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Along with Pakistan and Nigeria, Afghanistan remains one of three countries where polio is endemic

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A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child, out of Kabul Afghanistan (file photo)

By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan

A nationwide three-day polio vaccination drive kicked off in Afghanistan on Monday in an effort to vaccinate millions of children in high-risk areas.

Along with Pakistan and Nigeria, Afghanistan is one of the three remaining countries where polio is endemic.

According to the officials at the countrys Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), more than six million children in the southern and southeastern provinces bordering Pakistan are at risk of contracting polio.

Maiwand Ahmadzai, director of the ministry's polio eradication program told Anadolu Agency that a comprehensive plan worth some $60 million had been designed to vaccinate up to 9.5 million children in 2017.

"Our primary focus is on high-risk areas, and we will strive to ensure the elimination of the polio virus from the country", he said.

According to the MoPH, only 13 cases of polio were recorded at the beginning of 2016 in Paktia, Helmand, Kunar and Kandahar provinces. However, in the past 6 months, no such case has been registered in the country.

On Sunday, Melisa Corkum, program communication specialist at UNICEF Afghanistan, told journalists in Kabul that the country was very close to eradicating the disease, urging citizens to cooperate with health workers.

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Millions of children to get polio shots in Afghanistan - Anadolu Agency

Wall Street Journal

Challenging the US, Moscow Pushes Into Afghanistan Wall Street Journal KABULRussia is making fresh inroads into Afghanistan that could complicate U.S. efforts to strengthen the fragile Kabul government, stamp out the resilient Taliban insurgency and end America's longest war. Moscow last month disclosed details of ...

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Challenging the US, Moscow Pushes Into Afghanistan - Wall Street Journal

The following column originally appeared on AEIdeas.org, the blog of the American Enterprise Institute.

In an interview with ABC News, President Donald Trump talked about the carnage taking place in Chicago, declaring, Afghanistan is not like whats happening in Chicago. People are being shot left and right. Thousands of people over a short period of time.

Is Trump right that Chicago is more dangerous that Afghanistan? For Americans, yes. If you compare US casualties in Afghanistan to those in Chicago, the Windy City has been a far more perilous place for Americans. Consider the statistics.

The total number of Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001 underOperation Enduring FreedomandOperation Freedoms Sentinelis 2,377. By contrast, there have been 8,229 murders in Chicago during that same time period. Here is the year by year breakdown:

2001: 667

2002: 656

2003: 601

2004: 453

2005: 451

2006: 471

2007: 448

2008: 513

2009: 459

2010: 436

2011: 433

2012: 506

2013: 422

2014: 427

2015: 495

2016: 746

2017: 45 (so far)

TOTAL: 8,229

To continue reading Marc Thiessen's column, click here.

Marc Thiessen is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where he studies and writes about American presidential leadership and counterterrorism. He also writes about general US foreign and defense policy issues and contributes to the AEIdeas blog. A member of the White House senior staff under President George W. Bush, Thiessen served as chief speechwriter to the president and to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Before joining the Bush administration, Thiessen spent more than six years as spokesman and senior policy adviser to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC). A weekly columnist for The Washington Post, Thiessen is also a contributor to Fox News, appearing several nights a week on The Kelly File. His book on the Central Intelligence Agencys interrogation program, Courting Disaster (Regnery Press, 2010), is a New York Times bestseller. Thiessen is also the coauthor, with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, of Unintimidated (Sentinel, 2013). Thiessen has done postgraduate studies at the Naval War College and has a B.A. from Vassar College

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Marc Thiessen: Is Trump right that Chicago is more dangerous than Afghanistan? - Fox News

The hiring freeze that President Donald Trump slapped on the federal government his first week in office was meant to signal that serious change was coming to how the government is run. But according to some Afghanistan hands, its the kind of change that could leave the U.S. effort in that country understaffed and end up costing Washington more money in the long run.

The U.S. military mission has steadily declined from a high of about 100,000 in 2011 to 8,400 by the end of last year. And as those troops left but the Taliban threat remained constant many of the jobs in intelligence collection, security screening, other critical non-combat specialties were handed over to a small U.S. government civilian workforce.

But there have long been serious gaps in civilian staffing, and by the start of 2017 there were about 160 empty positions among the approximately 700 slots in the country. Under the hiring freeze, which also bars federal workers from moving to new positions, those positions will remain unfilled even though volunteers were getting ready to deploy over the next several weeks, a defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Foreign Policy.

The empty slots, if those workers arent granted a waiver, will make the already serious shortage of engineers and intelligence analysts even worse and could have a damaging effect on the war effort, the official said.

Its long been difficult to fill positions in Kabul with civilian government employees, as they have to volunteer to deploy for up to a year no government worker can be forced to deploy and their supervisors can veto their request.

But now that those volunteers are barred from traveling to Afghanistan, and their bosses stateside are likely unable to fill their jobs even if they were given permission to deploy. The official said the executive order will likely have a chilling effect on volunteerism and getting people to deploy to Afghanistan.

The force and management are already spooked by the hiring freeze, the official said, unless something changes were in a death spin given all of the empty desks.

At the time the executive order was signed, there were approximately 67,700 vacant civilian positions across the Defense Department, according to Johnny Michael, a Pentagon spokesperson. Those jobs will likely have to remain empty while managers and Pentagon officials figure out solution.

Overall, the new rule looks like it will hit veterans particularly hard, since vets make up about 30 percent of the more than 2.8 million employees in the federal workforce. According to statistics provided by the Office of Personnel and Management, the federal government hired 221,000 workers in fiscal 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

One way to fill the empty slots is with contractors, adding to the 33,000 private contractors already working in Afghanistan.

When former president Barack Obama announced in July of last year that troop numbers would level off at 8,400 by the end of December, we started downsizing, the official said. And the plan was for the civilians to replace the military, but in actuality we werent able to get the civilians in the proper numbers and the proper skill sets to fill in the gaps, so contracts were signed with companies such as DynCorp and Fluor to fill some jobs with contractors.

The deal to bring in some 200 contractors came to work under deals worth about $84 million, and if more civilians cant deploy, requirements will likely go empty or be filled by more contractors at a cost of $400,000 a per person, the official added.

There might be a reprieve, however. Officials at the Pentagon are working on getting waivers to the executive order to allow the 160 employees to deploy to Afghanistan. But its uncertain if their superiors will still allow them to go, since theyre barred from filling their empty positions at home under the new rule.

Fifteen years into the countrys longest war, the campaign still is managed as an ad-hoc endeavor, with a short-term outlook, cobbled together month-to-month, year-to-year.

Photo Credit WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images

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Trump's Hiring Freeze Could Hurt U.S. in Afghanistan, Raise Costs ... - Foreign Policy (blog)

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Under former commander-in-chief Barack Obama, a top spokesman for the U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan suggested to Pentagon reporters in October 2016 that the American military and their Afghan counterparts may never defeat the Taliban, adding that the ultimate goal is a negotiated solution and reconciliation between the terrorist group and the Afghan government.

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The Taliban has repeatedly claimed victory over the U.S.-led foreign troops and their Afghan allies.

In the letter to journalists, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid warned President Trump that, as long as the U.S.-led coalition remains on Afghan soil, peace will be difficult to attain, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Independence from foreign dominance is the only asset an impoverished nation like Afghanistan truly has, reportedly added the letter.

The Afghan Taliban made a similar demand in a statement issued soon after Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, telling the then-President-elect to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

Citing the statement, Khaama Press (KP) reported, the Taliban urged the newly elected [U.S.] President to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan as it claimed victory in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, claiming that the [U.S.] should not further harm its prestige, economy, forces and generals in the country.

However, it is unlikely President Trump will heed the demand of the Taliban, which captured more territory under Barack Obama than at any time since its regime was overthrown by the U.S. military in 2001.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) learned from unnamed Afghan official earlier this week that then-President-elect Trump told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in a phone call in December that he would certainly continue to support Afghanistan security forces and will consider a proposal for more troops after an assessment.

According to the Taliban, Russia also wants the United States to leave Afghanistan.

We had a common enemy, an unnamed senior Taliban official told Reuters last month. We needed support to get rid of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan and Russia wanted all foreign troops to leave Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

While Taliban officials claim Moscows support does not extend beyond moral and political support, Afghan intelligence and defense officials are reportedly worried about more direct support including weapons or funding, noted Reuters.

American Gen. John Nicholson, top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, has also expressed dismay towards the malign influence in Afghanistan of external actors such as Pakistan, Russia, and Iran.

In late October 2016, American Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, a top spokesman for the U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan, indicated the American-led coalition may never defeat the Taliban when asked, Do you [think] the United States and the Afghan government will ever defeat the Taliban?

The goal for the government of Afghanistan is to ultimately come to a negotiated solution with the Taliban, he responded. So, our expectation is it there is really not a military solution to what is happening here in Afghanistan.

Gen. Cleveland also described the end game as a reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Taliban jihadists have repeatedly demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops as a condition for peace talks with the United States and the Afghan government.

In December, spokesman Mujahid indicated that the Talibans two conditions for peace talks are the removal of the group leaders name from the U.N. blacklist and the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan, reported Military.com.

However, the Afghan government rejected the groups demands an indication of the depth of the rift between the two sides in Afghanistans protracted conflict, it added.

In May 2016, Hibatullah Akhundzada became the leader of the Taliban following the execution of his predecessor Mullah Akhtar Mansour by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

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Taliban Threatens Trump: Get Out of Afghanistan - Breitbart News