As Sunday's spectacular attack in Kabul showed, the war in Afghanistan may be winding down in Washington, but it is heating up on the ground with spring's arrival.

And in Foggy Bottom and, to a lesser degree, on Capitol Hill, a battle is on for American hearts and minds even as calls for immediate withdrawal grow louder.  The objective: to keep Afghan women from falling off the political agenda while Washington and its NATO allies hunt desperately for a diplomatic solution to America's longest-ever war.  As the NATO summit in Chicago approaches - and women to date still have no formal role - that fight gets more urgent.

"Any peace that is attempted to be made by excluding more than half the population is no peace at all," said Sec. of State Hillary Clinton at a luncheon for the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council, an organization started under President George W. Bush to support programs benefiting Afghan women. "We will continue to stand with and work closely with Afghan women. And we will be working closely with the international community as well, because we all need to be vigilant and disciplined in our support and in our refusal to accept the erosion of women's rights and freedoms."

Former First Lady Laura Bush echoed the Secretary's comments.

"The failure to protect women's rights and to ensure their security could undermine the significant gains Afghan women have achieved," said Mrs. Bush.  "No one wants to see Afghanistan's progress reversed or its people returned to the perilous circumstances that marked the Taliban's rule."

Clinton, Bush and their allies face an uphill fight.  Today a record-high 69 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting. And the recent alleged killing of unarmed Afghan civilians by an American soldier has cemented public desire to call an end to the war that began just after the attacks of September 11.

President Obama did not once mention Afghan women in his 2009 speech at West Point, and members of his administration have been quoted as likening the country's women to "pet rocks."

It wasn't always this way. In 2001, Washington leaders regularly invoked the plight of women, who had just endured years of Taliban rule that barred them from school and work.  Afghan women became something of a cause célèbre worldwide, and the return of women to public life was seen as among the most positive byproducts of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Then-First Lady Laura Bush spoke out in support of Afghan women during a weekly presidential radio broadcast in 2001, and made high-profile visits to women's projects while visiting the country. 

A decade later, members of Mrs. Bush's team acknowledge the challenge they face convincing the American public that supporting Afghan women on the way out of the country matters.

"It is hard for people to see the endgame and that is what I think contributes to the frustration," says Mrs. Bush's former chief of staff, Anita McBride. "This is not high on the radar screen because it is challenging and the solution seems so far away."

Those working closely with Sec. Clinton acknowledge the battle to keep women front and center is not easy.  But they say they see an increased acknowledgment throughout the State Department and in the president's recent executive order on U.N. Resolution 1325 that women matter when it comes to peace. 

"While clearly there is a strong, strong desire for the end of this (war), the big concern is the state of the women -- what happens to Afghan women and that they not somehow be forgotten," says Ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer. "There is a recognition that for the genuine end of conflict and for the ability to reconcile with whomever it is possible to reconcile with, that the women have to be a part of that."

Those who have spoken out about the need to end the war swiftly say they agree.

"I came away strongly feeling that as we do draw down there that we have to retain a focus on these gains and whatever is necessary diplomatically or through our aid, that we can't neglect women," says Rep. Niki Tsongas of a recent trip to Afghanistan. "You have to publicly continue to raise the issue. That is the very least what we can continue to do, to publicly raise the issue and the importance of just trying to protect and secure those gains."

Tsongas did just that at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing with Gen. John Allen.  

"The question is, as we draw down from Afghanistan over the next several years, what can we do to make sure that we don't lose the hard-fought gains for the rights of Afghan women, 50 percent of the population? And what, if any, leverage will we have as we go through this process and after our withdrawal is complete?" she asked.

But is more than rhetorical support from those who support Afghan women's progress even possible?

"It is difficult, because I think that even for those who care very deeply about the status of Afghan women there is a little bit of schizophrenia, because I think some of us recognize that whatever the future is for Afghan women, the kind of military footprint that we have in Afghanistan can't go on another decade," says Rep. Donna Edwards, who co-chairs the Afghan Women's Task Force in Congress. "I believe that it is possible for us to construct a strategy where we make those kinds of civilian investments that will enable investments where it is possible to support women entrepreneurs, to support women in education, to support women as parliamentarians, I think it is possible to do that and I don't think we have too many more options left."

So what do the women at the center of all the discussion think of all the discussion of their future? Most say they simply want to be part of the conversation about their own country, particularly as they work to elbow their way into the discussions in Chicago next month.   And they want to know what, exactly, leaders of the international community means when they say to women that "we will not abandon you," as Sec. Clinton has repeatedly.

"We women are no more the priority for the world, that is true," says Samira Hamidi of the Afghan Women's Network.  "The international community is in a rush for withdrawal, but at the same time they keep repeating and pushing the theme that we will remain with you."

Hamidi says women want clarity on what, exactly, those assurances mean. Says Hamidi, "in ten years whatever has happened for women is because of the struggle and participation of women.  We are still fighting for our rights, for our inclusion, to be part of decisions and to be decision makers."

What Hamidi and other women leaders say they seek are assurances that any Taliban negotiations will keep in tact the Afghan constitution of the past decade, with its guarantee of equal opportunities, including the right to work and go to school, as well as a set-aside of a quarter of parliamentary seats for women.  More than two million Afghan girls are now in school, with thousands in university, and civil society leaders want them to stay there.  Women also want to be at the table, not outside the room, in any diplomatic discussions that will decide their country's future shape.   That starts with Chicago next month.

Women say they are not asking for favors, but to be part of their own societies.  They can speak up for themselves, and they are, but they could use the backing of big-dollar international donors who will be funding their government's security forces for years to come.  

"The worrying part for me in 2014 is not that the international community is leaving -- troops are leaving, they have to leave this is a reality.  We can't expect them to stay in Afghanistan for years and years, but for me what is important is how powerful our own security forces will be in 2014, how responsive they will be to women's needs.  Those are things that the international community can really make their funding conditional on."

Those who support Afghan women say that if the world wants to see any progress achieved in Afghanistan continue, it will support civil society leaders like Hamidi - between now and 2014, and beyond.

"Increasingly, across the board, people get the fact that this is pragmatic, that you can't get from here to there on the items all of us want to see [in Afghanistan] without women," Verveer says.   "Is it a guarantee? Well, we can't write the future.  None of us knows exactly what is going to happen.  We are dealing with a hypothetical and the best we can all do is to make sure that everything is in place as best as it can be as this continues to go forward."

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

In his last official event as an ambassador, barely an hour after the un-redacted transcripts of his alleged Blackberry Messenger (BBM) conversations with Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz were released, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani bore a grim expression as authors read out from short stories and poetry at the Pakistan Embassy (in the interest of full disclosure, I frequently cover issues relating to U.S.-Pakistan relations, and have interviewed Ambassador Haqqani a number of times).

Later that evening, he lost his cool with the media after they harassed him for a sound byte on Ijaz's accusations that Haqqani was the "senior diplomat" who led a plan following the death of Osama bin Laden to solicit American assistance to prevent a coup in Pakistan, and to help remove the country's senior military and intelligence personnel, by means of a "backchannel" memo to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. At the time he denied any involvement and said his fate was in President Asif Ali Zardari's hands, a position he maintains.

A day later, he boarded a flight to Islamabad.

This morning, news outlets reported on a meeting taking place at the Prime Minister's House with President Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and intelligence head honcho Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha with the ambassador. Not long after the meeting, Haqqani tendered his resignation, which was then accepted by the PM. According to Pakistani news channels, the Prime Minister asked for the Ambassador's resignation. In an official statement, a spokesperson for Gilani said, "As a result of controversy generated by the alleged memo which had been drafted, formulated and further admitted to have been received by Authority in USA, it has become necessary in National interest to formally arrive at the actual and true facts." Further details on what really happened in the meeting weren't available, but for days, many had speculated that this would be the expected outcome.

Several names for replacements for Haqqani have been making the rounds since he offered to resign last week, in light of the "memogate" disclosures. These include current Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, former ambassador to the United States Maleeha Lodhi, the current Pakistani representative to the United Nations Hussain Haroon, and former Pakistani Army chief Gen. Jehangir Karamat.

Lodhi, when asked about whether she would want to be ambassador, said at an event at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) last week that she had picked up the American expression, "three strikes and you're out." Lodhi has twice served as Pakistan's Ambassador to Washington under Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf's governments respectively.

Bashir, who at 59 years old is due to the reach the age of retirement soon, could be asked to resign from the Foreign Office and become a political appointee to the United States. Bashir's brother is Admiral Noman Bashir, the former Chief of Naval Staff, and he is viewed as being close to the military and establishment. He was also part of the Pakistani delegation that met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York in September.

But beyond the rumours on Ambassador Haqqani's replacement, there are dozens of unanswered questions about "memogate." Who was responsible for the contents of the memo, which did not reflect Haqqani's polished and erudite English prose? (Though by all accounts the alleged BBM transcripts closely resemble Haqqani's style). Why did they decide to use Mansoor Ijaz, who has a history of making extravagant and sometimes false public claims? And lastly -- what motive did all the players have for their roles in this episode?

More importantly though, it is unclear how this affair will impact civilian and military relations within Pakistan. It is no secret that the Pakistani Army was not Haqqani's biggest fan -- and if it turns out they insisted on his resignation, one can expect that they plan to call the shots with Pakistan's next emissary to Washington.

Huma Imtiaz works as a correspondent for Express News in Washington DC, and can be reached at huma.imtiaz@gmail.com

Tune in today: an on-the-record, all-day conference at the New America Foundation on the state of al-Qaeda and its affiliates ten years after September 11, 2001 (NAF).  

Change at the top 

The Associated Press reported this morning that as part of a reshuffling of President Obama's Afghanistan war team, current CIA chief Leon Panetta will be named secretary of defense to replace outgoing secretary Robert Gates, while current International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) head Gen. David Petraeus will replace Panetta at the CIA (AP). Yesterday the AP reported that that the Obama administration is likely to nominate veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker to be the next U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, replacing current ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who is expected to depart in the next few months (AP, NYT, Reuters, Post). The move would bring Crocker back to South Asia, where he was ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 until 2007 and opened the post-Taliban U.S. embassy in Kabul. Gates said yesterday that no decision has been made about the number of U.S. troops to begin withdrawing in July (Reuters).

Read on

One of the first cables released by the website WikiLeaks was a May, 2009 cable regarding the delay of removing High Enriched Uranium (HEU) by the U.S. from Pakistan's Atomic Research Reactor-1 (PARR) near Islamabad. In 2007, the Pakistani government agreed to allow the U.S. to ship the unknown quantity of HEU back to the U.S. However, in 2009 when U.S. technical experts arrived to discuss the fuel transfer, the Pakistani government balked for fear of local media backlash of the U.S. "stealing" Pakistani fuel. The event provided one more example of the poor relationship between the two countries and the U.S. not respecting Pakistani national concerns.

Read on

An airstrike in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan, yesterday is estimated to have killed as many as 27 civilians. The news of this airstrike has yet again stoked questions of whether a counterinsurgency strategy can be effectively carried out in Afghanistan, and if not, what the overall prospects of success in Afghanistan really are. Reducing airstrikes is key: these are the most visible and publicly inflammatory tactics that international forces use. But airstrikes, or the conduct of the coalition forces operating in Marjah, are only part of the picture; other practices that are equally important in terms of rebuilding Afghan trust and moving toward stability in Afghanistan have been routinely ignored and not seriously addressed.

The most serious outstanding example of this is the continued reliance on night raids, which my organization, the Open Society Institute, explores in a recently released report. Night raids are when military forces, usually a mixed group of internationals and Afghans, force entry into an Afghan home in the middle of the night, search the premises and usually detain one or more men of the family. Reports of abuse -- punching, slapping, or other mistreatment -- during these raids are frequent. According to the UN, at least 98 civilians were killed in these incidents in 2009.

Though night raids do not result in as many deaths as airstrikes, they can be as lethal to public opinion, if not more so. In terms of creating enemies, it's hard to do worse than breaking into someone's house at night, taking actions that are viewed as violating the women of the household, and hauling family members to unknown detention sites for weeks to months.

I was recently speaking to a group of Afghan National Army commanders who had just been trained in new counterinsurgency strategy about the importance of protecting and respecting civilians. He told me I should save my lessons for international forces. "Just last week they raided my house and three members of my family were taken away," he shouted, obviously enraged. "If they continue like this, soon I will become an insurgent rather than a counterinsurgent!"

Our research showed that even if the number of airstrikes decreases, night raids perpetuate Afghan impressions that international forces are abusive outsiders who wantonly or purposefully kill Afghans with no accountability to the law. These practices contradict international forces' public promises of population protection, and make it harder for international forces to speak credibly when incidents like the airstrike in Uruzgan do happen.

No one questions that it is necessary to detain and question suspects who might be aiding and abetting the ongoing insurgency. But the broader strategic goals of supporting the rule of law and regaining Afghan trust are seriously undermined when the default procedure for doing so is to break into homes at night with guns, dogs, and back-up, and absolutely no mechanism for monitoring or follow-up of reported abuse. For several years there have been serious concerns about the conduct of pro-government forces, particularly of U.S. Special Forces, intelligence personnel, and local militias, involved in these raids. Yet even high level officials have found it virtually impossible to identify those involved in a raid to hold them accountable.

There is reportedly a new directive on night raids, though still classified, which addresses some of these concerns. This is an important step, but the fact that this new directive has remained classified suggests that international forces have still not gotten the message that the lack of accountability over these practices is a large part of what is so unacceptable.

Though the continued pressure on airstrikes and on the overall conduct of operations like those in Marjah and in Uruzgan is important, it should not come at the cost of ignoring other practices that equally influence the effectiveness of the overall strategy in Afghanistan. In part II of this blog, I'll go into greater depth on what we found were the serious concerns and fixes for night raids.

Erica Gaston is a human rights lawyer for the Open Society Institute, specializing in civilian casualty issues.  She is based in Kabul.