VZCZCXRO7990
RR RUEHDBU RUEHPW
DE RUEHBUL #1278/01 1391303
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 191303Z MAY 09 ZDK
FM AMEMBASSY KABUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8988
INFO RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 KABUL 001278 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SRAP, SCA/FO, SCA/A, EUR/RPM 
STATE PASS TO AID FOR ASIA/SCAA 
USFOR-A FOR POLAD 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PINR EAID MARR AF
 
SUBJECT:  Balkh Province - Security Setbacks, Corruption, Uneven 
Development Hinder Progress 
 
¶1. (U) Summary: Strong provincial leadership by Governor Atta makes 
the Balkh government work, but a worsening security picture in 
districts west of the provincial capital Mazar-e-Sharif and 
widespread corruption within his administration threaten to 
undermine people's confidence in government.  Balkh Governor Atta 
continues to blame the international community for not allocating 
the same development assistance to the north as it does to the south 
and east of the country. 
 
Security 
-------- 
¶2. (U) Despite having one of the most permissive security 
environments in the country, Balkh province still faces serious 
security challenges.  One of them is stabilizing the 
Pashtun-majority districts of Chemtal, Charbolak, and Balkh, which 
flank the ring road.  Attacks by anti-government elements (AGE) on 
GIRoA authorities and ISAF forces are on the rise in those 
districts, and the largely unmentored and undermanned ranks of the 
Afghan National Police (ANP) are incapable of neutralizing the 
insurgent threat.  Governor Atta exerts tremendous influence over 
the ANSF in his province, but the ANSF do not enjoy the trust of 
Pashtun villagers in the three above-mentioned districts. 
 
¶3. (U) This is not a new phenomenon; those communities have ties to 
Hezb-I Islami Gulbuddin elements and allege discrimination by 
government security forces, whom they accuse of having Jamiat Party 
connections.  Former HiG members in Balkh - led by Atta's nemesis, 
Paktia Governor Juma Khan Hamdard - hold Atta responsible for last 
year's murders of 14 former HiG elders, but the truth may never be 
known.  Atta has denied the charges and no investigations into the 
killings have been ordered. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Provincial Council chairman Azimi privately acknowledges 
that Governor Atta has been too preoccupied in recent weeks with his 
party's election-related activities to deal with the unrest in those 
districts.  Azimi cited the examples of how the government has dealt 
with similar problems in the districts of Sholgara and Dowlatabad, 
where insurgents had previously been active.  There, the governor 
used his influence and cash to encourage residents of non-Pashtun 
villages encircling Pashtun villages to stay vigilant and report 
suspicious activities to the governor's office.  That approach 
yielded actionable intelligence that resulted in some arrests and 
killings of insurgents - not by the district police, but by a 
better-equipped unit under the direct control of the Provincial 
Chief of Police.  The PC chairman said neither he nor the governor 
has confidence in the regular ANP units in those districts.   The 
PRT has voiced its concerns to the governor about the police chief 
in Chemtal, who is believed to have ties to insurgents.  Governor 
Atta agrees that the police chief there must go and is reportedly 
looking for a way to make that happen. 
 
¶5. (U) The onset of spring has seen an uptick in threats and 
incidents even in the provincial capital city, Mazar-e-Sharif.  Two 
separate car bomb attacks - one claiming the life of a Norwegian 
ISAF soldier - occurred there within a one-week period in April 2009 
- the first such attacks in two years. 
 
¶6. (SBU) ISAF has made Balkh the focus of efforts to affect the 
transfer of lead security responsibility (TLSR) into Afghan hands, 
which would make it the second province after Kabul to achieve this 
status.  To this end, Germany has launched Focused District 
Development (FDD) training of the ANP in Dehdadi district and 
together with the U.S., has pledged to continue with FDD training of 
district police throughout the province.  Germany envisions that 
Balkh will formally be classified as TLSR-ready when certain 
governance indicators are met and after all police in the province 
have been trained through FDD - a process expected to take another 
three-to-five years.  In practice, TLSR has essentially happened in 
Balkh, with ISAF playing a supporting role even now by responding to 
ANSF requests for assistance.  Sweden and Finland have already 
started discussions about shifting their security assistance efforts 
to the other three provinces (Jowzjan, Sar-e-pul, and Samangan) of 
the PRT's area of responsibility once Balkh achieves formal TLSR 
status. 
 
¶7. (U) Balkh ANSF maintained excellent security with little ISAF 
assistance during the high-profile Persian New Year's festival in 
Mazar-e-Sharif in March.  Yet stove-piping of information and lack 
of coordination by the Afghan army, police and intelligence service 
remain impediments to effective command and control in Balkh. 
District police chiefs do not communicate laterally with their peers 
in other districts; information flows up to headquarters and back 
down, but rarely between districts.  Cross-provincial border 
information sharing is even poorer between the ANSF in districts 
like Charbolak and Chemtal and their counterparts in adjacent 
districts that belong to Jowzjan and Sar-e-pul provinces. 
 
KABUL 00001278  002 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶8. (U) The transition from the ANP-led Joint Regional Command Center 
(JRCC) to the ANA-led northern regional Operations Coordination 
Center (OCCR) is incomplete.  The OCCR is meant to coordinate the 
collective efforts of ANSF in Regional Command North, and is 
supposed to be manned by deputy commanders from the ANA, ANP, and 
NDS.  But at present, it is manned only by ANP duty personnel and a 
couple of liaison officers from the ANA and NDS who attend the 
morning briefings.  The OCCR functions as a place to share 
information and not as the coordination center it is intended to be. 
 The Finnish military contingent at the PRT has agreed to provide 
personnel to mentor the ANA staff who man the 24/7 operation, but 
those mentors have not yet arrived.  ISAF has shown a greater 
willingness to incorporate the concept of jointness with the Afghan 
police and Afghan army in its patrols and operations, but the low 
numbers of available ANSF units limit this in practice. 
 
¶9. (U) Governor Atta wants Balkh province to become a hub for Afghan 
military operations, given its strategic central location in the 
north.  American military personnel who train Afghan commando units 
in Balkh give them high marks and would like to see them supported 
with rotary assets to take on the insurgent threat in Ghormach 
district of Faryab.  The governor has also pushed for the 
Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) process to begin in six 
districts of Balkh simultaneously - a first for DIAG.  While Atta 
covets this distinction, it is clear that the DIAG process in and of 
itself will not make a huge dent in reducing the numbers of weapons 
believed to be buried in caches throughout the province. 
 
Governance 
---------- 
¶10. (SBU) A former mujahideen commander turned politician and 
businessman, Governor Atta enjoys unrivalled influence in the 
northern region.  His government is largely a one-man show.  Five 
years into his term, Atta remains the longest serving governor to 
serve in a single province, and he has commented that he would like 
to remain Balkh governor for another five-to-ten years.  Atta has 
shown himself to be a very powerful and effective administrator, but 
he continues to turn a blind eye to conflicts of interest, thus 
blurring the line between personal and official business.  Atta took 
the initiative of establishing Balkh's own anti-corruption 
commission and has vowed to bring to justice anyone found guilty of 
corruption.  Transparency into the work of the commission is lacking 
and hopes are not high that the commission will curb the rampant 
corruption within provincial and municipal departments.  The civil 
service reform commission in Balkh has seen its work of identifying 
candidates for government jobs based on merit undermined by 
influential people trying to install their associates in key 
revenue-generating departments, such as in the customs department at 
the Heyratan border with Uzbekistan.  Atta is known to mistrust the 
justice system and has made it no secret that he believes the chief 
judge in Balkh is corrupt. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The Balkh provincial council is weak and its politically 
ambitious, well educated chairman is generally regarded by the 
public as a mouthpiece for the governor.  PC chairman Azimi concedes 
privately that even as an elected official, he is politically 
subservient to Governor Atta.  Azimi, who has decided not to run 
again in the August 2009 provincial council elections, is awaiting 
Atta's blessing on his plans to run for Parliament in 2010. Other 
provincial council members have privately complained that the 
chairman utters public statements on behalf of the council without 
prior consultation with them. 
 
Development 
----------- 
¶12. (U) Atta believes the north has not yielded its due peace 
dividend in the form of development dollars despite having much 
greater levels of security than the Taliban-infested south and east. 
 He does not accept that a dangerous province like Helmand should 
receive hundreds of millions of dollars in development money while a 
relatively safe province like Balkh gets only a tiny fraction.  This 
frustration has led him to step up criticism of the Swedish-led PRT 
and the international community for not doing enough reconstruction 
in his province.  Atta even wrote a letter to UNAMA last year asking 
for a new lead nation to replace Sweden as head of the PRT for that 
reason.  Sweden, working through SIDA, its development arm, channels 
the lion's share of its development assistance directly through the 
central government in Kabul - thus largely removing the PRT from the 
development picture, unlike the close relationship between USAID and 
the U.S. military in U.S.-led PRTs.  The Swedes have, however, 
imposed a "soft earmark" on their contributions to Kabul, requesting 
that 25 percent of their funds be expended in the four provinces 
covered by its PRT. 
 
¶13. (U) Atta is not content with "soft" capacity building projects, 
 
KABUL 00001278  003 OF 003 
 
 
such as support for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission 
or training of journalists, that Swedish development money typically 
funds.  Atta wants roads and infrastructure projects, and he is 
getting that to a limited extent through other means:  Germany has 
embarked on efforts to build a world class airport terminal in 
Mazar-e-Sharif and a runway that can handle jumbo jet traffic. 
Germany is considering paving a road directly linking Mazar and 
Kunduz, which would benefit commerce by greatly reducing travel 
times (Kunduz has a border crossing to Tajikistan).  Atta would like 
to see extension of the rail line that would connect Mazar-e-Sharif 
with Uzbekistan and the whole of Europe - a development that could 
make Balkh province one of the most important trade hubs in the 
country and attract more investment to the north. 
 
¶14. (U) Atta is proud that his province was the first to be declared 
poppy free but is angry that, in spite of this achievement, Balkh's 
farmers have not received alternative livelihood projects that he 
claims were promised by the central government.  He feels that he 
put his reputation on the line when he encouraged farmers to 
eradicate first their poppy and later cannabis crops and has little 
to offer them in the way of rewards.  This overlooks the fact that 
Balkh has received $2.5 million in Good Performers Initiative monies 
for maintaining poppy-free status since 2007.  Balkh recently 
received another $1 million in GPI money for the 2008 cultivation 
results.  It has spent these funds on tractors, health clinics and 
potable water projects.  Still, Atta feels those amounts are 
insufficient when he compares Balkh's slice of the pie with that of 
poppy-growing provinces like Helmand and Kandahar. 
 
¶15. (U) Atta takes a hands-on approach to development and even paid 
a contractor from his own pocket to develop and refine Balkh's 
provincial development plan.  But he harbors disillusionment with 
donors who either do not want to fund or are unable to fund his top 
priority projects across the plan's eight sectors.  USAID remains 
the single biggest donor in Balkh, and Atta appreciates its 
reconstruction efforts.  Despite a rocky start with USAID's $40 
million Mazar Foods Initiative (MFI) - envisioned as the showcase 
agricultural project in the northern region - Atta is on board with 
the project's new focus.  However, any reduction in funding for MFI 
or other USAID projects in Balkh or redirecting of USAID funds to 
other areas of the country may find the U.S. Government on the 
receiving end of Atta's criticism. 
 
EIKENBERRY