Mediaboss Marketing

BySayed Yahya Akhlaqi

Afghanistan, given its ancient history and strategic and geopolitical location in the heart of Asia and on the ancient Silk Route can play a pivotal role in the economic development of the region. Afghanistan with its unique location is able to act as a linking ring of Southern and Northern Asia, Middle East and Western Asia and can play its extraordinary role in regions economic development and stability.

Considering the rich energy resources of Central Asian countries, and an acute need for it in the South Asian countries, Afghanistan can serve as a link for this connectivity. Without a doubt facilitating transit and access by Central Asian countries to South Asian Markets and vice versa can very much help in the economic growth and prosperity of the region. On one hand, it is important to transport natural gas, fuel and electricity from countries located northwards of Afghanistan to her southern neighboring countries like India for the development of domestic production and industrial development. And on the other hand, for the products of these South Asian countries can be exported to Central Asian countries, particularly those products from India such as tea, coffee and equipment required for upgradation and modernization of the existing industrial infrastructure and in the agricultural sector as well.

When Afghanistan acquires the capacity to build a port and the road via Vakhan Valley to Xinjiang province of China, then Afghanistan would get not only better transit advantages but this route would serve as a shortest path for export of products of PRC to West Asian countries by road, and on the other hand China for increase of its productions would need more raw materials and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan could be the source for supply of those materials because this country as a linking land bridge which offers unique opportunities for the economic development of the region.

Afghanistan is one of those countries which possesses especial geographical location with special transit advantage, and can desirably use this advantage through the extension of transport, transit, communication networks and establishment of a reliable transportation system to enhance economic benefits. Chabahar can be a good example of transit transport communication between Afghanistan and India as well as other Asian and African countries. Chabahar allows India to side-step Pakistan, which blocks its access to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

On their part, Indians are cognisant of its strategic location and its potential for opening a route to Afghanistan and Central Asia. There have been two significant trips where the port has figured in discussions on investment and connectivity. During Prime Minister Narendra Modis trip to Tokyo last November, his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, agreed to help India with the Chabahar project. Both leaders directed their aides to hammer out a plan to fast-track the project. India wants Japanese investment and help in building the railway track between the port city and Zahedan. Both India and Japan see strategic convergence in Chabahar as it allows the landlocked countries of Central Asia to find a route away from ports that enjoy Chinese domination like Gwadar.

The presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, during their visits to Delhi, were also promised access to this warm water port. From all standpoints Chahbahar located in the Oman Sea away from the turbulence of the Persian Sea region, has the potential to reorder old routes into new ties. Afghanistan can act as a land bridge to Eurasia including Central Asian countries. Russia and the Central Asian countries are also in need of a southern opening into South Asia. Importantly the Central Asian countries will also have access to warm water ports in the Arabian Sea.

Completion of Railway project Sangan-Khaf in Iran and its extension up to Afghanistan, the extension of the Railroad from Aqina up to Shirkhan Bandar and finally into Tajikistan, operationalization of final station of the Hairatan- Mazar-e-Sharif railroad, completion of transportation of energy which includes electricity transmission project from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, operationalization of route to Chabahar port, Lapis Lazuli Route Agreement for exports and imports Afghanistan position as the hub of trade, transit and transport corridor connecting east with west, and north with south is obvious.

(Director of Transit and Trade Facilitation in Afghanistan Ministry of Commerce and Industries)

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

See the article here:
Afghanistan: Transit hub for the region - Economic Times (blog)

Army Maj. Gen. Robin Fontes on Saturday assumed the highest position of any female servicemember in Afghanistan since the war began, taking over command of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.

I promise to give you my full support, my best effort, my respect and my loyalty every day, Fontes told a crowd at a change-of-command ceremony. Fontestook over fromoutgoing Commander Army Maj. Gen. Richard Kaiser.

Fontes, a U.S. Military Academy graduate, has spent 12 years in the region, serving in Afghanistan multiple times, as well as in India, Pakistan and Tajikistan. She speaks three regional languages.

Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, described Fontes as the most proficient and competent officer in the field of security assistance within the military. He said he had to fight to get her the position because she was heavily sought after in Washington.

There is no officer of any service in the United States military that has more experience in this region than Maj. Gen. Robin Fontes, Nicholson said. She is the best possible commander for this command. She will take this command to the next level.

In addition to taking control of CSTC-A, Fontes will assume the role of deputy chief of staff, security assistance for Resolute Support headquarters.CSTC-A is part of NATOs Resolute Support mission aimed at developing Afghan security forces. It provides resources and training in areas such as management and sustainability.

Before relinquishing command, Kaiser, who Nicholson described as universally respected, told Stars and Stripes that he believed his tenure as CSTC-A commander was productive.

I always hesitate to use the word success, he said. Weve had many successes, but there are many challenges that remain.

Kaisersaid establishing Afghanistans Anti-corruptionJustice Center and implementing measures to identify and prevent so-called ghost soldiers were among his biggest successes.

He saidissues regarding genderremain one of the biggestchallenges, but he believes progress will be made underFontes.

Im confident shell do a wonderful job, Kaiser said.

2017 the Stars and Stripes. Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.

WATCH NEXT:

Excerpt from:
New Commander Is Highest Ranking Female Officer In Afghanistan ... - Task & Purpose

This year at FIRST Global Challenge, a robotics competition in Washington, D.C., an international committee of judges will assess the creativity and collaboration of 163 teams from 157 nations focused on tackling the global water crisis. From Sunday through Tuesday, the teams will present robots designed to clean contaminated water, as represented in a simulation by colored balls.

One of the groups attending consists of six teenage girls from Herat, a city in western Afghanistan near the border with Iran. (They will present a device that can recognize and sort balls of different colors.) These young women, who range in age from 14 to 16, know the ravages of water crises firsthand. Indeed, Afghanistan and Iran, which share a border, are just now trading barbs about water usage.

That the girls are able to attend at all is a political miracle. Despite winning a spot in the event, they were turned down twice by the U.S. consulate when they sought visas to come to America, once in May and again in June. Even after traveling to Kabul to try to obtain them, the girls joined their Gambian counterparts as the only teams turned down by local U.S. consulates. This, even though nearly 10,000 U.S. soldiers remain in Afghanistanwith more likely heading there before the year is outin what has become Americas longest-ever war. As part of Americas presence in Afghanistan, it has invested heavily in girls education, maternal health, and the broader issue of womens rights. These investments are frequently cited by U.S. leaders as measures of the country's progress. Yet it took sustained pressure on and from Washington leaders to bring these six girls, who embody their nations forward movement over the past 16 years, to the United States.

On Tuesday, a congressional letter signed by more than 50 members of Congress urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to reconsider the decision to bar the girls. Then, on Wednesday, word broke that the Trump White House itself would intervene to get the visas approved. The State Department worked incredibly well with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that this case was reviewed and handled appropriately, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell said in a statement issued on Wednesday. We could not be prouder of this delegation of young women who are also scientiststhey represent the best of the Afghan people and embody the promise that their aspirations can be fulfilled. (The Gambian team has also been cleared to attend.)

For the Afghans working to build this team, the high-profile attention and approval meant a great deal after several weeks of disappointment and dashed hopes. The team had worked for months, and come up against the challenges of the old and real world: the conservative society from which they came, and the security risks people representing the U.S. government viewed them as posing. And then, suddenly, the same government that denied them the chance to compete reversed itself.

The girls are very talented and we are very happy the U.S. didnt ignore us and they are giving us the option to come here, Roya Mahboob, an Afghan tech entrepreneur who serves as one of the teams sponsors told me. It will be an inspiration for other girls to follow these girls [into studying] mathematics and robotics.

Immigration, visas, and foreign visitors, have consumed a great deal of attention since Trumps election and subsequent anti-Muslim travel ban. But Afghans difficulty in securing visitor visas to America began well before the Trump administration, out of concerns stemming from people who came to the country and then either sought asylum in Canada or simply skipped out on their visas.

In late 2015, for example, the Thunderbird School of Global Managements Thunderbird for Good program, which has offered business training to Afghan women entrepreneurs since 2004, put forward 14 names for visas to attend its two-week program at the schools Phoenix campus. A few months later, they got their answer: zero yess, 11 nos, and three maybes. We were totally shocked, Kellie Kreiser, executive director of Thunderbird for Good, told me.

Eventually, she learned that visas had become more difficult to come byeven Fulbrighters were being turned down. Government officials didnt know who was going and who was staying, and they had so many people who were seeking asylum or skipping out that they had to ratchet [the administering of visas] down, she said. It was a legitimate response to something they couldnt get a handle on anymore. I cannot fault them for that. Kreiser and her team moved the session to India so that the women they selected would still have access to Thunderbirds training.

The entrepreneurs didnt lose out, as they still got the training they sought. But even fewer Americansincluding policy makersgot to meet them, to hear their stories, and to speak in person with these entrepreneurs working towards their countrys future.

Some see at least one bright spot in the Trump administrations reversal on the visas for the Afghan robotics team: Americans, long accustomed to a narrative that has bled into caricaturethat Afghanistan is a basket case which remains in the stone agecan now see for themselves a new generation of Afghans fighting for a different future. Young people who want to be connected to the world, who see something other than war as a possibility for their nation.

At 16 I [only] had the option [of knowing] what a computer is. But for these girls that are 16, they are building robots and they are coming to the States to compete with other countries, Mahboob said. It is huge compared to 12 years ago.

The abrupt policy change on the visa issue came about after sustained media attention. While Afghanistan was never part of Trumps travel ban, the questions about who can come and for what reason send a message as America prepares to send more troops back to Afghanistan.

For Americans who have worked to raise money for development programs in Afghanistan, there is some vindication in all this high visibility. It has shown that there are Afghan women who are advanced enough in technology to be able to compete that is a big reveal for a lot of people, that there has been progress, especially in education, in Afghanistan, Toni Maloney, CEO of Business Council for Peace, which since 2004 has supported and mentored small business owners in Afghanistan, told me. We do have to credit the past work of a lot of non-profits, the State Department and their own exchange programs, and USAID. There has been a lot of money invested and a lot of time. And so it is hard won by anybodys standards.

Mahboob echoed the idea that Afghanistan is changing, and said technology is a part of that shift. Technology gives us access to new realities, she said. It allows us to dream further.

Go here to read the rest:
The Young Robot-Builders of Afghanistan - The Atlantic

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis speaks during his meeting with Italy's Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti on July 11, 2017, at the Pentagon. Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

The past two ISIS-K emirs were killed in July 2016 and

Nicholson helped launch an Afghan and U.S. counteroffensive aimed at driving ISIS-K out of the country by the end of the year. Nicholson said in a video statement that operations over the last year have killed dozens of the groups senior leaders.

Mattis is currently conducting a review of Afghanistan strategy and troop levels and is expected to release those plans soon, though he said he did not want to put a timetable on it.

Mattis and Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford previously said that the Pentagons review includes the broader South Asia region and that it would be delivered in mid-July.

Senate Armed Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Arizona, last month said the United States has no strategy to end what he called a stalemate in Afghanistan after 16 years of war.

"Six months into the new administration, it still has not delivered a strategy," McCain said in a June 19 statement. We cannot keep going like this. If the administration fails to develop a strategy for success, Congress will need to play a greater role."

McCain said Congress could put a committee-created Afghanistan strategy into the National Defense Authorization Act. The House passed its version of that act, which raises defense spending to $696 billion in fiscal year 2018, 344-81.

More here:
ISIS Leader in Afghanistan Killed in Airstrike, Pentagon Says - NBCNews.com

Afghanistan has suffered through a harrowing summer, even by the nightmarish standards of a country convulsed by conflict for decades.

On May 31, a truck bomb exploded in Kabuls heavily fortified diplomatic enclave, killing more than 150 people. On June 2, Afghans, furious about their governments failure to provide security, took to the streets of Kabul. Security forces cracked down, killing at least five people. One of them was the son of the deputy leader of Afghanistans Senate. His funeral the next day, attended by top Afghan political leaders, was rocked by three explosions that killed at least twenty people.

This merciless cycle of violence continued unabated. Two bomb blasts at Shia Muslim mosques, one in Herat on June 6 and the other in Kabul on June 15, killed seven and four people, respectively. On June 18, an assault on a police station in eastern Afghanistan killed five officers. On June 20, eight Afghan guards employed at Bagram, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, were gunned down in an ambush as they headed to the base to work a night shift. And on June 22, a car bomb outside a bank in Helmand Province claimed at least thirty lives.

Thats at least 229 dead in just twenty-three days.

Against this bloody backdrop, the Trump administration plans to send several thousand more soldiers to Afghanistaneven as it continues to flesh out a broader strategy.

The decision to put more boots on the ground has made headlines, but the still-evolving strategy is far more consequential. Indeed, if the United States is to help arrest Afghanistans spiraling destabilization, itll need much more than troops to do so. And yet, whats known about the emerging strategy so far inspires little confidence that the Trump administration will have any more success than its predecessor.

Make no mistake: A mini-surge will do little to rein in Afghanistans recent orgy of violence, much less tame the Taliban insurgency. More than one hundred thousand American troops couldnt do the trick during the height of the surge in 2010 and 2011, so you can bet your bottom dollar that dispatching a few thousand troops to reinforce the current 8,500 wont eithereven with the improvements in Afghan warfighting capacities in recent years.

Read more here:
Trump's Afghanistan Strategy Is Simply Old Wine in a New Bottle - The National Interest Online