AFGHANISTAN VOTES Voters defy Taliban threats and turn out in large numbers, forming long queues in cities across the country. 5APR14

CONGRATULATIONS to the people of Afghanistan who accepted their responsibility for their government and voted today. Congratulations also to the Afghan Security Forces for protecting these voters from taliban terrorism. And congratulations to the Afghan government and election officials who did their best to hold a free and fair election in spite of many of your colleagues. Now to see if the vote counting can be conducted without fraud. 

Voters defy Taliban threats and turn out in large numbers, forming long queues in cities across the country. D. Parvaz Last updated: 05 Apr 2014 14:26

Up to 400,000 security forces and police were deployed around Afghanistan [Abdullah Shahood/Al Jazeera]

Kabul, Afghanistan - It was not without its glitches, but an election signaling the first democratic transfer of power in Afghanistan went off without major incident. There were minor attacks, leading to nearly 900 polling stations being closed due to fighting or lack of security forces. The capital was quiet and security was heavy, the city heavily dotted with check points. There were a steady stream of small attacks, foiled attacks, ballot shortages and reports of ballot-stuffing and voter irregularity throughout the day. At a polling station in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood in Kabul, the lineup moved steadily in the rain. "I’m 100 percent sure that there will be fraud," said Takhor Shaml, a 21 year-old medical student. "But I’m still here to vote for the next president and provincial candidates." At that very polling station, a tense scene unfolded at day’s end when observers for presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign refused to let a box of ballots be taken away for counting. Mujib Rahman, one of the observers, wondered "why a box had shown up half full from the ministry of women’s affairs, why votes from this station are cast into it, why enough ballots and enough boxes aren’t provided and why the box must be taken away to be counted." 'We now know what we’re doing' Shrugging off fears of fraud, many cheerfully lined up to vote. Abdulbagheh Seddiqi, 62 the information manager of a television station, said he was not too concerned about voter fraud. The first election [2004] was new to us, we learned more by the second one [2009] and now we know what we’re doing. Abdulbagheh Seddiqi, 62-year-old voter in Kabul "I don’t plan to cheat, so I count on others not to cheat," he said. When asked about the possibility of government fraud - what many are worried about - Seddiqi replied: "The first election [2004] was new to us, we learned more by the second one [2009] and now we know what we’re doing." The results of this third attempt will start to roll in as soon as 28 of the 34 provinces have counted five percent of their vote - a process that will take several days. Glenn Cowan, CEO of Democracy International, an observer group with 16 observers at polling stations around the country, said what had been witnessed today was a "spectacular turnout" and that the election commission is expected to undertake counting "in an organised manner". The counting process will also be observed by local and international groups. Security concerns will continue over the next following days as ballots are transported and counted, but an unnamed security official told Al Jazeera that the number of recorded attacks on election day has been lower than an average days in the country. Voter turnout Participation was the crucial question of the day. Indeed, Afghan local media reported on the morning of the elections that 70 percent of eligible voters were expected to turn out. But that number, said Political analyst Haroun Mir, is too high, as it’s unknown how many people are eligible or registered to vote, with the number for the latter swinging somewhere between just over 16 million to 12 million. In a country of somewhere between 28 million - 32 million (there has been no recent census), hard data can be elusive. It is also unknown how many voter registration cards - which are simple, laminated pieces of paper, without a barcode or a magnetic strip of any sort - have actually been issued. "What’s important is that in 2009, seven million people voted, with about 1.2 million of those votes being discounted [due to fraud]," Mir told Al Jazeera. "If in the ensuing years all the people that have come of age to be eligible to vote and we have seven to eight million people voting, that will be significant." Who voted? The eligible and the legally ineligible alike were lining up to vote, all with voter ID cards. Nazanin, 16, also seemed focused on the presidential election over the provincial elections, taking place on the same day. "I think war is enough and we want peace," said the high school student, on why she was voting. Although not legally being eligible to vote herself (but was voting nonetheless), she also said she fears "fraud by government officials." Adibeh Khorami, an election observer at one of the 8,455 polling centres for women, said the Kabul station where she was working saw a 14-year-old girl come in with a voter ID, attempting to vote. "She was wearing a chadori [a burqa]," said Khorami, who had seen 343 women at her polling station by 2pm local time. "That’s how they try to get it. We took her card away, put her name on a list barring her from voting elsewhere and sent her away." Additional reporting by Jawad Jalili               Follow @dparvaz on Twitter

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2014/04/afghan-presidential-polls-close-2014451331246955.html

Obama announces reduced U.S. role in Afghanistan starting this spring 11JAN13

THIS is a good step in the right direction. It has been time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan and make them responsible for the security of their nation. Over a decade of coalition forces fighting the taliban and al qaeda and the training and arming of the Afghan military and nation police should have be enough for the nation to defend and police itself. The fact that after 10+ years of involvement in Afghanistan the government is still deeply corrupt (mostly due to complicity by a corrupt U.S. military-industrial complex) and that the rights of women are still being debated and at risk are disturbing, but can no longer be the justification for keeping American troops in the country. These are problems and issues the Afghan people and their government are going to have to work out. Our responsibility is to keep the pressure on the Obama administration to expedite our disengagement from Afghanistan and get out troops home before the end of 2014. From the Washington Post....

By Scott Wilson and David Nakamura

President Obama moved Friday toward a faster reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and laid the groundwork with Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a small troop presence in the country after the American mission formally ends there in 2014.
Obama and Karzai, leaders who have often been at odds in recent years, brought into sharper focus the American endgame for its longest war. Appearing after a series of morning meetings, the two outlined steps to wind down the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan over the next two years, a show of unity that excluded any talk of new ambitions.
Speaking at the White House, Obama said Afghan forces would take the lead in securing the country this spring, several months ahead of what had been planned at a NATO summit last year.
Karzai also clarified his intention to eliminate a key obstacle to preserving some U.S. forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014, pledging to “go to the Afghan people and argue for immunity for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.” Obama’s inability to reach an immunity agreement, which protects U.S. forces from foreign prosecution, prevented him from keeping any troops in Iraq.
Although Obama did not say explicitly that the accelerated transition would allow him to more quickly pull the remaining 66,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, he made clear that the “nature of our work” in the country after nearly a dozen years of war would soon change.
“We achieved our central goal, or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again,” Obama said. “At the end of this conflict, we are going to be able to say that the sacrifices that were made by those men and women in uniform has brought about the goal that we sought.”
The faster shift to a mostly advisory and training role will likely energize those within the White House, particularly among Obama’s civilian advisers, who have argued for a faster drawdown than some generals have recommended.
Obama will soon receive from Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a recommended schedule for troop reductions over the next two years. The U.S. president’s meetings with Karzai came as he prepares to set the final withdrawal timeline in the coming weeks and to discuss with the Afghan leader how he intends to do so.
Obama has ranked ending the war in Iraq and winding down the even-longer conflict in Afghanistan as key foreign policy achievements during his first term. Senior administration officials say bringing the war to a “responsible end,” as Obama said several times on Friday, is a top priority as he begins his second term.
His recent selection of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and Vietnam veteran, as defense secretary underscores Obama’s intention to focus less on fighting new battles in Afghanistan than on bringing home and caring for U.S. troops, many of whom have served several tours.
Asked Friday whether the human and financial cost of the Afghanistan war had been worth it, Obama recalled the 3,000 Americans who were “viciously murdered” by al-Qaeda, as well as the Afghans who were “brutalized” by the Taliban that controlled the country at the time.
“Have we achieved everything that some might have imagined us achieving in the best of scenarios? Probably not,” Obama said. “ This is a human enterprise, and, you know, you fall short of the ideal.”
But, he continued, “Have we been able, I think, to shape a strong relationship with a responsible Afghan government that is willing to cooperate with us to make sure that it is not a launching pad for future attacks against the United States? We have achieved that goal.”
Obama said any U.S. mission in Afghanistan beyond 2014 would focus solely on counterterrorism operations and training Afghan security forces, whose progress he described optimistically on Friday.
Obama would not specify how many troops he may leave in Afghanistan to accomplish those tasks, but he said it will be “a very limited mission, and it is not one that would require the same kind of footprint, obviously, that we’ve had over the last 10 years in Afghanistan.”
Within the White House, some officials are pushing to keep a force as small as 2,500 past 2014, far lower than the 10,000 to 30,000 that some U.S. officials and NATO allies were discussing as recently as a year ago. And Obama’s positive public assessment Friday will likely make it far more difficult for military officials to make the case for a more gradual drawdown than the White House wants.
Afghan forces have taken the lead in security operations in most of the country already, but Obama’s emphasis on the faster transition Friday suggested that he intends to use the shift to withdraw forces on an accelerated timeline. He called the spring transfer of responsibilities “a historic moment and another step toward full Afghan sovereignty.”
Karzai has complained frequently that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan threatens his country's independence, often drawing the anger of Obama and his senior advisers in doing so.
But unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has few natural resources and little national wealth, giving Karzai a greater incentive to push for an immunity agreement that would help keep U.S. troops and assistance in his country after 2014. On Friday, Karzai cited Turkey and Germany — two NATO countries that host large U.S. military bases — as possible post-war models for the U.S.-Afghan relationship.
Obama and Karzai hope to have the security agreement, including the immunity guarantee, finalized by November. That would help formalize the U.S. presence in Afghanistan before that country’s next presidential election, expected in the spring of 2014. The issue of American troops could become a feature of that campaign and complicate security negotiations if they have not concluded by then.
Asked on Friday how many U.S. forces should remain after 2014, Karzai said that is “an issue for the United States,” suggesting he would not negotiate vigorously over the number Obama settles on.
“Numbers are not going to make a difference to the situation in Afghanistan,” Karzai said. “The broader relationship will make a difference in Afghanistan and the region.”
Karzai and Obama said they had discussed the Afghan president’s efforts to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban, a process the White House refers to as “reconciliation.” The leaders agreed on allowing the Taliban to open an office in Qatar, where Karzai said direct peace talks with Afghan government negotiators will be held.
But Obama noted several times that the war is incomplete — both on the battlefield and in building a stable country.
As U.S. forces leave, Obama emphasized that he expects Afghan leaders to protect the rights of women to participate in public life in a Muslim nation where many are still forced to wear restrictive burqas and have limited avenues to education and jobs.
“The single-best indicator, or one of the single-best indicators, of a country’s prosperity around the world is how does it treat its women,” he said. “Does it educate that half of the population? Does it give them opportunity? When it does, you unleash the power of everyone, not just some.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/karzai-meets-obama-to-discuss-us-drawdown-in-afghanistan/2013/01/11/b50c72ec-5c03-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_print.html

TWO MORE AMERICANS KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN & NATO: 2 coalition troops killed by gunmen, one of whom believed to be Afghan soldier 29FEB12

SIX American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the last two weeks by our Afghan "allies", the very people we are protecting and training so their nation can be a democratic member of the community of nations. It isn't working, the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt, the Afghan people do not want us there, and the taliban will not be defeated by military force. I have two nephews in the U.S. Army. If they are sent to Afghanistan and are killed their blood will be on President Obama's and Congress' hands and I will not allow them to forget that they killed my nephews. It is time to end the waste of lives in Afghanistan, American, NATO and Afghan. It is time to end the waste of American tax dollars and material in Afghanistan. It is time to call the Pentagon and the U.S. military-industrial complex out over their lies and propaganda about the Afghan war and for our government to start to withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan immediately. From the Washington Post.....

by Mark Memmott

Enlarge AFP/Getty Images Feb. 23: Afghan demonstrators burn a U.S. flag during a protest in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Two more American military personnel were killed in Southern Afghanistan today when, officials believe, an Afghan civilian grabbed a weapon from an Afghan soldier and opened fire, NPR's Quil Lawrence reports from Kabul. At least one other attacker may also have been involved.
Quil adds that "we don't know yet whether this attack is linked to the Quran burnings, which set off so much violence — including the killing of four U.S. servicemen in the week that followed."
But as he notes, the killings follow closely the anti-American protests and violence in Afghanistan since it was reported on Feb. 21 that international military personnel had burned some Qurans at the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul. According to U.S. officials, the Qurans were mistakenly mixed with some trash. There have been apologies from President Obama and top U.S. commanders.
The Associated Press adds that it's been told by some officials that as many as three attackers may have been involved in today's killings — and that two of them were killed. NATO's International Security Assistance Force says in a statement "two individuals, one believed to be an Afghan National Army service member and the other in civilian clothing, turned their weapons indiscriminately against International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Security Force service members in southern Afghanistan today."
On ABC News' Nightline Wednesday, Obama said that while "we're not out of the woods yet," he believes the apologies have "calmed things down" in Afghanistan. He came under some sharp criticism — most vocally from Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich — after issuing the apology.

NPR's Tom Bowman, on 'Morning Edition'

Earlier today, on Morning Edition, NPR's Tom Bowman reported from Fort Polk, La., on the mock villages where U.S. military personnel are training for their dangerous mission to be advisers to the Afghan Army:

"The mission will be to advise and assist the Afghans on just about everything from combat operations and logistics to police work and medical care.
"It's no small task. Afghan soldiers and police aren't well-educated. There are desertion, drug abuse and a host of other problems. 'The big problem in Afghanistan, for the Afghanistan government, is corruption,' says Wahidullah Naqibullah, one of the Afghan role-players at Fort Polk."

KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO says two service members were shot dead in southern Afghanistan when two men, one of whom was believed to be an Afghan soldier, turned their weapons against international troops.
Thursday’s shooting is the latest case of Afghan policemen or soldiers — or militants disguised in their uniforms — killing NATO troops.
Six NATO service members have been killed this way in less than two weeks. NATO says one of the gunmen was wearing civilian clothing and the other was believed to be a member of the Afghan army.
Two U.S. military advisers were shot and killed Feb. 25 inside their office at the Afghan Interior Ministry. Days before that, an Afghan solider shot and killed two other U.S. troops during a protest over the burning of Qurans at a U.S. base.

by Mark Memmott

Enlarge AFP/Getty Images Feb. 23: Afghan demonstrators burn a U.S. flag during a protest in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Two more American military personnel were killed in Southern Afghanistan today when, officials believe, an Afghan civilian grabbed a weapon from an Afghan soldier and opened fire, NPR's Quil Lawrence reports from Kabul. At least one other attacker may also have been involved.
Quil adds that "we don't know yet whether this attack is linked to the Quran burnings, which set off so much violence — including the killing of four U.S. servicemen in the week that followed."
But as he notes, the killings follow closely the anti-American protests and violence in Afghanistan since it was reported on Feb. 21 that international military personnel had burned some Qurans at the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul. According to U.S. officials, the Qurans were mistakenly mixed with some trash. There have been apologies from President Obama and top U.S. commanders.
The Associated Press adds that it's been told by some officials that as many as three attackers may have been involved in today's killings — and that two of them were killed. NATO's International Security Assistance Force says in a statement "two individuals, one believed to be an Afghan National Army service member and the other in civilian clothing, turned their weapons indiscriminately against International Security Assistance Force and Afghan National Security Force service members in southern Afghanistan today."
On ABC News' Nightline Wednesday, Obama said that while "we're not out of the woods yet," he believes the apologies have "calmed things down" in Afghanistan. He came under some sharp criticism — most vocally from Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich — after issuing the apology.

NPR's Tom Bowman, on 'Morning Edition'

Earlier today, on Morning Edition, NPR's Tom Bowman reported from Fort Polk, La., on the mock villages where U.S. military personnel are training for their dangerous mission to be advisers to the Afghan Army:

"The mission will be to advise and assist the Afghans on just about everything from combat operations and logistics to police work and medical care.
"It's no small task. Afghan soldiers and police aren't well-educated. There are desertion, drug abuse and a host of other problems. 'The big problem in Afghanistan, for the Afghanistan government, is corruption,' says Wahidullah Naqibullah, one of the Afghan role-players at Fort Polk."

Afghanistan’s Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces 20JAN12

AFGHANISTAN, a waste land. Wasted lives, wasted material, wasted money, wasted time and effort. george h bush and his cabal of neo-con nazis are to blame for most of this because they never planned to support the American and NATO forces sent to Afghanistan to the extent needed to win this war, they had their wallets focused on Iraq. Now we are in a position of trying to find a way out without ending up having to evacuate the American Embassy in Kabul by helicopter. The French are right to suspend their operations in Afghanistan because of the murder of their troops by a member of the Afghan Army. The French will probably be out of Afghanistan before Spring, many other NATO members will quickly follow. They also knew when to get out of Vietnam. The US Military is counting on a deceptive, manipulative propaganda campaign to persuade the American people we can't afford to leave Afghanistan before 2014 and that we need to send more Americans to be killed and maimed to keep us safe and free. They used the same tactics to prolong the Vietnam War. But a vast majority of Americans (59% per Rasmussen poll 28-29NOV11 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/afghanistan/59_want_us_troops_home_from_afghanistan ), the Pentagon's propaganda campaign isn't working. Below is an article from the NY Times exposing another piece of American military propaganda. When a government has to resort to lying to their own people to justify a war, that war is already lost. END THE WAR NOW! After reading the article check out http://www.rethinkafghanistan.com and get involved in the anti-war movement. The struggle to end the war is one we must win for the sake of our soldiers and the soul of the nation.

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Afghanistan’s Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.
A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan.
Underscoring the danger, a gunman in an Afghan Army uniform killed four French service members and wounded several others on Friday, according to an Afghan police official in Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan, prompting the French president to suspend his country’s operations here.
The violence, and the failure by coalition commanders to address it, casts a harsh spotlight on the shortcomings of American efforts to build a functional Afghan Army, a pillar of the Obama administration’s strategy for extricating the United States from the war in Afghanistan, said the officers and experts who helped shape the strategy.
The problems risk leaving the United States and its allies dependent on an Afghan force that is permeated by anti-Western sentiment and incapable of combating the Taliban and other militants when NATO’s combat mission ends in 2014, they said.
One instance of the general level of antipathy in the war exploded into uncomfortable view last week when video emerged of American Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. Although American commanders quickly took action and condemned the act, chat-room and Facebook posts by Marines and their supporters were full of praise for the desecration.
But the most troubling fallout has been the mounting number of Westerners killed by their Afghan allies, events that have been routinely dismissed by American and NATO officials as isolated episodes that are the work of disturbed individual soldiers or Taliban infiltrators, and not indicative of a larger pattern. The unusually blunt report, which was prepared for a subordinate American command in eastern Afghanistan, takes a decidedly different view. The Wall Street Journal reported on details of the investigation last year. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.
“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” it said. Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.
The coalition refused to comment on the classified report. But “incidents in the recent past where Afghan soldiers have wounded or killed I.S.A.F. members are isolated cases and are not occurring on a routine basis,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr. of the Army, a spokesman for the American-led International Security Assistance Force. “We train and are partnered with Afghan personnel every day and we are not seeing any issues or concerns with our relationships.”
The numbers appear to tell a different story. Although NATO does not release a complete tally of its forces’ deaths at the hands of Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified report and coalition news releases indicate that Afghan forces have attacked American and allied service members nearly three dozen times since 2007.
Two members of the French Foreign Legion and one American soldier were killed in separate episodes in the past month, according to statements by NATO. The classified report found that between May 2007 and May 2011, when it was completed, at least 58 Western service members were killed in 26 separate attacks by Afghan soldiers and the police nationwide. Most of those attacks have occurred since October 2009. This toll represented 6 percent of all hostile coalition deaths during that period, the report said.
“The sense of hatred is growing rapidly,” said an Afghan Army colonel. He described his troops as “thieves, liars and drug addicts,” but also said that the Americans were “rude, arrogant bullies who use foul language.”
Senior commanders largely manage to keep their feelings in check, said the officer, who asked not to be named so he could speak openly. But the officer said, “I am afraid it will turn into a major problem in the near future in the lower ranks of both armies.”
There have been successes, especially among the elite Afghan commandos and coalition Special Operations forces, most of whom have undergone in-depth cultural training and speak at least some Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan. But, as highlighted by the classified report, familiarity in most cases appears to have mainly bred contempt — and that, in turn, has undercut the benefits of pairing up the forces.
The problem has also featured in classified reports tracking progress in the war effort, most of which are far more negative than the public declarations of progress, said an American officer, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing secret information.
“If you get two 18-year-olds from two different cultures and put them in New York, you get a gang fight,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has advised the American military on its Afghan strategy.
“What you have here are two very different cultures with different values,” he said in a telephone interview. “They treat each other with contempt.”
The United States soldier was killed this month when an Afghan soldier opened fire on Americans playing volleyball at a base in the southern province of Zabul. The assailant was quickly gunned down. The deadliest single incident came last April when an Afghan Air Force colonel, Ahmed Gul, killed eight unsuspecting American officers and a contractor with shots to the head inside their headquarters.
He then killed himself after writing “God in your name” and “God is one” in blood on the walls of the base, according to an Air Force investigation of the incident released this week.
In a 436-page report, the Air Force investigators said the initial coalition explanation for the attack — stress brought on by financial problems — was only a small part of Colonel Gul’s motivation. His primary motive was hatred of the United States, and he planned the attack to kill as many Americans as possible, the investigators said.
There have been no reported instances of Americans’ killing Afghan soldiers, although a rogue group of United States soldiers killed three Afghan civilians for sport in 2010. Yet there is ample evidence of American disregard for Afghans. After the urination video circulated, a number of those who had served in Afghanistan took to Facebook and other Web sites to cheer on their compatriots, describing Afghans of all stripes in harsh terms.
Many messages were posted on public forums, others in private message strings. One private exchange was provided to The Times by a participant in the conversation; the names of those posting matched those on record as having served in the Marine Corps. In that conversation, a former Marine said he thought the video was “pretty awesome.” Another said he hoped it would happen more often.
The 70-page classified coalition report, titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,” goes far beyond anecdotes. It was conducted by a behavioral scientist who surveyed 613 Afghan soldiers and police officers, 215 American soldiers and 30 Afghan interpreters who worked for the Americans.
While the report focused on three areas of eastern Afghanistan, many of the Afghan soldiers interviewed had served elsewhere in Afghanistan and the author believed that they constituted a sample representative of the entire country.
“There are pervasive feelings of animosity and distrust A.N.S.F. personnel have towards U.S. forces,” the report said, using military’s abbreviation for Afghan security forces. The list of Afghan complaints against the Americans ran the gamut from the killing of civilians to urinating in public and cursing.
“U.S. soldiers don’t listen, they are too arrogant,” said one of the Afghan soldiers surveyed, according to the report. “They get upset due to their casualties, so they take it out on civilians during their searches,” said another.
The Americans were equally as scathing. “U.S. soldiers’ perceptions of A.N.A. members were extremely negative across categories,” the report found, using the initials for the Afghan National Army. Those categories included “trustworthiness on patrol,” “honesty and integrity,” and “drug abuse.” The Americans also voiced suspicions about the Afghans being in league with the Taliban, a problem well documented among the Afghan police.
“They are stoned all the time; some even while on patrol with us,” one soldier was quoted as saying. Another said, “They are pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of the fighting.”

Alissa J. Rubin, Rod Nordland, Sangar Rahimi and Graham Bowley contributed reporting from Kabul.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article omitted reference to a previous account of the classified coalition report, which was published in The Wall Street Journal last year.