to upholding America's promise to the Afghans.

Dr. Paul D. Miller is an Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National Defense University's College of International Security Affairs. The views expressed here are his own, and do not reflect those of the U.S. government.